An After-Death Apology

In his 1902 book, Can Telepathy Explain?, Dr. Minot J. Savage, a popular Unitarian minister and author, tells of a number of sittings he had with Leonora Piper, the famous Boston medium, before she had become famous.  "At this time, she went into a trance, but talked instead of writing," Savage recalled, referring to the fact that in her early days of mediumship she was primarily a trance-voice medium while in later years information usually came through her by means of automatic writing while in a trance state.

In one of several sittings with Mrs. Piper, Savage was told that his son, who had died at age 31 three years earlier, was present.  "Papa, I want you go at once to my room." Savage recalled his son communicating with a great deal of earnestness.  "Look in my drawer and you will find a lot of loose papers.  Among them are some which I would like you to take and destroy at once."   The son had lived with a personal friend in Boston and his personal effects remained there.   Savage went to his son's room and searched the drawer, gathering up all the loose papers.  "There were things there which he had jotted down and trusted to the privacy of his drawer which he would not have made public for the world," Savage recorded, commenting that he would not violate his son's privacy by disclosing the contents of the papers.

As reported by Savage and further recorded in the records of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, the Rev. W. H. Savage, Minot's brother, and a friend of Harvard Professor William James (who had "discovered" Piper), sat with Mrs. Piper on Dec. 28, 1888.   Phinuit, Piper's spirit control (who used her voice mechanism to speak), told him that somebody named Robert West was there and wanted to send a message to Minot.  The message was in the form of an apology for something West had written about Minot "in advance."  W. H. Savage did not understand the message but passed it on to Minot, who understood it and explained that West was editor of a publication called The Advance and had criticized his work in an editorial.  During the sitting, W. H. Savage asked Phinuit for a description of West.  An accurate description was given along with the information that West had died of hemorrhage of the kidneys, a fact unknown to Savage but later verified.

In a sitting by W. H. Savage two weeks later, West again communicated, stating that his body was buried at Alton, Ill. and giving the wording on his tombstone, "Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."  Savage was unaware of either of these facts, but later confirmed them as true.

"Now the striking thing about this lies in the fact that my brother was not thinking of this matter and cared nothing about it," Minot Savage ended the story, concluding that  this ruled out mental telepathy on the part of the medium.   "There was no reason for the [apology] unless it be found in simply human feeling on his [West's] part that he had discovered that he had been guilty of an injustice, and wished, as far as possible, to make reparation, and this for peace of his own mind."

Leonora Piper was studied for nearly 18 years by Dr. Richard Hodgson, who set out to "unmask" her and prove that she was a charlatan.  However, after thoroughly observing hundreds of sittings, he said,  "I have no doubt but that the chief communicators to whom I have referred...are veritably the personalities they claim to be, that they have survived the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us, whom we call living, through Mrs. Piper's entranced organism."  To read my complete interview with Hodgson, go to  http://www.lightlink.com/arpr/tymn/index.htm and scroll down to "Interviews with the Dead."  You can also read more about Dr. Savage's sittings with Mrs. Piper on that same page under "The Minister and Mrs. Piper."