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

I looked again at dear Hugh, recalling the happiness we had enjoyed together, and while I sat there I saw his spirit leave the body. It emerged from the back of his head and gradually moulded itself into an exact replica of his earthly body. It remained suspended about a foot above the body, lying in the same position, and attached to it by a cord to the head. Then the cord broke and the spirit form floated away, passing through the wall.

I went into the kitchen to get some water to wash his face and hands, and an astonishing sight met my eyes. All the wallpaper on one side of the twelve-foot room was hanging from the wall in strips. This, then, was the explanation of the rending noise, which I had heard as my husband died. It was the first physical manifestation of the spirit power I had experienced. I could not explain the occurrence, yet I intuitively understood its meaning. It was I believed a symbol of the rending of the veil.

I had no money to buy flowers, so I took the children to the Downs, where we gathered bunches of the little purple flowers which my husband had loved so well. All of us joined in weaving them into a wreath.

On three consecutive nights after he died, he called to me. On the third night I heard his voice say: “I need you. I want you to come to me.”
“But how?” I asked, distraught by grief. “By dying.”
“But, darling, I can’t do that,” I said. “There are the children to care for.”

He said no more. The stress of his passing after his long illness must have been great. It was natural that he should want me.

He appeared in the room once more before the burial. He said, as if in apology: “I did not understand. I do not need you now. What you have always told us is right. Here, all live on and cannot die. It is quite wonderful.”
Deeply moved, I said; “You live, and others live. It is the message I must tell the world.”