  Sir William F. Barrett, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research, more than forty years ago tried some experiments which led him to believe that something then new to science, which he provisionally called "thought transference" and which is now known as "telepathy," really existed. At the first general meeting of the Society, on the 17th July 1882, he read a paper entitled "First Report on Mind Reading." Since that date the Society has carried out a great number of experiments which tend to show that telepathy is a scientific fact. The evidence for its existence is twofold There are several theories to explain the action of telepathy. The first compares it to wireless telegraphy. On this hypothesis it is supposed that it is due to ethereal wave action:—Thought causes motion in the brain cells of the agent, the cells then impart motion to the surrounding ether in the form This theory offers great difficulties. An opponent to it points out that "A wireless message is transmitted by a succession of single ethereal wave impulses produced by the electric sparks at the starting station and received by the coherer at the receiving station, whereas a diagram to be transmitted would require a number of brain-waves produced simultaneously and arranged in the form of the diagram." Another mode of putting the matter recently advanced is that the agent does not transmit his thought, but that the percipient reads clairvoyantly what is in the agent's mind. There is also the spiritualistic theory. It is asserted that an external entity, or spirit, conveys the images or thoughts from one mind to another. Another theory is that telepathy takes place in the subconscious mind, and that the subconscious mind of the agent is in Not one of these theories has been accepted as proved by the Society for Psychical Research. In cases of spontaneous telepathy it is now generally believed that the appearance of a person at the time of death or at a crisis is not caused by an objective bodily ghost, but arises from a telepathic impact from the agent formulating itself into his image in the mind of the percipient. In the case of two persons seeing an apparition at the same time, this may be due to the two percipients receiving each, separately, a telepathic impression, or there may be only one percipient who telepathically impresses the hallucination on the mind of the second person. I will now proceed to relate some cases of telepathy which have come under my personal observation. My first experiment in the transmission of images of drawings and diagrams took place in the rooms of the Society for Psychical Research in May 1902. During the first experiment Miss Telbin, who was a stranger to me, sat with her back towards a large opaque screen. In front of her stood a small table upon which rested a crystal ball. She was asked to gaze at the crystal and to describe any vision that might appear to form itself therein. I may parenthetically remark that the object of crystal-gazing is to concentrate the mind and to withdraw it from outward influences. The vision seen in the crystal does not exist objectively, but only in the mind of the seer. On the other side of the screen, entirely hidden from the view of Miss Telbin, sat Mr. Piddington and myself. This gentleman proceeded to take from a box, which was behind the screen and on the floor between his and my chairs, various articles, and to hand them silently, one at a time, to me. I then concentrated my thoughts successively on each article. Miss Telbin gave an account The first article handed me was a Windsor Magazine, on the cover of which there was an engraving of Windsor Castle. I concentrated my thoughts on this engraving, and Miss Telbin then gave a description of the vision that presented itself to her mental view. She first observed that she could see trees on the left side of the picture, and cottages also on the left, and that there was water. These details were correct so far as they went, but the subsequent details that she gave were incorrect, and the experiment was abandoned as a failure. I then replaced the magazine in the box from which it had been taken, so that Miss Telbin had no opportunity of seeing the magazine during the experiment nor after. Other experiments were being tried when Miss Telbin spontaneously said that she had had a vision of Windsor Castle. This experiment may be regarded as a case of deferred telepathy. Another experiment with the same lady, in which simultaneous double telepathy occurred, is of better evidential value. Miss Telbin again sat with her back to the screen, and instead of the crystal a piece of paper and a pencil were placed on the table in front of her. This time Mr. Thomas and I sat behind the screen hidden from her view, and Mr. J. G. Piddington took notes. Mr. Thomas and I acted as simultaneous agents. We each held a small piece of cardboard with a diagram on it known to the agent viewing it, but not to the other agent. These diagrams belonged to the Society for Psychical Research and had not been seen by Mr. Thomas nor by me previous to the experiment. They were in a box which was at our feet behind the screen. We each took a diagram from the box, taking care that we did not see each other's diagram. We concentrated our minds on our respective diagrams, and Miss Telbin drew her impressions on the piece of paper in front
At the time that Miss Telbin got the impression of the diagram with three sections, she made the remark that it looked like three leaves. The correspondence between the drawings and the diagrams is very great, and difficult to account for by chance. The following points have to be considered. First, that Miss Telbin only made two drawings and not many from which two might have been selected in which there was a resemblance to the diagrams. Secondly, that Mr. Thomas's diagram was correctly reproduced although in a reversed position (the The explanation that the result might have been due to collusion between the persons experimenting of course cannot be entertained, at least by myself, who was one of the experimenters. It was not possible for the percipient to see through the large screen which was behind her, and there were no mirrors in the room in which the small diagrams could have been reflected. No word was spoken to give her the slightest clue. These two successful telepathic experiments led to It will be of interest to insert here an account of an experiment in telepathy, similar to the one I have just described, between two agents and one percipient, which Sir Oliver Lodge carried out in the year 1884. When the experiment was tried with Miss Telbin, Mr. Thomas, and myself I was not aware that Sir Oliver Lodge had already tried an experiment of a like nature. Sir Oliver Lodge's Account"My own first actual experience of thought transference, or experimental telepathy, was obtained in the years 1883 and 1884 at Liverpool, when I was invited by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie of that city to join in an investigation which he was conducting with the aid of one or two persons who had turned out to be sensitive, from among the employees of the large drapery firm of George Henry Lee & Co. "A large number of these experiments "Most of these experiments were confirmations of the kind of thing that had been observed by other experimenters. But one experiment which I tried was definitely novel, and, as it seems to me, important; since it clearly showed that when two agents are acting, each contributes to the effect, and that the result is due, not to one alone, but to both combined. The experiment is thus described by me in the columns of Nature, vol. xxx., page 145, for 12th June 1884:— "An Experiment in Thought Transference"Those of your readers who are interested in the subject of thought transference, now being investigated, may be glad to hear of a little experiment which I recently tried here. The series of experiments was originated and carried on in this city by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, and he has prevailed on me, on "One evening last week—after two thinkers, or agents, had been several times successful in instilling the idea of some object or drawing, at which they were looking, into the mind of the blindfold person, or percipient—I brought into the room a double opaque sheet of thick paper with a square drawn on one side and a St. Andrew's cross or X on the other, and silently arranged it between the two agents so that each looked on one side without any notion of what was on the "In a very short time the percipient made the following remarks, every one else being silent: 'The thing won't keep still.' 'I seem to see things moving about.' 'First I see a thing up there, and then one down there.' 'I can't see either distinctly.' The object was then hidden, and the percipient was told to take off the bandage and to draw the impression in her mind on a sheet of paper. She drew a square, and then said, 'There was the other thing as well,' and drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, saying afterwards, 'I don't know what made me put it inside.' Originals. Reproduction. "The experiment is no more conclusive as evidence than fifty others that I have seen at Mr. Guthrie's, but it seems to me somewhat interesting that two minds should produce a disconnected sort of impression on the mind of the percipient, quite different from the single impression which we had usually obtained when two agents were both looking at the same thing. Once, for instance (to take a nearly corresponding case under those conditions), when the object was a rude drawing of the main lines in a Union Jack, the figure was reproduced by the percipient as a whole without misgiving; except, indeed, that she expressed a doubt as to whether its middle horizontal line were present or not, and ultimately omitted it." Original. Reproduction. As I have said, the two successful telepathic experiments which I have described,
It was arranged that we should sit on certain days in the week, and that at a fixed hour I should act as agent and transmit to her my thoughts, she being at the time in her residence in West Hampstead, and I in Kensington. The distance between these localities as the crow flies is four miles. The result of our first sitting, which took place on 20th May 1902, is shown on the preceding page. There was no possibility that the agent or the percipient could have copied the drawings, as the letters embodying them that we wrote to each other were posted on the evening of the same day and received by the first post the following morning, having crossed in the post. Telepathy was clearly indicated in this experiment. We continued trying experiments for some months after, but did not get such good results as at the beginning. On one occasion, however, we obtained a successful negative result. I was not feeling well, and did not fix my attention on any object. On the following morning Miss Telbin's letter said, "I could get nothing from you last night." It was, On another occasion, when Miss Telbin was in London and I in Folkestone, I arranged to transmit to her the impression of a diagram on a certain day at 8 p.m. It chanced that on that evening there was a performance at the theatre, at which my wife wished to be present. I therefore decided to telegraph to Miss Telbin that I would be unable to try the experiment that night, but after a good deal of hesitation I changed my mind, and thought that I would endeavour to transmit the impression of the diagram on my way to the theatre. The letter that I received from Miss Telbin the next day was to this effect:— "I got a good deal of writing last night which was illegible, but amongst it I read the words 'going out' and 'rain.'" Now this may be a mere coincidence, but it was strange that the words "going out" should correctly represent the idea that was in my mind during a great part of the pre The result appears to indicate the transmission of my mental state. The word "rain" represented correctly the state of the weather at Folkestone, but, as it often rains in England, this was of no evidential value. In regard to spontaneous telepathy I may bring before the reader two cases which I personally investigated, the percipient in the first case being a gentleman who belonged to a circle which regularly met for the study of psychic phenomena, and of which circle I was a member. The percipient, Mr. John Polley, gave me an account of his vision as follows:— "At a sÉance held within sound of Big Ben on 8th May 1901, there were present Mrs. E. V. M., Mr. Thomas Atwood, and myself. As Mr. Atwood resumed his seat after delivering an address (about 8.30 p.m.) I became aware of a vision which presented itself as being some five feet distant from me, and displayed part of the interior of a room, namely, that part where the stove stood. The "Next Thursday morning, 9th May 1901, upon awakening, I described to my wife the events of the previous evening's sÉance. On the evening of the same day, namely, Thursday, (Signed) "John Polley" I obtained from the other sitters at the sÉance the following statement:— "At the sÉance held on the evening of Wednesday, 8th May 1901, at which were present Mrs. E. V. M., Mr. Thomas Atwood, and Mr. John Polley, we, the undersigned, testify that Mr. John Polley gave to us a description of a vision of the burning of a child which he saw at this sÉance. (Signed in full) "E. V. M. I personally interviewed Mr. John Polley's wife and sister and received a written state A local paper containing an account of the inquest on the child states that the accident took place on Tuesday, 7th May, and the child was taken to a hospital immediately and there died. The father of the child wrote to me as follows:— "Dear Sir,—In reply to your inquiry respecting my late son, John Frederick, I beg to say that on Tuesday, 7th May, my wife went out to do some shopping, leaving my son, aged two years and two months, in a bedroom with another brother aged seven. Whilst the elder brother was getting some toys to play with, the deceased thrust some paper in the fire, pulled it out again, and set fire to his clothes. Some neighbours took him to the Children's Hospital, Paddington Green, where he passed away on Wednesday, 8th May, at 11.45 a.m. No intimation of this was given by myself or any member of our family to my brother, Mr. John Polley, until a friend of the family called at my address on Thursday, 9th May, between 1 and 2 p.m., when we informed him of the sad loss that we had sustained, and he told us (Signed) "Frederick George Polley" In the above case it appears to me that the vision of the burning child which Mr. John Polley saw arose out of a spontaneous telepathic impression, either from the mind of the father of the child to his brother's (Mr. John Polley's mind), or from the mind of one of the persons who was cognizant of the sad event. In regard to the second case of spontaneous telepathy to which I have referred, I cannot do better than to give the account of same as it appeared in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research of June 1912:— "The following case of a reciprocal telepathic impression occurring to two persons "Miss Steele writes as follows:— "'16 and 17 Sillwood Place, "'Mr. Claude Burgess, who is an invalid, had been staying at my private hotel, at the above address, for some months. He left on 15th February to take up his residence at No. 10 Belgrave Place, Kemp Town, Brighton. In the interval between the date of his leaving and the night of the 5th inst., when I had the remarkable dream (if it can be called a dream) which I am about to relate, I had not seen Mr. Burgess, and nothing had occurred to cause me to think particularly about him. "'On the above night I retired to rest at my usual time. I awoke finding myself standing in the middle of my room and answering, "All right, I'm coming," to Mr. Burgess, who, I thought, called three times: "Miss Steele! Miss Steele! Miss Steele!" "'By the time I had put on my dressing-gown and lighted the gas I was fully awake. "'Emma M. Steele' "The letter from Mr. Burgess to Miss Steele referred to above, which is now in our possession, was as follows:— "'10 Belgrave Place, Brighton "'My dear Emma,—I had a funny dream about you last night. I dreamed that you appeared at about 3 a.m. Just a glimpse of you. It's funny, isn't it?—Yours, "'Claude Burgess' "Miss Steele's cook made the following statement to Mr. Baggally:— "'13th March 1912 "'On Wednesday morning, the 6th March last, Miss Emma Steele came down from her bedroom at 8.30. I saw she was looking pale. I asked her if she were not well. She replied that she had had a strange dream. She heard Mr. Burgess call her three times. She told me that she suddenly jumped up and put her dressing-gown on. By the time she had put on her dressing-gown and lit the gas she remembered Mr. Burgess had left the house. She said it was about 3 o'clock a.m. when she heard Mr. Burgess call. (Signed)"'Sarah Pollard' "The following statement was written by Mr. Baggally on 13th March 1912, from Mr. Claude Burgess's dictation:— "'On Tuesday night, 5th March 1912, I woke up at about 3 a.m. with a start. I saw Miss Emma Steele standing at the door of my bedroom. I had closed the door, but she appeared to have opened it. She was attired in her ordinary dress. "'I was much surprised. It was an absolutely distinct apparition. I had not been thinking of her the previous day, and I cannot tell why she appeared to me. "'The apparition lasted about five seconds. I was not at all frightened, and went to sleep immediately after. "'I was so struck by what I had seen that, next morning, the 6th March, at about 11 o'clock, I wrote a letter to Miss Steele which I handed to Mr. William Watkins, the proprietor of the establishment where I now reside, for him to send to Miss Steele. In this letter I told Miss Steele that I had dreamed that she had appeared to me on the previous night. (Signed) "'Claude Burgess' "In reply to Mr. Baggally's personal inquiries, Mr. Claude Burgess stated that it was the first time that he had had a hallucination of this kind, and he had not had one since. Statement by Mr. William Watkins"'10 Belgrave Place, "'Mr. Claude Burgess delivered to me a "'William Watkins' Statement by Mr. Baggally"'I called on the afternoon of the 13th March 1912 at the offices of the Church Army Labour Home, St. James Street, Brighton, and saw the Secretary, who showed me an entry in their books confirming the fact that, at the request of Mr. William Watkins, a man in their employ had delivered a letter to Miss Emma Steele of 16 Sillwood Place, Brighton, in the afternoon of 6th March 1912. "'I have interviewed all the persons connected with this case, and they confirmed their respective statements. "'W. W. Baggally' "In reply to our further questions as to whether Mr. Burgess's experience was a dream or a waking hallucination, Mr. Baggally wrote to us on 1st April 1912:— "'I had an interview with Mr. Burgess to-day, and the following is the information I received from him respecting the points you raise. He said to me:— "'"(1) I used the word 'dream' in my letter to Miss Steele for want of a better word. (2) I woke up and then had the vision of Miss Steele. (3) I did not notice anything in the room at the time I had the vision. The room appeared dark. (4) Miss Steele appeared to me in a bright light, not self-luminous or phosphorescent, but just as she would have appeared in daylight. She appeared to me in the part of the room where the door was."' "Mrs. Baggally sends us the following statement enclosed in a letter dated 27th April 1912:— "'I was in the drawing-room of Miss E. Steele's sister on the evening of Wednesday, 6th March, when Miss Emma Steele came in, saying in an excited manner, "Where is Mr. Baggally? He will be so interested in this." "'She held in her hand a letter from Mr. Burgess, and proceeded to tell me that the previous night she had heard, as she thought, "'Finding herself in the middle of the room, she heard him call "Miss Steele!" three times. She then suddenly remembered that Mr. Burgess was no longer living in her hotel. She struck a light, looked at the clock, and found it was 3 o'clock. The following morning she felt so tired that when giving orders to her cook, the latter noticed her fatigue and commented upon it. She told the cook the reason was that she heard Mr. Burgess apparently calling her at 3 o'clock. "'Miss Steele proceeded to say that Mr. Burgess had, curiously enough, sent her that afternoon the note which at that moment she held in her hand, and in which he told her that he dreamt she had appeared to him at 3 a.m. the previous night. "'Miss Steele appeared much impressed and wondered if anything had happened to Mr. Burgess. I informed my husband that same night, on his return home, of what Miss E. Steele had told me. "'Laura E. Baggally' "'On my return home on the evening of 6th March my wife related to me what appears in her statement above. "'W. W. Baggally'" The above case is evidentially a good one, inasmuch as both Miss Emma Steele and Mr. Burgess each reported on the morning of 6th March (the one to her cook and the other to his landlord) their experiences of the previous night before either of them was aware that a reciprocal telepathic impression had occurred between them. There appears to be evidence that telepathy can also occur between the mind of a human being and that of an animal. The reader will doubtless recollect Mr. H. Rider Haggard's case which appeared in the public press. This gentleman, on the night of Saturday, 9th July 1904, dreamed that a favourite dog of his eldest daughter was lying on its side among brushwood by water, and that it was trying to transmit in an undefined fashion the knowledge that it was dying. Next day the dog was missing. The body of the dog was subsequently found floating in the water near a bridge. An A very good case was that communicated by Lady C. The following is the account of her experience:— "On one hot Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1900 I went, after luncheon, to pay my customary visit to the stables to give sugar and carrots to the horses, among the number being a favourite mare named Kitty. She was a shy, nervous, well-bred animal, and there existed between us a great and unusual sympathy. I used to ride her every morning before breakfast (whatever the weather might be)—quiet, solitary rides on the cliffs which overhung the sea at Castle F., and it always seemed to me that I wrote to Lady C., and received the following reply:— "27th December 1904 "Lady C. would be glad indeed to have the case investigated, as it always seemed to her to be of the greatest possible interest. At the same time, it may be difficult at this date to get a statement from the stablemen, Lady C. afterwards sent me a statement from a former coachman; it is this:— "31st December 1904 "I was coachman at Castle F. at the time. Lady C. came to the stables after luncheon as usual on a Sunday afternoon with carrots and sugar for the horses. Kitty was then loose in her box and quite well. I then went to my room over the stables, the other stablemen being also upstairs, and to my surprise, after half an hour or three-quarters of an hour later, her ladyship, who had been to the garden, called me and the other stablemen to come and help Kitty up, as she was lying 'cast' (Signed) "E. N." Telepathy may possibly exist between the mind of an animal and that of a human being and vice versa, but a sufficient number of cases have not been collected to establish this as a fact. |
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