The Hamilton Files

2

His first contact with psychic literature happened in his undergraduate years, when he chanced on some articles written by W. T. Stead in the Review of Reviews. Then in 1918 he came upon the Patience Worth publications, at that time attracting wide attention. These stimulated his curiosity to the extent that in 1919 he devised and carried out some simple experiments in thought-transference with his friends Professor
W. T. Allison of the English Department of the University of Manitoba, and the Rev. D. N. McLachlan, then pastor of our church. To his surprise he found telepathy to be a fact.
Then he began to read reports of the leading European and American investigators, Myers, Crookes, Hyslop, Barrett, Flammarion, Crawford, Lodge. To his further surprise he discovered a wide range of authoritative findings whose existence he had not even suspected, and which offered a good deal of reliable evidence for the reality of supernormal happenings, and which moreover, tended to support humanity’s age-old belief in the survival of the human personality.
Then, as is so often the way, my parents’ first personal psychic experience seemed to come about purely by chance. With two friends they casually tried table-tipping one night in our home in late 1920. To their utter astonishment, by way of table-tilts they received this message:
“Plato Book Ten. . . Allegory very true. . . Read Lodge... Trust his religious sense . . . Myers . . . Myers and Stead here. . . Stead answers Drs. questions.”

From their reading my parents by that time knew of course that Myers and Stead had been active researchers in England in the early days of the British Society for Psychical Research; and they admired greatly Lodge’s writings on this subject. Of Plato they knew nothing, and the reference to the allegory was to them quite meaningless. By now quite curious to track it to its source, they acquired a copy of the Republic, looked up the allegory in Book Ten’ and found that it set forth the philosopher’s argument that the physical world is but the shadow of a more enduring reality which constitutes the world of the spirit, and that continuing life must follow bodily death if we are to believe in the justice of a divine God.

This unexpected message now found to contain so significant a reference could not they felt be lightly dismissed. My parents knew that Myers and Lodge had been close friends, and that Lodge had made a very careful study of the famous Myers cross-correspondences which had come through three different mediums shortly after Myers’ death in 1901 (messages referring to obscure passages in classical Greek and Roman literature, Myers’ special field). They felt therefore that Lodge was the one person qualified to pass an opinion on the worth of their table-tilt message. They at once wrote to him of their strange, unexpected experience and invited his comment. In due course his answer came:
“I thank you for letting me know about the message you obtained by table-tilting, and which certainly seems to me to be of an evidential character. The message given is characteristic of Myers as I knew him . . . I mean in its brevity and pointedness.”
‘See Appendix, page 151, for the appropriate excerpts from the Jowett translation of Plato’s Republic.
As far as my father was concerned, that was that. There he was prepared to let the whole matter rest.

In the meantime, W. J. Crawford’s reports of his studies of telekinesis (supernormal movement of objects) had been added to our growing library. After reading them, my mother, as she told me later, had been struck by apparent similarities of behaviour between Crawford’s medium, Kathleen Goligher, and Mrs. Elizabeth Poole, our little Scottish neighbour and good friend, who had been present at my parents’ first impromptu sitting. The thought occurred to her that perhaps Mrs. Poole might have a psychic potential which could be developed with regular sittings. Mrs. Poole appeared quite willing to try. The two met once a week in our home for several months.

Nothing unusual happened, and my mother was about to give up her idea, when one evening in mid-July, 1921, the table suddenly tilted up on two legs and remained so for several minutes in spite of strong downward pressure from my mother. She called my father to see this for himself, and again the same thing happened. This peculiar behaviour of the table hinted strongly that Mrs. Poole did have some kind of psychic potential; and as my parents were by now curious to know more about whatever force it was that could make a table act in this fashion, and as Mrs. Poole was quite willing to continue coming to our home weekly, they invited a small group of close friends to form a circle and continue the seances.
My mother’s hunch was soon to prove correct. As the weeks went by, Mrs. Poole’s psychic faculty, whatever it was, did develop, for the table movements became stronger and more varied, and more table-tilt messages were received. Finally, after eight months and some forty seances, by March, 1922 my father had declared himself satisfied as to the reality of three distinct types of phenomena:
(1) Powerful movements of the ten-pound wooden table under Mrs. Poole’s manual contact; (2) strong independent actions of the table after she had removed her hands and while she was under his strict manual control; (3) raps which showed intelligence.
The first two types interested him profoundly. He concluded, conditionally, that some kind of energy was operating the table at a distance from Mrs. Poole, and that this force appeared to be under some kind of intelligent control.
But of the third category, raps manifesting intelligence, he was extremely critical from the start.
While he admitted that such raps might be paranormal in origin, he positively refused to admit at this time to himself or to any of his associates that “Myers” and “Stead” might actually be communicating. He went so far as to admit that such a possibility might exist, but he demanded much more in the way of proof.

This was as far as he was prepared to go. Because he felt that the widespread prejudice which then prevailed against this type of investigation would in the end destroy his reputation as a medical man, and because he also believed Mrs. Poole’s psychic powers to have become exhausted, he now put a stop to the sittings and firmly shut the door on any further inquiry. To put it bluntly, he had had enough.
Nine months passed. Then in January, 1923, at an impromptu sitting in our home for a friend visiting us from another city, non-contact raps signalled: “Go on with your work . . . More ahead . . . Stead.” My mother told me that never before had she seen my father so impressed, and that when they were alone and able to speak freely he had said:
“Lillian, I must give in. There is more here than meets eye or ear. Find me a group of people who will take this matter seriously and I will see what I can do about finding time to experiment further. What is ahead I do not know, but I must admit, to myself at least, that here is a region of fact which must be investigated along scientific lines.”
The busy physician and surgeon was soon to take on the exacting task of psychic researcher.