The Conversion of Dr. Richard Hodgson -- Part 2 of 2

        Hodgson's views changed after the death of George Pellew, a 32-year-old member of the ASPR, as a result of a fall from a horse during February 1892.  Sometime before his accident, Pellew, the author of at least six books, including biographies of statesmen John Jay and Henry Addington, had told Hodgson that he could not conceive of an afterlife but that if he died before Hodgson and found himself "still existing" he would attempt to let Hodgson know.

       On March 22, 1892, a little over a month after Pellew's death, Hodgson brought John Hart, a friend of Pellew's, for a sitting with Leonora Piper, a Boston, Mass. trance medium whom Hodgson was studying.  Mrs. Piper would go into a trance and Phinuit, her spirit control, would speak through her, relaying messages from other spirits.  Apparently, it was too difficult and risky for other spirits to occupy her body; thus Phinuit acted as an intermediary.

         Early in the sitting, Phinuit announced that "George" was there. He then gave his full name and the names of several close friends, including the sitter.  To give assurance that it was actually him communicating through Phinuit, Pellew told Hart that the pair of studs he was wearing were once his and were given to Hart by his (Pellew's) parents, which Hart confirmed as true.  Pellew then mentioned some mutual friends, Jim and Mary Howard, and asked Hart if he could get them to attend a sitting.  He also brought up a discussion he had had with Katharine, the Howard's 15-year-old daughter, about God, space, and eternity.  As neither Hart nor Hodgson, who was also in attendance and taking notes, was aware of any such discussion with Katharine, this information, later verified as fact, clearly fell outside the scope of telepathy.      

       Hodgson recorded that many personal references were made by Pellew and that Hart was very impressed, mentioning that various words of greetings and speech mannerisms were very characteristic of Pellew, even though relayed through Phinuit.

       Some three weeks later, Jim and Mary Howard had a sitting with Mrs. Piper. As was the procedure, Hodgson did not tell Mrs. Piper their names or give her any clue as to their connection with Pellew. Yet, Pellew communicated.  However, rather than Phinuit speaking through Mrs. Piper and relaying messages from Pellew, Pellew took over Mrs. Piper's body and spoke directly to his friends.  "Jim is that you?" Hodgson recorded Pellew's initial greeting.  "Speak to me quick.  I am not dead.  Don't think me dead.  I'm awfully glad to see you. Can't you see me?  Don't you hear me? Give my love to my father and tell him I want to see him.  I am happy here, and more so since I can communicate with you..."

        Pellew went on to tell his friends that he was very limited in what he could do as he had just "awakened to the reality of life after death."  He told them it was all darkness at first and that he was puzzled and confused.  He said that he could see Jim, but that his voice sounded like a big bass drum.  Jim Howard asked Pellew if he was surprised to find himself still living.  "Perfectly so," Pellew responded.  "Greatly surprised.  I did not believe in a future life. It was beyond my reasoning powers.  Now it is as clear to me as daylight.  We have an astral facsimile of the material body."  

      At a later sitting, the Howards brought their daughter, Katharine. Pellew came through and asked Katharine about her violin lessons, commenting (apparently jesting) that her playing was "horrible."   Not realizing the humor in it, Mary Howard spoke up to defend her daughter's music, but Pellew then explained that he mentioned it because that is what he used to do when in the flesh. It was intended as verification of his identity. 

      However, there was some confusion on Pellew's part in responding to various questions put to him by the Howards.  Pellew explained that he was somewhat "dull" in his new sphere and that his memory was not much different than when he was on the earth plane, i.e., that he couldn't always recall everything in a moment.  He went on to say that he had lost all sense of time in his new environment, but he was determined to make his identity clear.   "Hodgson, I mean, and Jim, I want you both to feel I am no secondary personality of the medium's," he told them, adding that he lives, thinks, sees, hears, knows, and feels just as clearly as when he was in the material life.  "...but it is not so easy to explain it to you as you would naturally suppose, especially when the thoughts have to be expressed through substance materially." 

       Phinuit broke in and took back control from Pellew, commenting that Pellew had bypassed him by mistake and that he would act as the go-between the remainder of the session.  Phinuit began speaking fluent French to Katharine, who had lived in France and knew the language.  Someone known to Mary Howard as Madame Elisa then interrupted, speaking in Italian.  Mary Howard responded in Italian.  (Piper did not know French or Italian.)

        As a further test of telepathy, Mrs. Howard brought three pictures to a sitting and asked Pellew to identify them.  Pellew correctly identified the first picture as the Howard's summer home.  He correctly identified a second picture as a country place where they had stayed, recalling a little brick henhouse which was not in the picture.   Mrs. Howard confirmed the accuracy of this report and then showed a third picture, which Pellew could not identify.  In fact, Pellew had never seen it.  Had Mrs. Piper been reading Howard's mind, she should have been able to identify it, unless, of course, she could also read Howard's mind relative to the test, and her subconscious was aware and devious enough to know that it was more important to show ignorance than it was to identify the location in the picture.

      The communication with Pellew caused Hodgson to abandon all other theories in favor of the spirit one.   While the earthly existence of Phinuit could not be verified, there was no doubt that Pellew had lived in the flesh.  Moreover, there was too much individuality, too much purpose and persistence, expressed by Pellew to attribute it to telepathy of a limited or expanded nature.   It was one thing for a medium to tap into another mind or cosmic reservoir for information, quite another for that other mind or reservoir to come back with the fullness of a personality rather than just fragmentary bits of information.

       "I had but one object, to discover fraud and trickery," Hodgson wrote. "Frankly, I went to Mrs. Piper with Professor James of Harvard University about twelve years ago with the object of unmasking her...I entered the house profoundly materialistic, not believing in the continuance of life after death; today I say I believe.  The truth has been given to me in such a way as to remove from me the possibility of a doubt."           
        Pellew then began sharing "control" duties with Phinuit and eventually took over for him. Hodgson noted that when someone Pellew had known when alive happened to be sitting, he (Pellew) would greet him or her by name.  When someone unknown to him was sitting, he didn't address the person by name.  The non-recognition went against any telepathy theory.  "There are thirty cases of true recognition out of at least one hundred and fifty persons who have had sittings with Mrs. Piper since the first appearance of G.P. (George Pellew), and no case of false recognition," Hodgson reported.  "The continual manifestation of this personality - so different from Phinuit or other communicators - with its own reservoir of memories, with its swift appreciation of any reference to friends of G.P., with its ‘give and take' in little incidental conversations with myself, has helped largely in producing a conviction of the actual presence of the G.P. personality, which it would be quite impossible to impart by any mere enumeration of the verifiable statements."   

         At a sitting on June 17, 1895, Hodgson asked Pellew what Phinuit was doing when he (Pellew) was the only one using Piper's body.  Pellew replied that Phinuit was holding back "a million others" from interrupting him.