Aspects for Synthesis

Seventh Year Blog Anniversary
April 26, 2009 - April 26, 2016

This montage accompanied one of the 315 previous posts at this blog.  

Above are nine examples of people whose lives have been chronicled in biographical books and case studies encompassing 'unexplained phenomena.'  The first of these is the man known by the name 'Nostradamus' (1503-1566).  Ian Wilson mentioned in Nostradamus: The Man Behind the Prophecies (2003) that a local landmark from his day still exists in the French village of Michel de Nostredeme's birth.  Although the main neighborhood church collapsed into rubble in 1818, the church's 14th Century bell tower is still standing.  As mentioned in a previous article, an English translation of a letter in Latin by Nostradamus to Francois Bérard dated August 27, 1562 appears in The Unknown Nostradamus (2003) by Peter Lemesurier and includes the following statements: "Be advised therefore that for nine nights in succession I have sat from midnight until about four o'clock both with my brow crowned with laurel and wearing the skyblue stone and, as it were on the tripod, have wrung out of that good spirit about your ring.  Therefore, having plucked a swan's quill (for he thrice refused a goose one), and with the spirit dictating to me, as though carried away by a poetic frenzy I launched myself into the following lines . . . ."  In this letter "Michael the Archangel" is mentioned as "my invincible patron."
 
The extant collection of diaries written by John Dee (1527-1609) provide details of his life in Elizabethan England for one who chronicled communication with 'spiritual creatures' and 'good angels.'  Crystal gazing was the primary method for Dee and his scryers (mediums).  There were also occasions when there were other forms of interaction with people from other spheres of existence.  In the 'private diary,' there are such practical domestic comments as on July 21, 1596: "Isabell Bordman from the chamber to the kitchin."  In a diary of 1584, the comments attributed to the angel Gabriel refer to God as “all power” and scryer Edward Kelly is noted to have asked, “As concerning the power, What is it?”  Gabriel responded, “What it is, that it is, for the knowledge of it may lead you to error.”  Dee wrote: “This answer offended greatly E.K. and thereupon he left off, and would receive no more at their hands.”  The predicament was one of many similar occasions showing how Dee and Kelly had two very different temperaments in relation to supernatural revelation.
 
When Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) entered a trance state during hypnotic sessions, his body was used as a channel.  The communicating Intelligence would speak in plurality, usually beginning a 'reading' with a statement such as "We have the body . . ." and finishing upon saying "We are through for the present."  Some of his other activities included churchgoing and reading the Bible, gardening and fishing.  David Kahn wrote in My Life with Edgar Cayce (1970): "He became a teacher in Sunday school, and preached in the Campbellite Christian Church until he went to Virginia Beach, where he became a member of the Presbyterian Church."  The channeled reading transcripts involve such topics as metaphysics, dream interpretation, psychic abilities, reincarnation, health and Oneness.  There are sections of the transcripts where words spoken by Michael, 'Lord of the Way,' are presented.  In comparison with the vast knowledge communicated during his trance 'readings,' Cayce had left school after the sixth grade.  In Venture Inward (1964), Hugh Lynn Cayce wrote about his father: "There was never an indication that Edgar Cayce was conscious of a single word he uttered while in the self-imposed unconscious state.  All of this material seemed to come through or out of his unconscious mind."
 
The presence of Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) was sometimes accompanied "by the making of 'spirit raps' on the table or silvery bell-tinkling in the air . . .," as her close acquaintance Col. Olcott wrote in Old Diary Leaves (Third Series 1904).  A New York Times reporter in 1885 wrote: "If the bell tones of the invisible 'attendant sprite' Pou Dhi were heard as they were heard by scores of different persons, this phenomenon so minutely described by Mr. Sinnett in The Occult World, was as likely to be chaffed good-naturedly by an obstinate skeptic as it was to be wondered at by a believer.  But even the skeptic would shrug his shoulders and say, when hard pushed, 'It may be a spirit.  I can’t tell what it is.'"  As chronicled in Old Diary Leaves (Second Series 1900), during one eventful evening HPB commanded the flame of a lamp to "Go up!" and "Go down!" in intervals with success.  Olcott divulged about this incident: "She said it was very simple: A Mahatma was there, invisible to all but herself, and he had just turned the lamp up and down while she spoke the words."
 
Irish trance medium Eileen Garrett (1893-1970) in her book Awareness observed about the 'controls' who spoke through her for intervals: “. . . the controls are always generous.  They state and hold fast to their own reality; they refer to me as being ‘beloved’ of them.  And here are purity and greatness, since loving involves giving, and there is no giving that exceeds serving and creating for the beloved.  I have always been aware of this truth.  It has taught me the renunciation of pettiness and the glory of service.”  Garrett was unable to resolve her questions to make any certain conclusion about the controls yet she affirmed that she accepted “with graciousness and good will, the controls whom I cannot explain or definitely understand.”  The expression 'beloved' is notable in other cases of transcendental communication, as indicated in many previous articles at this blog.
 
A Scottish medium known for trances and materializations during seances was Helen Duncan (1895-1956).  Duncan’s daughter Gena Brealey co-wrote with Kay Hunter a 1985 biography of the 'physical medium,' The Two Worlds of Helen Duncan.  The book explains many circumstances in Helen’s life.  Another daughter, Isabella, was the namesake of Helen's mother who'd been disturbed by childhood indications of Helen's psychic abilities.  Brealey revealed that the suggestion for a home circle was one of the instructions about Helen's mediumship made by 'Dr. Williams,' the first ‘control’ to make himself known to Helen and her husband Henry while she was in the trance state.  Other prominent controls were ‘Albert Stewart’ and ‘Peggy.'  Helen was the victim of what Maurice Barbanell called "a gross miscarriage of justice" when she was convicted and imprisoned under the archaic Witchcraft Act of 1735.  The biography by Brealey quotes Chief Constable A C. West of Portsmouth as having mentioned at the trial: "In 1942, Mrs. Duncan was reported for having transgressed the security laws when she foretold the loss of one of His Majesty's ships before the fact was made public."
 
I mentioned in a 2015 blog article that Mark Probert (1907-1969) worked as a bellman or 'bellhop' before he became a trance medium (or what today would be known as a "channeler").  Bryant and Helen Reeve in Flying Saucer Pilgrimage (1957) commented about Probert: "Mark Probert is the famous and respected 'sensitive' of San Diego, California, whom Meade Layne worked with in bringing forth the remarkable book The Coming of the Guardians [subtitled "An Interpretation of the 'Flying Saucers' as Given from the Other Side of Life"].  It is a veritable treasure house for the more advanced researcher who is not afraid of tackling the higher aspects of outer space."  The 1957 Third Edition Foreword includes the statement: "Science is only beginning its exploration of sub-atomic matter; along with this must go new concepts of space, time, the ether(s), tele — or apportation, the energetic character of thinking — and also of high importance, the reality of communication with etheric peoples, the Star-Wanderers and Guardians, and with wise and good people of our own race, who are in the regions of the so-called dead but indeed very much alive . . . ."  The book's biographical notes concerning ten Mark Probert 'controls' (communicators) include one familiar name, Thomas Edison.  The others include 'Lo Sun Yat,' 'Arakashi' and 'Yada di Shi'Ite.'
 
The focus of the current series of blog articles is Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint (1911-1994).  One sitter of Leslie Flint was the widow Eira Conacher who on one occasion discussed with 'Douglas Conacher' the possibility of a new age for the earth-world.  Chapters of Experience (1973) is a compilation of seance transcripts from tapes recorded by Eira.  The voice of her husband is quoted at a seance circa 1965-7: "What is going to happen—and I am sure I am right in this—is that beings from other worlds, or other planets, are going to make themselves known very soon.  In other words, they are going to come in such a way to earth, that man will realize to the full the living reality of peoples on other planets."  On another occasion the comment was made: "The point is that all our worlds, all the spirit worlds, are planets.  I do not know quite what some people assume about our world, but of course we are in worlds such as yours, but of a higher order."
 
Arthur Shuttlewood (1920-1996) is the UFO newspaper reporter and 'contactee' who wrote a series of books about his experiences.  An early article in The Warminster Journal was entitled "Bell Hill Mystery."  Shuttlewood wrote in Warnings from Flying Friends (1968) about glimpsed "elegant spaceships and their crews": "The most common daylight variety is a gunmetal grey that sparkles . . . Basic shapes are round, bell and long or torpedo."  The book detailed new encounters with people from 'Aenstria' after initially "three persons purporting themselves to be space visitors . . . regularly rang me during a seven-week period in September and October 1965."  One of them is reported in The Warminster Mystery (1967) to have referred to 'the great Creator' as 'the Living Force.'  Shuttlewood described receiving an afternoon telephone call from 'Karne of Aenstria.'  After Shuttlewood demanded an in-person contact and slammed down the phone, seconds later the doorbell rang and a face-to-face conversation with Karne ensued.  Shuttlewood recalled the warnings given, including: "All indications are that there will be a third World War . . . Man must learn to use his faculties . . . But the forthcoming years presage the death of your old civilization and the birth of a new and glorious age."

7/18/16 Update: Although I didn't consider it at the time, in each of these people's lives are chronicled diverse instances relating to 'The Michael Pattern' (and 'The Bell Pattern').  In the case of Eileen Garrett, in Telepathy (1941) she wrote about childhood interaction with a man named Michael whose duties were taking care of a house she would visit.  He was involved in an episode of her life that first made her aware of a "universal consciousness."

Leslie Flint's Life as a Direct Voice Medium

People who attended Direct Voice seances conducted by medium Leslie Flint (1911-1994) heard communicator voices from 'the other side' share details of Earth lives and the afterlife.  Audio recordings originally made with tape recorders offer remarkable evidence of Direct Voice Phenomena personally witnessed by thousands of people.  Today hundreds of Leslie Flint Direct Voice audio recordings may be heard without charge on the Internet at wholejoy.com and other websites.
 
The Leslie Flint Educational Trust website makes available an inexpensive copy of Flint’s 1971 autobiography, Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium as told to Doreen Montgomery.  The Trust Recordings Archive includes 40 recordings featuring seances where was heard the voice of one of the early Hollywood movie stars, Rudolph Valentino.  The author of The Voice of Valentino (1965), Lynn Russell is one of several authors to chronicle their experiences at Flint's seances in a nonfiction book. 

About 'Mickey'—whom Flint described in Voices in the Dark as "the spirit helper who acts as a sort of master of ceremonies at my seances"—Alexander Walker appraised, "This perky and impertinent boy would engage his master in Cockney chitchat and occasionally turn his sharp tongue on the guests sitting expectantly a dozen strong around the big Paddington dining-room in the 1960s or when Flint's health had permitted him to tour in earlier decades, packing the churches, halls and theaters in their hundreds and thousands all over Britain, the continent of Europe and America."  There were also occasions when Mickey's voice manifested with a boisterous adult emanation while at other times was heard a somber modulation while profound knowledge of humanity and spirituality was expressed.

Flint was careful to specify that not all of his seances were successful: "Sometimes I and my sitters would wait in the darkness of the seance room for an hour and nothing at all would happen . . . I have learned from experience that the mental attitude of the sitter is of great importance to results.  A hostile approach or a selfish and demanding one can inhibit the phenomena, but honest skepticism is no barrier."
 
Flint commented about the voices that were heard during the seances:

Sometimes those who speak from beyond the grave achieve only a whisper, hoarse and strained, at other times they speak clearly and fluently in voices recognisably their own during life, and even after thirty-five years of my mediumship I do not fully understand what are the conditions which cause the phenomena to vary in this way.  I do know I have learned more about life and people and human problems and emotions by sitting in the dark than I could possibly have learned in any other way, and those who have taught me the most are people who, dead to this world, are living in the next.

The homepage of the Trust website presents quotes from Flint's memoir: "I think I can safely say I am the most tested medium this country has ever produced . . . I have been boxed up, tied up, sealed up, gagged, bound and held, and still the voices have come to speak their message of life eternal."  A brief biographical profile at the website is attributed to Alexander Walker of London's Evening Standard newspaper.  Walker himself had attended several sittings conducted by Flint and wrote about these experiences: "Although tolerantly skeptical, I had to concede that those who addressed me, claiming acquaintance with a recently deceased parent, answered test questions about childhood, family and pets with fluency and total accuracy."  A homepage photo has been described as showing an infrared photo of Leslie Flint with ectoplasm emanating from his neck to form what has been called the 'Voicebox.'

As mentioned by Alexander Walker in the biographical article, the voices of famous men and women manifesting in Flint's presence were outnumbered by voices of ordinary people that included recognizable voices of loved ones speaking "messages of hope, comfort and occasional clairvoyance to their friends and relatives." 

Flint's book begins with sad details of his childhood in the southeast England city of St. Albans.  His parents were "pitifully young, desperately poor, and they had been coerced into maturity by their elders long before they were ready for it."  While his father was in the army, his mother would leave the boy watching silent films at the local cinema while the manager's wife kept an eye on him.  When his mother eloped with one of her admirers, Flint went to live with his grandmother whom he called 'Gran.'  Illiterate, she lived on a few schillings a week and her modest living quarters didn't have a bathroom.  She was so poor that a Sunday suit for the boy would be returned to the pawnshop on Monday.

Flint related two incidents in Gran's kitchen where he saw after their death his Uncle Alf and a townswoman named Mrs. Pugh.  Gran's reaction was to give the boy a clout for saying such things.  He wrote: "My grandmother was a wonderful woman.  She gave me all she could from the little she had but her life was too harsh, the daily struggle for a bare existence too grim, too unrelenting for tenderness between us."  After Gran qualified for a small old age pension, they were able to attend the local cinema.

In the hungry twenties the working class was neither as sophisticated nor as educated as its modern counterpart, millions could not read or write and lived in squalid poverty.  The cinema brought romance, glamour and excitement into their lives and even if the intellectuals called it the opium of the masses at least it was a relatively harmless drug and retailed at a price even the poorest could afford occasionally.

At the gala local premiere of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" starring Valentino, Gran and her grandson waited for hours to succeed in obtaining two of the "few cheap seats available for those who queued on the great night."

At the age of thirteen, Flint left school to work in a job assisting cemetery gardeners.  He helped dig new graves and became distressed when he was called upon to climb down into graves to disentangle coffin cords.  Flint acknowledged that listening to arguments about the hereafter and his recollection of seeing Uncle Alf and Mrs. Pugh motivated him to first contemplate life after death.

Attending a Theosophical Society lecture at the local library heightened his interest to learn more and he eventually discovered a Spiritualist Service was going to be held at the Quakers' hall.  There, he watched the medium Mrs. Annie Johnson go into a trance and relay messages to audience members from people that only the medium could see.  Flint became startled to find himself confronted with convincing evidence of a message from a deceased schoolmaster who'd once been an acquaintance.  Mrs. Johnson told Flint that among the spirit people around him was a guide — not really an Arab, he was someone who dressed as an Arab.  "In the not too distant future," Mrs. Johnson insisted, "you will be doing the same kind of work as I am doing and you will become a very famous medium."

Although not all the mediums observed by young Flint impressed him favorably, a "young Arab 'who was not really an Arab'" again turned up at a seance with the same message.  Flint wrote that for a long time he refused to accept becoming a medium because he couldn't imagine himself giving messages in public.  On the same night that he agreed to join Mrs. Cook's home circle, he went home and found a letter from Europe.  A woman in Munich informed him she'd been sitting regularly in a home circle for years and had received a message through the medium from a spirit who called himself Rudolph Valentino.  The spirit had given her Flint's name and address in England and asked her to give him the message that he must develop his mediumship and be of service to his fellow men.  Flint wondered if the mysterious Arab he'd heard about was Valentino, whom he'd seen play the part of an Arab in "The Sheik" and "The Son of the Sheik" before the actor's death at the age of 31.

During a home circle meeting, raps were heard that indicated alphabet letters and there were messages from Valentino.  There were further paranormal demonstrations and when the table raised up, Flint could hardly believe his eyes.  Further messages instructed the group that they could in future dispense with the table and just sit quietly in a circle.  As Flint remembered: "They would experiment with the power, we were told, and particularly with me because I had remarkable physical mediumship, in fact they hoped later on to be able to speak to us in direct voice."

At the next meeting of the home circle, Flint thought he'd fallen asleep but the others told him that deceased loved ones had communicated through him.  Mrs. Cook told him "a film actor came through, Valentine or whatever he called himself, the one that died a couple of years ago . . . he said to tell you to continue with your development."

Mrs. Cook couldn't conceive of a Hollywood actor being a very advanced soul.  Her own spirit guide 'Shu-Shu' was said to have been a high priestess in the temple of Isis during her life on earth.  Following a year of Flint entering a trance and spirits speaking through him, Mrs. Cook fell into trance and Shu-Shu presided.  From that night on, Flint's trances became less frequent and then stopped altogether.  Flint's participation in the home circle ended following a demonstration of temple dancing and chanting by Shu-Shu through her medium.  Flint wasn't able to hold back his laughter and he recalled that "at last Mrs. Cook came out of her trance and with a look which withered me to ashes sat down in her chair again."  She told him it would be best if he didn't continue attending the sessions.

After deciding to leave the cemetery and find a new job, Flint worked in stints at a cinema, pub and tailor's shop.  After turning 20, Flint was planning to be co-proprietor of a dancing school and found himself in need of a pianist when a past acquaintance from the Spiritualist church, Mrs. Edith Mundin, invited him to join the home circle she was starting.  He agreed when she mentioned that she might play the piano.  He estimated Edith to be in her early forties.  While he found her group to be "far above my station in life," Flint found the others in the home circle "had that true gentility which never discomforts those who have been less privileged than themselves . . ."  He felt accepted "as one of themselves and they liked me."   After many months of sitting as a member of the circle every Wednesday evening, although there were no indications of any psychic development Flint realized that he found rewarding "the quiet joy of repose, tranquility and friendship shared.  What I did not realize until long afterwards was that during the months when nothing seemed to be happening we ourselves were creating the very conditions of harmony and love in which the gift of mediumship can flower best."

The trances resumed, allowing discarnate friends and relatives of circle members to speak through Flint, including Edith's late husband.  Flint's development as a medium entered a new phase when Flint went to the cinema to see the talkies and strange voices of men and women could be heard whispering around him.  ". . . it was made very clear to me that other members of the audience could also hear them because I was constantly being told to shut up or thumped angrily on the back by those sitting around me."  This happened so often that he had to give up going to the cinema altogether.  He later recognized that this was the earliest manifestation of his Direct Voice mediumship.

Edith's financial circumstances required her to move into a council house with Owen, the youngest son from her first marriage.  Flint became a lodger for a modest rent and in the circle sittings spirit voices became audible, first whispering and then "strong clear voices who announced themselves as the persons they had been on earth, giving their names and addresses and telling us about their lives on earth."  To Flint's joy, he was no longer in a trance during these manifestations: ". . . I, too, could hear and appreciate everything that went on in the circle.   Indeed I could even hold intelligent conversations with some of the spirit entities who were able to manifest through my mediumship . . ."

One of the voices first spoke in Italian before continuing in English:

". . . My name was Valentino and I have come tonight to say how happy I am that this young man has at last accepted the life path he must tread and I want to tell him that one day when he is a famous medium he will hold a seance in the room which was my bedroom in my house in Hollywood and I will come to speak to him there when he does so."

Flint wrote that ". . . his message filled me with joy and the desire to use my gift to help people."

From that night onwards Edith began with great tact and gentleness to educate me for the public work she knew I must do.  She would ask me to read to her, then she would correct my grammar and my pronunciation.  She taught me table manners and many of the small courtesies and refinements which would make it easier for me to feel confident when I had to be in the public eye and to meet people of all kinds.  Many times I must have jarred on her unbearably because of my ignorance and the uncouthness of my manners, but she never let me know it and slowly, with infinite kindness, she changed me from the country lad I was into a man acceptable on most levels of society.

A small local Spiritualist church was the setting for Flint's first public work as a medium.

As soon as I stepped to the edge of the platform that night to speak I felt the familiar sensation of the room rushing away from me and I lost consciousness of my surroundings.  When I woke from the trance an hour later I learned that I had delivered a most interesting discourse and followed it by a brilliant demonstration of clairvoyance while under the control of a spirit who introduced himself as White Wing, who was one of the spiritually evolved entities who often controlled me in our circle before my independent direct voice mediumship developed.  Since it was not possible for the voices to manifest in a fully lighted hall White Wing clearly had come to help me out in this first public appearance by taking control of me in trance.

This experience made Flint and Edith realize a church of their own was needed to provide the necessary darkened space to make his Direct Voice mediumship available to people.  Appearances at other Spiritualist churches helped him to become established and when Flint's Watford Spiritualist Mission opened its doors, he was able to devote all his time to his mediumship for the first time in his life.  His living expenses were provided by the private seances Flint held once a week in the sitting-room of Edith's council house. 

One afternoon, the voice of Thomas Alva Edison spoke to sitter Dr. Louis Young and in following seances there were other voices of famous people who had also been acquainted with Dr. Young during their Earth lives, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge.

Dr. Young and his wife helped Flint and Edith to move to a new home nearer to London in the Hendon district and Flint began to give public demonstrations in London for audiences of up to two thousand people.  Among the new sitters were individuals who'd been attached to the Royal Household for many years and found themselves greeted by the voices of King George the Fifth and Queen Victoria.

About this time materialised forms were beginning to manifest in our regular circle through my mediumship, and Dr. Young suggested we should sit by the light of a dim red bulb in order that the members of the circle could see me and the materialisations at the same time.  When this was done, Dr. Young and the circle members were satisfied that the apparitions were distinct and separate from my body.  These materialisations were quite firm and solid and they could be felt as well as seen.  They would move round the circle and sometimes they would speak to the members.  I was not entranced during these manifestations and I was aware of an icy clammy coldness enveloping me while the forms built up and there was a faint odour about them which I found disagreeable.  This rare type of phenomenon ceased after a while and we were told by the Guides of the circle that they had been experimenting with my physical power only to find that the materialisations detracted from the strength of the voices, and they considered it better to concentrate on my voice mediumship in order to reach many hundreds of people through the meetings in the big halls.  I was glad when the materialisations stopped because apart from the unpleasant sensations during the seances I was absolutely exhausted and very nervy and irritable when they were over.

During World War II, Flint was a conscientious objector and an account is shared of the tribunal where he attempted to explain his determination not to kill.

"Are you suggesting our brave men in the services will suffer remorse in the next life because they are killing their country's enemies?"  "No, madam," I said, "they will not, because they do not know, as I know, the consequences to the souls of those they send into eternity.  It is precisely because I have been given that knowledge through the exercise of my gift of mediumship that I must refuse the responsibility of taking human life."

Flint was called to serve in a noncombatant regiment and when he visited home he conducted sittings.  When a bomb landed in the vicinity, Mickey informed those gathered that a land mine had fallen a few streets from them and many people had been killed.

He went on to say that hundreds of spirit people were already at the scene of the disaster to help the victims over the border between this life and the next and to explain to them the fact of their physical death and their continuing life in the other world.  Mickey is normally gay, irrepressible, quick at repartee, but that evening he talked to us very seriously and as he talked his treble boy's voice changed its timbre and became more adult, more cultured, more resonant.  The subject of Mickey's discourse was the enormous effort being made by the spirit world to ensure no victim of  the war, whatever his nationality, creed or state of mind, should be left to cling to the earth because of the ignorance of the life to come.  He told us thousands upon thousands of spirit people had made it their work to go wherever the need arose to guide newly dead in a state of bewilderment to their place in the next life.

The same evening, Flint finally persuaded Edith to marry him.

A guide who began recurring at the Direct Voice seances during this period was known as 'Dr. Charles Marshall.'

During the war my spirit helpers were joined by another who introduced himself at my home circle as Dr. Marshall who once lived and practised medicine in Hampstead, London.  The personality which his warm sympathetic voice suggested was that of everyone's ideal family doctor.  From snippets of information Dr. Marshall gave us about himself from time to time we were able to verify some facts about his life on earth.  Dr. Charles Frederick Marshall was born in Birmingham in 1864 and received his medical training at Bart's Hospital in London where he gained a reputation for brilliance in both medicine and surgery.  He was interested in psychical research when the subject was still considered cranky and eventually he became a convinced Spiritualist.  Originally he specialised in diseases of the skin but later he turned to research in cancer.  After years of this study he believed he had discovered a new approach to the disease and a new method of treatment.  In 1932 he published A New Theory of Cancer in which he propounded his theories and described a number of advanced cases which he claimed had been cured by his method.  Unfortunately, the medical pundits were not interested and he died a disappointed man in May 1939.  Since he first came, Dr. Marshall has advised and helped literally thousands of my sitters about their health or emotional anxieties.

Upon his return home after army service, Flint chronicled a surprising occurrence during a sitting for a group of women who'd lost sons.  One woman didn't turn up at the scheduled time and when a young man's voice was heard asking for his mother, the group soon realized he must be the missing woman's son.  The voice insisted: "Mother's train was late but she is here now.  She is sitting on a chair on the landing outside this room."  Flint described what happened next.

As a rule the discarnate speak from a point above my head slightly to one side of me within what Mickey has referred to as my 'auric emanation,' but as this spirit spoke his voice moved right away from me across the room to the door where he called loudly for his mother.  From outside the door the mother answered him and the dead boy and the living mother talked together through the door until the woman was convinced he was really her own son alive and loving as he was in life.

At large group seances, a specially constructed cabinet was utilized so that the auditorium could be left fully lit.  Seven feet high and four feet square, Flint sat within it while seated on an ordinary chair.  The sides of the cabinet were covered with tarpaulin to ensure no light could enter with the microphone standing around twenty inches in front.  At one of these seances, there was an incident recalled by Flint that he used to explain his understanding of 'Mickey.'

As usual Mickey spoke first, but this time, unusually, he told the huge audience that Mickey was only the name by which he was known in the world of spirit and to his medium.  He said that in his life on earth he was called John Whitehead and he had sold newspapers outside Camden Town underground station until he was run over and killed by a lorry when he was ten years old.  "I'm a lot happier over here than I ever was on your side," he assured the crowded hall, "you could say kicking the bucket was the best thing I ever did!"  This caused a general laugh and tension throughout the hall relaxed noticeably.

Flint reported about the testing of his mediumship by members of the Society for Psychical Research under the aegis of the Rev. Drayton Thomas.  Working with a group of men that included an electronics expert, a researcher viewing Flint through an infra-red telescope was able to see the ectoplasmic larynx forming on his left side some two feet distant from him.

While the men involved in these successful tests publicly stated their trust in the reality of the voices, Flint divulged that this wasn't always the result.  The responses of some researchers suggested to Flint that they "have immutable values of their own which preclude belief in a meaning or purpose in man's existence or in the possibility of a life after death.  Their concern was rather to disprove the reality of my voices and they would postulate any alternative however far-fetched or absurd sooner than admit the implication of their own successful experiment."

Flint observed that those who'd never sat with a medium of any kind ridiculed the preponderance of American Indians, ancient Egyptians, Tibetan Lamas and children as guides.  Flint reflected about many aspects and attributes of the phenomena he'd experienced.

As far as influencing the phenomena goes I am certainly unaware of ever being able to do so, though on very rare occasions I have mentally received some comment or remark a split second before a spirit voice utters it.  I am of course clairvoyant also so I can often see as well as hear the spirit communicators, and sometimes when they are unable to get their voices through I may receive an evidential message for the sitter which may be some consolation for a poor sitting . . .

During a Los Angeles visit, Flint conducted a series of seances in Rudolph Valentino's former home as had been foretold.  The recordings present occasional indications that the Direct Voice communicators have vast knowledge of the lives of seance participants.  Here is another example from the book.

. . . when the shopping, the cooking, the care of my wife and trying to do my spiritual work at the same time became a burden of almost nightmare proportions I decided to ask them for help.  At the next sitting of my home circle I asked for someone to be sent to my assistance.

"Someone has already been sent," said Mickey, "he is working in this house and he was at your last big meeting at the Kingsway Hall."  I could not imagine what Mickey meant.  The only person working in the house was a young fellow who was redecorating one of the bedrooms.

"You can't mean the painter?" I said to Mickey.  "Yes I do," he answered perkily.  "His name is Bill Willis and he is wondering what on earth to do when he finishes the job here because the partner he had walked out on him.  Ask him and he will take over your worries and become interested in your work."  It was true there had originally been two painters when the job was started and for the past few days one of them had been missing but even so Mickey's solution to my problem seemed highly unlikely.  "Ask him!  I’m telling you, he'll do it," said Mickey with a trace of impatience at my obvious incredulity.  "Very well," I said.  "If you say so, Mickey."

The next morning very diffidently I took a cup of tea into the room where the painter was working alone.  To check on Mickey's statement, I was about to ask him if he had been at my Kingsway Hall meeting when he told me how interesting he had found it.  He told me he had sat next to a woman whose son, killed in the war, had spoken to her in a voice the woman had told Bill was exactly his voice when he was on earth.  "Is it really true?" said Bill, "It's almost too wonderful to be really so."  I assured him it was true, then, testing Mickey further, I asked if his partner had left him in the lurch.  "Yes," said Bill.  "He has left me in a right old mess.  I can't carry on this business without another fellow and he's walked out for good.  I don't know what I'll do when I finish this job.  Get a job in a factory, most likely."

Bill accepted the job upon learning that he would have his own room in the house.  Flint wrote: "Many of my friends and sitters will remember Bill with affection before his sadly premature death from an inoperable cancer."  At the time of Bill's passing, Edith had already made her transition and Flint had moved into "the garden flat of a big house in Bayswater."  Flint wrote that a new assistant, Bram, had been trained by Bill.  The autobiography dedication reads: "For Rosie and Bram."

George Woods and Betty Greene recorded more than 500 sittings on tape.  One of the many spirits who provided information about life on the other side at Flint's sittings was Rose Hawkins, who'd been an impoverished street flower seller in London.

When George asked Rose what it was like in her present condition of life she replied: "Now you've asked me!  You want me to describe our world in your material language!  I don't know which way to start.  I suppose if you could think of all the beautiful things in your world without all the things which aren't pleasant, you'd 'ave a vague notion of what it's like."

Another sitter asked if the people in Rose's world ever thought about money and Rose was scornful.  "You can't buy anything over 'ere with money, mate!  The only things you get 'ere is by character and the way you've lived your life and how you've thought and acted!"

Among the diverse communications described in the autobiography are those of young men who committed suicide and wanted to express their regret.  Flint mentioned that on rare occasions a living person was heard to speak during a seance, usually in a weak whisper.  A unique incident was happily mentioned by Flint as showing an example of his mediumship being used to confirm the mediumship of another.  Flint described what happened when Rosemary Brown attended one of his sittings.

Almost as soon as I turned off the light Sir Henry Wood announced himself as 'compère' of the seance.  Sir Henry brought many of Rosemary's musical inspirers to speak with her, including Chopin, who said of her: "The group of musicians in spirit chose Rosemary because of her simplicity, if they had communicated through an accomplished musician the experts would have questioned this proof of man's survival of death!"

Brown wrote about her sittings with Flint in Unfinished Symphonies (1971) as reported in a previous blog article.

Lynn Russell in The Voice of Valentino described the response from Mickey when she asked about information provided by another guide, 'Ram-a-Dahn,' through the entranced Ursula Roberts at the Spiritualist Headquarters in Belgrave Square: "Gone was the Cockney accent, gone was the shrill little voice and pitched laugh, and now, speaking in smooth modulated tones, he [Mickey] allowed his true character to be revealed.  'You must realize we have all been brought together for a purpose, for a  great Truth.  Some of us you know, like Rudy and Ram-a-Dahn, others you do not know . . . Each one is here to bring enlightenment and the ways of the Spirit are often strange . . . we're all here to give service and help.'"

A Momentous Truth Suppressed (from Voices in the Dark)

Dr. Cosmo Lang (1864-1945)

Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint's autobiography Voices in the Dark (1971) includes his commentary about a suppressed report written by a committee appointed to investigate Spiritualism.  Dr. Cosmo Lang was the church leader who appointed the members of the committee.

This is how a 1942 unattributed Psychic Press pamphlet "The Silence of Dr. Lang" (PDF File) summarizes the predicament —

Over four years ago, the Primate of All England, The Most Rev. Cosmo Gordon Lang, appointed a committee to investigate Spiritualism.  After two years of patient and systematic inquiry, the committee made its report.  It was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury.  It was circulated among the diocesan bishops.  And there, in the archiepiscopal and episcopal archives, it rests.  For over two years, Spiritualists, responsible Churchmen, and public opinion, as reflected in the clamour of the Press, have demanded that the report be made public.  But othodoxy remains obdurate.  The report is favourable to Spiritualism.

Following the end of his Earth life, 'Dr. Cosmo Lang' was occasionally heard among the myriad of manifesting Direct Voice communicators introducing themselves at Flint's seances.  This article presents excerpts from the fourteenth chapter of Voices in the Dark and includes portions of transcripts of 'Dr. Cosmo Lang' conversation recordings.

When my old friend Father Sharp died in 1960 he was 94 years of age, but he had never ceased to hope that one day the brave dream of The Confraternity would become a reality and Spiritualism would be brought within the framework of the Established Church.  One of the most grievous disappointments of his life was the suppression by the then Archbishop of Canterbury of the Report on Spiritualism produced by a Commission of churchmen who had spent many months investigating its claims.  This commission had been sent up by the late Dr. Cosmo Lang when he was Archbishop of York, but when he became Primate of England he suppressed the findings of his own Commission which by a majority verdict reached the conclusion that the claims of Spiritualism to communicate with the dead through specially gifted persons were true.

Lord Lang died in 1945 and one year later he spoke to Father Sharp in our home circle through my mediumship.  This is what he had to say: "If only I could have my life over again with the knowledge I now have, how different I would act.  I could have done so much, but I was afraid."  He went on to speak of the thousands of young souls precipitated into the next world by the war who were resentful because the Church had not taught them that death is not the end and a bridge can be made between the two worlds.

 
Just as each of the Direct Voice communicators, 'Dr. Cosmo Lang' articulated an idiosyncratic synthesis of human experience and knowledge.  Flint's quotations of Lang are evidently not verbatim and variations are found in some of the same transcript material included in Neville Randall's Life After Death (1975), a book about the Direct Voice phenomena that occurred in the presence of medium Leslie Flint (1, 2).  Nine 'Dr. Cosmo Lang' tape recordings may be heard at wholejoy.com.

Here is another quotation of 'Dr. Cosmo Lang' from Flint's autobiography. 
 

In August 1967 the former Cosmo Lang spoke again, this time in my own home circle, and I would like to quote an excerpt from the tape recording we made of his discourse.  He said: "The study of the human race from time immemorial is in itself an object lesson to all, yet we heed not the lessons we have learned, we do not see the present in the past, but what is the present but the result of past events, past mistakes, past foolishness?  Man has turned his back for centuries upon truth and he does not see that there within himself in his innermost soul is the paramount truth of all, the indestructible truth that man is truly Spirit and thus immortal.  Often I think back to my early years and how with enthusiasm I did step out in the path of religious instruction and experience.  How often I spoke from the pulpit to the many who had gathered to listen to the word of God, and I strove to give out truth as I saw it and as I felt I knew it.  As I look back, I see what I lacked was simplicity and knowledge of the power of the Spirit within.  If only I had seen what underlay the teachings not only of Jesus but of many of the Prophets and the great reformers and teachers of earlier times.  If I could only have seen the golden thread which runs from earliest times through all the great religions and realised that that single thread is the basis of all truth, that all men are of the Spirit and part of the great plan and that all life no matter what form it takes is indestructible and that even the lowliest creatures on earth have their place and their purpose not only in your world but also in ours.  Man so often thinks of Spirit as having shape or form or as a glory to come after death, but Spirit is none of these things.  It is the force which animates all who live in human form, everything in nature, and all manifestations of life in the universe."

A Complicated Murder (from Voices in the Dark)

"Owen, Edith and Leslie on holiday in 1936"

At the beginning of his career as a Direct Voice medium, Leslie Flint (1911-1994) and his close friend Edith Mundin opened a Spiritualist church named the Watford Spiritualist Mission.   Flint reminisced about the early 1930s and the Watford period in his autobiography Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium (1971).  “For my own living expenses I relied on private seances for direct voice which I held once a week in the sitting-room of Edith’s council house and for which I charged one guinea for two persons.”

The couple decided to hold what they called an open circle after the usual Thursday evening service.

When the service was over and the congregation had dispersed to their homes a few people who had booked a seat for two schillings would remain behind and we would sit in darkness and people whom the world calls dead would come to talk to us.  My voice mediumship by this time was almost fully developed and more often than not I was fully conscious during these group seances and perforce had to listen to all that was said both by living members of the circle and their friends and relations from the other side of life.  Sometimes the talks between them were so intimate and so charged with emotion I would feel like an eavesdropper.

One of the fascinating anecdotes during this period in Flint’s career involved an apparent murder victim whose voice was repeatedly heard during the open circle meetings.  Here is the passage from the sixth chapter of the book.

. . . after various friends had spoken in the usual way we heard a woman’s voice trying to speak to us, in the uncertain way in which new communicators sometimes manifest.  Eventually her voice became stronger though she sounded distressed.  She told us she was Lucy Doris Covell who had lived in St. Albans Road, Watford.  She was a secretary who had been murdered, and her body had not yet been found.  Her voice faded and one of the entities who guide me from the other side came through to tell us the girl was distressed at the manner of her passing and very worried about the man who had killed her who was her lover and less to blame for what had happened than she was herself.  Naturally we watched the local paper after this sitting to see if the facts the girl had given us about herself would be verified and only a few days later we read that the girl’s body had been discovered and the man she had been living with had disappeared.

At our next open circle the murdered girl returned to speak to us and though she was calmer she was still concerned about her lover who had not yet been found by the police.  She told us that on the night of her death her lover had been out on his own and when he came home in the small hours he wakened her and they had a furious row.  She had said angry and bitter things which goaded him beyond endurance and he hit out at her with the bicycle pump he had in his hand.  He had not meant to do her any serious injury but because of a physical abnormality of her own the blow killed her.  Because the lover was terrified no one would believe his story, foolishly he ran away.

The girl said the police would find him sitting in a local park playing with a piece of string to find the courage to take his own life.  A day or do later we read in the local paper that the man had been found and arrested in just the way the girl had described.  He was sent for trial on a charge of murder and during the trial the girl returned to speak several times.  Each time she came she told us with great confidence her lover would not be found guilty of her murder, the charge would be reduced to manslaughter and he would be sentenced to five years in prison and in the event this is what happened.  Since the lover may well still be living and his debt to society was paid a long time ago it would not be just to reopen a matter which must have caused him great suffering by mentioning his name in this book but there must be many people in the Watford area who remember the seances where the dead girl told her story, and the story of her death and her lover’s trial were fully reported in the local paper at the time.