Summary: Interview with author and parapsychology investigator Michael Tymn examines the work of Leonora Piper. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Michael Tymn author of, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife. During the interview Tymn talks about his research: Alex Tsakiris: There are two ways we can look at this turn of the 20th century history. We can look at it in terms of forgotten history, which is the angle you take. If only we could go back. If an honest person, an open-minded person would look at this data it’s pretty hard not to be extremely aware that there is a significant amount of this history that’s been lost. But, I’ve got to wonder if there isn’t a totally different way of looking at this history. Isn’t it a textbook game plan for the kind of scientism, for the spirit of denial that we live in today? If you want to look at how to take overwhelmingly significant evidence and bury it, sweep it under the rug, and embarrass all the people who’ve touched it, here’s the way to do it. Mike Tymn: I agree. That’s one of the reasons I wrote this book and the four other books that I’ve written. It’s to try and resurrect this stuff because it’s so little-known. I’ve talked to a number of parapsychologists and they don’t know it themselves. I remember one who didn’t even know who Frederic Myers was. You talk about Leonora Piper, Sir Oliver Lodge, or Gladys Osborne Leonard, they’re all names they recognize but they don’t know any of the history. I don’t know what they teach them when they’re pursuing their degrees in parapsychology but they seem to avoid the early stuff. Michael Tymn's Website Play It Listen Now: Download MP3 (45 min.) Read It: Today we welcome Michael Tymn to Skeptiko. Mike is the author of several books relating to afterlife communication and mediumship including, The Articulate Dead, The Afterlife Revealed, and his latest that we’re going to talk about today, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife. It’s a book published by White Crow Books which is a place where you’ll also find Mike’s excellent blog. Mike, welcome back to Skeptiko. It’s great to talk to you again. Mike Tymn: Thank you very much for having me on, Alex. Alex Tsakiris: So you’ve written this book about Lenora Piper, someone who many people who are interested in mediumship and history in general might know, but I think there are a lot of people who don’t know who Leonora Piper was. I guess that’s the natural place to start. Mike Tymn: Leonora Piper was an American woman born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1859. She discovered her mediumistic ability sometime around 1883 when she was 24. Her father-in-law had suggested that she see a psychic healer for some problem that she was having at the time. While she was seeing the psychic healer, she dropped off into a trance and she started giving information to another person in the room at the time, a doctor, about his deceased son. So that’s how she came to realize that she had mediumistic ability. Then she started experimenting with it now and then with friends. Somewhere along the line that first year, William James’ mother—William James being a Professor of Psychology at Harvard—had a sitting with Leonora and found it very evidential and told her husband, William James, all about it. So William James had his own sitting and was very much impressed. As a result, he signed up Leonora to be a research subject for the next 18 years or so. Alex Tsakiris: It’s Leonora, so I apologize for that. I’ll have to do that correctly from here on out. I do feel we need to lay the backdrop here, right? She goes on to become the white crow that many people who know William James know his famous quote about there only needing to be one white crow to prove not all crows are black. He’s really talking about psychic ability and ability to talk with the dead.
