Leonora Piper

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{{Psychic}}
Leonora Piper (1857–1950) was an American [[medium]].
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'''Leonora Piper''' (1857–1950) was an American [[medium]].
  
 
==Overview==
 
==Overview==

Revision as of 02:15, 30 December 2012

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Leonora Piper (1857–1950) was an American medium.

Overview

Piper grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire where, according to her parents, she first displayed psychic abilities as a child. At the age of 22 she married shopkeeper William Piper of Boston and settled in the city's Beacon Hill area. Piper did not levitate tables or exude ectoplasm, she was not a physical but a mental medium. She became known for her trance mediumship but she also did automatic writing on occasion.

The spiritualist supporters of Piper claimed she could channel numerous spirits through her consciousness. The problem with the spiritualist interpretation is that even Piper herself admitted her trance personalities were not spirits and many of the things she said in her trance sessions have proven to be false.

On this subject the British hypnotist and psychical researcher Simeon Edmunds wrote:

In contrast to the extravagant claims made by the vast majority of mediums, Mrs Piper herself was not convinced that the information obtained through her came from discarnate sources or that her 'controls' were, in fact, the spirits they purported to be. One of her early controls, who called himself Phinuit, was obviously fictitious, for although he claimed to be the spirit of a French doctor who had lived in Marseilles, he knew but little of French and still less of medicine. All statements to verify his statements met with failure. One investigator invented a dead niece whom he named Bessie Beale, and requested Mrs Piper's control to contact her spirit. Messages from the non-existent 'spirit' were duly given.[1]

Psychology explains the mediumship of Piper and there is no need to resort the supernatural. The psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Amy Tanner who observed some of the trances of Piper wrote the explanation was in terms of the subconscious mind harboring various personalities that pretended to be spirits or controls. Piper had subconsciously absorbed information that she later regurgitated as messages from spirits in her trances.[2]

The skeptic Robert Todd Carroll wrote:

In actual fact, Piper was not a fraud, at least not most of the time. But she was most likely not in touch with spirits, either. She produced a number of claims that others validated as meaningful to them and as coming from the spirit world. Had psychologists at that time an understanding of subjective validation and the power of irrational subconscious desires, it is unlikely Piper would hold such a high place in the history of psychic phenomena.[3]

Footnotes

  1. Simeon Edmunds Hypnotism and Psychic Phenomena
  2. Amy Tanner Studies in Spiritism Prometheus Books, 1994, Originally published by D. Appleton, 1910
  3. Leonora Piper at the Skeptic's Dictionary
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