{"id":357,"date":"2009-04-14T09:18:45","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T13:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stacyhorn.com\/unbelievable\/?p=357"},"modified":"2009-04-14T09:20:20","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T13:20:20","slug":"mary-craig-sinclair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"Mary Craig Sinclair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nA few years before she died Mary Craig Sinclair, wife of Upton Sinclair, wrote J. B. Rhine about growing old and losing so many friends who had died. \u201cI look out across the world and it is peopled with strangers!\u201d<\/em> Mary Craig had conducted experiments in telepathy which further galvanized Dr. William McDougall’s support of J. B. Rhine. She made an important contribution to parapsychology. \u00a0But she had such a horrible end.<\/p>\n

I pieced together the last year of her life based on letters, articles, Upton Sinclair’s autobiography, and a most excellent Upton Sinclair biography called Radical Innocent by\u00a0Anthony Arthur.<\/p>\n

The Sinclairs were living in near-seclusion towards the end.\u00a0 Western Union telegrams had to be thrown over a high fence that Sinclair had constructed in order to provide a \u201cserene, undisturbed atmosphere\u201d for Mary Craig, who had a heart condition.\u00a0 A rare visitor said \u201cdeeply shrouded electric lamps, with bowls of pink camellias, stood in every corner of the room, while his wife, who was scarcely able to move, so frail her heart was, sat in the semi-darkness like a heroine of Poe.\u201d \u00a0At one point Upton described cooking over 3,000 pots of rice for Craig as part of a special diet. He was looking after her and reading to her \u201calmost constantly,\u201d he so desperately didn’t want her to leave him and did everything he could to keep her alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was just downright painful reading about her final days.\u00a0\u201cI do not have any relief from constant and most uncomfortable fibrillation,\u201d<\/em> she wrote Rhine.\u00a0 Upton described it as a distressing and “endless quivering of the heart” that made it impossible for her to sleep.\u00a0 Craig asked Rhine to suggest hypnotists who could give her \u201ccurative suggestions,\u201d but Rhine knew few hypnotists, and none in her area.\u00a0 Mary Craig died a little over a month after writing Rhine, and she was terrified right up until the end.\u00a0 \u201cHer fears dominate her whole being,\u201d Upton wrote his son.\u00a0 In a particularly harrowing chapter in his autobiography, Sinclair described her in her last days as a \u201chideously tormented human being.\u201d\u00a0 He begged the doctors to end her suffering, but they refused.\u00a0 \u201cIt was life.\u00a0 It is our human fate.\u00a0 It happened to me and it could happen to you.\u00a0 The universe is a mystery to me.\u00a0 How beauty, kindness, goodness should have such an end visited upon it will keep me in agony of spirit for the rest of my days on this planet … why she should have died in such untellable horror is a question I ask God in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n

She died\u00a0on April 26, 1961.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years before she died Mary Craig Sinclair, wife of Upton Sinclair, wrote J. B. Rhine about growing old and losing so many friends … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6u-5L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}