Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 1, 4/8 by Estelle Roberts

A medium, taking her place on a public platform, relies entirely upon her spirit friends, for without them she can do nothing. It is only at the ultimate moment before addressing her audience that she becomes aware whether or not her gift will manifest itself. No dress rehearsal, no prompter in the wings can help her.

She stands alone save only for her spirit communicators, and this was the first time I had been called upon to take the platform at the Queen’s Hall. It was the beginning of an important series of fortnightly meetings and a most significant moment in my career.

There can be no other explanation than that the Knight had come to show me I was not alone in my mission to spread the truth of survival after death – that the blazing red cross on his breast was symbolical of the crusade upon which I was setting out.

I had an ordinary schooling in the local council school, which I left at the age of fourteen. I had continued without a break to meet my spirit people. They now started to warn me of events, which afterwards came to pass. At such moments I would receive intensely strong impressions about future happenings, accompanied by the certain knowledge of how they would work out.

One day, shortly after my father’s death some years later, he returned in spirit form to my mother’s house. I can see him now, standing at the top of the stairs and speaking words which filled me with alarm. “My dear,” he said, “I am worried about Bella.”

Bella was my sister, and for the next two or three days I hugged my father’s words secretly to myself in a fever of worry and anxiety. On the fourth day the blow fell. Bella became ill – very ill – and for a time I was certain that her last earthy hours had come. Then to my intense relief she slowly began to recover and eventually was quite well again.

It was natural that my father should have been concerned for Bella’s well-being. It was no less natural, having regard for my tender age, and the circumstances of my father’s visit to me, that I should put the blackest, most dread interpretation on his words, and, as a result, I suffered needless agonies of suspense.

It seemed to me that there was a moral to be drawn from this experience, and that there was a lesson to be learned. That, at least, was how I looked at it. As a consequence, from that day to this, I have always guarded carefully against the slightest tendency to read more into the words which come to me from my voices than is intended, or, indeed, is strictly there.