The four-part series "Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena" is a fascinating set of books that can be read for free at www.archive.org, even by those who have not registered at the site. Perhaps the highlight of the four-part series is pages 33 to 76 of Volume 3, where we read a long narrative of the most astonishing series of successes by a woman who underwent what were some of the most rigorous series of tests ever applied to someone with apparent paranormal power. The woman is identified merely as Miss M. The 38-pages are rather off-topic, given the title of the book series. Some of the most astonishing clairvoyants in history were those who produced their results only after being hypnotized (an example being Osty's subject Mrs. Morel, discussed here). But Miss M. apparently produced most or all her more amazing results in a normal waking consciousness, without requiring someone to hypnotize her first. We do hear, though, of some doctor using "suggestion" with her, so it is rather unclear whether any hypnosis was involved.
We read on page 33 that the main investigator of Miss M. was "Dr. A. N. Khovrin, the superintendent of the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Tambov, a city with a population of about 50,000 and situated between Moscow and Saratov, some 300 miles south-east of Moscow." On page 38 we read of an event that got Khovrin interested in Miss M.:
"Khovrin happened to be with her just at the moment when a letter was delivered to her. It was from one of her sisters, but she did not open it and was just holding it in her hand when she became very sad and started crying. She declared that her sister’s little boy had died and her sister also was very ill. This indeed proved to be the news contained in the letter. Khovrin thought that this might have been a coincidence, but when she was asked how she guessed it, Miss M. replied that very often she knew what was inside a letter from her relatives even before opening it. After hearing this reply, Khovrin decided on a series of experiments, for, he argued to himself, if Miss M. was able to ' read ' letters from her relatives in this way, then why not other letters as well ?"
We read of a clairvoyance experiment with a Miss M., done by a Russian investigator:
"The first experiment in this series took place on 21 March 1892 at 20.00 hours. Khovrin took half a sheet of writing-paper, wrote a sentence on it, folded it in four, carefully sealed it in an ordinary envelope and proposed to Miss M. that she should try to read what was inside. After repeated refusals, she finally yielded to his persuasion, having first stated, however, that nothing would come of it. Indeed, she continued to talk on other subjects while already holding the letter, until he asked her directly to concentrate on her problem. Then she began looking attentively at the envelope and moving it between her fingers, as if she were receiving some sensations which she was trying to define. After two or three minutes of concentration she said that it seemed to her that there were the words ' Sofia Aleksandrovna' and also something more, but she was so exhausted that the experiment had to be interrupted. Since these words were in fact in the letter Khovrin became interested, and upon leaving her suggested to her that she should try to find out what was in the envelope and tell him the next morning. Next day, she sent him the envelope on which she wrote ‘ Sofia Aleksandrovna, you should recover'. This, indeed was the sentence he had written. After careful inspection of the envelope through a magnifying-glass, Khovrin was unable to detect any traces of it having been opened. Moreover, when looking at it against the light, he was unable to see a single word."
A bit later in the same work we read of an equally striking success:
"The next experiment, however, which was carried out under much stricter conditions, gave no less decisive results. The text was written on standard writing-paper with the sheet folded in such a manner that there were five layers between the written words and the surface of the envelope ; not the slightest trace of writing was visible when the envelope was held up against the light. Having sealed the envelope carefully, he made across the flaps a number of signs in black ink which, he believed, would certainly be affected if the envelope were to be steamed or dampened. Having thus prepared the envelope he gave it to Miss M. at noon, asking her to try to read the text. Two hours later she came to his apartment, imploring him to release her from this experiment, as she was quite unable to read it. Khovrin examined the envelope through a magnifying-glass and found no visible traces of any attempt to open it. Then, regardless of Miss M's reluctance to proceed, he asked her to continue with the experiment. She unwillingly gave her consent and immediately applied herself to it."
After apparently quite a bit of struggling, pauses and rather convulsive behavior from Miss M., this result occurred:
"All at once she wrote on the envelope the following sentence, 'Field-surgeon M-v poisoned himself with morphia out of love for his first cousin'. This sentence corresponded exactly to the text in the sealed envelope."
We next read this:
"A series of new experiments was undertaken with every precaution against any attempt at fraud and, without going into particulars, he stated that these experiments convinced him that Miss M. possessed a singular faculty which he believed was nothing other than an extraordinary acuity of certain sense organs which enabled her to receive sensory impressions from sources that would not be perceived by normal people. Further, these unconsciously received impressions appeared later in her consciousness in the form of fantastic pictorial images which, however, corresponded with the objects producing these impressions."
We then read about an elaborate testing protocol:
"Two of them, he writes, were reported at length in the journal Voprosy Filosofi [Philosophical Problems] and in the protocols of the St. Petersburg Society of Experimental Psychology, 1892 and 1893. In the protocol of this society for 3 November 1893 it is recorded that, after an exhaustive discussion of the problem as to how best to conduct the experiment and conceal from the clairvoyant the text that she was supposed to read, the meeting unanimously accepted the following procedure. Each of the nine members at the meeting wrote on a sheet of standard paper a short sentence of two or three lines in such a way that no one knew what the others had written. This sheet was then folded, wrapped in another sheet of paper and put into an envelope. All the envelopes were then placed in a hat, from which the Vice-president, Mr. Fisher, took one at random and burned the others. The envelope picked out by Mr. Fisher was then put into another thick envelope and glued to it inside in two places. This envelope also was glued and stapled in four places across the flaps with special clips. As a further precaution against fraud a seal of the society, similar to those used by public notaries, was placed on the middle of the envelope. The letters on the seal were arranged in relation to two points made on the envelope by a pin and visible only under a magnifying-glass, and beneath the seal, but invisible from the outside, was placed a tiny piece of hair. If either Miss M. or anyone else removed the seal, the hair would also be removed without being noticed and if the envelope were exchanged a counterfeit of the society’s seal would have to be made, which itself would be a difficult task.... After several sittings, Miss M. wrote on the outer envelope that what she saw in the text was ' I’m convinced that you will read my letter easily and without trouble and that afterwards you will feel magnificent. Petersburg, L. G. Korchagin.' She said that this text was written on unlined paper occupying three and a half lines, the handwriting being medium sized and uniform.
As soon as Miss M. had solved the problem Khovrin sent the result to St. Petersburg and at a sitting of the Society of Experimental Psychology on 3 April, 1893, the outer envelope was examined by an expert who declared that no traces of fraudulent handling were to be found. Then both the envelopes were opened and the original text compared with Miss M's reading, which proved to be entirely correct. Consequently the members at the sitting came to the following conclusion, which was drafted in these terms : 'It is highly probable that the fact of clairvoyance in this particular case was authentic and it is therefore most desirable that the experiments with Miss M. should be continued' ."
We then read of another test that was equally successful:
"Miss M. agreed to make another similar experiment with stricter controls and particularly with the assistance of a person familiar with such matters. He therefore asked an expert from the post office, Mr. S. A. Stroganov, who had never before met Miss M., to prepare for her a problem according to his own requirements. On 13 April, therefore, Stroganov gave Khovrin an envelope, closed with his own wax seal and with a number of various signs across the flaps. On 17 April Miss M. returned the envelope, on which she had written, ' There are things in this world we never dreamt of'. The envelope was at once passed to Stroganov and on the next day the following statement was received from him. 'After minute examination of the outer envelope by myself and other experts, it was found to be in the same state as when I gave it to you. My personal seal placed across the flaps did not show the slightest traces of being handled, or the flaps of being dampened or steamed. The figures and signs on the envelope, even the finest ones, have been examined through a magnifying-glass and show the same state as before the experiment. After the envelope was cut open, the interior was again examined and found free from any handling : the letter itself was glued to the envelope precisely as I did it myself and a very thin tape made from special material that was used to tie the inner envelope crosswise was also intact, together with its ends glued to the envelope. Obviously, if the letter were taken out of the envelope, it would have been torn out and the tape binding would have been torn out also, but no traces of this have been discovered. The sentence I had written was as follows, 'There are things in this world the wisest men did not dream of'. The sheet of paper was folded in such a manner that even if there were a possibility to look at it against the light the words of one line were covered with the words of another and were entirely unreadable. This sheet was wrapped in another clean sheet, which was also folded in four and the envelope itself was of very thick paper so that reading the text against the light seems to me absolutely impossible. 1 cannot refrain from expressing my amazement as to how Miss M. could guess my text under such unnatural conditions.' ”
A different type of test is described on this page. The test involved reading a sealed envelope containing a piece of undeveloped film, and a piece of paper mentioning the burning of a building. The test was run by an authority who was convinced that if any trickery had somehow opened the sealed envelope, the film would have been exposed to light, in a way that would have given away the trickery. Miss M. stated that the envelope produced in her a vision of a burning building. The film was developed, and no sign was found that it had been exposed to light.
A student used these precautions in preparing an envelope to test the clairvoyance of Miss M.:
"My text was written on a half sheet of standard paper, folded in two. I wrapped this in a sheet of yellow paper, so that the first sheet could not even be seen without first unwrapping it. Then, from the same yellow paper I made an envelope of irregular shape, gluing it with carpenter’s glue and putting six seals from the mental hospital library across the flaps. Inside, the first envelope was glued to the yellow paper. The outer envelope was then put into an ordinary postal envelope and sealed with eleven seals of various kinds, both wax and otherwise and imprinted by a certain gadget from the laboratory.”
Miss M. brought back the sealed envelope, and had written these words on its outside:
" Large country road ; trees on the side of the road ; one can see a coach (farantass) and there seem to be two persons sitting in it ; one, it seems to me, is an elderly man who wears some sort of heavy coat, next to him is a woman with a white umbrella above her head."
After getting the envelope back, the student who prepared this test wrote the following:
"After a most thorough examination of the seals, and of the envelopes, I am able to conclude that it was positively impossible for Miss M. to open the envelope, read the text, and put it back, forging all the seals. It is necessary to admit that she has indeed some special faculty for reading hidden texts and for imagining very realistically (even to the point of hallucination) pictures corresponding to what the experimenter had written. My text consisted of the following sentences. ‘A large country road, with trees growing on both sides. In the distance one can see horses drawing a coach—a tarantass. There are two passengers sitting in the coach : an old man in a heavy coat and a young woman in a summer suit, with a white umbrella above her head.”
On page 51 we read of this experimental success with Miss M.:
"As these trials gave positive results, Khovrin went on to more regular experiments and one of the more complicated ones will here be described. He had prepared a number of tests written on identical pieces of standard paper in his ordinary handwriting. Each sheet was covered with a similar blank sheet, both folded in two and put into thick, heavy envelopes, entirely opaque when held against the light. He then picked up at random one of these envelopes and destroyed the others, so that he himself had no idea which text Miss M. was going to work at. During all these sittings, Miss M. held the envelope only in his presence ; otherwise it was hidden in a place which was known only to himself. This experiment took altogether five days, owing mainly to the fact that after fifteen to twenty minutes Miss M. became too exhausted to continue....The usual proceeding was that Miss M. tried to concentrate, holding the envelope between her fingers or against her head. Each time she saw a fragmentary hallucination until at a later sitting on 1 June it culminated finally into a distinct and more complete picture. After a few moments she came to herself and then wrote on the envelope ' I saw a large room brightly illuminated with many candles and a chandelier ; many people are walking about in couples dressed as for a ball. There is a stage in this room : one of the ladies in a white dress goes up on the platform ; she is holding something in her hands and mounting the stage and gesticulating ; I seem to hear her singing. I do not know whether she is really singing or whether it is in my imagination. The people stopped moving about and they seem to be applauding. S. M., 1 June 1893.”
"This task was quite perfectly solved, for Khovrin’s text was : 'A large hall brightly lighted with lamps and chandeliers, ladies and gentlemen in evening-dress walk around in groups. One of the ladies, in ball dress, with a fan in her hands, mounts the stage and remains standing there. Then she begins to sing in a pleasant voice, "Out in the Storm". The audience applauds.' ”
We then read of other tests successfully passed by Miss M., in which the experimenters were careful to keep the sealed envelope in their sight at all times, or in a combination of their sight or a locked container which only the experimenters had the key to.
Experimenters of the time tried to explain these results by postulating a "hyperacuity" of the senses. But a writer explains why this explanation does not work:
"It may be of interest to give the views of a modern physicist on the interpretation of Khovrin’s experiments from the physiological point of view. He points out that there are three directions in which normal sight can be possibly developed beyond the usual limits. Firstly, seeing in near ultra-violet, or near infra-red light ; secondly, seeing in near darkness ; and thirdly, high definition, such as seeing very small print at a very long distance. There are physiological limits to all three. Reading through opaque matter does not come into this category at all. Opacity is the result of reflection, refraction and diffraction of light. As the opacity increases, the contrast between the signal and the diffused light decreases. At a certain point the contrast becomes insignificant and no amount of extra lighting, magnification or exposure in the case of photography will help. Under normal circumstances a single sheet of blotting-paper is perfectly opaque, and no amount of ' hyperacuity' of sight will make it less so, because as the intensity of the signal increases so does the diffusion of light, and the ratio remains the same."
You can easily demonstrate this with a simple test like the one below. First, I wrote the name "Thomas Jefferson" on a piece of paper using an ordinary ball-point pen:
I then folded the paper twice, and stuck it in an ordinary envelope, one I had got from a letter sent to me by some health care agency. I held the envelope up to a bright electric light, a light so bright that it leaves an after-image in my closed eyes if I look at the light and then close my eyes. I could not see any of the letters when holding the letter up to the bright light:
Even after playing around with various image parameters such as Gamma Correction and Contrast, none of the letters were visible. Playing around with the Contrast parameter caused the lines on the paper to be very faintly visible, but not the letters written on the paper.
Our scientists should search out and test people who report paranormal effects such as being able to tell the contents of sealed hand-written letters before opening them, an effect very clearly reported by many witnesses such as Mark Twain, as described here. When they are done in the right way, such tests suggest something profoundly important about the human mind: that it is something much different and much more than a product of the brain. But alas, for every scientist trying to do such tests, there are probably 100 scientists who waste the government's money running the "Rodent Racket" of doing worthless poorly-designed experiments involving rodents, memory and fear. Such experiments tell us nothing reliable about memory or rodents, because they involve a variety of very poor research practices such as using way-too-small study group sizes (insufficient to show correlation), a failure to follow a blinding protocol, and the use of unreliable subjective techniques for judging rodent fear ("freezing behavior" judgments) rather than reliable techniques for measuring rodent fear such as measuring heart rate spikes. Modern academia has incentives for such junk science studies, but penalizes and shames those who run-well designed studies demonstrating paranormal effects. And so we end up with so many junk science rodent memory studies that can be fairly described as suitable for wrapping fish or lining the bottoms of bird cages.
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