Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 7, 4/16 by Estelle Roberts

It was at one of these “overflow” meetings that Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair received convincing proof of her husband’s survival. As a result, she became an enthusiastic Spiritualist.

When, at the age of eighty-four, she joined the House of Red Cloud, she thought nothing of flying back from Paris expressly to attend my direct-voice séances. During his earthly life the Marquis had been deeply interested in Red Cloud’s teaching, and had actually passed into the next world while peacefully reading one of his guide’s lectures.

At another of these meetings a man received abundant evidence of his wife’s survival from the messages I transmitted to him. He acknowledged the truth of all that I told him until I spoke of flowers being placed in his wife’s coffin.

At this the husband explained, “What a pity you said that, Mrs. Roberts, because no flowers were put in the coffin!”
“It was not I who said it,” I reminded him. “It was your wife who was speaking.”

But, he insisted, he was quite certain no flowers had been placed inside the coffin, and emphasized that he was in a better position to know than I was.

However, he was on the telephone to me the next day. When he repeated the messages on his arrival at home, his daughter had told him what he had not previously known – that she had enclosed a little posy for her mother in the last few moments before the coffin was sealed. It was generous of the man to confess his error so readily.

Spiritualism is a subject which consistently interests the Press. Several national newspapers have conducted investigations and invited my collaboration. I have always been willing to cooperate and have invariably found them to be considerate and fair in their reports.

I well remember Mr. Hugh Cudlipp, then Editor of the Sunday Pictorial, coming to take his place at one of a series of public meetings his paper had organized. A few hours earlier he had suffered a great bereavement, caused by his wife dying in childbirth. But he appeared in his place nevertheless, and stressed that nothing should be said about this tragedy, thereby earning my gratitude and admiration.