Episode 6: Subject 23
Excerpts from the psychical research notebooks of Dr Henry Lock, Consultant Neurologist, St Bartholomew's Hospital, London.
Thursday, 20th January 1881.
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The subject is a woman of twenty-two years, chestnut hair, plain features, slim build, very pale, and with a somewhat anxious appearance. Family background is upper middle class and wealthy. Father stockbroker. Three brothers, none of whom appear to possess any psychic abilities. Subject believes that her mother, now dead, may have, though she never admitted it.
The subject first became aware of her abilities at the age of three or four years, when she realized that by sitting still and quiet with her eyes closed, she could somehow sense the mood and emotions of her nursemaid, a woman whose demeanour was typically taciturn. She soon found she could do the same with family members, though there was usually no need, as none of them were adept at hiding their emotions.
At some point she discovered she could ’see’ certain images in the minds of others, and this developed into her party trick, whereby she would ask others to imagine a simple picture e.g. a dog, or a boat, or a house, and then draw it. Her parents were amused and indulgent at first, but put a stop to the practice when she reached ten years. Not long afterwards, they ordered her to suppress her abilities and look upon them as childish fancies.
During her teens, she followed her parents’ instruction as best she could. She threw herself into her studies and established a close relationship with her governess. When she was fifteen, she befriended a boy who appeared to be living in the house next door. She noticed nothing remarkable or unusual about this boy. They talked and played together like ordinary children. When she told her parents about her new friendship, they expressed surprise and asked to be introduced to the child. It was quickly established that the friend was visible only to the subject. Her parents assumed the boy was a product of the subject’s imagination and admonished her. She was confined to her room until she admitted her deception. However, the subject refused to recant, which led to her confinement in a lunatic asylum for six months. Her fiancee is not aware of this episode in her life and would certainly break off the engagement if he knew.
Since then, the subject has never spoken about the matter with her family. She has continued to exercise some of her abilities in secret, though in an unsystematic way, regarding them as a means of staving off boredom and the overwhelming sense of futility she sometimes feels.
The subject is very concerned that her future husband, should he learn of her history and abilities, will be as unsympathetic as her family was. She says she would rather kill herself than be committed to an asylum again. She is looking forward to having children and raising them, believing this will give her a purpose in life. She is also worried that her children may inherit her abilities, which she believes would be a cause of great unhappiness for them.
The subject answered the advertisement in the Evening News hoping I could provide a ‘cure’, so that she can marry with a calm mind.
At first she refused to take part in any tests, but I explained to her that these were intended to further understanding of the general phenomenon and how it was expressed in the particular subject.
In order to access what she calls her ‘other mind’, the subject must first attain a state of detachment from her immediate surroundings, with her eyes closed, her breathing relaxed, and her body still. She is emphatic that this is not a trance state, but simply an ‘opening of myself’.
The following experiments were conducted in this first session.
Telepathy Test 1
My assistant, Dr Reece, sat in his office, while I sat in mine, with the subject. There was no possibility of visual or verbal communication between Dr Reece and the subject. There are two offices between mine and Reece’s. We stationed a colleague with a pocket watch in the corridor, and he called out the start and finish of each element of the test.
The standard test that Reece and I have devised was used, comprising thirty-two random iterations of six simple line drawings: a circle, a square, a triangle, a cross, an equivalence sign, and an upward arrow. Reece rolled a die to select the shape for each element of the test, with 1 corresponding to the circle, 2 to the square, and so on. Once this was done, Reece would draw the shape on a small sheet on notepaper, while imagining it. The subject was allowed two minutes to draw the shape, timed from the second that Reece completed the drawing.
The results of the first test are shown in the following table […]
In summary, the subject recorded 7 correct results, 3 ambiguous results, and 26 incorrect results.
The subject was clearly unhappy and uncomfortable, claiming that the room was too cold, that Reece and I were as gloomy as a pair of undertakers, and that she felt she was on trial for some kind of crime. She said she would take the test again — it now seemed a matter of pride for her — on condition that the heat from the stove was increased, and that Reece and I each told the funniest joke we knew.
The heating was a simple matter, but it took no little time for Reece and I to agree on the funniest jokes each of us knew. In the end we decided on […]
The subject was now visibly more relaxed, and the test was repeated.
The results of the repeated first test are shown in the following table […]
In summary, the subject scored 23 correct results, 5 ambiguous results, and 8 incorrect results, an exceptional score and an indicator of rare psychic ability.
Telepathy Test 2
In this test, Reece followed the same procedure as Test 1, except that he did not draw the object but simply pictured it in his mind. This time, the two minutes started at Reece’s (silent) signal that he had the shape in mind.
The results of the second test are shown in the following table […]
In summary, the subject scored 14 correct results, 7 ambiguous results, and 15 incorrect results.
The subject asserted that the reason for the decline in accuracy from the first test was that she had lost interest, and that she would much rather hear about my progress in finding a cure for her ‘condition’.
When I told the subject that I knew of no ‘cure’ relating to her abilities, and that my researches were not directed at finding one, she became very upset. When she had composed herself, and despite my entreaties, she refused to take part in any further experiments […]