The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [181]
99: “I remember playing the esprit fort”: William James’s account of his first meeting and subsequent interest in Leonora Piper was published as “A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 6 (1890): 651-59. The report was read to the society by his brother, Henry James Jr.
100: “People who fly into rages”: The Sidgwick discussion of spiritualists from Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 425, and Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, p. 99; R. Hodgson and S. J. Davey, “The Possibilities of Malobservation and Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of View,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4 (1887): 381-495; Wallace’s response cited in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research.
102: “ ‘he says his name is John’ ”: Minot Savage’s accounts of his early investigations of Leonora Piper are detailed in Minot J. Savage, Can Telepathy Explain? (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902).
104: James and Savage collaborated on a formal report: “Report of the Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena,” Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882): 102-6.
5. Infinite Rationality
105: “I was only waiting for breath”: Gurney to WJ, Apr. 16, 1886, Houghton.
106: an essay on the fleeting brilliance of nitrous oxide: William James, “Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide,” Mind 7 (1882).
106: both experimented with hashish: Hodgson describes his and Myers’s use of hashish in a letter to Jimmy Hackett on Mar. 4, 1886, ASPR.
106: “On Cocaine”: Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 1, no. 3 (1984): 206-17.
107: Frank Podmore: An excellent short biography of Frank Podmore can be found in the psychical research scholar Eric J. Dingwall’s introduction (v-xxii) to Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century.
107: asked Podmore and Myers to investigate: Podmore’s incisive analysis of D. D. Home in Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, also includes background on his investigation with Myers and their differences of opinion.
109: “I was palpably aiming”: Sidgwick’s journal for Jan. 4, 1885, cited in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 161; archived at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
109: The provocative question: Myers’s discussion of religion and psychical research in the introduction to Gurney, Phantasms, x—xii.
110: “is it wise to say it?”: Journal entry for June 28, 1885, in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 415.
111: “Planchette is simply nowhere”: “The New ‘Planchette’: A Mysterious Talking Board and Table over Which Northern Ohio Is Agitated,” New York Tribune, Mar. 28, 1886.
112: “Attention to such gruesome tales”: Description of Gurney’s house and meeting with Lodge from Oliver Lodge, Past Years: An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), 270-71.
112: each ghost story gained power: All “ghost stories” are retellings of those in Gurney, Phantasms.
116: “The Bloodthirsty Bluebells”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 408.
118: “fail to reveal any sensibility for a magnetic field”: Joseph Jastrow and George F. H. Nuttall, “On the Existence of a Magnetic Sense,” Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882): 116-26.
118: a pattern of insanity: Suggestions of mental aberration form the central thesis of Josiah Royce, “Report of the Committee on Apparitions and Haunted Houses,”Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 1 (1882): 224.
119: “I think your constant allegation of fraud”: Two letters from Alfred Russel Wallace to William James, written Dec. 21, 1886, and Dec. 23, 1886, enumerate his complaints against psychical research. The letters were prompted by James’s work in publicly exposing a Boston medium, Hannah Ross, whom Wallace admired.
120: “select the weak stories”: Sidgwick’s journal for Aug. 22, 1885, in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick.
120 “monotonous assortment”: Gurney to WJ on Apr. 16, 1886, Houghton.
120: “ruthless hand of science”: Myers’s commentary on science in psychical research from his introduction to Gurney, Phantasms, xxiii—xxvii.