The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [72]
Although he had no way of seeing it, instead the move to the United States—and his investigations there—would be the most influential of his life, changing Hodgson, changing the essential nature of how he viewed reality. He was a man in a hurry when he arrived in Boston, with no sense of the supernatural mysteries—and the eerie possibilities—that would seduce him into remaining there.
In fact, Hodgson reminded James of a perpetual motion machine. The new ASPR secretary wrote letters; answered inquiries; met with callers; attended committee meetings; researched “remarkable stories”; lectured on hypnotism to the Massachusetts Medical Society; attended unsuccessful thought-transference experiments by the surly, remaining ASPR scientists; and visited Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grave to pay his personal respects.
“Well, I am happy enough,” Hodgson wrote to his friend Jimmy Hackett. He liked the rocky New England shoreline, the curving green of the nearby Adirondacks. He liked Boston’s sportsman culture, was already making friends at the Union Boat Club. He had his books of poetry and philosophy ; he’d invested in a smart-talking green parrot for company. But he still dreamed of a wife and family.
He had moved around too much for that. “I should like to be married, if the fates permit, but have no one in my eye ... if I am stirred profoundly by any woman, I expect I shall go for her like thunder, but I don’t fancy I shall until then.” In the meantime, he was concentrating on only one woman, an overrated medium with a reputation that needed exploding.
Leonora Piper shared with other mediums one particular convention of the time, a spirit guide. As was the custom, her “control” served as kind of spirit business manager, relaying messages, summoning other ghosts into conversations. Hodgson had never cared for spirit controls; from Madame Blavatsky’s misty mahatmas to Florence Cook’s astonishingly solid Katie King, they seemed to him implausible at best, fraudulent at worst.
Mrs. Piper’s guide claimed to be a Frenchman named Dr. Phinuit, who had lived from 1790 to 1860. Shortly after Mrs. Piper went into a trance, her voice would change into his—deep, rough, flavored with a country French accent. Her personality would change too, from eager-to-please to abrasive, from gentle to forceful.
At least Phinuit didn’t trail around in filmy garments flirting with visitors, but neither William James nor associates in France nor anyone else had found any records showing that the imperious Dr. Phinuit had ever existed. The control didn’t even speak very good French. In conversations with James, who was fairly fluent, the doctor tended to rapidly fall into a baffled silence.
James suspected that the control was a creation of Mrs. Piper’s subconscious, a fascinating mental process that seemed to serve to buffer her from the strangeness of the trance life.
Hodgson found Phinuit a silly complication and a “freak personality.” Still, with the personality’s voice grumbling away during a trance, it was hard to ignore him. So Hodgson decided to simply confront the mess, interrupting to tell “Phinuit” that he was an obvious fake. The ever-irritable Phinuit promptly ended the sitting, announcing that he didn’t want to talk to “this man” any more that day.
Hodgson rode the train back from the Pipers’ suburban home to his downtown apartment, brushing cinders from his clothes and fuming about the whole deceptive, impossible profession of so-called mediums. But he returned, and so did Phinuit, this time prepared to put Hodgson in his place.
He had a message for Hodgson, he said, a personal one. The message came from a cousin, long dead, who was, according to Phinuit, the son of Hodgson’s mother’s brother. His grumbly voice continued: