Hodgson closes his report (Pr. XIII, 409):
"It has been stated repeatedly that the 'channel is not yet clear,' that the machine is still in process of repair; and it has been prophesied that I shall myself return eventually to America and spend several years further in the investigation of Mrs. Piper's trance, and that more remarkable evidence of identity will be given than any heretofore obtained."
He did return and continue his beloved work for several years. But the next time we meet him it will be as an alleged denizen of the spirit world, and perhaps his testimony in that capacity was part of the "more remarkable evidence of identity" promised.
These influences, whatever their fundamental character, having made a saint of Hodgson, as was alleged by a friend who did not believe that the influences were from a post-carnate world, the drama took a new turn on December 20, 1905, in the death which Hodgson had eagerly awaited, and his ostensible reappearances through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. The principal report of them is made by his friends Professor William James, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. J. G. Piddington and Sir Oliver Lodge in Pr. XXIII, and occupies some 170 octavo pages, most of them literal reports of sittings. Other manifestations appear in the heteromatic writing of Mrs. Holland (Pr. XX) and elsewhere. Of course but a few entirely inadequate scraps can be given here.
As in the case of G. P., the first appearance did not take place until, on Dec. 28th, a peculiarly close and congenial friend of Hodgson happened to have a sitting--an argument of course for telepathy from the friend, but an equal argument for a genuine communication that had to await a congenial sitter.
To avoid constant circumlocution, I will provisionally write as if Hodgson were really speaking. Indeed, I doubt if I could persistently do otherwise: for the utterances are so natural that all the editors of the Pr. S. P. R. unconsciously fall into that way of expression.
James says (Pr. XXIII, 7) that the first alleged appearance of Hodgson:
"was at Miss Theodate Pope's sitting on Dec. 28th, 1905 [the eighth day after Hodgson's death. Ed.] ... Rector had been writing, when the hand dropped the pencil and worked convulsively several seconds in a very excited manner.