Research source

When the sitting is over and the automatic writing has ceased, Mrs Piper begins to return gradually to her…

Date of account: English edition published 1904
Source: Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research
Reference: Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research · selected passage 145
Rights: public_domain
Language: English translation from French
Translation: English translation of Michel Sage with an Oliver Lodge preface
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

When the sitting is over and the automatic writing has ceased, Mrs Piper begins to return gradually to her normal state

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

When the sitting is over and the automatic writing has ceased, Mrs Piper begins to return gradually to her normal state. She then utters with more or less distinctness some apparently disconnected phrases which it is sometimes difficult to catch. She is like a person talking in sleep. Dr Hodgson and Professor Hyslop have collected as many of these broken sentences as they could, keeping them separately under a different heading from the record of the rest of the sitting proper. At the end, Mrs Piper often asks this odd question, "Did you hear my head snap?" And after her head is supposed to have snapped she looks round her in apparent astonishment and alarm, and then all is over, she no longer remembers what she has said or written during the trance.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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