Some years ago there appeared at the Alhambra Theatre, London, two entertainers—Mr. and Mrs. Zancig—whose performances were of so puzzling a nature that to many who had witnessed them the only explanation of the results obtained appeared to be that genuine telepathy was at play. The Daily Mail newspaper arranged that Mr. and Mrs. Zancig should be subjected to a series of severe tests at its office, and on the 30th November 1906 these were carried out.

On the 1st December the Daily Mail published a full account of these experiments. The publication of this and of other accounts by persons who had witnessed the remarkable performances of the Zancigs led to a heated controversy between the correspondents of the Daily Mail and the Daily Chronicle. Those of the first paper mostly asserted that the performance was an exhibition of true telepathy, while those of the second paper declared that codes—visual and verbal—would account for the phenomena. Previously to the experiment carried out by the Daily Mail I had obtained a letter of introduction to the Zancigs from a friend of mine who had had private tests with them, but as it was necessary to have the permission of the manager of the Alhambra before an interview with the Zancigs could be arranged, I called at the offices of that theatre, and saw Mr. Scott, the manager. I informed him that I was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, which body I told him took the deepest interest in telepathy. I handed him a letter that I had written to Mr. Zancig, and on the 29th November 1906 I received the following communication from the last-named gentleman:—

Although the contents of the above letter were of a discouraging nature, I determined to strike the iron while it was hot; therefore, on the evening of the same day I called, accompanied by my wife, at the flat where the Zancigs resided. They were at the time partaking of their evening meal. We apologized for our intrusion, but by the kind way that they received us we were soon put at our ease. I informed Mr. Zancig that I was much interested in telepathy, and that I had personally carried out experiments in this branch of psychical research, and that I was assured of the truth of its existence through the successes that I had obtained.

Mr. and Mrs. Zancig impressed my wife and myself most favourably by their unaffected and simple manner. After a conversation which lasted about ten minutes, Mr. Zancig very kindly spontaneously offered to try some experiments. I will now describe these. Madame Zancig went to the other end of the room farthest away from where Mr. Zancig, my wife, and I sat. She faced the wall with her back to us; Mr. Zancig then wrote with a chalk a line of figures on a slate which he held in his left hand, and called out the word "Ready." Madame Zancig immediately named the figures correctly and in their proper order. The same kind of experiment was tried successfully three times. The results might have been due to telepathy, but I was not satisfied, as it could have been possible that the figures were prearranged, or that Madame Zancig could tell by the sound of the chalk what figures were being written. I also had in my mind the fact that there is a method of communicating figures by time-coding.

Mr. Zancig then asked me to write a double line of figures. I handed the slate to him, and after he had called out "Ready" Madame Zancig proceeded to cast them up correctly.

As Madame Zancig named all my figures aloud as she was summing them up, this experiment was of a more complicated nature than the previous ones; nevertheless, I was not entirely satisfied, as time-coding in putting down the resultant figures by Mr. Zancig, and the hearing of the sound of the chalk by Madame Zancig when I was writing my own figures, might have accounted for the favourable result.

To prevent the possibility of communicating by an electrical or other apparatus concealed under the carpet, I requested Mr. Zancig to raise his feet from the floor. He immediately complied by sitting on the table, where he remained to the last experiment.

Madame Zancig then retired into an adjoining bedroom with a slate in her hand; the door was closed, but not entirely. My wife wrote down two lines of figures, the slate was handed by her to Mr. Zancig, who called out "Ready," and he then proceeded without speaking to add them up. Madame Zancig then came into the room with the correct result written by herself on her slate. This was a more crucial test than the last, but still, although visual-coding was excluded, sound-coding while Mr. Zancig was writing the resultant sum was not entirely so.

Then followed the experiment of transmitting a selected line in a book. Mr. Zancig handed me a book and asked me to open it at any page and to point out a line. After I had done so I handed the book to him. He called out "Ready." Then his wife opened a duplicate book at the proper page, and read the line which I had selected. Doubtless the words of the line were not communicated telepathically or otherwise by Mr. Zancig, but only the number of the page and the number of the line counting from the top of the page. Nevertheless, it was difficult to discover by what method this was done, as Mr. Zancig simply called out "Ready." There did not appear to be time for the numbers of the page and line to be transmitted by time-coding. The reader will observe that as the experiments proceeded they appeared to present increasing evidence that true telepathy was at work.

The following and last experiment that I tried on this occasion was the most crucial. I requested Mr. Zancig to go out with me on to the landing outside the door of the flat. I did not previously inform Madame Zancig nor Mr. Zancig of the nature of the test that I was about to put. Madame Zancig remained in the room with my wife. The door was closed, but not completely. When we were on the landing I suddenly drew my cheque-book out of my pocket, tore out a cheque, and handed it to Mr. Zancig, requesting him to transmit the number. Mr. Zancig observed to me in a whisper that the noise of the traffic in the street was very disturbing. This was true, as the hall door to the street was open. He then remained silent while he looked at the cheque. My wife then came out on to the landing, and handed me a slate upon which Madame Zancig had during the experiment written the words, "In the year 1875." Mr. Zancig then said aloud, "This is not what we want; it is the number." My wife returned into the room with the slate, and the door was closed, but not completely. It was impossible, however, for Madame Zancig to see her husband. The suspicion arose in my mind that the number on the cheque might have been communicated to Madame Zancig by the words that Mr. Zancig had spoken aloud. I therefore took the cheque that he had in his hand and substituted another one with a different number that I tore from the bottom of my cheque-book. Mr. Zancig remained absolutely silent during the whole time that this second experiment lasted. My wife again came out of the room with the slate, upon which Madame Zancig had written quite correctly, in their proper order, four of the five numbers of the second cheque, with the exception of the last figure, which was wanting, but just as we were returning to the room Madame Zancig said, "There was another figure; it was four"—which was correct. This impressed me as a good test, with regard to the three last numbers of this cheque, which were different from the corresponding ones of the first cheque. Madame Zancig could not see her husband, and he remained absolutely silent while the experiment was being carried out.

I insert here a note by Sir Oliver Lodge in which he gives an account of an experiment of a similar nature, and also of other experiments which he tried with the Zancigs.

"Independently of the more thorough investigations of Mr. Baggally, I myself was favoured with a private interview with the Zancigs, who were friendly and considerate and helpful; and I tried the experiment of having Mrs. Zancig outside the room, though with door open, and Mr. Zancig with me and quite silent. I wrote five or six figures on a slate, taking care to make no noise, and Mrs. Zancig failed to get them correctly. Zancig seemed distressed at that, and after a little time groaned out, 'Oh, surely you can do this'; almost immediately after which Mrs. Zancig came into the room with the correct figures written on her slate. It was difficult to see how the sentence had conveyed the figures, but it was instructive to find that utterance of some kind seemed necessary. It was partly this, and partly the manifest difficulty of eliminating all possibilities of code between a pair of performers accustomed to go about together, with years of experience behind them, that prevented me from doing what I probably ought to have done, though circumstances did not render it very easy, namely, to make a serious study of the Zancig phenomena.

"Moreover, I questioned Mr. Zancig about codes, and found that he was familiar with a great many. He was quite frank about it, and rather implied, as I thought, that at times he was ready to use any code or other normal kind of assistance that might be helpful, though he assured me that he found that he and his wife did possess a faculty which they did not in the least understand, but which was more efficient and quicker than anything they could get by codes. On the whole, I think this extremely likely, but the rapidity and the certainty and dependableness of the power went far beyond anything that I could imagine as possible between people who depended on supernormal faculty alone. But if there was a mixture of devices between people so skilled, I despaired of bringing the genuine part of the phenomenon to a definite issue.

"I do not think that either this or the weight of my other avocations are a sufficient excuse for this neglect, but it certainly was not easy to get opportunities for careful investigation. One of the main difficulties was that they were not free agents, having entered into contracts with managers whose financial interests partly depended upon the continued uncertainty of the public as to the causes underlying their very remarkable performance. Moreover, I knew that so skilled an investigator as Mr. Baggally was more favourably impressed with them than I was myself, and was able to give to them some considerable time and attention.

"The extraordinary and rapid success with which Mrs. Zancig named one thing after another, handled or seen by her husband as he went through the hall in their public performances, is familiar to everybody who attended those exhibitions; but one episode which I have not put on record did impress me as rather exceptionally good, though entirely unsensational and unnoticeable at the time. I relate it here:—

"The Zancigs happened to come to Birmingham for a week during the University Vacation when I was away. On the last day of their performance I happened unexpectedly to return to Birmingham, and was dining at the club with some other men. Some one remarked that the Zancigs were performing, and suggested that we should cut dessert and go and see them; so we went in the middle of the performance and sat at the back of the gallery. Everything went on as usual. Mrs. Zancig was on the stage, blindfolded, I think, though I attach no importance to that. Mr. Zancig had been through the body of the hall, and was coming along the side gallery, taking objects from members of the audience as he went, and having them described quickly one after the other as usual, when he caught sight of me at the back of the gallery, and indicated recognition by a little start. The next object that he took in hand (a purse or what not) he said, 'What is this?' and Madame Zancig on the stage said 'Oliver.' Zancig shook his head and muttered, 'No, that's what I was thinking of, but what's this?' On which she said whatever it was correctly, and the performance went on as usual; my friends in due time getting their tests efficiently done. Nobody noticed the incident in particular; it was over in a second. It conveyed no impression of anything except of a slight confusion,—an error, in fact, immediately corrected,—but I could not fail to notice that the very unimportant incident tended in favour of the view that a power of sympathy or communication between them was genuine, since she got an undesired and unintended impression which certainly was at the moment in Mr. Zancig's mind.

"O. J. L."