Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James

6. New Directions

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h[Yel[h[Z \hec her loss, William’s work took new directions. His first recorded interest in psychic phenomena came in '.,/, when he reviewed a book by Epes Sargent, FbWdY^[jj["
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IY_[dY[. (A planchette, a triangular piece of wood mounted on two wheels and with a pencil at one point, was used for spirit communication. A medium would place one hand on the device, which was placed on a piece of paper, and then allow a spirit to move it, sometimes producing coherent messages.) William critiqued Sargent for his failure to conduct scientific investigations “in which pedantically minute precautions had been taken against illusion of the senses or deceit.”1 William visited a medium as early as '.-* to investigate her claim that she could raise a piano. Though he found her a deceiver, he wondered whether there yet might be some force unknown to us or if such accounts revealed “universal human imbecility.”2 Such psychic phenomena were of great interest at the time, both abroad and in the United States.3 Now William’s interest in psychic events intensified. In '..+ he established a psychophysics laboratory at Harvard, and he also began experiments with hypnotism, which eventually became an accepted part of medical treatments.4 Investigating both physiological and psychic phenomena, he helped develop a questionnaire on trance and hallucination that elicited /(

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Z_h[Yj_edi '-,&&& responses.5 Like Alice, he took these matters very seriously, but he approached spiritualism differently than she did—in a scientific spirit, he believed. Ultimately, he wanted to find a middle way between religious and scientific attitudes toward psychic phenomena.6 Through his motherin -law he discovered a Boston medium, Leonora Piper, whose work he investigated for decades. She was a strikingly lovely woman, her beauty surely a part of her appeal.7 He saw her before Christmas '..+ and thought she was honest; though he would have to pay her for her help, she was well suited for his research.8 After hearing of the medium through a friend or a friend’s servant, Eliza Gibbens had attended one of Mrs. Piper’s séances.9 Eliza was impressed with this woman, who gave her many details about the Gibbens family, including her husband, Daniel Gibbens. Eliza told her daughters, and one of them went immediately; then mother and daughter suggested that William and Alice see Mrs. Piper. When Alice and William attended, Mrs. Piper mentioned a “Niblin” or “Giblin,” words reminiscent of “Gibbens.” They were also impressed. Not only did the woman hear from Niblin/ Giblin, she uttered a variant of Hermann’s name: Herrin.10 Alice was sure the baby was calling to her from behind the gossamer curtain of eternity. She had not been able to reach her child on her own, but this medium had contacted him the first time Alice visited her.11 Hearing this one name was enough to make her Mrs. Piper’s disciple for the rest of her life. Years later she confided to her friend Bessie Evans, “It did make me reconciled and happy just that one flash of light over the undiscovered country.”12 Mrs. Piper intuited just how effective communications concerning children (living and dead) were to mothers. In one sitting she advised Alice on how to deal with Billy’s tantrums, and later she alluded to Hermann’s ghostly presence at /+ Irving Street, the home where the Jameses lived after '../, “how a certain rocking-chair creaked mysteriously.”13 And after Mary and William Salter’s baby, Eliza, died in '../, Mrs. Piper sent messages from the child, reporting that she died of diphtheria and that one of her last actions involved playing with her father’s knife. Mary Salter tried to recall whether she had spoken to Mrs. Piper about the knife incident, finally deciding neither she nor her sister Margaret had mentioned it. She noted the grief that recalling the child’s death engendered. “And, indeed, my baby’s illness is something I can speak of to no one. Time for me only adds to its pathos.”14 d[m
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/) Just before Hermann’s death William had grown tired of the whole psychic business. In June '..+ he told his skeptical sister that he found his investigations loathsome and intended to give them up the next winter and return to his work on J^[
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