Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 5, 6/7 by Estelle Roberts

“It was what is known as a psychic rod,” I told them. “Red Cloud says that such a rod may build up anywhere where there is a strong concentration of wickedness.”
“But there is no concentration of wickedness here,” they protested.

“No longer perhaps, but who knows what happened here before your coming?”
“ ‘The evil that men do lives after them. . .’” Somebody quoted.

“Precisely that,” I agreed. “I think that if you care to do a little research you may find that this house was the scene of some forgotten tragedy or other.”

“I’ll make it my business to find out,” said the Colonel. And he did. He quickly discovered that the house was built on the site of a bloody feud which, growing out of lust and hatred, had lived grimly on this spot. The story, however, has its happier note. The owners of the house have lived in peace of mind ever since, which for me is the crowning achievement.

On the few occasions I have related this story to friends, it has prompted the same questions:
“How is it that you are able to see things which are not there – at least, not in the physical sense? And, seeing them, why do you react to them as if they were solidly material?”

The answers are presumably that my mind is functioning on the astral plane of consciousness, a condition in which my visions are clear and sharp, just as if I were seeing them with my physical eyes.

Furthermore, the reactions and emotions they engender are no different from those produced by similar sights on the physical plane. My reaction to the psychic rod, for instance, was one of revulsion, indistinguishable from what I should have felt had it been a tangible, growing thing.

Shortly before the last war I witnessed a remarkable example of one man’s high sense of moral duty. I have since thought much about this episode and wondered, not too cynically, I hope, how many other men would have behaved as he did. In similar circumstances, would they not have taken the easy way out and destroyed the few pages of evidence that no one knew existed?