Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 4, 11/12 by Estelle Roberts

The day of his enlightenment occurred during the war when he came home on a week-end leave from the Royal Air Force, bringing a young woman with him. He had told her I was a medium and she, never having come into contact with the occult before, was eager to learn what it was all about.

In this she got no encouragement from Terry, who was almost belligerent in his antipathy to Spiritualism. She persisted in her questions until Terry, with such good grace as he could muster, offered to take her to a public meeting that evening. But, of course, he had forgotten it was wartime and that public Spiritualist meetings were few and far between.

As we sat quietly round the fire after dinner, my thoughts were preoccupied with this strange resistance by Terry to convictions so firmly held by other members of my family. I knew sooner or later he would change his views and under normal circumstances I should not have been concerned. But this was different.

It was wartime; air raids were almost a nightly occurrence; none of us knew from day to day whether we should live to see the next. I felt I would suffer remorse if Terry or this pleasant-faced girl should pass into the next life ignorant of the knowledge I had to give them.

And so, breaking the habit of a lifetime by offering to demonstrate my powers uninvited, I said: “If you like, I’ll give the pair of you a little demonstration of what Spiritualism can do. There’s a friend of yours standing beside you now, Terry.”

“Is there?” Terry replied, humouring me, “what’s his name?”
He says his name is Jimmy Macfarlane. Do you know a Jimmy Macfarlane?”
“Yes I do. Is he dead?”

“He was killed nearly a year ago. Tell me why he keeps calling you Toady?”
“Toady? Good Lord, I haven’t been called that for years! It goes back to when I was a kid at school and kept some toads as pets. Do you mean to say that you can actually hear Mac calling me Toady?”

For the first time in his life Terry was half convinced by my spirit voices.
“How else would I know?” I asked him. “A mother does not invent such an unpleasant name for her son.”