Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 12, 6/13 by Estelle Roberts
Later he came again to my séance room and spoke this time in the direct voice. Dick was upset and his voice came with great difficulty. He was worried because of a claim that he had spoken through a medium at a public meeting. This, he said, was not so. He then asked that a message be given to his daughter,
urging her to go ahead with the plans for his memoirs, and giving the name of somebody who was opposed to their publication. He sent affectionate greetings to George Lansbury, adding that he and Lansbury’s son were firm friends. He rounded off what he had to say with the words, “God’s blessing be on you all.”
Dick spoke for no more than three minutes, yet during the brief time his command of the trumpet increased beyond belief. He began more haltingly, and with greater effort than any other spirit communicator the circle could recall, yet he finished almost eloquently.
Questioned on it, Red Cloud Replied: “He was anxious and distressed when he started, but these things passed with the delivery of his message.”
Among the twenty people in my Teddington séance room one evening was the well-known geographer, E. A. Reeves. For over fifty years Mr. Reeves was on the staff of the Royal Geographical Society. During the greater part of that time he was Map Curator and Instructor in Surveying to the Society.
In this capacity he had known the leaders of all the major expeditions of discovery to leave the shores of Britain during the first half of the century. Men like Scott, Shackleton, Fawcett, and Watkins had been his friends as, indeed, had been many other explorers and scientists.
Reeves, a frequent visitor to my séances, spent a great deal of time in the study and investigation of psychic phenomena, invariably making a thoughtful and intelligent contribution to each problem that arose. On the particular evening I have in mind, his brother, who had been drowned, nearly fifty years earlier, had just spoken to him, when another was sounded from the trumpet.
“This is Watkins, Mr. Reeves, Do you remember me?”
“Gino, my dear boy,” Reeves replied, taken aback by his unexpected visitor, “of course I do.”
“You know the story, I expect. I was drowned in the Arctic. I was out seal-hunting, went under the ice and that was that. Please tell Sir William I have spoken to you.” (Sir William was the current President of the Royal Geographical Society.)
Reeves knew the story only too well. Gino Watkins had led an expedition to Greenland, where his death occurred as the result of an accident. How it happened had not been definitely established. All that was known was that he had gone out alone in his kayak canoe and that the tiny craft had capsized.