The Founders of Psychical Research

Alan Gauld

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367182809
• eBook ISBN: 9780429594120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Originally published in 1968 The Founders of Psychical Research is centred upon the lives and work of Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers – prominent in the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R) - during its early years: it is not a history of the Society. It passes over important aspects of the S.P.R.'s story and deals at some length with matters quite outside it. The book frequently gives accounts of 'paranormal' phenomena which if indeed they occurred, would not be explainable through any recognisable hypothesis, but are treated throughout as unexplained.

Part One

THE ORIGINS AND FOUNDERS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

I The Rise of Modern Spiritualism in America 1848–55

IN THE SECOND QUARTER of the nineteenth century the more remote parts of New York State were curiously prolific of new religious movements. At least three of these movements—Mormonism, Adventism and Spiritualism—spread very widely and, in one form or another, they are known to most of us today. None of the three is more interesting than Spiritualism. The ‘phenomena’ characteristic of Spiritualism find many parallels in other religions and thus may have a bearing upon the psychology of religion in general; and certain of the episodes which have marked its history present puzzles of interest both to the philosopher and the amateur detective.

Not the least puzzling of these episodes is that with which modern Spiritualism began. On the 11th December 1847 a poor but respectable Methodist farmer, by name J. D. Fox, moved with his wife Margaret and his daughters Margaretta (aged fourteen) and Catherine (aged twelve) into a tiny wooden house in the village of Hydesville, New York State. In March 1848 the Foxes began to be disturbed at night by inexplicable rappings. The rappings came from the bedroom in which the whole family slept, but their immediate source could not be discovered. The noise ‘was heard near the same place all the time. It was not very loud yet it produced a jar of the bedsteads and chairs, that could be felt by placing our hands on the chair, or while we were in bed.’¹ Matters came to a head on the evening of Friday, 31st March. The weather was cold, and there had been a light fall of snow. The Fox family had lost so much sleep during the previous fortnight that they decided to go to bed early and take no notice of the rappings. Mrs. Fox’s original statement, dated 11th April 1848, runs:

My husband had not gone to bed when we first heard the noise on this evening. I had just laid down. It commenced as usual. I knew it from all other noises I had ever heard in the house. The girls, who slept in the other bed in the room, heard the noise, and tried to make a similar noise by snapping their fingers. The youngest girl is about 12 years old; she is the one who made her hand go. As fast as she made the noise with her hands or fingers, the sound was followed up in the room. It did not sound any different at that time, only it made the same number of noises that the girl did. When she stopped, the sound itself stopped for a short time.

The other girl, who is in her 15th year, then spoke in sport and said, ‘Now do this just as I do. Count 1, 2, 3, 4,’ &, striking one hand in the other at the same time. The blows which she made were repeated as before. It appeared to answer her by repeating every blow that she made. She only did so once. She then began to be startled; and then I spoke and said to the noise, ‘Count ten,’ and it made ten strokes or noises. Then I asked the ages of my different children successively, and it gave a number of raps, corresponding to the ages of my children.

I then asked if it was a human being that was making the noise? and if it was, to manifest it by the same noise. There was no noise. I then asked if it was a spirit? and if it was, to manifest it by two sounds. I heard two sounds as soon as the words were spoken. I then asked if it was an injured spirit? to give me the sound, and I heard the rapping distinctly. I then asked if it was injured in this house? and it manifested it by the noise. If the person was living that injured it? and got the same answer. I then ascertained by the same method that its remains were buried under the dwelling, and how old it was. When I asked how old it was? it rapped 31 times: that it was a male; that it had left a family of five children; that it had two sons and three daughters, all living. I asked if it left a wife? and it rapped. If its wife was then living? no rapping; if she was dead? and the rapping was distinctly heard. [H]ow long had she been dead and it rapped twice.¹

By now it was about half-past seven in the evening. The Foxes called in various neighbours, who also heard the rappings. When William Duesler arrived about nine o’clock, he found, according to his statement, twelve or fourteen persons in the house. Some of them were too frightened to go into the haunted bedroom. Duesler questioned the supposed spirit still further by means of the primitive code which Mrs. Fox had established. The spirit alleged that his initials were ‘C. B.’, and that in life he had been a pedlar. He had been slain with a butcher’s knife by a previous occupant of the cottage, a blacksmith named John G. Bell. Bell had taken $500 in cash which the pedlar had had about him, and also his trunk and pedlar’s pack. The murder had been committed one Tuesday night about midnight, while the other inhabitants of the house, Mrs. Bell and a girl named Lucretia Pulver, were away.

The raps showed a rather curious familiarity with the concerns of the Foxes’ neighbours, answering questions about them so readily that one witness, Chauncey P. Losey, remarked: ‘I think that no human being could have answered all the questions that were answered by this rapping.’¹

Mrs. Fox and the children spent the night with neighbours, Mr. Fox and a Mr. Redfield remaining behind. On the evening of the next day, Saturday, 1st April, large crowds gathered in and around the cottage. The rappings recommenced, and answered questions about the murder in much the same terms as before. Committees were chosen and placed in different parts of the house to guard against trickery. Various persons began to dig up the cellar, but after they had got down two or three feet water came in so fast that they had to desist. The noises began again on Sunday morning and continued throughout the day, ceasing in the evening. They were resumed on Monday night and occurred, perhaps spasmodically, for at least the next few weeks; without however conveying any fresh information of note about the deceased pedlar, except that his name was, supposedly, Charles B. Rosma.

In the middle of April a certain E. E. Lewis, a publisher of Canandaigua, collected statements from fourteen of the chief witnesses. He also obtained statements from five persons who had witnessed curious happenings in the house before the Foxes moved into it. One of these persons, Miss Lucretia Pulver, testified that she lived for a while with John C. Bell and his wife, and that one afternoon a pedlar, wearing a black frock coat and ‘light coloured pants’ and carrying a basket, had called at the house. ‘Mrs. [Bell] was going to Lock Berlin to stay that night. I wanted to buy some things of the pedler [sic], but had no money with me, and he said he would call at our house the next morning and sell them to me. I never saw him after this. About three days after this, they sent for me to come back …’¹

Soon afterwards she began to hear knockings in the bedroom, and on one occasion she heard footsteps coming from the buttery. One evening Mrs. Bell sent her down to the cellar. She stumbled over a place where the cellar floor was uneven and loose. Mrs. Bell said that the unevenness was due to rats, and shortly afterwards ‘Mr. [Bell] carried a lot of dirt into the cellar just at night, and was at work there some time.’ Mrs. Bell said that he was filling up the rat holes.

Mrs. Anna Pulver testified that Mrs. Bell had told her of being disturbed one night by a sound like somebody walking about from one room to another. Mr. and Mrs. Weekman, who had lived in the house a year or so previously, stated that they had heard knockings and other strange noises there; and Mrs. Jane C. Lape, who had lived with the Weekmans, deposed:

One day, about two o’clock P.M., while I was doing my work in the kitchen, I saw a man in the bed-room joining the kitchen. The bed-room door was open, and I saw the man distinctly … I had been in the kitchen some time at work, and knew that no one had gone into that room. The man stood facing me when I saw him. He did not speak, nor did I hear any noise at any time, like a person walking or moving about in the room. He had on grey pants, black frock coat and black cap. He was about middling size, I should think. I knew of no person in that vicinity who wore a similar dress. Mrs. Weekman was in another part of the house… I was very much frightened and left the room, and when I returned with Mrs. W. there was no person there.²

Lewis published these statements towards the end of April 1848, in a pamphlet now of the utmost rarity.³ To this pamphlet he appended a certificate, signed by forty-four persons, testifying to the good character of John C. Bell, who had moved to the town of Lyons, Wayne county. Attempts to trace the pedlar or his family failed, and no formal charge was ever brought against Bell. Some later authorities state that David S. Fox (John D. Fox’s son) and several other persons recommenced digging in the cellar of the Hydesville house in the summer of 1848; they unearthed some human teeth, some fragments of bone and some human hair. In November 1904 the disintegration of one of the cellar walls exposed to view ‘human bones consisting of vertebrae, rib, arm and leg bones, a shoulder blade and collar bone’.¹

So far as I am aware history tells no more of the intriguing story of the murdered pedlar; it has however a great deal to relate about the curious developments to which the ‘Hydesville knockings’ gave rise.

Most of the witnesses whose first-hand testimonies about the Hydesville knockings have come down to us believed that the Fox family could not have been responsible for them. Chauncey P. Losey said that the noise ‘was unaccountable. It sounded as if it was in different places at different times.’² William D. Storer was even more definite:

I cannot imagine any way by which this noise could be produced by any human agency. I have examined the premises very carefully, and can find nothing by which these sounds could be produced; no cord or wire, or anything of that kind by which anybody could produce these sounds by being at a distance.—There is no chance under the floor where anything could be secreted—no ceiling or anything of that kind.³

What appears particularly odd to anybody versed in the ways of modern psychical researchers is that no one seems to have suspected the Fox girls, Margaretta and Catherine. Indeed E. W. Capron asserts⁴ that on one night at least the sounds continued whilst the girls were away from the house; though the original testimonies do not make it completely clear that this was so. After a few weeks however it became apparent that the phenomena now centred around the younger girl Kate. Sometime in the early summer of 1848 Kate was therefore packed off to stay with her widowed sister, Leah Fish, a music teacher at Rochester, New York State. Unfortunately the rappings then broke out in the presence of Margaretta, who was living with her brother David a few miles from Hydesville. Worse than this—as soon as Kate was established in Rochester they recommenced around her with greater strength than before. Mrs. Fish’s house became the scene, so it is alleged, not merely of loud rappings, but of violent and totally inexplicable movements of objects. Rumours about these occurrences began to circulate, and Mrs. Fish’s pupils to desert her. In despair she asked a Quaker named Isaac Post, who was an old friend of the family, to help her. Post sat with the family round a table and questioned the raps. Mrs. Fish mentioned to him that her brother David had obtained the name of the deceased pedlar by calling out the alphabet and noting which letters were responded to with raps. Post suggested that they should try this method again, and the raps spelled out ‘We are all your deceased friends and relatives. Jacob Smith.’ Jacob Smith was Mrs. Fish’s grandfather.

When the Fox family heard of this startling development, which seems to have taken place in the autumn of 1848, they all proceeded to Rochester; and Rochester remained the principal abode of Mrs. Fox and her three daughters for most of the next two years. The Fox girls were soon besieged by, on the one hand, numerous spirits desirous of communicating with those still on earth and, on the other, uncomfortably large numbers of persons anxious to receive messages or to witness wonders. A visitor who was much impressed was E. W. Capron, of Auburn, who arrived in Rochester on 23rd November 1848. He made the following contemporary memorandum of one of his experiments:

At another time, being present with Isaac Post, of Rochester, I tried the experiment of counting in the following manner. I took several shells from a card-basket on the table (small lake shells), closed my hand, and placed it entirely out of sight, and requested as many raps as there were shells. It was done correctly. As I knew how many shells there were in my hand, I resolved to test it another way, to see if there was a possibility of my mind having any influence in the matter. I took a handful of shells, without knowing how many I took myself. Still the answers were correct. I then requested Mr. Post, who sat by the table, to put his hand in the basket, take out some shells without knowing the number, and pass them into my hand, which I immediately closed and placed in a position where none could see it. The number was told correctly as before.¹

Capron became a frequent visitor to the Foxes; and, about late Summer 1849, Kate Fox went for a protracted stay at his home in Auburn, New York State. According to Capron’s own journal, she produced at seances there a large number of remarkable phenomena, mostly however in the dark. These ph...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART ONE: THE ORIGINS AND FOUNDERS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
• PART TWO: THE WORK OF THE EARLY PSYCHICAL RESEARCHERS
• EPILOGUE
• INDEX