![Report to the California Society for Psychical Study, Inc., upon recent work done by the Group for the Study of Luminous Phenomena, by Philip S. Haley, Ph. C., D.D.S. Our work with the medium, Mrs. Betty North, began in 1962, and, with certain intermissions, has continued steadily to the time of this writing. Betty North has cooperated devotedly, accepting cheerfully practically any conditions for study suggested by the Group. She has also made it clear from the start that she has no preconceived ideas as to whether the trance personalities which manifest during her trance are disembodied spirits or vocal and teleplasmic representations of her own bodily and mental psychisms. Yet, in her conscious state, she is very enthusiastic about her work, enjoying and utilizing her intuitional faculty. In addition to her work which consists, in the main, in sitting in a cabinet made of black cloth, she is capable of producing drawings in pencil or crayons. (Black cloth is used rather than other cloth since such material is less reflective of flashlight rays used in our study of ectoplasmic structures.) This activity may take the form of human faces or the writing of predictions of coming events which relate to the life sequences of sitters or to natural occurrences such as earthquakes or other phenomena, such as the deaths of well-known personages. Our group has secured a number of tape recordings of such sittings, and a review of them shows considerable accuracy in future time lucidity. Trance has been well defined by Clarence Wilbur Taber in his Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary as, "A sleeplike state as in deep hypnosis, appearing also in hysteria and in some spiritualistic mediums, with limited sensory and motor contact with the ordinary surroundings, and with subsequent amnesia of what has occurred during the state." The post-trance state of Mrs. North fits well with this definition, since she is quite unable to tell of her experience after emergence. In my study of the pulse of our medium, I noticed a phenomenon which some people in the waking and normal state can induce at will. Her radial pulse as she falls asleep at times seems to at first become accelerated, then tends to fall to a scarcely noticeable tension. At times, and also at the medium's will, it disappears entirely. It may remain this way for a full minute, according to my observations made when I first began my study of her physiological states. When a trance personality appears the pulse takes on a bounding quality for several beats, then falls to a normal rate and tension. While this condition can be developed with practice, it seems to be one well known among mediums in general. One well known San Francisco medium says that with the coming of a spirit when she is giving messages at her church her pulse "doubles." Mrs. North respiration is nearly always at about the usual normal rate as to number of beats per minute and as to depth of inspiration. The personalities usually but not always begin to appear with the coming of a "guide" by the name of Pansy. Most of our group agree with me that Pansy is probably the personality, in trance, of Betty North. But this is not true of subsequent personalities. To give one instance of this, early in our work with Betty, a masculine personality who said his name was Nee-Pah-Wah, an American India, was very insistent that he was what he claimed to be. Another man who said he was to be known by the name of Popeo, told us that he would help in our photographic work. Both of these men said that they would materialize. We were surprised, not to say delighted, when the faces of the men appeared in two photographs some time later. We have at the present time three photographs of faces which appear to me to be clearly human looking. Various other humanoid faces can be seen on other photos, but it has been my practice to make no claim for them since some of such can be explained by the accidental folds of the curtain and the highlights and shades which result from this effect. The photographs of the two men first spoken of appear to be connected with horizontal lines of some kind of emanation of radiation emerging from the curtain, forming a teleplasmic complex of amorphous smoky substance within which is built the faces, probably a semi-biological process of ideoplasty. The genesis of the ideoplasty may come from the medium's mental processes or of those who claim to be Nee-Pah-Wah and Popeo. This, since the inception of the work of those who began to use the camera from the beginning with William Mumler, said to be the first to secure spirit extras on his films in 1861, to the present time, has been the subject of much [page ends]](https://library.umbc.edu/specialcollections/garrett/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/06/Report-to-the-California-Society-for-Psychical-Study-Inc.--scaled.jpg)
Many parapsychological research studies were conducted on mediums. This report describes research done on Betty North, which began in 1962. Like many other mediums, one of North’s trance personalities is a Native American – a pattern which reflects the exoticization of indigenous peoples and cultures foreign to the white Eurocentric hegemony. Note also the use of the term hysteria, which at that time was a prominent diagnosis used to justify the institutionalization women, and is now recognized as invalid diagnosis rooted in sexist assumptions.
See: Mediumship
Report to the California Society for Psychical Study, Inc., upon recent work done by the Group for the Study of Luminous Phenomena, Philip S. Haley, Ph. C., D.D.S., pg. 1, VF#1342, Folder “Photographer”, Box 32, Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection, Collection 331, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD).