Pinto
Grand Master of Malta: (See Cagliostro.) Piper, Mrs.: A famous trance medium, whose discourses and writings present the best evidence extant for the actuality of spirit communication. A native of America, it was there that Mrs. Piper first became entranced, while consulting a professional clairvoyant in 1884. Numerous spirits purported to control her in these early days-Mrs. Siddons, Longfellow, Bach, to mention only the most celebratedbut in 1885, when she came under the observation of the Society for Psychical Research, her principal control was Dr. Phinuit. From that time forward her trance utterances and writings for after 1890 the communications were generally in writing-were carefully recorded and analysed by members of the S.P.R., chiefly under the direction of Dr. Hodgson. In 1889-90 Mrs. Piper visited this country and gave many séances, most of which seemed to display supernormal powers in the medium. It is impossible in a limited space to detail her remarkable trance impersonations. On his death in 1905 Dr. Hodgson became one of her controls; Mr. Myers and Mr. Gurney also controlled her. But perhaps the most life-like and convincing impersonation or spirit-manifestation-whichever it may have been-was that of George Pelham, a young American author and a friend of Dr. Hodgson, who had died suddenly in 1892. (See Trance Personalities.) The information given by this control, his recognition of friends, and so on, were so accurate as to convince many that it was indeed "G.P." who spoke. Planchette 66 دو cross- From that time until 1896 the séances were especially productive, but in the latter year the medium underwent an operation. Phinuit, who often acted as a go-between for other controls and the sitter, now took his departure, Imperator of Stainton Moses, took control of Mrs. Piper's organism. The trance writings and utterances became fewer, and the spirits recommended that the number of sittings be cut down on account of the medium's health. Nevertheless some excellent tests were subsequently got with the Piper- Hodgson, Piper-Myers, and Piper-Gurney controls. Mrs. Piper was also one of those who took part in the correspondences" sittings held in 1906 and onwards, the other mediums being Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Verrall, Miss Verrall, Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Forbes, etc. (See "Spiritualism, and Cross-Correspondences.) It seems clear that in Mrs. Piper's trance phenomena there are evidences of some supernormal faculty, at the best, of telepathy, though to the writer even that hypothesis seems to be inadequate. It would, for example, be a very complicated form of telepathy, that would enable some of these automatic cross-correspondence" scripts to be written, in which, say, two scripts contain allusions unintelligible to the writers, and requiring a key provided by a third script to make them plain. Such a case inevitably suggests that one and the same intelligence directs all three mediums. Mrs. Piper's impersonation of George Pelham, again, calls for some explanation, since it would seem that all the information could hardly have been culled from the sitter's minds. (See Spiritualism.) 66