Resurrecting Leonora Piper

Mrs Piper was the most researched medium of 100 years ago, and was investigated by all the leading psychical researchers of her day, including William James, Richard Hodgson, FWH Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge and James Hyslop. These and many others began as sceptics and were convinced by Mrs Piper's demonstrations even if they did not all embrace the spiritist hypothesis - this was especially true of William James, who felt his reputation would be endangered if he publicly admitted this view. Ironically, he himself ostensibly communicated through Mrs Piper after his own death in 1910, and has some interesting things to say about his state. He says he is a conscious being with body of expression and capacities normal and rational, with fewer limitations than he expected.

The material described constitutes William James's White Crow and is remarkable in the persuasive power all the evidence supplied. Richard Hodgson began as an investigator who subsequently became a communicator after his own early death, thus participating from both sides. I also discovered some sources I did not know about, including a book on Spiritism written by Judge John Edmonds and George Dexter, with claimed messages from Swedenborg and Francis Bacon – the extract from the latter is remarkably eloquent. The other book was by Lady Barrett, herself a dean of a medical school and wife of Sir William Barrett. In one of his messages, Barrett speaks about the separation of the conscious and subconscious mind during physical life, but their coming together again after death, which complicates the matter of communication since only a part of one's mind is able to function; one cannot communicate with one's whole self. The sequence of cases with George Pellew is also very evidential, as he names each of 30 people that he knew when communicating with them. At the end of the book, the author reflects on the five possible explanatory frameworks, with which most readers will be familiar: conscious fraud, unconscious fraud for secondary personality, super-ESP, impostor spirits or spirits who really are who they say they are. He discusses each in turn, and quotes Hyslop at the end in support of the spirit hypothesis after many years of investigation.