After the birth of her first child, Alta Laurette, on May 16, 1884, in Boston, she sought relief from recurring pain caused by a childhood accident.

[9] George E. Dorr, Piper's manager, set up six sittings with Dr. G. Stanley Hall and his associate Amy Tanner both from Clark University.

[10] Piper made a fortune from her séances whilst being tested by psychical researchers, she was receiving around $1000 a year for her mediumship services.

Later psychic investigators included Oliver Lodge, Frederic Myers, James Hyslop, and G. Stanley Hall and his assistant Amy Tanner.

[14] In 1885, the year after the death of his young son, psychologist, philosopher, and SPR member William James had his first sitting with Piper at the suggestion of his mother-in-law.

I am persuaded of the medium's honesty, and of the genuineness of her trance; and although at first disposed to think that the 'hits' she made were either lucky coincidences, or the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was and of his or her family affairs, I now believe her to be in possession of a power as yet unexplained.

[18] However, Piper and the Italian Eusapia Palladino became the most widely studied parapsychologists and mediums of their time, especially by the works of Hugo Münsterberg and G. Stanley Hall.

[21] However, Frank Podmore wrote that Hyslop's séance sittings with Piper "do not obviously call for any supernormal explanation" and "I cannot point to a single instance in which a precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished of a kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working upon the materials provided and the hints let drop by the sitter.

"[22] Hyslop's trance report on Piper and views on spiritualism were criticized in depth by psychologist James H. Leuba, leading to a dispute between them.

American psychic investigator Gardner Murphy who attended three years of séance sittings with Piper concluded they were "uneventful and lacking in the types of phenomena which characterized the zenith of her career.

[33] Among her controls was a personality referred to as G.P., who claimed to be George Pellew (1859–1892), a writer who had died in New York City and a friend of Richard Hodgson.

[35] A cousin declared that the impersonation was "beneath contempt" and his brother said the communications ascribed to George were "utter drivel and inanity".

[38] Among other spirit guides who supposedly were assuming control of Piper were a young Indian girl named Chlorine, Martin Luther, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Longfellow, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.

[40] The Reverend Mr. Sutton and his wife who had lost their daughter Katherine (Kakie) six weeks previously, attended a séance sitting with Piper on December 8, 1893.

John G. Taylor suggested that the information Piper gave could naturally be explained if she had read an obituary notice in the local newspaper.

[52] In February, 1895 Dean Bridgman Connor, a young electrician, died from typhoid fever in an American hospital in Mexico.

[53] Anthony Philpott, a journalist for The Boston Globe, travelled to Mexico to investigate the incident but could not find a lunatic asylum or Dr. Cintz as described by Piper's control.

[53] Due to the incorrect information the Dean Connor case has been described as an incident that has cast doubt on Piper's alleged ability to contact the dead.

In the article she announced her separation from the SPR, denied being a Spiritualist and wrote "I must truthfully say that I do not believe that spirits of the dead have spoken through me when I have been in the trance state".

[56][57][58] On October 25, 1901, Piper stated in the Boston Advertiser: "I did not make any such statement as that published in the New York Herald to the effect that spirits of the departed do not control me ... My opinion is to-day as it was eighteen years ago.

"[59] Psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Amy Tanner, who observed some of the trances, explained the phenomena in terms of the subconscious mind harboring various personalities that pretended to be spirits or controls.

One investigator invented a dead niece whom he named Bessie Beale, and requested Mrs Piper's control to contact her spirit.

"[66] Chapman Cohen noted that the controls of Piper were obviously fictitious as it was claimed she communicated with the fictional character Adam Bede from George Eliot's novel.

"[68] Physician Antônio da Silva Mello also considered Piper to be a fraud, he noted that "all her revelations were nothing more than guesses and interpretations, often vague and with a high percentage of error.

"[71] Furthermore, the Jameses sat so frequently, and over such a period of time, with Mrs. Piper that she even stayed at their New Hampshire residence for a week in the fall of 1889 bringing William's objectivity into question.

[72] Thomas W. M. Lund recalled that before a séance with Piper he had told another sitter about his son's illness and his wife's plans "within earshot of Mrs.

[5] Irish anatomist Alexander Macalister attended a séance sitting wrote that apart from one common guess Piper got nothing correct and that her trance mediumship was a poor imposture.

Gardner reports that when Phinuit made a mistake he would claim deafness and leave, and that Piper was unable to discern between real and fictitious information given to her.

[76] Skeptic John Sladek wrote that Piper's controls "spoke nonsense, fished for clues, and knew next to nothing about their own lives on earth.

[36] However, Alan Gauld has disputed this, commenting that Hodgson in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research acknowledged the negative attitude of Fiske and did not personally find "the communications as having evidential value".