Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 8, 3/10 by Estelle Roberts

It did not take long for the materialization to begin. The two luminous plaques were lifted by invisible hands from the floor. Soon there could be seen between them the silhouette of a face. It was Red Cloud.
‘John,’ he said, calling me by the nickname he gave me years ago, ‘come forward.’ I felt my seat and stood within three or four inches of the cabinet opening.

‘Give me your hand,’ I was told. A masculine hand – certainly not that of Estelle – grasped mine.
‘Feel my hair!’ said Red Cloud. I did so. It was long and silky and reached almost to where his shoulders would be. This was extraordinary, because Estelle’s hair is crisp and wiry and inclined to be crinkly.

Standing so close to him, I could see the beard on his fine, oval face. When I told him, he asked me to feel that also. I did. It was a short beard, soft and silky in texture.
‘It is very soft hair,’ I said. One other person had this privilege, Mrs. Constance Treloar, who felt Red Cloud’s hair and beard. ‘This is known as bearding the guides,’ I said jokingly. Red Cloud laughed.

At least six times I left my seat and stood very close to the materialized form of Red Cloud. Twice, to show himself as clearly as he could, he arranged for the light of the red torch to be focused on his face. It was a handsome face, with eloquent eyes. I could see the ectoplasm which was draped round his figure. His height I judged to be several inches taller than that of his medium.

Here was a ‘miracle’ – a materialization of a ‘dead’ man who could move and speak who had life and volition. Incidentally, the voice that came through his moving lips was a little softer than I have usually heard it, but it was undoubtedly the voice of Red Cloud as I have often heard it through his entranced medium and through the trumpet at his direct voice séances.

Then the guide invited all the sitters to file past the cabinet so that they could see his face. He held the two luminous plaques quite still for almost two minutes, as far as I could judge, while, one by one, the sitters went to the cabinet and filed past.

Shortly afterwards, we all saw an extraordinary spectacle. The curtains of the cabinet were slowly parted. At one end, there stood a materialized figure, holding the red torch which illuminated another materialization, dazzling white in appearance. To me, the illuminated figure seemed to be seated.