Extra-Sensory Perception - (08) Five Other Major Subjects

CHAPTER 8

Five Other Major Subjects

It will be convenient to complete the presentation of the other five principal subjects as something of a single unit of contribution, partly in the interest of economizing space and partly because they have, because of their relative newness, each one contributed fewer data than the three already reported on, but chiefly because these subjects have worked together a great deal and their data correlate well. One subject, for

p. 87

example, has acted as agent in telepathic work for each of the other four, while some of them have reversed the arrangement with her and have themselves cooperated.

All five of these subjects have been Duke students, and all are good, normal, intelligent individuals, like the other major subjects, devoid of any marked peculiarity of personality. Three are girls, and all five subjects are between 20 and 25 years of age, all in good health.

All five subjects have shown some definite inclination toward artistic interests. For one point, all of them are specially interested in music, and all either play the piano or sing well. All are imaginative and have been at some time given to extensive day-dreaming. All are quite sociable and friendly, though two are relatively reserved in expression. And, as almost of necessity follows, all five are more interested in people than in things or causes.

All five of these subjects are what we may properly call religious in interest and ideals, but none is at all orthodox. All five also have had some "intuitional" or hallucinatory or clairvoyant experience, though these vary widely. All three of the girls have had some sort of hallucination in childhood in which they saw apparitions, heard voices, heard steps or the like. But they do not regard these over-seriously.

The family histories of these subjects is of interest, on the point of similarity of background. In all cases there is reported a near relative with something parapsychological, if nothing more than "intuitional" capacity. (In the popular sense, this usually means mildly clairvoyant.) One subject states that her aunt has had various clairvoyant experiences, another that her aunt (mother's sister) heard "voices", while her mother had quite marked intuitional understanding of people. One of the boys states that his father and father's father possessed parapsychic ability, and the other boy related an incident that was regarded as typical, in which his mother showed clairvoyant or telepathic knowledge of a mishap that befell him.

All of the subjects are, I think, hypnotizable, though I have not gone far into that state with the two boys. Both, at least, made definite beginnings. One of the girls has done automatic writing and another has demonstrated other automatic phenomena.

These subjects are all of the kind that one can easily work with—they are highly co-operative; in part this may be because of genuine interest in the phenomena themselves. All of them have a major interest in psychology, the two graduates, Miss Sara Ownbey and Mr. George Zirkle, being assistants in our Department. Miss May Frances Turner has about completed her work for graduation, and Miss June Bailey is an

p. 88

undergraduate. Mr. T. Coleman Cooper is an undergraduate, formerly of Duke and now of Birmingham Southern.

In presenting the data in this chapter, I shall not give consideration to the question of fraud or deception, since that has been perhaps overdone in the earlier chapters. Not that all these results were obtained without any precautions-some of them had the best of conditions. But because it involves too much unnecessary duplication to describe conditions repeatedly, and because we are beyond the question of proof and are after the explanation and conditions. Besides these points, the very experimental conditions here are often in themselves incidentally the answer to the deception question, as well as contributive to knowledge of the process, (e.g., long distance E.S.P.).

Altogether we have, from these five subjects alone, from less than a year's work with them, 26,950 trials, which have been very fruitful in scores as well as in general relationships. This is indicated by the fact that the average per 25 for the 26,950 trials, including all conditions, is 8.4 and the value of X, the "anti-chance" ratio of deviation to p.e., is 81.9, higher than the whole 64,224 trials heretofore made. Combined with these we now will have a total of 91,174 trials, with a combined X-value of 111.2. On this score figures can do no more.

I shall begin the "carving" of the huge piece of work represented by these 26,950 trials by trimming off a portion that for our purposes is irrelevant. This consists of 2,625 trials in clairvoyance by Zirkle. These are really preliminary trials, since Zirkle has not developed, as yet, any measurable P.C. ability, although he is our best P.T. subject, so far. It was due to a slight misunderstanding that he and the assistant recorded this large item-before good evidence of his P.C. ability is discovered. And, once recorded, we cannot ignore it in the calculation of totals, averages, values of X, etc. But, for the comparisons we want to make in the processes we are working with, we may well exclude this block of results for the time being. This leaves 24,325 trials with a yield of successes totalling 8,499, an average of 8.7 per 25, and a value of X = 86.4. These may be compared with the figures of the last paragraph.

Of these 24,325 trials, 10,275 are P.T., 7,925 are made with the B.T. clairvoyant condition and the remaining 6,125 are D.T. clairvoyance. Their averages per 25 run as follows: P.T. 9.6, B.T. 8.9 and D.T. 7.1.

The data of this group of subjects may again be split apart in a direction that cuts across the tri-partite division into P.T., B.T. and D.T. This is on the matter of witnessing. It is a matter of relative unimportance here, because, with the exception of one subject, the results are quite as

p. 89

good when witnessed as when not. The P.T. data are all witnessed, sometimes by the agent, when she was authorized as an assistant. Table XXVII will give the results on these points.

TABLE XXVII

P.T., B.T., and D.T., Witnessed and Unwitnessed, Five Major Subjects

It will be seen that both with the B.T. and the D.T. the witnessed data were lower in score, as shown in the last column. With the B.T. the difference is not great enough to be important (0.5). With the D.T. it is larger (1.7) and is entirely due here to one subject, Miss Ownbey, who does very good D.T. work unwitnessed but drops with a witness present. Her later work has, however, shown that she is getting over this effect; her witnessed D.T. score has shown a value for X of 3.2, with the best results latest. This is evidently an exaggerated case of the phenomenon shown regularly by Pearce with visitors and reported in Table XIX, Chapter 7. Miss Weckesser also had the same effect of witnessing on her B.T.

The P.T. results bring the "witnessed" up above the "unwitnessed", if we include them. This immunity from the disturbing effect of witnesses, if we may so regard it, here in the higher P.T. results (which were all witnessed) is probably due to the fact of the participation of the witness in the agency of the experiments. It was noted by Lodge in his early experiments in telepathy that witnesses were not as disturbing if they participated, a matter possibly explainable on the grounds that a witness engaged cooperatively has his own attention engaged by his task, and consequently does not contribute so much to the percipient's self-consciousness and consequent inability to attend extra-sensorially.

Other points of interest in Table XXVII are the relatively similar averages-per-25 of the B.T. and P.T. data, in spite of the fact that the phenomenal scoring of Zirkle in P.T. raised that average considerably.

p. 90

[paragraph continues] (And Zirkle has shown no B.T. ability as yet.) This is the largest group comparison we have yet made on P.T. and B.T. There are 10,275 trials in the one and 7,925 in the other, with averages per 25, respectively, of 9.6 and 8.9.

Another point of importance is the D.T. scoring and totals. This is the largest D.T. block of data yet offered and, while it is vastly significant mathematically, it is much below the B.T. It runs, however, at almost exactly the level that Pearce ran at, with about the same ratio to the B.T. scores. Yet these subjects did not know Pearce's averages, or even each other's and their own. Are we up against a physical barrier or a psychical or parapsychical limitation in D.T.?

It will be remembered that the subjects whose D.T. work has been reported earlier all showed a rate-of-scoring curve that fell to its lowest point somewhere in the 15 cards of the center of the pack and rose again with approach to the top and bottom. (Cooper's work in D.T., done later, gave the same sort of U-curve.) But Miss Ownbey's data on the 3,350 trials at D.T., for which I have the detailed data in hand, show just the opposite type of curve. Miss Ownbey gets more hits in the center-3 of the untouched pack than in any other 5. Next come the two adjacent 5's. Not only is this true of the totals but, when divided into the two main periods in which they were run, they show the same curve in the relation of the serial 5's in the pack. The details can be better presented in the later chapters (chapters 10, 12 and 14; for these data see Graphs 1 and ) summarizing the "curve data" but the gross results of totals by order of 5's in the pack are as follows: 210, 226, 248, 230, 211. Suffice it here merely to point out this reversal of the thought that was already taking shape in our minds, that somehow there was regular difficulty experienced in the center of the pack, possibly due to some physical obstruction. This hypothesis for the lower D.T. scores was incapacitated by Miss Ownbey's D.T. data.

And Miss Ownbey's results help to explain why the other D.T. scores are lower than the B.T. It has seemed probable that the difficulty of scoring in the center of the pack held the total score for the run at its relatively low level. On this basis, those who score at a level of around 10 in 25 at B.T. would do little over 7 per 25 at D.T. Pearce is a good example of this. Now, Miss Ownbey gets better results in the interior and she scores the highest in D.T. work of all the subjects, once reaching 20 in 25 in one run and averaging 8.4 in 25 over a range of 3,275 trials. It would appear that D.T. scoring is as high as the B.T. for those portions of the pack which are favored by the subject—the central 5 by Miss Ownbey, and the first and last 5's by others. What governs these curves—if not the expectation of the subject?

p. 91

There is the further point to be added that the regularity of this D.T. curve of Miss Ownbey (for both sub-divisions of her D.T. results) and its unexpectedness are further testimony to the genuineness of the data, for any who may have doubted on this point. That is, even had Miss Ownbey known what shape of curve to expect (which she did not), she would not likely have so regularly differed from what she would naturally suppose we might be expecting.

To provide a basis for further discussion and comparison, Table XXVIII offers all the data for each subject, under the different conditions, P.T., B.T. or D.T., and witnessed or not witnessed, merely stating number of trials and average per 25. I exclude again here the 2,625 practise trials on B.T. and D.T. by Zirkle, who has shown no ability in these phases of E.S.P. All the special experiments are included, however, regardless of their effect on the score.

TABLE XXVIII

All E.S.P. Data from Five Major Subjects, 1932-33

A number of individual peculiarities appear in the table and others still escape this very general summary of the evidence. Miss Ownbey is, as mentioned above, our best D.T. subject if we take her unwitnessed records, as I am fully prepared to do, but she has done very little P.T., B.T. or witnessed D.T. work. Yet on all of these she has shown good promise of success. She has been so good an agent in P.T. work that her other work has been neglected.

Zirkle is the best P.T. man by far, but he has not been able to develop B.T. or D.T., though he has tried a great deal. Cooper has not tried D.T. work as yet. 1 He was kept concentrated on B.T. and P.T. comparison work, to be reported later.

The other two subjects, Misses Bailey and Turner, are pretty well balanced between B.T. and P.T. and though they are still low on D.T., they are able to do it with some success.

On the P.T., where all five may be compared, there is pretty general similarity, ranging only over 8.1 to 10.7 in the averages. And on B.T. the four who can score well do it about equally well, ranging over much the same averages as in the P.T. It will be of much interest indeed to see if,

 

p. 92

in the future, Zirkle can qualify on B.T. 1 Such results suggest some general level, a sort of species level for E.S.P., which level ranges from 8 to 11 approximately, under normally good conditions.

The B.T. and P.T. comparisons justify, I think, another rearrangement of these data in Table XXIX for the first four subjects, totalling and averaging the witnessed and unwitnessed data for the purpose. Note, however, back in Table XXVIII that the witnessed B.T., which are among the latest performed and should be the more comparable to P.T. because made during the period of P.T. experiments, are, in the main, strikingly similar to them. The widest difference between a subject's B.T. (witnessed) average and his P.T. is 1.0, and with 2 of the subjects the difference is only 0.2. This is very meaningful on the point of interrelationship of the functions concerned in telepathy and clairvoyance. Could such a series be mere coincidence? But, because of the relatively small number of witnessed trials, we will include in Table XXIX also the unwitnessed, even though they widen the gap considerably.

TABLE XXIX

Comparison of B. T. and P. T. Work of Four Major Subjects

This table brings out more comparable groups of data from the point of number of trials, and brings Miss Turner's data on B.T. and P.T. to an almost identical average, though we have widened differences between the results of Misses Bailey and Ownbey for the two conditions. But the totals of these four subjects for the two conditions come out most remarkably similar, 8.9 and 8.5. With only a difference of .3, we have no significant distinction between the two conditions for these subjects and the results. In a later chapter all the data on this point, from all subjects, will be mustered-with even greater coincidence resulting.

We had an opportunity to compare the daily fluctuations of one of these subjects, Mr. Cooper, on both B.T. and P.T. They show, as did Mr. Pearce's results under similar conditions, a very general agreement as to direction of change from day to day. With but two exceptions, both B.T. and P.T. rise and fall together. See Table XXX. In one of these cases, the P.T. dropped to chance because the laboratory was very hot

 

p. 93

[paragraph continues] Temperature around 100° F.) and the electric fan which was used on every other day of the series was not obtainable. (One is moved to remark that the once-much-talked-of "involuntary whispering" had its one really superb opportunity to help out on this, the only day when the fan was not available. Its failure to work we shall have to leave to its advocates to explain, if any of these are left.) The B.T. of this day was done under the regular conditions. Due to this difference in conditions, I put the figures for this day, accordingly, in parenthesis. The reader can judge them as he prefers. In the other exception the case is a clear one for those who understand the workings of this mode of perception; the point is, there is no value to including, for comparative purposes, data not above chance. On the day in question here, Cooper started off in his P.T. with only chance results for the first three runs, getting 6, 4, 4. Then after trying some special distance tests, not included in this table, he returned to plain P. T. and got 8 in 25. After another digression to other tests, he came back with 11, 11 in P.T. If we include the calls when he obviously did not show any E.S.P. ability, it makes an average per 25 of 7.3; but this defeats our purpose-to discover the daily level of P.T. and B.T. scoring, when conditions are right for E.S.P. to function. I feel, therefore, that most readers will approve my taking the above-chance scores 8, 11, 11 for the data for comparison for the P.T. of that day with the B.T. of that day. This is not a point of evidence for E.S.P. or the case would be different. I set the gross average 7.3 in parenthesis and the restricted average 10, without. Other days, too, show a low start-off; it is rather the rule. But all the others gave a quicker rise to good scoring; some special difficulty was present here.

TABLE XXX

Comparison of B.T. and P.T. in Daily Fluctuations of Cooper's Data

Allowing the corrections made, we have here another good case of joint daily fluctuations in B.T. and P.T.—somewhat better, in fact, than Pearce's. Note the relative agreement of the average per 25 of the totals for B.T. and P.T., again differing by the small figure of 1.1.

p. 94

I do not have the data for a daily comparison of B.T. and P.T. on the other subjects, except for Zirkle, and his B.T. has not yet risen above chance average.

Turning from the point of comparison of natural scoring levels of the subjects to factors that influence these, we find that P.T., as well as B.T., is affected by sodium amytal, by caffeine, by illness (so far as we have data), and by sleepiness and general fatigue. The evidence on the last two points is merely incidental but on the first two is experimental. It is not adequate on the last point, since in most cases the testimony of the subject to his fatigue and sleepiness came after the work was begun and he had already registered low scores. I accept these judgments, myself, since I follow the work and know the subjects very well, and can check up on such judgments to some extent, but I do not ask the reader to accept them. But the similarity of this condition of sleepiness to the effect of sodium amytal, and the similarity of results may help the reader to accept the fragmentary data on the point.

I have noted the disturbance to scoring of sleepiness and general fatigue on Linzmayer and Pearce on clairvoyance, and on telepathy between Miss Ownbey and Zirkle. Selecting only the data from the two last named where I am certain, myself, of the correctness of the judgment, I will make a small table, XXXI, showing the results taken before and after the period of sleepiness and fatigue in P.T. work, with Zirkle as percipient. On the first day reported on here, I myself saw Zirkle, and he told me, before beginning to work, that he had been up all night and had had only three hours of sleep in the morning. He said he did not especially want to sleep but was "sort of groggy". The second occasion reported was one on which both Zirkle and Miss Ownbey had returned late at night from a walk of about four miles into the country. We have the complication here that the agent, too, was tired. An equal number of the trials, last preceding and the same number of those next succeeding the period of sleepiness, are shown under general columns marked "Before" and "After".

TABLE XXXI

Effect of Fatigue and Sleepiness on E.S.P. (P.T.), Zirkle and Ownbey

[paragraph continues] These data are supported by the strong general "clinical impression" I have that, on the whole, both P.C. and P.T. work succeed best when the

p. 95

subject is least tired and sleepy. In this way the results from the effects of caffeine can best be harmonized and explained. This drug improves scoring when it falls off, and makes the subject more alert and integrated at the same time.

On the point of illness, too, the data are fragmentary and none too adequate, but they support the already mentioned observations made on Pearce. Miss Turner had a mild illness, a sort of general run-down condition, with a temperature rise that led the physician to suggest her staying in bed. She tried B.T. work under these conditions, but said she felt unable to do it well and, since the tentative trials were poor, she discontinued. She tried again several times, since she was rather bored, but did not get the feeling of success, and, since she did not get up to her usual good scoring level, she did not run for record and we thus lost the opportunity to measure the effect of illness. However, on her return to class, but before she was fully well, she was asked to try for record and made two runs of 25 in my presence, with results of 5 and 4. We stopped here because she did not like to score low and we thought the effect might be bad on the process. Miss Turner does not require an "adjustment period" at the start; so this question is ruled out. On the last preceding occasion of my witnessing (also, the last preceding B.T. she had done) she had made 2 runs, yielding 10 and 8; and next before these, 5 runs averaging 10.2 in 25. We have no follow-up data, since the experiments were interrupted for two months thereafter. Her general B.T. average for 3,825 trials is 9.0. These fragments agree with Pearce's B.T. data on the point of illness. We have, too, some illness data with a similar bearing on the P.T. phase, obtained with Zirkle and with Miss Ownbey as agent. We can best state them, along with Miss Turner's few data, as a small table, XXXII. In this period of illness we have the complicating circumstance that both agent and percipient were indisposed. Further data, of course, will be required to discriminate between the relative effect upon the two. We offer these results for what they may mean as they are, with only the assurance that the percipient was ill for a time before the agent and the drop came at once with his indisposition. The illness was tonsilitis with Zirkle and a general cold with Miss Ownbey. It lasted approximately 9 days, affecting the results from July 12 to the 20th, inclusive.

TABLE XXXII

Illness and E.S.P., with Miss Turner and Mr. Zirkle

p. 96

The drop of Miss Turner was a drop of 9.9 less 4.5, or 5.4, and for Mr. Zirkle from an average of (from data before and after) 14.9 to one of 8.6 during the period of illness. This is a drop of 6.3 per 25, a highly significant value, and it leaves little question that, directly or indirectly, such illness is a condition very inhibitory to E.S.P.

More striking still are the drug data obtained by Zirkle with Miss Ownbey as agent and observer. The experiments with caffeine on the telepathic phase here showed, as did those with the effect of caffeine upon clairvoyance with Pearce, that caffeine helped the subject to recover his normal E.S.P. scoring level when he was low, i.e., it helped to overcome disturbing (disintegrative) factors. But, as with P.C. work, we have no data on the P.T. with caffeine that shows that it enhances the actual E.S.P. function itself; it seems rather that it merely helps it to function better through counteracting the inhibiting elements, as seemed the case with the B.T. experiment. Again, like caffeine and B.T. with Pearce, the drug did not raise the P.T. score even to its highest level but, rather, to approximately the normal average level. Zirkle's level for his period of good health is 14.8 in 25, P.T. and the average per 25 with caffeine for 300 trials was 14.7. Now, Zirkle's highest score for a long series was 17.4 per 25 on an average, for 300 trials without drugs and all made in one day, as were the caffeine trials. So far as we understand the known psychological effects of caffeine on recognized processes, this is what we would expect; namely, a general integrative effect, overcoming dissociated states, but not directly strengthening a special ability or raising its specific efficiency. We were especially interested, therefore, in the results from giving caffeine to Zirkle some time after sodium amytal. This brings out sharply and experimentally the expected effects of both drugs on the general mental organization, thus relating E.S.P. all the more closely to the general functioning of mind.

It was planned with Miss Ownbey to give Zirkle sodium amytal and to take his scoring level one hour later, over a range of 300 trials. As a matter of fact, the level was also taken three hours after the drug treatment. Then, according to plan, with the subject in this very dissociated condition, he was treated with caffeine. The purpose was to put the general principle of the role of caffeine in known processes to test on this particular process (E.S.P.); and, in an anticipatory word, it worked quite as might have been expected for any cognitive function of mind.

In both the caffeine and amytal experiments 5 grain capsules were used, both drugs being made up to look alike, and the subject was given no notion of the drug to be used for a given occasion and did not know what to expect from either one by way of effect on the P.T. ability. Miss

p. 97

[paragraph continues] Ownbey knew which drug was used but did not know what to expect in score effects.

After a level of 13.6 per 25 trials for the last preceding 250 trials over the day preceding and after 2 runs averaging 13.5 hits in 25 on the same day, a 5 gr. capsule of sodium amytal was taken by Zirkle (Pearce had taken 6 gr.; Linzmayer 15) and one hour later testing was resumed. By this time he was showing signs of sleepiness. He became very sleepy during the course of the experiment, which took about 1/2 to 2 hours. He wanted to lie down, felt a little dizzy on rising, occasionally wanted to pause, but seemed rationally clear when questioned and could walk in a straight line. If the experimenter left him alone a few minutes he dropped asleep.

The conditions of the experiments were these: the regular P.T. conditions were used, with the 5-symbols taken from the Zener cards, and the telegraph key was used for signalling readiness by the agent. The agent chose a systematized scheme of variation from series to series and used no objective basis (cards, etc.), except the scoring record made of the calls of the percipient. These were checked for correctness as the call was recorded. The agent and percipient were in different rooms, out of sight of each other but with the door open, with an electric fan going (for comfort and "covering noise" combined). The percipient sat or lay with eyes closed, back toward the agent's room. A distance of about 8 to 12 feet separated the two. The key tapping was monotonously uniform to my ear and judgment. All the data of the table, XXXIII, are from these conditions. In brief summary, the score average per 25 dropped from 13.6 for the preceding runs down to 7.8 for the series of 12 runs (300 trials); this is a drop of 5.8 and is very significant mathematically. Like Pearce (and his B.T. data) under the influence of the same drug and a similar amount, the fluctuations are large, due, I think, to varying effort at "pulling himself together" and its effect on attention. The scores per 25 runs are as follows: 7, 8, 10, 4, 6, 10, 11, 10, 11, 8, 6, 3. Total 94. Average per 25, 7.8. It is interesting to see that Zirkle dropped from his average level (for period of good health) of 14.8 by a percentage roughly similar to what Pearce did on B.T. under the influence of the same drug; namely, a drop of 47% from the upper score level as compared to 39% for Pearce.

Three hours after the drug was taken Zirkle was very, very sleepy indeed. Sensory perception, which had not been disturbed during the earlier runs, was now beginning to suffer slightly from illusion. A piece of chalk lying a few feet (3 to 6) away appeared to be another capsule. If a book was held close, he saw "double", but he could still read without trouble and, with effort, walk straight. His recall of recent events was impaired. In this condition 12 runs of P.T., under the same conditions

p. 98

yielded only an average score per 25 of 6.2, with nothing higher than 9. These scores run as follows: 5, 5, 6, 9, 7, 4, 5, 5, 8, 7, 5, 8. Total 74; average per 25, 6.2. This is a drop of 8.6 from Zirkle's pre-drug level of 14.8.

Now, of course, was the superb opportunity to test the effect of caffeine's integrative influence upon this P.T. scoring. Would it work just as it does upon any complex mental ability or skill; i.e., would E.S.P. rise with the re-achievement of self-control and capacity for attention? Our other data had suggested that it would—and it did! It rose from the level of 6.2 per 25, passed the older amytal level of 7.8 in 25, which had been reached one hour after taking the amytal, and attained the fairly respectable score average of 9.5 in 25. This was now 5 hours after the 5 gr. dose of sodium amytal and one hour after a 5 gr. dose of caffeine. The 300 trials yielded the following scores, varying rather widely: 10, 8, 4, 6, 13, 11, 8, 13, 8, 11, 9, 13. Total 114, an average per 25 of 9.5. During this experiment Zirkle was still sleepy but the effect of the caffeine was clearly noticeable in his general behavior. He had become somewhat more alert and poised, but was by no means fully "normal" yet. He seemed much like his score average of 9.5 indicated—approximately "half-way normal". Two to three hours later, however, he reported that he was fully recovered.

Still more data would have been interesting as the effect of the caffeine increased and Zirkle became much more alert. But he had already run 950 trials in one day and was leaving the next morning; and human endurance and patience ought not to be asked for more than this. Also, Miss Ownbey's work on this day alone deserves the highest comment. The agent's duty is often the more exhausting by far, as Lodge early pointed out. 1 And these data alone are highly significant, the conditions good and suggestion ruled out by the disguise of the drugs. On these points of physiological changes, too, then, the P.T. phase of E.S.P. responds in about the same degree and in the same way as the B.T., and falls and rises with the degree of disintegration of the nervous system. The summary of the drug experiments with Zirkle appears in Table XXXIII. The percentage of drop that followed taking the amytal is computed in the text from the general average of 14.8 and in the table from the average of the preceding interval 13.6, based on 250 trials. There are points in favor of both and the data are significant enough that it does not matter which level is used. In a final word, the results show that both the disintegrating and integrating drugs seriously affect the process of E.S.P. under P.T. conditions as much, in fact, as under B.T. The condition of the

 

p. 99

nervous system, then, is important in both. E.S.P. is pretty well indicated to be a nervous phenomenon, in both phases or conditions, P.T. and B.T.

TABLE XXXIII

Effect of Caffeine and Sodium Amytal on P.T. Scoring, Zirkle and Ownbey

One of the minor features of our pure telepathy work is the greater tendency to fatigue on the part of the agent than of the percipient, as it appeared at first. In working with Miss Bailey in a most remarkable series, from room to room, Miss Ownbey, the agent, reported headache and general fatigue. She reported fatigue more than once with other subjects as well, particularly with Mr. Zirkle, with whom she did the most of her P.T. work. The headache effect was stopped by hypnotic suggestion and, although she has served as agent in several thousand trials since, she no longer experiences this discomfort. But the fatigue effect was not included in the suggestion treatment and continued for a time. Then it declined with experience, until at length she was able to work without special fatigue and even to participate in the long series of 950 trials in one day. It seems probable that more strain goes with the stronger effort, combined with the greater uncertainty of success in the earlier trials, and that such strain, if prolonged, may cause headache perhaps and fatigue certainly. But it is doubtful if the calm, more experienced agent, who has grown into a confidence in her ability, need be especially fatigued or indisposed. I have earlier referred to Lodge's observation of this effect on the agent. I think the above explanation may be applicable to his case also.

p. 100

There seems to be a great difference in the ability of the agents we have used. Our data are not conclusive on this point, because there are, as usual in this work, other factors to consider. The fact that a P.T. percipient does well with one and poorly with another agent may mean merely that the one personality is less disturbing and straining than the other; or more interesting or more suggestive and impressive; or perhaps there may be many different features involved. We know that even in B.T. work subjects have preferences as to whom they wish present and that scoring is much affected by such attitudes. (See Table XIX on effect of visitors, B.T., Pearce.) We would expect some such effect on P.T. also from the presence of different agents. One point of fact, however, in this connection is that most subjects do better with certain agents than with others. For example, Zirkle did very well at once with Miss Ownbey, his fiancée. But he had been tried earlier by another friend, also an assistant in this work, with a very much smaller positive deviation from chance average. Pearce, it will be remembered, did his best P.T. with young lady agents. But we come, in the P.T. work of Cooper, to a sharper comparison between the agency of two young ladies, Miss Margaret Parsons 1 and Miss Ownbey, in whom the factor of the social interest of the percipient is fairly equalized but who differ in a very important way. Miss Ownbey has well demonstrated her E.S.P. ability in both the P.C. and P.T. phases. Miss Parsons has tried patiently and nobly, but has not yet scored very successfully.

We have a very similar situation with Miss Bailey's P.T. work, with Miss Beaven and Miss Ownbey as agents. Miss Beaven has not demonstrated marked E.S.P. ability as yet, while Miss Ownbey has. Miss Ownbey, Miss Bailey and Miss Turner, our three highest scoring girls, are also our best agents. Can it be that the E.S.P. ability helps in the agency also? This remains to be better studied. Often the agent seems to perceive telepathically what the percipient "wants to call next", but, in order to insure its being a one-way process, we adhere pretty closely to the policy of having the agent devise mentally a system of sequence of the images to be chosen and to alter the scheme every 5 calls. But the facts seem strongly to suggest that agents not only differ at their end of the function but also that it may be E.S.P. ability that makes a good agent. This is only suggested, however. The fact that Stuart, with his fair E.S.P. ability, did better in his early trance-telepathy work than I, with almost no significant E.S.P. ability, did, is also in line. For a summary of the data on comparison of agents in the P.T. work of this chapter, see Table XXXIV.

 

p. 101

The names in the heavier type represent agents who have been good subjects and the rest, with only exceptions noted, have not yet qualified. The name of Mr. Stuart is not in heavy type because he was, during the period in which these tests were made, running very low, close to chance average, on his other E.S.P. work. The total of the data taken with agents whose names are emphasized is 2,350, with an average per 25 yield of 10.7, whereas the remaining 1,525 yield an average per 25 of only 6.4. The very significant difference of 4.3 suggests that the agent is important and that E.S.P. capacity may be one of the important features.

TABLE XXXIV

Agents in P.T. Work Compared; The Same Percipients Used

But however much we may find (in the future) that E.S.P. ability may help in P.T. agency as well as on the side of perception, it is apparently not an equally reversible process. That is, the agent cannot turn percipient and receive from the former percipient with success equal to that of the original arrangement, so far as our results go. When Cooper tried to send back to Miss Parsons, after successfully "receiving" from her for 800 trials, the score was not above chance average. When Zirkle and Miss Ownbey work with Zirkle receiving, the normal average is 14.8, but with Miss Ownbey receiving it falls to 8.1. If we take, in order to have similar conditions, Zirkle's first 300 for comparison with Miss Ownbey's 300 trials with him as agent, we have 11.8 for him as percipient and 8.1 for her—still a significant difference, 3.7 for 15 runs. We have a few data, however, to suggest that when we have agents and percipients equal in E.S.P. ability they can reverse the P.T. process without great difference. For example, with Miss Bailey as agent, Miss Turner got an average per 25 of 11.2 from 125 trials, and with the reverse arrangement for 50 trials, Miss Bailey got 10 per 25. Reversals between Miss Ownbey and Miss Turner differ in average per 25 by 2.1, but the number of trials are too

p. 102

small for significance. These interesting but inadequate results are summarized in Table XXXV.

TABLE XXXV

Comparison of P.T. Results With Reversed Direction of Transference

Of the data in Table XXXV, those of Miss Ownbey and Mr. Zirkle alone are significant and they are clearly so. Those of Cooper are somewhat impressive because of the supporting fact that Miss Parsons shows as yet no clear E.S.P. ability. While it is dangerous to speculate on this table, it is safe, I think, to suggest that the differences between percipients are brought out here, while in the last preceding table the differences between agents were shown. The three girls in the last two items of the table (3 and 4) are very much on a par in E.S.P. ability and reversing makes very little difference. In Zirkle's case, he is our highest scorer on P.T. and the reversal with him brings a drop. With Cooper and Miss Parsons the contrast is even greater, since her E.S.P. ability is very low. Combining the data of the two tables, it appears: (1) that good E.S.P. ability in both agent and percipient means high scoring (as shown by Miss Ownbey as agent for all four percipients, who all have good E.S.P. ability); (2) that good E.S.P. in a percipient, with low E.S.P. capacity in the agent, means mediocre scoring (Cooper with Miss Parsons as agent, 6.5; Miss Bailey with Miss Beaven, 6.8; Zirkle with Stuart during his low period, 6.7; and others); (3) that with a percipient with low E.S.P. ability and an agent with good E.S.P. ability the scoring will be bad, or will be limited according to the ability of the percipient. (Miss Parsons as percipient, with no demonstrated E.S.P., and Cooper as agent; and the lower scoring of Miss Ownbey when she and Zirkle reversed, supports the point of the E.S.P. capacity of the percipient being the more limiting factor.) These three situations have been illustrated and to some extent demonstrated, though not adequately. The third situation is the weakest in data but it is strong in my own conviction. That is, there have been incidents that support the point aside from the regular data. Often some one helping,

Click to enlarge
Mr. Zirkle (left) doing pure telepathy seated two rooms away, 30 feet from, his back toward, Miss Ownbey (right), the agent, who signalled

p. 103

as agent has playfully tried to obtain a reversal of direction of the transfer of thought, perhaps for a few trials or not for serious record; and the general impression has thus grown up in my mind that, as the above data suggest, a good agent (as measured by his own general E.S.P. record) cannot succeed in transferring thought to a "percipient" who (as shown by the general evidence of the tests) has shown no E.S.P. capacity or cannot go beyond the ability level shown. In a word, the percipient seems to be the more limiting factor but is in turn limited by agents who are poor in E.S.P. capacity. This hypothesis will be further tested out in future work.

In turning finally to telepathy-at-a-distance we come up first against the question of the effect of the mental attitudes of the percipient. This is a question that concerns many of the experiments and will be raised by many readers. If the percipient thinks a new experiment will not work, it probably will not. If he suggests it and believes in it, it has then a much better chance. Such is the general impression I have received and for observations that support this I refer to the effect of new techniques as summed up on one subject, Mr. Pearce, Table XX. Therefore, when we came to the drug experiments with Zirkle, it was decided to keep him ignorant of the drug taken and of its probable effect on his record. And when we were trying first to separate out a possible telepathic factor by looking at the cards for one series and not looking for the next, a screen was used to keep Pearce from knowing the condition used at a given time. And so on.

But it is difficult to test P.T. at a distance from the agent, and avoid the factors of suggestion and expectation, without practising deception. And it is hard for anyone to expect as good chances for success at a distance as in the same room. Most of our first "distance P.T." was handicapped, then, with an "inhibiting idea" that it would not work as well. It certainly did not. As will be recalled from Pearce's data (Table XXIV), significant results were had with short distances of from 8 to 12 feet between agent and percipient; but with greater separation (20-30 feet) the score fell off and ran about chance average.

With Cooper distance too seemed to offer difficulty. He said he felt "out of touch" with the agent. 300 trials made by him with Miss Ownbey as agent yielded only an average per 25 of 5.8—without mathematical significance. But Miss Bailey (who, incidentally works in a semi-trance condition that is self-induced) was quite successful in overcoming the "distance delusion" and in the short distances tried, 8 to 12 feet, and 30 feet, she held her scoring average up to par, obtaining in 475 trials an average per 25 of 9.1 at the shorter and 12.0 at the longer, with 150 trials. Both scores are above her general average.

p. 104

Then Mr. Zirkle tried these shorter distances and after a time it seemed, as with Miss Bailey (and contrary to what a wave mechanics would lead us to expect), the farther away he got, the better he averaged. It was quite remarkably so, in fact. At the beginning, however, he got only a little above chance; he was at low ebb physically and was scoring then only from 7 to 9 in the same room with the agent. So we cannot evaluate the earliest 15 runs. They averaged only 4.8 per 25, and may have been due to a belief that he could not score at a distance or due to illness, or both. At any rate, on July 21 he got well, raised his regular (same room) P.T. score from 7.4 (of the day before) to 15.0, and went into the next room and conquered the "distance" obstruction at once by an average of 19 per 25 in 5 magnificent runs. He then invaded the next room away, adding still another wall between the agent and himself and reaching 28-30 feet distance, and made 5 runs, 125 calls with an average of 17 per 25. All the records were broken and on these data alone the significance went soaring to the heights of fullest satisfaction. And they continued. On the 22d he called 50 across the table from the agent at an average per 25 of 10.5, 50 in the adjoining room (12 feet), average of 16.5 per 25, and 50 at 30 feet, 12 in 25. By the 26th, when he left the campus, we have for the period of restored health (which omits the first 15 runs and begins with August 21), at close range, 100 at an average of 12.8 per 25, 750 at 12 feet, with an average of 14.6 per 25; and, at the longer distance of 30 feet, separated by two walls, 250 trials with an average of 16.0 per 25. The only way in which we can suppose a law of inverse squares to apply here, as in wave mechanics, would be to suppose some very strong compensating factor to be present and to suppose the distance too small to be significant under the circumstances. With this in view, then, the next experiment is very much to the point.

Miss Turner and Miss Ownbey carried out, during the month of July, 1933, a long distance experiment in pure telepathy, after the manner of the shorter distance tests. The distance was well over 250 miles, from Durham to Lake Junaluska, N. C. The principal exception to the regular procedure was that the time and rate of calling had to be arranged by correspondence. At first, 5-minute intervals were followed between calls and this was later reduced to 3 minutes. Both followed official time and worked by the arranged time intervals instead of the auditory signals used in the laboratory.

Miss Turner was a particularly good subject for this, since she has never shown the more usual drop with new techniques or conditions and with new witnesses. She has even boldly and successfully demonstrated her E.S.P. ability to one of her teachers who was openly sceptical. But her previous work had not prepared me for the shock of the first results

p. 105

of this 250-mile P.T. test. The first score was 19 hits in 25! Unquestionably significant alone, even if she never called another card. But the next 25 gave 16 correct, and the third again gave 16. These 75 calls alone yield 36 above the chance expectation of 15 and give an "anti-chance" index of (X =) 15.7, which offers clinching satisfaction to the critical mind from that point of view. What of the other conditions? Miss Ownbey had turned her agent's record (made at the close of the 5-minute intervals) over to me and Miss Turner was expected to send her call records direct to me. She made an error and forwarded them for all three days to Miss Ownbey. Miss Ownbey, whose record I already had on my desk, brought the letters received from Miss Turner direct to me; and for the benefit of the reader, I will state that the recording was unmistakably in Miss Turner's own hand and ink, and no changes were evident. The notes that were written under the record were unmistakably those of Miss Turner. The point is, that if one of these excellent young ladies were to be suspected, both would have to be. Besides any motive to deceive me, difficult as it is to conceive it in these two, they would never aspire so absurdly high as to give me 19 in 25 on the first run! I confess I wrestled for hours with every possible escape from accepting it as fact. And, to my mind, there is none.

Thereafter, the records came directly to me, from each one independently, but the scoring fell off seriously. It was, of course, a monotonous procedure sitting quietly for one hour and 15 minutes and not knowing how well the scoring is going until several days afterward. The whole list of scores ran as follows: 19, 16, 16, 7, 7, 8, 6, 2. At this point we stopped the experiment for a time, to await a recovery. The whole 200 trials average 10.1 per 25 and give a total positive gain over chance average that is 10.8 times the probable error. It shows that pure telepathy stands up under distance conditioning as no known physical process does. This average of 10.1 in 25 for 200 trials is higher than all Miss Turner's tests with Miss Ownbey right in the same room with her. Now, there were 275 trials made with only a table between Miss Ownbey as agent and Miss Turner as percipient and they yielded an average of only 7.7 in 25. Again we have, as with Miss Bailey and Mr. Zirkle, an appearance of improvement with distance in P.T. scoring, rather than the decline expected by physical analogy. Miss Turner never ran under any other conditions such scores as the "19, 16, 16" which she got at once with "P.T. at 250 miles". There is an interesting suggestion in these facts. I hesitate to state it, for it is not in the least proved—purely hypothetic: that one who is at a considerable distance from the agent tends to relax those sensory processes commonly depended upon for perception and utilizes the process of extrasensory perception the more; also, the rational judgment realizes its own

p. 106

uselessness and ceases to obstruct the E.S.P. function; the result is better abstraction and "concentration".

The "distance" work on P.T. is summarized in Table XXXVI, in which will be given the records of the four out of the five subjects of this chapter who have worked under this condition. First will be given their regular score average made with agent and percipient in the same room. Next will come separation by 8 to 12 feet, which means with a tile wall between the two subjects, with an open door in the wall but not directly between the subjects, so that vision was cut off. Third will come the 28-30 feet distance, with two tile walls between but each with an open door. Last will come the long distance (250 miles) data of Miss Turner.

In all these data, with distance or without it, there was no chance for involuntary whispering (even if there were any!), since an electric fan was kept going practically all the time. And the percipients in these four cases do not look at the agent, even when in the same room. There is no sensory contact between the two, except for the methodical and uniform tapping of the telegraph key, and the calling aloud of the percipient. The agent is silent. And, of course, at the long distance all sensory contact is gone. The percipient does not know till the end of a run of 25 how many are right. The symbol thought of by the agent is not given objective record until after the call is made (thus excluding B.T.), or, in the long distance work, after the time interval is about gone and the call has supposedly been made by the percipient. The data presented under the heading "Same Room" are restricted to those obtained with the agents who worked on the distance tests also. This is done in order to afford a better basis of comparison, since results vary so much with different agents. We omit also the data of Zirkle during the period of illness. For these see Table XXXII.

TABLE XXXVI

Distance Between Agent and Percipient, in P.T.; 4 Subjects

The table shows the general increase in scores with distance, and this is more emphatically shown by totalling the distance P.T. data, as will be done in Table XXXVII showing that in large numbers of trials distance makes a significant advance in scores. The difference of 1.2 in the

p. 107

average per 25 is of mathematically justified significance, being 5.8 times the p.e. for the difference. Two great points are affected by this fact: first, on the question of sensory perception (unconscious or fraudulent), it is very important indeed to find that the more the possibility of sense perception is excluded by walls and distance, the better the scores; and, second, on the question of the underlying physics of the phenomena, it is most baffling to present-day physical theorizing in terms of wave mechanics, since, instead of falling off rapidly with the square of the distance, as all radiation intensity is thought to do, it actually significantly increases with distance.

The P.T. totals of these five subjects have been given already in Table XXVII but are more fully presented here as a background for completeness.

TABLE XXXVII

P.T. Totals, General, and for Distance Comparisons; Five Subjects

With these results our chapter closes but the work goes on. One wishes at most points to go on to larger figures and for more variations, but with 90,000 trials there is some justice in a pause for discussion. Truth, however, is not a matter purely of huge figures, and we must often be more attentive to small but meaningful series than to those numbering in thousands.

I feel, however, that the task of interpretation of these data is not one for the weeks spent in the writing of this report, but one rather for years of thinking about them and discussing them. So that, however they are interpreted now, I shall steadfastly refuse to defend the interpretation and shall hold it as necessarily tentative. I hope that readers will, in the main, do the same.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Here again we have to add a final note on current progress achieved during the writing-up period. Miss Turner and Miss Ownbey resumed their distance P.T. work after a short rest and at 300 miles distance this time, but could not get back to good scoring. After four runs at chance average they discontinued again for a time. Miss Ownbey was in an

 

p. 108

unusual situation; she was expecting soon to be married and, for lack, perhaps, of a better theory, we suppose it may have been hard for her to give her fullest attention to the role of E.S.P. agent under such circumstances. This is, of course, only a conjecture. Miss Turner stated that she could not get back the feeling of rapport.

At the same time a P.C.-distance test was made with Miss Turner, Miss Ownbey handling the cards for her. Miss Ownbey would place the card, without observing its figure, on a book in the center of a table in her home in Asheville, N.C., with which Miss Turner was familiar, and Miss Turner in Wilson, N. C., would call the cards at the intervals arranged for, every 3 minutes. These began low, 4 per 25 for the first 2 runs. Then she rose to 7, 8, 7 in the next three, when the experiment was interrupted for a time. (But see the Pearce distance-P.C. results, which began about the same time, addendum to Chapter 7.)

Cooper and Miss Ownbey, too, were at this time engaged in a distance P.T. experiment over 7 or 8 miles of extent but it did not rise above the chance level, either, before it was interrupted. There were 7 runs at an average of only 4.4. Cooper did not expect it to succeed, since at a distance he loses his feeling of rapport.

Also at the same time Miss Ownbey and Zirkle tried distance P.T. at 165 miles, but got little above np or chance average, 5.5 in 25 for the 10 runs tried. This, too, may be interpretable in the same way as suggested for the Turner-Ownbey failure. But, actually, we do not know, in so complex a situation, all that might be concerned. Zirkle, too, felt out of rapport and wrote his impression on his records before he knew of the low scores he was making.

And, in some respects, it is more reassuring to have such failures following such striking successes than to have uniform success. First, because it is essential that we have variation of phenomena to reveal to us the laws of nature. And, second, the sceptic can get some degree of reassurance on the ground that at this point when we expected good results to come in, as they had done before under the same conditions, they failed us flatly, although any practise of deception was as fully available as before. Nor was it because we changed conditions essentially, except as the subjects themselves change from time to time. There were, of course, three experiments being conducted with one agent and, as mentioned before, she had other things on her mind. Naturally we expect strain to interfere with perception; and good agency has been shown above to be required for good P.T. perception. In any event, Miss Ownbey's long and splendid record as agent can take a lot of failures without appreciable suffering. And Miss Turner's brilliant series of P.T. at 250 miles cannot be statistically impaired by a score of such failures.

 

---

Footnotes

91:1 Since the above was written Cooper has begun D.T., with some success.

92:1 Later on he did in fact qualify very successfully, getting, in the 1,150 trials of the later series, a deviation of over 15 times the p.e., and an average of 8 per 25, which is only .8 below his P.T. average for the same period.

98:1 Lodge, Oliver, J. D. Sc. "An account of some experiments in thought-transference". Proc. S.P.R., 2: pp. 189-200, 1884.

100:1 Miss Parsons has since become Mrs. L. C. Apgar.

107:1 Zirkle's period of illness, of course, excepted. It is included in item No. 1.