Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 2, 1/14 by Estelle Roberts

CHAPTER TWO,
THE COMING OF THE RED CLOUD

Hugh died in May 1919, three days after my thirtieth birthday.
Since the necessity for living by the sea had now gone, I decided to leave Hastings and went to settle with my three children in Hampton-on-Thames.

Although I had passed through much stress and grief during the twelve years of my marriage, our family life had been a happy and united one. And so it continued; the children, who were now reaching companionable age, bringing me great joy and consolation.

I never spoke to them of my spirit people, but inevitably they became aware that I possessed some special insight which they did not share nor could they understand. It became almost like a parlour game when I would predict for their amusement little unimportant things that were going to happen.

Sometimes I would startle them by telling them what they had done in my absence. I derived endless amusement from mystifying them, as children always love to be mystified, and they never tire of laying traps to catch me. One of their favourite games centred in an old-fashioned phonograph we owned, which had a large trumpet; the records were in the form of cylinders.

The children delighted to bring these cylinders to me, holding them behind their backs so that I could not see them, and test my powers of clairvoyance by demanding that I tell them the names of the particular cylinders they held. Nearly always I was right, but on the odd occasions when I was wrong, the cheers of triumph from the little ones rang joyously round the house.

Again I was faced with the task of supporting a family and I succeeded in getting work at the Sopwith factory in Kingston. My job was to sew the fabric on to the ailerons of airplane wings.
One day I was asked to sew a canvas boat, which was to be carried by Harry Hawker, Sopwith’s chief test pilot, on his attempt to fly the Atlantic.

In the course of sewing it I became more and more convinced that the boat would be put to the purpose for which it was intended. The feeling was so strong I told my friends about it, adding that it would be the means of saving Hawker’s life. Nobody paid much attention to my prediction, until it was fulfilled exactly as I had foreseen. Although it was unfortunate that Hawker’s bold attempt was unsuccessful, I was nevertheless happy that my sewing had stood the test.