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This Classic work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain. Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research by Michael SageV A sitting with Mrs Piper--The hypothesis of thought-transference--Incidents.
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This Uncle Frank was aged about 80, and was living in Cornwall: the general description is characteristic. Professor Lodge wrote to him to ask if the above details were correct. He replied, giving exact details: "I recollect very well my fight with a boy in the corn field. It took place when I was ten years old, and I suppose a bit of a boy-bully."
On the 29th November[31] Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, had a sitting with Mrs Piper. It was arranged that Mrs Sidgwick, who stayed at home, should do something specially marked during the sitting. Mrs Piper was to be asked to describe it, to prove her power of seeing at a distance. Phinuit, when questioned, replied, "She is sitting in a large chair, she is talking to another lady, and she is wearing something on her head." These details were perfectly correct. Mrs Sidgwick was sitting in a large chair, talking to Miss Alice Johnson, and she had a blue handkerchief on her head. However, Phinuit was wrong about the description of the room in which this happened.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] For detailed report of these sittings see _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi.
[13] At the first sitting in Liverpool there was some talk of a sea captain. Phinuit, who was rather fond of nicknames, jocularly attached the epithet "Captain" to Professor Lodge.
[14] _I.e._, "As I entered the medium's organism."
[15] Here Phinuit is supposed to be reporting in the first person words of Aunt Anne, treated as if present.
[16] Of a future life.
[17] Phinuit seems to have left, and Mr E. takes his place. This Mr E. was an intimate friend of Professor Lodge; he had appeared at a preceding sitting and had offered proofs of his identity, which were verified later. Professor Lodge recognised his mode of address. Phinuit, we remember, always addressed Professor Lodge as "Captain."
[18] The investigation into psychic matters.
[19] In accordance with a statement previously made by Phinuit.
[20] These changes in the medium's voice are very surprising. If there is fraud in the case, Mrs Piper must be the most accomplished actress who has hitherto appeared.
[21] _I.e._, still living.
[22] Mrs Lodge.
[23] Mrs Lodge's step-father.
[24] These assertions, that spirits return to the places they have lived in, and unknown to us, do what they were accustomed to do, are very odd. But the literature of the subject is full of such accounts.
[25] Mrs Lodge's father. Phinuit had alluded to this accident in a previous sitting, but without being able to explain if it had happened to Mrs Lodge's father or her step-father.
[26] In these communications the self-styled spirits always affirm that the dead get farther and farther by degrees from our universe, in accordance with time, and their own progress. The Stevenson episode, referred to above, is described on page 71.
[27] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi. p. 467.
[28] _Ibid._ p. 503.
[29] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi. p. 514.
[30] _Ibid._, p. 549.
[31] _Proc. of S.P.R._, p. 627.
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