The extraordinary multiple language mediumship sessions of Valiantine and Whymant

An extraordinary case of multiple-language mediumship communication, from Michael Tymn's blog, at http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/month/2021/05/ .

"Dr. Neville Whymant, a professor of linguistics at Oxford and London Universities, as well as the Universities of Tokyo and Peking, who spoke some 30 languages, reported that he attended 12 séances at the home of Judge and Mrs. William M. Cannon in New York City beginning in October 1926.  He was in the United States to study the languages of Native Americans when invited to the Cannon home. There, through George Valiantine’s trumpet mediumship (voices came through the trumpet, not directly from the medium), he communicated with “spirits of the dead” in 14 different languages, including Chinese, Hindi, Persian, Basque, Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, Italian, Yiddish, German and modern Greek.”  One spirit identified himself as K’ung-Fu-Tzu, the actual name by which Confucius was known, and began speaking in an ancient Chinese dialect, but because Whymant was not totally familiar with that dialect, the “voice” switched to a more modern dialect.

Though highly skeptical, Whymant could not imagine a trickster knowing the ancient Chinese dialect or even the more modern dialect with its little twists of the tongue. The ancient dialect was as dead colloquially as Sanskrit or Latin, Whymant explained.  “If this was a hoax, it was a particularly clever one, far beyond the scope of any of the sinologues now living,” he recorded.  Whymant also reported that his wife’s deceased father communicated in his familiar “tone and slight drawl,” reminiscent of the West Country of England.

Whymant tested the “voice,” asking “it” about a poem written by Confucius, providing the first line. The voice responded by reciting all 15 lines of the poem.  The voice also explained a mistake made in modern translations of another poem, stating that the copyists were in error, as the character written as sê should have been i, and the character written as yen was an error for fou."

Tymn enumerates some suggested debunking arguments, and easily shows how none of them are even slightly plausible. The skeptic arguments are:

- Valiantine was a very clever illusionist
- Valiantine had a very educated confederate hidden away in the Cannon home
- Whymant made up the whole story so he could sell some books
- Valiantine must have been a skilled ventriloquist
- Famous people don’t communicate
- Telepathy or Super PSI might explain the voices
- Valiantine was accused of cheating in 1931; therefore, he was clearly a fraud