Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 4, 5/12 by Estelle Roberts

Another piece of stone that was brought to me conjured up an impression of a medieval castle and a battle raging round it. Especially clear were the arrow-slits let into the massive walls. I told the man who had given it to me that this stone chipping had been taken from one of the slits. He confirmed this in detail, telling me that it had come from a castle in North Wales whose name I have forgotten. I remember only that it was reputed to be the birthplace of Prince Llewellyn of Wales.

On another occasion I took from a tray of some thirty objects, each labelled with a number so that the owner could identify their own possessions, a small cube of white marble about the size of a lump of sugar. I was at once able to identify the owner – whom I did not know – and told him that he habitually carried the marble in memory of his wife whose body was buried in Italy. The marble itself, I said, he had taken from the foot of the grave. Thus, verily, are sermons written in stones.

One day a heavy metal ball, obviously a cannon ball, was among the collection of articles presented for psychometry. On placing my hand on it, I had no difficulty in identifying the battle in which it had been used – the fight for Quebec on the Heights of Abraham in 1759.

Some time after the death of his first wife, Sir Hugo Cunliffe-Owen placed a ring in my hand. I was at once aware of a sense of tragedy attached to it. Indeed, it was more than tragedy – it was as though the ring bore a curse. Though I got no more detailed picture than this, I was repelled by the evil it emanated and said I would like to throw it into the sea. Sir Hugo then told me that the ring, which had belonged to his wife, was set with a stone taken from the tomb of Tutankhamen.

At one psychometrical sitting a strange thing occurred which impressed everybody who witnessed it. I had been handling a string of large beads which had no clasp. It was a cheap necklace, long enough to be slipped comfortably over the head. As I handed it back to the owner, I found one of the beads lying loose in my hand. I thought for a moment that I had broken the threads on which the beads were strung. But examination showed that the thread was as whole and unbroken as ever it had been.