Three Months at Adyar

The inquiry began with an accusation. Emma Coulomb, who had worked in the household at the Theosophical Society headquarters near Madras, claimed that she and her husband had helped Helena Blavatsky produce the phenomena, and produced letters she said Blavatsky had written her with instructions. The society in London sent Richard Hodgson to establish what had happened. He spent roughly three months in India. He examined the shrine cabinet in which letters from the Mahatmas appeared, and the wall behind it, and reported a sliding panel giving access from an adjoining room. He collected handwriting samples and compared the Mahatma letters against Blavatsky's own hand. He interviewed the Coulombs, members of the household, and Theosophists who had witnessed phenomena, and worked through the reported incidents one by one, in each case asking what an ordinary explanation would require and whether the circumstances allowed it. His report to the society in 1885 concluded that the letters were Blavatsky's work, delivered with assistance, and that she was neither the agent of hidden masters nor a genuine medium. He was twenty-nine, recently arrived from Australia by way of Cambridge, and had no standing in the movement he was sent to examine or in the society that sent him.