Telepathy, Genuine and Fraudulent

"'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,"'Brighton, 13th March 1912

"'Mr. Claude Burgess delivered to me a letter which he had written to Miss Steele, at about 11 a.m. on 6th March, which I handed to a man of the Church Army Labour Home to take to Miss Steele. The same morning at 8 a.m. Mr. Burgess told me he had dreamt of Miss Steele.

"'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, Mr. Burgess fall on the floor of the bedroom over her own. She sprang out of bed.

"'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 examination of the attendant circumstances pointed to the dog having met its death on the night of Mr. Rider Haggard's dream. As a result of this gentleman having made public this experience, he received from numerous correspondents accounts of telepathy between the minds of the writers of the letters and the minds of animals. These accounts were sent by Mr. Rider Haggard to the Secretary of the S.P.R., who handed them to me for investigation.

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 Kitty enjoyed that hour in the freshness of the day as much as I did. On this particular afternoon I left the stables, and walked along to the garden, a distance of a quarter of a mile, and established myself under a tree with an interesting book, fully intending to remain there for a couple of hours. After about twenty minutes an uncomfortable sensation came between me and my reading, and at once I felt sure that there was something the matter with Kitty. I tried to put the feeling from me, and to go on with my book, but the impression grew stronger, and I felt compelled to hasten back to the stables. I went straight to Kitty's box and found her 'cast,' and in urgent need of help. The stablemen were in a distant part of the stables, whence I fetched them to have the mare up. Their surprise was great to find me in the stables for the second time that afternoon."

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, one of whom is somewhere in England, but Lady C. will try to do so. She is absolutely convinced that no one entered the stable. Had the stablemen done so they would at once have helped the mare to get up, and anyone else would have given the alarm. It seems a direct case of telepathy from animal mind to human."

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'1 in her box. No one had gone into the stable in the interval.

(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.

PART II

FRAUDULENT TELEPATHY

I now come to another class of so-called thought transference – that exhibited at public entertainments in which genuine telepathy plays no part.

On the 25th November 1912 Miss Isabel Newton, the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, and I attended the demonstration given by Yoga [sic] Rama of his alleged occult powers at the "Little Theatre," Adelphi.

Accounts had appeared in the public press of a previous private performance given by this so-called Abyssinian Mystic, at which Sir John Simon, the Solicitor-General, Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Anthony Hope had assisted, and it was stated that Yoga Rama had been able to read the thoughts of the Solicitor-General by supernormal means.

In order to demonstrate, in a public manner, the alleged occult power of this "psychic," a stage performance was given at the "Little Theatre" on the afternoon of the above-mentioned date. A large audience was present, and their expectations of witnessing manifestations of an occult nature were raised by the contents of the programme, wherein it appeared that Yoga Rama was to give a demonstration of "The power of mind over mind" by means of —

"1. Clairaudience.

"2. The possibility of the interpretation of vibrations without the aid of sound.

"3. Psychometry by sense of touch.

"4. Telepathy. The disclosure of names thought of by persons in the audience.

"5. Disclosure of personalities by subconscious means.

"6. Revelations by a circumstantial chain of mind pictures.

"7. Various demonstrations of ideas silently conveyed to the spectator by suggestion.

"8. Descriptions of cities and places by mind pictures.

"9. Messages."

Before Yoga Rama made his appearance a gentleman (a Mr. Fletcher) delivered a short speech from the stage. He stated that the "Yoga" had acquired his occult powers by contemplation after many years' study. He went on to say that in the Eastern World the occult powers of the mind had been more studied than in the Western World, but at the present day the Western World looked upon these powers with much less prejudice than formerly.

After Mr. Fletcher had retired, Yoga Rama made his appearance from between the centre of two curtains which hung at the back of the stage. He was attired in a long loose black gown and wore a large crimson turban. He advanced to the front of the stage and made a speech which had a smattering of a theosophical discourse. He described four kinds of Yogi. The first kind, he said, was frequently met in India. These Yogi worked on the physical plane and produced effects resembling the feats of a conjurer. The second kind worked in the mental plane (to this class he implied that he belonged). The third dealt with the spiritual problems of life. The fourth was absorbed in meditation.

He continued his speech by saying that he required the sympathy of the persons with whom he would experiment. If they mentally opposed him he could do nothing, but if their minds were sympathetic and not antagonistic he would succeed.

The speeches of Mr. Fletcher and of Yoga Rama still further raised the expectations of the audience that they were about to witness that afternoon a demonstration of the power of mind over mind by supernormal means.

Yoga Rama, after the conclusion of his speech, called for thirty persons (ladies and gentlemen) to come upon the stage and form a Committee. A gentleman and I first answered the call. We were soon followed by a rush of ladies and gentlemen who rather inconveniently filled the stage, but this did not interfere with the performance, as the majority of the ladies and gentlemen kept at the back of the stage while Yoga Rama carried out his experiments with a limited number of the members of the Committee. In order to be more at his ease, Yoga Rama removed his turban. I placed it under a table which stood on the stage. I then had a good look at him. I found he was a black man with short crisp curly hair. From his appearance and the fluency with which he speaks English, I came to the conclusion that he is not an Abyssinian, but an American or West Indian negro.

Amongst the members of the Committee were Mr. Zancig and Mr. William Marriott. Both of these gentlemen I have had the pleasure of knowing for some years. They, together with Mr. Charles Guttwoch (a friend of Mr. Marriott), three or four other gentlemen, and myself, were the only members of the Committee who actively endeavoured to ascertain whether Yoga Rama's experiments depended for their success on trickery or on other causes. The other members of the Committee remained passive spectators. As regards the lady members with whom Yoga Rama tried a few experiments, they declared themselves, at the conclusion of the performance, to be believers in his alleged supernormal claims.

Before the experiments commenced, Yoga Rama asked that some one should blindfold him with some articles which lay on a small table in the centre of the stage. These consisted of two pieces of folded paper just large enough to cover the eyebrows and eyes, a piece of porous plaster perforated with holes, a thin white cotton handkerchief, two gloves, and a long red silk scarf. Mr. Marriott offered to blindfold him. I stood close to him while this was being done. Mr. Marriott placed the pieces of paper first on Yoga Rama's eyes, then the porous plaster, then the cotton handkerchief, after this the two gloves, and finally the red scarf which he wound several times round his head. The tip of Yoga Rama's nose could be seen under the plaster, the white cotton handkerchief, and the scarf. Yoga Rama, who remained standing, then requested some one to sit on a chair in front of him, to think of a name, then to hold his left hand (i. e. the sitter's left hand) in front of the sitter's face, and to trace on the palm of the left hand with the forefinger of the right the first letter of the name thought of. The sitter was then asked to give taps on his left hand or make movements in the air with his right hand corresponding to the number of letters of which the name thought of consisted. When Yoga Rama suggested (as he subsequently did) that the name of a flower or of a city should be thought of, he requested that the same procedure of tracing the first letter of the name and giving a number of taps or making movements with the right hand corresponding to the number of letters should be followed, but when he suggested that a play of Shakespeare should be thought of he only asked that the first one or two letters of the title should be traced on the palm of the left hand of the sitter with the forefinger of the other hand. He did not then ask that taps or movements of the right hand should be given or made. About an hour and a half of the first part of the performance was taken up by experiments of the above nature. These were varied only by one experiment of telling the title of a hymn which a lady thought of, one of reading the thoughts of a young lady, and one experiment with playing cards.

Yoga Rama then made a long speech about happiness depending on our own selves and our being what we willed ourselves to be. He asserted that he had overcome in himself the passion of anger. He laboured these points so much and repeated himself so often that it became manifest he was making the speech solely with the object of filling up the time.

The patience of the Acting Committee became exhausted, and one of the members advanced to the front of the stage, interrupted Yoga Rama, and, appealing to the audience, said he had no doubt but that he had their support when he asserted that they had come to the theatre not to hear speeches but to witness experiments. Yoga Rama brought his speech abruptly to a close after saying he would now demonstrate the power he had acquired of controlling the functions of his body and of rendering it insensible to pain. To show the control over his body he asked two members of the Committee to stand by his side and to look at their watches and note the length of time he was able to cease from breathing. To show his insensibility to pain he said he would stand barefooted on a board studded with long nails, and also stand on broken glass.

I have given an account of the nature of the performance with which Yoga Rama favoured us. I will now proceed to describe the experiments more in detail and to comment upon them.

Mr. Marriott was the first person to sit on the chair in front of Yoga Rama. He was told to hold his left hand in front of his face, to trace the first letter of the name thought of on the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of the right, and give the taps or make the movements in the air with his right hand in the manner already described. Mr. Marriott, instead of holding his left hand up, held his right hand. Yoga Rama immediately said, "Not your right hand but your left." This was a suspicious circumstance, as it indicated that Yoga Rama could see notwithstanding he was blindfolded. Now conjurers know that blindfolding in the manner above described is not a precaution against seeing, as at the time of blindfolding what the conjurer does is to shut his eyes tightly and bring his eyebrows well down. When the blindfolding is finished, the conjurer opens his eyes and draws his eyebrows up; the bandages will then be displaced and drawn up from their original position and he will be able to see under the bandages through the spaces between the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. This, in the joint opinion of Mr. Zancig, Mr. Marriott, and myself, is what Yoga Rama did, and our opinion was confirmed when we examined the bandages at the time they were removed from the performer's eyes, as will be described later.

Yoga Rama's method of telling the name thought of is to watch the movement of the finger of the sitter's right hand while he traces the first letter of the name on the palm of the left. This indicates to him the first letter of the name, then he counts the number of taps or movements given by the sitter's right hand. Thus, if the first letter were W and the number of taps or movements seven, the name in all likelihood would be William, or, if the first letter were W and the number of taps or movements six, the name would probably be Walter. Ordinary Christian names are limited in number, and Yoga Rama took care to know beforehand whether the sitter were thinking of a female name or of a male name. It was therefore not a difficult matter for him to hit upon the name. Moreover, when he was in doubt, as was often the case, he not only asked that the first letter should be traced, but the second and the third and the fourth, etc. Before hazarding a guess Yoga Rama often asked whether the second or third or fourth, etc., letter of the name were a letter that he mentioned. Thus, if he were not quite sure that W had been traced, but he had noticed that seven taps or movements had been given, he would say is not the fourth letter of the name L. If the sitter answered in the affirmative, he would be pretty sure that William was the name, but if the sitter's answer were a negative one, Yoga Rama asked that the letters should be traced again and the taps, etc., repeated. Yoga Rama resorted to the above-described method when he asked the sitter to think of the name of a flower or of a city, but he only tried one or two experiments with the names of flowers or cities, the reason being, obviously, that as the names of flowers or cities are not so limited in number as Christian names, he fought shy of them. The reason he gave for not being able to guess readily the name of a flower was, he said, that he was not a botanist.

As regards the titles of Shakespeare's plays he only asked that one or two of the first letters of the title should be traced on the left hand, and did not require any taps or movements of the right hand. Any person acquainted with Shakespeare's plays and knowing the first one or two letters of the title could have guessed with equal facility which play was in the mind of the sitter. After getting the name of the play, Yoga Rama asked the sitter to think of a personage in that play. He only requested that this should be done once or twice, and was not successful in getting the name of the personage at the first guess, but only after making two or three guesses.

In the experiment of telling the title of a hymn which a lady had in her mind, Yoga Rama resorted to the same method of asking her to trace the first letter of the title of the hymn on the palm of her left hand. She traced the letter L, and he hazarded the guess that it was "Lead, kindly light," which proved to be correct. Apparently the most successful experiments were one carried out with a young lady and one with myself. Yoga Rama asked the young lady to think of something. He then, without asking her to trace any letter or make movements with her right hand, told her that she wished to get married. She acknowledged that that was the thought in her mind. This caused a good deal of amusement amongst the audience. The young lady left the stage immediately after the experiment. This step on her part gave rise in the minds of some of the members of the Committee that she was an accomplice, and that, as the experiment had been carried out, she was no longer required by Yoga Rama. These members of the Committee may be doing an injustice to the young lady, but it was unfortunate she should have left the stage at that moment.

As regards the experiment with myself, I stood in front of Yoga Rama and did not sit down, neither did I place my left hand in front of my face as other experimenters had done, but close against my body when tracing the letters of my second name, which was the one I had in my mind.

My object in standing up was to have my hands out of the line of his vision. I took care that the movement of the forefinger of my right hand when tracing the letters should not be seen by him.

Yoga Rama repeatedly asked me to trace and retrace all the letters of the name. He then gave the name correctly. Although this experiment appeared to indicate that the performer possessed telepathic powers, it must be borne in mind that he might have known who I was, as he had been practising his so-called occult powers for some time in London under the name of Professor Pickens before he assumed that of Yoga Rama. It was not necessary that he should see my face in order to know with whom he was experimenting. It was observed that he took a very careful stock of the dresses of the Acting Committee before he was blindfolded. It was only necessary, therefore, that he should see the lower part of the dress for him to know which member of the Committee stood in front of him. As one member after the other experimented with him he described their dress. He asserted that he was able to do this by a sort of telepathic vision.

The experiment with the playing cards was a simple conjuring trick. Yoga Rama produced a pack of cards and asked the Committee to see that it was unopened. I opened the pack, shuffled the cards, and handed them to Mr. Marriott, who had been asked by the Professor to retire to a corner of the stage and choose a card which he was to show to two members of the Committee. Mr. Guttwoch and I accompanied Mr. Marriott to the corner of the stage and saw which card Mr. Marriott had chosen. Mr. Marriott then shuffled the pack again and handed it to Yoga Rama, who put it in his pocket. Yoga Rama then asked Mr. Marriott what card he had chosen. Mr. Marriott informed him. He then wrote something on a piece of paper which he folded and handed to one of the members of the Committee to hold. He then drew from his pocket another pack of cards similar in appearance to the original pack (that it was not the original pack was evidenced by the fact that the bottom card of the pack which Yoga Rama drew from his pocket was not the same as the bottom card of the original pack), but which had the cards arranged in an order known to Yoga Rama. He proceeded to pass the cards one after the other before Mr. Marriott's eyes, asking him to tell him when he came to the card he had chosen. When Yoga Rama came to the card, Mr. Marriott told him. Yoga Rama then said, "What is the card in front of the one you chose and the one behind it?" He was informed which they were. He then asked that the piece of paper should be opened, and it was found that the names of the cards had been written by him on the piece of paper. What occult power Yoga Rama intended to demonstrate by this simple conjuring trick I fail to see. It could not have been telepathy, as the two cards (the names of which Yoga Rama had written) had not been chosen nor thought of by Mr. Marriott.