The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [56]
As she told her father, she hoped the visit wouldn’t be too ridiculous. Beyond that, she was keeping her expectations low.
Minot Savage wanted more than just to present Mrs. Piper with a tricky test. He also wanted to evaluate a concept that currently intrigued psychical researchers. Called “psychometry,” it was the idea that material objects could convey information to people, or conversely, that some people had the ability to read information from rocks and wood, paper and metal.
The word psychometry had been coined in 1842 from the Greek words psyche, “soul,” and metron, “measure.” But the idea itself was woven through folklore from many cultures and many, many years past. Generations of ghost stories derived from the belief that a building could contain memories of a murder, that terror could inhabit a place for years to come.
Most academics regarded the idea as so rank with superstition that it was hardly worth discussing. About thirty years earlier, though, a Boston geologist had decided to run psychometry tests on his wire—who claimed some psychic ability-and a few of her friends. His experimental approach was simple in the extreme, using the materials he knew best. The geologist wrapped rocks in paper packets and asked the sensitives to tell him something about the contents. A fragment of lava from the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea elicited the response, “It seems as if an ocean of fire were pouring over a precipice”; a limestone pebble with glacial scratches: “I am going, going, and there is something above and around me. It must be ice. I am frozen in it.”
As critics pointed out, his test subjects could have been guessing while they tried to feel the rock through paper. And even if there was something to psychometry, no one could explain how an inanimate object could communicate with a person. The concept provoked questions rather than theories: Was there an energy left by intense events? Could a house somehow retain the “memory” of a violent murder; could a rock recollect the savagery of an eruption? Or was it all just a fascinating dream of supernatural abilities, kept alive by the occasional coincidence?
Savage didn’t know himself. But he did know that Leonora Piper had shown a possible psychometric talent in that Italian letter test given her by Margaret Gibbens. It was that which led him to devise the experiment with the locks of hair. Like his daughter, he kept his expectations as low as possible—which meant that both of them were shocked by the outcome.
As Savage wrote in his report to the ASPR, “After Mrs. Piper had gone into a trance, these locks of hair were placed in her hand, one after another. She told all about them, gave the names, the name of the friend who had asked her to bring them, and even asked why one person had cut the hair from the end, where it was lifeless, instead of nearer the head.
“My daughter, of course, did not know whether any of the names given or statements made were correct or not. She made notes, however, and found that Mrs. Piper had been accurate in every particular.” James and Savage collaborated on a formal report to the American society, which admitted that both men found Mrs. Piper inexplicable. They urged that the ASPR invest serious time and money investigating all the questions they had raised about the medium. Here, they said, was a rare opportunity to put “real” science to work, and they hoped not to lose it.
5
INFINITE RATIONALITY
SUDDENLY, in a shock of glorious insight, Edmund Gurney realized the truth about immortality. The moment was breathtaking, luminous. He alone had solved the infinite puzzle, seen the path to eternal life.
Unfortunately, as he complained to William James, that gleaming certainty melted