Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 5, 1/7 by Estelle Roberts
CHAPTER FIVE,
HAUNTING
Haunted houses and sometimes the furniture in them are of special interest to people sensitive to psychic emanations because of the immense energy that is nearly always present. Even people who are not normally receptive of psychic phenomena can often sense its presence, though they may not appreciate its source.
Tax them with it and they will tell you vaguely that it is “just a feeling” and will probably deny it if you suggest they are being influenced by the supernormal. Because of my mediumship a visit to one of these places is a fascinating experience. The emanations are so strong that they reveal scenes of unusual detail and crystal clarity.
Maurice Barbanell, one of the most experienced and best-informed psychic investigators, invited me to accompany him to the home of a woman who kept an antique shop in Hammersmith. I have no knowledge of antiques. As far as I was concerned the large, ornate bed we were shown on arrival might have been made in any country and in any century.
The only information offered was that the bed was haunted, and this I had no need to be told. As soon as I entered the room I was conscious of its sinister associations. So strongly did they reach out and flood my mind, that I was almost overwhelmed by the impressions I received.
Fragments of its history came flooding into me and I described them aloud without pause. It was, I said, a great estate and occupied the principal room of a medieval ducal chateau. I saw a man asleep in the bed, and watched him being stabbed while he slept.
The killer then ransacked the room in search of some papers, which I knew he would not find because they were concealed in a hollow leg of the bed. Failing in his search, the killer dragged the body from the bed and threw it into the moat.
This was the third murder to have been committed in this bed. The first victim had been poisoned and the second bludgeoned, the occupant’s head being smashed in so that blood had spurted over the bed-head.