Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 8, 7/10 by Estelle Roberts

The demonstration ended with an avalanche of a dozen or more apports gushing from the trumpet like water from a tap. Everyone present had been named and given an apport, but most remarkable of all was the unexplained manifestation of a piece of garnet on the bedside table of a women who had hoped to attend our meeting but had been prevented from doing so at the last minute.

On another occasion Red Cloud used a different technique to bring an apport to a sitter. It was the more remarkable in that it took place in broad daylight. In this instance the sitter was a woman doctor who regularly came from Bournemouth to sit with me,

not only from her own interest in Spiritualism but also to represent others who were unable to make the journey. Charles, she and I were at this séance. Red Cloud, controlling me as usual when I was in deep trance, talked to my visitor for some time. Suddenly he said, “Take the medium’s hands in yours.”

She did as she was bid. Red Cloud spoke again: “What do you see in them?”
“Nothing,” she replied, looking carefully at my hands and turning them over. “Nothing at all.”
“Close the fingers of her left hand till they are clenched in a tight fist. Now fold the fingers of the right hand round it.”

Again she followed instructions.
“Envelop the mediums hands within your own and wait.”
She sat clasping my two hands while Charles looked on, wondering what would happen next.

Suddenly she said excitedly: “There’s something hard in my hand. It’s getting bigger.”
“Be still,” Red Cloud admonished her. “Do not release your clasp.”
According to Charles, perhaps a full minute elapsed before Red Cloud spoke again. “Unclasp your hands,” he said.

She did so. There lying in the palm of her right hand was a circle of black onyx, the size of a halfpenny.
I have welcomed the serious investigator or the intelligent sceptic to my circles. The occasions when they have not gone away with a great deal to ponder have been rare indeed.

I recollect one sitting with particular satisfaction as it was held under test conditions principally for the benefit of one man. He was introduced to me as a specialist in mental disorders, but apart from that I knew nothing of him, nor where he came from.