Aunt Kate’s Death told to Professor James
by Michael E. Tymn
On March 6, 1889, Alice James, the wife of Professor William James of Harvard, and Robertson James, William’s brother, sat with Leonora Piper, the Boston medium who was being studied by Dr. Richard Hodgson of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). They were informed by Phinuit, Piper’s spirit control, that “Aunt Kate” (Kate Walsh) had died early that morning and that a letter or telegram saying she was gone would be received later that day.
Professor William James
It was known to the two sitters that Aunt Kate had been seriously ill, but neither was aware she had died. After leaving Mrs. Piper’s home, Robertson James stopped by the ASPR office to report the sitting to Hodgson and Professor James. “On reaching home an hour later I found a telegram as follows,” William James recorded: – ‘Aunt Kate passed away a few minutes after midnight. – E. R. Walsh’.
Alice James recorded her version: “It may be worth while to add that early at this sitting I inquired, ‘How is Aunt Kate?’ The reply was, ‘She is poorly.’ This reply disappointed me, from its baldness. Nothing more was said about Aunt Kate till towards the close of the sitting, when I again said, ‘Can you tell me nothing more about Aunt Kate?’ The medium suddenly threw back her head and said in a startled way, ‘Why Aunt Kate’s here.’ All around me I hear voices saying, ‘Aunt Kate has come.’’ Then followed the announcement that she had died very early that morning, and on being pressed to give the time, shortly after two was named.”
On November 7, 1889, Hodgson sat with Mrs. Piper and received some fragmented and confusing messages from Aunt Kate, which he passed on to William James. James replied: “The ‘Kate Walsh’ freak is very interesting. The first mention of her by Phinuit was when she was living, three years or more ago, when she had written to my wife imploring her not to sit for development [as a medium]. Phinuit knew this in some incomprehensible way. A year later [in a sitting] with Margaret Gibbens [sister of Mrs. James], I present, Phinuit alluded jocosely to this fear of hers again, and made some derisive remarks about her unhappy marriage, calling her an ‘old crank,’ etc. Her death was announced last spring, as you remember. In September, sitting with me and my wife, Mrs. Piper was suddenly ‘controlled’ by her spirit, who spoke directly with much impressiveness of manner, and great similarity of temperament to herself. Platitudes. She said Henry Wyckoff had experienced a change, and that Albert was coming over soon; nothing definite about either. Queer business!”
In a later report, James wrote: “The aunt who purported to ‘take control’ directly was a much better personation [than Phinuit], having a good deal of the cheery strenuousness of speech of the original. She spoke, by the way, on this occasion, of the condition of health of two members of the family [Henry and Albert] in New York, of which we knew nothing at the time, and which was afterwards corroborated by letter. We have repeatedly heard from Mrs. Piper in trance things of which we were not at the moment aware. If the supernormal element in the phenomenon be thought-transference it is certainly not that of the sitter’s conscious thought.”
James went on to report that when his mother-in-law returned from Europe, she could not locate her bank book. “Mrs. Piper, on being shortly afterwards asked where this book was,” James continued, “described the place so exactly that it was instantly found.”
At that same sitting, James was told by Phinuit that the spirit of a boy named Robert F. was the companion of his deceased child, Hermann, who had died as an infant in 1885. The F.’s were cousins of his wife and were living in a distant city. On his return home, James told his wife of the reading and asked for particulars on the baby lost by her cousin, as he did not recall the name, sex, and age of the child being as reported by Phinuit. However, his wife corrected him and confirmed Phinuit’s version. “I then learned that Mrs. Piper had been quite right in all those particulars, and that mine was the wrong impression.”
Perhaps out of concern for his reputation in scientific and academic circles, James struggled, at least outwardly, to accept the spirit hypothesis. However, in the end, he appeared to see it as more probable than other explanations, such as telepathy of a limited or more cosmic scope. “One who takes part in a good sitting has usually a far livelier sense, both of the reality and of the importance of the communication, than one who merely reads the records,” he wrote. “I am able, while still holding to all the lower principles of interpretation, to imagine the process as more complex, and to share the feelings with which Hodgson came at last to regard it after his many years of familiarity, the feeling which Professor Hyslop shares, and which most of those who have good sittings are promptly inspired with [i.e., the spirit hypothesis].”
