Posted on 22 July 2019, 8:46

It was considered “unscientific” for early psychical researchers to conclude that they were hearing from spirits of the dead through mediums. Although telepathy, or mindreading, was also considered unscientific by the fundamentalists of science, and still is to this day, it was preferred to spirits as an explanation for the messages coming through the medium.  That is, the medium, must have tapped into the mind of the sitter for information. As it was not as unscientific as spirits of the dead, psychical researchers were therefore always on guard for telepathy.  One such researcher was Lydia W. Allison, a member of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). 

As reported in the February 1925 issue of the Journal of The American Society for Psychical Research, Allison (1880 – 1959), the widow of Edward Wood Allison, M.D.,  arranged for an anonymous sitting with medium Hester Travers Smith while visiting London, England during June 1924.  A resident of Dublin, Ireland, Travers Smith (1868-1949) was the daughter of Professor Edward Dowden, a distinguished Shakespearian scholar, and the wife of a prominent Dublin physician. She was primarily an automatic writing and Ouija board medium, sitting regularly with a small group of friends, including Lennox Robinson, a world-renowned Irish playwright, and the Rev. Savell Hicks.  Sir William Barrett, a distinguished physicist and psychical researcher, was a close personal friend and also attended a number of sittings with Travers Smith, attesting to the genuineness of mediumship. Geraldine Cummins, perhaps the most famous automatist in history, was introduced to mediumship by Travers Smith, who is referred to in books by Cummins by her maiden name, Hester Dowden.

In her 1919 book, Voices from the Void, Travers Smith states that she had begun experimenting with automatism six or seven years earlier to see what it was all about and if it really was evidence of survival after death. She began with the belief that automatism was, as many scientists of the day believed, merely a method of studying ourselves – that everything coming through the board and automatic writing was coming from the subconscious.  However, she came to the conclusion that there is more to automatism than the subliminal self and that disembodied souls were indeed involved, even if some of the messages were colored by the medium’s subconscious.

Allison (hereinafter “Lydia”) first sat with Travers Smith on June 27, 1924.  As instructed, she brought along several articles that belonged to her husband, who had died in 1920, including a gray suede tobacco pouch. The pouch was placed close to the Ouija board pointer and Travers Smith instructed Lydia to ask questions.  She first asked to whom the pouch belonged, and the board spelled out E-d-w-a-r-d.  She then asked by what name Edward was called.  The response came N-e-d (correct).  Lydia then asked who had been recently married. There was no response. A second try and still no response.  She then asked who gave him the pouch.  “A-n-i-t-a” was the correct reply.

At this point, they changed from the board to automatic writing and Ned was asked where Anita had given him the pouch.  “Londan” was the reply, although the second “o” in London appeared to be an “a.”  However, London was the correct answer.  He was then asked for his surname and “All——” was written in a scrawl.  Asked for his middle name, he correctly gave Wood.  Although Lydia did not ask for her name, the pencil wrote “Lydia.”  They then returned to the Ouija board.

Lydia then asked Ned who had communicated with her in a sitting she had had with another medium (Gladys Osborne Leonard) not long before. “James Hyslop” was the correct reply. Hyslop, the former director of the ASPR had also died in 1920.  “Whose name did he mention?” Lydia next asked, to which the reply correctly came “Prince.” (This was apparently a reference to Walter Franklin Prince, who was a research associate with the ASPR.)  Lydia asked who else was mentioned and the name “Bruton” was given. That name was unknown to Lydia, although she does recall that Hyslop had mentioned a number of people unknown to her and Bruton could have been one of them. As Lydia saw it, this name was opposed to the telepathic hypothesis, since it was not a name with which she was familiar and not “on her mind.”

She next asked Ned his sister’s name and he correctly replied with A-n-n-a.  When asked for his other sister’s name, he again gave the correct name, M-a-r-y.  When again asked for his surname, he slowly spelled, A-l-l-e-s-n…A-l-l-i-s-n…and finally A-l-l-i-s-o-n. 

Lydia again sat with Travers Smith on July 3.  Travers Smith rubbed the pointer of the Ouija board against the tobacco pouch and addressing her spirit guide, Johannes, asked him to call Ned to the table.  He returned with both Ned and James Hyslop.  Lydia noted that Travers Smith turned her head away from the board and closed her eyes, maintaining that position for the rest of the sitting.  Lydia had both hands free to take notes.  She first addressed Hyslop, asking him if he knew someone who just arrived in London.  Hyslop responded with T-u-b-b-y, the reference being to Gertrude Tubby, his former associate at the ASPR in New York.  Lydia noted that she had just arrived the prior afternoon and was certain that no one besides herself was aware of her arrival.

There was some further communication with Hyslop but nothing of evidential value.  She asked that Ned return to the board.  To again test him, she asked if he remembered Gretchen.  He responded that he did remember her, after which he was asked the name of Gretchen’s sister.  With Travers Smith continuing to look away and with eyes closed, her hand guided the pointer to E-l-s-a, followed by E-l-s-i-e.  Lydia noted that her baptismal name was Elsa but she was called Elsie.
 
Lydia then asked Ned if he remembered Jack and Marian and if he could give their last name.  He correctly spelled M-a-c-k-a-y.  She then asked for the name of her mother.  The board spelled P-a-u-l-a, which was correct, although Lydia had Polly on her mind, as that is the nickname her mother went by.  She then asked Ned for her mother’s nickname, expecting Polly, but the board spelled out M-u-d-d-e-r.  In fact, Ned always referred to her as Mudder.  As it had been some 15 years since her mother passed, she had more or less forgotten about Ned’s name for her.  When she asked Ned for her other nickname, he responded with “P-o-l-l-y.  Now do you think it is I?  You are very amusing to me.”  (hyphens omitted for clarity.)

Lydia’s third sitting with Travers Smith was on July 9.  She again asked for the names of his two sisters and both Anna and Mary were named.  She then asked for the name of his niece.  He correctly identified her as T-h-e-l-m-a.  This was the name she was looking for when she asked about someone being recently married in the first sitting. Strangely, the report ends there and there is no indication that Lydia then called Ned’s attention to the fact that Thelma had just married and if he was aware of it.

In commenting on the case, Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, ASPR Research Officer, wrote that the most surprising thing about the record is it transmission of proper names, which are usually difficult to produce.  “Did the names come from spirits or from the mind of the sitter?” he asks. “I am far from thinking that a definite conclusion can be drawn from one brief case like this.  But there are certain logical implications which ought to be stated.”  He points out that Lydia got “Paula” when she was thinking “Polly” and “Elsa” when she was thinking “Elsie, but most impressive to him was that “mudder” for her mother’s nickname when she was expecting “Polly.”  He saw this as lending itself to the spiritistic theory rather than the telepathic one.

“Finally, there is a singular fitness to the spiritistic theory in the failure of Edward to give the name of the person lately married,” Prince concluded, “though it was later given when the name of his sister’s daughter was demanded. For he would remember the name of his sister’s daughter but could not be expected to remember what had happened since his departure unless on the unreasonable assumption that spirits must know all that takes place on earth. But Mrs. Allison had the name ‘Thelma’ as definitely in mind when she asked who was married as when she asked who was the sister’s daughter.  Why should telepathy between the living observe the consistencies appropriate only to a spirit consciousness?”

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.

Eric,

Thank you for your input on the Wriedt matter.  As for your relativity theory, as you know, I offered it to three MENSA friends and none of them understood it, nor did I.  I think it is like sports and athletics.  The best players rarely make the best coaches as they are so gifted that they don’t realize that the more average person does not have his gifts.

Oh I don’t know Eric. I often confuse the sound of my Rice Crispies with conversations with dead relatives.

Dear Michael (Tymn),

For me, what you publish is informative and deeply interesting because I have not myself read the sources you refer to and in which you are very clearly very expert. One critical correspondent mentions attempts to produce sounds by use of Potassium and lycopodium seed. Chemical reactions in horns might well make sputtering or other sounds, but I would question whether potassium powder (or whatever) was REALLY ever used. An
investigatee knowing about it and obtaining it, let alone handling it without harm to herself, sounds very very very very unlikely to me.

That ‘explanation’ is much more likely to be a desperate attempt by the clever and dishonest mind of someone with knowledge of chemistry to discredit the psychic subject. Solid sodium has to be submerged in oil to be handled at all under ordinary everyday conditions, and is extremely active as soon as damp, forming caustic soda. Potassium is even more reactive than sodium, being top of the Reactivity Series. To suggest that Wriedt or anyone used such a method to make what they would then claim to be “spirit sounds” is insane, and betrays both the chemical knowledge and intense prejudice (ie the willingness to purport pseudoscientific ad hoc. ‘explanations’) on the part of the person claiming that this is the explanation.

My own claim that Relativity Theory provides a priori evidence of the possibility of other universes (including at least one we have for millennia intuited, and have called ‘heaven’) is truly scientific, and I am amazed at the silent rebuff it is receiving from your correspondents. Perhaps they do NOT have scientific knowledge after all, despite their claims to it, and perhaps that indicates the value of their ongoing bickering over anecdotal sources and records of century-old investigations, honest and open-minded or cynical and prejudiced alike.

Eric Franklin

David,

I should have added to my last comment that what Birkeland analyzed was probably ectoplasmic residue.  To my knowledge, nobody has ever done a complete chemical analysis of ectoplasm, as it is reabsorbed into the medium’s body and there is nothing to analyze.  Schrenck-Notzing did capture a little residue in his experiments with Eva C. and wrote: “As regards the structure of the teleplasm (ectoplasm), we only know this. That within it, or about it, we find conglomerates of bodies resembling epithelium, real plat epithelium with nuclei, veil-like filmy structures, coherent lamellar bodies without structure, as a well as fat globules and mucus.”  Whether or not this residue represented the true nature of the ectoplasm or was just that part associated with the medium’s own body Schrenck Notzing had no way of knowing. One thing for sure, he commented, the substance did not consist of India rubber, which many skeptics had suggested it was.

The possibility that what Birkeland examined was ectdoplasmic residue probably never occurred to him as, according to science, there is no such thing as ectoplasm.

Mike,

You have thoroughly researched and continuously provided so much information that reveals
substantial evidence that there is more than just telepathy going on in many of
the cases of mediums throughout history.

Humans are imperfect and so are spirits, so therefore, spirit communications are also imperfect.  How can the imperfect expect perfection?

I believe that those who carefully, seriously and sincerely study and contemplate upon ALL the available evidence presented,
by their reason and commonsense, may logically come to a conclusion that there is more going on then just telepathy.

I thank you profusely for your diligent compilation of the evidence for the afterlife, of spirits and spirit communications.

The more knowledge mankind has of these spiritual realities, the less confused they will be when they themselves return to the spirit world.

For us mediums, see so many spirits that communicate in great confusion…

Most Respectfully,
Yvonne Limoges

David,

I think we’ve been over this before, so I will not repeat it.  I will just ask how potassium particles result in voices speaking in different languages, even Bosnian and Serbian, while providing evidential information from deceased friends and loved ones.  Admiral Moore wasn’t the only one to test Wriedt.  Dr. John King, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett, and others sat with her and found no trickery.

David,
I appreciate your comments but I have to say that I do get weary of comments that are based on one or two biased investigators, that is, investigators biased against spiritualism or the paranormal and who cherry-pick their ‘facts’ just to substantiate their bias.  Every generation it seems has its James Randi I suppose and as new generations come along the cycle starts all over again with those who believe and those who do not and the same arguments start again ad infinitum.  It is like a nightmare that repeats over and over again as new people take interest in the subject.

I also have to say that I too am a skeptic but I hope I am an open minded skeptic who doesn’t trash phenomena just because someone writes a book or magazine article against it.  I have my favorites as far as valid phenomena are concerned and I also have those that I have a difficult time accepting as honest.  But after 60 or more years reading and considering reports of psychic phenomena including all of the exotic effects like apparitions, apports, and direct voices,  I believe that there are some, maybe just a few that are not explainable according to what science tells us today about reality.

Patience Worth (here I go again) is one case that I believe cannot be easily explained as fraud or dishonest reporting.  There are multiple examples of the end product of Pearl Curran’s contact with Patience Worth that may be read, studied and considered by anyone who takes the time to do so.  That case does not depend on only one person’s report about Pearl Curran and Patience Worth but there were many, many people who sat with Pearl Curran in her home around a Ouija board who could attest and did attest to the honesty of Pearl Curran.  Walter Franklin Prince, (not a light weight by any means) and Casper Salathiel Yost (long-time editor of the St. Louis Democrat) wrote about their experiences with Pearl Curran and Patience as they sat around the Ouija board.  I believe them!  Anyone could challenge them but nobody did.  No one has suggested that Curran, Prince or Yost are lying.  No one!  Even James Hyslop who wrongly criticized Yost’s book proved to be mistaken in his comments about Yost and the Currans and eventually the SPR had to basically state that Hyslop was wrong in his critique.

If you have not considered the Patience Worth case, I recommend that you do so.  Read Dr. Prince’s book “The Case of Patience Worth”.  Then read Patience Worth’s epic story “The Sorry Tale”.  It is not an easy read but if you persevere, read it slowly and consider what it would take to write that story of 400 plus pages, one letter at a time, without errors of history especially assigning appropriate ethnic names to the many characters, then you may begin to question honestly whether or not that case is a fraud.
 

Personally I find great solace in the poetry of Patience Worth and I marvel at her creative use of language, not only her use of obsolete English words but also that she had the ability to use language of several periods of time from medieval times through the Victorian era as well as her own contrived language in ‘The Sorry Tale’.

I guess that many of us are looking for some explanation about the meaning of life.  Some of us make finding an answer an activity of a lifetime while others just dismiss the challenge out of hand and consider that the answer has been determined by ‘scientists’ and that the meaning of life is that there is no meaning of life.  Maybe so!  - AOD

Amos,

William Usborne Moore was not a reliable researcher, he even had to apologize to Hereward Carrington for making false charges (You can find this info on his Wikipedia article). He had a history of endorsing materialization or physical mediums that were caught in fraud, for example: Bangs Sisters, Frederick G. Foster Craddock, Joseph Jonson and Etta Wriedt.

In 1911, Everard Feilding attended seances with Wriedt. He suspected fraud so he was banned from attending any further seances. Let’s also not forget Wriedt was exposed as a fraud by chemist Kristian Birkeland. Metallic potassium particles and Lycopodium seeds were found in her trumpet. When mixed with water, the effect was quite loud. This was a trick that direct-voice mediums used to make “psychic sounds”, from their trumpet.

Birkeland was nominated for the Nobel Prize seven times. He was not an idiot and I trust his exposure. I do not understand why this website continues to ignore all the exposures of fraud. I agree there is some strong evidence for life after death, but this cheesecloth or physical mediumship stuff was discredited years ago.

Keith P.,
I have enjoyed your YouTube video about Oscar Wilde and think that it is time that I read some of his works. Your video was very informative and worth viewing several times - AOD

Michael,
If one accepts William Usborne Moore’s accounts of his sittings with Etta Wriedt, then I agree that Wriedt was an extraordinary medium.  She apparently did it all according to Moore.  At sittings with Wriedt, Moore described visual apparitions, orbs, odors, apports and direct voices—-sometimes more than one voice speaking at the same time as well as speaking at the same time that Wriedt was talking. Wriedt, who according to Moore was a frail woman and was very hard of hearing, produced or channeled extraordinary phenomena around her during a séance. It is unfortunate that voice recorders were not readily available in 1912 and 1913 when Moore met with Wriedt as were available to Leslie Flint who recorded direct spirit voices later in the century. 

Cora Scott did produce a large amount of material during her lectures and stage performances.  I don’t find them as poetically inspiring and evidential as the writing of Pearl Curran/Patience Worth but there are a lot of them and seemingly beyond Scott’s knowledge and education to produce them.  Emily French did not strike a chord with me.  Perhaps I just haven’t read enough about her.  I have to admit that I am enamored with Patience Worth and I suspect that some people ‘roll their eyes’ when I keep mentioning her, but I think that that one case can provide an answer to whether or not there is an existence after death and/or reincarnation of consciousness in another body or something else. The hard evidence is there for everyone to consider. - AOC

Lloyd,
In my view hits on the head, Alzheimer’s disease, drugs, etc. affect the brain and therefore, to varying degrees, the ability of an organism to remain conscious.  But, I think there is a distinction between being conscious and consciousness.  I don’t see this as a small distinction but perhaps one of definition and semantics. One might define conscious-ness as that thing that interprets those stimuli which the body registers in the brain, or as some might say, are filtered through the brain resulting in awareness of the physical reality. When no longer conscious, consciousness remains but is not aware of physical reality.  Certainly dreams are an example of consciousness existing in a non-physical reality as perhaps are NDE and OBE experiences, drug induced so-called psychedelic experiences and experiences of some mediums who report, through inner sight, hearing and feeling, contact with other realities. It is consciousness that survives when the body is no longer conscious after death.

Regarding Phineas Gage it seems to me that a change in personality could be expected in anyone who had a railroad spike driven through his head.  Gage was a handsome young man with his whole life ahead of him.  The trauma to his head and loss of vision in one eye destroyed his looks and thereby altered the course of his life.  Few of us would retain a happy-go-lucky personality after such trauma and most likely we would be angry that fate had been so unfair

The hydrocephalics with little or no apparent brain did have a layer of brain tissue smashed up against the skull.  Perhaps that is all that is necessary to be intelligent.  Apparently some people are able to function with less.  We hear and see them every day in the news. - AOD.

James McArthur said, “It all goes to clearly show one thing to me: that if a person’s mind is made up that there is no afterlife, then there is no amount of evidence that will change their mind.”

I think it might be important to understand why someone has made up their mind.  Different people have different reasons.  Having been raised by spiritualist parents, there was no way I could seriously doubt the existence of telepathy.  But for several decades I did doubt life after death, because:

1.  I observed how things that affect the brain (like hits on the head, alzheimer’s disease, psychedelic drugs) seemed to do drastic things to one’s consciousness.

2.  Textbooks, and the scientific popular media, had a habit of playing up well documented examples of these kinds of physical hits on consciousness (like Phineas what’s-his-name who had a railroad spike shoot through his scull and underwent extreme personality changes) — but somehow they seemed to ignore just as well documented counter-observations (like brilliant students whose skulls are mostly fluid).

Discovering that there was a brain-as-partly-filter theory, and then reading about a study where some psychedelic mushroom was shown to have no revving up effect on any brain area, but rather, a calming effect on those areas that have been shown to naturally calm down during meditation—all that has completely turned me around.  Now, for me, the super-psi theory is the one that requires extraordinary proof.

Has anyone else gone through a similar thinking process?

James,

I agree.  “Spirits” can never be the answer for Science, since they are “unscientific.”  I don’t think there is much psychical research going on these days.  It is all parapsychology, which avoids any mention of spirits or survival.
Amos,

Yes, Patience Worth may have been the greatest phenomenon of them all.  I think it is a toss up between Pearl Curran and Cora Scott when it comes to the best “teaching” medium on record, with Emily French a close third.  Etta Wriedt ranks number one with me as to “communication” mediums.

Just in case anybody reading this blog is interested in more impressive information coming from the ouija board of Hester Dowden aka Travers Smith, I recently made a Youtube documentary of 25 minutes duration, in April this year, entitled - ‘Oscar Wilde: Dead or Alive?’.

It is based on books written by Dowden with Cummins taking a role as transcriber of the messages supposedly coming from Oscar Wilde, about his own existence on the Other Side, and what he thought of certain literary figures still living in the world. There are also comments on it by Sir Wm Barrett and Arthur Conan Doyle. It is an amusing as well as informative piece and you can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s6ojKTFKfs
or you could input to Youtube the video’s title plus my name Keith Parsons.

Thank you Michael for a very interesting piece. I note that in his book ‘Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death’ Myers, the author, was also fascinated and concerned about differentiatiing between telepathy and true spirit communication.

Michael,
It is fascinating to read these old stories about communications with the dead whether by way of the Ouija Board, automatic writing, possession of the voice, arm or hand of a medium or direct voice of the deceased person.  Unfortunately not much is received today from spirits by those means.  Today’s mediums report that the see, hear and feel the presence of spirits and they have to interpret what they see, hear, or feel to provide a meaningful message for the ‘sitter’ which may not always be the correct interpretation.  I am thinking of John Edward and George Anderson and others today who say that this is the way they discern the spirits.  I remain unconvinced to this day after reading over many years multiple tales of contact with the unknown.
 

Geraldine Cummins may have been perhaps the most famous automatist in history but I think Pearl Curran may have been the most prolific, writing as directed by Patience Worth her spirit muse,  several novels, short stories dissertations and many, many poems as well as interesting “table talk” with sitters around the Ouija Board.  Unfortunately she is famous only in a small circle of devotees who have read all of her work and recognize its quality and significance in proving spirit existence.  It is difficult for me to apply the term “automatist” to Curran because I think she was in a class by herself, somewhat more like the modern mediums mentioned above but perhaps much more sensitive to what she heard, saw and felt in her mind’s eye.  In many ways she and Geraldine Cummins were alike apparently as they both described their method of perceiving communications in a very similar way.

Pearl Curran commented that the Ouija board was a “thought dispeller” nothing more than “dead wood” and that it was she who moved the planchette, letter by letter, apparently in response to what was communicated by Patience Worth in visions, symbols and verbal interpretations to Curran.

(I tried this by reciting letter by letter something I had memorized, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for example, and realized that this was not an easy thing to do especially if it is done rapidly as Curran did . I don’t think one can be actively creating a story or poem and recite it letter by letter at the same time.  Try it sometime and see what kind of a creative writer you can be.  My point is that the stories and poems of Patience Worth must have been created prior to Pearl Curran’s use of the Ouija board to write them down.  That is, Patience Worth (or Curran) must have composed them beforehand and then dictated them to Pearl Curran through Curran’s subliminal mind.)

Later Curran advanced to speaking whole words and eventually she used the typewriter.  She was never possessed by Patience Worth nor obsessed with her. Curran did not go into a trance as such although she might have been distracted at times and neither was her hand, arm or voice box taken over by Patience Worth.  Curran lived a normal life according to her family and friends.  She was for all appearances a normal housewife living a middle class life in St. Louis during the early 20th century. 

Reportedly Travers-Smith ” began with the belief that automatism was, as many scientists of the day believed, merely a method of studying ourselves – that everything coming through the board and automatic writing was coming from the subconscious.  However, she came to the conclusion that there is more to automatism than the subliminal self and that disembodied souls were indeed involved, even if some of the messages were colored by the medium’s subconscious.”  I tend to agree with her that there probably is an interplay between the subconscious (subliminal) mind of the medium, the mind of the sitter and the consciousness of the deceased person.  I am less likely to think that psi or super psi (whatever they may be) are a big part of the mix.  - AOD

I have had several readings from different mediums who have provided me with information that I didn’t have, from spirit persons who I didn’t even know had passed on to spirit. If they were merely reading my own mind they were doing an excellent job, since they were finding information there that I didn’t even have at the time of the reading.

We see the same ‘psychological vs. spiritistic’ viewpoint in contemporary psychical research. Many skeptical researchers will still contend that the poltergeist phenomenon is caused entirely by unexplained, latent powers of the human mind, rather than by visiting discarnate spirits: this, again, in the face of the fact that the poltergeist experiencers are often provided with veridical information that they did not have and could not reasonably have obtained on their own.

It all goes to clearly show one thing to me: that if a person’s mind is made up that there is no afterlife, then there is no amount of evidence that will change their mind. I have no quarrel with ‘skeptics’: only with die-hard non-believers who masquerade as skeptics.

Eric,

I’m interested but I very rarely comment on these blogs despite the fact that I find them and some of the comments enlightening so I’m not surprised that others don’t either. 
                                                               
You wrote, “Relativity Theory is essential to the question of whether other universes exist wherein living Being is the substance, and our own physical universe-around-us only our own milieu, not our essence.”                         

Not being a scientist or having a grounding in physics, I’m just not sure what that means, but I’m willing to learn.

Really interesting. Thank you.

Dear Michael,

I am very grateful to you for publishing evidential material of which I have been totally unaware.

I remain stunned and mystified by the fact that no-one in communication with you seems to perceive, or is even interested in the claim, that Relativity Theory is essential to the question of whether other universes exist wherein living Being is the substance, and our own physical universe-around-us only our own milieu, not our essence. (Words are no good since they describe only our universe-around.) Why is no-one interested?

Eric