The Search for Bridey Murphy

by Morey Bernstein

  But what of human beings? How shall we treat each other? The Nazis gave their answer at Dachau and Buchenwald. To them people were not so different from trees. Human beings could be dismembered and thrown into the furnaces. The Communists also have an answer: they think the human being is a transient, expendable machine, which must be sacrificed to the supremacy of the state.

  But now at last there is scientific evidence that men are something more than bodies, that they have minds with freedom from physical law, that these minds have unique creative forces which transcend the space-time-mass relations of matter. The mind, in short, has been found to be a factor in its own right and not something which is centered completely in the gray matter of the organic brain. This new evidence, as it is developed, cannot help but strike hard against man’s inhumanity to man.

  Before his death in 1923, Charles Steinmetz, the mathematical wizard and electrical engineer, told the world that science, when it finally turned toward spiritual discoveries, would make more progress in fifty years than in all its past history. If that great genius were alive today he would probably agree that the gong has sounded at last. The fateful half century has finally got under way.

  1See Appendix H

  2See Appendix K

  3See Appendix I for additional details of the Duke experiments

  4Despite angry denials from some quarters, the case for ESP stands as a solid scientific fact. Commenting on anti-ESP attacks, Yale Professor G. E. Hutchinson said, “The whole literature of parapsychology is disfigured by books and articles which are supposed to be critical evaluations, but which on examination turn out to be violent attacks by people who either have not read the works they are attacking or have willfully misunderstood them.”

  5R. C, Johnson, Imprisoned Splendour (New York: Harper, 1954). See also S. G. Soal and F. Bateman, Modern Experiments in Telepathy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954)

  6See Appendix J

  7Geoffrey Gorer, distinguished British anthropologist, wrote in his book Africa Dances, “It is my belief that African Negroes, without the inhibitions which time and a causal universe impose upon us, regularly dream the future as much as the past and as vividly, with the result that past, present, and future have no meaning to them as they have to us.”

  8A. M. Low, What’s the World Coming to? (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1951)

  9Not necessarily so, hints Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, India’s great scientist, whose amazing invention, the crescograph, registers spasmodic, painlike flutters when a tree or fern is pierced with a sharp instrument.

  CHAPTER 5

  For me there was one disappointment in all the modern parapsychology literature. It concerned hypnosis. Practically nothing was being done to employ hypnotism in these controlled experiments. To quote one book: “To this day no one has determined whether hypnotism is of any service in the investigation of extrasensory phenomena. We found only that we could get results more quickly without it.”1

  This disturbed me. I could not conceive how the trance state could fail to affect the score of an experiment in telepathy or clairvoyance. The very history of these phenomena had been, as we have seen, wrapped up with hypnosis; the relaxation ascribable to the trance state should alone be a favorable factor. Then there had been my own experience with a subject under hypnosis. If such results could be developed unintentionally, would there not be at least a reasonable possibility of encountering similar results when they were purposely sought?

  I spotted another comment by Rhine in a later book2: “There is much yet to be learned about how best to combine hypnosis with the exercise of these abilities.” Yes, I thought, perhaps that was it. Perhaps the one big snag here was the failure to properly apply hypnosis to these tests. That gave me an idea.

  So I sat down and wrote Dr. Rhine, telling him what I had in mind. I pointed out that I had been unable to find in his books, or any other books, any reports of tests conducted under dual hypnosis. In other words, in all these experiments only the person being tested for telepathic or clairvoyant perception had been in the hypnotic state. Why not, I asked, run some experiments after both the sender and the receiver had been hypnotized? In short, I suggested that I hypnotize one person in one room, that my friend Bill Moery hypnotize a second person in another room, and that we then ascertain, by means of controlled experiments, to what extent these two entranced subjects could communicate with each other.

  Instead of the sender remaining in the waking state and only the receiver in the hypnotic state, it seemed a more logical test (of the effect of hypnosis) to place both under hypnosis. In this way, with both minds probably on the same subconscious level, communication between the two might be somewhat facilitated.

  Dr. Rhine answered me promptly. “I do not know of any published work done with sender and receiver both under hypnosis.” He added that he, too, was looking for a great deal more from hypnosis than had been obtained in the past. And in any event he urged that we proceed with our experiments in dual hypnosis.

  So Bill Moery and I swung into action. We decided that, as the basis of the experiment, we would use five objects—a drinking glass, a knife, a bar of soap, a coin, and a cigarette. For each “run”—that is, for each round of twenty-five successive tries (or “calls”) by the receiver—every one of these five objects would appear five times.

  This meant that a list of twenty-five objects must be prepared before the test began. So that neither the sender nor the receiver should have any clue as to the order in which the objects would appear on the list, we would ask the witnesses to the experiment to establish the order in some random method. We asked only that each of the five objects—the glass, knife, soap, coin, and cigarette—appear five times on the list. We did not care how these “targets” were arranged. A sample listing of twenty-five targets, therefore, might appear as follows:

  While the spectators were making up this schedule in one room, Bill would hypnotize the sender in the kitchen. In still another room I hypnotized the receiver. After the sender was in the hypnotic state, one of the witnesses would hand Bill the list.

  Also rigged up in advance was a simple two-way electric signaling device. By means of small electric bulbs Bill could signal me when his subject was ready to mentally “send” the first item on the list. I, in turn, could flash Bill as soon as my hypnotized subject, the receiver, was ready for number two on the list. And so on. This eliminated any conversation between the hypnotists or their subjects; even the light bulbs were beyond the visual range of the subjects (and their eyes, of course, were closed).

  Noting that the first target on the list was “knife,” Bill would place the knife in the hands of his subject, the sender, and direct him to concentrate on that item—the idea, in other words, was to convey mentally to the receiver in the other room that this particular object, now in his hands, was a knife. At the same time Bill would press a button; the resultant flash of light in my room would indicate that I should now ask my subject, the receiver, for his “call.” As soon as the receiver made his call, I would record it on my pad, then I would signal Bill that I was ready for item number two.

  This procedure would be followed until the sender had gone through the entire twenty-five. Never during any of this time would the receiver be given a hint as to whether he was wrong or right. To be sure, I would hardly be in a position to give such a hint since I myself had not the slightest idea as to the order that had been selected and handed to Bill. After the last call both subjects would be awakened, and then the sender’s list would be compared with the receiver’s calls, which were now recorded on my pad.

  The first “guinea pig” was my wife. Bill hypnotized her—she was to be the sender—while in another room I hypnotized a second volunteer, who was the receiver. When both Hazel and my subject had been hypnotized, one of the witnesses gave Bill the paper listing the order of the twenty-five items. I received Bill’s flash that he was now starting on the first target, and the show was on.

  I exp
lained to my subject that Hazel was now holding one of the five objects. Which one was it? “Cigarette,” he said. I wrote “cigarette” on my pad after number one; then I flashed Bill that we were ready for the next call. In a minute he returned my signal, indicating that Hazel now held the second item on the list. So I asked Walter for his next call.

  This was our first effort, so naturally our technique had some rough spots. The first snag developed by the time we reached number five. When I asked Walter for his fifth call, he replied, “Soap.” I recorded it.

  I waited for the light which would signify that Bill was ready with the sixth object—waited, in fact, for a much longer time than usual. Finally I decided that I must have missed Bill’s flash, probably having forgotten to look over at the light as quickly as usual. So I asked my subject for his sixth call.

  “Soap,” he replied again.

  At this point I thought that I had better check with Bill to determine whether I had erred by going ahead with number six. I did so, taking Bill aside (in the presence of witnesses) and asking him what number five had actually been. “Soap,” he said.

  Then I asked what the sixth item had been. Bill registered surprise at this question, pointing out that he was still working on the fifth object. Indeed, the hypnotized sender, Hazel, still held the soap in her hand. Bill pointed out that I had never signaled that I was ready for number six.

  It was true; the blunder was mine. So I suggested, since my subject was ready for number seven, that he leave the soap in the sender’s hand, call it number seven, and we would go on from there.

  When I returned to my subject and asked him for his seventh call, he responded with conviction, “Soap!” We proceeded from there and encountered no more hazards during the remainder of the run.

  Afterward I asked the subject why he had insisted on calling “Soap” three times in succession. He answered that he could very clearly see that bar of soap—that nothing but soap floated into his perception during those calls. The term “float,” incidentally, was his own expression. He explained that these various objects seemed to float into his perception on a sort of wave, and he described the wave with his hand.

  Then we checked his score, counting all three soaps as only one hit. Even though he had correctly named the target three times, still it had been the same target, never having been changed in the sender’s hands during all three calls. So we counted this as a single hit, and he had scored nine hits.

  While this was not a spectacular score, it certainly would be extremely significant if it could be maintained. Furthermore, we had been particularly impressed by the soap incident. We determined, therefore, to pursue these experiments whenever we could find subjects—and sufficient time.

  Within a month, using six different subjects, we had completed six runs or 150 calls. Our average had dropped a little but was still high. And even though this dual hypnosis routine had not resulted in a miraculous mental radio system, there had been certain factors which seemed especially significant. For one thing, when we added the “conviction” test, the results were surprising.

  The conviction test was merely our term for the subject’s adding, immediately after he made his call, a comment as to whether his perception on that particular call had been “clear” or “dim.” For example, the subject might say, in answer to number seven, “Cigarette—clear,” or, “Knife—dim.” In this way we recorded the subject’s personal conviction as to the perception of his own calls. Oddly, each receiver had an extraordinarily high accuracy on this conviction test.

  Then there was something else, too. The number of “forward displacement” calls was out of all proportion. That is, the receiver had called an uncanny number of targets in advance; moreover, these advance calls had a striking tendency to be grouped together. For example, when asked for call number eleven, the subject might call the object scheduled for number twelve. Then, when asked for twelve, the subject would name the thirteenth object. And so on he would go, threading a pattern of advance calls. While these were scored as misses instead of hits, no Einstein was required to discern that these displacements were mathematically significant. But we had made too few tests to merit serious consideration.

  1J. B. Rhine, New Frontiers of the Mind (New York: Farrar, 1937)

  2Rhine, Reach of the Mind (New York: Sloane, 1947)

  CHAPTER 6

  Meanwhile I was keeping Dr. Rhine at Duke informed on our work, and the correspondence between the doctor and myself began to assume hefty proportions. Dr. Rhine asked an extraordi nary number of questions: Was the door closed between the two rooms during the experiment?… Was there any communication between trials as to the success of the trial just finished?… Will you make a comparative series of tests in which you have the same receiver in the hypnotic state go through the same number of runs with the same sender but with the sender in the normal state?… Do you have in mind also having the sender hypnotized and the receiver normal? There were many more, and most of these questions were concerned with precautionary measures to insure the accuracy of the experiments.

  The hypnotic experiments continued until we had fourteen runs of twenty-five targets each, or a total of 350 individual trials. At this point Hazel and I decided to visit Dr. Rhine at his Duke laboratory. There were many questions he could answer for us, and besides, we wanted to meet personally this courageous scientist who had undertaken such a mammoth pioneering project.

  At the airport, where Dad was seeing us off, his parting comment was, “I’ll bet this Rhine isn’t even listed in Dun and Bradstreet.” As the plane took off, I was still trying to figure out whether he had been serious.

  The following day Hazel and I were in Durham, North Carolina, more than two thousand miles from Pueblo, waiting in a high-ceilinged, book-lined room. While we were looking over Dr. Rhine’s library, he walked in. Tall, handsome, and well built, he hardly fitted the picture that one imagines when thinking of the typical college professor. He wasn’t even wearing glasses! Over his alert eyes were bushy black brows, revealing that his thick white hair had once been black.

  Since I had already prepared a list of typewritten questions I wasted no time in asking them. And the doctor lost no time in answering; he seemed to have a prepared list of answers. I wanted to know about everything from experiments with prayer to his experience with Lady, the Wonder Horse. Hazel added questions too, and since we spent almost a week with Dr. Rhine we thought of more as we went along. One question which inevitably pops up during a meeting between two people interested in parapsychology is “How did you become interested in these phenomena?” Naturally this was one of my questions for Dr. Rhine, and one night while we were having dinner together, he related an episode (also recorded in one of his books) which was a factor in his decision to plunge into the whirlpool of psychic mysteries. “When I was a graduate student at a large university,” Rhine told us, “one of my most respected science professors related a typical psychic occurrence to which he had been in part an eyewitness:

  “Our family was awakened late one night by a neighbor who wanted to borrow a horse and buggy to drive nine miles to a neighboring village. The man said, apologetically, that his wife had been wakened by a horrible dream about her brother who lived in that village. It had so disturbed her that she insisted he drive over at once to see if it was true. He explained that she thought she had seen this brother return home, take his team to the barn, unharness the animals, and then go up into the hayloft and shoot himself with a pistol. She saw him pull the trigger and roll over in the hay, down a little incline into a corner. No reassurance could persuade her that she had only had a nightmare. My father lent them a buggy (it was before the day of telephones) and they drove over to her brother’s house. There they found his wife still awaiting her husband’s return, unaware of any disaster.

  “They went to the barn and found the horses unharnessed. They climbed to the hayloft, and there was the body in the spot the sister had described from her dream. The pistol was
lying in the hay, where it would have fallen if it had been used as she had indicated and if the body had afterward rolled down the incline. It seemed as though she had dreamed every detail with photographic exactness. I was only a boy then, but it made an impression on me I’ve never forgotten. I can’t explain it and I’ve never found anyone else who could,” the professor concluded.

  Rhine continued, “His story puzzled and impressed me when I heard it, and it has remained in my mind long years after most of the things he taught in class have been forgotten. It is not the story alone that I have remembered, but the fact that the man who told it, himself a teacher and a scientist, though clearly impressed by the occurrence, had no explanation whatever to offer; that he had lived all the years of his manhood believing such a thing had occurred and had done nothing, even to satisfy his own curiosity, about it.”

  When I, in turn, was asked to account for my own interest in these matters, I realized that I had never taken much time to give myself reasons. I supposed that my interest was something like that of the mountain climber in the novel, The White Tower. When asked why he insisted upon climbing a peak which had not yet been reached by man, he answered, “Because it is there.”

  Likewise, I just can’t dismiss this stuff. It is there.

  Our visit to Duke gave us an intimate glimpse of one of the world’s most important scientists. Probably more than any other one person, Joseph Banks Rhine has managed to pry an opening under the most ponderous of all iron curtains, the mystery of man’s own nature. His evidence is revolutionary; it calls for—indeed, it necessitates—a revision of many basic scientific concepts. The implications cut across psychology, medicine, philosophy, religion; they offer man, for the first time, an opening wedge in his efforts to understand himself and his fellow man.