More about research testing ESP versus the evidence of Spirit Communication.

Further to the articles on Kenneth Richmond, Myers and J.B. Rhine, I have just come across some information about similar work with Margery Crandon and her guide, Walter Stinson. Remember that Myers told Kenneth Richmond that reading cards was really a preliminary activity, leading up to spirit communication proper.

This is Paul Miller writing in volume 2 of his "Cavalcade of Spirit," Psychic Book Club, 1943.

"The tests carried out in what is called "extra-sensory perception" are elementary and crude compared with the high standard reached by these and other mediums working in co-operation with their guides. If a medium tries to see for herself, it is harder than when the guide co-operates, because he can go and see what is being done, and he can return to his medium and tell what he has seen. It is as simple as that, whatever the processes may be for impressing the knowledge or picking it up. It is merely an extension of the normal mundane method of finding things out, only followed by people who are no longer hampered and limited by a physical body. [Now, J.B. Rhine and his followers in testing E.S.P. or P.S.I. did not take into account the activity of the guides and other spirits present. He was testing psychic ability without including spirit in the equation. Imagine trying to do survival research without communicating with the other side! That would be cold reading indeed! .R.R.]

Here is an example of what is meant by the assertion that mediums make the "extra-sensory perception" tests look amateur, which they are. One day Margery Crandon, Maurice Barbanell (‘Silver Birch's' medium) and his wife Sylvia, William Button (President of the American Society for Psychical Research, and Captain John Fife were traveling from New York by train. Button bought two packs of playing cards. They were handed to Barbanell, who broke the seals and saw that the backs of the cards were identical in both packs. He then selected 25 cards, aces, kings, queens, knaves and tens. Mrs. Barbanell, Button and Fife looked on at the faces of the cards while Barbanell held them so that Margery could see only the backs as she stood seven feet away. Without hesitation, 21 out of the 25 cards were called correctly. The four misses were all tens. Of these, two were wrongly named, but the medium asked to be allowed to call them again, and named them correctly in one case at the second attempt, and in another at the third attempt The recall was voluntary.
For the next test five tens were put into the middle of another selection of 25 cards, and with the medium 25 feet away and Mrs. Barnanell holding the cards and the others watching, the medium called 24 correctly at the first attempt, including four of the tens. The fifth ten was called incorrectly, but immediately the medium said she would try again, and was then right. All the participants signed a statement describing what happened.
Incidentally, Walter Stinson, Margery's guide, was probably the first spirit guide to make a radio broadcast. He said over the airwaves: "My friends, I come to you at the request of some of our group to let you hear the sound of a ‘dead' man's voice. Years ago the agency through which I speak would have been thought of as the work of the devil. The mediums would have been burned. You are progressing. Remember the first chapter of Jeremiah, 19th verse: ‘And they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee.' Many of our sitters have criticized the fact that we, from the other side, do not bring you facts more necessary to your lives. As a matter of fact, you know all things that you ought to know - things to make life bigger and better. The simplest things of life are the best - love, honor, all the things that go to unite mankind."

Compiled by Richard Rowley