Year: 2021

That was not my only experience in last week’s investigations, although after that almost incredible sitting with Mrs. Roberts, the others pale away in my memory . . .I had a séance with another medium, Lilian Bailey. To her I took another bereaved mother from Birmingham, Mrs. Ethel Wright. Mrs. Wright lost her five-year-old daughter nine months ago – and the medium told her that the child died ten months ago.Mrs. Bailey also described the child quite fairly and added: ‘She wants you to give her love to her daddy…

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Mrs. Wilson sat wide-eyed with wonder. Her whirling mind tried to grasp the immensity of the revelation.Mrs. Roberts turned to Mrs. Pugh. After a while she said:‘Your little boy is a dear kiddie, with brown curly hair. He is standing just beside you now.’ Mrs. Pugh gave Mrs. Roberts a toy which had belonged to her child. But the medium was not satisfied. She asked: ‘He says he wants to have the other toy you have brought with you in your bag.’Mrs. Pugh opened her handbag and produced a very…

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‘Your little girl’, she said, ‘passed into the spirit world with a terrific shock. I have a feeling of constriction round the throat – of choking. Your little girl was strangled.’Now do you remember the case of Sheila Wilson? She was, in fact, strangled by a man who has since been executed for his crime. ‘This spirit,’ Mrs. Roberts went on, ‘passed over only a short time ago. She has been dead less than six months. It is difficult for her to communicate . . . she has not yet…

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“Here and now I must admit that I am completely staggered and bewildered. The picture of the little girl you see on this page is that of Sheila Wilson. You may remember her, for three months ago Sheila, eleven years of age, was brutally murdered in a London house. I did not know Sheila. Until three days ago I had never seen her parents. But it happens that Mrs. Wilson read in the Sunday Pictorial that I was investigating claims of Spiritualists to be able to communicate with children in…

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Frederick Nodder’s name had been very much in the news. It was clear to readers of the newspapers that the police were very interested in Nodder’s movements at the time of the crime and just before it, but interest and suspicion are not enough to substantiate a charge at law. The police needed proof and they had not been able to get it. Neither had they been able to find Mona Tinsley, dead or alive. “Assuming the child has been killed, where would you say the murderer hid the body?”…

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Inside, the house was bare from top to bottom; every stick of furniture had gone. Left to roam as I pleased, I went first to the staircase and climbed to the two rooms above. I received no psychic impressions in the first room I entered, but in the second, at the back of the house, particularly near the water tank, I could feel the presence of Mona. I went downstairs again and walked around the two lower rooms. It was in the front one that Mona had spent her time…

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I wrote to the Chief Constable at Newark-on-Trent, and told him that I believed I might be able to bring some comfort to the unhappy parents if he would send me some garment belonging to the missing girl. I received a reply in which the Chief Constable, Mr. Barnes, said: “This is forwarded at the request of the parents of Mona Tinsley and I shall be glad if you will refrain from giving my action any official interpretation.” As this was in accordance with my desire for no publicity, we…

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CHAPTER SIX,MURDER AND SUICIDE When I had a telephone call from Douglas Sladen, an old friend whose books I enjoy, I guessed from his tone that he was diffident about coming to the point. After some humming and hawing he said: “Look Estelle, I have just been talking to an editor. He asked if I thought you could do anything to help find this child.” I knew at once whom he meant by “this child.” It was 1937, when the disappearance of tenyear–old Mona Tinsley had been making headline news…

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I was asked to investigate at a house whose occupants were suffering physical violence at the hands of an earthbound spirit entity. The attacks always followed a similar pattern. Every now and then one of the residents using the staircase would be pitched down the steps. This was not only disconcerting but dangerous. When I arrived at the house, I stood at the bottom of the staircase and looked up. There, half-way up, was the spirit figure of a grizzled old man who came directly to the point.“If you come…

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“It was what is known as a psychic rod,” I told them. “Red Cloud says that such a rod may build up anywhere where there is a strong concentration of wickedness.”“But there is no concentration of wickedness here,” they protested. “No longer perhaps, but who knows what happened here before your coming?”“ ‘The evil that men do lives after them. . .’” Somebody quoted. “Precisely that,” I agreed. “I think that if you care to do a little research you may find that this house was the scene of some…

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Ever since they had moved in, calamities, great and small, had increasingly befallen them. In as many months, half-a-dozen deaths had occurred, ranging from domestic pets to the girl’s own mother. This accumulation of misfortunes had so preyed on her mind that she was beginning to be obsessed with unreasoning fear for the life of her small son. Of course, all this might have been a chain of circumstances simply explained by an overlong streak of bad luck. Or there might be something in the hoodoo theory. Colonel Castello asked…

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As we had done all we could in the gallery for the time being, we left to the comfort of the drawing room. Here Red Cloud took control and speaking through me, he told us what lay behind these visitations. The spirit form I had seen was a brother of a former owner of the house who had been strangled to death in an upstairs room. Before his death the murdered man had concealed some ancient manuscripts which his earthbound brother was now perpetually hunting. “Is there anything distinctive about…

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The owner had several times been awakened by the piteous howling of a Dalmatian dog which shared his bedroom. Each time the howling was followed by the sound of footsteps moving about the house in places where there was no human being. The secretary had been awakened several times at night to find a ghostly face peering at her from the darkness. The housekeeper had a similar unnerving story to tell. Altogether it was not the sort of atmosphere in which anyone could live comfortably for any length of time.…

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