2020-07-27, 09:57 PM
While the Kakie case is perhaps the best example challenging Super Psi, two more cases from Gauld to round this all out:
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Quote:1. Sir Oliver Lodge’s Uncle Jerry This case took place during Mrs Piper’s visit to England in the winter of 1889–90. Sir Oliver Lodge’s summary of it (111, pp. 458–459) is as follows:
It happens that an uncle of mine in London [Uncle Robert], now quite an old man, had a twin brother who died some twenty or more years ago.
I interested him generally in the subject, and wrote to ask if he would lend me some relic of his brother. By morning post on a certain day I received a curious old gold watch, which his brother had worn … I handed it to Mrs Piper when in a state of trance. I was told almost immediately that it had belonged to one of my uncles … After some difficulty … Dr Phinuit caught the name Jerry … and said … ‘This is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I am here. Uncle Jerry, my watch.’ … I pointed out to him that to make Uncle Robert aware of his presence it would be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood …
‘Uncle Jerry’ recalled episodes such as swimming the creek when they were boys together, and running some risk of getting drowned; killing a cat in Smith’s field; the possession of a small rifle, and of a long peculiar skin, like a snake-skin, which he thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert.
All these facts have been more or less completely verified. But the interesting thing is that his twin brother, from whom I got the watch, and with whom I was thus in a sort of communication, could not remember them all.
He recollected something about swimming the creek, though he himself had merely looked on. He had a distinct recollection of having had the snake-skin, and of the box in which it was kept, though he does not know where it is now. But he altogether denied killing the cat, and could not recall Smith’s field.
His memory, however, is decidedly failing him, and he was good enough to write to another brother, Frank, living in Cornwall, an old sea captain, and ask if he had any better remembrance of certain facts – of course not giving any inexplicable reason for asking. The result of this enquiry was triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith’s field …, and the killing of a cat by another brother was also recollected; while of the swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details were given, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy episode.
It should be noted that Uncle Frank could not remember the snake-skin; so that if Mrs Piper got all this information by telepathy, she must have ransacked the memory stores of two separate individuals and collated the results.
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Quote:2. The following is a summary (164a, p. 354) by Miss Helen Verrall (Mrs W. H. Salter) of a case from a long paper in which she describes and analyses some remarkable communications from a recently deceased young man, Bennie Junot, to surviving members of his family:
On 11 February 1902, Mr Junot [senior] sent a message through his son Bennie to a former coachman of his, Hugh Irving, who had been dead some months, asking where ‘the dog Rounder’ was. Hugh Irving had left Mr Junot’s service about two months before his death and taken the dog with |44| him.
In the waking stage [i.e., when Mrs Piper was beginning to ‘come to’] on 2 April 1902, it is stated that ‘John Welsh has Rounder’. Mr Junot succeeded after some difficulty in tracing ‘John Welsh’, but unfortunately it proved impossible to discover whether he had ever had the dog in his possession. It is certain, however, that he was closely associated with the coachman, who took the dog away, and it was through his attempts to find John Welsh that Mr Junot recovered the dog. Moreover, there seems good reason for thinking that John Welsh, even if he never had the dog himself, knew something of his whereabouts, and could have helped Mr Junot to recover him.
Neither Mr Junot nor any of his family had ever to their knowledge heard of John Welsh (at any rate under that name), still less of his connection with Hugh Irving and possible connection with the dog. Doubtless people could have been found to whom all these facts were known, but they were not people with whom Mrs Piper had ever been brought into contact. Until we know to what limitations, if any, telepathy between living minds is subject, we cannot determine whether it is a sufficient explanation of such phenomena as this.