ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

60 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.
is no blinking the nature of the case. But I rely for this conviction
much more on Dr. Hodgson's account of the facts to me than I
do on that of Mr. Philpot, tho I accept his testimony as to the
facts of his personal investigations. But he would have made a
stronger book if he had refrained from misrepresenting both the
subject and the scientific men whom he ridicules for methods they
never pursued. lt would be perfectly easy to explain the whole
fiasco on the spiritistic theory, but I should have no evidence for
the explanation. and I prefer to admit the liabilities of telepathy in
the case, tho I do not think that we have satisfactory evidence for
that view, or not to explain the facts at all until we have more information.
If we had been given the whole detailed record we
might find an explanation even much simpler than telepathy or
spirits, and I suspect that most men of hard sense would prefer
a simpler one. Perhaps they could not get it, but we cannot get
explanations at all by isolating or selecting our facts as do writers
like Mr. Philpot.
I know a similar case in my own experience. A man disappeared
from home and resort was had to a psychic to find whether he was
dead or alive. The control said he was alive and would return in
warm weather. The psychic knew of the man's disappearance, but
did not know that the sitter was present to obtain information on
the matter and no direct questions were asked. The whole message
was spontaneous. The particularly interesting fact was that the
psychic knew that the man had disappeared and believed he 1t•as
dead. She did not believe anything else for a moment. But the
control said the man was alive. In about two months afterward the
body was found in a pond where it had been ever since his disappearance.
As soon as the ice melted the body came to the
surface.
I challenged the control to explain the failure and the control
actually knew that it had been a failure, but explained it by saying
that it was due to the difficulty of distinguishing between the
physical and spiritual world and between living and dead people.
This can be interpreted as " crawling " or subterfuge and no other
interpretation would be allowable, but for the fact that there are
several well accredited positions which render such a view quite
possible. ( 1) We have strong evidence that many discarnate spirits
do not know that they are themselves dead. (2) In subliminal stages
of mediumship that is not well developed mistakes between apparitions
of the dead and of the living are frequent, and less frequent
in the deeper trance. ( 3) In the pictographic or mental picture
process there is no apparent distinction between apparitions or
phantasms of either the living or the dead, or between animate and
inanimate objects. The reality of them has to be determined by
certain marks. ( 4) It has always been the contention of com-
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