Super-Psi & some notes from Braude's Immortal Remains

The Psi Encyclopedia Entry on Piper

Some of this is already noted above, but a few important details:

The behaviour of the ‘Phinuit’ personality, whether this was real in some sense or merely a construct of Piper’s unconscious mind, was distasteful to the investigators and to visitors who experienced poor sittings. Although he was generally disposed, even eager, to be helpful, he also sometimes showed a certain low cunning in pretending to knowledge that he did not have, appearing to use methods now known as ‘cold reading’ (described as ‘fishing’ by the investigators).  For instance he would sometimes note if the sitter provided a piece of information, and then later casually produce it as if it was original knowledge of his own.

Walter Leaf wrote, ‘If he is not able to make a right statement, he is always ready with a guess of more or less ingenuity to conceal his ignorance, or at least with some ambiguity or subterfuge which should make a show of turning the difficulty.’12  This made a powerfully negative impact on certain observers, and today is widely taken out of context to portray Piper as a common charlatan.

On many occasions information was given that was only partly right, or completely wrong. Sitters who attended sittings in which ‘Phinuit’ produced only generalities and wrong information came away believing that there was nothing supernormal about Piper’s performance.

However, as the investigators concurred, in successful sittings, ‘Phinuit’ could pour out quantities of correct information – names, relationships, family circumstances, trivial incidents, pet names – without any hesitation or stumbling.

The ‘secondary personality’ argument was somewhat weakened with the appearance of the personality identifying himself as George Pellew (referred to in the literature as ‘Pelham’ or ‘GP’ -- see above), whose speech, mannerisms and interests were thought by Hodgson -- and by many of Pellew’s friends whom Hodgson invited to sit with Piper in the months and years following his death -- to match those of the living Pellew. ‘GP’ also showed none of ‘Phinuit’s’ ‘fishing’ tendencies.  In his 1897 report on the Pelham sittings, Hodgson revealed his new conviction of the survival of consciousness after death. 

Also tending to counter the ‘secondary controls’ interpretation, the controls were frequently replaced by other personalities who identified themselves as deceased friends and relatives of sitters, talking and behaving in ways that the sitters often found completely convincing.  These direct interactions tended to be brief, but were sometimes routine, as in the case of the communicator claiming to be James Hyslop’s deceased father. Another sitter described her frequent conversations with a communicator she believed to be a deceased friend, a church minister whose interests and mannerisms were distinct from both ‘Phinuit’ and Piper.15 (See below for further discussion)

This issue with controls would continue to haunt Piper even later in her career:

On this occasion the main communicating control was ‘Hodgson’.  Hall and Tanner concluded that the phenomenon was an unusual kind of secondary personality. They found no evidence of paranormality. The investigation is notable for the ‘Bessie Beals’ incident, in which Hall and Tanner asked ‘Hodgson’ to see if he could locate a (fictional) deceased aunt. Although the character was an invention, ‘Hodgson’ subsequently provided several messages from ‘Bessie Beals’.46

SPR researchers were critical of the Tanner report, which they regarded as poorly reasoned.47

That last footnote is worth a read in its entirety:

How Martin Gardner Bamboozled the Skeptics

This first part gets into the fictional Bessie Beals:

Both Gardner and Hall seem to place much importance on this ‘scam’, despite the fact that Hall had asked Mr. Dorr (Mrs. Piper’s SPR ‘manager’ of the time) whether the investigators had tried such a trick previously. Mr. Dorr’s answer was that “many have tried foolery and sometimes have succeeded splendidly, and other times have failed. Controls are very suggestible and very willing to take up any ideas presented by the sitters, so that they can be very easily taken in” [my emphasis]. Certainly, this suggestibility should give one pause when trusting the words of Mrs. Piper (or any other medium). But given that the original SPR researchers had noted this aspect – it wasn’t ignored or never tested, the researchers simply found that it couldn’t explain away the convincing ‘hits’ that Mrs. Piper managed regularly – it doesn’t seem quite as great a scam as Gardner would have us believe.

Gardner’s criticisms are more successful when he brings up particular instances that concerned the original researchers. He rightly points out that Phinuit seemed unable to provide the contents of letters and secret messages written by the dead communicators he was in contact with: “Three times Phinuit tried vainly to guess the contents of a sealed envelope in James’s possession, even though the doctor supposedly contacted the dead woman who wrote the letter.” This particular case is a major stumbling block to the idea that the communicators were truly who they claimed to be – surely they would remember their own writings? All the same, there are still interesting facets to the case that are suggestive of some paranormal faculty, which Gardner doesn’t mention. But this genuine criticism is an isolated instance in Gardner’s essay. If he was more conversant with the source material he certainly could have raised other concerns. One of William Newbold’s sittings provided minor evidence of Mrs. Piper possibly purloining phrases from dictionaries. And an odd mistake in a sitting with a Professor Bowditch could be an indication of prior research being done on the sitter. Gardner would have done better to concentrate on analysis of some of these isolated incidents, instead of broad criticisms that have previously been comprehensively rebutted.

There are other fascinating aspects for discussion in this case even on the assumption of deception. One of the more curious aspects of Mrs. Piper’s trance mediumship was that for a time (during the transition from communication via the voice, to communication via writing), three different ‘communicators’ could hold ‘conversations’ with three different sitters at the same time – one through voice, one writing with the right hand, and one writing with the left hand. Yet Gardner casually explains away this bizarre simultaneous three-way mediumship simply by saying Mrs. Piper was “strongly ambidextrous”. And there are other aspects that should give the curious mind pause before dismissing her as a fraud. Given her reputation after the first couple of years of investigation, Mrs. Piper could have left the service of the SPR and charged exorbitant amounts of money offering sittings for the rich and powerful, with much less chance of being caught. Instead, she remained on a compensatory wage under the skeptical eyes of investigators for a good portion of her lifetime. Further to that, if she was a fraudulent medium, why change ‘technique’ from voice mediumship when it was so successful, to developing simultaneous voice and writing (and at times communicating via mirror writing) for no additional reward or benefit? And how did she fool scientists and physicians that her trance was genuine, showing no reaction to pain sensitivity tests including surprise needle jabs, flames held to her skin, and long inhalations of ammonia?