SIR OLIVER LODGE AND MRS. PIPER

    For more about Sir Oliver Lodge, see “‘Interviews’ with the Deceased below.”

After hearing about the mediumship of Leonora Piper from Professor William James of Harvard, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London decided to invite Mrs. Piper to their country to be studied and tested.  There, in late 1889, she had many sittings with Frederic W. H. Myers, the Cambridge scholar who co-founded the SPR, and Professor Oliver Lodge (later, Sir Oliver), the renowned physicist and radio pioneer.    

In one sitting, Lodge handed the entranced Piper an old gold watch that had belonged to his deceased Uncle Jerry and which had been sent to him by his Uncle Robert, Jerry’s twin brother.  Lodge asked Phinuit, Mrs. Piper’s spirit control who took over her body while she was in trance, if he could tell him anything about the watch.  Phinuit  immediately said it had belonged to one of Lodge’s uncles.  Shortly thereafter, Phinuit said, as if impersonating Uncle Jerry, “This is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I am here.  Uncle Jerry, my watch.”

Even though Piper was in a trance and all those who had observed her were certain she was a legitimate medium, Lodge still considered telepathy, or mindreading, as an explanation for this, i.e., Mrs. Piper (or Phinuit) was reading his mind, so he asked Uncle Jerry if he could recall some trivial details about his (Jerry’s) boyhood – something unknown to him (Oliver) but known to his Uncle Robert.  Uncle Jerry then recalled episodes of swimming a creek together and running a risk of getting drowned, killing a cat in Smith’s field, the possession of a small rifle and of a long peculiar skin, like a snake-skin, which he thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert.   Lodge then checked with his Uncle Robert to determine if he recalled such boyhood incidents.  Robert confirmed all but the killing of the cat, but he admitted that his memory was failing him. However, another brother, Frank, clearly recalled the cat-killing incident in Smith’s field.

 Lodge further reported that Phinuit recognized a ring being worn by his wife as having been given to her by a specified aunt.  Phinuit accurately described how the aunt had died.   Phinuit also told Lodge that the pocket watch he had on him once belonged to his father and pointed out that it was missing something.  Lodge did not know what was missing, but his wife later reminded him that a certain appendage belonging to his grandfather had once been attached to the watch.

 Phinuit further told Mrs. Lodge that the chair she was sitting in had once belonged to her Aunt Anne, which was true.

“Scattered through all the sittings are innumerable instances of this sort of curious memory of and interest in trifles,” Lodge wrote.  “Every experienced sitter knows that such references are the commonest of all. What is the explanation?  I am not prepared with a full explanation, but, granted the most completely spiritistic hypothesis, it would appear that the state after death is not a sudden plunge into a stately, dignified, and specially religious atmosphere.  The environment, like the character, appears to be much more like it what it is here than some folks imagine.”

Lodge further suggested that these trivial recollections were much more evidential than some discourse on their discoveries since crossing over to the Other Side.

 –  Michael E. Tymn