The Truth about 'Psychic Photography'

Author/publisher/editor Maurice Barbanell reported about "extraordinary psychic phenomena" after extensive firsthand observations in Europe and North America over the course of decades.  Maurice included a chapter about 'psychic photography'—or what other psychical researchers called 'spirit photography'—in his memoir Power of the Spirit (1949), considering photos showing phenomenally manifested images as "permanent records of survival."  He observed: "If you receive a photograph of a loved one and you are satisfied beyond doubt that the production of this extra, as it is called, could not be explained by trickery, then you have a treasured memento."
 
Maurice's experiences revealed that the psychic photographers whom he encountered were unquestionably authentic.  However, among a large segment of the public the anomalous photos were simply too unexpected to be considered a subject worthy of closer examination.  Nonetheless, due to his own evolution from agnostic to Spiritualist, Maurice found himself able to sympathize with people who had a questioning perspective toward the photos.  He acknowledged:

 

I do not blame inquirers for thinking that the explanation of psychic photography must be fraud.  The production of successful extras is so remarkable a happening that you require incontrovertible proof before being convinced that the face of your loved one has been placed on the plate by spirit power.

The information about the subject of 'psychic photography' in Power of the Spirit offers some details about the work of three people who unexpectedly found themselves to be photographer mediums during the course of their careers: Ada Emma Deane, John Myers and William Hope.  Maurice's commentary explains some of the confusion arising from the work of these three individuals.  The following three photos provide examples. 

Plate 12 from Maurice Barbanell's case study biography of John Myers (d. 1972), He Walks In Two Worlds (1964): "A spirit 'extra' of Lord Balfour . . ."

This photo is identified as one taken by Ada Emma Deane (1864-1957) circa 1922.  (other examples 1, 2)

This photo is identified as one taken by William Hope (1863-1933) in the 1920s.  (other examples 1, 2)

The following excerpts are from Chapter VI of Power of the Spirit by Maurice Barbanell.

As with all cases of physical mediumship, the word "exposure" has been frequently bandied about, although in most instances the "exposure" was nothing more or less than an exposure of the ignorance or incompetence of those who made the charge.  Judged by normal standards, the results are so incredible that it is easier to cry "fraud" than to believe that you have a genuine spirit extra in your possession, even when every precaution has been taken to make the seance fraud-proof.

For years, I was involved in the many controversies and arguments that centred around the mediumship of one psychic photographer and was familiar with this attitude of disbelief, especially on the part of newspapermen and professional photographers, to whom the taking of pictures is part of their everyday life.  Besides, you must remember that for many  years the Press behaved rather stupidly towards Spiritualism in general and to physical mediumship in particular.

There was the case of Mrs. A. E. Deane, who had a raw deal from one newspaper.  In my early days in Spiritualism, I knew her well.  Over a period of many years I regularly took a party of friends to her seances and sometimes we obtained striking results.  Mrs. Deane, like other psychic photographers and physical mediums, was at first keen on giving test seances.  But again, like the others, she became tired of the constant atmosphere of suspicion and refused to give tests.  I sympathised with her attitude.  After all, though you begin your psychic career with enthusiasm, with the passing of the years you resent the idea that your honesty is in question.  Moreover, you know that in reality the acid test of psychic photography depends upon the recognition of the extras.  Leaving on one side the credulous person who will see a likeness when one does not exist, there are thousands of cases of identifiable extras, which are among the best evidence for life after death.

Fraud entails the use of a highly complex organisation that could not be kept secret.  The medium must know in advance who is coming for a seance.  Somehow or other, there must be access to old family albums, with photographs removed for copying without this fact being discovered.  Alternatively, the medium must learn the town where the deceased person lived, and conduct a long search among its photographers, looking for pictures taken thirty, forty and fifty years ago.  If all this were the explanation of how extras are obtained, it would soon come to light.  You cannot break into houses and steal pictures from albums without being found out.  Neither can you conduct long and exhaustive inquiries among photographers without arousing suspicion.


Another important factor is the antecedents of the medium, the years spent in cultivating and developing the psychic gift, the obtaining of partially successful results until finally, with full unfoldment, the medium is ready to give seances to strangers.


I am sure that Mrs. Deane, and her two charming daughters, will forgive me if I say that she is a simple woman—very lovable for that reason—who does not possess the kind of cleverness that would enable her to be a fraud.  She was nurtured in the Roman Catholic faith, but despite that went to a Spiritualist meeting where she was told by the medium that she was a photographic medium.  She did not understand what he was talking about and afterwards asked him to explain what he meant.  The explanation was so interesting that she thought she would try to develop this gift.


The medium and his wife arranged to visit her house and help her.  Mrs. Deane bought some plates and took eight photographs, but nothing psychic appeared and she was getting tired, apart from being disappointed.  However, on the two remaining plates extras did appear.  This made her so excited that she wanted to go out and buy some more plates immediately, but she was told not to repeat the experiment for a few days.


Mrs. Deane was possessed of limited means and had no proper facilities in her working-class house for the taking and developing of plates.  Her background was a tablecloth pinned to the kitchen wall.  It was always a source of amusement when sitters looked behind the cloth to see whether spooks were hidden there.  The kitchen table was her dark room.  She placed hooks all round the table and on them hung a cloth made from some old dresses and petticoats.  Her red light came from a paraffin lamp with red glass.  When it was necessary for her to load the camera and plates and to develop them, she would crawl under the table.

In the early days of her mediumship, priests from the Roman Catholic church tried to persuade her to renounce her work.  She resisted their blandishments and refused to accept their suggestion that the whole thing was evil and had some connection with the devil.  Too many mourners had visited her and received comfort by obtaining extras of their beloved dead for her to entertain so preposterous a theory.

For many years after the 1914-1918 war, Mrs. Deane took pictures of the Armistice Day service held at the Cenotaph.  These experiments were made under the supervision of Estelle Stead, daughter of the famous journalist, W. T. Stead, who laid down the conditions to ensure that no accusation of trickery could later be made.  Usually the pictures contained a crowd of spirit faces superimposed on the section of the large gathering shown on the plates.  Many of these faces were afterwards recognised.

1924 Armistice Day photograph

As an example of unfair Press treatment, I cite what happened in 1924 when the Daily Sketch published an article stating that the Armistice photograph taken that year was fraudulent.  It alleged that the extras were not those of dead people, but actually pictures of living ones, including some well-known sporting persons.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had the brilliant idea of submitting these photographs to Sir Arthur Keith, a distinguished anthropologist who, if anything, was an anti-Spiritualist.  He was also shown the photographs of the men and women whom the Daily Sketch said the extras resembled.

Sir Arthur Keith made a detailed examination of them all and returned them to Conan Doyle, saying he could trace no resemblance between the faces of the living persons selected by the Daily Sketch and the extras which appeared on the Armistice plate.  Conan Doyle sent Keith's letter to the Daily Sketch, which refused to print it.  Yet, for years afterwards, it was usual when Mrs. Deane's name was mentioned to be met with the reply, "Oh, wasn't that the woman exposed by the Daily Sketch?"

 

*        *        *

For many years I was closely associated with John Myers, whose psychic photography was a storm-centre of controversy.  The first intimation I received of his mediumship was when I launched Psychic News.  A few days before the first issue was due to appear, I received an account of how he had accepted a challenge made by a parcels officer at the South-Western District Post Office in London.  This postal official, a sceptic so far as Spiritualism was concerned, had imposed all his own conditions and was surprised to find that two of the plates had extras.  I published the account and decided to follow up the story.

I learned that John Myers was a dentist in Victoria.  His interest in Spiritualism had been aroused when a medium told him that he possessed the gift of psychic photography.  Among friends and sympathetic Spiritualists he formed a circle and developed his gift, with startling results.

Very often, in Spiritualism, the evidence that we receive is similar to the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.

Scores of people received through his mediumship identifiable extras of dead relatives and friends, some of them reproducing earthly defects or characteristics which made the recognition unmistakable.

One striking result that I obtained was the reproduction of a signature of a woman who was known to me.

. . . R. L. Parish, a New York business man, was cured through Myers's mediumship.  His interest was first aroused by Myers's psychic photography.  When Myers agreed to allow him to conduct some experiments, Parish was determined to have a test that permitted of no loopholes.  He insisted that he himself should purchase everything necessary for the test, from the camera down to the developing materials.  Myers was not allowed to handle any part of the photographic apparatus.  The medium's sole contribution was to be present in the room when the photographs were taken.

Parish experimented with different types of camera, employing expert photographers to load the plates in a huge wall cupboard fitted up as a dark room in his hotel suite.  Often the medium would clairvoyantly announce, during the taking of pictures, the results that subsequently appeared on the plates.  At one test, when two different cameras were employed, Myers declared that identical extras would be obtained, and they were!

In all my seances with Myers, I noticed one outstanding fact.  Though he often broke all the rules of photography, the extras were not affected.  Plates were fogged, but the extras would be clear.  Plates were dropped and cracked, but the cracks would never come across the extras.

Once I called on Myers soon after the passing of William Hope, another outstanding psychic photographer.  At 10:45 p.m., just as I was thinking of going home, we discussed some aspect of psychic photography and Myers suggested that we try an impromptu seance.  There were two unopened packets of plates lying there, one of which I chose.  In loading the camera I pressed rather hard and cracked a plate.  I received on this plate a large extra of William Hope, whose face came on the portion of the plate which was uncracked.

Many of Myers's seances were held in a room attached to his dental surgery.

 

*        *        *

  

I always regret that I did not have a closer relationship with William Hope, the Lancashire medium who had a raw deal—yes, it was one of those "exposures"—from alleged researchers.  He gave thousands of successful seances, but it was not long before he announced that he was tired of giving tests.  Yet when I happened to be passing through Crewe and called on him, he insisted on having a seance and demanded that I should go and buy the plates to make a test of it.  The results were genuine, but unfortunately I could not recognise the extras I obtained.

Hope refused to use any camera other than the ancient, battered one presented to him by a clergyman, Archdeacon Colley, who succeeded in obtaining on a half plate a remarkable result.  This plate was sealed so that no light could have access to it and was held between the hands of six persons for thirty-nine seconds.  It was developed without being exposed, and contained an Easter sermon on the Resurrection, consisting of eighty-four lines made up of one thousand seven hundred and ten words!

Hope related with great gusto, and in his own marked Lancashire dialect, the story of how he discovered his mediumship.  At the time he was working in a factory.  He was asked to take a photograph of a fellow-workman.  The exposure was made outside the factory gates on a Saturday afternoon.  The friend had arranged to develop and print the pictures.

One day during the following week, this friend met Hope with the strange statement, "Billy, thou'rt got a dead 'un on t' plate!"  Hope looked at him in amazement.  The friend produced the photograph and showed him that on it there was an extra of a dead relative he could identify.

They were so puzzled that they determined to repeat the experiment the following Saturday.  Hope took another picture.  Once again, he was told there was a "dead 'un" on the plate and that the extra was recognisable as a dead friend.  Neither Hope nor his colleague had any knowledge of Spiritualism and they did not appreciate the significance of the extras.

A long time afterwards, Hope wandered into a Spiritualist meeting at Crewe.  When the service was over, he approached some of the officials.  Taking the psychic pictures out of his pocket, he asked if they could explain what they meant.  The officials immediately realized that Hope was a potential psychic photographer and advised him to develop the gift.  When he asked how this could be done, he was told that in Crewe there was a woman named Mrs. Buxton who was sitting for the development of her mediumship.  Hope went to see her and thus began a famous partnership, which lasted for many years, for the production of spirit extras.

I should like to mention that Mrs. Buxton was not altogether surprised at meeting Hope.  At several Spiritualist meetings she had been told by mediums that they could see her holding what looked like a piece of glass up to the light.  She did not connect these messages with spirit photographs until she met Hope and learned his story.

In the decades that have followed the epoch of 'spirit photographs,' the development of new technology related to video and audio recorded media have resulted in showing an array of visual imagery signifying forms of transcendental communication, altogether given the term 'Instrumental Transcommunication' (1, 2) by researchers.  Below is one example from worlditc.org.  A previous blog article is "Ted Serios and the Lehrburger Sequence".

 

Two Acclaimed 'Psychic Artists': Frank Leah and Coral Polge

Many examples of Frank Leah's psychic drawings (with photographs for comparison) are presented in the case study Faces of the Living Dead (1943) by Paul Miller.

 

 

Editions of Maurice Barbanell's memoirs as a Spiritualist journalist include a chapter about psychic artist Frank Leah (1886-1972).  While the 'psychic' drawings of Coral Polge (1924-2001) are similar to those of Frank, her talent and psychic ability is articulated very differently in her autobiography The Living Image (1984 coauthored by Kay Hunter / updated and republished as Living Images 1991).  The artists' own perspective of their mentality as a medium is subjective to individual perception and expression.  Maurice referred to people in the afterlife 'showing' themselves to Frank.  Left unexpressed is the reality that each 'communicator' is subject to an omnipresent 'Life Force' or 'supernormal intelligences' (words used in his book Forewords) in the ascended realm of existence and this Force/'Oneness' is eternally interacting with all life forms on Earth and in the realms beyond.

The following profile of Frank Leah is from Power of the Spirit (1949) and the concluding paragraph is from This Is Spiritualism (1959). 

This photo of Frank Leah is from the 1995 edition of Faces of the Living Dead.

. . . Frank Leah has been exercising his unique gift, which combines clairvoyance and artistry, for twenty years.  He told me that he has portrayed many thousands of dead men, women and children.  In nearly every case, the drawings have been identified.

Leah is definitely unusual.  He lives in a world of his own, has the artistic temperament, which makes him become heated over matters that others might dismiss, and possesses a volubility that has to be heard to be appreciated.

He has been clairvoyant since he was a child.  At first, he was scared of the forms he could see but which were invisible to others.  He was mystified as to who these forms were, until gradually it dawned on him that they belonged to those the world calls dead.  For many years, he followed the normal vocations of being a journalist and a cartoonist until, one day, he decided to combine all his gifts.

He now lives a lonely life, with simplicity as the dominant motif, and gives the world permanent records of Survival by drawing the dead people who constantly present themselves to his vision.  In the early days of his mediumship, he received sitters, who always came anonymously, after they had made appointments through Spiritualist societies.  Now the usual method is for a prospective sitter to telephone him and for Leah to begin sketching a dead relative who is connected with the telephone caller, even though no names are mentioned.  While he is making the sketch, Leah gives a running commentary of evidence from the spirit communicator, so that recognition is complete even before the sitter has seen the portrait.

The sitter is then asked to visit Leah in his London studio.  When he arrives he finds, in many cases, that the drawing has been completed.  The artist may have asked the sitter to bring a photograph so that a comparison could be made.

On many occasions, Leah has foreknowledge of the telephone call.  He awakens to see a spirit face in front of him.  By clairaudience, he is able to maintain a conversation with the other-world visitor and glean information as to who he is and why he has returned.


. . . He feels the torture of every illness, sickness, disease, all the pains from which the dead suffered before being finally freed from earth.  They will often impress on him, for the purpose of identification, incidents connected with their lives ten, twenty, thirty and forty years ago.  Occasionally, these incidents are given in remarkable detail.  A woman once showed herself wearing the dress in which she was presented to Queen Victoria.  The artist saw the whole court scene, thronged with its eager attendants.

Leah maintains that there is nothing ghostly or eerie about these spirit visitors.  He does not see them as phantoms, wraths or transparent figures.  They look solid.  They are alive and intensely vital.  He can walk round them as though they were living persons on earth, just as if they were models posing for  an artist.  They will stand still while he takes a note of their shape, proportions and any other identifiable details.

When they are experienced communicators, they show themselves very clearly.  Leah is able to see every line and wrinkle, the colour of the eyes and hair, and even to notice individual characteristics, such as a mole or a broken tooth.  Usually, they give the kind of information about themselves that produces speedy recognition, unusual names, the towns in which they lived and their professions.

He is not in trance when he executes these drawings.  He is quite normal.  The outstanding feature is the speed with which they are done.  Once, he finished a complete drawing in nine seconds.  Thirty seconds is fairly common when dealing with good communicators, and generally the time taken is from three to five minutes.

The drawings are always life-size.  They are done in daylight in his studio, but occasionally he has made a sketch on top of a London bus.

Recently, when Mrs. Margaret Lyon, the Glasgow healer, visited London, I suggested that she should telephone Leah in the hope of obtaining a drawing of her guide, Kahesdee, who has been instrumental in helping so many sufferers.  She called Lead at his flat, but there was no reply.  The next day, she telephoned him again.  They had never met.  All that he could have known, from the ordinary point of view, was that the person speaking at the other end of the line was a woman with a Scottish accent.  She deliberately refrained from giving any name.

"Are you seeking a guide or a relative?" he asked.  She answered that she left it entirely to him as to who manifested.  The evidence came in a stream.  Leah described the three guides who work with Mrs. Lyon and laid stress on the last, her Japanese woman doctor.  He described her appearance and age, saying at first that she was an Oriental and finally mentioning the correct nationality.  That did not complete the story.  He went on to tell Mrs. Lyon that her husband was standing beside her.  This was true.  Next came the artists' statement that the dead father of the husband had now shown himself and that Leah was making a sketch of him.  An appointment was made for Mr. and Mrs. Lyon to see Leah the next day.  When they arrived, they were confronted by two portraits—her beloved Japanese guide and his dead father.

In one case that I know, Leah made seven portraits of a communicator, ranging from his early childhood to his old age.  By an extraordinary chance, the family were able to find seven photographs which compared with the artist's portraits.

Here is another example of the accuracy of Leah's mediumship.  Before one sitting, Leah's studio was filled with the pungent odour of cigar smoke.  The smell was so strong and  persistent that others who came in afterwards asked, "Who has been smoking cigars?"

Leah appreciated the significance of this happening.  It meant that when the communicator lived on earth he must have been constantly smoking cigars.  Turning to a woman visitor who had come anonymously, Leah said, "That's your husband."  Next, the artists saw, in a vision, the man driving a car, with his wife by his side.  Then something happened quickly.  The husband was flung through the windscreen on to what appeared to be a bank and was killed outright.  "That is how my husband passed on," the woman said.  The communicator insisted that Leah should draw a caricature of him with a cigar in his mouth before he would allow a serious portrait to be made.  Clairvoyantly, the artist was taken away from the seance room until he found himself in familiar surroundings.

"I know that place," he said.  "It's Daly's Theatre . . . I am in the orchestra . . . I am conducting. . . . That was his job."  Here the medium raised his hands as if they held a baton and went through the motions of conducting an orchestra.  Next, he was able to tell the woman the exact date of her husband's passing.  Finally, he did a serious drawing in contrast to the caricature.

"Everything you have told me is quite correct," said the delighted woman.  "My husband, Thomas N. Turnbridge, was the conductor at Daly's Theatre under the management of George Edwardes."

Leah's communicators have included people of many nationalities.  I remember seeing the psychic drawing of a Persian Moslem who gave his name in Persian and, to indicate that he was a follower of Mahomet, referred to Mecca.  Further, he gave the name of the town of Kierbeleh, near Baghdad, where his body was buried.  After showing himself as he usually looked on earth, he depicted his likeness during the illness he endured before his passing, showing even the icebag he had on his head.

I was instrumental in being the means by which a mother received great comfort when Leah drew her six-year-old child.  The girl, Shirley Ann Woods, suffered from a rare disease which defied all medical skill.  When she passed on, her parents were stricken with grief.


When I was introduced to Mrs. Woods, we had a discussion on Spiritualism, which resulted in her determination to inquire for herself.  She began very wisely by reading psychic literature and soon, at a series of seances, she received sufficient evidence from her child to assure her that Survival was a fact.  All the time, her husband, with his mathematical brain, coldly analysed all the evidence, acting as a restraining influence, so that his wife should be certain there was no alternative explanation.

At my suggestion she telephoned Leah without disclosing her name.  He told her at once that she sought a portrait of her child.  He gave a perfect description of Shirley Ann, commenting on her character, appearance, hair and complexion.  By the time the artist had finished, the mother was convinced that Leah was really looking at her dead daughter.  Later, when she called at his studio, she was overjoyed with the splendid likeness of her daughter which he had portrayed.

This is one of those rare cases where there was no comparative photograph, for the mother did not possess a picture taken at the age at which Shirley Ann showed herself to the artist.  Mrs. Woods asked her husband to call at the studio, and he too was impressed by the portrait.  In his presence, Leah did a second portrait with added details of the daughter's appearance.  In both drawings the child was shown wearing a plaid frock.  Later, Mr. and Mrs. Woods actually showed me this frock, which they had kept.

The sequel to the story is that not long afterwards Mrs. Woods had a sitting with Estelle Roberts and through this medium the child referred to the portraits Leah had done.  As the mother had not mentioned this fact to Estelle, it was a striking confirmation.

In one or two cases, Leah has not only made portraits, but has exhibited his skill as a sculptor by modelling a bust of the communicator.  The most recent development is for him to complete the psychic portrait in colour, which, of course, enables the sitters to have a permanent, life-like reproduction.


Leah is at pains to make it clear that he depends on the co-operation of the communicators.  He cannot command them to appear.  A wealthy widow, who was very anxious to have  an oil painting of her deceased husband, offered him a commission of six hundred guineas.  Nothing would have pleased Leah more than to accept it, but the husband refused to show himself, although he did not mind talking to the artist.  Because he detested it, he had always refused to be photographed.

An example of Frank Leah's work is included at the end of the blog article "Excerpts from There Is Life After Death".  A previous article mentioning Coral Polge is "Some Recordings of Channeling".  Considering the diverse range of phenomena witnessed in mediumship cases, one series of seances held where artistic renderings of people were materialized is the topic of the article "Phenomena of Materialization".

 Coral Polge: "1978—Receiving the Spiritualist of the Year Award."

 

In Coral Polge's autobiography originally entitled The Living Image, the story of her life is told.  After two childhood 'out-of-body' experiences and learning that her mother's arthritis was helped by a spiritual healer, Coral attended a Spiritualist Church service and was startled when the medium came to her and said, "Do you know you are a psychic artist?"  Upon further investigation, the initial stage of Coral's psychic mediumship encompassed automatic writing that gave her instructions for her future work.

After the automatic writing came automatic drawing.  At first it was not even drawing, but a series of lines, circles, waves, and funny meaningless shapes.  It gradually became obvious that my spirit communicators were trying to get the "feel" of a material channel, rather as a child has to learn to hold and manipulate a pencil.  At that stage their creations were not meant to make sense.  Gradually, understandable images began to emerge, even though they were not brilliantly artistic.  One was a portrait of Yo San, the Chinese artist who professed to be working with me.

'Yo San Loo' was "doorkeeper" (1, 2, 3) among a succession of 'guides' identified during the course of her career.  Early in this sequence of events, 'Tommaso di Giovanni' is described as being "one of several artists who, over the years, have been willing to return to guide my hand and eventually produce some 2,000 to 3,000 pictures each year."  Coral explained further:

These artists seem to come and go, some only working on one or two portraits while others remain constant helpers.  They do not take complete control of my hand, possibly using my mind in some subtle way , and so influencing the choice of colour and positioning of line.

My most frequent helper now is the French pastel portrait artist, Maurice de la Tour, who began to make his presence felt some twenty years ago.  Being a critical man he had obviously delayed using me until my own abilities had considerably improved.  Over a period of several years other mediums had described this Frenchman, dressed in 18th century style, with wig and lace ruffles.  Eventually I managed to sketch a portrait of him, but at that time I had still only established that his Christian name was Maurice.  No further information was known.  Shortly afterwards a book came into my hands, apparently quite by chance, and there among the illustrations was a self-portrait of the laughing-eyed Frenchman.  He was instantly recognizable as "my" Maurice, and there too was the rest of his name; he was Maurice de la Tour. 

Coral mentioned that her husband Arthur attended a Leslie Flint Direct Voice seance and the voice of 'Maurice de la Tour' was heard to affirm an involvement with her work.
 
Considering the gamut of mediumship cases (profiled in many preceding blog articles), one should understand that it is the omnipresent spiritual Force comprehensible through such terms as 'God' and 'Christ Consciousness' that determines the 'guardian angels'/'controls' or 'guides' for each person during an Earth incarnation.

"Two portraits drawn for Kay Hunter, who immediately recognised her father, and her maternal grandmother, Jessie Monteith Traynor.  Their photographs are also shown."

 

In her autobiography Coral Polge wrote about the early stage of her artistry and about her awareness of Frank Leah.

Among the automatic writings was a statement to the effect that one day I would take Frank Leah's place in Spiritualism.  Leah was a brilliant portrait artist and psychic.  Most of his portraits were of relatives and friends of his sitters—far more evidential than anything I was producing at that time.  But one day perhaps . . . I thought hopefully.


In the meantime I was only drawing spirit guides.  Wondering why it was only Spiritualists and not other religions which seemed to have guides, I came to the conclusion that it was all a question of labels.  "Guardian angels" seems to be a Christian term . . .


In time, instructions were given by my communicators to begin work in public, requesting a group of spiritual healers at the local church to sit for me.  This, I was informed, would bring in further work, but under no circumstances was advertising allowed. "If the work is not coming to you, then it is not of the standard expected," I was told.  They were, as always, blunt and to the point in their wisdom.  As promised, requests for pictures began to snowball, setting me on a path which was to change my whole way of life.

Coral attended a public demonstration by Frank Leah in 1957, about five or six years after beginning her own psychic work.

. . . he had made his preliminary contacts with recipients by telephone, gaining impressions simply from the voice, and making quick sketches.  He took these pictures to the hall where the demonstration was held, and finished off the portraits on the platform.  The accuracy of his work was extraordinary and I had a great admiration for him.  It was therefore a great thrill when I was introduced to him by journalist Bill Leach, and invited to his studio.  His advice was that if I studied a lot more, I might eventually make the grade, and to have encouragement of this kind from the great man was something I valued greatly.

Coral commented about her mental state while creating a psychic drawing:

Although working with a spirit artist who helps me to portray these people, to a large extent I have to be very aware of the person being drawn.  I must feel like them and almost become them, putting down that impression.  When the picture is accurate there is a sense of looking in a mirror, the portrait reflecting back to me what I am actually feeling.  I can sense the structure of the face over my own, and can share the subject's character and personality, sometimes even experiencing the conditions under which they pass to the spirit world.

Coral regularly worked in tandem with other mediums — "While I drew, another medium would give clairvoyance, linking the picture with the recipient."  When Coral appeared at the huge Albert Hall, an overhead projector was utilized with Coral successfully implementing a fine felt-tipped pen on "a slippery sheet of plastic."  The pen was indelible so no mistake could be made.

Coral reported that her clients didn't always receive a picture of the person they wanted.  There were many "unknown pictures, identified later by relatives or friends . . . A recent portrait proved to be the sitter's step-daughter's husband's father, whom my client had never meant.  Telepathy [merely between client and Coral] would mean far more satisfied clients; they would get whom they wished for, but that is not usually the case."

. . . portraits have often taken long and devious routes before finding the correct recipient.  It is quite extraordinary how in most instances they eventually reach the right destination, perhaps having been unrecognized for months or even years.  One portrait took fifteen years before it was positively identified.  And it happened in a way which makes one wonder whether there is any such thing as coincidence.

The autobiography recounts a diverse variety of psychic experiences related to Coral's artistic renderings while interacting with the public.  Coral's first publicity in the national English press occurred when Maurice Barbanell decided to feature one of her drawings in an article for Illustrated, a popular weekly magazine.  She found the attention "flattering and exciting" and she wrote: "I was not prepared for the repercussions.  Letters began to flood in from all parts of the country, even from overseas."

In 1964, Coral married spiritual healer Tom Johanson "who was connected with a spiritual centre which he was eventually to run, the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain in Belgrave Square in London."  [The Association had formerly been located at Russell Square in Holborn.]

Examples of the art of Coral Polge may be seen at tomjohanson.com among other websites.  In the video "Coral Polge - Psychic Art" she is heard to declare: "The important part of mediumship, as I see it, is purely to introduce people to something far more advanced, far more spiritual . . . As we come to the end of this age into the Aquarian Age—an age of change and new beginnings—then we shall all begin to develop that hidden talent within us and people like myself will be unnecessary.  And if we follow our path wisely and well, then we shall all be our own medium."
  

A Medium Whose Work was 'Beyond Belief' Among People Ignorant about Spiritualism

These photographs show entranced medium Margery Crandon with ectoplasm materializing.  (more photos)

Margery Crandon (1888-1941) is one of the renowned mediums who became an acquaintance of Spiritualist journalist Maurice Barbanell (1902-1981).  She is the subject of a chapter in Power of the Spirit, his 1949 memoir about the diverse manifestations associated with Spiritualism that he'd personally witnessed.  Arthur Conan Doyle in his autobiography The Edge of the Unknown (1930) referred to the phenomena occurring in the presence of Margery as being "perhaps the best attested in the whole annals of psychical research."  Upon writing about Margery's passing, Maurice described her as "the eighth wonder of the world."  He reminisced in Power of the Spirit:

When my wife and I were her guests, at her Boston home and her seaside cottage not far away, we witnessed the extraordinary range and versatility of her mediumship for which, during the whole of her psychic career, she never charged a penny.

Though she was the centre of world-wide controversy and had many calumniators, Margery refused to speak ill of her opponents.  One test arranged for my wife and me was a striking one, but so that you should appreciate it I would like to supply the background.

Margery's interest in Spiritualism was aroused when her husband, a medical man of distinction, read the experiments in physical mediumship conducted by Professor Crawford at Belfast.  Crandon was so intrigued that he wondered whether he could obtain similar results in his own home.  At a series of regular sittings, he discovered that his wife was the medium.  The first to communicate was her Canadian brother, Walter Stinson, who was killed in a railway accident.  After Walter had proved his survival in ways that left no doubt of identity he became the presiding spirit genius at all his sister's seances.

First, they had elementary psychic phenomena—rappings and movements of the table.  Later, there came trance and direct voice, apports, the production of ectoplasm, materialisation, the passing of matter through matter, spirit writing in foreign languages and cross-correspondence—by this means messages given in part to different circles, separated by many miles, formed a sequential communication when pieced together.  It was a cross-correspondence test in which I took part.

Through the years, the evidence for Survival accumulated until one day Walter said, "What more proof do you require?"  They told him that fingerprints were considered indisputable proof of identity.  Walter asked them to provide wax and hot water in the seance room, and thumbprints which he said belonged to him began to arrive.  They were able to check these with part of Walter's thumbprint found on a razor he has used shortly before his death.

Not satisfied, Walter introduced variations.  At first the thumbprints were positive, which is the normal result.  Then came negative thumbprints, which meant that the ridges became indentations and the indentations became ridges.

The next stage was to produce negative thumbprints which were both convex and concave.  Walter complicated matters with mirror thumbprints, so that while they corresponded with the others, ridge for ridge, they were reversed.  All these thumbprints, which he produced one hundred and thirty-one times—when enlarged they showed perfect details of normal skin anatomy, sweat glands and characteristic loops and whorls—were confirmed by Government or police officials in Washington, Boston, Munich, Vienna and Scotland Yard.

Maurice reminded that the thumbprints among other phenomenal fingerprints were taken under rigidly controlled conditions and Margery "endured it all without complaint."  Shown above is one of the photographs too unexpected for belief among people who knew nothing about the phenomena of Spiritualism (encompassing materialized people and 'simulacrums' 1, 2) during the 20th Century.  Formed from ectoplasm, a materialized hand is seen making a print in dental wax.

Maurice Barbanell observed about Margery Crandon:

Her home at 10, Lime Street, Boston, became the most famous address in Spiritualism.  She gave seances to scientists whose names were world-famous.  Conjurers, lawyers, doctors, authors, clergymen and psychic researchers of all kinds were the guests of the Crandons.  Dozens of books were written about her mediumship.  In thousands of newspapers and magazines, millions of words appeared discussing her psychic powers.  Her seance room became a battlefield, and its happenings caused heated debates, controversies, disputes and arguments.  Some psychic researchers who came as friends and guests repaid their hospitality with vitriolic attacks.  Still, the Crandons made many friends—and many enemies, for they were guilty of the unforgivable sin of upsetting orthodox notions in science and religion.

In their study I saw some signed portraits.  "To Margery in gratitude and appreciation," was the inscription under the picture of Sir Oliver Lodge.  "Two splendid fighters for truth," was the tribute on the photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife.  Though, for many years Margery and her husband faced hostility, ridicule and antagonism, they remained calm, even when one opponent descended to such depths as describing their home as "a house of ill fame."  You must remember that they lived in priest-ridden Boston, where four-fifths of the population are Roman Catholics.

The Crandons, two modern martyrs, endured their persecution with smiling courtesy.  They would protest, if you spoke harshly of even their worst traducers.  I remember when I introduced Houdini's name, she replied, "He's my friend."  Yet Houdini vilified her all over the United States.  The first time he arrived in her home he said: "How do you do?  I am going to make five hundred thousand dollars out of this.  Think of the publicity I am going to get.  Why, you can get me front-page publicity every day.  I can't get it any more for myself."

When Margery repeated, "He's my friend," I reminded her of the occasion when Houdini secretly "planted" a ruler in the seance room so that when it was later discovered she would be accused of fraud.  She laughed and told me how, disguised in a blonde wig, she sat in the front row of Boston's largest hall to hear Houdini denounce her as "a fraud and a fake."

Crandon treated his wife's mediumship in a spirit of scientific detachment.  He was modest about her psychic achievements and asked that the name of Crandon should, as far as possible, be kept out of all references to his wife's mediumship.  In the talks I had with him he always referred to the mediumship of Margery, the name that was given to his wife—her own was Mina—in what seemed to be an impersonal manner.  The last time I met him, in London, he was going to pay a friendly call on some psychic researchers, whom he named.  I was surprised because they were among his traducers.

Crandon's attitude was to state the facts of the mediumship as impartially as he could and to leave others to draw their inferences from the facts.  On this occasion, he showed me three remarkable apports [materialized objects], one of them a large piece of amethyst in quartz formation.  It was nearly as big as a man's fist.  He told me, however, that he deliberately absented himself from the seance room when Walter promised the production of apports in case he might be regarded as a possible confederate.

Whenever another scientist who had come to inquire suggested a new test with specially devised apparatus to prevent the possibility of mal-observation, the Crandons agreed to its being used.  And always Walter triumphed, even under the most rigid conditions, in producing results.  When it was once suggested that his thumbprint resembled a living man's—this was not really an argument against the supernormality of his results but an allegation that fingerprints were not an infallible proof of identity—Walter's answer was to reproduce both his hands in wax.  Conan Doyle once returned through Margery's mediumship and autographed one of his books in writing that exactly matched his earthly signature.


Margery was a simple, honest woman, who could not cheat because trickery was foreign to her nature.  If you knew her you knew that fact.  The days I spent in her Boston home and seaside cottage are among my most treasured memories.

Walter suggested at an impromptu seance that we should have a test of cross-correspondence.  He asked Captain John W. Fife, head of Boston's naval dockyard, to select six people who were to choose a word or object the next night at 7 p.m.  Walter would then try to give this word to Margery and Sary Litzelman, another Boston medium who obtained her results by automatic writing.

Fife was starting the next morning on an automobile trip with his children.  He knew he would be motoring through New Hampshire, but he did not know where he would be at 7 p.m.  But he promised to find a group to select the word and to sign a statement telling what they had done.  Then Fife was to telephone French's Store at Royalston, about seventy miles from Boston, and give this word to them.

The next morning, Margery, my wife, and William H. Button, then president of the American Society for Psychical Research, left for Margery's country place, a collection of cabins in a forest, about a mile away from Royalston.  Sary Litzelman and her husband were staying there.  There was no telephone at this forest home.  For that reason, French's Store was chosen, it being the nearest place with a telephone.  I called and saw the manager, a man named Wilcox, and told him to take down any message he received soon after 7 p.m. and I would collect it.

At 7:10 p.m.. Margery sat in one cabin and Sary in another.  In the presence of Button, her Japanese servant and myself, Margery wrote "Water Melon."  Sary, in the presence of my wife, wrote the same words!  While she was writing, the Japanese servant was playing with Margery's dog, making him growl.  The medium told him to stop, but the distraction made no apparent difference to her writing.

I went by car to French's Store and collected from Wilcox the message he had received a few minutes earlier.  He handed me a sealed envelope.  Inside it I found the words "Water Melon" on a slip of paper.  All those who participated gave their signed testimony.

Button told me that these experiments succeeded only when mooted by Walter or conducted with his approval.  One interesting fact about Sary's mediumship is that her communications are received in mirror writing and you have to hold them to a looking glass before you can read them.

In Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science (1934), Nandor Fodor described investigation results of the manifesting phenomena during the 1920s.

At the end of 1923 Margery and Dr. Crandon visited Europe.  In Paris Margery sat for Dr. Geley, Professor Richet and others.  With the strictest control excellent phenomena were produced.  Still more successful was a seance before the S.P.R. in London.  Harry Price's famous fraud-proof table was, in white light, twice levitated to a height of six inches.  Other sittings at the British College of Psychic Science and psychic photographs obtained with Hope and Mrs. Deane established Margery's powerful mediumship without question.

Nandor Fodor commented about the Scientific American Committee in 1924:
 

. . . despite many striking and excellent demonstrations, the committee came to a deadlock and the only thing approaching a verdict was a series of individual statements published in the  November, 1924, issue of the Scientific American.  Carrington pronounced the mediumship genuine, Houdini fraudulent, Comstock wanted to see more, Prince said he had not seen enough and McDougall was non-committal.  Malcolm Bird, the secretary of the committee, was satisfied, after 10-12 sittings that the phenomena were genuine.


Another [second] Harvard Committee, with Dr. Sharpley, the astronomer, followed suit and precise conclusions were absent from the report of Dr. E. J. Dingwall (Proceedings, Vol. XXXVI) as well.  He had many sittings in January and February, 1925, in Boston.  He admitted that "phenomena occurred hitherto unrecorded in mediumistic history . . . the mediumship remains one of the most remarkable in the history of psychical research," but obsessed with fear of hoax and fraud he made strenuous efforts to throw doubt on his own observations . . .

Maurice Barbanell also reported details about witnessing "a demonstration of her ability to name correctly the denomination of playing cards that she could not see."  As the experiment progressed with impressive results, Maurice's wife was holding up the cards with only the backs of the cards seen by Margery.
 

Margery then announced with a smile that she would "switch the influence" to my wife.  While under this alleged influence, my wife succeeded in attaining a high degree of accuracy in naming unseen cards.

Considering this predicament, the beginning of a statement made by Maurice Barbanell in the Foreword of This Is Spiritualism (1959) provides the key to comprehending the essential insight made possible from all circumstances involving 'supernormal' phenomena:  "The happenings in the séance room are all pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that make a pattern . . . ."

Concerning Margery's simplicity and honesty, these traits are evidently shared by Maurice Barbanell and many others who have known the necessity of informing others about the significance of 'unexplained phenomena.'  Some of these individuals mentioned in previous articles at this blog include 'psychics'/'mediums'/'channelers' such as: Rosemary Brown, Edgar Cayce, Leslie Flint, Eileen Garrett, Helen Greaves, Marjorie Livingston, Ray Brown, Ryuho Okawa; and journalists/authors such as: John Dee, Donald Keyhoe, Meade Layne, Mark Macy, Matthew Manning, William Usborne Moore, Andrija Puharich, Arthur Shuttlewood, A.P. Sinnett.

Evolution of a Medium

Helen Hughes (1893-1967)

 

 

Maurice Barbanell's Power of the Spirit (1949) is the memoir of a journalist examining "psychic faculties" and diverse manifestations of "spirit power."  He'd attended many seances and public appearances of medium Helen Hughes.  Aspects of her mediumship encompassed clairvoyance/clairaudience and 'spirit communication' during trance (what today is called 'channeling').  There are also chapters about Helen in another edition of Maurice's remembrances, This Is Spiritualism (1959).  The following excerpts from the latter book describe incidents in her life in North East England that foreshadowed her becoming a medium.

Like most mediums, Helen Shepherd had psychic experiences as a child.  Because she was always "seeing things" her Methodist parents had secret fears about her sanity.  When she, the first of seven children of a bottle-finisher in a glass works, described her invisible playmates, she was scolded for indulging in "absurd fancies" . . .


No matter how many times she was reproved for "telling lies," Helen knew that she could see and hear real children, because she played with them.  Even at school she was punished for her visions.  Yet a number of other children shared one of her psychic experiences.

At the age of eleven she was going to morning school at Seaham Harbour.  Passing through a doorway, she was attracted by a child, unlike any of those attending the school, standing by the window inside her classroom.  Helen called about twelve other children and pointed to the figure by the window which, strangely, they all could see.  They decided that the child must have been accidentally locked inside the school.

The teacher approached the chattering crowd to ask the reason for their excitement.  They pointed to the window, but the child had disappeared.  Their explanations did not convince the teacher, who selected Helen as the "ringleader" of a practical joke.  As a punishment for "seeing a ghost," she made Helen stand by the same window where the vision had appeared.


About three years after the school incident, Helen had another strange psychic experience.  Playing with her friends in the street, she looked up in the sky and clearly saw the words, "Fever spreading."  This time none of the other children could see anything unusual.  When Helen's mother heard this latest story, she rebuked the child.  Yet three weeks later, Helen caught the fever.

Though soon afterwards Helen left school to start as an apprentice to a dressmaker, the visions and voices continued.  At the early age of eighteen, she married Thomas Hughes, a miner.  The responsibilities of a working woman's life, and the birth of three children in just under four years, seemed to force her psychic faculties into the background.  After the birth of her last baby she developed a severe spinal complaint, and became an invalid with no immediate help of recovery.

There followed the darkest days of her life.  Added to her constant pain was the growing fear caused by the return of the strange psychic happenings which began to make her doubt her own sanity.  There was no one to explain the simple fact that she was an undeveloped medium . . .


Helen Hughes had become so ill that she was expected to die.  Relatives and friends gathered for what seemed the inevitable end.  Instead, she found herself walking in a garden of dazzling beauty, profuse with flowers of all colours.  To her surprise she met an elderly woman friend whom she knew to be long since dead.  Excited by this reunion, they had a long discussion, in which Helen became conscious of a new lease of vigorous life in marked contrast to the miserable existence which had been her lot.

"After a few moments of conversation," Helen recalls, "I saw a flower that even in this garden of ineffable beauty seemed to outshine all in its brilliance of colour, and reached forward to caress it.  But I was restrained with the words, 'Not yet, you have work to do.'"

She awoke to find her relatives and friends bending anxiously over her.  Excitedly, she told them that she knew she was not going to die.  Outwardly, they agreed; inwardly, they doubted.  Her suffering was not over.  For two years she was unable to walk and had to use a bathchair.


. . . she began to hear the voices of people who she knew were long since dead, and she began to see them.

Encouraging her to walk, the voices became louder and were heard more often as Helen's health improved.  Other psychic phenomena experienced during this period were "knockings on the wall, and her bed would shake."  The "form of an unknown woman" made silent visits and Helen knew her visitor "was no longer in this world."  Helen and her husband moved to another cottage, expecting the haunting phenomena to cease yet "The phenomena were more insistent than ever."  Thomas Hughes began "seeing things" himself "when he perceived the unknown woman who had presented herself to his wife for many months."  A focal point for Helen's life changing was a visit from an "old roadman [vagabond] who had been working outside."  He was found to be "a spiritually enlightened wayfarer" that instructed her about Spiritualism and mediumship.

 

For six months, the roadman came to see her daily, encouraging her in every way he could.  Finally, he advised her to visit a Spiritualist church.  She received a message from the visiting clairvoyant, a complete stranger, who knew all about her psychic experiences and predicted that she would become a great medium herself.

Upon greeting the 'mystery woman' at her next appearance, Helen learned that she was the mother of Willie Ducker, who lived in the same village and had been declared missing while in military service.  The sequence of events involving the 'mystery woman' reached a climax the following day when Helen went to tell Willie's sister about the surprising turn of events.  When Helen arrived she was greeted with the news:
 

"Our Willie's been killed."  The tragedy had been conveyed to the sister in news brought only a few minutes before by the postman.

Maurice Barbanell wrote in the first chapter of This Is Spiritualism:  "The medium is, in effect, a human radio or television set.  He or she . . . is able to tune in to a world of activity that for the rest of mankind is invisible and inaudible . . . Mediumship comes into being when these innate psychic powers are developed in conscious co-operation with what are called spirit guides, who are qualified, because of their advanced evolutionary state, to act as tutors in spiritual matters."  Maurice mentioned about Helen Hughes: "Mackenzie King, when he was Prime Minister of Canada, always made a point of having a private séance with her whenever he visited Britain."

A chapter of Power of the Spirit includes Helen's descriptions of the sensations experienced by a trance medium and what occurred during sittings; along with perspectives of the purpose and meaning of this phenomena, as follows.
 

"During control," she says, "I am completely unconscious and am dependent on the testimony of my friends for knowledge of the phenomena that occur.  I am told there is a complete transformation of my personality.  Facts and proofs of Survival are given of which I could have no previous knowledge.  When controlled, my voice, gestures and pose of body alter and take on the characteristics of the controlling entity."

Though she is not entranced during demonstrations of public clairvoyance, Helen Hughes says that she experiences a modified form of control.  She appears to be doing everything of her own volition, yet she is aware of the stimulating action of psychic forces on her nerve centres.  This frequently accounts to a feeling of ecstasy, but she never loses consciousness.

The release from the trance state she likens to the feeling of awakening after sleep.


I have had many trance sittings with Helen Hughes, the most evidential being when they have taken place impromptu and not by pre-arrangement.  There are three regular communicators.  The first is White Feather, a dignified Indian with slow and deliberate speech.  "He is the philosopher, the teacher and the comforter," says Helen.  "Many hearts have been healed by his kindly words.  Tolerance and love are his greatest ideals.  He is the great moulding influence in my life."  Then there is Granny Anderson, a North Country woman with the distinctive dialect and idioms of that district, who never holds anything back.  Lastly there is Mazeeta, a "spiritual Peter Pan," she has been called, a disarming child who really is a child and not a secondary personality.  Her ideas, speech, mannerisms, spelling and writing are all those of a child.

A hard-bitten Northern journalist, after inquiring into Helen's mediumship, summarized his experience of her three guides by declaring: "I can only say that if you heard these three voices on your radio you would find it impossible to credit that they could come from one person.  If Mrs. Hughes is not a genuine trance medium, then she could make a fortune giving character impressions on the stage."

Each of these communicators brings different types of evidence at seances.  In addition, there is frequently direct control by your own loved ones or friends who have passed on.  [A blog article concerning such a predicament is "Raymond's Other Guides".]


Usually at a sitting with Helen Hughes, you have a succession of communicators, with the three guides speaking at the beginning and two of them returning at the end.  Granny contents herself with one communication only, but what she has to say is very much to the point.  Mazeeta takes a childish delight in giving evidence by writing, and her messages, which include the giving of names, are spelled phonetically.


The trance seances of Helen Hughes have been the means of bringing comfort to many bereaved people, particularly the relatives of the war dead.  I have met scores of these former mourners, whose lives have been transformed by psychic knowledge, during my travels up and down the country at the many meetings I have addressed with Helen Hughes.

Maurice wrote in This Is Spiritualism about her appearances when many people are gathered:

Her public displays of clairvoyance are always given at great speed and almost without pause.  Frequently she breaks off in the middle of one spirit message to start another from a communicator who has suddenly made himself visible or audible to her.  Knowing that the previous recipient will be disappointed at the thought that the message will not be completed, she provides reassurance by saying that she will return to it when she has successfully transmitted the new communication.


There is something in the voice of the recipient which is indicative to the medium.  At the beginning of the message more than one person may try to claim it.  I have noticed how eagerly Helen Hughes will listen to the would-be recipients and eliminate one of them by saying, "It is not your voice I want."

In a chapter of Power of the Spirit about Helen's public exhibitions, Maurice mentioned that at times a factor is "an unusual psychic gift of smell."

I heard her tell one person that the dead man she was describing was a chemist because she could smell a chemist's shop.  At another meeting, she added the evidence that the communicator liked a good smoke, and she was sure it was not a pipe.  She knew it was a cigar, she said, because she could smell it.


Audiences have laughed when she has said that the particular individual whose message she was transmitting liked his little drop of drink.  She knew because of her psychic sense of smell.


"In clairvoyance," she said, "I see a spirit form as naturally as if I were using the physical eyes.  I feel as though I am there and yet not there."

She added: "First, before I begin to demonstrate, I have to make myself completely passive.  I can tune in at any time and when I do so I can see with my spirit eyes and hear with my spirit ears.  It is something like opening or closing a door.  It is a power within myself which I can either open or close.  It is something within me that does the seeing and the hearing, something like an inner eye and an inner ear."


"I feel as if an electric force, which takes of something magnetic in nature, is at my feet, and, rising, flows through me.  When it is working well and is really strong, there seems to be something like a series of telegraph wires, a range of vibrations, along which comes the messages.

"After a time, the 'power' dies down.  I cannot pick up the vibrations easily, and then, as I am liable to become less accurate, I always have to stop.  One must never force this strange 'power,' for fear of inaccuracy, and also because it imposes a strain on the system."


"I actually hear the spirit voices sometimes speaking in my ear.  At other times I hear them in the region of my solar plexus.  The voices vary in clarity, some being as loud as ordinary physical voices and others whisperings or muffled tones."  [There is a parallel between these variations and what may be heard in audio recordings of Direct Voice Phenomena.  The range in manifesting speech is mentioned in the blog article "Leslie Flint's Life as a Direct Voice Medium".]


I asked her about the problem of when two or three people claim to recognize the same spirit message.  Usually, she said, a spirit light comes from the communicator and moves to the person for whom the message is intended.  When the light does not appear, and two or three people respond, the medium knows which one is the right one because when she hears the correct response from the audience something "clicks" within her.


She explained the fact that she breaks off one message to start another by saying that the voices often do not give her much time.  They are rapid and always break in.

When the spirit fails to make himself heard, then her guide has to step in, but that is never as effective as direct communication.


When she is giving clairvoyance, said Helen: "I see a spirit form as naturally as if I were using the physical eye.  I am not aware of any abnormal sensation until I begin to respond to the feelings or characteristics of the spirit that appears to me."

"But all these feelings seem to be under the control of my will.  That is, I can 'close up' or 'open out' at will.  If a sensation is too unpleasant I can 'switch it off.'  I can often get a clear understanding of the mission and message of the spirit by interpreting these sensations."

The mediumship often functions spontaneously in the street, on trains and elsewhere.  The dead people, she told me, can see her and they frequently greet her.  Usually this takes place in the morning rather than in the evening.  "The freshness of the morning somehow makes them easier to my vision," she added.  Frequently in railway carriages Helen has been faced with the problem of eager spirit communicators who show themselves clearly, converse with her, and then ask for messages to be given to one of the occupants of the compartment.  To break down the traditional British reserve and talk with a fellow passenger in a train is bad enough, but to pass on a spirit message to a complete stranger is to ask a rebuff.  Occasionally Helen has taken a chance and when she has transmitted the message it is almost invariably received with gratitude.

Another interesting fact is that in the streets she often sees spirit forms of dogs walking with their earthly owners.  Seldom, however, has she clairvoyantly seen cats out of  doors, although she has seen them sitting on people's laps in their own homes.  When she takes a walk in her village Helen is usually accompanied by the Alsatian who was her earthly friend for many years.

Maurice wrote in the Foreword of Power of the Spirit —
 

When death comes we "shuffle off our mortal coil," that is, we discard our physical body which has served its purpose and is returned to nature, which utilizes is elements for her own purposes.  But that is not the end of us.  Our consciousness persists.  We continue as complete individuals, with all our characteristics and idiosyncrasies, with the ability to love, to enjoy affection and friendship, with our memory intact and with a complete set of faculties expressly designed for use in the larger life that we now inhabit.