Telepathy Part 5

THE ZANCIGS

Some years ago there appeared at the Alhambra Theatre, London, two entertainers--Mr. and Mrs. Zancig--whose performances were of so puzzling a nature that to many who had witnessed them the only explanation of the results obtained appeared to be that genuine telepathy was at play. The _Daily Mail_ newspaper arranged that Mr. and Mrs. Zancig should be subjected to a series of severe tests at its office, and on the 30th November 1906 these were carried out.

On the 1st December the _Daily Mail_ published a full account of these experiments. The publication of this and of other accounts by persons who had witnessed the remarkable performances of the Zancigs led to a heated controversy between the correspondents of the _Daily Mail_ and the _Daily Chronicle_. Those of the first paper mostly a.s.serted that the performance was an exhibition of true telepathy, while those of the second paper declared that codes--visual and verbal--would account for the phenomena. Previously to the experiment carried out by the _Daily Mail_ I had obtained a letter of introduction to the Zancigs from a friend of mine who had had private tests with them, but as it was necessary to have the permission of the manager of the Alhambra before an interview with the Zancigs could be arranged, I called at the offices of that theatre, and saw Mr. Scott, the manager. I informed him that I was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, which body I told him took the deepest interest in telepathy. I handed him a letter that I had written to Mr. Zancig, and on the 29th November 1906 I received the following communication from the last-named gentleman:--

"DEAR SIR,--I received a letter from Miss H. A. Dallas, telling me that you would like to meet us. Now, my dear sir, we would be pleased to make your acquaintance, and have you call for a visit, but if it is for any private show and to be tried and judged if our work is, as we represent, 'two minds with but a single thought,' I will have to say No. We have done nothing since we arrived in London but have callers to test and try us every day, from three to four ladies and gentlemen. My wife and I agreed to all tests they put to us, and all was quite satisfactory. Personally I do not care, but it has been quite a strain on my wife. Should you care to witness our show, you would be able to see us at ten p.m. on the Alhambra stage, but if you care to call and see us, and have a little talk, we both would be pleased to meet you.--Trusting that I am understood, I remain, yours sincerely,

(Signed) "JULIUS ZANCIG"

Although the contents of the above letter were of a discouraging nature, I determined to strike the iron while it was hot; therefore, on the evening of the same day I called, accompanied by my wife, at the flat where the Zancigs resided. They were at the time partaking of their evening meal. We apologized for our intrusion, but by the kind way that they received us we were soon put at our ease. I informed Mr. Zancig that I was much interested in telepathy, and that I had personally carried out experiments in this branch of psychical research, and that I was a.s.sured of the truth of its existence through the successes that I had obtained.

Mr. and Mrs. Zancig impressed my wife and myself most favourably by their unaffected and simple manner. After a conversation which lasted about ten minutes, Mr. Zancig very kindly spontaneously offered to try some experiments. I will now describe these. Madame Zancig went to the other end of the room farthest away from where Mr. Zancig, my wife, and I sat. She faced the wall with her back to us; Mr. Zancig then wrote with a chalk a line of figures on a slate which he held in his left hand, and called out the word "Ready." Madame Zancig immediately named the figures correctly and in their proper order. The same kind of experiment was tried successfully three times. The results might have been due to telepathy, but I was not satisfied, as it could have been possible that the figures were prearranged, or that Madame Zancig could tell by the sound of the chalk what figures were being written. I also had in my mind the fact that there is a method of communicating figures by time-coding.

Mr. Zancig then asked me to write a double line of figures. I handed the slate to him, and after he had called out "Ready" Madame Zancig proceeded to cast them up correctly.

As Madame Zancig named all my figures aloud as she was summing them up, this experiment was of a more complicated nature than the previous ones; nevertheless, I was not entirely satisfied, as time-coding in putting down the resultant figures by Mr. Zancig, and the hearing of the sound of the chalk by Madame Zancig when I was writing my own figures, might have accounted for the favourable result.

To prevent the possibility of communicating by an electrical or other apparatus concealed under the carpet, I requested Mr. Zancig to raise his feet from the floor. He immediately complied by sitting on the table, where he remained to the last experiment.

Madame Zancig then retired into an adjoining bedroom with a slate in her hand; the door was closed, but not entirely. My wife wrote down two lines of figures, the slate was handed by her to Mr. Zancig, who called out "Ready," and he then proceeded without speaking to add them up.

Madame Zancig then came into the room with the correct result written by herself on her slate. This was a more crucial test than the last, but still, although visual-coding was excluded, sound-coding while Mr.

Zancig was writing the resultant sum was not entirely so.

Then followed the experiment of transmitting a selected line in a book.

Mr. Zancig handed me a book and asked me to open it at any page and to point out a line. After I had done so I handed the book to him. He called out "Ready." Then his wife opened a duplicate book at the proper page, and read the line which I had selected. Doubtless the words of the line were not communicated telepathically or otherwise by Mr. Zancig, but only the number of the page and the number of the line counting from the top of the page. Nevertheless, it was difficult to discover by what method this was done, as Mr. Zancig simply called out "Ready." There did not appear to be time for the numbers of the page and line to be transmitted by time-coding. The reader will observe that as the experiments proceeded they appeared to present increasing evidence that true telepathy was at work.

The following and last experiment that I tried on this occasion was the most crucial. I requested Mr. Zancig to go out with me on to the landing outside the door of the flat. I did not previously inform Madame Zancig nor Mr. Zancig of the nature of the test that I was about to put. Madame Zancig remained in the room with my wife. The door was closed, but not completely. When we were on the landing I suddenly drew my cheque-book out of my pocket, tore out a cheque, and handed it to Mr. Zancig, requesting him to transmit the number. Mr. Zancig observed to me in a whisper that the noise of the traffic in the street was very disturbing.

This was true, as the hall door to the street was open. He then remained silent while he looked at the cheque. My wife then came out on to the landing, and handed me a slate upon which Madame Zancig had during the experiment written the words, "In the year 1875." Mr. Zancig then said aloud, "This is not what we want; it is the number." My wife returned into the room with the slate, and the door was closed, but not completely. It was impossible, however, for Madame Zancig to see her husband. The suspicion arose in my mind that the number on the cheque might have been communicated to Madame Zancig by the words that Mr.

Zancig had spoken aloud. I therefore took the cheque that he had in his hand and subst.i.tuted another one with a different number that I tore from the bottom of my cheque-book. Mr. Zancig remained absolutely silent during the whole time that this second experiment lasted. My wife again came out of the room with the slate, upon which Madame Zancig had written quite correctly, in their proper order, four of the five numbers of the second cheque, with the exception of the last figure, which was wanting, but just as we were returning to the room Madame Zancig said, "There was another figure; it was four"--which was correct. This impressed me as a good test, with regard to the three last numbers of this cheque, which were different from the corresponding ones of the first cheque. Madame Zancig could not see her husband, and he remained absolutely silent while the experiment was being carried out.

I insert here a note by Sir Oliver Lodge in which he gives an account of an experiment of a similar nature, and also of other experiments which he tried with the Zancigs.

"Independently of the more thorough investigations of Mr.

Baggally, I myself was favoured with a private interview with the Zancigs, who were friendly and considerate and helpful; and I tried the experiment of having Mrs. Zancig outside the room, though with door open, and Mr. Zancig with me and quite silent. I wrote five or six figures on a slate, taking care to make no noise, and Mrs. Zancig failed to get them correctly. Zancig seemed distressed at that, and after a little time groaned out, 'Oh, surely you can do this'; almost immediately after which Mrs. Zancig came into the room with the correct figures written on her slate. It was difficult to see how the sentence had conveyed the figures, but it was instructive to find that utterance of some kind seemed necessary. It was partly this, and partly the manifest difficulty of eliminating all possibilities of code between a pair of performers accustomed to go about together, with years of experience behind them, that prevented me from doing what I probably ought to have done, though circ.u.mstances did not render it very easy, namely, to make a serious study of the Zancig phenomena.

"Moreover, I questioned Mr. Zancig about codes, and found that he was familiar with a great many. He was quite frank about it, and rather implied, as I thought, that at times he was ready to use any code or other normal kind of a.s.sistance that might be helpful, though he a.s.sured me that he found that he and his wife did possess a faculty which they did not in the least understand, but which was more efficient and quicker than anything they could get by codes. On the whole, I think this extremely likely, but the rapidity and the certainty and dependableness of the power went far beyond anything that I could imagine as possible between people who depended on supernormal faculty alone. But if there was a mixture of devices between people so skilled, I despaired of bringing the genuine part of the phenomenon to a definite issue.

"I do not think that either this or the weight of my other avocations are a sufficient excuse for this neglect, but it certainly was not easy to get opportunities for careful investigation. One of the main difficulties was that they were not free agents, having entered into contracts with managers whose financial interests partly depended upon the continued uncertainty of the public as to the causes underlying their very remarkable performance. Moreover, I knew that so skilled an investigator as Mr. Baggally was more favourably impressed with them than I was myself, and was able to give to them some considerable time and attention.

"The extraordinary and rapid success with which Mrs. Zancig named one thing after another, handled or seen by her husband as he went through the hall in their public performances, is familiar to everybody who attended those exhibitions; but one episode which I have not put on record did impress me as rather exceptionally good, though entirely unsensational and unnoticeable at the time. I relate it here:--

"The Zancigs happened to come to Birmingham for a week during the University Vacation when I was away. On the last day of their performance I happened unexpectedly to return to Birmingham, and was dining at the club with some other men. Some one remarked that the Zancigs were performing, and suggested that we should cut dessert and go and see them; so we went in the middle of the performance and sat at the back of the gallery. Everything went on as usual. Mrs. Zancig was on the stage, blindfolded, I think, though I attach no importance to that. Mr. Zancig had been through the body of the hall, and was coming along the side gallery, taking objects from members of the audience as he went, and having them described quickly one after the other as usual, when he caught sight of me at the back of the gallery, and indicated recognition by a little start. The next object that he took in hand (a purse or what not) he said, 'What is this?' and Madame Zancig on the stage said 'Oliver.' Zancig shook his head and muttered, 'No, that's what I was thinking of, but what's this?' On which she said whatever it was correctly, and the performance went on as usual; my friends in due time getting their tests efficiently done. n.o.body noticed the incident in particular; it was over in a second. It conveyed no impression of anything except of a slight confusion,--an error, in fact, immediately corrected,--but I could not fail to notice that the very unimportant incident tended in favour of the view that a power of sympathy or communication between them was genuine, since she got an undesired and unintended impression which certainly was at the moment in Mr. Zancig's mind.

"O. J. L."

Later, on the same evening of the experiment with the numbers on my cheque-book which I have described above, my wife and I attended the public performance at the Alhambra. We were seated at a distance from the stage. When Mr. Zancig came amongst the audience my wife handed him a piece of something black, the nature of which it was difficult to tell at first sight. He stooped down and asked in a whisper, "What is that?"

My wife answered, also in a whisper, "Liquorice." Madame Zancig immediately called out from the stage, "Liquorice." No word had been spoken by Mr. Zancig after my wife had whispered the word "Liquorice." I then handed a visiting-card with a double name. Zancig read to himself in a low voice the last name, which was Hutchinson, and said, "What is the first name?" Madame Zancig called out "Berks"; this was correct. It appeared to me suspicious, however, that the question, "What is the first name?" although appropriate and natural, should contain the same number of words as there are letters in the name Berks--namely, five.

Therefore some months after, at another performance, I wrote the same name, Berks Hutchinson, on a piece of paper and handed it to Mr. Zancig.

This time he asked, "What is this?" Madame Zancig replied, "A piece of paper with a name." Mr. Zancig said, "Give the name." She replied, "Berks Hutchinson."

I attended a series of performances at the Alhambra, and took down the questions and answers in order, if possible, to discover the code. On witnessing a first performance the spectator might be led to believe that word-coding alone is at the bottom of the mystery, but if notes are taken at a number of performances he will find that the same question is answered differently time after time.

From my experiments with the Zancigs I came to the conclusion that although the alleged transmission of thought might possibly depend on a code or codes which I was unable to unravel, yet their performance was of such a nature that it was worthy of serious scientific examination.

On the a.s.sumption that they possessed genuine telepathic powers it would be a pity that the opportunity of investigating their claim should be missed. I therefore set myself to work to arrange with Mr. Alfred Moul, managing director of the Alhambra, and Mr. Zancig for some experiments to be tried before a Committee of the members of the Society for Psychical Research.

An article appeared in the _Daily Mail_, inspired evidently by Mr. Moul, from which I now quote:--

"We have suggested to Mr. Zancig that in preference to inquiries into telepathy by unskilled persons he should place himself in the hands of the Society for Psychical Research, of which Mr. Gerald Balfour is the President, and of which Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, and other distinguished scientists are leading members. Mr. Zancig has informed us that he has already received a communication from that Society, and that he was entirely willing to place himself and Madame Zancig at the disposal of the Society for a thoroughly scientific series of tests."

The investigation by the Society for Psychical Research, at which I was present, took place on the 18th January 1907. I regret that I cannot give an account of what took place at this meeting, as it was mutually arranged between Mr. Moul and the S.P.R. that the results should not be divulged. They appeared, however, sufficiently favourable to some of the members present (though not to all) to induce them to subsequently form an unofficial Committee to carry out further tests. These unofficial experiments did not take place till 26th July 1907.

In the meantime I continued my own private experiments. A striking one is the following. I was in the balcony of the Alhambra on the 19th January 1907, and when Mr. Zancig came to that part of the house I handed him a piece of paper on which I had written the word "Istapalapan." I took care that he should not see the word previously to my giving him the paper. Zancig remarked to me in a whisper, "This is a long word." Owing to the distance from his wife it could not have been possible for her to overhear these words. Then Mr. Zancig called out, "Spell this." Madame Zancig immediately wrote on the blackboard which was on the stage "Istapala," and when she came to the second "p" she wrote "f" and then "san." I have often noticed that when Madame Zancig makes a mistake in a letter or number there is a similarity in the form of the letter or number to that which was to be transmitted; thus, she would put down "f" for "p," "7" for "9." "fsan" in this case is very like "pan," and Mr. Zancig may have mistaken the letters. I fail to understand how in this experiment he was able to code such a long word as "Istapalafsan" by the simple words "Spell this." It would appear as if Madame Zancig really saw what Mr. Zancig was looking at. The reader will recollect that in his preliminary remarks at each of his performances Zancig says, "What I see, Madame Zancig sees."

I have several times observed this alleged peculiarity, notably so on the occasion of the tests at the Gramophone offices, which took place on the 22nd February 1907, and at which I was one of the members of the Committee. Mr. and Mrs. Zancig were divided by a large screen. They could not see each other. A recording trumpet was placed near each, into which they spoke. A table was placed by the side of Mr. Zancig on which a great number of articles had been placed by the members of the Committee. Madame Zancig with great rapidity named the articles as Mr.

Zancig took them up in answer to his "What is this? and this?" etc. An incident which struck me as remarkable was the following. Mr. Zancig raised a pencil, saying, "What is this?" and after Madame Zancig had correctly stated what it was, he took up immediately (not in the vicinity of the pencil, but some distance from it) a case, and said, "And this?" Instead of naming the article Madame Zancig proceeded to enumerate in their proper order the articles that lay between the two articles which Mr. Zancig had taken up. Thus, a pencil, a seal, a penknife, a case. It appeared as if Madame Zancig had actually seen the articles over which her husband had pa.s.sed his hand.

An excellent test was the following. Dr. W. M'Dougall, a member of the Council of the S.P.R., who was present at these tests, borrowed a book from one of the members of the Committee. He came to the side of the screen where Mr. Zancig stood, opened the book at a certain page, then pointed to the middle of a line in the centre of the page. Mr. Zancig, without taking the book in his hand, glanced at the line, then Dr.

M'Dougall shut the book, took it to the other side of the screen, and handed it closed to Madame Zancig. Mr. Zancig remained absolutely silent, placed his hand against his forehead, and appeared to make a strong mental effort. Madame Zancig, after the lapse of a minute, opened the book at the proper page and began reading at the word in the middle of the line that had been chosen by Dr. M'Dougall. Some members of the Committee and I stood quite close to Mr. Zancig. We did not hear him utter a sound. He could not be seen by Madame Zancig owing to the screen.

I was present at the _matinee_ performance given under the auspices of the _Daily Mirror_ newspaper at the Alhambra. Dr. H., princ.i.p.al surgeon of a well-known hospital, handed to Mr. Zancig a set of skeins of silk of different colours. These were then pa.s.sed on to Madame Zancig, who was on the stage. Dr. H. pointed silently to a skein of silk of a corresponding set which he had retained, and which he took care Madame Zancig could not see. Mr. Zancig, who preserved absolute silence, and remained motionless, looked at the colour of the skein, and in the s.p.a.ce of half a minute his wife picked out a skein of the corresponding colour from the set that she had in her possession. This test was tried successfully three times. I particularly took note that Mr. Zancig remained silent and motionless, retaining the same position of his body during the course of the three experiments.

I have tried tests with Mr. and Madame Zancig in the transmission of diagrams. I took with me to a private house to which I was invited an envelope containing cards with diagrams on them. Madame Zancig sat behind a large screen at the end of the room. By her side sat a lady, a friend of mine, who watched Madame Zancig and saw that she did not move from her chair. Mr. Zancig stood close to me near the other end of the room. I presented the envelope to him, retaining it in my hand. He drew out one of the cards on which was a diagram not known either to him or to me till he looked at it. He fixed his gaze intently on it, remained motionless, and in a whisper said to me, "Please say ready." I called out, "Ready," and his wife then drew a diagram on a piece of paper, at the same time saying, "Something like half a moon."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. ZANCIG'S DIAGRAM]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME ZANCIG'S DRAWING]

Mr. Zancig then drew another card from the envelope. This time he did not speak, but nodded his head once, and I called out, "Ready." Madame Zancig thereupon observed, "It is a square within a square." The diagram that Mr. Zancig was looking at was this:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

his wife drew this:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Two more cards were then drawn, but Madame Zancig did not succeed; she got absolutely wrong drawings.

At a public performance at Eastbourne I handed Mr. Zancig this diagram:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He called out, "Draw this." Madame Zancig, who was on the platform, said, "It is something like this." She made a motion with her right arm like drawing a capital V; she then drew it on the blackboard. After this she slowly drew a horizontal line through the V, thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mr. Zancig said, "Give the number." She then placed a 2 in the proper position. He then called out, "Give the rest." She thereupon placed the _a_ under the line, thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration]