Margery Plays Cards

Mrs. Le Roi Goddard Crandon, whose professional name is "Margery," is a celebrated Boston medium whose doings are well known to spiritualists the world over. Wife of a suave and wealthy surgeon, Margery does not use her singular gifts to turn over a profit. Her control, who speaks and thinks for her when she is entranced, is "Walter," a deceased brother. Some years ago Margery asserted that fingerprints mysteriously produced in dental wax were Walter's--hence ectoplasmic. A furor broke loose when Prof. Harold Cummins, Tulane University anatomist, testified that the fingerprints were those of a living Boston dentist.

Some of Margery's adherents forswore their allegiance after that, but others remained faithful. Psychologist Henry Clay McComas of Johns Hopkins University, whose hobby is exposing mediums, gathered two distinguished colleagues, a physicist and another psychologist, and journeyed to Boston to make a scientific report on a Margery seance. They were allowed to feel "ectoplasmic rods" supposedly sprouting from her thighs, but came to the conclusion afterwards that the rods were animal intestines stuffed with cotton and stiffened with wire.

It was natural that Margery should hear of the much publicized experiments of Psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University, who believes in the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance as the result of tests with special "ESP" (ExtraSensory Perception) cards which he has patented. If one of Dr. Rhine's subjects guessed nine or ten right out of 25 hidden cards, he had a good score. To Margery, such scores seemed piddling. Margery challenged Dr. Rhine to sit in at a seance, watch her perform clairvoyance with cards. Dr. Rhine refused unless strict laboratory conditions were imposed. Margery "re-challenged" Dr. Rhine, and there the matter stood.

However, William H. Button, president of the American Society for Psychical Research, has remained faithful to Margery. Last week the A. S. P. R. announced the results of clairvoyance tests made with Margery, using the honor cards of an ordinary deck.* In the first series of 25 she got 22 right. In the second, all 25 right. In the third, 24 out of 25. In the fourth, all 25. Total score: 96 out of 100.

'I'm afraid Dr. Rhine and I can never get together," said Margery. "He came to my house once, some years ago, and after a single sitting denounced my mediumship. Dr. Rhine has made thought transference so complicated that it is now impossible to figure out what he has or has not done. People are beginning to confuse his experiments with the Einstein theory. This is a smart move on Dr. Rhine's part."

-*as been discovered that Dr. Rhine's patented ESP cards can be read from the back when light is reflected from the back of the card at a certain angle. This, of course, is not true if a shield is interposed between the cards and the clairvoyant.

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