uld have been learned with the greatest facility if Mrs
Piper had acquired these details fraudulently or by normal means,
namely, proper names. Professor James was the first to notice a fact
which a large number of observers have since remarked. The impression
that the names are shouted to Phinuit by a spirit is unavoidable.
Phinuit, who is to transmit them, hears imperfectly, doubtless on
account of his position, which all the controls describe as very
uncomfortable and painful--the organism of the medium seems to plunge
the controls into a semi-somnolence.

Thus Phinuit mangles the names he repeats. It appears that the
communicating spirit is conscious of this and corrects. Phinuit repeats
the name thus several times, and very often only succeeds in giving it
exactly after several attempts. It even sometimes happens that a name
cannot be given all at a sitting, but then it is generally given at a
subsequent one.

Thus, at this first sitting of Professor James, the name of his
father-in-law, _Gibbens_, was first given as _Niblin_, and then as
_Giblin_. Professor James had lost a child a year before. He was
mentioned, and his name, _Herman_, was given as _Herrin_. But the
details which accompanied the enunciation of the name prevented mistake,
on the part of the sitters, about the person intended.

Professor James brought away from this first sitting the conclusion that
unless Mrs Piper, by some chance inexplicable to him, knew his own and
his wife's families intimately, she must be possessed of supernormal
powers. In short, his first scepticism was shaken, and he had twelve
further sittings with Mrs Piper in the course of the winter. Moreover,
he obtained circumstantial details from relatives and friends who
likewise had sittings.

The following are some examples of Phinuit's clairvoyance.[9]

Professor James's mother-in-law had, on her return from Europe, lost her
bank-book. At a sitting held soon afterwards Phinuit was asked if he
could help her to find it. He told her exactly where it was, and there
it was found.

At another sitting, Phinuit said to Professor James, who this time was
not accompanied by Mrs James, "Your child has a boy named Robert F. as a
playfellow in our world." The Fs. were cousins of Mrs James, who lived
in a distant town.

On returning home Professor James said to his wife, "Your cousins the
Fs. have lost a child, haven't they? But Phinuit made a mistake about
the sex; he said it was a