Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 9, 2/10 by Estelle Roberts

Many times I have been asked what are the sensations of the deep trance state. It is a question I have never found easy to answer, any more than it is possible to describe the sensations of sleep. I sit in my chair, relaxed yet with a strong awareness of what is about to occur.

What happens next can best be likened to the effects of an anaesthetic. From full consciousness there comes a brief period of light-headedness during which I hover between consciousness and oblivion. This is the moment when the spirit is being withdrawn from the body and is marked by particularly heavy breathing – followed by heavy, dreamless sleep.

While I am deeply entranced I am conscious of nothing. The spirit forms I see clairvoyantly and the spirit voices I hear clairaudiently, the constant companions of my waking hours, are suddenly no more. I see nothing, hear nothing and, in demonstration of direct voice, say nothing.

I sit in my chair as if in a drugged sleep and only return to consciousness when my guide and his spirit doctors decided that I shall do so. They usually awaken me after a period of up to ninety minutes. I return to the material world, physically and mentally tired but anxious to be told what has taken place in my absence.

Entrancement is not necessarily essential to the successful demonstration of the direct voice. There are a number of mediums, notably in the United States of America, who regularly hold direct voice séances while remaining fully conscious of all that is going on, but I am not one of them.

My demonstrations of direct voice have always occurred while I was in trance and, with one exception, all have been held in private, though there were often as many as sixty sitters present. My one public demonstration of this phenomenon was the Kingsway Hall in London and is described elsewhere in this book.

I have, of course, often been entranced at public meetings when Red Cloud wished to deliver a lecture, but such occasions were “trance addressed” in which Red Cloud spoke through me and not by the direct voice entailing the use of the trumpet. These lectures, which were often beyond my understanding, were avidly studied when transcribed by many of the outstanding philosophical and scientific brains in the country, and were frequently highly praised.

A remarkable feature was the speed at which they were delivered. Even the most expert shorthand writers had difficulty in keeping pace, and then could do so only for a few minutes at a time. Because of this we sometimes had as many as four shorthand writers working in relays in order to ensure that no word was missed.

In the pages which follow I describe some of the more outstanding séances at which I was deeply entranced. But, of course, I am unable to do so from personal recollection. For my information I am indebted to the descriptions by the persons who sat with me, to the notes of the short hand writers who were invariably present at my direct voice demonstrations, and to contemporary accounts which found their way regularly into both the national and psychic press.