Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/340

320 addition has been made to the evidence. In February; 1892, there died in New York quite suddenly, at the age of thirty-three, one George Pelham, an author of some promise. He had been known personally to Dr. Hodgson, and had two years before his death promised that if "still existing" after death he would do his utmost to prove the fact to Dr. Hodgson, should the latter survive him.

Pelham was an associate of the American Branch of the Society for Psychical Research, and in 1888 had had one sitting with Mrs. Piper, one of a series of sittings arranged by a committee. But the names of the sitters were carefully guarded by the committee: Pelham never attended another sitting, and never saw Mrs. Piper again. Moreover, despite the promise above referred to he had little interest in the question of a future life, thinking it, as Hodgson tells us, an almost inconceivable possibility. No allusion to Pelham was made at the sittings with Mrs. Piper, until the 22nd of March, 1892, four or five weeks after his death. On that day, an intimate friend of his, John Hart, had arranged through Hodgson for a sitting. Hart's real name was not, of course, mentioned to Mrs. Piper.

No. 71 From

[At the commencement of the sitting there were some references, mostly correct, to deceased relatives of the sitter.