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Preface to The beginnings of Seership by W T Stead

The experiments carried on by a Committee of Investigators between the Alhambra stage and the Daily Mirror office, as recorded in the Occult Review of April, show that a professional music hall performer and her husband were able, with the aid of the ordinary telephone, to practise phone-voyance to the entire satisfaction, or mystification, of the committee.

Articles presented at random to the husband, by members of the committee in the Alhambra, were immediately seen and described by his wife, who was at the other end of the telephone in a newspaper office a mile away.

Many other tests are needed before any authoritative opinion can be expressed as to the range, or the conditions, of Madame Zomah's phone-voyance. It may have been simply long-distance telepathy; but, to judge from the reports that have been published, Madame Zomah actually saw the article which was held in her husband's hand at the other end of the telephone wire.

She does not seem to have spoiled her vision of what was actually present at the other end by seeing things which were not there at the moment, but which had been there on previous occasions.

This baffling superposition; of what has been upon what is, occurs frequently in Mr. Turvey's experience.

It is interesting, but most disconcerting; none the less it opens up a fascinating field for scientific inquiry. Another point to be noticed is that whereas Madame Zomah has her husband, who has trained the faculty of transmitting his thoughts to his wife, at the other end of the telephone wire, consciously telepathing the description of the articles selected to her; Mr. Turvey has no such assistant.