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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 case. 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 assured 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 substituted 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 circumstances 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
assistance that might be helpful, though he assured 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. Someone 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. Nobody 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.
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