1939-10-18 — Page 15

THE CHINA MAIL, OCTOBER 18, 1939 TO-DAY'S STRANGE STORY OF REAL PEOPLE

LEANORE PIPER

THE PSYCHIC

BY VINCENT TOWNE

A masked man entered a modest cottage on the outskirts of Boston. He proceeded to a room where an uncon scious woman leaned over a table, her head buried in a pillow, her hand clut- ching a pencil whose point rested upon a pad of paper. The woman's hand commenced to write messages to the masked man-communications al- leged, to be from his relations beyond the grave.

con-

woman was

This mysterious visitor returned to the New England cottage day after day, being always announced as "Mr. Smith." At length, he became vinced that the information written to him by the unconscious such that no living person but himself could possibly have known. Much to the astonishment of his brother savants he announced his belief in the pow- er of the living to communicate with the dead.

The masked man was Dr. James H. Hyslop, professor of logic and ethics at Columbia University,

New York, and the mysterious woman who con- verted him to the spiritistic hypothesis was a modest and retiring New Eng- land housewife, Mrs. Leonore Piper. Unlike her predecessors, she had as- sumed her uncanny role unwillingly, had never given public seances, never demonstrated her powers before other than scientific investigators.

This strange woman was the dis- covery of Professor William James of Harvard. brother of Henry James, the noted litterateur. Nearly a half contury ago Professor James, delving into the mysteries of psychic research, learned that she suffered now and then from peculiar aberations of conscious- ness, during which it had been acci- dently discovered by her family that she could reveal certain truths that could not possibly have come to her. from any living personage.

Professor James tested her powers and communicated results to Dr. Richard Hodgson, an English psycholo- gist living in Boston, and in order to subiect her to an acid test, Dr. Hodgson conspired with Professor Hyslop, whom he knew to be a skeptic and a careful scientific investigator. Thus it was arranged that Professor Hyslon should mask himself, disguise his voice and proceed to the Piper homestead unknown and unannoun- ced, entering the presence of the al- leged medium only after she had lapsed into one of her spells of un- consciousness.

In the course of these experi- ments, during which the woman of mystery never saw his features or heard his natural voice, Professor Hyslop allered the pencil in her hands wrote a secret password from his dead father, a word unknown to any one else, and which he was sure could never have been communicated to Mrs. Piner by any living conselous- ness. Reams of paper, bearing alleged messages written by Mrs. Piper in Pro- 'fessor Hyslop's presence convinced

him that her demonstrations were ab- solutely above fraud, and he had her sublected to medical tests proving that while writing these communications she was beyond question in a state of anesthesia, Insensible to pain.

com-

Having convinced these men of science that the dead could municate with the living. Mrs. Piper received an Invitation to visit England, and subject herself to tests arranged by the famous London Society for Psychic Resourch.

UNCONSCIOUS ... HER HEAD BURIED IN A PILLOW... HER HAND CLUTCHING A PENCIL

her right hand, which, holding a pèn- cil, rests upon a pad on another table to her right. She talks on various subjects until suddenly dropping for- ward on the pillows."

An example of the testimony alleged to have been communicated by Mrs. Piper to him was described to me by Professor Hyslop as follows:

"Once while I was having at sitting with Mrs. Piper, a 'message' was re- ceived from a man, a stranger to me. who gave his name; and that of his home town. He also stated that he had lost a finger. I made inquiry in the county and town mentioned as his home and found that the oldest re- sidents of the same name, people 76 and 84 years old, had never heard of him. Later I found a cousin of those people's father who had had the same name and had died before I was born. Pursuing my inquiries still further, I' found that this man had lost a finger In the War of 1812."

This mysterious woman succeed- ed in retaining the confidence of all who investigated her, and because of

lic demonstrations of her persistent refusals to make pub- phenomena, she retained

her alleged even of the skeptics who refused to the respect capitulate to her. She disclaimed any theories as to the source from which She her alleged "messages" were derived.

What was her power? Will any one

many more learned savants capitulat- way for a year and thus hid my iden- ed to her. Describing his experien- tity from her until after the results of ces with Mrs. Piper, Professor Hyslop those experiments had been obtained. said:

She goes into a trance while seated in a chair, her head resting on pillows pilled on a stand before her. turns her face to the left so that she can not see the writing executed with ever know?

"I wore a black mask covering my face from my forehead to below my beard when I began to visit Mrs. Piper. I remained masked in this

After some persuasion she went abroad, stomping in Liverpool, where," at the residence of Sir Olive Lodge, president of the University - of Bir- mingham, she was subjected to a rigid examination. A committee asked the alleged medium to communicate; to them just what two persons, whom they knew to be utter strangers to her, were doing minuta by minute in Lon- don at that preclia time. Mrs. Piper, entering the transe state, wrote a des- cription of these përson's lasts: during the evening and comparíkon later divulged that she was correct.

Proceeding to London, she un- derwent a long course of investigation at the hands of a committee of the Society for Psychlo. Rasearch, and

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