Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 7, 12/16 by Estelle Roberts

They met twice a week in Firebrace’s flat and, as usual, a trumpet, not the musical instrument but a megaphone to intensify sounds, was placed in the circle. At first they were not very successful, but they knew they were making progress when they began to get short whisperings through the trumpet.

This was satisfactory as far as it went, but it also raised the intriguing question as to which was the medium. They were not kept long in suspense as one evening the trumpet began to move sharply about the room while the Firebraces were outside and only the Russian was present.

They continued to make progress until, to the Brigadier’s astonishment, through the trumpet came mention of Red Cloud’s name. The spirit voice said that Red Cloud had come to help until the Russian mediums guide had gained greater proficiency at using the trumpet.

This statement was rounded off by a chuckle which the Firebraces instantly recognized as Red Cloud’s distinctive laugh. From that evening onward, Red Cloud continued to visit the circle until it was broken up by the Firebrace’s return to England.

On the Firebraces’ first visit to me after their return home, Red Cloud volunteered a reference to their circle and its happenings in Latvia, giving further proof of supernormal knowledge at which I have never ceased to marvel.

The accounts I have given of events relating to a variety of people, some of them newcomers to Spiritualism, have been mostly solitary episodes for the purpose of illustrating one or another aspects of the subject.

But through these happenings were presented as isolated instances they were, as often as not, nothing of the sort, being either single links in a long chain of experience, or else the first link from which many others were later to lead. It is extremely rare that anyone making his first incursion into Spiritualism, and witnessing some psychic phenomenon, does not investigate more deeply.

Indeed, the very nature of Spiritualism insists that he should. In my experience, the more you know about psychic phenomena, the more you want to know. This opinion has been borne out by the scores of sitters who came to me knowing practically nothing and remained to make psychic study almost their life’s work.