"ELSEWHERE in the city, a scheduled passenger named Alta Piper struggled through a restless night in her hotel room. She was the daughter of Leonora Piper, the famed spirit medium known universally as "Mrs. Piper," the only medium that William James, the pioneering Harvard psychologist and sometime psychic investigator, believed to be authentic. Alta seemed to share her mother's gift, for throughout that Friday night, as she claimed later, she heard a voice telling her, "If you get into your berth, you'll never get out."