Leonora Piper (born Leonore Simmonds, 1857 - died 1950) - According to psychologist G. Stanley Hall, historian Frank Podmore, magician and puzzler Martin Gardner, pulitzer winning science writer Deborah Blum, historian Ruth Brandon, and magic historian Milbourne Christopher, Leonora Piper is the most famous trance medium in the history of Spiritualism. For a quarter of a century she provided the most convincing evidence for the reality of life after death or telepathy to some of the keenest, predominately male, minds in science. Mrs. Piper was a simple American middle class house wife. She never was a "professional medium," in the strict sense she had not advertised and charged a fee. [751033] Piper avoided the company of spiritualists, had never regularly attended seances, and did not subscribe to or read spiritualist publications. But she did read at some length the publications of the Society for Psychical Research, especially the accounts of her own sittings. (Investigating psychologist, Amy Tanner, forgot the SPR publications may have been used by Piper for gathering information about the members of the SPR and their friends.) Piper claimed to have no memory regarding her sittings.Studies in Spiritism by Amy Tanner, Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910, page 11 & 13 Piper also claimed, in her normal state, she had never received telepathic messages.Studies in Spiritism by Amy Tanner, Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910, page 13 From the beginning in 1884 Leonora Piper's clients paid her $1.00, equivalent to $23.67 in 2008, for a sitting.The Night is Large by Martin Gardner, St. Martin's Press, 1996, page 215 Only briefly did she read for the general public before becoming monopolized by William James and the Society for Psychical Research.

Biography

At the age of 22 Leonora married William Piper of Boston. Soon afterwards she visited a clairvoyant, Dr. J. R. Cocke. Touched by his hand, she fell almost instantly into trance, her first experience of this kind ever. During her second stay Leonora was able to receive her first automatic writing message which she handed (while still in trance) to one of the sitters. The latter proved to be Judge Frost. Frost claimed the letter came from his recently deceased son. Leonora Piper's first medium of communication between spirits and the sitter was called ‘Phinuit’: he purported to be a French doctor. His French was limited to only salutions like bon jour and au revoir. Phinuit professed little knowledge both of the French language and medicine. He could not understand French when it was spoken. Medical people were surprised Dr. Phinuit did not know the French or Latin names for the many remedies he advised for his sitters. These only cured part of the time. His historical existence could not be verified by SPR investigations. Phinuit was given to evasions, quibbles and lies in order to make himself appear to the advantage. He was always boastfully ready to meet any test suggested, and when he failed notoriously, as happened repeatedly, no one could be more ingenious in framing excuses as he.

Now prosperous Mr. & Mrs. Piper moved from her father-in-law's house to Boston's Beacon Hill Section where they raised their two daughters. Piper's popularity rose. In 1885 soon after the death of his son professor William James, a member of the Society for Psychical Research(SPR), who lived a few miles away had his first sitting in the red room of Mrs. Piper's apartment house with the purpose of examining the praise Piper had gotten from his wife and also his mother-in-law, who had recently returned from Italy. Mrs. Piper could not the describe the contents of a test letter James' mother-in-law had received from Italy. But Piper had correctly described some characteristics of the author. Mrs Piper's readings impressed professor James. He was also taken by her disarming openness and honesty. After a bit of fishing Piper gave James the first name of his 18 month old son, who had died that summer, and the last name of his father-in-law, which was the same as that of James' earlier visiting mother-in-law. James writes,"Although my father, my mother and a deceased brother were repeatedly announced as present, nothing but their bare names came out, except a hearty welcome message of thanks from my father that I had "published the book." I had published his Literary Remains; but when Phinuit was asked "what book?" all he could do was to spell out the letters L,I, and say no more. Few things could have been easier, in Boston, than for Mrs. Piper to collect facts about my own father's family for use in my sittings with her."

"We took particular pains on the occasion to give the Phinuit control no help over his difficulties and to ask no leading questions. In the light of subsequent experience I believe this not to be the best policy. For it often happens, if you give this trance personage a name or some small fact for the lack of which he is brought to a standstill, (does not have an answer) that he will then start off with a copious flow of additional talk, containing in itself an abundance of "tests."

The two explanations James ventured for the need of Mrs. Piper's fishing for information were that the deceased had some difficulty remembering things from when they were alive or the control had a difficult time reading the thoughts of the sitter. Soon James arranged sittings for his many friends. At their first interview fifteen of the sitters, including one member of the SPR, were surprised at the communications they received, names and facts. It seemed improbable that these things should have been known to the medium in a normal way. Twelve others, including four members of the SPR, obtained none, and felt that Mrs. Piper was a fraud. Names and facts that were relevant to some sitters were not revelant to others. At first James thought the "hits Piper made were either lucky coincidences, or the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was and his or her family affairs." Later James accepted Mrs. Piper "to be in possession of power as yet unexplained." James thought it was probable that the spirits originally appearing to himself appeared in the sittings of others who knew nothing either of their persons or names. This was the cause of confusion and mix-up among the sitters.

==Excerpts from Certain Phenomena of Trance, by William James== '

'"Phuinuit's stumbling , spelling, and otherwise imperfect ways of bringing out his facts is a great draw-back with most sitters, and yet it is habitual with him. The aunt who purported to “take control” directly (instead of Phinuit) was a much better personation, having a good deal of the cheery strenuousness of speech of the original. She spoke, by the way, on this occasion, of the condition of health of two members of the family in New York, of which we knew nothing at the time, and which was afterwards corroborated by letter. We have repeatedly heard from Mrs. Piper in trance things of which we were not at the moment aware. If the supernormal element in the phenomenon be thought-transference it is certainly not that of the sitter’s conscious thought. It is rather the reservoir of his potential knowledge which is tapped ; and not always that, but the knowledge of some distant living person, as in the incident last quoted. It has sometimes even seemed to me that too much intentness on the sitter’s part to have Phinuit say a certain thing acts as a hindrance.

Mrs. Blodgett, of Holyoke, Mass., and her sister, devised, before the latter died, what would have been a good test of actual spirit-return. The sister, Miss H. W., wrote upon her deathbed a letter, sealed it, and gave it to Mrs. B. After her death no one living knew what words it contained. Mrs. B. not then knowing Mrs. Piper, entrusted to me the sealed letter, and asked me to give Mrs. Piper some articles of the deceased sister’s personal apparel, to help her to get at its contents. This commission I performed. 'Mrs. P. gave correctly the full name (which even I did not know) of the writer, and finally, after a delay and ceremony which occupied several weeks on Phinuit’s part, dictated what purported to be a copy of the letter. This I compared with the original (of which Mrs. B. permitted me to break the seal); but the two letters had nothing in common, nor were any of the numerous domestic facts alluded to in the medium’s letter acknowledged by Mrs. Blodgett to be correct. Mrs. Piper was equally unsuccessful in two later attempts which she made to reproduce the contents of this document, although both times the revelation purported to come direct from its deceased writer. It would be hard to devise a better test than this would have been, had it immediately succeeded, for the exclusion of thought-transference from living minds.My mother-in-law, on her return from Europe, spent a morning vainly seeking for her bank-book. 'Mrs. Piper, on being shortly afterwards asked where this book was, described the place so exactly that it was instantly found. I was told by her that the spirit of a boy named Robert F. was the companion of my lost infant. The F.’s were cousins of my wife living in a distant city. On my return home I mentioned the incident to my wife, saying, “ Your cousin did lose a baby, didn’t she? but Mrs. Piper was wrong about its sex, name, and age.” I then learned that Mrs. Piper had been quite right in all those particulars, and that mine was the wrong impression. But, obviously, for the source of revelations such as these, one need not go behind the sitter’s own storehouse of forgotten or unnoticed experiences. Miss X.’s experiments in crystal-gazing prove how strangely these survive. If thought-transference be the clue to be followed in interpreting Mrs. Piper’s trance-utterances (and that, as far as my experience goes, is what, far more than any supramundane instillations, the phenomena seem on their face to be) we must admit that the “ transference “ need not be of the conscious or even the unconscious thought of the sitter, but must often be of the thought of some far away. Thus, on my mother-in-law’s second visit to the medium she was told that one of her daughters was suffering from a severe pain in her back on that day. This altogether unusual occurrence, unknown to the sitter, proved to be true. The announcement to my wife and brother of my aunt’s death in New York before we had received the telegram (Mr. Hodgson has, I believe, sent you an account of this) may, on the other hand, have been occasioned by the sitters’ conscious apprehension of the event. This particular incident is a “ test” of the sort which one readily quotes ; but to my mind it was far less convincing than the innumerable small domestic matters of which Mrs. Piper incessantly talked in her sittings with members of my family. With the affairs of my wife’s maternal kinsfolk in particular her acquaintance in trance was most intimate. Some of them were dead, some in California, some in the State of Maine. She characterised them all, living as well as deceased, spoke of their relations to each other, of their likes and dislikes, of their as yet unpublished practical plans, and hardly ever made a mistake, though, as usual, there was very little system or continuity in anything that came out. A normal person, unacquainted with the family, could not possibly have said as much; one acquainted with it could hardly have avoided saying more.The most convincing things said about my own immediate household were either very intimate or very trivial. 'Unfortunately the former things cannot well be published. Of the trivial things, I have forgotten the greater number, but the following, rarce nantes, may serve as samples of their class: She said that we had lost recently a rug, and I a waistcoat. [She wrongly accused a person of stealing the rug, which was afterwards found in the house.] She told of my killing a grey-and-white cat, with ether, and described how it had “ spun round and round” before dying. She told how my New York aunt had written a letter to my wife, warning her against all mediums, and then went off on a most amusing criticism, full of traits vifs, of the excellent woman’s character. [Of course no one but my wife and I knew the existence of the letter in question.] She was strong on the events in our nursery, and gave striking advice during our first visit to her about the way to deal with certain “tantrums” of our second child, “little Billy-boy,” as. she called him, reproducing his nursery name. She told how the crib creaked at night, how a certain rocking-chair creaked mysteriously, how my wife had heard footsteps on the stairs, &c, &c. Insignificant as these things sound when read, the accumulation of a large number of them has an irresistible effect. And I repeat again what I said before, that, taking everything that I know of Mrs. P. into account, the result is to make me feel as absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in the world that she knows things in her trances which she cannot possibly have heard in her waking state, and that the definitive philosophy of her trances is yet to be found. The limitations of her trance-information, its discontinuity and fitfulness, and its apparent inability to develop beyond a certain point, although they end by rousing one’s moral and human impatience with the phenomenon, yet are, from a scientific point of view, amongst its most interesting peculiarities, since where there are limits there are conditions, and the discovery of these is always the beginning of explanation."

In James' initial introduction of Mrs. Piper to the S.R.P in The Report of the Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 1, 1886-1889, pp 102 James states there are nine stenographic reports from twenty five sitters, but he does not specify if these reports were taken during the sittings or after the sittings, or how long after a sitting. The complete questions and answers of the sitter and Mrs. Piper are not recorded, for no repetitions, stumbling, fishing, etc. are presented. James never states that Piper only hears by having the sitter speaking into her right hand during trace. Nor is there a record of any attempt at stopping Piper's ears to test the validity of Piper's or the control's ability to only being able to hear through Piper's right hand. The whole story of what actually occurred during a sitting is left to the reader's imagination. This weakness is also evident in William James' later Certain Phenomena of Trance in the Proceedings of the Society of Research, (London), Vol. 2, Part 17, December 1890. which was written in answer to a request by Frederic Myers of the S.P.R.. This failure to inform continues through later investigations of Mrs. Piper.

Phinuit's memory

According to William James, "The most amazing thing about the Phinuit personality seems to me the extraordinary tenacity and minuteness of his memory. The medium has been visited by many hundreds of sitters, half of them, perhaps, being strangers who have only come but once. To each Phinuit gives an hourful of disconnected fragments or talk about persons living, dead, or imaginary, and events past, future, or unreal. What normal waking memory could keep this chaotic mass of stuff together? Yet Phinuit does so; for the chances seem to be, that if a sitter should go back after years of interval, the medium, when once entranced, would recall the minutest incidents of the earlier interview, and begin by recapitulating much of what had then been said. So far as I can discover, Mrs. Piper's waking memory is not remarkable, and the whole constitution of her trance is something which I am at a loss to understand."

Referring to his earliest inquiries James wrote:" My own white crow is Mrs. Piper. In the trances of this medium I cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and wits"

Later James wrote though he was interested in psychical research, he found the seance troubling, remarking that it was "a strange and in many ways disgusting experience, which I have conscientiously undertaken to sit out"(Correspondence 6:137).

Richard Hodgson Investigates

In 1887 doctor Richard Hodgson, a thirty-five year old Australian, his assistant, Miss Lucy Edmunds, and his typist, Alice Stutermann, arrived in Boston, Mass. Hodgson was to assume the position secretary for the new American Society for Psychical Research. Two weeks after his arrival Professor James invited Hodgson to sittings with Mrs. Piper. James requested Hodgson to continue the research for the A.S.P.R. and the S.P. R.. James was too busy with academic and literary matters to make a really thorough investigation himself. James recommended to the SPR that the use of a stenographer would improve the verbal record of a Piper sitting. James had never hired one himself, because they were expensive and SPR funds were low. Hodgson did not have a stenographer. Richard Hodgson or Miss Lucy Edmunds took notes at the Piper sittings like William James. Later Hodgson and James Hyslop would sometimes alternate in a joint effort.

Richard Hodgson was an associate of S. J. Davey, an amateur magician, who was also a member of the S.P.R.. In 1887 Hodgson showed great skill documenting the incorrect observations and false memories of sitters during seances. and exposing the methods of the physical mediums, William Eglinton and Helena Blavatsky. Leonora Piper was a trance medium, a situation that may have been foreign to Hodgson's experience with mental mediums. Hodgson took every precaution to exclude the slightest chance of deception on the medium’s part. He insisted on the anonymity of the sitters and never gave her any time to prepare for séances which were often held in improvisational manner. As had always been the case, successful results were obtained with those who came for three or more sittings. Frequently the first sittings were blanks as far as valuable results were concerned. Hodgson described Mrs. Piper as "this freak personality, whatever it is, with its varying phases, and supernormal "faculty." in a March 11, 1888 letter to his friend James T. Hackett, of Adelaide, Australia.

In 1889 Richard Hodgson took Leonora Piper and her two daughters to the UK, where professor Oliver Lodge and later Frederick W. H. Myers took responsibility for arranging the sittings and installing the test conditions. Lodge and Myers began by testing Mrs. Piper's trance state. The men pricked her with pins, burned her arm with a match, held ammonia under her nose. Nothing disturbed the sleeplike daze. Between November 1889 and February 1890 she gave for them 88 séances during which convincingly proved to many her ability to produce lots of details about strange people's relatives, dead and alive.

Immediately after Piper's arrival at Myers' house a veiled Miss X was introduced to the medium in the trance state. Miss X was at once recognised, and named. “You are a medium; you write when you don’t want to. You have got Mr. E.’s influence about you. This is Miss X that I told you about.” She was subsequently addressed by her first name, one of similar sound being first used but then corrected.

                                                                                      Miss X was told of a baby brother, William, whom she had forgotten about but later remembered. Psychologist, Amy Tanner reviewing the UK sittings comments, But here... the guess of a dead baby, and the name William is very common and comparatively safe. If Miss X had not remembered the dead brother she probably would have recalled some other relative of this name, and Phinuit could easily have explained that he was some one else's dead brother. The identity of Miss X was Ada Goodrich Freer. At first Freer was favorably impressed by Mrs Piper, but later altered her opinion. F. W. H. Myers stated, Many of the facts given could not have been learnt even by a skilled  detective. That to learn others of them, although possible, would have needed an expenditure of money as well as of time which it seems impossible to suppose that Mrs. Piper could have met. That her conduct has never given any ground whatever for supposing her capable of fraud or trickery.

Not later than 1891 was Richard Hodgson convinced of Mrs. Piper having any supernormal abilities.

Phinuit's ‘regime’ lasted until 1892 when "George Pelham", a friend of Dr. Hodgson, appeared. In 1897 the ‘Imperator group’ took charge and brought major change to the way things were going: all of the ‘inferior’ interference ceased, the passing in and out of the trance for the medium became easier, the messages’ content became quasi-religious, although somewhat pompous. When he began investigating Piper, Hodgson hired detectives to shadow Mr. and Mrs. Piper for several weeks to make sure they were not secretly researching "evidential" information about sitters.

After Mrs. Piper's return to America doctor Hodgson took charge again. His second report for the SPR Proceedings in 1897 was concluded with the words:

"I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the 'chief communicators '... are veritably the personalities that they claim to be; that they have survived the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us whom we call living through Mrs. Piper's entranced organism.

Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several years, and the 'spirit' hypothesis also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the 'spirit' hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the other hypothesis is not."

Sittings with James Hyslop

In 1892 professor James Hyslop had his first sitting with Mrs.Piper. According to Hyslop it lasted for about fifteen minutes. Six years later in 1898, he returned and joined the investigation. This time for the first two sittings, before and after Piper was not in trance, he wore a full face mask. Hyslop was certain Piper would not be able to recognise him for he now had a full beard. During trance he removed his mask and kept himself behind Piper. There were some problems in the first sitting, because, according to G. P. (the spirit-control): "You will have to have patience with me, friend, for there are three persons who are all speaking to me at once. One is calling mother, and the other is calling Charles, and the other is calling for you" . Nevertheless, a good evidence was obtained:

(...)the communication became relevant, and suggested my brother Charles : "I had a fever, and they said it was typhoid. My throat, I had a very bad throat, and it took me over here. And I did not know any one before I left my body." It was true that Charles died of a fever, but it was not typhoid. It was scarlet fever. I found also— what I did not know at the time of the sitting, though I may have heard it mentioned when I was a child—that he suffered with a veryputrid sore throat during his illness. I learn that this is characteristic of scarlet fever, but I did not know the fact at the time of the message. The statement that he did not know any one before he left the body will depend for its truth upon its interpretation. If it meansthat he did not know any one " in spirit " before his death, it is perfectly true, as my sisters Margaret and Sarah died before he was born. If it means that he did not know any of us or any person "on earth" it is equivocal. If it means that he does not remember any one,this might be true, as he was only four and a-half years old when he died thirty-four years ago ; but if it means that he never saw or knew any one, it would be false.

My brother continues : " I think I have been here a good many years, and I do not know all of my . . . . ," which if it had ended with "brothers and sisters" would have completed the truth,as two brothers and a half-sister were born after his death. But I interrupted with the question, "Have you seen mother?" He said, "She is here with me. She is all right. She came here after I did." It is true that my mother died after this brother. I then asked if he had seen anyone else besides mother, having in mind my father, and the reply was, "Yes, I have. Do you remember she had a sister who was in the body when I passed out? But she came here, too, and she came after mother." Every word of this is true, both as to the facts and as to the time relations of their occurrence ; but it was not reading my thoughts at the time. Onlyone of my mother's sisters has died since she did in 1869.

Piper said Hyslop's name in the second sitting, which he still was using the mask:

The second sitting opened with a very marked difference between it and the first. The situation seemed to have completely changed. The same apparent causes for confusion were not manifest. The trance personalities seemed to have the situation perfectly at command. The first sitting had closed with the expressed indication by G. P. that the lady who had claimed me for her son should be made clear again. But in the meantime it was as if the trance personalities had consulted over the situation and the evidence, and had become assured of the right communicators. The opening of the second sitting after the usual preliminaries with the confident address to me in my own name in the very first words is evidence of the appearance as I have described it. I was addressed: "James. James. Speak. James. James, speak to me. James. James," the name by which my father always called me after 1877. But there was no such apparent fishing and hesitation in regard to the rightful communications that had marked the dubioussituation in the first sitting. The way was now perfectly clear for settled communications.

Hyslop stopped wearing the mask in the third sitting:

As my name was announced at the previous sitting I did not deem it necessary this time to wear my mask, but it is interesting to record that nearly as little was known about my presence as if I had worn it. We were met at the door by the servant and went up to the room where the sittings are held without seeing Mrs. P. I sat down on the floor in a corner of the room behind the sofa to untie a package with almost my back toward the door where Mrs. P. was to enter. She entered and spoke indifferently to Dr. Hodgson. I looked up to speak, but her face was turned away from me and I quickly turned back to my work without speaking, and in a moment I overheard Mrs. P. remark to Dr. Hodgson that she had not seen me until then. I turned my head to look at her and found that she was not looking at me at all, but was in position for the trance. I then moved into my proper place and not the slightest attention was paid to me, and soon Mrs. P. was in the trance, apparently without the slightest clue as to who I was, even if she had known me well before. I left the sitting before she recovered consciousness, so that there was practically nothing still to identify me though I offered the opportunity for it by abandoning the mask. I do not say that she could not have identified me, but only that the conditions of the present (third) sitting were practically as good for concealment as in the two previous instances, though this fact requires neither recognition nor emphasis, but only to be recorded, because the announcement of my name in the previous sitting made it unnecessary to practise any further precautions by wearing a mask.

Hyslop had seventeen sittings. It took twelve sittings to convince him that his initial theory of 'dual personality' was wrong. “I prefer to believe that I have been talking to my dead relatives in person; it is simpler”, he declared.

In 1898 Prof. James wrote in the Psychological Review:

"Dr. Hodgson considers that the hypothesis of fraud cannot be seriously maintained.

I agree with him absolutely.

The medium has been under observation, much of the time under close observation, as to most of the conditions of her life, by a large number of persons, eager, many of them, to pounce upon any suspicious circumstance for (nearly) fifteen years.

During that time not only has there not been one single suspicious circumstance remarked, but not one suggestion has ever been made from any quarter which might tend positively to explain how the medium, living the apparent life she leads, could possibly collect information about so many sitters by natural means.

The scientist who is confident of 'fraud' here must remember that in science as much as in common life a hypothesis must receive some positive specification and determination before it can be profitably discussed, and a fraud which is no assigned kind of fraud, but simply 'fraud' at large, fraud in abstracto, can hardly be regarded as a specially scientific explanation of concrete facts".

After Dr. Hodgson's sudden death in 1905 Mrs. Piper remained under the jurisdiction of the SPR and the sittings were continued under the charge of professor Hyslop. Her second visit to Britain a year later was devoted exclusively to the so-called ‘cross-correspondence’: a massive series of messages which started to arrive allegedly from the recently departed Myers, Edmund Gurney, Hodgson and some other psychic investigators. Leonora Piper has held on the whole 74 sitting. According to Oliver Lodge's report, - "...On the whole they (messages) tend to render certain the existence of some outside intelligence or control, distinct from the consciousness, and, so far as I can judge, from the subconsciousness also, of Mrs. Piper or other mediums. And they tend to render probable the working hypothesis, on which I choose to proceed, that the version of the nature of the intelligences which they themselves present and favour is something like the truth. In other words, I feel that we are in the secondary or tertiary touch - at least occasionally - with some stratum of the surviving personality of the individuals who are represented as sending messages."

G. Stanley Hall and Amy E. Tanner Studies in Spiritism

After the death of Richard Hodgson in 1905 even though Mrs. Piper was a believer in her extraordinary powers, her manager, George B. Dorr, representing the British branch of the Society For Psychical Research in Boston, Mass invited further investigation.Studies in Spiritism by Amy Tanner, Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910 Dorr set up six sittings with Dr.G. Stanley Hall, psychologist, and his assistant, Amy Tanner, from Clark University. A sitting with Mrs. Piper, then in 1909, cost $20.00. (This would be equivalent to $456.60 in 2008). Mrs. Piper herself never received more than $1000.00 per year from her sittings. (This would be equivalent to $22830.14 in 2008). If she had obtained her information by sending people to investigate families she would have had to spend considerable sums for traveling, to say nothing of paying an agent. Three sittings were to be paid for by Hall and the other three were free, coming from Dorr's pocket. Several times before Hall had attempted to get sittings through Richard Hodgson, who kept her dates from 1887 till his death in 1905, with no success. Hall was told all her available time and strength were monopolised by psychic researchers and that a man of uncertain purposes outside their circle might mar the quality of her work.

In 1909 Dr.G. Stanley Hall and Amy Tanner had six sittings with Mrs.Piper. The use of a stenographer was not allowed. A pledge was given that no experiments were to be performed that might affect the medium's power. Piper sat at a table and rested the side of her head on three pillows. Piper's ears were never covered at any time before, during, or after trance. It was claimed Piper only heard sounds during trance through the palm of her right hand that was placed close to a sitter's mouth. The sitter had to speak loudly or shout and was often asked to repeat their words into the hand. Piper's right hand also wrote answers and questions, often illegible, on a pad with a pencil. The writing hand paused at the end of each completed page below the pad, so the top completed page could be torn off and read by those in the sitting room.Studies in Spiritism by Amy Tanner, Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910, page 18Studies in Spiritism by Amy Tanner, Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910, Hall's introduction page 19 While Piper is in trance Dorr had assured and almost invited sitters to move about and converse in low tones. As it becomes apparent to the sitters Piper is in a truly deep sleep and will not awaken, they are soon whispering and then speaking freely, believing Piper to be a deaf person. (These conversations were never recorded by anyone investigating Mrs. Piper.) Piper snored preceding trance and entry of the control. Yet the immediate control during trance has told sitters he does not like their whispering and speaking in low tones. These make him suspicious and angry. The control has also responded to private conversations within the sitting room. As a ruse, Amy Tanner pretended there was a gas leak in the hall. "At once the control wrote violently with abbreviations that Dorr was to fix anything that was wrong." Hall writes,"Not only does her ear receive all messages into the her hand, but it is keenly aware of everything audible. The noises on the street, the rustle of clothing, the sitter's position, every noise or motion and conversation, too was often reacted to." Amy Tanner writes, "Undoubtly the hearing is normal and more acute and sensitive than in the average person." During trance the memory of statements and actions of Mrs Piper while in a normal state were said to be forgotten by the control. Hall's tests proved this to be untrue and that the control was shifty and deceptive. Emotional tests applied to Piper by Hall and Tanner revealed Mrs. Piper and the control shared the same likes and dislikes. While under trance the right hand gave very little response to the Ethesiometer which measured tactile sensitivity. Both taste and smell were both involuntary betrayed by the use of salt and ether. Alta Piper, Leonora Piper's daughter, accused Hall and Tanner of performing an experiment upon her mother that caused her to suffer in pain for several days with a badly swollen and blistered tongue as the consequence of a powerful liquid applied to Mrs. Piper's mouth. These tests occurred during Hall and Tanner's fifth sitting with Mrs. Piper. As was the custom in the 19th century, occasionally a sitter with an appointment presented their visitor's card when entering the Piper apartment house before going (being led?) upstairs to the red room where all Mrs. Piper's readings took place. Immediately before Hall and Tanner are led upstairs by Dorr for their first sitting with Mrs. Piper, Dorr introduces them to Piper's two daughters. So that Hall and Tanner will be known to them if Dorr is not with them on another visit. Puzzler and magician Martin Gardner speculated that Mrs. Piper's daughters may have acted as her accomplices supplying her with information.. This is certainly unlikely for the sittings occurring during Mrs. Piper's first visit to England, when the medium was separated from her children for a few days. Out of trance Piper was poor at remembering names, but good at remembering both faces and voices, especially voices.James Hyslop estimated about 1910 that $75,000 (equivalent to $1,712,260.20 in 2008) had been spent on the investigation and the publishing of Mrs. Piper's case. 2000 pages had been printed in The Society for Psychical Research's Prooceedings. The team of Hall and Tanner did not agree with Hyslop's conclusions.

After having six sitings with Dr.G. Stanley Hall, psychologist, amateur magician and his assistant Amy Tanner she developed (according to her daughter Alta L. Piper’s 1929 biography) some kind of subconscious fear of entering a trance state and lost all of her trance abilities. Hall and Tanner theorized and agreed if Mrs. Piper could afford it and was no longer isolated as the property of marvel seekers she could lose her secondary personalities and live the normal life with other people that she desired. They concluded,"We are not able to satisfy ourselves of the genuineness of the alleged trance of Mrs. Piper and no communications were received by us that could be recognised as originating with deceased persons." Her third visit to Britain (1909-1910) coincided with her having caught a severe cold eventually proved to be a failure. In 1910, in England, Piper was baptized and confirmed in the Anglican Church. On May 24, 1911 a coming suspension of mediumship was announced by her ‘Imperator’ guide. James Hyslop, supporting Mrs. Piper's supernormal abilities, blamed Hall and Tanner for the loss of her mediumship. According to Hyslop their clumsy and misguided attempts at science and making personal reputations for themselves had damaged the instrument that carried messages from the dead back to the world of the living, proving the existence of surviving consciousness.[751034]Andrew Lang of the SPR thought Mrs. Piper created "dishonest secondary personalities". Eleanor Sidgewick of the SPR believed Piper's 'control' was 'some element of her own consciousness'. Mrs. Eleanor Sidgwick did not accepted the spirit of her husband, Henry Sidgwick, coming through Mrs. Piper as genuine. Mrs. Sidgwick wrote,"The intelligence commununication directly with the sitter, through Mrs. Piper's organism is Mrs. Piper." She did not agree with Richard Hodgson that the deceased commununicated through Piper. Leonora Piper continued to receive messages through automatic writing but her once famous trance abilities re-emerged only once, in 1915 when a spirit-guide called ‘Faunus’ gave her one sensational message about Sir Oliver Lodge's son Raymond’s forthcoming death. "The offical view of the SPR may be judged from the fact that when the mediumship of Mrs. Piper had declined to such an extent that they could no longer experiment with her the Society granted her a pension, and she is probably the only medium in the world ever to receive such a compliment from a scientific body."

Dr. Gardner Murphy in a footnote to his Challenge of Psychical Research (1961), page 200, states, "I had three years of sittings with Mrs. Piper in 1922 to 1925, near the end of her career. For the most part, my sittings were uneventful and lacking in the types of phenomena which characterized the zenith of her career. There were, however, some phenomena of interest, as appears for example, in the experiences of Jane H. Sagendorph: A vision and itsSequel, Boston Society for Psychic Research, 1928.

Leonora Piper remains an unexplained enigma”, wrote Nandor Fodor in his “Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science” (1934).

References

Link

[751035]Studies in Spiritism by Amy E. Tanner, Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910 First introduction by Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Google books

[751036]Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Volume 5, 1911, James Hyslop's Letter to G. Stanley Hall and Criticism of Studies in Spiritism by Amy E. Tanner

[751037]Essays in Psychical Research by Ada Goodrich Freer, George Redway, 1899, See: Page 21

See also

Arthur FordGary Schwartz