MENTAL RADIO

  MARY CRAIG SINCLAIR

  1883–1961
]

                      (_Revised Second Printing_)

                              MENTAL RADIO

                   _By_
                   UPTON SINCLAIR

                       _Introduction by_
                       WILLIAM McDOUGALL

                           _Preface by_
                           ALBERT EINSTEIN

                               _With a Report by_
                               WALTER FRANKLIN PRINCE

                      CHARLES C THOMAS · PUBLISHER
                    _Springfield · Illinois · U.S.A_

                      CHARLES C THOMAS · PUBLISHER
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                              INTRODUCTION

Mr. Upton Sinclair needs no introduction to the public as a fearless,
honest, and critical student of public affairs. But in the present book
he has with characteristic courage entered a new field, one in which
reputations are more easily lost than made, the field of Psychic
Research. When he does me the honor to ask me to write a few words of
introduction to this book, a refusal would imply on my part a lack
either of courage or of due sense of scientific responsibility. I have
long been keenly interested in this field; and it is not necessary to
hold that the researches of the past fifty years have brought any
solidly established conclusions in order to feel sure that further
research is very much worth while. Even if the results of such research
should in the end prove wholly negative that would be a result of no
small importance; for from many points of view it is urgently to be
wished that we may know where we stand in this question of the reality
of alleged supernormal phenomena. In discussing this question recently
with a small group of scientific men, one of them (who is perhaps the
most prominent and influential of American psychologists) seemed to feel
that the whole problem was settled in the negative when he asserted that
at the present time no American psychologist of standing took any
interest in this field. I do not know whether he meant to deny my
Americanism or my standing, neither of which I can establish. But his
remark if it were true, would not in any degree support his conclusion;
it would rather be a grave reproach to American psychologists. Happily
it is possible to name several younger American psychologists who are
keenly interested in the problem of telepathy.

And it is with experiments in telepathy that Mr. Sinclair’s book is
chiefly concerned. In this part, as in other parts, of the field of
Psychic Research, progress must largely depend upon such work by
intelligent educated laymen or amateurs as is here reported. For
facility in obtaining seemingly supernormal phenomena seems to be of
rare and sporadic occurrence; and it is the duty of men of science to
give whatever encouragement and sympathetic support may be possible to
all amateurs who find themselves in a position to observe and carefully
and honestly to study such phenomena.

Mrs. Sinclair would seem to be one of the rare persons who have
telepathic power in a marked degree and perhaps other supernormal
powers. The experiments in telepathy, as reported in the pages of this
book, were so remarkably successful as to rank among the very best
hitherto reported. The degree of success and the conditions of
experiment were such that we can reject them as conclusive evidence of
some mode of communication not at present explicable in accepted
scientific terms only by assuming that Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair either are
grossly stupid, incompetent and careless persons or have deliberately
entered upon a conspiracy to deceive the public in a most heartless and
reprehensible fashion. I have unfortunately no intimate personal
knowledge of Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair; but I am acquainted with some of Mr.
Sinclair’s earlier publications; and that acquaintance suffices to
convince me, as it should convince any impartial reader, that he is an
able and sincere man with a strong sense of right and wrong and of
individual responsibility. His record and his writings should secure a
wide and respectful hearing for what he has to tell us in the following
pages.

Mrs. Sinclair’s account of her condition during successful experiments
seems to me particularly interesting; for it falls into line with what
has been observed by several other workers; namely, they report that a
peculiar passive mental state or attitude seems to be a highly
favorable, if not an essential, condition of telepathic communication.
It would seem that if the faint and unusual telepathic processes are to
manifest themselves, the track of the mind must be kept clear of other
traffic.

Other experiments reported in the book seem to imply some supernormal
power of perception of physical things such as is commonly called
clairvoyance. It is natural and logical that alleged instances of
clairvoyance should have from most of us a reception even more skeptical
than that we accord to telepathic claims. After all, a mind at work is
an active agent of whose nature and activity our knowledge is very
imperfect; and science furnishes us no good reasons for denying that its
activity may affect another mind in some fashion utterly obscure to us.
But when an experimenter seems to have large success in reading printed
words shut in a thick-walled box, words whose identity is unknown to any
human being, we seem to be more nearly in a position to assert
positively—That cannot occur! For we do seem to know with very fair
completeness the possibilities of influence extending from the printed
word to the experimenter; and under the conditions all such
possibilities seem surely excluded. Yet here also we must keep the open
mind, gather the facts, however unintelligible they may seem at present,
repeating observations under varied conditions.

And Mrs. Sinclair’s clairvoyant successes do not stand alone. They are
in line with the many successful “book-tests” recorded of recent years
by competent workers of the English Society for Psychical Research, as
well as with many other less carefully observed and recorded incidents.

Mr. Sinclair’s book will amply justify itself if it shall lead a few
(let us say two per cent) of his readers to undertake carefully and
critically experiments similar to those which he has so vividly
described.

                                                       WILLIAM MCDOUGALL

  _Duke University, N. C.
  September, 1929_

                                PREFACE

Ich habe das Buch von Upton Sinclair mit grossem Interesse gelesen und
bin überzeugt, dass dasselbe die ernsteste Beachtung, nicht nur der
Laien, sondern auch der Psychologen von Fach verdient. Die Ergebnisse
der in diesem Buch sorgfältig und deutlich beschriebenen telepathischen
Experimente stehen sicher weit ausserhalb desjenigen, was ein
Naturforscher für denkbar hält. Andererseit aber ist es bei einem so
gewissenhaften Beobachter und Schriftsteller wie Upton Sinclair
ausgeschlossen, dass er eine bewusste Täuschung der Leserwelt anstrebt;
seine bona fides und Zuverlässigkeit darf nicht bezweifelt werden. Wenn
also etwa die mit grosser Klarheit dargestellten Tatsachen nicht auf
Telepathie, sondern etwa auf unbewussten hypnothischen Einflüssen von
Person zu Person beruhen sollten, so wäre auch dies von hohem
psychologischen Interesse. Keinesfalls also sollten die psychologisch
interessierten Kreise an diesem Buch achtlos vorübergehn.

                                                         gez A. EINSTEIN

  _den 23. Mai 1930_

                                PREFACE

I have read the book of Upton Sinclair with great interest and am
convinced that the same deserves the most earnest consideration, not
only of the laity, but also of the psychologists by profession. The
results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in
this book stand surely far beyond those which a nature investigator
holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in
the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair
that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world; his
good faith and dependability are not to be doubted. So if somehow the
facts here set forth rest not upon telepathy, but upon some unconscious
hypnotic influence from person to person, this also would be of high
psychological interest. In no case should the psychologically interested
circles pass over this book heedlessly.

                                                    [signed] A. EINSTEIN

  _May 23, 1930_

                                FOREWORD

I contemplated a statement introducing this book to the reader, but on
further thought I realized that the book introduces itself and speaks
for itself all the way through. I will only say that Mary Craig
Kimbrough was my wife for almost half a century. She guarded me, managed
me, and worried about me during that period—for the task was an unending
one. I was often engaged in politically and socially dangerous tasks,
and Craig was the one who realized the dangers and undertook the task of
saving me. This went on all through our marriage, and in the end her
heart weakened, and for almost ten years I dropped all my other tasks
and devoted myself to keeping her alive. She died in April, 1961.

I wrote the text of _Mental Radio_, 1929, under her direction; she
revised every word and had it exactly the way she wanted it. She was the
most conscientious and morally exacting person I have ever known.
Loyalty to the truth was her religion; and every sentence in this book
was studied so that it would be exactly true and so clear that nobody
could misunderstand it. She knew just how we did our experiments; she
had told me exactly what to do, and I had done it; if I set it down
wrong in the manuscript, she made it right.

She has told of her early psychic experiences, and they were enough to
fill her with determination to make sure they were real, and if possible
to find out what they meant. It was she who laid down all the procedures
in our tests. It was she who studied the results and got the record
exact to the last comma. In reading this book bear in mind, there are no
errors. If the book says that the experiment was done in a certain
precise way, that is the way it was done; and always it was done without
prejudice, without a preconception or anything that could affect the
result. When the record was put on paper every word had to be studied,
and every little mistake that I made had to be corrected by her
tenacious memory.

So trust this book. Understand that what is told here happened exactly
as it has been told. Don’t think that maybe there was a slight slip, or
that there is a careless word. I remember in the course of the years
some learned psychologist suggesting that maybe Craig had unconsciously
got some idea of what the drawings were by seeing the movement of my pen
or pencil. This meant just one thing—the learned gentleman didn’t want
to believe, and hadn’t taken the trouble to go back and study the book.
You who are going to read now will note again and again that I went into
another room to make the drawing, and I shut the door. Make note now and
bear it in mind all through the book, I never made a drawing in the same
room with Craig; and always the door was shut. To have done otherwise
would have been to waste her time as well as mine, and she saw to it
that I did not waste either. She wanted to _know_; she was _determined_
to _know_; she laid down the law, and I obeyed it. The only way you can
reject the evidence in this book is to decide that we were a pair of
unconscionable rascals.

I’ll give you one opinion about that. Albert Einstein, possessor of one
of the greatest modern brains, and also of a high character, was one of
our close friends. He came to our home, and we came to his, and he
witnessed some of our experiments. When this book was ready for
publication in 1929 I sent him a set of the proofs and asked him if he
would care to write a preface for the German edition. He consented and
wrote the letter in German to the German publisher. Unfortunately, the
publisher went out of business.

What you are going to read is the exact text of Craig’s book as it was
written in the year 1929 and published in the next year. The only
changes I have made have to do with the lapse of thirty years since the
text was written. Near the end are one or two references to friends who
have since died, but you probably never knew those persons, so it
doesn’t matter.

At the end of the book I have published a few comments on it, and an
account, written by myself, of later experiments. Also I give an
extensive summary of the results of a study of the drawings published by
Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, a Boston clergyman who resigned from his
pulpit in order to become Research Officer of the Boston Society for
Psychic Research. Dr. Prince asked if we would be willing to entrust the
documents to his examination, and I immediately bundled them up and sent
them to him by registered mail. The long commentary which he wrote
appeared in the _Bulletin_ of the society for April, 1932.

Perhaps the most important single item concerning _Mental Radio_ is the
following:

Prof. William MacDougall, who had been head of the Department of
Psychology at Oxford University and later head of the Department of
Psychology at Harvard—and who had won the title of “Dean of American
Psychology”—came to see us in Pasadena soon after the publication of
this book. He told Craig that he had just accepted the job of head of
the Department of Psychology at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina,
and would have at his disposal a considerable fund for research. He had
read _Mental Radio_ and had written the preface which is in this book,
and he said that he would like to be able to say that he himself had
witnessed a test of the genuineness of Craig’s telepathic power.

Craig had always shrunk from anything of that sort because her power
depended entirely upon solitude and concentration; but her respect for
MacDougall was great, and she told him she would do her best. He said
that he had some pictures in his inside coat pocket, and he would like
to see if she could describe them. She sat quietly with her eyes closed
and presently said that she saw a building with stone walls and narrow
windows, and it seemed to be covered with green leaves. MacDougall took
from his inside coat pocket a postcard of one of the buildings at Oxford
covered with ivy.

Other tests with him will appear later. Here I add one more story, how
we took the good man for a test with Arthur Ford, who was then head of a
spiritualistic church in Los Angeles. I had picked out four letters or
postcards from well-known persons, one of them Jack London and another
Georg Brandes, the Danish critic, highly respected. I wrapped each of
these documents in a sheet of green paper to remove any possibility of
holding them up to the light or otherwise getting a glimpse. I showed
this to MacDougall, and he agreed that the concealment was effective. We
then sealed them in four numbered envelopes, and in a little ante-room
of the church Arthur Ford lay back in his chair, covered his eyes with a
handkerchief, and put the envelopes one by one on his forehead.

I subsequently wrote an article about the experiment which was published
in the _Psychic Observer_, but I do not have the text at hand. Ford told
us significant things about the contents of all those envelopes, and I
remember that afterwards MacDougall, Craig and I strolled down the
street and stopped at a little kiosk where we ordered lemonade or orange
juice. I said, “Well, what do you think of it?” and MacDougall’s answer
was, “I should say that it is undoubtedly supernormal.”

He then told Craig that what she had done had already decided him—he was
going to Duke University in a week or two and his first action would be
to set up a Department of Parapsychology. That was a little over thirty
years ago, and I think it is correct to say that what MacDougall did,
with the help of J. B. Rhine, his assistant and later his successor, has
made the subject of Parapsychology scientifically respectable throughout
the United States and Europe.

And now, to the text, as published, 1931.

                                                          UPTON SINCLAIR

                                CONTENTS

                                                                  _Page_

 _Introduction_ by WILLIAM MCDOUGALL                                   v

 _Preface_ by ALBERT EINSTEIN                                       viii

 _Foreword_                                                           xi

 MENTAL RADIO                                                          3

 _Addendum_: The Sinclair Experiments for Telepathy
   (by WALTER FRANKLIN PRINCE)                                       149

 _Epilogue_                                                          237

                              MENTAL RADIO

                                  _1_

If you were born as long as fifty years ago, you can remember a time
when the test of a sound, common-sense mind was refusing to fool with
“new-fangled notions.” Without exactly putting it into a formula, people
took it for granted that truth was known and familiar, and anything that
was not known and familiar was nonsense. In my boyhood, the funniest
joke in the world was a “flying machine man”; and when my mother took up
a notion about “germs” getting into you and making you sick, my father
made it a theme for no end of domestic wit. Even as late as twenty years
ago, when I wanted to write a play based on the idea that men might some
day be able to make a human voice audible to groups of people all over
America, my friends assured me that I could not interest the public in
such a fantastic notion.

Among the objects of scorn, in my boyhood, was what we called
“superstition”; and we made the term include, not merely the notion that
the number thirteen brought you bad luck, not merely a belief in
witches, ghosts and goblins, but also a belief in any strange phenomena
of the mind which we did not understand. We knew about hypnotism,
because we had seen stage performances, and were in the midst of reading
a naughty book called _Trilby_; but such things as trance mediumship,
automatic writing, table-tapping, telekinesis, telepathy and
clairvoyance—we didn’t know these long names, but if such ideas were
explained to us, we knew right away that it was “all nonsense.”

In my youth I had the experience of meeting a scholarly Unitarian
clergyman, the Rev. Minot J. Savage of New York, who assured me quite
seriously that he had seen and talked with ghosts. He didn’t convince
me, but he sowed the seed of curiosity in my mind, and I began reading
books on psychic research. From first to last, I have read hundreds of
volumes; always interested, and always uncertain—an uncomfortable mental
state. The evidence in support of telepathy came to seem to me
conclusive, yet it never quite became real to me. The consequences of
belief would be so tremendous, the changes it would make in my view of
the universe so revolutionary, that I didn’t believe, even when I said I
did.

But for thirty years the subject has been among the things I hoped to
know about; and, as it happened, fate was planning to favor me. It sent
me a wife who became interested, and who not merely investigated
telepathy, but learned to practice it. For three years I watched and
assisted in this work, day by day and night by night, in our home. So I
could say that I was no longer guessing. Now I really know. I am going
to tell you about it, and hope to convince you; but regardless of what
anybody can say, there will never again be a doubt about it in my mind.
I KNOW!

                                  _2_

Telepathy, or mind-reading: that is to say, can one human mind
communicate with another human mind, except by the sense channels
ordinarily known and used—seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and
touching? Can a thought or image in one mind be sent directly to another
mind and there reproduced and recognized? If this can be done, how is it
done? Is it some kind of vibration, going out from the brain, like radio
broadcasting? Or is it some contact with a deeper level of mind, as
bubbles on a stream have contact with the water of the stream? And if
this power exists, can it be developed and used? Is it something that
manifests itself now and then, like a lightning flash, over which we
have no control? Or can we make the energy and store it, and use it
regularly, as we have learned to do with the lightning which Franklin
brought from the clouds?

These are the questions; and the answers, as well as I can summarize
them, are as follows: Telepathy is real; it does happen. Whatever may be
the nature of the force, it has nothing to do with distance, for it
works exactly as well over forty miles as over a few feet. And while it
may be spontaneous and may depend upon a special endowment, it can be
cultivated and used deliberately, as any other object of study, in
physics and chemistry. The essential in this training is an art of
mental concentration and auto-suggestion, which can be learned. I am
going to tell you not merely what you can do, but how you can do it, so
that if you have patience and real interest, you can make your own
contribution to knowledge.

Starting the subject, I am like the wandering book-agent or peddler who
taps on your door and gets you to open it, and has to speak quickly and
persuasively, putting his best goods foremost. Your prejudice is against
this idea; and if you are one of my old-time readers, you are a little
shocked to find me taking up a new and unexpected line of activity. You
have come, after thirty years, to the position where you allow me to be
one kind of “crank,” but you won’t stand for two kinds. So let me come
straight to the point—open up my pack, pull out my choicest wares, and
catch your attention with them if I can.

Here is a drawing of a table-fork. It was done with a lead-pencil on a
sheet of ruled paper, which has been photographed, and then reproduced
in the ordinary way. You note that it bears a signature and a date (Fig.
1):

[Illustration: Fig. 1]

This drawing was produced by my brother-in-law, Robert L. Irwin, a young
business man, and no kind of “crank,” under the following circumstances.
He was sitting in a room in his home in Pasadena at a specified hour,
eleven-thirty in the morning of July 13, 1928, having agreed to make a
drawing of any object he might select, at random, and then to sit gazing
at it, concentrating his entire attention upon it for a period of from
fifteen to twenty minutes.

At the same agreed hour, eleven-thirty in the morning of July 13, 1928,
my wife was lying on the couch in her study, in our home in Long Beach,
forty miles away by the road. She was in semi-darkness, with her eyes
closed; employing a system of mental concentration which she has been
practicing off and on for several years, and mentally suggesting to her
subconscious mind to bring her whatever was in the mind of her
brother-in-law. Having become satisfied that the image which came to her
mind was the correct one—because it persisted, and came back again and
again—she sat up and took pencil and paper and wrote the date, and six
words, as follows (Fig. 1a):

A day or two later we drove to Pasadena, and then in the presence of Bob
and his wife, the drawing and writing were produced and compared. I have
in my possession affidavits from Bob, his wife, and my wife, to the
effect that the drawing and writing were produced in this way. Later in
this book I shall present four other pairs of drawings, made in the same
way, three of them equally successful.

[Illustration: Fig. 1a]

Second case. Here is a drawing (Fig. 2), and below it a set of five
drawings (Fig. 2a):

[Illustration: Fig. 2]

[Illustration: Fig. 2a]

The above drawings were produced under the following circumstances. The
single drawing (Fig. 2) was made by me in my study at my home. I was
alone, and the door was closed before the drawing was made, and was not
opened until the test was concluded. Having made the drawing, I held it
before me and concentrated upon it for a period of five or ten minutes.

The five drawings (Fig. 2a) were produced by my wife, who was lying on
the couch in her study, some thirty feet away from me, with the door
closed between us. The only words spoken were as follows: when I was
ready to make my drawing, I called, “All right,” and when she had
completed her drawings, she called “All right”—whereupon I opened the
door and took my drawing to her and we compared them. I found that in
addition to the five little pictures, she had written some explanation
of how she came to draw them. This I shall quote and discuss later on. I
shall also tell about six other pairs of drawings, produced at this same
time.

Third case: another drawing (Fig. 3a), produced under the following
circumstances. My wife went upstairs, and shut the door which is at the
top of the stairway. I went on tip-toe to a cupboard in a downstairs
room and took from a shelf a red electric-light bulb—it having been
agreed that I should select any small article, of which there were
certainly many hundreds in our home. I wrapped this bulb in several
thicknesses of newspaper, and put it, so wrapped, in a shoe-box, and
wrapped the shoe-box in a whole newspaper, and tied it tightly with a
string. I then called my wife and she came downstairs, and lay on her
couch and put the box on her body, over the solar plexus. I sat
watching, and never took my eyes from her, nor did I speak a word during
the test. Finally she sat up, and made her drawing, with the written
comment, and handed it to me. Every word of the comment, as well as the
drawing, was produced before I said a word, and the drawing and writing
as here reproduced have not been touched or altered in any way (Fig.
3a):

[Illustration: Fig. 3a]

The text of my wife’s written comment is as follows:

“First see round glass. Guess nose glasses? No. Then comes V shape again
with a ‘button’ in top. Button stands out from object. This round top is
of different color from lower part. It is light color, the other part is
dark.”

To avoid any possible misunderstanding, perhaps I should state that the
question and answer in the above were my wife’s description of her own
mental process, and do not represent a question asked of me. She did not
“guess” aloud, nor did either of us speak a single word during this
test, except the single word, “Ready,” to call my wife downstairs.

The next drawings were produced in the following manner. The one at the
top (Fig. 4) was drawn by me alone in my study, and was one of nine, all
made at the same time, and with no restriction upon what I should
draw—anything that came into my head. Having made the nine drawings, I
wrapped each one in a separate sheet of green paper, to make it
absolutely invisible, and put each one in a plain envelope and sealed
it, and then took the nine sealed envelopes and laid them on the table
by my wife’s couch. My wife then took one of them and placed it over her
solar plexus, and lay in her state of concentration, while I sat
watching her, at her insistence, in order to make the evidence more
convincing. Having received what she considered a convincing telepathic
“message,” or image of the contents of the envelope, she sat up and made
her sketch (Fig. 4a) on a pad of paper.

[Illustration: Fig. 4]

[Illustration: Fig. 4a]

The essence of our procedure is this: that never did she see my drawing
until hers was completed and her descriptive words written; that I spoke
no word and made no comment until after this was done; and that the
drawings presented here are in every case exactly what I drew, and the
corresponding drawing is exactly what my wife drew, with no change or
addition whatsoever. In the case of this particular pair, my wife wrote,
“Inside of rock well with vines climbing on outside.” Such was her guess
as to the drawing, which I had meant for a bird’s nest surrounded by
leaves; but you see that the two drawings are for practical purposes
identical.

Many tests have been made, by each of the different methods above
outlined, and the results will be given and explained in these pages.
The method of attempting to reproduce little drawings was used more than
any other, simply because it proved the most convenient; it could be
done at a moment’s notice, and so fitted into our busy lives. The
procedure was varied in a few details to save time and trouble, as I
shall later explain, but the essential feature remains unchanged: I make
a set of drawings, and my wife takes them one by one and attempts to
reproduce them without having seen them. Here are a few samples, chosen
at random because of their picturesque character. If my wife wrote
anything on the drawing, I add it as “comment”; and you are to
understand here, and for the rest of this book, that “comment” means the
exact words which she wrote _before_ she saw my drawing. Often there
will be parts of this “comment” visible in the photograph. I give it all
in print. Note that drawings 1, 2, 3, etc. are mine, while 1a, 2a, 3a,
etc., are my wife’s.

In the case of my drawing numbered five, my wife’s comment was:
“Knight’s helmet.”

[Illustration: Fig. 5]

[Illustration: Fig. 5a]

On figure 6, the comment was: “Desert scene, camel, ostrich, then
below”—and the drawing in figure 6a. On the reverse side of the page is
further comment: “This came in fragments, as if I saw it being drawn by
invisible pencil.”

[Illustration: Fig. 6]

[Illustration: Fig. 6a]

And here is a pair with no comment, and none needed (Figs. 7, 7a):

[Illustration: Fig. 7]

[Illustration: Fig. 7a]

On the following, also, no comment was written (Figs. 8, 8a):

[Illustration: Fig. 8]

[Illustration: Fig. 8a]

[Illustration: Fig. 9]

[Illustration: Fig. 9a]

I drew Figure 9, and my wife drew 9a, a striking success, and wrote the
comment: “May be elephant’s snout—but anyway it is some kind of a
running animal. Long thing like rope flung out in front of him.”

Next, a series of three pairs, which, as it happened, were done one
after the other, numbers three, four and five in the twenty-third series
of my drawings. They are selected in part because they are amusing.
First, I tried to draw a bat, from vague memories of boyhood days when
they used to fly into the ball-rooms at Virginia springs hotels, and
have to be massacred with brooms, because it was believed that they
sought to tangle themselves in the hair of the ladies (Figs. 10, 10a):

[Illustration: Fig. 10]

[Illustration: Fig. 10a]

My wife’s comment on the above reads: “Big insect. I know this is right
because it moves his legs as if flying. Beetle working its legs. Legs in
motion!”

And next, my effort at a Chinese mandarin (Figs. 11, 11a):

[Illustration: Fig. 11]

[Illustration: Fig. 11a]

The comment reads: “More beetles, or legged bugs”—and she draws the
mustaches of the mandarin and his hair. “Head of dragon with big mouth.
See also a part of his body—in front, or shoulders” The association of
mandarins with dragons is obvious.

And finally, my effort at a boy’s foot and roller-skate, which undergoes
a strange telepathic transformation. I have put it upside down for
easier comparison (Figs. 12, 12a):

[Illustration: Fig. 12]

[Illustration: Fig. 12a]

The comment, complete, reads: “Profile of head and neck of animal—lion
or dog—a muzzle. Maybe pig snout.”

The above are samples of our successes. Altogether, of such drawings, 38
were prepared by my secretary, while I made 252, a total of 290. I have
classified the drawings to the best of my ability into three groups:
successes, partial successes, and failures. The partial successes are
those drawings which contain some easily recognized element of the
original drawing: such as, for example, the last one above. The profile
of a pig’s head is not a roller skate, but when you compare the
drawings, you see that in my wife’s first sketch the eyes resemble the
wheels of the roller-skates, and in her second sketch the snout
resembles my shoe-tip; also there is a general similarity of outline,
which is what she most commonly gets.

In the 290 drawings, the total of successes is 65, which is roughly 23
per cent. The total of partial successes is 155, which is 53 per cent.
The total of failures is 70, which is 24 per cent. I asked some
mathematician friends to work out the probabilities on the above
results, but I found that the problem was too complicated. Who could
estimate how many possible objects there were, which might come into my
head to be drawn? Any time the supply ran short, I would pick up a
magazine, and in the advertising pages find a score of new drawings to
imitate. Again, very few of the drawings were simple. We began with such
things as a circle, a square, a cross, a number or a letter; but soon we
were doing Chinese mandarins with long mustaches, and puppies chasing a
string. Each of these drawings has many different features; and what
mathematician could count the number of these features, and the chances
of reproducing them?

It is a matter to be judged by common sense. It seems to me any one must
agree that the chances of the twelve drawings so far shown having been
reproduced by accident is too great to be worth considering. A million
years would not be enough for such a set of coincidences.

                                  _3_

Much of the evidence which I am using rests upon the good faith of Mary
Craig Sinclair; so, before we go further, I ask your permission to
introduce her. She is a daughter of the far South; her father a retired
planter, bank president and judge, of Mississippi. The fates endowed his
oldest child with the blessings of beauty, health, wealth and wisdom—and
then spoiled it, by adding a curse in the shape of a too tender heart.
The griefs of other people overwhelm Craig like a suffocation. Strangers
take one glance at her, and instantly decide that here is one who will
“understand.” I have seen her go into a store to buy a piece of ribbon,
and come out with tears in her eyes, because of a tragic story which
some clerk was moved to pour out to her, all in a moment, without
provocation. She has always said that she “gets” the feelings of people,
not by their words, but by intuition. But she never paid any attention
to this gift; never associated it with “psychic” matters. She was always
too busy, first with eight younger brothers and sisters, and then with
the practical affairs of an unpractical author-husband.

Early in childhood, things like this would happen: her mother would say
to a little negro servant, “Go and find Miss Mary Craig”; but before the
boy could start, Craig would know that her mother wanted her, and would
be on the way. This might, of course, have been coincidence; if it stood
alone, it would have no value. But the same thing happened with dreams.
Craig dreamed there was a needle in her bed, and woke up and looked for
it in vain; in the morning she told her mother, who slept in another
room. The mother said: “How strange! I dreamed the same thing, and I
woke up and really found one!”

Of her young ladyhood, Craig told this story, one of many: Driving with
a girl friend, miles from home, she suddenly remarked: “Let’s go home;
Mr. B is there.” Now this was a place to which Mr. B had never come; it
was three hundred miles from his town. But Craig said: “I have just had
an impression of him, sitting on our front porch.” Going home, they
found him there.

Another instance, of more recent date. Shortly after our coming to
California, my wife all at once became greatly worried about Jack
London; she insisted that he was in terrible mental distress. As it
happened, George Sterling had told us much about Jack’s troubles, but
these were of old standing, and there was nothing to account for the
sudden notion which my wife took up on a certain day. We had a lot of
conversation about it; I offered to take her to the London ranch, but
she said she would not attempt to meddle in the affairs of a married
man, unless at his wife’s request. I made the laughing suggestion that
she go alone, in the guise of a gypsy fortune-teller—a rôle which in her
young ladyhood she had played with social éclat. Two days later we read
that Jack London was dead, and very soon came letters from George
Sterling, telling us that he had taken his own life. This, again, might
be coincidence; if it stood alone I would attach no importance to it.
But taken with this mass of evidence, it has a share of weight.

When we were married, seventeen years ago, we spent some time in
England, and there we met a woman physician, interested in “mental
healing,” and full of ideas about “psychic” things. Both Craig and I
were in need of healing, having been through a siege of trouble. Craig
was suffering with intense headaches, something hitherto unknown in her
life; while I had an ancient problem of indigestion, caused by excess of
brain work and lack of body work. We began to experiment with healing by
the “laying on of hands”—without knowing anything about it, just groping
in the dark. I found that I could cure Craig’s headaches—and get them
myself; while she found that she could take my indigestion, a trouble
she had never known hitherto. Each of us was willing to take the other’s
pains, but neither was willing to give them, so our experiments came to
a halt.

We forgot the whole subject for more than ten years. I was busy trying
to reform America; while Craig was of the most intensely materialistic
convictions. Her early experiences of evangelical religion had repelled
her so violently that everything suggestive of “spirituality” was
repugnant to her. Never was a woman more “practical,” more centered upon
the here and now, the things which can be seen and touched. I do not go
into details about this, but I want to make it as emphatic as possible,
for the light it throws upon her attitude and disposition.

But shortly after the age of forty, her custom of carrying the troubles
of all who were near her resulted in a breakdown of health. A story of
suffering needless to go into: suffice it that she had many ills to
experiment upon, and mental control became suddenly a matter of life and
death. In the course of the last five or six years Craig has acquired a
fair-sized library of books on the mind, both orthodox scientific, and
“crank.” She has sat up half the night studying, marking passages and
making notes, seeking to reconcile various doctrines, to know what the
mind really is, and how it works, and what can be done with it. Always
it was a practical problem: things had to _work_. If now she believes
anything, rest assured that it is because she has tried it out in the
crucibles of pain, and proved it in her daily regimen.

She was not content to see psychic phenomena produced by other persons.
Even though authorities warned her that trances might be dangerous, and
that _rapport_ with others might lead to dissociations of
personality—even so, she had to find out for herself. A hundred times in
the course of experiments of which I am going to tell, she has turned to
me, saying: “Can you think of any way this can be chance? What can I do
to make it more sure?” When I said, the other night: “This settles it
for me. I am going to write the story,” her reply was, “Wait a while!”
She wants to do more experimenting; but I think that enough is enough.

                                  _4_

Two years ago Craig and I heard of a “psychic,” a young foreigner who
was astounding physicians of Southern California, performing feats so
completely beyond their understanding that they were content to watch
without trying to understand. We went to see this young man, and
befriended him; he came to our home every day, and his strange
demonstrations became familiar to us. He had the ability to produce
anaesthesia in many parts of his body, and stick hatpins through his
tongue and cheeks without pain; he could go into a deep trance in which
his body became rigid and cold; and I put his head on one chair and his
heels on another, and stood in the middle, as if he were a two-inch
plank. We have a motion picture film, showing a 150-pound rock being
broken with a sledge-hammer on his abdomen while he lay in this trance.
The vital faculties were so far suspended in this trance that he could
be shut up in an airtight coffin and buried underground for several
hours; nor was there any hocus-pocus about this—I know physicians who
got the coffins and arranged for the tests and watched every detail; in
Ventura, California, it was done in a ball park, and a game was played
over the grave.

In our home he gave what appeared to be a demonstration of levitation
without contact. I do not say that it really was levitation; I merely
say that our friends who witnessed it—physicians, scientists, writers
and their wives, fourteen persons in all—were unable even to suggest a
normal method by which the event could have happened. There was no one
present who could have been a confederate, and the psychic had been
searched for apparatus; it was in our home, where he had no opportunity
whatever for preparation. His wrists and ankles were firmly held by
persons whom I know well; and there was sufficient light in the room so
that I could see the outline of his figure, slumped in a chair. Under
these circumstances a 34-pound table rose four feet into the air and
moved slowly a distance of eight feet over my head.

We saw this; our friends saw it; yet, in my mind, and likewise in
theirs, the worm of doubt would always creep in. There are so many ways
to fool people; so many conjuring tricks—think of Houdini, for example!
I was unwilling to publish what I had seen; yet, also, I was unwilling
not to publish it—for think of the possible importance of faculties such
as this, locked up in our minds! Here was my wife, ill, suffering pain;
and these facilities might perhaps be used in healing. If by
concentration and auto-suggestion it was possible for the mind to
control the body, and put a veto upon even a few of its disorders,
certainly it was worth while for us to prove the fact. I could not
escape the moral obligation to probe these matters.

This “psychic” claimed also to possess and demonstrate the power of
telepathy, or mind-reading. He would go out of the room while one of us
selected mentally some object in the room, not revealing the choice to
any one else. The “psychic” would then come back, and tell us to stand
behind him and concentrate our thoughts upon that object, and follow
close behind him, thinking of it. He would wander about the room for a
while, and in the end pick up the object, and do with it whatever we
mentally “willed” him to do.

We saw him make this test not less than a hundred times, in California,
New York, and Boston; he succeeded with it more than half the time.
There was no contact, no word spoken, nothing that we could imagine as
giving him a clue. Did we unconsciously make in our throats some faint
pronunciation of words, and did the young man have a super-acuity of
hearing? Again, you see, the worm of doubt, and we never could quite
decide what we really believed about this performance. After puzzling
over it for a year or more, my wife said: “There is only one way to be
certain. I am going to learn to do these things _myself_!”

This young man, whom I will call Jan, was a peculiar person. Sometimes
he would be open and frank, and again he would be mysterious and
secretive. At one time he would agree to teach us all he knew, and again
he would hold on to his arts, which he had had to go all the way to
India to get. Was it that he considered these forces too dangerous for
amateurs to play with? Or was it merely that he was considering his
means of livelihood?

Jan was a hypnotist; and my wife had come to realize that all illness is
more or less amenable to suggestion. She had had the idea of being
hypnotized and given curative suggestions; but she did not know enough
about this stranger, and was unwilling to trust him. After she got to
know him better, her purposes changed. Here was a fund of knowledge
which she craved, and she put her woman’s wits to work to get it. She
told him to go ahead and hypnotize her—and explained to me her purpose
of trying to turn the tables on him. Jan fixed his eyes upon hers in the
hypnotic stare, and made his magnetic passes; at the same time his
patient stared back, and I sat and watched the strange duel of
personalities.

An essential part of Jan’s technique, as he had explained it, was in
outstaring the patient and never blinking his eyes. Now suddenly he
blinked; then he closed his eyes and kept them closed. “Do your eyes
hurt?” asked his patient, in pretended innocence. “No,” he replied. “Are
you tired?” she asked. “No, thank you,” said he. “What was I thinking?”
she asked. “To hypnotize me,” he replied, sleepily. But Craig wanted
further proof, so she closed her eyes and willed that Jan should get up
and go to the telephone. “Shall I go on treating you?” he asked. “Yes,”
said she. He hesitated a moment, then said, “Excuse me, I have to
telephone to a friend!”

I am telling about these matters in the order of time, as they came to
us. I am sorry that these stories of Jan come first, because they are
the strangest, and the least capable of proof. In the hope of taking
part of the onus from our shoulders, let me quote from a book by Charles
Richet, a member of the Institute of Medicine in France, and a leading
scientist; he is citing Pierre Janet, whose name is known wherever in
the world the human mind is studied. The statement reads:

“P. Janet, a most eminent French psychiatrist, and one of the founders
of the famous Salpetriere school of psychology in Paris, and a careful
and sceptical observer, has verified that a patient of his, Leonie B.,
being put into hypnotic sleep by himself, or his brother (from whom
Leonie in her hypnotic sleep was unable to distinguish him), could
recognize _exactly_ the substance that he placed in his mouth—sugar,
salt, pepper. One day his brother, J. Janet, in an adjoining room,
scorched his right arm above the wrist. Leonie, who could have known
nothing about it normally, gave signs of real pain, and showed to P.
Janet (who knew nothing of the occurrence), the exact place of the
burn.”

Or let me cite the late Professor Quackenbos, of Columbia University,
who wrote many books on hypnotism as a therapeutic agency, and tells of
numerous cases of the same kind. He himself would sometimes go
involuntarily into hypnotic sleep with his patient, and so, sometimes,
would the nurse. Frequently between the hypnotist and the subject comes
what is called _rapport_, whereby each knows what is in the other’s
mind, and suggestions are taken without their being spoken. You may
believe this, or refuse to believe it—that is your privilege. All I want
to do is to make clear that my wife is claiming no special achievement,
but merely repeating the standard experiences of the textbooks on this
subject.

This _rapport_ between Craig and her protégé was developed to such an
extent that she could tell him what was in his mind, and what he had
been doing; she told him many stories about himself, where he had been
and what he had done at a certain hour. This was embarrassing to a young
man who perhaps did not care to have his life so closely overseen; also,
possibly, he was wounded in his _amour propre_, that a mere amateur—and
a woman at that—should be coming into possession of his secret arts.

The trick depends upon a process of intense concentration, which will
later be described in detail. After this concentration, Craig would give
to her subconscious mind the suggestion, or command, that it should
bring to her consciousness a vision of what Jan was doing. This giving
an order to the subconscious mind is much the same sort of thing that
you do when you seek to remember a name; whether you realize it or not,
you order your subconscious mind to get that bit of information and
bring it to you. Whatever came to Craig, she would write it out, and
when next she met Jan, she would use her woman’s wits to verify it
without Jan’s knowing what was happening. At times it would be very
amusing—when he would find himself accused of some youthful misdemeanor
which his preceptress was not supposed to know about. In his efforts to
defend himself, he would fail entirely to realize the telepathic aspects
of the matter.

                                  _5_

Please let me repeat, I am not telling here a set of fairy tales and
fantasies; I am presenting a record of experiments, conducted in strict
scientific fashion. All the results were set down day by day in writing.
For an hour or two every day for the past three years my wife has been
scribbling notes of her experiments, and there are eight boxes full in
her study, enough to fill a big trunk. No statement in all the following
rests upon our memories; everything is taken from memoranda now in my
hands. Admitting that new facts can be learned about the mind, I do not
see how any one can use more careful methods than we have done.

My wife “saw” Jan carrying a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in white paper,
on the street, and she wrote this down. She later ascertained that at
this hour Jan had carried flowers to a friend in a hospital in Los
Angeles, and she telephoned this friend and verified the facts. On
another occasion when Jan was in Santa Barbara, a hundred miles from our
home, she “saw” him escorting a blonde girl in a blue dress from an auto
to a hotel over a rainy pavement; she wrote this down, and later
ascertained that it had actually been happening. The details were
verified, not merely by Jan, but by another member of the party. I ought
to add that in no case did my wife tell the other persons what she had
“seen” until after these persons had told her what had happened. No
chance was taken of their making up events to conform to her records.
Always Craig kept her cold-blooded determination to know what was _real_
in this field where so much is invented and imagined.

Again, she “saw” Jan preparing to commit suicide, dressed in a pair of
yellow silk pajamas; then she “saw” him lying dead on the floor. She was
much disturbed—until Jan reminded her that he had been seven times
publicly “buried” in Southern California before she met him. Several
weeks later she learned that in one of these “burials” he had worn
yellow silk pajamas. Jan had forgotten this, but Dr. Frank Sweet, of
Long Beach, who had overseen the procedure, remembered the pajamas, and
how they had been ruined by mud.

Craig saw a vision of a bride, at a time when Jan, in his room in a far
part of the city, was awakening from sleep with a dream about a friend’s
wedding. On two occasions, while “concentrating,” she got the impression
that Jan and a friend of his had returned unexpectedly from Santa
Barbara to Hollywood. In both cases she made careful record, and it
turned out to be correct; I have a written statement of the two young
men, confirming the second instance, and saying that it could not have
been normally known to my wife.

I have also a detailed record—some twenty pages long—of a “clairvoyant”
vision of Jan’s movements about the city of Long Beach, including his
parking of a car, carrying something over his arm, visiting a
barber-shop and a flower-shop, and stopping and hesitating and then
going on. The record includes a detailed description of the streets and
their lay-out, a one-story white building, etc. Jan had been doing all
this at approximately the time specified. He had carried his trousers to
a tailor-shop, with a barber-shop directly opposite; he had stopped in
front of a flower-shop and debated whether to buy some flowers; he had
taken a letter to be copied by a typist, and had stopped on the street,
hesitating as to whether to wait for this copying to be done. All these
details he narrated to my wife _before_ he knew what was in her written
record.

Another curious experience: I took Jan to the home of Dr. John R. Haynes
of Los Angeles, to give a demonstration of his mind-reading. Jan said he
felt ill, and would not be successful. Only one or two of the tests
succeeded. But meanwhile my wife was at home, concentrating, and
ordering her subconscious mind to show her what Jan and I were doing.
When I returned I found that she had written a detailed description of
Dr. Haynes’ home, including a correct ground plan of the entrance hall,
stairs and drawing-room, and a description of the color and style of
decorations, furniture, lamps, vases, etc., in good part correct. Craig
has never been in this house.

Jan goes into one of his deep states—a cataleptic trance, he calls it—in
which his body is rigid and cold. He has the power to fix in advance the
time when he will come out of the trance, and his subconscious mind
apparently possesses the power to keep track of time—days, hours,
minutes, even seconds. I have seen him amaze a group of scientists by
coming out on the second, while they held stop-watches on him.

But now my wife thinks she will vary this procedure. Jan goes into the
trance in our home and Craig sits and silently wills, “Your right leg
will come out; you will lift it; you will put it down again. You will
sit erect”—and so on. Without speaking a word, she can make him do
whatever she pleases.

Another incident, quite a long one. I ask you to have patience with the
details, promising that in the end you will see what it is all about. I
am in the next room, and I hear Jan and my wife having one of their
regular evening arguments, because he will not tell her how he does this
or that; at one moment he insists that he has told her—and the next
moment he insists that he does not know. My wife finally asks him to
concentrate upon an object in the room, and she will see if she can
“get” it. He selects the gas stove, in which a fire is burning; and
Craig says, “I see a lot of little flames.” Jan insists that is “no
good,” she didn’t get the stove; which annoys her very much—she thinks
he does not want to allow any success to a woman. He is a “continental
male,” something she makes fierce feminist war upon.

Craig is suffering from neuralgia in neck and shoulder, and Jan offers
to treat her. He will use what he calls “magnetism”; he believes there
is an emanation from his finger-tips, and so, with his two forefingers
he lightly traces the course of the nerves of her neck and shoulder and
arm. For ten or fifteen minutes his two fingers are tracing patterns in
front of her.

Then it is time for him to go home, and he is unhappy, and she succeeds
in drawing the explanation from him—he has to walk, and his shoes are
tight and hurt him. He has to have them stretched, he tells her. She
offers him a pair of my big tennis shoes to wear home, and then she
scolds him because he has the fashionable notion that white canvas
tennis shoes are not proper footwear for eleven o’clock in the evening.
Finally he puts them on and departs; and my wife lies down and makes her
mind a blank, and orders it to tell her what Jan is doing.

She has a pencil and paper, and presently she is writing words. They are
foreign words, and she thinks they must be in Jan’s native language;
they come drifting through her mind for several minutes. Next day comes
Jan for the daily lesson, and she shows him this record. He tells her
that the words are not in his language, but German—which he knows, but
never uses. My wife knows no German; except possibly sauerkraut and
kindergarten. But here she has written a string of German and
near-German words. I have the original sheet before me, and I give it as
well as I can make out the scrawl: “ei einfinen ein-fe-en swenfenz
fingen sweizzen czie ofen weizen ofen fingen swienfen swei fingern efein
boden fienzen meifen bogen feingen Bladen Meichen frefen eifein.”

Some of this is nonsense; but there are a few German words in it, and
others which are guesses at German words, such as might be made by a
person hearing a strange language, and trying to set down what he hears.
Part of the effort seems to be concentrated on getting one expression,
“zwe Fingern”—two fingers! You remember the two fingers moving up and
down over Craig’s neck and shoulder! And “Ofen”—the argument about the
stove! And “bladen”—to stretch shoes over a block of wood. Where these
ideas came from seems plain enough. But where did the German come
from—unless from the subconscious mind of Jan?

A further detail, especially curious. Jan gave my wife the meaning for
the word “bladen”: “to stretch shoes over a block of wood”; I have the
memo which he wrote at the time. But looking up the word in the
dictionaries, I do not find it, nor can I find any German who knows it.
Apparently there is no such word; and this would clearly seem to
indicate that my wife got her German from Jan. If so, it was by
telepathy, for he spoke no word of it that evening.

It is the fashion among young ladies of the South to tease the men; and
Craig found in this episode a basis for tormenting her psychic
instructor. He had assured his patient that during the treatment he was
sending her “curative thoughts.” But what kind of telepathic healer was
it who sent gas-stoves and shoe-blocks into a neuralgic shoulder? Jan,
missing the humor, and trying to save his reputation, declared that he
hated the German language so greatly, he did not even allow himself to
think in it! Germany was associated in his mind with the most painful
memories, and all that previous day he had been fighting depression
caused by these memories. You see, in this blundering defense, a
significant bit of evidence. Jan had really had the German language in
his thoughts at the time Craig got them!

I have before me a letter from Jan to my wife, postmarked Santa Barbara,
October 19, 1927. He says: “May these lovely Cosmos bring you such peace
and contentment as they have brought me.” He has cut a double slit in
the paper, and inserted cosmos blossoms and violets. Prior to the
receipt of this letter, my wife was making the record of a dream, and
here is what she wrote down: “I dreamed Jan had a little basket of
flowers, pink roses and violets, shaped like this.” (A drawing.) “He
lifted them up and said they were for me, but a girl near him took them
and said, ‘But I want them.’” When Jan came to see us again, my wife
asked about the circumstance, and learned the following: a woman friend,
who had given Jan the flowers, had accused him of meaning to send them
to a girl; but he had answered that they were for “a middle-aged and
distinguished lady.”

[Illustration: Fig. 13]

[Illustration: Fig. 13a]

I present here the basket of “pink roses and violets” which my wife
drew, and then the spray of pink double cosmos and violets which met her
eyes when she opened the young “psychic’s” letter a day or two later. I
explain that my wife’s drawing (Fig. 13) is partly written over by the
words of her notes; while in Jan’s letter the violets had to be at once
traced in pencil, as they would not last. My wife drew pencil marks
around them and wrote the word “violet” in three places, to indicate
what the marks meant. The cosmos flowers, pressed and dried, are still
exactly as Jan stuck them into position and as they remained until I
took them to be photographed (Fig. 13a).

                                  _6_

As I have said, I hesitate to tell about incidents such as these. They
are hard to believe, and the skeptic may say that my wife was hypnotized
by Jan, and made to believe them. But it happens that Craig has been
able to establish exactly the same _rapport_ with her husband, who has
never had anything to do with hypnosis, except to watch it a few times.
A Socialist “muck-raker,” much wrapped up in his job, the husband sits
and reads, or revises manuscript, while the wife works her white magic
upon his mind. Suddenly his train of thought is broken by an
exclamation; the wife has “willed” him to do such and so—and he has done
it! Or maybe she has been asleep, and come out with the tail end of a
dream, and has written down what appears to be a lot of rubbish—but
turns out to be a reproduction of something the husband has been reading
or writing at that very moment! Hear one or two instances of such
events, all written down at the time.

Colonel Lindbergh has flown to France, but Craig does not know much
about it, because she is not reading the papers, she is asking, “What is
life?” A year passes, and in the mail I receive a monthly magazine, the
_Lantern_, published by Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers in Boston. I open
it, and find an article by a young radical, assailing Lindbergh because
he does not follow in his father’s footsteps; his father was a radical
congressman, but now the son allows himself to be used by the army and
navy people, and by the capitalist press, to distract the minds of the
masses from social justice. So runs the charge; and before I am through
reading it, my wife comes downstairs from a nap. “What are you reading?”
she asks, and I answer: “Something about Lindbergh.” Says my wife: “Here
are my notes about a dream I just had.” She hands me a sheet of paper, I
have it before me now as I write, and I give it with misspelling and
abbreviations exactly as she wrote it in a hurry, not anticipating that
it would ever become public:

“‘I do not believe that Lindberg flew across the ocean in order to take
a ransome from a foreign gov as well as from his own. Nor in order to
induce the nations of the earth to a war in the air.’ Words which were
in my mind as I awoke from nap on aft May 25.”

I should add that my wife had had no opportunity to look at the Boston
magazine, whether consciously or unconsciously. She tells me that
Lindbergh had not been in her conscious mind for a long time, and she
had no remotest idea that the radicals were attacking him.

Another instance: I am reading the latest “book of the month,” which has
just come in the mail, and to which my wife has paid no attention. She
interrupts me with a question: “Are there any flowers in what you are
reading?” I answer, “Yes,” and she says: “I have been trying to
concentrate, and I keep seeing flowers. I have drawn them.” She hands me
two drawings (Figs. 14a, 14b):

The book was Mumford’s _Herman Melville_, and I was at page 346, a
chapter entitled, “The Flowering Aloe.” On this page are six lines from
a poem called “The American Aloe on Exhibition.” On the preceding page
is a discussion of the habits of this plant. While my wife was making
the left-hand drawing (Fig. 14a), I had been reading page 344: “the red
clover had blushed through the fields about their house”; and “he would
return home with a handful of clover blossoms.”

[Illustration: Fig. 14a]

[Illustration: Fig. 14b]

Of experiences like this there have been many. Important as the subject
is, I find it a bother, because I am called upon to listen to long
narratives of dreams and telepathy, while my mind is on Sacco and
Vanzetti, or the Socialist presidential campaign, or whatever it is.
Sometimes the messages from the subconscious are complicated and take
patience to disentangle. Consider, for example, a little drawing (Fig.
15)—one of nearly three hundred which this long-suffering husband has
made for his witch-wife to reproduce by telepathy: a football, you see,
neatly laced up. In her drawing (Fig. 15a) Craig gets the general effect
perfectly, but she puts it on a calf. Her written comment was:
“Belly-band on calf.”

[Illustration: Fig. 15]

[Illustration: Fig. 15a]

While Craig was making this particular experiment, her husband was
reading a book; and now, wishing to solve the mystery, she asks, “What
are you reading?” The husband replies, wearily: “DeKruif’s _Hunger
Fighters_, page 283.” “What does it deal with?” “It is a treatise on the
feeding of cows.” “Really?” says Craig. “Will you please write that down
for me and sign it?”

But why did the cow become a calf? That, too, is something to be
explained. Says Craig: “Do you remember what I used to tell you about
old Mr. Bebb and his calves?” Yes, the husband knows the story of the
half-crazy old Welshman, who thirty or forty years ago was the caretaker
of the Kimbrough summer home on the Mississippi Sound. Old Mr. Bebb made
his hobby the raising of calves by hand, and turning them into parlor
pets. He would teach them to use his three fingers as a nursing bottle,
and would make fancy embroidered belly-bands for them, and tie them up
in these. So to the subconscious mind which was once little Mary Craig
Kimbrough of Mississippi, the idea of a calf sewed up like a football is
one of the most natural in the world.

Since my wife and I have no secrets from each other, it does not trouble
me that she is able to see what I am doing. While I am away from home,
she will “concentrate” upon me, and immediately afterwards write out
what she “sees.” On one occasion she described to me a little red book
which I had got in the mail at the office. By way of establishing just
what kind of book she had “seen,” she had gone to my bookcase and picked
out a French dictionary—and it happened that I had just received the
Italian dictionary of that same series, uniform in binding. On another
occasion, while making a study of dream-material, she wrote out a dream
about being lost in long and involved concrete corridors—while I was
trying to find my way through the locker-rooms of a Y. M. C. A.
basement, running into one blind passage after another, and being much
annoyed by doors that wouldn’t open.

Dreams, you understand, are products of subconscious activity, and to
watch them is one method of proving telepathy. By practice Craig has
learned to lie passive, immediately after awakening, and trace back a
long train of dreams. Here is one of the results, a story worth telling
in detail—save that I fear you will refuse to believe it after it is
told.

On the afternoon of January 30, 1928, I was playing tennis on the courts
of the Virginia Hotel, in Long Beach, California, and my wife was taking
a nap. She did not know that I was playing tennis, and has no knowledge
about the places where I play. She takes no interest in the game,
regarding it as a foolish business which will some day cause her husband
to drop dead of heart failure—and she declines to be present on the
occasion. When I entered the house, she said: “I woke up with a long
involved dream, and it seemed so absurd I didn’t want to write it out,
but I did so.” Here are the opening sentences verbatim:

“Dreamed I was on a pier, watching a new kind of small, one or two
seated sport-boat, a little water car into which a woman got and was
shot by machinery from the pier out to the water, where she skidded
around a minute or two and was drawn back to the pier. With us on the
pier were my sister and child, and two young men in white with white
caps. These appeared to be in charge of this new sport-boat. This boat
is not really a boat. It is a sort of miniature car. I’ve never seen
anything like it. Short, so that only one or two people could sit in it.
An amusement thing, belonging to the pier. The two young men were
intensely interested, and stood close together watching it out on the
water,” etc., etc.

Understand that this dream was not supposed to have anything to do with
me. It was before Craig had come to realize the state of _rapport_ with
me; she had not been thinking about me, and when she told me about this
dream, she had no thought that any part of it had come from my mind. But
here is what I told her about my afternoon:

The Virginia Hotel courts are close to what is called “The Pike,” and
there is an amusement pier just across the way, and on it a so-called
“Ferris wheel,” with little cars exactly like the description, which go
up into the air with people in them. That afternoon it happened that the
tennis courts were crowded, so my partner and I waited out a set or two.
We sat on a bench, in white tennis suits and hats, and watched this
wheel, and the cars which went up in the air, and at a certain point
took a slide on long rods, which made them “skid around,” and caused the
women in them to scream with excitement. Underneath the pier was the
ocean, plainly visible along with the little cars.

(Footnote, 1962: The hotel and the Pike no longer exist, so do not waste
your time trying to verify all this.)

I should also mention the case of our friend, Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz,
with whom there is a _rapport_ which my wife does not tell her about. My
wife will say to me, “Mrs. Gartz is going to phone,” and in a minute or
two the phone will ring. She will say, “Mrs. Gartz is coming. She wants
me to go to Los Angeles with her.” Of course, a good deal of guessing
might be possible, in the case of two intimate friends. But consider
such guessing as this: My wife had a dream of an earthquake and wrote it
down. Soon thereafter occurred this conversation with Mrs. Gartz. I
heard it, and my wife recorded it immediately afterwards, and I quote
her written record:

“Mrs. Gartz dreamed of earthquake. ‘Wasn’t it queer that I dreamed of
swaying slowly from side to side.’”

“‘I dreamed the same,’ I said. ‘But I was in a high building.’”

“‘So was I,’ she replied.”

Craig calls attention to the word “slowly,” as both she and Mrs. Gartz
commented on this. They didn’t believe that an earthquake would behave
that way; but I pointed out that it would happen just so with a
steel-frame building.

                                  _7_

I come now to a less fantastic and more convincing series of
experiments; those made with the husband of my wife’s younger sister,
Robert L. Irwin. Eight years ago the doctors gave Bob only a few months
to live, on account of tuberculosis. Needless to say, he has much time
on his hands, waiting for the doctors’ clairvoyance to be verified. He
proved to be a good “subject”—the best of all in the tests with Jan. One
day in our home, a series of five tests were made, with Bob holding an
object in mind, while sitting several feet away from Jan. The latter
found the object, and made the correct disposition of it, as willed by
Bob, in four out of the five trials. This included such unlikely things
as picking up a striped blanket and wrapping it about my shoulders.

Bob and Craig made the arrangement that at a certain hour each day, Bob,
in his home in Pasadena, was to take pencil and paper and make a drawing
of an object, and sit and concentrate his mind upon that drawing. At the
same hour Craig, in our home in Long Beach, forty miles away, was to go
into her state of “concentration,” and give orders to her subconscious
mind to find out what was in Bob’s mind. The drawings were to be dated,
and filed, and when the two of them met, they would compare the results,
in the presence of myself and Bob’s wife. If there should turn out to be
a correspondence between the drawings, greater than could be attributed
to chance, it would be evidence of telepathy, as good as any that could
be imagined or desired.

The results were such as to make me glad that it was another person than
myself, so as to afford a disinterested witness to these matters, so
difficult of belief. I repeat that Bob is a young American business man,
priding himself on having no “crank” ideas; he has had a Socialist
brother-in-law for ten years or more without being in the slightest
degree affected in manners, morals, or convictions. Here is his first
drawing, done on a half sheet of green paper. The word “CHAIR”
underneath, and the date, were written by Bob, while the words “drawn by
Bob Irwin” were added for purposes of record by Craig (Fig. 16):

[Illustration: Fig. 16]

[Illustration: Fig. 16a]

And now for Craig’s results. I give her report verbatim, with the two
drawings which are part of her text:

“At 10 o’clock or a little before, while sewing (without effort) I saw
Bob take something from black sideboard—think it was the glass
candlestick. At 11:15 (I concentrate now) I saw Bob sitting at dining
room table—a dish or some small object in front of him (on N. E. corner
table). I try to see the object on table—see white something at last. I
can’t decide what it is so I concentrate on seeing his drawing on a
green paper as it is about 11:20 now and I think he has made his
drawing. I try hard to see what he has drawn—try to see a paper with a
drawing on it, and see a straight chair. Am not sure of second drawing.
It does not seem to be on his paper. It may be his bed-foot. I
distinctly see a chair like 1st on his paper.” (Fig. 16a.)

When Bob and my wife discussed the above test, she learned that he had
sat at the northeast corner of the table, trying to decide what to draw,
and facing the sideboard on which were silver candlesticks. Later he
went to his bedroom and lay down, gazing through the foot of his bed at
the chair which he had taken as his model for the drawing. The bed has
white bars running vertically, as in my wife’s second drawing. The
chair, like Bob’s drawing, has the strips of wood supporting the back
running crossways, and this feature is reproduced in Craig’s first
drawing. Her report goes on to add that she sees a star and some
straight lines, which she draws; they are horizontal parallel lines, as
in the back of the chair. The back of the chair Bob had looked at had a
carved star upon it.

The second attempt was the next day, and Bob drew his watch (Fig. 17).
Craig first drew a chair, and then wrote, “But do not feel it is
correct.” Then she drew the following (Fig. 17a):

[Illustration: Fig. 17]

[Illustration: Fig. 17a]

The comment was: “I see this picture. Later I think it is not flower but
wire (metal, shining). The ‘petals’ are not petals but wire, and should
be _uniform_. This is hasty drawing so not exact as seen. What I mean
is, I try to see Bob’s drawing and not what he drew from. So I see no
flower but shape of one on paper. Then decide it is of wire, but this
may be merely because I see drawing, which would have no flower color.
However, I see it shining as if it is metal. Later a glass circle.”
Drawings then show an ellipse, and then a drinking glass and a glass
pitcher. It is interesting to note that Bob had in front of him a glass
bowl with goldfish.

The next day Bob drew a pair of scissors (Fig. 18):

[Illustration: Fig. 18]

The drawings of Craig follow without comment (Figs. 18a, 18b):

[Illustration: Fig. 18a]

[Illustration: Fig. 18b]

Three days later Bob drew the table fork, which has already been
reproduced (Fig. 1), and Craig made the report which has been given in
facsimile (Fig. 1a): “See a table fork. Nothing else.”

One more test between Bob and Craig, the most sensational of all. It is
quite a story, and I have to ask your pardon for the medical details
involved. So much vital knowledge hangs upon these tests that I have
asked my brother-in-law to forget his personal feelings. The reader will
please consider himself a medical student or hospital nurse for the
moment.

The test occurred July 11, 1928. My wife made her drawing, and then told
me about the matter at once. Also she wrote out all the details and the
record is now before me. She saw a feather, then a flower spray, and
then she heard a scream. Her first thought in case of illness or danger
is her aged parents, and she took it for her mother’s voice, and this so
excited her that she lost interest in the experiment. But soon she
concentrated again, and drew a series of concentric circles, with a
heavy black spot in the center. Then she saw another and much larger
spot, and this began to spread and cover the sheet of paper. At the same
time came a feeling of intense depression, and Craig decided that the
black spot was blood, and that Bob had had a hemorrhage. Here is her
drawing (Fig. 19a):

[Illustration: Fig. 19a]

Two or three days later Bob’s wife drove him to our home, and in the
presence of all four of us he produced the drawing he had made. He had
taken a compass and drawn a large circle; making, of course, a hole in
the center of the paper. “Is that all you thought of during the time?”
asked my wife. “No,” said Bob, “but I’d hate to have you get the rest of
it.” “What was it?” “Well, I discovered that I had a hemorrhoid, and
couldn’t put my mind on anything else but the thought, ‘My God, my
lungs—my kidneys—and now this!’”

A hemorrhoid is, of course, apt to be accompanied by a hemorrhage; and
it seems clear that my wife got the mood of depression of her
brother-in-law, his thoughts of blood and bodily breakdown, as well as
the circle and the hole in the paper. There is another detail which does
not appear in the written record, but is fixed in my memory. My wife
said: “I wanted to draw a little hill.” Upon hearing that, I called up a
physician friend who is interested in these tests, and asked him what a
drawing of a hemorrhoid would look like, and he agreed that “a little
hill” was about as near as one could come. I hope you will note that
this particular drawing test is supported by the testimony of four
different persons, my wife, her sister, the sister’s husband, and
myself. I do not see how there could possibly be more conclusive
evidence of telepathic influence—unless you suspect all four of us of a
series of stupid and senseless falsehoods. Let me repeat that Bob and
his wife have read this manuscript and certified to its correctness so
far as concerns them. The comment written by my wife reads: “All this
dark like a stain—feel it is blood; that Bob is ill—more than usual.”

(Note: Bob Irwin died not long afterwards.)

                                  _8_

The experiments just described were all that were done with Bob, because
he found them a strain. Craig asked me to make some drawings for her,
and I did so, sitting in the next room, some thirty feet away, but
always behind a closed door. Thus you may verify my assertion that the
telepathic energy, whatever it may be, knows no difference between
thirty feet and forty miles. The results with Bob and with myself were
about the same.

The first drawings made with me are those which have already been given
(Figs. 2, 2a), but I give them again for the sake of convenience. I
explain that in these particular drawings the lines have been traced
over in heavier pencil; the reason being that Craig wanted a carbon
copy, and went over the lines in order to make it. This had the effect
of making them heavier than they originally were, and it made the whirly
lines in Craig’s first drawing more numerous than they should be. She
did this in the case of two or three of the early drawings, wishing to
send a report to a friend. I pointed out to her how this would weaken
their value as evidence, so she never did it again.

After my wife and I had compared the above drawings, she wrote a note to
the effect that just before starting to concentrate, she had been
looking at her drawing of many concentric circles, which she had made in
a test with Bob the previous day (Fig. 19a). So her first vision was of
a whirl of circles. This turned sideways, and then took the shape of an
arrowhead, and then of a letter A, and finally evolved into a complete
star. As the agent in this test, I wish to repeat that I made my drawing
in my study with the door closed, that I kept the drawing before my eyes
the entire time, and that the door stayed closed until Craig called that
she was through.

I do not find it easy to concentrate on a drawing, because my active
mind wanders off to side issues. If I draw a lighted cigarette, I
immediately think of the odious advertising now appearing in the papers;
or I think: “Will Craig get this right, and what does it mean, and will
the world accept evidence on this subject from me?”—and so on. Several
times my wife has “got” such thoughts, and so we took to noting them on
the record. On July 29, I drew a cigarette, with two little curls for
smoke, each running off like a string of the letter “eeeee,” written by
hand. Underneath I wrote as follows: “My thought: ‘cigarette with curls
of smoke.’ I said to myself these words: ‘she got the curls but not the
cigarette.’” This would appear to be telepathy coming from Craig to me,
for her drawing was found to contain a lot of different curves—a curly
capital S, several other half circles twisted together, and three ???
one inside the other. She added the following words: “I can’t draw it,
but curls of some sort.”

Again, here is a work of art from my facile pen, dated July 21, and
having underneath my notation: “Concentrated on bald head” (Fig. 20).

[Illustration: Fig. 20]

My wife’s note was: “Saw Upton’s face.” Then she drew a line through the
words, and wrote the following explanation: “Saw two half circles. Then
they came together making full circle. But I felt uncertain as to
whether they belonged together or not. Then suddenly saw Upton’s profile
float across vision.”

July 20 I drew a three-pronged fork, and made the note that I was not
sure if it was a hay-fork or an oyster-fork, and decided it was the
latter, whereupon my mind went off to “society” people and their many
kinds of forks. Craig wrote: “I thought it was an animal’s head with
horns and the head was on a long stick—a trophy mounted like this”—and
she drew a two-pronged fork.

July 17 I drew a large round stone with a smaller stone on top: at least
so I thought, and then decided they were two eggs. Craig drew two almost
tangent circles, and wrote: “I see two round things, not one inside the
other, as in Bob’s drawing of circles. Then the above vanished and I saw
as below”—and she drew four little oblongs, tangent, which might be a
cluster of fish-eggs or fly-eggs.

July 20 I drew two heavy straight lines making a capital letter T, and
Craig drew a complete cross or square X, which is, of course, the T with
vertical arm prolonged. July 14 I drew a sort of jack-lantern. It is on
next page (Fig. 21). I looked at this drawing and thought of the eyes of
M.C.S., and said mentally, “I should have drawn the curves over eyes.”
Afterwards I told Craig about this, and she noted it down on the
drawing. On the reverse side of the sheet she added the following: “I
told U. it was shaped like a half moon with something in center—I
supposed it must be a star, though I did not see it as star but as
indistinct marks.” Her drawing follows, turned upside down for greater
convenience (Fig. 21a):

[Illustration: Fig. 21]

[Illustration: Fig. 21a]

                                  _9_

A new method of experiment invented itself by accident; and makes
perhaps the strangest story yet. There came a letter from a clergyman in
South Africa, saying that he was sending me a copy of his wife’s novel
dealing with South African life. I get many letters from strangers, and
answer politely, and as a rule forget them quickly. Some time afterwards
came two volumes, entitled, “Patricia, by Marcus Romondt,” and I did not
associate them with the clergyman’s letter. I glanced at the preface,
and saw that the work had something to do with the religious cults of
the South African natives. I didn’t read more than twenty lines—just
enough to classify the book as belonging in Craig’s department.
Everything having to do with philosophy, psychology, religion and
medicine is first read by her, and then fed back to me in her eager
discourses. I took the volumes home and laid them on her table, saying,
“This may interest you.” The remark attracted no special attention, for
the reason that I bring her a book, or a magazine, or some clippings at
least once a day. She did not touch these volumes, nor even glance at
the title while I was in the room.

I went into the kitchen to get some lunch, and when it was ready I
called, “Are you going to eat?” “Let me alone,” she said, “I am writing
a story.” That also is a common experience. I ate my lunch in silence,
and then came into the living room again, and there was Craig, absorbed
in writing. Some time later she came to me, exclaiming, “Oh, I have had
the most marvelous idea for a story! Something just flashed over me,
something absolutely novel—I never heard anything like it. I have a
whole synopsis. Do you want to hear it?” “No,” I said, “you had better
go and eat”—for it was my job to try to keep her body on earth. “I can’t
eat now,” she said, “I am too excited. I’ll read a while and get quiet.”
So she went to her couch, and there was a minute or two of silence, and
then an exclamation: “Come here!”

Craig had picked up one of the two volumes from South Africa, and was
staring at it. “Look at this!” she said. “Look what I opened to!” I
looked at a page in the middle of the book—she has the devilish habit of
reading a book that way—and in the center of the page, in capital
letters, I read the words: “THE BLACK MAGICIAN.” “What about it?” I
said. “Did you ever hear of that idea?” asked Craig. I answered that I
had, and she said, “Well, I never did. I thought it was my own. It is
the theme of the ‘story’ I have just been writing. I have made a
synopsis of a whole chapter in this book, and without ever having
touched it!”

So Craig had a new set of experiments to try all by herself, without
bothering her busy husband. She would go to one of my bookcases, with
which she had hitherto had nothing to do, since her own books are kept
in her own place. With her back to the bookcase, she would draw a book,
and take it to her couch and lie down, placing the book upon her solar
plexus, and taking every precaution to make sure that it never came into
her line of vision. Most of the books, being new, were in their paper
jackets, so there was no lettering that could be felt with her fingers.
This, you note, is not a test of telepathy, for no human mind knew what
particular book Craig’s hand had fallen upon. If she could tell anything
about the contents of that book, it would appear to be clairvoyance, or
what is known as “psychometry.”

My books are oddly varied in character. There are new novels, and works
of history, biography, travel and economics. In addition, there are what
I call “crank books”; the queerly assorted volumes which are destined by
donors all over the world to convert me to vegetarianism,
antivivisection, anarchism, Mormonism, Mohammedanism, infanticide, the
abolition of money, or the doctrine that alopecia is caused by onanism.
Believe me, the person who sets out to guess the contents of the books
that come to me in the course of a month has his or her hands full!

But Craig was able to do it. She did it on so many occasions that she
would sit and stare at me and exclaim, “Now what do you make of _that_?”
She would insist that I sit and watch the process, so as to be able to
state that she never had the book in her line of vision. In my presence
she picked out a volume, and, keeping it hidden from both of us, she
said, “I see a blue cover, with a rising sun and a bare landscape.” It
happened to be a volume circulated by the followers of “Pastor Russell,”
and as the preface tells me that 1,405,000 have been sold, it may be
that you too have it in your library. The title is _Deliverence_, by J.
F. Rutherford, and it has a blue cloth cover, with a gold design of a
sun rising behind a mass of clouds and a globe.

On another occasion Craig wrote: “One big eye, with nothing else
distinct—then lines or spikes came around it, or maybe these project
from the head like stiff long hairs, or eye-lashes. Can’t tell what kind
of head—but feel it must be a tropical something, tho the eye looks
human,” etc. The book was _Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island_, by H. G.
Wells, and in this book is a chapter headed, “The Friendly Eye,” with
the following sentences: “I became aware that an Eye observed me
continually.... It was a reddish brown eye. It looked out from a system
of bandages that also projected a huge shock of brown hair upward and a
great chestnut beard ... the eye watched me with the illuminating but
expressionless detachment of a head-lamp.... Polyhemus, for that was my
private name for the man.”

A long string of such surprises! Craig picked up a book and wrote:
“Black wings—a vampire flying by night.” The title of the book was _The
Devil’s Jest_. She picked up one and wrote: “A Negro’s head with a light
around it.” It is a German volume, called “Africa Singt,” and has a big
startling design exactly as described. She picked up a book by Leon
Trotsky, and wrote the word “Checkro”—which may not sound like Russian
to Trotsky, but does to Craig! And a book with Mussolini on the cover,
wearing a black coat and feeding a lion: she got the shape of the Duce’s
figure, only she labeled him “Black Bird.” And here is a part of the
jacket design of “wings” on the “Literary Guild” books—and below is what
Craig made of it. She added the comment: “Motion—the thing is traveling,
point first (Fig. 22, 22a).”

[Illustration: Fig. 22]

[Illustration: Fig. 22a]

Another volume was described as follows: “A pale blue book. Lonely
prairie country, stretch of flat land against sky, and outlined against
it a procession of people. Had feeling of moving—wheeled vehicle which
seemed to be baby-carriage. This was strange, because country was
covered with snow.” Upon examination, the book proved to be bound in
mottled pale blue boards, title, “I’m Scairt,” with subtitle, “Childhood
Days on the Prairies.” On the first page of the preface occurs the
following: “It was in those days that a company of Swedes left their
beloved homeland in the far North and came to make a home for themselves
and their children on the Kansas prairie.”

Finally, I have obtained the publisher’s consent to reproduce the jacket
design of a recent book, so that I may put Craig’s telepathy alongside
it, and give you a laugh or two. Observe the jolly little tourists, and
what they have turned into! And then the efforts of Craig’s subconscious
mind at French. They taught it to her in a “finishing school” on Fifth
Avenue, and you can see that it was finished before it began (Figs. 23,
23a).

Yet another form of experiment invented itself under the pressure of
necessity. Impossible to have such a witch-wife without trying to put
her to use!

[Illustration: Fig. 23]

[Illustration: Fig. 23a]

I have the habit of working out a chapter of a new book in my head, and
writing down a few notes on a scrap of paper, and sticking it away in
any place that is handy; then, next day, or whenever I am ready for
work, it is gone, and there is the devil to pay. I wander about the
house for an hour or two, trying to imagine where I can have put that
scrap of paper, and reluctant to do the work all over again. On one
occasion I searched every pocket, my desk, the trash-baskets, and then,
deciding that I had dropped it outdoors, where I work with my
typewriter, I figured the direction of the wind, and picked up all the
scraps of paper I saw decorating the landscape of our beach home. Then I
decided it must be in a manuscript which I had given to a friend in Los
Angeles, and I was about to phone to that friend, when Craig asked what
the trouble was, and said, “Come, let’s make an experiment. Lie down
here, and describe the paper to me.”

I told her, a sheet off a little pad, written on both sides, and folded
once. She took my hand, and went into her state of concentration, and
said, “It is in the pocket of a gray coat.” I answered, “Impossible; I
have searched every coat in the house half a dozen times.” She said, “It
is in a pocket, and I will get it.” She got up off the couch, and went
to a gray coat of mine, and in a pocket I had somehow overlooked, there
was the paper! Let me add that Craig had had nothing to do with my
clothing in the interim, and had never seen the paper, nor heard of it
until I began roaming about the house, grumbling and fussing. Neither of
us know of any “normal” way by which her subconscious mind could have
got this information.

My secretary lost two screw-caps of the office typewriter, and I said to
my wife, “I will bring him over, and you see if you can tell him where
to look.” But my wife was ill, and did not want to meet any one, so she
said, “I will see if I can get it through you.” Be it understood, Craig
has not been in the office in a year, and has met my secretary only
casually. She said, “I see him standing up at his typewriting.” That is
an unusual thing for a typist to do, but it happened to be true. Said
Craig: “He has put the screw-caps on something high. They are in the
south room, above the level of any table or desk.” I went to the phone
to ask my secretary, and learned that he had just found the screws,
which he had put on top of a window-sash in the south room.

The third incident requires the statement that, a few months back, while
my wife was away, our home had been loaned to friends, and I had camped
at the little house which I was using as an office. Some medical
apparatus had been left there; at least I had a vague impression that I
had had it there, and I said, “I’ll go and look.” Said Craig: “Let’s try
an experiment.” She took my hand, and told me to make my mind a blank,
and presently she said, “I see it under the kitchen sink.” I went over
to the office, and found the object, not under the sink, but under the
north end of the bathtub. I took it back to the house, and before I
spoke a word, my wife said: “I tried to get you on the phone. I
concentrated again, and saw the thing and wrote it out.” She gave me a
slip of paper, from which I copy: “Down under something, wrapped in
paper—on N. side of room—under laundry tub on floor or under bath tub on
floor in N. corner.”

You may say, of course, if you are an incurable skeptic: “The man’s wife
had been over to the office and seen the object; she had been searching
his pockets, and had seen the paper.” Craig is positive that she did
nothing of the sort; but of course it is conceivable that she may have
done it and then forgotten it. Therefore, I pass on to a different and
more acceptable kind of evidence—a set of drawing tests, in which I
watched and checked every step of the proceedings at my wife’s
insistence. Here again I am a co-equal witness with her, and the skeptic
has no alternative but to say that the two of us have contrived this
elaborate hoax, making nearly three hundred drawings with fake
reproductions, in order to get notoriety, or to sell a few books. I
really hope nobody will say that is possible. Very certainly I could
sell more books with less trouble by writing what the public wants; and
if I were a dishonest man, I should not have waited until the age of
fifty-one to begin such a career.

                                  _10_

Concerning these drawings, there are preliminary explanations to be
made. They were done hastily, by two busy people. Neither is a trained
artist, and our ability to convey what we wish is limited. When I start
on a giraffe, I manage to produce a pretty good neck, but when I get to
the body, I am disturbed to note it turning into a sheep or a donkey.
When I draw a monkey climbing a tree, and Craig says, “Buffalo or lion,
tiger—wild animal”—I have to admit that may be so; likewise when my limb
of a tree is called a “trumpet,” or when Craig’s “wild animal” resembles
a chorus girl’s legs. I will let you see those particular drawings.
Figure 24 is mine, while 24a and 24b are my wife’s.

[Illustration: Fig. 24]

[Illustration: Fig. 24a]

[Illustration: Fig. 24b]

Again, I draw a volcano in eruption, and my wife calls it a black
beetle, which hardly sounds like a triumphant success; but study the
drawings, and you see that my black smoke happens to be the shape of a
beetle, while the two sides of the volcano serve very well for the long
feelers of an insect (Figs. 25, 25a):

[Illustration: Fig. 25]

[Illustration: Fig. 25a]

The tests began with four series of drawings, 38 in all, made by my
secretary. Following these were 31 series drawn by myself, comprising
252 separate drawings. Each drawing would be wrapped in an extra sheet
of paper, and sealed in a separate envelope, and the envelopes handed to
my wife when she was ready for the tests. She would put them on the
table by her couch, and lie down, putting the first envelope, unopened,
over her solar plexus, covered by her hand. Her head would be lying back
on a pillow, eyes closed, and head at such an angle that nothing but the
ceiling could be seen if the eyes were open. A dim light to avoid sense
stimulation; enough light to see everything plainly. When she had what
she judged was the right image, she would take a pad and pencil and make
the drawing or write the description of what she “saw.” Then she would
open the envelope and compare the two drawings, and number both for
identification.

This recording was, of course, an interruption of her passive state, and
made the task difficult. In a few cases she repeated a number or forgot
the number, and this leaves a chance for confusion. I have done my best
to clear up all such uncertainties, but there is a margin of error of
one or two per cent to be noted. This is too small to affect the
results, but is mentioned in the interest of exactness.

Since I found the sealing of envelopes tiresome, and Craig found the
opening of them more so, we decided half way through the tests to
abandon the sealing, and later we abandoned the envelopes altogether. We
reasoned that acceptance of the evidence rests upon our good faith
anyhow, and all that any sensible reader can ask is that Craig make sure
of never letting a drawing get within her range of vision. She was doing
this laborious work to get knowledge for herself, and she certainly made
sure that she was not wasting her own time.

At present the practice is this: I make her a set of six or eight
drawings on little sheets of pad paper, and lay them face down on her
table, with a clean sheet of paper over them. She lies down, and with
her head lying back on the pillow and her eyes closed, she reaches for
one of the drawings, and slides it over and onto her body, covered by
her hand. It is always out of her range of vision, even if the drawing
were turned toward her eyes, which it never is.

For the comfort of the suspicious, let me add that the relaxing of the
conditions caused no change in the averages. In the first four series,
drawn by my secretary, and sealed by him in envelopes, there were only
five complete failures in thirty-eight tests, which is thirteen per
cent; whereas in the 252 drawings made by me there have been 65 outright
failures, which is nearly twice as large a percentage. Series number
six, which was carefully sealed up, produced four complete successes,
five partial successes, and no failures; whereas series twenty-one,
which was not put in envelopes at all, produced no complete successes,
three partial successes, and six failures. Perhaps I should explain that
by a “series” I mean simply a group of drawings which were done at one
time. It is my custom to make from six to a dozen and when Craig has
finished with them, they are put into an envelope and filed away.

I will add that Craig again and again begged me to sit and watch her
work, so that I might be able to add my testimony to hers; I did so,
watching tests both with envelopes and without, and assure you she left
no loophole for self-deception. There was plenty of light to see by, and
some of the most startling successes were produced under my eyes. I will
add that no one could take this matter with more seriousness than my
wife. She is the most honorable person I know, and she has worked on
these experiments with rigid conscientiousness.

                                  _11_

I shall give a number of the successful drawings, and some of the
partial successes, but none of the failures, for these obviously are
merely waste. When I draw a cow, and my wife draws a star or a fish or a
horseshoe, all you want is the word “Failure” and then you want to know
the percentage of failures, so that you can figure the probabilities.
Failures prove nothing that you do not already believe; if your ideas
are to be changed, it is successes that will change them.

I begin with series three, because of the interesting circumstances
under which it was made. Late in the afternoon I phoned my secretary to
make a dozen drawings; and then, after dark, Craig and I decided to
drive to Pasadena, and on the way I stopped at the office and got the
twelve sealed envelopes which had been laid on my desk. I picked them up
in a hurry and slipped them into a pocket, and a minute or two later I
put them on the seat beside me in the car.

After we had started, I said, “Why don’t you try some of the drawings on
the way?” We were passing through the Signal Hill oil-field, amid
thunder of machinery and hiss of steam and flashing of headlights of
cars and trucks. “It will be interesting to see if I can concentrate in
such circumstances,” said Craig, and took one envelope and held it
against her body in the darkness, while I went on with my job of
driving. After a few minutes Craig said, “I see something long and
oblong, like a stand.” She got a pad and pencil from a pocket of the
car, and switched on the ceiling light, and made a drawing, and then
opened the envelope. Here are the pictures; I call it a partial success
(Figs. 26, 26a):

[Illustration: Fig. 26]

[Illustration: Fig. 26a]

Here is the next pair, done on the same drive to Pasadena (Figs. 27,
27a):

[Illustration: Fig. 27]

[Illustration: Fig. 27a]

Then came a drawing of an automobile. Considering the attendant
circumstances, it was surely not surprising that Craig should report it
as “a big light in the end of a tube or horn.” There were many such
lights in her eyes.

Then a fourth envelope: she said, “I see a little animal or bug with
legs, and the legs are sticking out in bug effect.” When she looked into
the envelope, she was so excited that she tried to get me to look—at
forty miles an hour on a highway at night! Here is the drawing, meant to
be a skull and cross-bones, but so done that a “bug with legs” is really
a fair description of it (Fig. 28):

[Illustration: Fig. 28]

After we arrived at our destination, my wife did some more of the
drawings, and got partial successes. On this telephone the comment was:
“Goblet with another one floating near or above it inverted” (Figs. 29,
29a):

[Illustration: Fig. 29]

[Illustration: Fig. 29a]

And then this arrow (Figs. 30, 30a):

[Illustration: Fig. 30]

[Illustration: Fig. 30a]

Concerning the above my wife wrote: “See something that suggests a
garden tool—a lawn rake, or spade.” And for the next one (Fig. 31) she
wrote: “A pully-bone”—which is Mississippi “darky” talk for a wish-bone
of a chicken. I don’t know whether it means a bone that you pull, or
whether it is Creole for “poulet.” Here is what my secretary had drawn
(Fig. 31):

[Illustration: Fig. 31]

I had asked my secretary at the outset to make simple geometrical
designs, letters and figures, thinking that these would be easier to
recognize and reproduce. But they brought only partial successes; Craig
would get elements of the drawing but would not know how to put them
together. There were seven in the first series, and there is some
element right in every one. An oblong was drawn exactly, and then two
fragments of oblongs added to it. A capital M in script had the first
stroke done exactly, with the curl. A capital E in script was done with
the curls left out.

And the same with the second series. Here is a square—but you see that
the two halves of it are wandering about (Figs. 32, 32a):

[Illustration: Fig. 32]

[Illustration: Fig. 32a]

And here is a letter Y, but by telepathy it has been turned from script
into print (Figs. 33, 33a):

[Illustration: Fig. 33]

[Illustration: Fig. 33a]

A quite different story began when my secretary allowed his imagination
a little play. He knows that my wife lives in part on milk, and he knows
that she is particular about the quality, because he has to handle the
bills. So he has a little fun with her, and you see that immediately she
gets, not the form, but the color and feeling of it (Figs. 34, 34a):

[Illustration: Fig. 34]

[Illustration: Fig. 34a]

The comment reads: “Round white foamy stuff on top like soap suds or
froth.” As she drinks her milk sour and whipped, you see that its
foaminess is a prominent feature.

Then comes an oil derrick. We live in the midst of these unsightly
objects, and are liable to be turned out of house and home by drilling
nearby; moreover, I have written a book called “Oil!” and the
exclamation mark at the end has been justified by the effect of it on
our lives. My wife made a figure five with long lines going out, and
wrote: “I don’t know why the five should have such a thing as an
appendage, but the appendage was most vivid, so there it is” (Figs. 35,
35a):

[Illustration: Fig. 35]

[Illustration: Fig. 35a]

After she had opened the envelope and seen the original drawing, the
problem became, not why a figure five should have an appendage, but why
an oil derrick should have a figure five. Craig puzzled over this, and
then lay down and told her subconscious mind to bring her the answer.
What came was this: the German version of my book, called “Petroleum,”
has three oil derricks on the front, and a huge dollar sign on the back
of the cover, and this was what Craig had really “seen.” She had looked
at this book when it arrived, a year or more back, and it had been filed
away in her memory. Of course, this may not be the correct explanation,
but it is the one which her mind brought to her.

                                  _12_

These drawing tests afford a basis for psycho-analysis, and it is
interesting to note some of the facts thus brought up from the childhood
of my wife. For example, fires! She was raised in the “black belt,”
where there are nine Negroes to one white, and the former are still
close to Africa. When Craig was a girl, a nurse in the family, having
been discharged, set fire to the home while the adults were away, and
the children asleep. Another servant, jealous of an unfaithful husband,
put her two babies into a barrel full of feathers and burned them alive.
Other fires occurred; so now, in her home, Craig keeps an uneasy eye out
for greasy rags, or overheated stoves, or whatever else her fears
suggest. When in these drawing tests there has been anything indicating
fire or smoke, she has “got” it, with only one or two failures out of
more than a dozen cases. Sometimes she “got” the fire or smoke without
the object; sometimes she supplied fire or smoke to an object which
might properly have it—a pipe, for example. The results are so curious
that I assemble them together—a series of fire-alarms, as it were.

You recall the fact that in one of the early drawing tests—those in
which, instead of giving the drawings to my wife, I sat in my study and
concentrated upon them—I drew a lighted cigarette, and thought of the
curls of smoke. Craig filled up her drawing with curves, and wrote: “I
can’t draw it, but curls of some sort.” At this time the convention that
“curls stood for smoke” had not been established. But now, in the series
drawn by my secretary, appeared a little house with smoking chimney, and
you will see that my wife got the smoke better than the house (Figs. 36,
36a):

[Illustration: Fig. 36]

[Illustration: Fig. 36a]

This apparently established in her mind the association of curls with
smoke. So when, in series six, I drew a pipe with smoke-curls, my wife
first drew an ellipse, and then wrote: “Now it begins to spin, round and
round, and is attached to a stick.” She then drew (Figs. 37, 37a):

[Illustration: Fig. 37]

[Illustration: Fig. 37a]

In series eight I drew a sky-rocket going up. My first impulse had been
to draw a bursting rocket, with a shower of stars, but I realized that
would be difficult, so I drew this instead (Fig. 38):

[Illustration: Fig. 38]

My wife apparently took my first thought, rather than my drawing.
Anyhow, she made half a dozen sketches of whirligigs and light (Figs.
38a, 38b, 38c):

[Illustration: Fig. 38a]

[Illustration: Fig. 38b]

[Illustration: Fig. 38c]

And here in series twenty-two is a burning lamp (Figs. 39, 39a):

[Illustration: Fig. 39]

[Illustration: Fig. 39a]

And here in series thirty-four another, with comment: “flame and sparks”
(Figs. 40, 40a):

[Illustration: Fig. 40]

[Illustration: Fig. 40a]

I drew another pipe in series twenty-two, with the usual curls of smoke;
and Craig wrote: “Smoke stack.” I drew another in series thirty-three
with the result that, five drawings in advance of the correct one, Craig
drew a pipe with smoke. Of course, this may have been a coincidence; but
wait till you see how often such coincidences happen! (Figs. 41, 41a):

[Illustration: Fig. 41]

[Illustration: Fig. 41a]

In series twenty-one I drew a chimney, and Craig drew a chimney, and
added smoke. In thirty-four I drew an old-fashioned trench-mortar; and
here again she supplied the smoke (Figs. 42, 42a):

[Illustration: Fig. 42]

[Illustration: Fig. 42a]

Cannons are especially horrible things to her, as you may note again and
again in her published war-sonnets:

         The sharpened steel whips round, the black guns blaze,
             Waste are the harvests, mute the songs of birds.

So when, in series eleven, I drew the muzzle half of an old-style
cannon, Craig’s imagination got to work one drawing ahead of time. She
wrote: “Fire and smoke—smoke—flame,” and then drew as follows (Fig.
43a):

[Illustration: Fig. 43a]

The next drawing was the cannon, and I give it, along with the drawing
Craig made to go with it. The comment she wrote was: “Half circle—double
lines—light inside—light is fire busy whirling or flaming” (Figs. 44,
44a):

[Illustration: Fig. 44]

[Illustration: Fig. 44a]

So much for fires, and things associated with fire. Now consider another
detail about life in the Yazoo delta, brought out in the course of our
psycho-analysis. In the days of Craig’s childhood, poisonous snakes were
an ever-present menace, and fear of them had to be taught to children,
and could hardly be taught too early. There is a family story of a
little tot crawling under the house and coming back to report, “I see
nuffin wiv a tail to it!” In the swamps back of Craig’s summer home on
the Mississippi Sound I have counted a dozen copperheads and moccasins
in the course of a half hour’s walk. Also, her father has some childhood
complex buried in his mind, which causes him to have a spell of nausea
at the sight of a snake. All this, of course, strongly affected the
child’s early days, and now it is in her mental depths. So when I drew a
hissing snake, just see the uproar I caused! She made no drawing, but
wrote a little essay. I give my drawing, and her essay following (Fig.
45):

[Illustration: Fig. 45]

“See something like kitten with tail and saucer of milk. Now it leaps
into action and runs away to outdoors. Turns to fleeing animal outdoors.
Great activity among outdoor creatures. Know it’s some outdoor thing,
not indoor object—see trees, and a frightened bird on the wing (turned
sidewise). It’s outdoor thing, but none of above seems to be _it_.”

In other words, little Mary Craig Kimbrough is back on the plantation,
seeing terror among birds and poultry, and not knowing what causes it!
Study the drawing, and you see that I got the action of the snake, but
didn’t get the coils very well, so they might be a “saucer of milk”—and
a sure-enough kitten’s tail sticking out from it. Another childhood
horror here! Craig was a fat little thing, and she slipped and plumped
down on her favorite pet kitten, and exploded it.

                                  _13_

The person whom we are subjecting to this process of psycho-analysis has
a strong color sense, and wanted to be a painter. So we note that she
“gets” colors and names them correctly. Here is my drawing of what I
meant to be a bouquet of pink roses (Figs. 46, 46a):

[Illustration: Fig. 46]

[Illustration: Fig. 46a]

Or take this case of a lobster. Craig’s comment was: “Gorgeous colors,
red and greenish tinges.” Apparently I had failed to decide whether I
was drawing a live lobster or a boiled one! My wife wrote further: “Now
it turns into a lizard, camelian, reds and greens.” When she sees this
about to be made public, she is embarrassed by her bad spelling; but she
says: “Please do not overlook the fact that a chameleon is a reptile—and
so is a lobster.” I dutifully quote her, even though her zoology is even
worse than her spelling! (Figs. 47, 47a):

[Illustration: Fig. 47]

[Illustration: Fig. 47a]

While we are on the “reptiles,” I include this menacing crab, which may
have got hold of little Mary Craig’s toe on the beach of the Mississippi
Sound (Fig. 48):

[Illustration: Fig. 48]

For the crab, Craig made two drawings, on opposite sides of the paper
(Figs. 48a, 48b):

[Illustration: Fig. 48a]

[Illustration: Fig. 48b]

The comments on the above read: “Wings, or fingers—wing effect, but no
feathers, things like fingers instead of feathers. Then many little dots
which all disappear, and leave two of them, O O, as eyes of something.”
And then, “Streamers flying from something.”

Another color instance: I drew the head of a horse, and Craig drew a lot
of apparently promiscuous lines, and at various places wrote “yellow,”
“white,” “blue,” “(dark),” and then a general description, “Oriental.”
Afterwards she said to me: “That looks like a complete failure; yet it
was so vivid, I can’t be mistaken. Where did you get that horse?” Said
I: “I copied it from a Sunday supplement.” We got the paper from the
trash-basket, and the page opposite the horse contained what Craig
described. We shall note several other cases of this sort of intrusion
of things I did not draw, but which I had before me while drawing.

Also anything with metal or shine seems to stand a good chance of being
“got.” For example, these nose-glasses (Figs. 49, 49a):

[Illustration: Fig. 49]

[Illustration: Fig. 49a]

The comment reads: “Opalescent shine or gleam. Also peafowl.”

Or again, a belt-buckle; my wife writes the word “shines” (Figs. 50,
50a):

[Illustration: Fig. 50]

[Illustration: Fig. 50a]

Or this very busy alarm clock—she writes the same word “shines” (Figs
51, 51a):

[Illustration: Fig. 51]

[Illustration: Fig. 51a]

She has got at least part of a watch whenever one has been presented.
You remember the one Bob drew (Fig. 17). There was another in series
thirty-three; Craig made a crude drawing and added: “Shines, glass or
metal” (Figs. 52, 52a):

[Illustration: Fig. 52]

[Illustration: Fig. 52a]

Also, on the automobile ride to Pasadena, series three, there was a
watch-face among the drawings, and Craig drew the angle of the hands,
and added the words, “a complication of small configurations.” Having
arrived in Pasadena, she took the twelve drawings and tried them over
again. This time, of course, she had a one in twelve chance of guessing
the watch. She wrote: “A white translucent glimmering, or shimmering
which I knew was not light but rather glass. It was like heat waves
radiating in little round pools from a center.... Then in the center I
saw a vivid black mark.... So it was bound to be the watch, and it was.”

And here is a fountain. You see that it appears to be in a tub, and is
so drawn by Craig. But you note that the “shine” has been got. “These
shine!” (Figs. 53, 53a):

[Illustration: Fig. 53]

[Illustration: Fig. 53a]

Another instance, even more vivid. I made a poor attempt to draw a bass
tuba, as one sees them on the stage—a lot of jazz musicians dressed up
in white duck, and a row of big brass and nickel horns, polished to
blind your eyes. See what Craig drew, and also what she wrote (Figs. 54,
54a):

[Illustration: Fig. 54]

[Illustration: Fig. 54a]

The comments, continued on the other side of the sheet, are: “Dull gold
ring shimmers and stands out with shadow behind it and in center of it.
Gleams and moves. Metal. There is a glow of gold light, and the ring or
circle is out in the air, suspended, and moves in blur of gold.”

You see, she gets the feeling, the emotional content. I draw a child’s
express-wagon, and she writes: “Children again playing but can’t get
exactly how they look. Just feel there are children.” Or take this one,
which she describes as “Egyptian.” I don’t know if my pillar is real
Egyptian, but it seems so to me, and evidently to my wife, for you note
all the artistry it inspired (Figs. 55, 55a):

[Illustration: Fig. 55]

[Illustration: Fig. 55a]

Sometimes Craig will embody the feeling in some new form of her own
invention; as for example, when I draw an old-fashioned cannon on
wheels, and she writes: “Black Napoleon hat and red military coat.” I
draw a running fox—well drawn, because I copy it from a picture; she
rises to the occasion with two crossed guns, and a hunting horn with a
lot of musical notes coming out of it (Figs. 56, 56a):

[Illustration: Fig. 56]

[Illustration: Fig. 56a]

I draw an auto, and she replies with the hub and spokes of a wheel. Not
satisfied with this, she sets it aside, and tries again a little
later—without looking at the original drawing—and this time she produces
a horn, with indication of a noise. I give both her drawings, which are
on two sides of the same slip of paper (Figs. 57a, 57b):

[Illustration: Fig. 57a]

[Illustration: Fig. 57b]

                                  _14_

An extraordinary incident occurred in connection with the fourth series
of drawings. While my secretary, E. M. Hart, was making the drawings,
there came into the office his brother-in-law, R. H. Craig, Jr., a
teller of the Security First National Bank of Long Beach, a person
entirely unknown to my wife. He heard what was going on, and said, “I’ll
give her some that’ll stump her.” He took a pen and drew two pictures,
which were duly wrapped in sheets of green paper and sealed in
envelopes, and put with the rest of the series. I was not at the office,
and nothing was said to me about Mr. Craig having taken part in the
matter.

My wife did this series under my eyes; and when she came to the first of
Mr. Craig’s two drawings, she wrote, “Some sort of grinning monster,”
and added an elaborate description. Then she opened the envelope, and
found a roller skate with a foot and leg attached. This, naturally, was
called a failure; but seven drawings later in the same series came Mr.
Craig’s other drawing, which was as follows (Fig. 58):

[Illustration: Fig. 58]

Now read the amazing description which my wife had written, seven
drawings back, when the first of Mr. Craig’s drawings had come under her
hand:

“Some sort of grinning monster—see only the face and a vague idea of
deformed neck and shoulders. It is a man, but it looks like a cat’s
face, cat eyes and whiskers. Don’t know just how I know it is a man—it
is a deformity. Not a cat. See color of skin which is deep, flat pink,
as of a colored picture. The face of the creature is broad and weird.
The flesh of neck, or somewhere, gives effect of rolls or creases.”

I asked my secretary what this drawing was meant to be, and he said “a
Happy Hooligan.” My cultural backwardness is such that I wasn’t sure
just what a “Happy Hooligan” might be, but my secretary told me it is a
comic supplement figure, and I then looked it up in the paper, and found
that the face of the figure as printed is a very pale pink, and the
little cap on top is a bright red. I called Mr. Craig on the phone and
asked him this question: “If you were to think of a color in connection
with a ‘Happy Hooligan,’ what color would it be?” He answered, “Red.”

Now I ask you, what chance do you think there is of a person’s writing a
description such as the above by guess work? To be sure, my wife had
eight guesses; but do you think that eight million guesses would
suffice? And if we call it telepathy, do we say that my wife’s mind has
the power to dip into the mind of a young man whom she has never seen,
nor even heard of? Or shall we say that his mind affected his
brother-in-law’s, the brother-in-law’s affected mine, and mine affected
my wife’s? Or, if we decide to call it clairvoyance, or psychometry,
then are we going to say there is some kind of vibration or emanation
from Mr. Craig’s drawing, so powerful that when one of his drawings is
handed to my wife, she gets what is in another drawing which has been
done at the same time?

Whatever may be the explanation, here is the fact: Again and again we
find Craig getting, not the drawing she is holding under her hand, but
the next one, which she has not yet touched. When she picks up the first
drawing, she will say, or write: “There is a little man in this series”;
or: “There is a snow scene with sled”; or: “An elephant, also a
rooster.” I am going to show you these particular cases; but first a
word as to how I have counted such “anticipations.”

Manifestly, if I grant the right to more than one guess, I am increasing
the chances of guesswork, and correspondingly reducing the significance
of the totals. What I have done is this: where such cases have occurred,
I have called them total failures, except in a few cases, where the
description was so detailed and exact as to be overwhelming—as in the
case of this “Happy Hooligan.” Even so, I have not called it a complete
success, only a partial success. In order to be classified as a complete
success, my wife’s drawing must have been made for the particular
drawing of mine which she had in her hand at that time; and throughout
this account, the reader is to understand that every drawing presented
was made in connection with the particular drawing printed alongside
it—except in cases where I expressly state otherwise.

Now for a few of the “anticipations.” In the course of series six, drawn
by me on Feb. 8, 1929, drawing number two was a daisy, and Craig got the
elements of it, as you see (Figs. 59, 59a):

[Illustration: Fig. 59]

[Illustration: Fig. 59a]

Her mind then went ahead, and she wrote, “May be snow scene on hill and
sled.” The next drawing was an axe, which I give later (Fig. 145); she
got the elements of this very well, and then added on the back: “I get a
feeling again of a snow scene to come in this series—a sled in the
snow.” That was number three; and when number five came Craig made this
annotation: “Opened it by mistake, without concentrating. It’s my
expected sled and snow scene.” Here is the drawing (Fig. 60):

[Illustration: Fig. 60]

Series number eight, on Feb. 10, brought even stranger results. This is
the series in which the laced-up football was turned into a calf wearing
a belly-band (Figs. 15, 15a). But even while I was engaged in making the
drawings, sitting in my study apart, and with the door closed, Craig’s
busy magic, whatever it is, was bringing her messages. She called out:
“I see a rooster!” I had actually drawn a rooster; but of course I made
no reply to her words. She at once drew a rooster and several other
things, and after I had brought my drawings into the room, but before
she had started to work with them, she wrote as follows:

“While Upton was making these drawings I sat before the fire thinking
how to dry felt slippers which I had washed. I had my mind on them. Hung
them on grating to see if they would hang there without burning.
Suddenly saw rooster crowing. Then thought, ‘Can U be drawing rooster?’
Decided to make note of this. Did so. Then saw”—and she draws a circle
with eight radiating lines, like spokes of a wheel.

In due course came drawing number eight, and before looking at it, Craig
wrote: “Rooster.” Then she added, “But no—it looks like a picture of
coffee-pot—see spout and handle.” This is hard on me as an artist, but I
give the drawing and let you judge for yourself (Fig. 61):

[Illustration: Fig. 61]

What about the circle and the radiating spokes? That was, apparently, a
fore-glimpse of drawing number five. I give you that, together with what
Craig drew for that particular test when it came. Her effort suggests
the kind of humor with which the newspaper artists used to delight my
childhood; a series of drawings in which one thing turns into some other
and quite unexpected thing by gradual changes. You will see here how the
hub of a wagon-wheel may turn into the muzzle of a deer! (Figs. 62,
62a):

[Illustration: Fig. 62]

[Illustration: Fig. 62a]

                                  _15_

What are the principles upon which I have classified the drawings, as
between success, partial successes, and failures? I will use this
series, number eight, to illustrate. There are eight drawings, and I
have set them down as one success, six partial successes, one failure.
The success is the rooster (Fig. 61), called “a rooster,” even though it
“looks like a coffee pot.” The partial successes are, first, an electric
light bulb, very crudely imitated as to shape in three drawings. Perhaps
this was hardly good enough to be counted; it was a border-line case,
and probably the poorest that I admitted to the classification of
“partial successes” (Fig. 63a).

[Illustration: Fig. 63a]

Second, the ascending sky-rocket, already printed as fig. 38, giving
rise to six different drawings of whirligigs and light. Third, the
following drawing, for which Craig wrote: “See spider, or some sort of
legged pest. If this is not a spider, there is a spider in the lot
somewhere! This I know!” (Fig. 64):

[Illustration: Fig. 64]

The fourth partial success was a drawn bow, with arrow fitted, ready to
be launched. Craig wrote as follows: “Picked this up and saw inside as
it dropped on floor—so did not try it. Suddenly recall I have already
‘seen’ it earlier.” Before starting the tests, along with her written
mention of “a rooster,” she had drawn a bow and crude arrow, and the
resemblance is so exact that it seems to me entitled to be called a
partial success (Figs. 65, 65a):

[Illustration: Fig. 65]

[Illustration: Fig. 65a]

Fifth, the wagon hub (Fig. 60), which became the deer’s muzzle. And
finally the laced-up football (Fig. 15) which became a belly-band on a
calf (Fig. 15a).

As for the failure in this series, it is a cake of soap, which was
called “whirls.” There are a couple of other drawings in the series,
marked: “Too tired to see it,” and “Tired now and excited and keep
seeing old things”—meaning, of course, the preceding drawings.

I tried to avoid drawing the same object more than once, but now and
then I slipped up. In series eleven I drew another rooster, and there
followed, not one “anticipation,” but several. Drawing number one was a
tooth; Craig wrote: “First see rooster. Then elephant.” Drawing number
two was an elephant; and Craig wrote: “Elephant came again. I try to
suppress it, and see lines, and a spike sticking some way into
something.” She drew it, and it seems clear that the “spike” is the