Out-of-body experiances: Ruickbie excerpt #14

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:

As well as self-projectionists, others had discovered that they could send their subjects out of their bodies. In the 1840s, the British physician Joseph Haddock (1800–1861) discovered what he called “distant clairvoyance” during investigations into hypnotism (then generally considered under the heading of Mesmerism). Working with a subject called Emma L., a domestic servant in her twenties, he asked her to describe one of Haddock’s female relatives in London whilst she was mesmerized in Bolton, 174 miles (279 km) away as the crow flies. She was apparently successful in this, but puzzled Haddock by going on to describe a lady in a grand building, which to him sounded like Buckingham Palace (he tested this by asking if she saw any soldiers, to which she replied that she did). He later discovered that his relative – the target of the experiment – had been thinking of the Queen at the time. Emma’s distant clairvoyance had seemingly followed the target’s line of thought. “It appeared,” wrote Haddock, “as if her mind partially left her body, to go to the place sought.” There are many more such accounts in the Mesmerist literature from this period.

I discovered a similar case in the British Library that had escaped being published or discussed in the hundred plus years since being documented in 1915. It involved Francis Gilbert Scott (1868–1933), a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and of the Society for Psychical Research, who had conducted a series of experiments in hypnotism on his maid in an effort to improve her work. He accidentally discovered that, whilst in trance, she could apparently leave her body and visit her sweetheart Edgar, who was serving on the Western Front, approximately 200 miles away. Further experiments included visiting the maid’s cousin Bruce, also at the front. Her observations, always involving incidents that could not have been realistically guessed beforehand, were later confirmed by post.

In both cases, reputable medical men conducted the experiments, which, although informal in character, showed no indication of being deceptive or mercenary. The level of unexpected detail makes sensory cueing or subjective validation unlikely explanations. That these details were independently confirmed also demonstrates that the experiences were not hallucinatory. Emma and Scott’s maid really did seem to be out of their bodies. 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.