Leonora Piper
Leonora Piper was a famous American trance medium in the area of Spiritualism. Piper was the subject of intense interest and investigation by American and British psychic research associations during the early 20th century, including psychologist William James and the Society for Psychical Research.
Researchers and scientists who studied Piper's mediumship have described mentalist techniques such as cold reading, muscle reading and "fishing", all techniques that she may have used to gather information about séance sitters, so she could appear to have unexplained insight. Science writer and mathematician Martin Gardner dismissed Piper as a "clever charlatan."
Biography
Piper was born to Stillman and Hannah Simonds. She grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire, where, according to her parents, she first displayed psychic abilities as a child. At the age of 22 she married shopkeeper William Piper of Boston and settled in the city's Beacon Hill area. After the birth of her first child, Alta Laurette, on May 16, 1884, in Boston, she sought relief from recurring pain caused by a childhood accident. A second daughter, Minerva Leonora, followed on October 7, 1885. Upon visiting an elderly blind man who claimed he could contact spirits that could aid in healing, she said she heard voices that resulted in her ability to deliver a message by automatic writing to a local judge who claimed the words came from his recently deceased son. Before Piper was investigated by psychical researchers she worked as a paid medium at a dollar for each sitting.George E. Dorr, Piper's manager, set up six sittings with Dr. G. Stanley Hall and his associate Amy Tanner both from Clark University. A sitting with Mrs. Piper about 1910 cost $20.00. Piper made a fortune from her séances whilst being tested by psychical researchers, she was receiving around $1000 a year for her mediumship services. Piper was a trance medium but in her later séances preferred automatic writing. Piper died on July 3, 1950, at her home from bronchopneumonia. She was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Massachusetts.
Career
Investigators
Agreeing to do readings for other visitors in her home, she soon gained attention from members of the American Society for Psychical Research and later its British associate, the Society for Psychical Research. Among these were Minot Savage, Richard Hodgson and George B. Dorr. Later psychic investigators included Oliver Lodge, Frederic Myers, James Hyslop, and G. Stanley Hall and his assistant Amy Tanner.In 1885, the year after the death of his young son, psychologist, philosopher, and SPR member William James had his first sitting with Piper at the suggestion of his mother-in-law. He advocated a "third way" as a sort of agnosticism for cases where things were not yet explained and held out for the possibility of belief. James was soon convinced that Piper knew things she could only have discovered by supernatural means. James expressed his belief in Piper by saying, "If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, it is enough if you prove that one crow is white. My white crow is Mrs. Piper." as well as stating, "My own conviction is not evidence, but it seems fitting to record it. I am persuaded of the medium's honesty, and of the genuineness of her trance; and although at first disposed to think that the 'hits' she made were either lucky coincidences, or the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was and of his or her family affairs, I now believe her to be in possession of a power as yet unexplained." However, James did not believe that Piper was in contact with spirits. After evaluating sixty-nine reports of Piper's mediumship he considered the hypothesis of telepathy as well as Piper obtaining information about her sitters by natural means such as her memory recalling information. James could find little "independent evidence" to support the spirit-control hypothesis. Most of it was ambiguous or only circumstantially relevant, and some of it was false. However, Piper and the Italian Eusapia Palladino became the most widely studied parapsychologists and mediums of their time, especially by the works of Hugo Münsterberg and G. Stanley Hall.
Later when Piper's "spirit contact" was claimed to be recently deceased Society for Psychical Research member Richard Hodgson, James wrote, "I remain uncertain and await more facts, facts which may not point clearly to a conclusion for fifty or a hundred years."
James Hyslop wrote of his séance sittings with Piper and suggested they could only be explained by spirits or telepathy. Hyslop favored the spiritualist hypothesis. However, Frank Podmore wrote that Hyslop's séance sittings with Piper "do not obviously call for any supernormal explanation" and "I cannot point to a single instance in which a precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished of a kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working upon the materials provided and the hints let drop by the sitter."
Hyslop's trance report on Piper and views on spiritualism were criticized in depth by psychologist James H. Leuba, leading to a dispute between them.
Richard Hodgson was one of the very few psychical researchers that believed Piper was in contact with spirits. Deborah Blum has written that Hodgson was personally obsessed with Piper. Hodgson would stand outside her house, observing her for long periods of time even in the winter blizzards of 1888. The American psychologist Morton Prince who knew Hodgson well commented that the mediumship of Piper had "wrecked" his mind.
Hodgson, during the latter days of his life, would allow no one to enter the privacy of his room in 15 Charles Street. During these years Hodgson believed that he constantly received direct communication with the regular band of spirits in charge of Piper. He received these messages when alone in the evening. He allowed no one to enter his room. Hodgson was afraid they would disturb the "magnetic atmosphere". He told very few people about this. Hodgson's lover, Jessie D., died in 1879. After Piper supposedly contacted the spirit of the deceased Australian woman Hodgson promised to marry, according to Hereward Carrington, Hodgson's reason deteriorated and he became a recluse in his dark room, believing he conversed with his lost love. Hodgson asked Carrington to keep this a secret.
American psychic investigator Gardner Murphy who attended three years of séance sittings with Piper concluded they were "uneventful and lacking in the types of phenomena which characterized the zenith of her career."
Controls
As with other mediums of the era, Piper claimed the use of spirit guides or "controls" in trance. In some of Piper's early sittings her control, supposedly Walter Scott, made absurd statements about the planets. He claimed beautiful creatures live inside Venus and the Sun is populated by "dreadful looking creatures" which he described as monkeys that live in caves made out of sand and mud.Among her controls was a personality referred to as G.P., who claimed to be George Pellew, a writer who had died in New York City and a friend of Richard Hodgson. In 1888 Pellew had attended a séance sitting with Piper. After he had died Hodgson claimed that Pellew communicated through Piper, however the family members and friends of George denied this. Andrew Lang wrote that when alive George Pellew was a scholar and metaphysician but the Pellew control of Piper had forgotten his Greek and philosophy and when asked for proof of his identity was incoherent or wholly mistaken. A cousin declared that the impersonation was "beneath contempt" and his brother said the communications ascribed to George were "utter drivel and inanity".
Another control was called "Phinuit" who was purportedly a French doctor. Phinuit's French was limited to salutations like "Bonjour" and "Au revoir" and had little apparent knowledge either of the French language or of medicine. According to some accounts, medical people were surprised Phinuit did not know the French or Latin names for the many remedies Piper advised for her sitters, and Phinuit's historical existence could not be verified by SPR investigations. Psychical researchers were not impressed by the control and William James described the Phinuit communications as "tiresome twaddle". Among other spirit guides who supposedly were assuming control of Piper were a young Indian girl named Chlorine, Martin Luther, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Longfellow, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.
On the subject of Piper and her controls Tony Cornell wrote that "Dr. Phinuit, Mrs. Piper's original control, was never able to provide any real evidence of his identity. Her later control "Imperator" did nothing but waffle and the control "Julius Caesar" and some others also ought to be regarded as no more than the personification of the nonsense at which they were so adept."
In 1888, psychical researcher Edmund Gurney died and it was alleged he communicated through Piper. William James strongly rejected this claim. The Reverend Mr. Sutton and his wife who had lost their daughter Katherine six weeks previously, attended a séance sitting with Piper on December 8, 1893. Piper described their daughter, gave her nickname and told how she had died of a throat infection, she also gave the nicknames of the little girl's brother and sister. John G. Taylor suggested that the information Piper gave could naturally be explained if she had read an obituary notice in the local newspaper. Taylor also suggested Piper may have picked up clues from the sitters about the girl's nickname. Piper's controls made many inaccurate statements. Eleanor Sidgwick had a sitting with Piper in 1899 and her "spirit control" Moses said that a great world war was going to take place. Germany would have no part in it and that it would be caused by Russia and France against England. In another sitting Piper's control "Walter Scott" claimed to have visited all the planets and when asked if he had seen a planet further away from Saturn answered "Mercury!".
The medium Rosina Thompson was described as a British counterpart to Piper. After the death of Frederic Myers in 1901, Piper claimed to receive messages from Myers for his widow. The messages were warnings that Thompson was a fraudulent medium. Before his death Myers had left a message in a sealed envelope; Piper's control did not reveal the message. In 1906 the Myers control was completely baffled when given a message in Latin by a séance sitter, and took three months to get the meaning of the message. This was unlike Myers, as whilst alive he was a classicist who knew Latin.
In her séances the controls of Piper would tell the sitters what they wanted to hear, for example Richard Hodgson a critic of Theosophy attended the séances of Piper and her control told him that Helena Blavatsky's "spirit was in the deepest part of hell". Piper's control told Hodgson he would get married, have two children and have a long life but Hodgson died a few months later, unmarried and childless. After the death of Hodgson between December 1905 and the beginning of 1908 Piper held about seventy séances during which the spirit of Hodgson was said to have communicated through her. However the control of Piper sounded nothing like Hodgson. According to Joseph McCabe "when Hodgson died in 1905 and left a large amount of manuscript in cipher, she could not get the least clue to it. When friends put test questions to the spirit of Hodgson about his early life in Australia, the answers were all wrong." The Hodgson control was asked the name of his schoolmaster in Melbourne but failed to give the correct answer, Hodgson's sister who was sent the messages was not convinced they were from Hodgson. Before he died Hodgson had written a test letter, and claimed that if he was to communicate through Piper he would reveal the contents inside the letter. Piper's Hodgson control failed to reveal the test letter.
The psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote regarding the Hodgson control of Piper:
In an experiment to test if Piper's controls were purely fictitious the psychologist G. Stanley Hall invented a niece called Bessie Beals and asked Piper's Hodgson control to get in touch with it. Bessie appeared, answered questions and accepted Dr. Hall as her uncle.