Mrs. Piper the Society for Psychical Research | Page 8

to hunt down
fraudulent mediums. He learned all their tricks, and acquired a
conjurer's skill. It was he again who discovered the unconscious[4]
frauds of Eusapia Paladino during the sittings which this Italian
medium gave at Cambridge. When such a man, after long study of Mrs
Piper's phenomena, affirms their validity, we may believe him. He is
not credulous, nor an enthusiast, nor a mystic. I have written of him
somewhat at length, because, by force of circumstances, his name will
often appear in these pages.
To return to Mrs Piper and the phenomena which specially interest us.
Mrs Piper falls into trance spontaneously, without the intervention of
any magnetiser. I shall explain later, at length, what must be understood

by "trance."
Professor Charles Richet was one of the persons who had a sitting with
our medium while she was staying at Cambridge. He describes the
trance in these terms:--
"She is obliged to hold someone's hand in order to go into a trance. She
holds the hand several minutes, silently, in half-darkness. After some
time--from five to fifteen minutes--she is seized with slight spasmodic
convulsions, which increase, and terminate in a very slight epileptiform
attack. Passing out of this, she falls into a state of stupor, with
somewhat stertorous breathing; this lasts about a minute or two; then,
all at once, she comes out of the stupor with a burst of words. Her voice
is changed; she is no longer Mrs Piper, but another personage, Dr
Phinuit, who speaks in a loud, masculine voice in a mingling of negro
patois, French, and American dialect."
Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., well-known among English men of science,
and at the time Professor of Physics at Liverpool, describes the opening
of the trance in very nearly the same words as Professor Richet in the
remarkable report which he published in 1890 on the sittings he had
with Mrs Piper. He also notices the slight epileptiform attack, although
he adds that he is not "pretending to speak medically."[5]
The Phinuit personality, of which Professor Richet speaks in the
passage above quoted, is what the Spiritualists call a "control." By
"control" is meant the mysterious being who is supposed to have
temporarily taken possession of the organism of the medium. Are these
controls only secondary personalities, or are they, as they themselves
declare, disincarnated human spirits, spirits of dead men who come
back to communicate with us by using an entranced organism as a
machine? In either case they must have a name. Phinuit has been one of
Mrs Piper's principal controls, but he is far from having been the only
one. On the contrary, they have been legion, and, what is strange, these
controls appear to be personalities as distinct from each other as
possible, each with his own style of language, his belief, his opinions,
his tricks of speech or manner.

Mrs Piper's trance has changed its aspect a little with the development
and perfecting of her mediumship. Formerly the controls
communicated only by using her voice; then some of them began to
write. In some of the sittings one personality communicated through
the voice, while another, entirely different, and speaking of utterly
different matters, communicated simultaneously in writing. For some
years now the controls have only communicated in writing, and have
used the right hand only. The right arm of the medium is in lively
movement, while the rest of her body lies inert, leaning forward upon
cushions.
In a long report which has just appeared,[6] Mr James Hyslop,
Professor of Logic and Ethics at the University of Columbia, in the
State of New York, describes the beginning of the trance in detail as it
now takes place. At the first sitting he had with Mrs Piper he seated
himself more than a yard from her, in a position which enabled him to
observe attentively all that happened.
The medium remained quietly seated in an armchair for three or four
minutes. Then her head shook and her right eyebrow twitched; all this
time she was trimming her nails. She then leant forward on the
cushions which had been placed on the table for her head to rest upon,
and closed and rubbed her eyes; her face was slightly congested for
some instants. She opened her eyes again, and the ocular globes were
visible, slightly upturned; she blew her nose, and began to attend to her
nails again. Her gaze became slightly fixed. Her face once more
changed; the redness disappeared, and she grew slightly pale. The
muscles relaxed, the mouth was a little drawn on one side, and the stare
became more fixed. Finally her mouth opened and the trance came on
gently, like a fainting fit, without struggle. Then Dr Hodgson arranged
her head on the cushions with her right cheek on her