959. More important, as regards this question of personal identity, is the series of sittings which formed the second stage of Mrs. Piper's trance history, in the years 1892-96, of which a detailed account is given in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 284-582 and vol. xiv. pp. 6-49, where vol. II. Q the chief communicator or intermediary was G. P. This G. P., whose name (although, of course, well known to many persons) has been altered for publication into "George Pelham," was a young man of great ability, mainly occupied in literary pursuits. Although born an American citizen, he was a member of a noble English family. I never met him, but I have the good fortune to include a number of his friends among my own, and with several of these I have been privileged to hold intimate conversation on the nature of the communications which they received. I have thus heard of many significant utterances of G. P.'s, which are held too private for print; and I have myself been present at sittings where G. P. manifested.

For the full discussion of the evidence tending to prove the identity of G. P., I refer my readers to the original report in the Proceedings S.P.R. I give in 959 A and B a detailed account of the circumstances of the first communications of G. P., and quote here a general summary, given by Dr. Hodgson several years later, of the whole series of his manifestations. (From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xiii. PP- 328-330).

On the first appearance of the communicating G. P. to Mr. Hart in March 1892, he gave not only his own name and that of the sitter, but also the names of several of their most intimate common friends, and referred specifically to the most important private matters connected with them. At the same sitting reference was made to other incidents unknown to the sitters, such as the account of Mrs. Pelham's taking the studs from the body of G. P. and giving them to Mr. Pelham to be sent to Mr. Hart, and the reproduction of a notable remembrance of a conversation which G. P. living had with Katharine, the daughter of his most intimate friends, the Howards. These were primary examples of two kinds of knowledge concerning matters unknown to the sitters, of which various other instances were afterwards given; knowledge of events connected with G. P. which had occurred since his death, and knowledge of special memories pertaining to the G. P. personality before death. A week later, at the sitting of Mr. Vance, he made an appropriate inquiry after the sitter's son, and in reply to inquiries rightly specified that the sitter's son had been at college with him, and further correctly gave a correct description of the sitter's summer home as the place of a special visit.

This, again, was paralleled by many later instances where appropriate inquiries were made and remembrances recalled concerning other personal friends of G. P. Nearly two weeks later came his most intimate friends, the Howards, and to these, using the voice directly, he showed such a fulness of private remembrance and specific knowledge and characteristic intellectual and emotional quality pertaining to G. P. that, though they had previously taken no interest in any branch of psychical research, they were unable to resist the conviction that they were actually conversing with their old friend G. P. And this conviction was strengthened by their later experiences. Not least important, at that time, was his anxiety about the disposal of a certain book and about certain specified letters which concern matters too private for publication. He was particularly desirous of convincing his father, who lived in Washington, that it was indeed G. P. who was communicating, and he soon afterwards stated that his father had taken his photograph to be copied, as was the case, though Mr. Pelham had not informed even his wife of this fact. Later on he reproduced a series of incidents, unknown to the sitters, in which Mrs. Howard had been engaged in her own home.

Later still, at a sitting with his father and mother in New York, a further intimate knowledge was shown of private family circumstances, and at the following sitting, at which his father and mother were not present, he gave the details of certain private actions which they had done in the interim. At their sitting, and at various sittings of the Howards, appropriate comments were made concerning different articles presented which had belonged to G. P. living, or had been familiar to him; he inquired after other personal articles which were not presented at the sittings, and showed intimate and detailed recollections of incidents in connection with them. In points connected with the recognition of articles with their related associations of a personal sort, the G. P. communicating, so far as I know, has never failed. Nor has he failed in the recognition of personal friends. I may say generally that out of a large number of sitters who went as strangers to Mrs. Piper, the communicating G. P. has picked out the friends of G. P. living, precisely as the G. P. living might have been expected to do [thirty cases of recognition out of at least one hundred and fifty persons who have had sittings with Mrs. Piper since the first appearance of G. P., and no case of false recognition], and has exhibited memories in connection with these and other friends which are such as would naturally be associated as part of the G. P. personality, which certainly do not suggest in themselves that they originate otherwise, and which are accompanied by the emotional relations which were connected with such friends in the mind of G. P. living.

At one of his early communications G. P. expressly undertook the task of rendering all the assistance in his power towards establishing the continued existence of himself and other communicators, in pursuance of a promise of which he himself reminded me, made some two years or more before his death, that if he died before me and found himself "still existing," he would devote himself to prove the fact; and in the persistence of his endeavour to overcome the difficulties in communicating as far as possible, in his constant readiness to act as amanuensis at the sittings, in the effect which he has produced by his counsels, - to myself as investigator, and to numerous other sitters and communicators, - he has, in so far as I can form a judgment in a problem so complex and still presenting so much obscurity, displayed all the keenness and pertinacity which were eminently characteristic of G. P. living.

Finally, the manifestations of this G. P. communicating have not been of a fitful and spasmodic nature, they have exhibited the marks of a continuous living and persistent personality, manifesting itself through a course of years, and showing the same characteristics of an independent intelligence whether friends of G. P. were present at the sittings or not. I learned of various cases where in my absence active assistance was rendered by G. P. to sitters who had never previously heard of him, and from time to time he would make brief pertinent reference to matters with which G. P. living was acquainted, though I was not, and sometimes in ways which indicated that he could to some extent see what was happening in our world to persons in whose welfare G. P. living would have been specially interested.

The sitter called Mr. Hart, to whom G. P. first manifested, died at Naples three years afterwards, and communicated, with the help of G. P., on the second day after his death. I give an account of his communications in 959 C.

960. There are numerous instances in the reports in the Proceedings, (see vol. vi. pp. 647-50; vol. viii. pp. 15-26; vol. xiii., passim; and vol. xvi. pp. 131 - 3), of the giving of information unknown to the sitters and afterwards verified. A striking illustration of this occurred in the case of the lady called "Elisa Mannors," whose near relatives and friends concerned in the communications were known to myself. I give a brief account of her first communications in 960 A. On the morning after the death of her uncle, called F. in the report, she described an incident in connection with the appearance of herself to her uncle on his deathbed. I quote Dr. Hodgson's account of this (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xiii. p. 378. Foot-note).

The notice of his [F.'s] death was in a Boston morning paper, and I happened to see it on my way to the sitting. The first writing of the sitting came from Madame Elisa, without my expecting it. She wrote clearly and strongly, explaining that F. was there with her, but unable to speak directly, that she wished to give me an account of how she had helped F. to reach her. She said that she had been present at his death-bed, and had spoken to him, and she repeated what she had said, an unusual form of expression, and indicated that he had heard and recognised her. This was confirmed in detail in the only way possible at that time, by a very intimate friend of Madame Elisa and myself, and also of the nearest surviving relative of F. I showed my friend the account of the sitting, and to this friend, a day or two later, the relative, who was present at the death-bed, stated spontaneously that F. when dying said that he saw Madame Elisa who was speaking to him, and he repeated what she was saying. The expression so repeated, which the relative quoted to my friend, was that which I had received from Madame Elisa through Mrs. Piper's trance, when the death-bed incident was of course entirely unknown to me.

Rare are the "Peak in Darien" cases (see section 718), but cases like this are rarer still.