The Ghost Hunters

by Deborah Blum

  4. Metaphysics and Metatrousers

  75: “the inside of a coal mine”: WJ to Charles Renouvier, Dec. 16, 1882, Houghton.

  78: “the old man stubbornly turned his face to the wall”: The description of James’s father’s death is based on multiple accounts, including those in Simon, Genuine Reality; Feinstein, Becoming William James; and Jean Strouse, Alice James (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980).

  78: unexpected invitation from Edward Gurney: Gurney’s invitation to WJ, Dec. 13, 1882, Houghton.

  79: “one of the first rate minds of the time”: WJ to wife, Dec. 18, 1882; “I doubt its compatibility”: Gurney to WJ, Sept. 23, 1883; both in Houghton.

  80: “No matter where you open its pages”: “What Psychical Research Has Accomplished,” Forum, Aug. 13, 1892, 727-42.

  80: “I have been tremendously busy”: Gurney to WJ, Feb. 18, 1884, Houghton.

  81: “belief in new physical facts”: WJ to Thomas Davidson, Mar. 30, 1884, Houghton.

  81: “Of all the senseless babble”: From William James, “Are We Automata?” Mind 4 (1879): 1-22.

  82: A few religious leaders: The religious response to the challenges of science is well told in Ronald Numbers, Darwinism Comes to America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  82: “I confess I rather despair”: WJ to Davison, Mar. 30, 1884, Houghton.

  82: “remarkable phenomena”: William Barrett, “The Prospects of Psychical Research in America,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 6 (1884).

  83: “paralyze the phenomena”: Henry Sidgwick’s belief that he paralyzed spiritual phenomena in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 284; his analysis of psychical researchers, including himself, can be found on pp. 387-88 of the same work.

  83: “a cheerful cynic named Richard Hodgson”: For my portrayal of Richard Hodgson, I draw largely on a lengthy collection of intimate letters that Hodgson wrote to his friend Jimmy Hackett, describing his days, thoughts, hopes, and plans in extraordinary detail. These letters are archived at the American Society for Psychical Research. Two other excellent sources of information are Alex Baird, The Life of Richard Hodgson (London: Psychic Press, 1949); and Arthur Berger, Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology: A Biographical History, 1850-1987 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988). Berger’s chapter on Hodgson (11-33) is meticulously researched and objectively told; Baird’s book is something of a hagiography. All Hodgson quotes in this section are from Hodgson’s letters to Hackett, including the Wordsworth verse and the evolution doggerel.

  85: “Blavatsky carried such a reputation”: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s remarkable rise is described in “Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: A Spirited Story of the Psychic and the Colonel,” Smithsonian, May 1995, 110-28, and is one of the more famous (and entertaining) stories in the history of the psychical research movement. Berger, Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology, focuses particularly on Hodgson’s expose, including the Australian’s suspicions that the so-called psychic might actually be a Russian spy. Conan Doyle, The History of Spiritualism (1:260-62), offers a more sympathetic version of her story.

  86: “She is a genuine being”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 384-85.

  86: “The evidence published by the English society”: The first circular of the ASPR, with its organizing principles, can be found in Berkhardt and Bowers, Essays in Psychical Research, 5-8. Founding of ASPR is described in a variety of sources, including Moore, In Search of White Crows, 142-44; Simon, Genuine Reality, 190-92; and Berger, Lives and Letters in American Psychology, 8—11. James comments on the importance of a strong science component are in a letter to philosopher Thomas Davidson on February 1, 1885, as well as his prediction that Newcomb would probably “carry the others” with him.

  87: dismissed Barrett’s work on mind reading: Newcomb wrote first about his problems with the British experiments in “Psychic Force,” Science, Oct. 17, 1884; he expanded his criticisms in Science, Jan. 29, 1886, in an essay based on his ASPR presidential address of early 1885.

  88: “It is worrying to think”: Gurney’s reply appeared in Science on Dec. 5, 1884.

  89: “considerably off the rails”: Gurney to WJ, July 31, 1885, Houghton.

  89: coined a new name: The SPR’s early experiments on telepathy, and Myers’s invention of the word, are described in many venues, including Funk, Widow’s Mite, 294-309; Rosalind Heywood, The Sixth Sense (London: Pan Books, 1971), 39-42; and G. N. M. Tyrrell, The Personality of Man (West Drafton, Middlesex, England: Pelican Books, 1948).

  90: “To brand as dupes”: James, having done his drawing experiments, wrote Science on January 30, 1886, to complain. He followed that up with a letter to Newcomb on February 12, 1886, with samples of his own drawings, and wrote to the astronomer again that summer, to tell him that he was wrong about thought transference.

  91: “The whole thing is a fraud”: Hodgson correspondence to Jimmy Hackett, March 19, 1885, ASPR.

  92: “this perpetual association”: Gurney to WJ, Mar. 31, 1885, Houghton.

  92: a country squire in eastern England: The squire’s story comes from Edmund Gurney, Phantasms of the Living (London: Trubner, 1886). I worked both from a facsimile copy of the original edition and from a compact revised edition, edited and abridged by Nora Sidgwick (1918; reprint, Hyde Park, N.Y: University Books, 1962). The squire’s story, as retold by me, is based on a series of letters on pages 163—66 of the original edition.

  94: “absolutely reek of candour”: Mar. 31, 1885, after Newcomb made his presidential address.

  94: analysis of ghost stories: Nora Sidgwick, “Notes on the Evidence, Collected by the Society, for Phantasms of the Dead,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1885): 69-150.

  95: His third son, Herman: On July 11, 1885, William James wrote a letter to his aunt, Kate Walsh, about the burial of his son, Herman, which was among many grieving notes he wrote to friends and relatives. His visit to the old house is described in an August 28, 1885 letter to his wife. Simon, Genuine Reality (196-200), discusses both the child’s death and the way that grief led the Jameses to meet with the Boston medium, Leonora Piper.

  97: Leonora Eyelina Piper: Among the countless sources for the life of Leonora Piper, I would like to reference: Alta Piper, The Life and Work of Mrs. Piper (London: Kegan Paul, 1929); Anne Manning Robbins, Past and Present with Mrs. Piper (New York: Henry Holt, 1922); Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 2:308-29; Amy Tanner, Studies in Spiritism (New York: D. Appleton, 1910), 9-46; and Berkhardt and Bowers, Essays in Psychical Research, from the notes section, pp. 394-400

  99: “I remember playing the esprit fort”: William James’s account of his first meeting and subsequent interest in Leonora Piper was published as “A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 6 (1890): 651-59. The report was read to the society by his brother, Henry James Jr.

  100: “People who fly into rages”: The Sidgwick discussion of spiritualists from Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 425, and Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, p. 99; R. Hodgson and S. J. Davey, “The Possibilities of Malobservation and Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of View,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4 (1887): 381-495; Wallace’s response cited in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research.

  102: “ ‘he says his name is John’ ”: Minot Savage’s accounts of his early investigations of Leonora Piper are detailed in Minot J. Savage, Can Telepathy Explain? (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902).

  104: James and Savage collaborated on a formal report: “Report of the Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena,” Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882): 102-6.

  5. Infinite Rationality

  105: “I was only waiting for breath”: Gurney to WJ, Apr. 16, 1886, Houghton.

  106: an essay on the fleeting brilliance of nitrous oxide: William James, “Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide,” Mind 7 (1882).

 
106: both experimented with hashish: Hodgson describes his and Myers’s use of hashish in a letter to Jimmy Hackett on Mar. 4, 1886, ASPR.

  106: “On Cocaine”: Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 1, no. 3 (1984): 206-17.

  107: Frank Podmore: An excellent short biography of Frank Podmore can be found in the psychical research scholar Eric J. Dingwall’s introduction (v-xxii) to Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century.

  107: asked Podmore and Myers to investigate: Podmore’s incisive analysis of D. D. Home in Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, also includes background on his investigation with Myers and their differences of opinion.

  109: “I was palpably aiming”: Sidgwick’s journal for Jan. 4, 1885, cited in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 161; archived at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

  109: The provocative question: Myers’s discussion of religion and psychical research in the introduction to Gurney, Phantasms, x—xii.

  110: “is it wise to say it?”: Journal entry for June 28, 1885, in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 415.

  111: “Planchette is simply nowhere”: “The New ‘Planchette’: A Mysterious Talking Board and Table over Which Northern Ohio Is Agitated,” New York Tribune, Mar. 28, 1886.

  112: “Attention to such gruesome tales”: Description of Gurney’s house and meeting with Lodge from Oliver Lodge, Past Years: An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), 270-71.

  112: each ghost story gained power: All “ghost stories” are retellings of those in Gurney, Phantasms.

  116: “The Bloodthirsty Bluebells”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 408.

  118: “fail to reveal any sensibility for a magnetic field”: Joseph Jastrow and George F. H. Nuttall, “On the Existence of a Magnetic Sense,” Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882): 116-26.

  118: a pattern of insanity: Suggestions of mental aberration form the central thesis of Josiah Royce, “Report of the Committee on Apparitions and Haunted Houses,”Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 1 (1882): 224.

  119: “I think your constant allegation of fraud”: Two letters from Alfred Russel Wallace to William James, written Dec. 21, 1886, and Dec. 23, 1886, enumerate his complaints against psychical research. The letters were prompted by James’s work in publicly exposing a Boston medium, Hannah Ross, whom Wallace admired.

  120: “select the weak stories”: Sidgwick’s journal for Aug. 22, 1885, in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick.

  120 “monotonous assortment”: Gurney to WJ on Apr. 16, 1886, Houghton.

  120: “ruthless hand of science”: Myers’s commentary on science in psychical research from his introduction to Gurney, Phantasms, xxiii—xxvii.

  121: “theories on which to build”: Myers’s list of theories in ibid., xxxii-xxxiii.

  121: “ploughing through some strange ocean”: Ibid., xxxv—xxxvi.

  122: Powdered nutmeg: Results from Gurney’s taste testing, ibid., 46-49.

  125: “The question for us now”: ... and discussion of census: Ibid., 376—89.

  127: “a bit of land”: WJ to his wife, Nov. 11, 1886, Houghton.

  127: “mind-cure doctress”: James’s doctress and his stand against Massachusetts legislation to eliminate alternative healers are discussed in the introduction to Murphy and Ballou, William James and Psychical Research, 8-12.

  127: the bane of the American Medical Association: The early AMA position and Mark Twain’s response are described in Patrick K. Ober, M.D., “Mark Twain’s Criticism of Medicine in the United States,” Annals of Internal Medicine 126, no. 2 (Jan. 15, 1997): 157-63.

  129: “This is a most extraordinary work”: William James, “Review of Phantasms of the Living, by Edmund Gurney et al.,” Science 9 (Jan. 7, 1887): 18-20.

  129: research community had taken notice: Scientific response to Phantasms, with an emphasis on the “tone of superior wisdom” taken by Charles Peirce, in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 171—74.

  6. All Ye Who Enter Here

  131: “der bestirnte Himmel”: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, reprinted, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.

  131: “Sidgwick ... as a young philosopher”: For the context for Sidgwick’s place in philosophy, see Barton Schultz, “Henry Sidgwick,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (winter 2004 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2004/entries/sidgwick/.

  132: “a Sovereign will”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 373-74.

  133: “He combines the powers”: Gurney to WJ, Jan. 16, 1887, Houghton.

  134: “Well, I am happy enough”: Hodgson to Hackett, July 18, 1887, and Nov. 14, 1887, ASPR.

  135: “My cousin Fred”: Hodgson, “A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance,” Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research 8 (1892): 60-67.

  136: “a dissipated looking wreck”: Joseph Rinn, Sixty Years of Psychical Research (New York: Truth Seeker, 1960), 76.

  136: a new scientific commission: The Report of the Seybert Commission on Spiritualism (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1920), 32-45.

  137: rare united reaction: The spiritualist response is described in Funk, Widow’s Mite, 81-83, 117-19.

  138: “Professor James and his ilk”: James to the editor of the Banner of Light, Feb. 10, 1887; Banner printed his letter and the editors’ response in the same issue.

  138 : “the acumen of Hodgson”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 465.

  139: Alice and Mary were caught signaling: The Creery sisters’ cheating is described in Hall, Strange Case of Edmund Gurney, 55—61; Oppenheim, Other World, 359-60.

  140: “If only I could form the least conception”: Sidgwick, Mar. 30, 1887, cited in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 374.

  141: “In one sense, I am sacrificing myself”: Hodgson to Hackett, Jan. 29, 1888, ASPR.

  142: It took all James’s diplomatic skills: James as diplomat, in Piper, Life and Work, 43-45.

  142: “You idiot!”: Piper, Life and Work, 62; Hodgson’s other precautions are described on pp. 62—65.

  143: “It is a mercy that Hodgson exists”: Gurney to WJ, May 20, 1888, Houghton.

  144: Gurney’s death: Obituary in the Atheneum, June 30, 1888, 827; account of inquest in Hall, Strange Case of Edmund Gurney, based on accounts from the Sussex Daily News, Brighton Examiner, Brighton Gazette, Brighton and Hove Herald, June 26, 1888; and Epperson, Mind of Edmund Gurney, 137-53. Three books also discuss Gurney’s suicide, with Hall raising the possibility that he was demoralized by cheating in the SPR’s telepathy experiments. Epperson contradicts this point of view emphatically, as does Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 173-82; both of these authors prefer the idea of either accident or a suicide related to his manic-depressive personality.

  144: “It seems one of Death’s stupidest strokes”: WJ to Henry James; cited in Sheppard, Henry James, 122.

  146: “fury of this hunt after ghosts”: George Croom Robertson, editor of Mind, to WJ, Sept. 9, 1888, Houghton.

  146: “whispers ... about his marriage”: Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, touches briefly on the sympathy for Kate Gurney’s loneliness; the problems of the marriage are more thoroughly discussed in Sheppard, Henry James (123-31), including her refusal to donate to memorial fund, and encounter with Henry James Jr. in Paris.

  147: Charles Richet: Richet’s personality described in Lodge, Past Years, 291-92.

  147: French researchers approached hypnosis: French scientists’ work with hypnotism is reviewed in Inglis, Natural and Supernatural, 338—53, and Epperson, Mind of Edmund Gurney, 65-67; it is also covered well by Richet himself: Charles Richet, Thirty Years of Psychical Research (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 120-30.

  149: a temperamental Italian peasant woman: Eusapia Palladino appears in every history of spiritualism published. For biographies contemporary to her time, I used Hereward Carrington, Eusapia Palladi
no and her Phenomena (New York: B. W. Dodge, 1909); and Theodore Flournoy, Spiritism and Psychology (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1911), 242-60.

  150: Maggie Fox Kane sold a confession: Maggie Fox Kane’s confession from Funk, Widow’s Mite, 240—42; “Mrs. Margaret Fox-Kane’s Confession,” New York World, Oct. 21, 1888; Rinn, Sixty Years, 55-56; 76-80, discusses journalist’s planned book.

  151: Census of Hallucinations: International Congress of Experimental Psychology: Instructions to the Person Undertaking to Collect Answers to the Question on the Other Side (1889), from the archives of the American Society for Psychical Research; letter from William James seeking publicity for the census, “To the Editor of the American Journal for Psychology,” American Journal of Psychology 3 (Apr. 3, 1890): 292.

  152: “deplorably hasty”: Myers, letter to James on maintaining the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, Dec. 12, 1888, Houghton.

  152: Miss Mary A. T. Sitting: Hodgson, “Certain Phenomena of Trance,” 67-167.

  154: “I am quite thick now with Sidgwick”: WJ to his wife, Aug. 7, 1889, Houghton.

  155: “A curious chapter”: Richet, Thirty Years, 26-27. On the instability of mediums, see also Funk, Widow’s Mite, 105-111; and Barrett, Threshold of the Unseen, 123-24.

  156: “I’m so cold”: Hodgson, “Certain Phenomena of Trance,” 92—95.

  7. The Principles of Psychology

  157: the Metaphysical Society: R. H. Hutton, “The Metaphysical Society: A Reminiscence” The Nineteenth Century (1885) posted on The Huxley File website, Created by Charles Blinderman, Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Biology, and David Joyce, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Clark University http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/.