NEW YORK TIMES, Friday, January 31, 1908 - Page 1.
SPIRIT MESSAGES PROVED, SAYS LODGE
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Distinguished British Scientist Asserts He Has Made Successful Psychic Tests.
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HAS TALKED WITH HODGSON
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Prof. Hyslop Says He Conversed with F. W. H. Meyer's Spirit Yesterday -- Demonstrations Promised.
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Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
London, Jan. 30. -- That he has succeeded in obtaining communications from the spirits of persons formerly well known in London as the result of secret and exhaustive tests recently conducted in connection with spiritualism is the astonishing statement just made by Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of the Birmingham University and holder of a long list of distinguished degrees in science and scholarship to the members of the Psychical Research Society here.
Three well-known persons are named by Sir Oliver as having sent messages to him through mediums from beyond the grave. They are the late Edmund Gurney, the late Richard Hodgson, and the late F. W. H. Meyers.
The latter was a brilliant writer of English prose and a leading member of the Psychical Research Society. He died in 1901 at Rome and declared just before his death that he intended to attempt to communicate with the members of the society after his death.
Sir Oliver said in part:
"On the question of the life hereafter the excavators are engaged in boring a tunnel from the opposite ends. Amid the roar of the water and the other noises we are beginning to hear the strokes of the pickaxes of our comrades on the other side. We have received what an investigation has proved to be messages from the dead through the mediums, Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Verrall."
"The latter is endowed to a remarkable degree with the power to act as a translator or interpreter of the psychical and the physical worlds. We have discovered that there is a new human faculty for communicating with the dead. The most important set of phenomena are those of astomatic(sic) writing and talking. Well-known persons, including those I have named, are constantly purporting to communicate with us with the express purpose of patently proving their known personalities, and giving evidence of knowledge appropriate to them."
"Not easily or early do we make this admission, in spite of long conversations with what purports to be the surviving intelligence of those friends and investigators. We were by no means convinced of their identity until crucial proof, difficult even to imagine, had, according to some of our beliefs, been supplied."
Sir Oliver Lodge will give out later definite illustrations of his surprising spiritualistic tests.
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Prof. James H. Hyslop, formerly Professor of Logic and Ethics at Columbia University, a member of the Psychical Research Society, at his home, 519 West 149th Street, said last night that Prof. Lodge was one of the best-known and most distinguished scientists in England.
"What he says is quite true," went on Prof. Hyslop. "I have taken messages from Mrs. Piper myself. Only ignorant people now doubt that Mrs. Piper and such as she is can communicate with the spirit world. Richard Hodgson established his identity several years ago through the mediums. Edmund Gurney made himself known through the mediums as far back as 1889. I have talked with Hodgson myself."
Just as THE TIMES reporter was walking out of the door Prof. Hyslop said:
"And as for this man Frederick Myers, why, I talked with him myself today.:
Prof. Hyslop has been Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, and has published a great deal of matter in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, who has given the weight of his opinion to the theory of spirit manifestations, has been often honored for work in scientific research. He is about 57 years old, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and has degrees from Oxford, St. Andrew's, Glasgow and other great British universities. He is the author of numerous scientific works and is one of the widest known of living English scientists.
Mrs. Piper was for eighteen years a coworker of Dr. Hodgson's and for that reasons Prof. Hyslop did not consider the messages received at her seances of as much values as the ones received through "a young girl." Before his death, Dr. Hodgson and Prof. Hyslop experimented with the girl, and the Hodgson spirit always referred to her as the "young light," among other things saying that she is all right."