Year: 2021

CHAPTER EIGHT,MATERIALIZATION AND APPORTS While I was living at Teddington we arranged a special direct-voice sitting in appreciation of the long service given to the circle by one of our members. It was an important occasion to each one of us as the sitting had been organized in collaboration with Red Cloud and we had reason to believe he might show himself. Our circle comprised nine people, all of considerable psychic experience. The proceedings began with the trumpet becoming most lively, circling the sitters and touching first one and then…

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Two years prior to this, Red Cloud had bewildered Margaret and me by speaking of a highly evolved spirit being who was helping Sir John and who had first been in touch with him many years previously in India. Time after time he spelled out the name, but for some reason I could never get beyond the first six letters – MAHAMO. Six more letters followed these but, try as I would, I could not get them. The first six letters, however, were sufficient for Sir John; he knew the…

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It was in 1954 that Sir John came to see me for the first and only time. Even then he was an old man, unable to get about as he could have wished. Ever since it has been his daughter, Margaret, who has come in his stead. Many times she has visited my house and carried back messages from Curzon to her father. The occasion of Sir John’s solitary visit was a memorable one. The sitting began inauspiciously enough until I mentioned the name, Curzon of Kedleston. Instantly Sir John…

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“I learned that Estelle was a healer and eagerly asked her if she would treat a friend whose spine had been injured five years previously. She readily agreed though the doctors said the injury was incurable and the unhappy girl was resigned to spending the rest of her life in a spinal jacket. Estelle gave her healing, and for six months there was no apparent change. Then, quite suddenly, there was some improvement, and we dared to hope again. The improvement, once started, advanced apace. In a matter of weeks…

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One such was a headmaster of a large boy’s school, a man with a critical, well-trained mind. He first visited me about six years ago, seven months after his world had collapsed when his wife and younger son, Roger, were killed in a flood disaster. He knew no more of Spiritualism than he had read in the popular press, and was almost aggressively sceptical of it, though out of courtesy for me he tried to conceal it. He came partly out of curiosity, but principally because friends had urged him…

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Normally I make a practice of deliberately trying to erase from my mind as soon as my sitter has left whatever messages may have passed. After all, such messages, being personal to my sitter and the communicator, are no concern of mine. For this reason I often don’t remember from one week to another what has transpired. On the whole, the cultivation of this “professional absence of memory” works very well, but it can occasionally be embarrassing as when the sitter, who has probably spent the whole week pondering the…

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After the sitting the Dudleys opened the envelope and studied its contents, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. They also showed me a photograph of their mother. There could be no doubt that the spirit figure I had seen was the same person, though she had appeared younger and more beautiful. Occasionally a medium is granted the satisfaction of a crosscheck on the evidence given which becomes more impressive and convincing as proof piles on proof. A remarkable instance of this was set in motion when a woman telephoned my home…

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I always remember with pleasure an occasion when Mr. Ewart Dudley, whom I knew well from his regular visits for healing, brought his sister to my house for a séance. It was a particularly satisfying meeting because, unknown to me, my two sitters had prepared for it carefully and intelligently and the results were gratifyingly convincing. The sitting began unremarkably enough. One or two relatives came with short spirit messages and were at once recognized by the brother and sister. Then I said: “Ah, here comes someone rather special; she…

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I must confess that although under the Act, as it stood, I could have been arrested as a rogue or vagabond, I had been neither deterred nor frightened by the thought of such a happening. My family rested a little more peacefully after the amendment, however, because it was customary for Hannen Swaffer, when on the same platform, to challenge the Police generally on duty at the rear of the Hall, because of the large audiences, to arrest me. There was no longer the need for them to carry my…

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These two Acts, which had the effect of making séances illegal and denying religious freedom to Spiritualists, were still on the State Book at the end of the Second World War. A campaign to repeal the sections which affected mediums began to gather momentum, and a vigorous attempt was made to end this archaic legislation. A Spiritualist Member of Parliament, Mr. T. J. Books, invited me to attend the first of a series of all-party dinners in the House of Commons, the purpose of the gatherings being to enlist the…

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I opened the meeting with a flat denial of Red Cloud’s “vindication” rumour. Red Cloud, I reminded my audience, was a spiritual teacher and unconcerned with my material affairs, however distasteful they may be to me. In saying this, however, I was not entirely right. At this meeting Red Cloud delivered one of his lectures, speaking, as always, through me after I had been entranced. The trance address lasted some thirty minutes and when it was over he turned briefly to the subject of my recent sufferings. Speaking of the…

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