The following article, published in a newspaper back in 1908, is about a psychic who claimed she was receiving messages from Martians. I am placing it here for those who are interested in the early research into psychic interplanetary communication.
Messages From Mars
Perhaps you don’t know this language. It is a sentence from the universal tongue spoken on the planet Mars as revealed by a spirit alleged to communicate through the personality of the celebrated Mrs. Smead, whose case has been under study for a number of years by Dr. James H. Hyslop, Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research. The words when translated into English mean “The man chief ruler’s place in which looks on our earth from Mars.” Many similar quaint and curious phrases have been wafted across the forty or fifty million miles of space between the two worlds and revealed, according to the testimony of the planchette operated by this medium in trance, for the study of terrestrial philologists.
True it is that Dr. Hyslop, whose point of view is that of the strict scientist and not of the credulous believer in every manifestation purporting to be spiritistic, does not hold that these communications working through Mrs. Smead give in reality any insight into the riddle of Mars. He thinks them on the contrary to be among the many tricks which the secondary personality plays when the normal conscious personality has been temporarily eliminated by a trance condition. Probably the explanation, from this point of view, of “communications” which involved for some years the creation of a fairly consistent language attributed to the Martians, together with pictures of themselves, their clothing, their landscapes, their clocks, and even their airships, lies in the keen interest of the public at the present time in all matters concerning the ruddy planet that swings nearest to us through the interstellar space. Mrs. Smead, like pretty nearly everybody else these days, has read a great deal of the fascinating literature that has grown up since the discovery of geometrical markings on the planet by Schiaparelli, about a generation ago. She has also, of course, read and listened to the discussions of the problems of aerial navigation. Hence when in the trance condition, with the little part of our life which is self-conscious completely blotted out, that larger portion of existence which the psychologists call the subliminal self gets busy, in the case of this abnormal woman who has a second personality, with the queerest imaginable freaks of the imagination.
Take, for instance, her Martian airship, on of the most ingenious tricks played by the secondary personality of this wife of an orthodox and aberrations have been presented in detail by Professor Hyslop in his latest book, “Psychical Research and the Resurrection.” A detailed description has been written by the planchette, with an accompanying drawing, of the manner in which the Martians have overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. Here is how the “spirit,” purporting to talk across the interplanetary gulf, explains the methods of aerial propulsion on Mars:
“Made of wire cloth-like stuff – made to go in the air. It is an airship. It is a coil. You see it will run a long mile when they have to stop and wind it, or it must be wound while it is in motion. This coil makes the wings go. Each wing is connected with this coil and then when the power is turned on it makes them go like bird’s wings. The power runs it all, only the propeller guides it. Let me tell you about the wings first.
“They are filled with air so that they are light. Then the wire-like cloth covers them. There are fifteen points or parts of the wings that are filled with air. These wings go up and down. The coil at the bottom are used to help the wings open. The power winds the coil. The power is electricity and the batteries are where the coils are. These are three big coils. One is for the wind sails, one is for the propeller. The coil is used with the sails because it is sometimes needed when the winds are strong. The propeller goes like a wing. The wind makes the ship go some.”
The sketch of the airship shows an amusingly impossible scheme of mechanism which resembles roughly a flattened balloon, suspended upon a flat boat with sails. The little holes in the drawing are said to be the means of entrance. Dr. Hyslop comments on the technical absurdity of this ship, the evident confusion of a propeller with the helm, the appropriation of forces like electricity now under the constant discussion in popular literature and appealing strongly to the popular imagination, as evidence which takes the Martian “communications” quite out of consideration as spiritistic revelations.
The value, however, of these indications of the action of the secondary personality – for he is very positive that no conscious fraud on Mrs. Smead’s part is involved – Dr. Hyslop is inclined to insist upon. One of the most important functions of psychology is to explore the regions of our personality that is not self-conscious secondary and tertiary personalities that sometimes are an outgrowth.
This Smead case, which according to scientific men of the American Society of Psychical Research has been second in interest only to the celebrated case of Mrs. Eleanor J. Piper of Boston, is one which Dr. Hyslop has had under constant investigation for a number of years. The name, it should be said, is an assumed one. The lady in question is the wife of a clergyman living at some distance from New York. She has never received any money for her work and has been examined under conditions that would seem to make any conscious fraud impossible. While many of the results obtained through her are plainly due to the action of secondary personality and need no supernatural hypothesis, others appear to Dr. Hyslop to be susceptible of only a supernormal explanation.
The Martian revelations, which ceased abruptly some time ago, are characteristic of the phenomena that can best be interpreted in terms of the subliminal personality. Systematic experiments had been made with Mrs. Smead since about 1895. Early in the course of them, the “communicators” began to refer to two or three of the planets. Finally Mars came definitely uppermost. The communicator from this planet was Maude, the deceased child of Mr. and Mrs. Smead. Names were given for the various zones, such as “Zentin” (cold), “Zentinen” (very cold), “Dirnstzerin” (South Temperate Zone), and “Emerincenren” (Equator).
Curious figures were drawn, which look much like the scrawls of school children, showing that the men off there wear dresses and pants and the women bag-like shirts. One of the drawings indicates that the Martians nearly ten years ago were ahead of the terrestrians with the Merry Widow hat. Many little facts about the social organization over yonder would indicate an advanced state of civilization, such as that “the people on Mars choose their ruler so that the children of great men do not count,” with the emphasis apparently on “people.”
In his humorous comment Dr. Hyslop says: “Evidently the aristocrats in that planet do not possess the franchise. They may have power, but they cannot share the privilege of helping in their own elections.”
Time flies and is measured on Mars if one may trust the testimony of Mrs. Smead’s subconscious personality; the planchette showed great ingenuity in constructing a plausible diagram of a Martian clock. The name assigned to this mechanism was “Triveniul.” It consisted of two circular wooden boxes resting side by side, and connected by openings through which passed from one to the other the wire that formed the coil springs in each box.
Without indigestion the Martians eat “Frain, kreki, trikuil, caruitz, fluiniz.” These are not perhaps so bad as they sound, for they are explained as being simply, “bread, cake, something like water, fruit and chicken.”
In the interest of the new science of aerology, as Prof. Lester F. Ward of Brown University has called it, to distinguish it from geology, there should be regret, perhaps, that the Martian communications through Mrs. Smead were suddenly interrupted and terminated by the appearance of a new personality, a Civil War veteran, who called himself Harrison Clarke, and who for a long time shut out all other communicators, when they wanted to get in a word or two through this medium. The later manifestations obtained through Mrs. Smead, whose identity has been carefully preserved in spite of the publication of a number of papers under the auspices of the American Society for Psychical Research, are given in considerable detail in “Psychical Research and the Resurrection,” which contains the remarkable series of Dr. Hyslop’s works in the scientific aspects of alleged spiritistic happenings. The record began, according to the psychologist’s conclusions with such shown in the Martian romance and has ended in the production of phenomena much like those of Mrs. Piper.
Other instances of what purports to be communications from other worlds may perhaps be explicable in the same way in which Dr. Hyslop sets forth the facts about Mars which have been disclosed through Mrs. Smead. It is, at all events, interesting and true that in addition to the recognized literature regarding the neighboring planet, including such books as those of Professor Percival Lowell, Professor Edward S. Morse, and the monumental work on which Professor David Todd of Amherst College is now engaged and which is scheduled to appear very shortly, there exist such treatises as the spectacular “Journey to the Planet Mars, or Our Mission to Ento (Mars), a Narrative by Sara Weiss, illustrated with Eleven Original Drawings by a Discarnate Artist.”
Those who believe implicitly in the truthfulness of the claims of such communicators – and there said to be more than 3,000,000 spiritualist in the United States – will find this work by a famous medium of St. Louis one of a character to confirm their beliefs; for those who prefer the recognized scientific method of approaching occult subjects, Dr. Hyslop is the man.
Source: The morning Astorian. (Astoria, Or.), 19 July 1908.
