[steansathtpos]

HE MEDIUMSHIP OF LEONORA PIPER (1859-1950)

Leonora was initiated into her gift at age 8 while playing in the garden. She suddenly felt a sharp blow on her right ear and heard a prolonged S sound followed by the words, "Aunt Sara not dead but with you still." Terrified, she notified her Mom who noted the exact time. It was soon confirmed that Aunt Sara had died on that day at that time.

As a fully developed medium, she displayed the astounding ability to channel two different discarnate entities at the same time, one entity through automatic writing and the other orally! Her automatic writing was typically scribbled with her eyes closed and her head resting on the table. When she emerged from her trance, she had no recollection of her channeling because, as her spirit control Phinuit explained, she had no access to her brain while out of her body, and so, could store no memories within it. I am hard pressed to dismiss the role of spirits in this channeling, especially in view of how impressive her verifications can be.

For example, consider the 5 years that George Pelham served as her spirit control through both her automatic writing and her entranced voice. A skeptic, George had promised his friend, investigator Richard Hodgson that if he died first and survived, he would try to demonstrate his survival to Hodgson's satisfaction. George allegedly became Leonora's spirit control just 5 weeks after his untimely death. Fontana explains how Hodgson was convinced that Leonore really could channel George:

"During the 5 years concerned he [George] recognized at least 30 of Mrs. Piper's sitters who were known to him in life, never once claimed erroneously to know any of the 120 or so sitters with whom he had been unacquainted, and referred correctly to many other people who were not present but who had been familiar with him. Furthermore, he displayed all the keenness, intelligence, and other [personality] characteristics possessed by George Pelham in life, and convinced a large number of Mrs. Piper's sitters that it really was he. (Fontana 125)."

Still, there is some reason to believe that Leonora did not channel the spirits of the dead, but rather gleaned her impressive information through ESP. Let me offer 4 reasons for my reluctant conclusion:

(1) Leonora was a psychic as well as a medium. She demonstrated the psychic ability to remove the scent from flowers and cause them to wither in a few minutes. She was also adept at psychometry, the paranormal ability to deduce details about both living and dead people simply by holding objects that they once owned.

(2) and (3) are repeated from my first post.
(2) Soon after his death in 1905, Richard Hodgson allegedly served as
Leonora's spirit control. The eminent psychologist, E. Stanley Hall, went for a sitting with her and asked "Hodgson" to contact his niece Bessie Beals. Miss Beals came through Leonora and communicated extensively. But in fact the cunning Hall had made Beals up. When the exposed "Hodgson" was confronted with this ruse, he tried to wriggle out of his embarrassment by claiming that he had been mistaken about the name and that the person he channeled through Leonore was in fact a Jessie Beals who was related to another sitter (Heaney 176). Hall's expose seems particularly significant in light of later proof that Piper's spirit control Phinuit was never the French doctor he professed to be.

(3) "S. G. Soal...visualized incidents with an imaginary friend, John Ferguson. He then went for a sitting with the medium, Blanche Cooper. The incidents he visualized came forth as though communicated from beyond death (Heaney, 176)."

(4) In my view, Leonora's perspective on her own channeling can be an important factor in assessing her ability to contact the dead. The New York Herald quoted her as preferring the ESP theory as the most plausible scientific explanation of her gift: "I do not believe that spirits of the dead have spoken through me when I have been in the trance state...It may be that they have, but I do not affirm it." She would later claim she was misquoted, but admitted, "Spirits of the dead may have controlled me and they may not. I confess that I do not know (Fontana 125)." If not even Leonora is fully convinced, then neither am I.

Don