this is audio book of,

LESLIE FLINT, voices in the dark.
in half hour parts. Text can be followed in the pdf or text version.
word errors  may be here, and thereby subsequent reading errors.
1st edition, January 1, 1971.

Flint was born in London in 1911 and reached the peak of his fame from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was famous for claiming to contact the spirits of dead celebrities, and would often record his sessions. He claimed his familiar, Mickey, was the spirit of a child who had been killed in 1910. Flint claimed to have seen his first spirit at the age of seven when his dead uncle appeared to him in his home. He conducted his first séance at the age of 17.

In his early life, he worked as a cinema usher and a cemetery gardener. Flint was a conscientious objector in World War 2, serving in the Non-Combatant Corps before being seconded to coal-mining. The first public séance performed by Flint was in 1955, just after he formed an association called the Temple of Light.

Flint was an avid fan of Rudolph Valentino and acquired the only known copy of footage from The Young Rajah. Flint was wealthy and lived in a mansion house at Westbourne Terrace near London Paddington station. The mansion had been formerly occupied by the actor George Arliss.

During pre-production for the 1973 film, Don't Look Now, director Nicolas Roeg and actress Julie Christie, were invited by Flint to a séance he was holding for some American parapsychologists who were coming to observe him. Roeg and Christie attended and sat in a circle in the pitch dark and joined hands. Flint instructed his guests to "uncross" their legs, which Roeg subsequently incorporated into the film.
Style of mediumship.
When taking part in séances with Flint, participants would report hearing the voices of the dead surrounding them in the room. Flint would perform bound and gagged in an attempt to prove that he was not throwing his voice. He claimed that he was able to conjure ectoplasm from which he could then reconstruct vocal cords. However, Flint always insisted on performing in the dark, so séance-goers were unable to see him during the performances. He would sometimes even perform in a cupboard. the spiritual mechanisms behind the phenomena for which Leslie was used as a tool,  are logically explained in the book written by Johannes Greber, almost a hundred years ago and which in English is called Communication-With the spirit world.

Foreword.   LESLIE FLINT came into this world in 1911 and left it  16 April 1994. While here, he became the finely timed instrument transmitting thousands of messages from the  world he now inhabits.  No intellectual, but a plain speaking man, Leslie was born into poverty and raised  amid family disarray. Yet through dogged determination and single-mindedness,  he became one of the most celebrated independent direct voice mediums of the  twentieth century. Through his remarkable gifts, he brought consolation and hope  to the bereaved and understanding and inspiration to thousands, as well as shedding light on many strange corners of history.  Voices in the Dark was first published in 1971. Thanks to The Leslie Flint Educational Trust, this new edition is presented to the public. The Trust has been established to preserve, record and authenticate Leslie's life-work with its wide educational endeavours.  Fortunately, today the public is, in part, more open and receptive to the reality of  the spirit world, more understanding of the crucial link between this world and the  next in the endless chain of human life.  With the advent of Mickey, his much-loved Cockney alter ego in the world beyond, there began decades of service as a direct voice medium. Leslie gave sittings  to those of every rank and degree, every profession, enabling the bereaved to learn  of the great truth of human survival beyond physical death. His mediumship was  also a channel for famous men and women whose spirit communications were on 
an elevated and inspiring plane, often throwing fascinating new light on the accepted annals of history.  Sceptics attended sittings, but left convinced. Others tested Leslie's genuineness  in every way. Truly, he could comment, "I am the most tested medium this country  has ever produced." People travelled from all over the world to sit with him. Leslie  also demonstrated abroad, particularly in the United States, where he was in great  demand.  The final chapter of his life came with his retirement to Hove, where he enjoyed  years of peace and happiness before passing on at the age of eighty-three.  Leslie acknowledged he 'had no education to speak of,' yet words of the highest  wisdom and most profound knowledge, often in a variety of languages, emerged at  sittings. He was an upright, simple man, with little financial ambition or perception, but his service to mankind was of inestimable worth. I have read letters written to him from many lands, expressing not only gratitude and friendship, but also  love and affection. In the sixteen years I knew him, from 1978 until his death, as  both friend and professional adviser, I was struck by his simplicity of soul, his  sheer innocence of material matters, and his honesty and integrity in his chosen  career.  While much of the world sinks further into a morass of materialism, commercialism and tribalism, it is now more important than ever that mankind learns to  appreciate the spirit world's reality, the survival of the soul, the vital importance of  good deeds and good thoughts to prepare the way ahead, and that, whatever colour or creed, we are all spiritual beings expressed in physical terms.  Leslie Flint displayed a rare dedication to his calling as a significant avenue linking two worlds. With this reprint of his own story, we salute him as one of the most  outstanding mediums and dedicated servants of the twentieth century.    Mr Aubrey Rose.   

One.
    IN spite of a childhood which would give any modern child-psychiatrist nightmares, or perhaps because of it, I have reached the age of fifty-nine without falling  prey to neurosis, psychosis or even the screaming meanies. I am a happy man. I  have friends who delight me, hobbies to absorb me and I find satisfaction and fulfilment in my work. I do my work by sitting wide awake in total darkness with other  people.  I am a medium. I have the rare gift known as the independent direct voice. I do  not speak in trance, I need no trumpets or other paraphernalia. The voices of the  dead speak directly to their friends or relatives and are located in space a little  above my head and slightly to one side of me. They are objective voices which my  sitters can record on their own tape-recorders to play later in the privacy of their  homes. Sometimes those who speak from beyond the grave achieve only a whisper, hoarse and strained, at other times they speak clearly and fluently in voices  recognisably their own during life, and even after thirty-five years of my mediumship I do not fully understand what are the conditions which cause the phenomena to vary in this way. I do know I have learned more about life and people  and human problems and emotions by sitting in the dark than I could possibly  have learned in any other way, and those who have taught me the most are people  who, dead to this world, are living in the next.  It seems to me that having entered my sixtieth year, it is time to set down on  paper the story of my strange talent and the life it has led me, and where better to  

begin than at the beginning.  My mother was much too beautiful for her own good and she loved pleasure and  admiration, so no one in the dingy street where she lived with her widowed mother  in St Albans was very surprised when she left her job in a local factory and disappeared from her usual haunts. No doubt they charitably assumed the worst and in  this case they were perfectly right, and I was born in a Salvation Army Home in  Hackney. My mother refused to have me adopted and, with a great deal more  courage than she would need in the same circumstances today, went home to St  Albans with her inconvenient bundle to face the neighbours' music. But with a lot  of help from my grandmother 'Fate had been working at her loom' as the saying  goes and between them my grandmother and Fate came up with a pretty disastrous  pattern. Instead of the recriminations and ostracism my mother expected, she  found my father waiting with an offer of marriage and a home in a furnished room.  Forthwith my arrival into the world was made legal, official and reasonably respectable.  Their marriage was doomed from the beginning. They were pitifully young, desperately poor, and they had been coerced into maturity by their elders, long before  they were ready for it. My mother, who loved gaiety and bright lights, pretty clothes  and the admiration of men, found herself trapped in a seedy room with a baby who  cried endlessly and a husband who drank most of his wages and put the rest on  horses which never seemed to win. But somehow they survived three years of discord, fighting each other every inch of the way until the 1914  to 18 war broke out. I  was three years old. My father was one of the first men in St Albans to volunteer for  the army, not I imagine from any fervent patriotism, but simply to get away from  the domestic hell he lived in. My mother accepted her husband's departure for  France with composure and, after arranging with her mother to take care of me  during the day, she got a job in a local factory making munitions and life began  again for her. She had her army allotment, she was earning money in the factory  and St Albans was full of men on leave, about to return to the trenches, who were  only too pleased to take my pretty mother out and give her the gaiety she craved.  

One of my very early memories, vivid to this day, is of waking up in the dark to  find I was alone in the room which was our home and feeling scared, lonely and  desperately frightened that my mother had gone away like my father and neither of  them would ever come back. Somehow I dressed myself in the dark and wandered  out of the house. I still remember standing in the pitch-dark street in the rain, calling and calling for my mother, but there was no one to listen and I sat down on a  neighbour's doorstep and fell asleep. When my mother eventually came home she  found me sitting in front of the neighbour's ﬁreplace drinking hot milk. When she  got me back to our room she spanked me soundly for showing her up in front of  the people next door.  As it turned out, that night of desolation was the prelude to a period of bliss. My  mother realised she could not again leave me alone in our room while she went out  enjoying herself, without inviting interference from the neighbours. She had no  intention however of giving up her freedom and so she concocted a plan. Every  evening as soon as she was dressed to go out, she would take me by the hand to  the local cinema where she would hand me over to Mrs Knight, the wife of the  manager, who for three or four pence would put me in a seat where she could keep  an eye on me, and there I would stay until the cinema closed and my mother came  to collect me. I was not old enough to take in a great deal of the many films I saw,  but those nights at the pictures delighted me. I loved the thrill which rippled  through the audience as the lights went out, the excited feeling that something  wonderful was about to happen. When the ﬁlm actually started, rustling and  

fidgeting would abruptly stop and all eyes were glued to the flickering figures on  the screen. I loved the 'mood music' which the pianist played on the upright piano.  I came to recognise love music, angry music and the exciting hurry-hurry music  when the hero or his sweetheart were in some dire predicament. I loved every  minute of these nights at the cinema. But this halcyon interlude came to an abrupt  end when my mother eloped with one of her admirers and disappeared from my  life. I was collected from our room by my grandmother and taken to live with her in  her two-up, two-down cottage in the poor street of terrace houses, where she existed rather than lived on a few shillings a week. The cost of feeding an extra mouth  was really beyond her, but my grandmother knew her duty when she saw it, and  even if it meant cutting her own living to the bare bone, she was determined to do  her duty by her abandoned grandson.  My grandmother could not read or write and she had strong principles which she  taught me with a leathery hand if she thought it necessary. She worked very hard  and I never knew her to sit still. She would spend the whole day at the big tub in  the kitchen doing not only our own washing, but laundry she took in from the  neighbours to earn a few extra pence. If the weather was fine Gran would hang the  washing in the yard to dry, but in the winter months every Monday morning she  would string lines across the kitchen which was also our living-room and damp  sheets, shirts and towels flapped in our faces for two days, until they were dry  enough to be pressed with the heavy rotation. The extra pennies she earned in this  way helped to support us. We also had a lodger who paid a few shillings for his  

bed and board and without his contribution to our budget I doubt if we could have  existed at all. I suppose it is hard for members of our affluent society to imagine  poverty as wretched as ours, but in those days a grown man might earn a wage of  twelve shillings and sixpence for a week's work and a married man might bring up  his family on a pound a week.  Gran and I had occasional luxuries. I remember being given four pennies to run  to the corner shop to buy twopence worth of broken biscuits and twopence worth  of jam. Coal was a luxury often out of reach and in the autumn Gran would borrow  a battered old pram from a neighbour and we would go 'wooding' in the countryside around St Albans to collect fuel to store for the winter. We spent many afternoons doing this because our old terrace cottage was cold and damp in winter and  we had no money for illness. I can see my grandmother now sitting by a wood ﬁre  backed up with soot from the chimney to make it last longer, mending, patching  and darning, and myself sitting at her feet revelling in the warmth of the ﬁre. Even if  the clothes we wore were old and shabby, mended and patched, they were always  clean, cared for and respectable. Respectability was terribly important to the working class in those days and when Gran went out, though her clothes were even  then old-fashioned, indeed they were Victorian in style, she always looked neat and  tidy.  My grandmother had enormous influence on me and since she had a strict moral  and ethical code I was brought up according to her own high ideals of what was  right and what was wrong, though without any formal religious observance  

because Gran would have thought it disrespectful to enter God's house in her  shabby clothes and she was self-conscious about her illiteracy which made it  impossible for her to follow the service. But when I was small she sent me to Sunday school and I wore a Sunday suit and a clean collar and my face was scrubbed  and my hair brushed flat with water. The Sunday suit would be returned the next  morning to the pawnshop where it remained most of the week in return for a couple of shillings to buy food, but at the Sunday school I was clean, neat and respectable. I liked Sunday school, especially in the winter months because it was  warm and I enjoyed listening to the Bible stories and learning about heaven and  hell and how dead people would rise from their graves to be judged when the  Angel Gabriel blew his silver trumpet on the Last Day and I accepted all I heard as  the literal truth.  One day I discovered that a small boy in the class attended three entirely different  Sunday schools and this intrigued me. Did they all have different gods? What kind  of stories did the other teachers tell? But it was simpler than that. By attending  three Sunday schools this enterprising child qualified for three Christmas treats.  Now the Christmas treat was the biggest and most thrilling event in my whole year.  There was a Christmas tree decorated in what, to me, was a breathtakingly beautiful  fashion and every child got a toy from its laden branches. Then there was a magic  lantern show followed by a glorious feast of jam sandwiches, iced buns and cakes,  with lemonade to drink. Finally, when we went home we were presented with an orange and a balloon. I thought the boy was terribly clever to achieve three such  

brilliant occasions in one year. Timidly, I asked if I could copy, and graciously he  said I could. And so for a whole year, unknown to Gran, my friend and I went to  three different Sunday schools on alternate Sundays and duly earned three Christmas treats. Privately gloating over three toys, three oranges, three balloons, not to  mention the memory of three parties, I felt vaguely sinful but quite determined to  repeat the manoeuvre the following year.  It was about this time, in the summer of 1918, that I had what I understand now  to be my first psychic experience. I vividly remember being in our kitchen with  Gran when my Aunt Nell came in and flopped into a chair, crying. Her husband  had been killed in France and she was followed into the kitchen by a soldier carrying a kitbag containing Uncle Alf's possessions. But behind the soldier with the  kitbag walked another soldier who stood in our kitchen looking lost and sad and he  was pulling at Aunt Nell's sleeve, trying to attract her attention. Aunt Nell took no  notice of him at all and shortly he just vanished. Later when Aunt Nell showed me  a photograph of Uncle Alf I recognised him as the sad-looking soldier who was trying to make Aunt Nell pay attention to him, but when I told her about it both she  and my grandmother were angry with me for telling lies. When I persisted in saying  it was the truth I got a good wallop from Gran.  Another time, as I came in from school I heard voices from the kitchen, Gran's  voice and that of a woman unknown to me. When I went into the kitchen my grandmother was not talking at all, she was sitting in her wicker chair sewing, but standing at her side was an elderly woman with a large mole on her chin, who vanished  

as I came into the room. When I asked Gran what had happened to the lady who  had been talking to her she told me I was imagining things, she had been quite  alone all afternoon. I described the woman I had seen and when I mentioned the  mole on her chin I got walloped again because, 'It's Mrs Pugh you're talking about  and she has been dead and buried for a month or more.' After that episode I  learned to keep quiet about the people I saw who vanished so abruptly.  I was not one of the giant intellects at school, but in one subject I shone quite  brightly and this was Art. I loved drawing and painting and I liked Mr Lewis, the Art  teacher. He was a tall gaunt man, I suppose in his late forties, and he had been  badly gassed in the trenches so that he coughed continually with a hard hacking  sound. Mr Lewis used to praise my efforts and encourage me to aspire to an Art  School training when I was older. Even then I knew we were too poor for this to be  anything but an impossible dream, but his encouragement and praise meant a  great deal to me and I remember the red letter days when we would pin up my work  for the rest of the school to admire. Eventually, I suppose, I came to look on him  as a sort of father figure in my life, probably because my own father had remained  in it so brieﬂy. I can remember to this day the grief and shock I felt when Mr Lewis  died after an illness lasting a few days. It was some small comfort to learn that he  was to be honoured by a military funeral because his death was due to his service  in the trenches, and twelve boys from the school were going to be chosen to follow  the coffin draped with the Union Jack. As I had been one of his best pupils and he  had taken so much interest in my work it simply did not occur to me that I would  

not be chosen to follow his coffin to the cemetery, but I was passed over and my  grief for his death was made the more bitter.  When I was twelve I found a job I could do in the mornings before I went to  school. It was in a house in what I thought of as the posh part of St Albans. It was  a well furnished house and they had carpets so I thought they must be very rich. I  got up at six every morning and walked to work whistling happily at the thought of  actually earning money, and for an hour and a half I cleaned the grates and lit the  ﬁres and did other domestic chores, then I hurried home to gobble down whatever  was on offer for breakfast, usually bread and margarine and tea, and then went off  to school. When my grandmother qualified for her old-age pension of ten shillings  a week our finances took on a brighter hue, but every Friday morning became a  nightmare for me. Gran could only draw her pension on Friday and by that time in  the week she was penniless, but she had to have it in the morning to buy food for  the weekend. Now, because she could not write her name she would make a cross  on her pension form and an arrangement was made with the postmaster of the  sub-post office across the road from our house, whereby he honoured her cross  and handed her ten shillings to me. But the post office did not open until nine  o'clock, at which time I was due in school, so every Friday morning I had to hang  about outside the post office waiting for the postmaster to open up to give me the  ten shillings, knowing with every minute which passed I was going to be late for  school again.  As soon as I got the ten shillings I would rush across the road and give Gran her  

money, then I would run all the way to school. But every Friday morning without  fail, I was late for class and since Gran could not write an excuse note for me, as  often as not, I was caned. In fact it became a ritual. At nine-thirty every Friday I was  knocking timidly on the door of the headmaster's study and at twenty-five to ten I  was being caned. I was not the bravest boy in the school, but however hard the  headmaster laid into me with the cane each Friday morning I never let out the  smallest whimper and all because of a picture hanging on the wall of his study. It  was a painting of Queen Boadicea in her chariot and for some reason it gave me  courage. I felt Boadicea and I had something in common and I must be as brave as  she had been to be worthy of her. When I stood outside the headmaster's door on  a Friday morning it comforted me to think I would see her again, even if it meant I  was going to be caned. I would try to be caned on the hand rather than on the bottom even though it hurt more, so that I could stand facing her picture while the  headmaster wielded his stick.  For a long time I believed my picture was the real Queen Boadicea and when I  learned it was an impostor I was shattered. Some years before I was born, Saint  Albans had staged a pageant of its history and one of the set pieces in it had been the  uprising of Boadicea against the Romans. My picture was a portrait of the woman  who had played the part of my heroine and she had been chosen for the role because she was the wife of the local milkman and was able to commandeer his milk float for her chariot. As soon as I knew the absurd truth the picture lost its magic  and when the headmaster next laid into me with the cane I wept. It simply did not  

occur to me to tell my grandmother about these weekly beatings. In those days  children hadn't the habit of complaining and their elders hadn't the habit of listening to them if they did. One of the maxims drilled into me as a child was 'what  cannot be cured must be endured'.  My grandmother was a wonderful woman. She gave me all she could from the little she had, but her life was too harsh, the daily struggle for a bare existence too  grim and too unrelenting for any tenderness between us.  Our improved finances now made it possible for Gran and me to taste pleasure.  For threepence or fourpence each we would go to the local cinema and escape for  a couple of hours, into an enchanted world where all the women were beautiful and  the men were godlike.  The films we saw were silent films and I would read out the subtitles to my  grandmother. Perhaps the absence of the spoken word stimulated the imagination  more strongly, but audiences in those days identified wholly and completely with  the stars they idolised and they watched their films as if they were seeing real people living real lives. How we rejoiced or suffered with the heroine, how we urged on  the hero or warned him of the machinations of the villain, usually greeted with  hisses. In the 'hungry twenties' the working class was not as sophisticated or as  educated as its modern counterpart, there were millions who could neither read  nor write and who lived in squalid poverty. The cinema brought romance, glamour  and excitement into their lives and even if the intellectuals called it the 'opium of  the masses' at least it was a relatively harmless drug and retailed at a price even the 
poorest could occasionally afford. My grandmother and I saw all the great stars  and 'the pictures' were our delight and joy. At least once a week we would buy  fourpenny tickets to our enchanted world and sit, eyes glued to the screen, transported. We also followed the serials and if at the end of an episode Pearl White was  left bound hand and foot in the path of an express train we could hardly wait for  the next episode to see if she would be saved. Deep down we knew very well she  was bound to be rescued, but that did not stop us from living on tenterhooks for a  week.  About this time St Albans got its first 'super-cinema' and there was to be a gala  opening with a showing of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse starring Rudolph  Valentino. Seats for this glamorous event were expensive and anyway they were all  taken by the rich and privileged folk of the town, but at the last moment we heard  that a few cheap seats would be available for those who queued on the great night.  Naturally Gran and I arrived at the cinema hours before time and queued for these  precious seats. We stood in line for three hours while the long queue shuffled forward inch by inch but at last we got inside and sat down triumphantly in two plush  seats in the very front row of the auditorium. The long wait and the seats which  cricked our necks and made our eyes ache because they were so close to the  screen did not matter to us one bit once the ﬁlm had started. We adored every  minute of it and we thought Rudolph Valentino was the most marvellous actor we  had ever seen. From then on we were his devoted fans.  The sub-post office across the street from us was a kind of forum for the  

exchange of news, gossip and above all, information about jobs, especially about  jobs. Those were the days when work was pitifully scarce and for every vacancy  there were literally dozens of applicants. Even the rumour of work was enough to  send desperate men trudging miles in the hope of being taken on at any wage,  under any conditions just so they could feed their families and regain their self-respect. One day, not long after my thirteenth birthday, the postmaster from across  the street told me that the local cemetery wanted a strong willing lad to work as the  assistant to the gardeners. Though I was hardly carried away by the thought of  working among graves, I made up my mind to try for the job and if I got it I would  leave school and begin my working life. I did get it and so my formal education  came to an end and I started work in the cemetery at twelve shillings and sixpence  a week.  My work consisted of keeping graves neat and tidy, clipping grass verges, weeding and rolling gravel paths with a heavy iron roller. I also helped to dig new graves  and after a funeral I had to fill them in again. It was hard back-breaking labour but  it was a job. I was earning my keep.  I remember one cold and blustery day in winter when I was working on my graves  and clipping the grass verges, we were waiting for a hearse to arrive with a funeral  party. We, that is the other gardeners and I, had been busy all morning digging the  grave for this burial and after some months of working in the cemetery I knew from  experience that the length of the funeral service would depend on the age of the  clergyman who turned up with the hearse. A young and keen curate would be most 
likely to ignore the cutting wind and the rain and conduct the service in a reverent  and unhurried way, but an elderly parson would rattle through as fast as he could  to get out of the cold and back to his ﬁreside. I was hoping like mad for an old man  and a quick farewell to the departed. My luck was in and the aged clergyman who  turned up with the cortège rattled through the proceedings with great speed and  was off like a shot. After the mourners had gone we began to fill in the new grave, a  deep one intended in due course to hold three coffins. Our first task was to withdraw the cords which had lowered the coffin into the grave but on this occasion  one of the cords had stuck and we couldn't shift it for all our tugging. So, since I  was the youngest, the smallest and the lightest of all the cemetery gardeners I had  to climb down a ladder into the grave and stand on the lid of the coffin to help to  free the cord. I must confess the task distressed me, but it was part of my job and I  had to do it. Maybe I did it too well for from that day on whenever a coffin got  jammed or a cord trapped invariably I was the unfortunate junior who was summoned to perform this horrid operation. There were other chores in the cemetery  which I found distasteful, even frightening, such as the times when an unusual  number of people died in winter or during an epidemic and we would be so busy  during the day we had to fill in the new graves at night by the flickering light of  lanterns. I found this eerie and melancholy work, even more so on the occasions  when I had to get down into a grave to perform my hated speciality of disentangling coffin cords.  I was fifteen in the summer of 1926 and I was beginning to wonder whether, if I  

learned all I could from the senior gardeners about the care of plants and flowers, I  might one day escape from the sadness of the cemetery to work in the grounds of  some gentleman's country mansion. Pursuing this ambition I made myself very  unpopular by badgering the gardeners for information about their work and following them about while they did it.  One hot August day that year the world learned with stunned disbelief that the  actor Rudolph Valentino had died suddenly in New York at the age of thirty-one.  Millions had adored this man and the wave of shock and grief seemed to travel  right around the globe. In my small comer, I also grieved for his death and found  the world a sadder place because of it. How could I guess that far off in the future I  would be more friendly with Valentino when he was dead than I ever could have  been had he lived?  

Two.   TACTFULLY out of sight behind a yew hedge in the cemetery, was a potting shed where the gardeners ate their sandwiches, brewed tea and talked during the midday break. Mr Hobbs, my immediate boss, enjoyed laying down the law on any and every subject and it was his voice, gritty as a  gravel path, which dominated these sessions. He was a lean and weathered man with a habit of  shaking his bony forefinger, deeply stained by nicotine, at whoever he harangued. He was supposed to be a great reader which gave him the edge in an argument, as invariably he quoted some  book he claimed to have read to contradict any opinion but his own. As the rest of us read only  sports results or, in my case, magazines about the Hollywood stars, Mr Hobbs had become something of an oracle.  Once a mild little man called Carter was telling us about his conversion at a Salvation Army meeting and I could not help being struck by the way his face lit up when he spoke of the joy he felt  when he knew he was saved. But Mr Hobbs would have none of it. He shook his bony finger in Mr  Carter's face and grated scornfully, 'You want to read your Darwin, mate. He showed up that rubbish for a pack of lies years ago.' Clearly Mr Carter had never heard of Darwin and so Mr Hobbs  was able to expound his version of the theory of natural selection. But Mr Carter refused to be  blinded by science. 'I happen to believe that if we live decent lives here below we shall go to our reward in the hereafter,' be said stoutly. Mr Hobbs got quite worked up.  'Haven't I just been telling you there isn't any hereafter! It's all evolution. First we was ﬁsh, then  we was apes and now we are human beings and when we kick the bucket we'll be compost for the  roses in some graveyard and that is absolutely all there is to it.'  I was the youngest of the gardeners and shy about butting in on my elders, but I hated to see the  light go out in little Mr Carter's face and timidly I tried to support him by telling about the time I  saw my Uncle Alf in our kitchen after he was killed. Mr Hobbs snorted. 'It was in your mind, boy!  You was thinking about the deceased and you imagined you saw him. Hypnotised yourself into it  most likely.' Made bold by a grateful look from Mr Carter, I persisted,  'I never saw Uncle Alf in my whole life so how could I imagine him? I didn't even know who he  was until my Aunt Nell showed me the photo she found in his kitbag.'  Mr Hobbs fixed me with his washed-out blue eyes, tapped his forehead with a bony finger. 'Take  my tip, young feller-me-lad, don't you go telling them tales to anyone in the medical profession or  you'll find yourself inside Shenley Asylum before you're very much older.'  The eyes and the finger were too much for me.  'No, Mr Hobbs,' I said meekly.  At seventeen I had been concerned with life, with earning my living, growing up, enjoying such  pleasures as came my way, and I had not given much thought to the question of life after death, but  the incident in the potting-shed made me think seriously about such matters for the first time.  Admittedly, working in the cemetery gave me the impression death was a pretty final event. When  the mourners had gone and the earth was filled in and pressed down on the new grave I knew very  well the corpse underneath had already begun to decompose, so the resurrection when Gabriel  blew his silver trumpet on the last day seemed an impossible lie. Was Mr Hobbs right? Were we  just apes who had learned to be smarter than our forebears who lived in trees? Was our universe a  cosmic accident doomed eventually to total extinction? What then was the conviction which gave  timid Mr Carter his inner glow and gave him the courage to stand up to the formidable Mr Hobbs?  I thought about seeing Uncle Alf and Mrs Pugh when I was a child. They had not struck me at the  time as being anything but ordinary living people yet they were dead and Mrs Pugh's body, at least,  must have been far advanced in decay. Had I really seen them or was I heading for the asylum, as  Mr Hobbs seemed to think? For days on end I pondered these and other questions, wondering  where I could go or whom I could find to give me the answers. It began to seem to me that the  most important thing in life was to know the meaning of death.  I started to haunt the local churches. Every week I went from one to another hoping to find some 
clue, some grain of truth in which I could believe, but just like Omar Khayyám, I 'heard great argument but evermore came out by the same door as in I went.' I wanted so much more than the Churches could offer. I was not content 'to have faith in' or 'to hope for', I wanted to know, I needed some  conviction on which to build my life. If death meant oblivion I could accept that, even without regret, but I wanted to be certain. If there was a life after death I wanted proof of it and I wanted to  know what kind of life it would be. After many weeks of earnest seeking in the various denominations of the Christian Church I had found neither conviction nor any hope of it and I was beginning to despair.  I read a notice in the local library about a meeting of The Theosophical Society, someone was going  to address them on 'The Ancient Wisdom'. This seemed right up my street, for what was I looking  for if it were not wisdom?  I borrowed a dictionary from the library to look up the word 'theosophical' and I was thrilled to  read 'theosophy' was immediate divine illumination claimed to be possessed by specially gifted persons.  I could hardly wait for the night of that meeting.  There were very few people in the audience on the big night and I felt sorry for the speaker who  had come up from London for the occasion, so when he stepped on to the rostrum I kept on clapping long after everyone else had stopped, to make him feel welcome. He spoke in what I thought  of as a 'haw-haw' voice and used words I had never heard before so I thought he must be very educated and as he was also 'specially gifted', according to The Chambers Dictionary, I prepared to  drink in his every word. Unfortunately most of his discourse passed right over my devoted head.  He had a lot to say about 'astral bodies' but he did not bother to explain what they were. Things  were looking up when he began to talk about souls who had progressed spiritually on the other side  who would sometimes reincarnate back into earthly bodies to perform some special work. This  seemed hopeful. At least this educated, specially gifted man was taking it for granted there was another side. Then came a real shot in the arm. The speaker solemnly warned the audience to have  nothing to do with Spiritualist mediums who, when they got in touch with the dead, contacted only  entities who were unevolved and were just hanging about the Earth and the low vibrations they  brought with them were not helpful. This was the first time I had ever heard it was possible to get in  touch with the dead and I was thrilled at the very idea. If it were true then whatever kind of entity  one contacted, high vibrations or low, it would surely prove there was life after death, or so at any  rate I reasoned at the time.  Obviously my next step was to find these Spiritualists with their low vibrations, whatever that  meant, to see what I could learn from them. I kept asking people where I could find them but no  one seemed to know. Sometimes the people I asked acted strangely. They turned on their heels and  stalked away looking affronted or else they screwed a finger into their temple and gave me a pitying  look. I began to think I was trailing some sinister secret society. By the 1970s Spiritualism was respectably and officially a religion with some three million adherents in the UK, but back in those  days mediums still risked prosecution under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 and to a certain extent they  were driven underground. I did not know this at the time, of course, and I concluded I had reached  another dead end.  Some weeks after I had more or less given up the search for these elusive Spiritualists, I had been  given the task of tidying up a row of contract graves, so named because relatives paid the cemetery  a fixed sum every year for their upkeep. When I had finished I noticed a neglected, overgrown grave  beyond them. I felt sad for this unknown, for whom no one seemed to care and decided I had  enough time before the midday break to tidy him up. I was busy clipping away the long grass and  weeds on this forlorn grave when a woman walked up the path carrying a sheaf of fresh flowers. She  removed the flowers from the grave she was visiting which, to my uncritical eye, seemed almost  fresh and threw them in a refuse bin, then put her fresh flowers on the grave and went away. By this  time my efforts had uncovered the name on the headstone of the sad grave I was working on and I  saw the man buried there had once been known as Edwin Lewis. With a shock of recognition I  

studied the dates on the headstone and I was left in no doubt that this was the grave of my dear Mr  Lewis, the teacher who had believed I might one day become an artist. The grave was as spick and  span as I could make it so I retrieved the woman's almost-new flowers from the bin, shook them  out and tidied them up as best I could, put them into a jam-jar and placed them on Mr Lewis' grave  with a small prayer for his happiness wherever he might be.  As I sat in a corner of the potting shed eating my lunch, I could hear Mr Hobbs' voice rasping  above the rest as usual. 'And so I said to the missus, I said, it's a lot of bloody nonsense. I've been  burying stiffs for thirty years, I said, and believe me, they stay buried. How can they come back?  Them Spiritualists are after your money, you silly cow!'  I almost choked on my ﬁsh-paste sandwich. Mr Hobbs grated on. 'What's more, I said to her, if  you set foot in that Quaker's Hall tonight to try calling up the departed, your hat with the grapes on  it will go into the ﬁre.'  Any sympathy I had for Mrs Hobbs was quickly drowned by my excitement. At last I had a clue to  finding the elusive Spiritualists! Come what may, I would be at the Quaker's Hall that night.  Scrubbed and wearing my Sunday suit I arrived at the Quaker's Hall and read a hand-written notice outside which said there would be a Spiritualist service that evening with Mrs Annie Johnson,  the well-known trance medium, giving an address followed by clairvoyance. Trance? Clairvoyance?  Well, there was only one way to find out.  I went inside.  The hall was only half-filled and I decided to sit in the back row as near to an an exit as I could get,  in case I wanted to beat a hasty retreat before the proceedings were over. Gradually the hall filled up  and hymn books were handed out. On the cover of mine I read The Greater World Christian Spiritualist Hymn Book. Ah! I thought, so they are Christians are they? But, looking about me, I didn't  think there was much of a church atmosphere about this bare hall. People were chatting, even  laughing together and there were none of the church ornaments I had been accustomed to admire  during my months of perambulation around other Christian churches in search of truth. When the  service started I was even less impressed. It seemed a haphazard business. I considered it lacked  the professional touch. In fact, I felt somewhat superior to these simple folk who sang hymns that I  did not know to a wheezy old harmonium and who prayed in an almost chatty way, as if they were  talking to the Almighty on friendly terms. It seemed presumptuous to me. 'This is the worst service  I've been to yet', I thought.  Suddenly there was a stir and a rustle among the congregation as a man and a woman walked together down the aisle towards a platform at the front end of the hall. They sat down on two straight backed chairs facing us.  

argument but evermore came out by the same door as in I went.' I wanted so much more than the  Churches could offer. I was not content 'to have faith in' or 'to hope for', I wanted to know, I needed some conviction on which to build my life. If death meant oblivion I could accept that, even  without regret, but I wanted to be certain. If there was a life after death I wanted proof of it and I  wanted to know what kind of life it would be. After many weeks of earnest seeking in the various denominations of the Christian Church I had found neither conviction nor any hope of it and I was  beginning to despair.  I read a notice in the local library about a meeting of The Theosophical Society, someone was going  to address them on 'The Ancient Wisdom'. This seemed right up my street, for what was I looking  for if it were not wisdom?  I borrowed a dictionary from the library to look up the word 'theosophical' and I was thrilled to  read 'theosophy' was immediate divine illumination claimed to be possessed by specially gifted persons.  I could hardly wait for the night of that meeting.  There were very few people in the audience on the big night and I felt sorry for the speaker who  had come up from London for the occasion, so when he stepped on to the rostrum I kept on clapping long after everyone else had stopped, to make him feel welcome. He spoke in what I thought  of as a 'haw-haw' voice and used words I had never heard before so I thought he must be very educated and as he was also 'specially gifted', according to The Chambers Dictionary, I prepared to  drink in his every word. Unfortunately most of his discourse passed right over my devoted head.  He had a lot to say about 'astral bodies' but he did not bother to explain what they were. Things  were looking up when he began to talk about souls who had progressed spiritually on the other side  who would sometimes reincarnate back into earthly bodies to perform some special work. This  seemed hopeful. At least this educated, specially gifted man was taking it for granted there was another side. Then came a real shot in the arm. The speaker solemnly warned the audience to have  nothing to do with Spiritualist mediums who, when they got in touch with the dead, contacted only  entities who were unevolved and were just hanging about the Earth and the low vibrations they  brought with them were not helpful. This was the first time I had ever heard it was possible to get in  touch with the dead and I was thrilled at the very idea. If it were true then whatever kind of entity  one contacted, high vibrations or low, it would surely prove there was life after death, or so at any  rate I reasoned at the time.  Obviously my next step was to find these Spiritualists with their low vibrations, whatever that  meant, to see what I could learn from them. I kept asking people where I could find them but no  one seemed to know. Sometimes the people I asked acted strangely. They turned on their heels and  stalked away looking affronted or else they screwed a finger into their temple and gave me a pitying  look. I began to think I was trailing some sinister secret society. By the 1970s Spiritualism was respectably and officially a religion with some three million adherents in the UK, but back in those  days mediums still risked prosecution under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 and to a certain extent they  were driven underground. I did not know this at the time, of course, and I concluded I had reached  another dead end.  Some weeks after I had more or less given up the search for these elusive Spiritualists, I had been  given the task of tidying up a row of contract graves, so named because relatives paid the cemetery  a fixed sum every year for their upkeep. When I had finished I noticed a neglected, overgrown grave  beyond them. I felt sad for this unknown, for whom no one seemed to care and decided I had  enough time before the midday break to tidy him up. I was busy clipping away the long grass and  weeds on this forlorn grave when a woman walked up the path carrying a sheaf of fresh flowers. She  removed the flowers from the grave she was visiting which, to my uncritical eye, seemed almost  fresh and threw them in a refuse bin, then put her fresh flowers on the grave and went away. By this  time my efforts had uncovered the name on the headstone of the sad grave I was working on and I  saw the man buried there had once been known as Edwin Lewis. With a shock of recognition I studied the dates on the headstone and I was left in no doubt that this was the grave of my dear Mr  Lewis, the teacher who had believed I might one day become an artist. The grave was as spick and  span as I could make it so I retrieved the woman's almost-new flowers from the bin, shook them  out and tidied them up as best I could, put them into a jam-jar and placed them on Mr Lewis' grave  with a small prayer for his happiness wherever he might be.  As I sat in a corner of the potting-shed eating my lunch, I could hear Mr Hobbs' voice rasping  above the rest as usual. 'And so I said to the missus, I said, it's a lot of bloody nonsense. I've been  burying stiffs for thirty years, I said, and believe me, they stay buried. How can they come back?  Them Spiritualists are after your money, you silly cow!' 
I almost choked on my ﬁsh-paste sandwich. Mr Hobbs grated on. 'What's more, I said to her, if  you set foot in that Quaker's Hall tonight to try calling up the departed, your hat with the grapes on  it will go into the ﬁre.'  Any sympathy I had for Mrs Hobbs was quickly drowned by my excitement. At last I had a clue to  finding the elusive Spiritualists! Come what may, I would be at the Quaker's Hall that night.  Scrubbed and wearing my Sunday suit I arrived at the Quaker's Hall and read a hand-written notice outside which said there would be a Spiritualist service that evening with Mrs Annie Johnson,  the well-known trance medium, giving an address followed by clairvoyance. Trance? Clairvoyance?  Well, there was only one way to find out.  I went inside.  The hall was only half-filled and I decided to sit in the back row as near to an an exit as I could get,  in case I wanted to beat a hasty retreat before the proceedings were over. Gradually the hall filled up  and hymn books were handed out. On the cover of mine I read The Greater World Christian Spiritualist Hymn Book. Ah! I thought, so they are Christians are they? But, looking about me, I didn't  think there was much of a church atmosphere about this bare hall. People were chatting, even  laughing together and there were none of the church ornaments I had been accustomed to admire  during my months of perambulation around other Christian churches in search of truth. When the  service started I was even less impressed. It seemed a haphazard business. I considered it lacked  the professional touch. In fact, I felt somewhat superior to these simple folk who sang hymns that I  did not know to a wheezy old harmonium and who prayed in an almost chatty way, as if they were  talking to the Almighty on friendly terms. It seemed presumptuous to me. 'This is the worst service  I've been to yet', I thought.  Suddenly there was a stir and a rustle among the congregation as a man and a woman walked together down the aisle towards a platform at the front end of the hall. They sat down on two straight-backed chairs facing us.  The man was small, drooping and elderly. Irresistibly he reminded me of pictures I had seen of  the notorious Dr Crippen who, before I was born, had chopped up his wife and eloped with his typist.  The woman was imposingly dressed in purple with a large silver pectoral cross. I approved of the  cross, it gave a touch of authenticity to the proceedings. 'Dr Crippen' got to his feet and said one of  the chatty prayers, then he invited us to sing another hymn. During the singing I observed my purple lady dropping off to sleep. After the hymn, Crippen announced that Mrs Annie Johnson would  now give her trance address. So my purple lady was the medium, but didn't silly Dr Crippen know  she had fallen asleep? To my astonishment the sleeping woman stood up and began to speak. I sat  up with a jerk at the first words, for booming through the hall there came, from the lips of this  sleeping woman, a voice no lady had any right to have. It was a deep, resonant, cultured voice  unmistakably male. Could it possibly be a man dressed up as a woman, I wondered? Would anyone  dare to do such a thing in a Christian church? But no one in my vicinity seemed perturbed or even  surprised. They were listening intently to what was being said, so I stopped worrying about it and  began to pay attention. The talk was about the Life Eternal. The male voice coming through the lips  of Mrs Johnson said he loved to come back to Earth to comfort those who were grieving for the  physical loss of their loved ones, to assure them the dear ones were only lost to human sight. We  were informed that they were still living, still loving those left behind them, and from the happier  world where they were now they could sometimes send messages of love and hope to those on  Earth. Tonight he told us he was going to help some of those who had gone before to give messages to their friends present in the hall. To put it mildly, I was staggered. Was this woman, or was  it a man, proposing to call up the dead?  I remembered the warnings at the Theosophist meeting about dangers of low vibrations, and  wondered if I should leave before this part of the programme began. But 'in for a penny, in for a  pound' I told myself and sat tight. The medium sat down and Dr Crippen invited us to sing a hymn  called Silently now, we wait for Thee. During the singing I wondered just what they were waiting for  and had I been wise to decide to remain, but I did not want to push past the row of women between  me and the exit, so more from shyness than conviction I stayed and sang with the rest.  The hymn ended and we all sat down. Mrs Johnson walked to the edge of the platform and pointed to a woman near the front of the congregation and began to speak to her in a quiet pleasantly  feminine voice, totally unlike the one she had used when she was asleep. She told the woman her  husband was standing beside her and he was anxious for the woman to know he no longer had the  terrible pain in his chest from which he suffered before he passed away. Mrs Johnson described the  

husband, even down to the colour of his suit and club tie she said he was wearing. The woman accepted what she said with an emphatic nodding of her head. I strained my eyes trying to see this  man Mrs Johnson said was standing beside the woman, but I could see neither hide nor hair of  him, so I concluded this was some kind of act cooked up by the pair of them, which did not impress me. There were other messages of a similar nature for other people in the hall and one or two  grew very emotional as they accepted what Mrs Johnson was telling them as true. I was still convinced that Mrs Johnson was working with accomplices planted in the congregation.  'I want to speak to the young man in the back row,' said Mrs Johnson suddenly and pointed  straight at me. I was petriﬁed at being singled out and looked around hopefully to see if there was  another young man she might mean, but I was the only male in the whole row and the finger continued to point at me. 'Put up your hand, young man,' said Mrs Johnson, so very nervously I raised  my arm. 'Yes,' she said, 'I mean you. There is a man here who wants to thank you for the flowers  you put on his grave this morning. He tells me he was a schoolmaster and his name was Edwin  Lewis. Do you understand this?' I was flabbergasted, but Mrs Johnson was not finished with me.  She went on to give an accurate description of Mr Lewis as I remembered him and said he had  been interested in my drawing and painting when he was on Earth. 'He was given a military funeral,'  she added casually. By this time I was very hot under the collar. How could this woman whom I had  never seen in my life, who could not possibly know anything about me, tell me about a man I had  known in my childhood and describe what I had done that morning, when I had been entirely alone  at Mr Lewis' grave? But Mrs Johnson was not done with me even yet. She described other people  she said she could see around me, including an Arab. What was an Arab doing around me I wondered, what did he want with me? He was a 'guide', said Mrs Johnson, and he was not really an  Arab, he was someone who dressed as an Arab. This seemed to me to get more involved by the  minute. When Mrs Johnson finally told me that this young Arab, who wasn't an Arab, wanted me to  develop as a medium 'to be of service to humanity', I thought she was well off the mark. 'In the not  too distant future,' Mrs Johnson insisted, 'you will be doing the same kind of work as I am doing  and you will become a very famous medium.' This seemed so crazy and so impossible I shrugged it  off and crept out of the hall as unobtrusively as I could.  For a long time before I slept that night I turned these events over and over and over again in my  mind and the more I thought about what Mrs Johnson had told me, the more fantastic it seemed. I  could no longer believe it was a trick played with the help of people planted in the congregation, because it had happened to me. No one but I could have known what I had done when I was entirely  alone, with not another soul in sight, at Mr Lewis' grave, nor could Mrs Johnson have known of his  special interest in me or of my affection for him. It had all happened when I was very young and I  was not a child who discussed my innermost feelings with others, even my grandmother had no  idea of the depth of affection the love-starved child I was had felt for Mr Lewis. I remembered the  dead people I had seen in my childhood who had vanished so abruptly when I approached them,  and I felt these incidents tied up in some way with the things Mrs Johnson had said to me and to  the others in the hall. Yet I still doubted. I could not quite accept that the dead could or would come  back, from wherever they might be, into the bare Quaker Hall to relay messages to their friends  through a lady as solid and earthly as Mrs Johnson. But the truth of what I had been told remained  to nag at me and before I finally slept I made up my mind to investigate further.  For many weeks after that night I took my seat in that bare Quaker Hall every Wednesday evening  promptly at half past seven. At first I sat shyly in the rear, as on the first occasion, but as I began to  feel more at home and to become on friendly terms with one or two members of the congregation I  ventured nearer and nearer to the front of the hall.  Gradually I came to appreciate the simplicity and sincerity of the short service of worship, which  on my first visit I had thought so naïve and unprofessional. I always tried to be sensible and objective about the clairvoyance which was given by the various mediums after the service. I heard a  great number of mediums at work during this period of my investigation into Spiritualism and by  no means did all of them impress me favourably. In fact to only a very small number did I concede  a genuine psychic gift, but at that stage I was not at all certain as to its nature. Was the medium really hearing or seeing the spirits of the dead or was it mind reading? Too many of the mediums  seemed to me to fish for information from the people they singled out and then, having elaborated  the information they got in this way, they handed it back as a message from the dead. At times I was  sickened by the blatancy of this fishing and angered by the gullibility of the persons who accepted  with enthusiasm evidence which I considered to be fraudulently obtained. Many times after hearing  a medium of this kind I was tempted to give up the whole thing, but in those moments of 
disillusionment I would remember the mediumship of Mrs Annie Johnson and soldier on.  I remember one medium who greatly impressed me. I have long since forgotten her name but I  still have a mental picture of a dumpy little woman, with improbable red hair, wearing a poison-green chiffon dress with floating panels. During the service she, as Mrs Johnson had done, fell into  trance, but by this time I knew what was happening and I was not surprised when, still entranced,  she walked to the edge of the platform and began to give an address. It did not even cause me to  raise an eyebrow when the voice issuing from her lips turned out to be that of an educated and cultured man. I admit, however, to a certain astonishment when she gave clairvoyance in her waking  state, for her own voice was undoubtedly that of a Cockney woman with a sheer 'gorblimey' accent.  On rare occasions I received messages myself but I thought most of them could be explained easily enough by mind reading or prior knowledge. But on one or two occasions my young Arab turned  up with the same message, that I was to become a medium and I was to serve and help suffering  humanity, to convince them that death was not the end. For a long time I refused to accept it or  even to think about it, because it seemed to be utterly impossible, by no stretch of the imagination  could I see myself standing on a platform giving messages in public.  These evenings at the Spiritualist meetings were not without their lighter moments. I began to  recognise several people who attended regularly and who invariably stood up to claim messages  which no one else could accept or understand. 'Yes, yes.' they would exclaim eagerly, 'I know  Jack.' (or Jim or William or whoever), he's my cousin in Spirit.' I used to think of them as the  'Body Snatchers' and they afforded me a certain amount of quiet amusement. Years later I learned  that all Spiritualist churches have their old faithfuls, people who grab at messages unclaimed by  others. But by then I had learned to be more sympathetic towards them, since they are so often  lonely or bereaved people longing to get some message of comfort and by snatching at obscure  messages they hope that the medium will eventually give them something they can truly accept and  understand.  One night after the officiating medium had described to me the young Arab, 'who was not really  an Arab', and given me the same message, that I must develop my mediumship to serve my fellow  man, which I was prepared to ignore as usual, I was approached after the meeting by a pleasant  middle-aged woman who asked me what I was going to do about this message which she had  heard given to me on more than one occasion. 'Nothing,' I mumbled, embarrassed, 'I'm not psychic, so what can I do about it?'  'Well, you can come to my home circle and find out if these messages have any truth in them,'  she said. 'If what you have been given is true, then sitting in a circle will soon develop signs of  mediumship if you have it.'  I wanted to know what took place in this circle before I committed myself and the woman told me  they sat around a very heavy Victorian dining table and they received messages by the sounds of  knocks or raps. I agreed to join them and after arranging an evening and a time I went home.  When I got home I found a letter propped up on the kitchen mantelpiece, addressed to me in  handwriting I did not know and on the envelope was a German stamp. I knew no one in Germany  and, baffled, tore open the envelope. I was even more baffled when I read the letter inside. The letter, in eccentric English, was from a woman in Munich who said she had been sitting regularly for  some years in a home circle and she had received a message through the medium of this circle  from a spirit who called himself Rudolph Valentino. This spirit had given her my name and address  in England and asked her to write and tell me he had tried to contact me through various mediums  for a long time without much success. The message he wanted to give me was that I must develop  my mediumship and be of service to my fellow man. I stood in our drab little kitchen for a long  long time staring blankly into space. I read and re-read the mysterious letter and remembered the  messages I had ignored. I wondered if 'the young Arab who was not really an Arab' could possibly  be Valentino.  I had seen and enjoyed two films of his in which he had played the part of an Arab, The Sheik and  The Son of the Sheik, but did spirits really dress up in this way? Could it be an attempt to identify  himself? If so, why should he think I would realise the mediums were describing him and not a real  Arab? Even if it were Valentino, why should he want to contact me? I had never known him in life  except as a shadow on the screen. True, I had admired him and I thought him very talented and enjoyed all his films, but no more than many millions of others. So why pick on me? But argue as I  might, I could not get away from the fact that a woman in Germany, of whom I had never heard and  who I was equally certain had never heard of me, had been given my correct name and address by a  medium in Munich and had been asked to convey to me the same message I had so often received,  

and ignored, from mediums in England. It was very late when I went to bed that night and the first  light was in the sky before I slept.  Next day I wrote and told the woman in Munich that I had received her letter. I asked her if she  would ask this spirit who called himself Rudolph Valentino, if he could make himself known to me  in England in some way which would be convincing to me.  The night of the home circle came and I arrived at the house early, as my hostess had suggested,  in order to get to know the other members of the circle before we started the proceedings. When we  were all present we were a group of six; three women and three men. The séance was to be held in a  room in which was the large Victorian dining table my hostess had described. That night she told  me the table could also be used as a billiard table and her husband and son often used it for this  purpose. We seated ourselves around the table and my hostess turned down the gaslight, leaving  just enough light for us to see each other clearly, and we all placed our hands palms down on the  surface of the table.  When we had been sitting like this for ten minutes or so a loud rap was heard, apparently from the  centre of the table. My hostess said this meant the spirits were ready to communicate with us. She  went on to explain that they had worked out a means of communication with the spirits which, although it was slow and laborious, worked very well. One member of the circle would go slowly  through the alphabet and at the required letter there would be a rap. Another member of the circle  was charged with writing down the letters and later reading out the message. First the spirits welcomed me as the newcomer to the circle, then they conveyed a message saying that I had great psychic power. The next message informed us that I had 'brought a spirit with me' who wanted to give  me a message. They said that this spirit had been very psychically gifted in his lifetime, they said his  name was Valentino. The next message, supposedly from Valentino, was exactly the same message  as in the letter from Munich, but I was also asked to thank the German lady for delivering it.  We were then asked if we would like to see how much greater the power was because of my presence. When we all said we would, the heavy table gave a great lurch, then reared itself up to stand  on one end. When I considered the weight and size of this table I could hardly believe the evidence  of my eyes. After this happening the messages continued and we were told we could in future dispense with the table and just sit quietly in a circle. They would experiment with the power, we were  told, and particularly with me because I had remarkable 'physical mediumship', in fact they hoped  later on to be able to actually speak to us in direct voice.  After the séance coffee and cakes were provided and we discussed the evening's events while we  all ate and drank companionably. All the members of the circle were delighted with the results and  told me they had never had so startling a manifestation before. They asked me to continue sitting  with them in their circle and I promised to do so, then took my leave and went home.  I walked through the darkened town with much food for thought. To what had I committed myself  by agreeing to continue with this circle? Did I really want to be a medium at all? All the way home I  pondered the night's events and finally I came to the conclusion that it was true. The dead could  communicate.  

Three.

   FOR a day or two after the séance at the home of the lady I now knew as Mrs Cook, I was elated by  my new-found conviction, but as the day of the next session approached my doubts about becoming a medium grew. Somehow I could not imagine myself standing on a platform in front of a huge  congregation, describing spirits and relaying messages. I felt I was too young and no one would  take me seriously, especially as I had noticed that church congregations, both orthodox and Spiritualist, seemed to consist largely of older people. It was the exception rather than the rule to see  someone of my age among them. There was also the fact that I had always desperately wanted to do  something of an artistic nature as my life's work, although I knew it would be hard to realise this  ambition. I had no education to speak of, and I knew no one who might help me to get out of the  rut that poverty and circumstance had created for me. None the less I had hopes of finding a better  paid job one day and then I would be able to pay for lessons and study art.  My decision wavered this way and that and the day I was due at Mrs Cook's house got nearer and  nearer. I knew if I went on the appointed day I would be morally committed to attend every week for  an indefinite period; weeks, months or even years for all I knew. After much deep thought I finally  decided to be content with the conviction I had been given, that there was life after death and to forget those grandiose notions of serving humanity, in order to get on with my own life. I would not  return to Mrs Cook's house. I wrote a polite note to her telling her of my decision, but before I  could post it another letter arrived from Munich. In it, my unknown German correspondent told me  that Valentino had spoken again through the medium of her circle and had instructed her to write  and plead with me to continue with my mediumship and to tell me he would help me, and that he  and I together would help humanity to find the truth. Valentino also said that he wanted to repay a  little of the affection ordinary men and women had shown him in his lifetime, and by helping my  development as a medium he felt he would do so. This letter had arrived by the first post before I  left for my day's work, and on the kitchen mantelpiece where I had left it the previous night, as my  reminder to post it on my way to the cemetery, was my letter to Mrs Cook. I looked at the German  letter and I looked at the envelope on the mantelpiece. What should I do? In the end I put both letters in my pocket. I would think things over during the day and if I decided to ignore the letter from  Munich I could post my note to Mrs Cook on my way home from work that night.  That day there was a funeral which I found even more harrowing than usual. The chief mourner, a  middle-aged woman wearing the sombre 'widows weeds' common in those days, was distraught  with grief and while the elderly parson gabbled through the burial service, her friends had to restrain her from throwing herself into the open grave. When the service was over and the widow's  friends were leading her away she caught hold of the parson's arm and I heard her say to him in a  voice choked with tears, 'How can I leave him all alone in that horrible hole in the ground? I can't  go on without him, I can't!' The clergyman spoke kindly to her. 'It was God's will to take your husband before you, ask Him for the grace to resign yourself to Him and He will comfort you.' The  widow gave a kind of strangled scream, 'If it's God's will to take him and leave me all alone, then I  hate Him, I hate Him!' 'Please, Mrs Wilson, control yourself,' said the parson sharply. He turned to  the friends holding the woman's arms, 'Get her home as quickly as possible!' The friends persuaded the widow in the direction of the waiting cars and the parson walked briskly off in the opposite direction. Impulsively I started towards the griefstricken woman, I wanted to tell her that she  had not lost her husband forever and that he was still near her, loving and caring for her as always,  but I checked myself abruptly and stood still in the middle of the gravel path. What right had I to intrude on this woman's grief? She would see my mud-caked dungarees and think I was being impertinent and presumptuous, and how could I comfort her even if she listened to me? Only a medium  could do that, a human bridge between the living and the dead. I stood for some moments with this  thought hammering in my mind, then slowly I drew the envelope addressed to Mrs Cook from my  pocket. I looked at it, hesitating, then I tore it in two and then into four and dropped the pieces in a  refuse bin. Now I had committed myself. I would try to develop as a medium if that was what was  required of me.  On the night of the circle Mrs Cook and her friends gave me a big welcome, and their warmth and  kindness made up for the feeling that somehow I had given up my freedom. One of the men in Mrs  Cook's circle, who had been introduced the previous week as Mr Herbert, was late and when he finally arrived it seemed to me as if he had brought with him a great wave of sadness. No one else  seemed to notice anything untoward and Mrs Cook suggested we form our chairs into a circle and  should dispense with the table, in obedience to the instructions we had been given the last time we 
sat. The gas was turned down low and we began the séance by singing a hymn. Mrs Cook then said  a simple prayer asking for protection and offering the circle for God's purpose, and we sat in silence waiting for a sign. I wondered what would happen and regretted the loss of the table which  had been used before for such an interesting manifestation. The clock on the chimney-breast ticked  loudly and the homely sound soothed and reassured me. We waited a long time, nothing happened  and the heat of the room made me feel drowsy, but at the same time I had a feeling of great well-being, finally I remembered nothing more because I fell fast asleep.  When I awoke the rest of the circle were still in their places just as they were when I fell asleep. I  wondered what on earth they must think of me and I started to apologise but Mrs Cook cut me  short by saying a prayer, which was clearly meant to close the proceedings and so I shut up. The  gaslight was turned up and Mrs Cook went out to fetch refreshments. One of the women turned to  me with a beaming smile. 'It was a wonderful sitting,' she said. Now I felt worse than ever, not only  had I been rude to these kind people but I had missed the wonders as well. 'I'm sorry,' I mumbled  awkwardly, 'the room was so warm I couldn't keep awake.' Mr Herbert smiled at me kindly. 'You  were not asleep, you were in trance,' he said. 'You are a natural born medium.' I stared at him in  utter disbelief. 'My wife talked to me,' went on Mr Herbert. I was glad he was pleased and I noticed  he looked so much happier than when he arrived, but I still found it hard to believe. Mrs Cook returned with a trolley laden with refreshments and she too was beaming approval at me.  As we drank tea and ate our egg-and-cress sandwiches, which I thought were too dainty for my appetite, I heard more snippets of what had been going on while I was asleep or in trance or whatever  I had been. The other woman's sweetheart, who had been killed in the war, had talked to her, and  the other man had enjoyed a talk with his mother. All very well for them, I was thinking rather  sourly, they've had a whale of an evening but it's been a total blank for me. I hoped they would go  back to the table next time and let me be part of the proceedings. Mrs Cook offered me a plate of  iced cakes. 'I nearly forgot,' she said casually, 'a ﬁlm actor came through, Valentine or whatever he  called himself, the one that died a couple of years ago.' 'Valentino?' I ventured. 'That's the one,'  said Mrs Cook, 'he said to tell you to continue with your development.' 'Of course he can't be a  very advanced soul and as you develop in our circle we shall hope to contact entities a lot more  spiritually evolved than Hollywood actors.' What a cheek, I thought, who is she to say who is advanced and who isn't? How was I to know at this stage of our acquaintance that Mrs Cook claimed  to be guided by a very exalted spirit known as 'Shu-Shu' who had been a high priestess in the temple of Isis during her life on Earth. For this reason Mrs Cook was determined to keep her circle on  the very highest level, both spiritually and intellectually. Unfortunately, no one had warned me  about Shu-Shu, who eventually became the means of my fall from grace in the Cook circle.  That night I walked part of my way home with Mr Herbert, hoping he would tell me more about  what Valentino had said while I was blanked out, but I was out of luck. He talked without ceasing  only about his wife who, it seemed, had died with tragic suddenness some months before. Their  marriage had been ideal he said, and without her his life had been bleak and lonely, until she had  spoken to him through me at the séance that evening. Naturally I was glad I had been the means of  giving back some meaning to his life, but I did wish he would spare the time to answer my timid  questions about Valentino and his message for me. I wanted to know what his voice had sounded  like, was it an American voice or did he have an Italian accent, and above all was any evidence given  that it really was Valentino? Since Mrs Cook had not even said his name correctly I could not be  sure about this. But Mr Herbert was too wrapped up in his own experience to bother to answer me  explicitly. I gave up trying and we walked on in silence, until quite suddenly he shot a question at  me.  'You were talking to the others for some time before I arrived, were you not?' he asked.  I told him I had arrived punctually and had chatted with the others until he came.  'I suppose they told you about my wife's tragic death?' he said quite sharply.  'No,' I replied, 'as a matter of fact no one even mentioned you or your wife.'  'Well I shall check up on that,' he said, 'so I hope you are telling the truth.'  Somewhat huffily I told him I wasn't in the habit of telling lies. Mr Herbert stopped walking and  standing there in a pool of light from under a lamppost he turned me by the shoulders to face him.  He looked very solemn. He said the communication from his wife meant far too much to him to accept it at face value. He wanted to be certain it was not just a product of my subconscious or even  my conscious mind. If I developed as a medium I must expect to be doubted at times and only  charlatans and fakes resented being investigated by intelligent people. I said I saw that, but what I  saw even more clearly was that being a medium was going to be tough if everyone suspected you  

were a liar or a fake all the time. Mr Herbert was not done with me.  'Another thing, Flint,' he went on, 'it's a big thing for an ordinary working lad to sit in a circle like  Mrs Cook's, so live cleanly and be worthy of the chance.'  Well we may not have a bathroom in our house, I thought to myself, but I bet I'm as clean as you  are. Instead, I said I must get home in case my grandmother worried, and he let me go.  I sat regularly in Mrs Cook's circle for many months and the procedure hardly varied from the first  time. Since Mrs Cook wanted her circle to be highly spiritual we always began with a hymn and  prayers, then I would 'go off' as they put it and various spirits would speak through me. At least the  others told me afterwards that they did, but as far as I was concerned it was just an hour of my life I  had lost. I saw nothing and heard nothing, and I had to rely on what snippets of information I could  pick up from the others after I came out of trance.  However, I did like the hymns and the prayers, and the sandwiches and cakes at the end of the  séance were delicious. Also, the others kept telling me how well I was developing so I was encouraged to persevere.  One night, after I had been sitting in this circle for more than a year, Mrs Cook herself fell into  trance and the spirit called Shu-Shu spoke to us. Shu-Shu urged us not to encourage entities near  to the Earth plane as we had been doing, but to aspire to communicate with more advanced and  progressed souls.  From that night on my trances gradually became less and less until they stopped altogether, and  Mrs Cook and Shu-Shu took over. I wondered if my development had stopped. I was puzzled and  so were the other members of the circle, with the exception of Mrs Cook who was convinced her  guide Shu-Shu had arranged matters in this way, so that the circle would become more spiritual  and not be content to merely communicate with their friends and relations on the other side  through my mediumship. To do justice to Mrs Cook, she was deeply concerned that I should develop my 'great potential' in the most elevated conditions possible. To that end, as circle leader she  ordained that we sing more hymns and say more prayers in future.  I continued to sit in the circle regularly but now I could hear all that went on which, since Mrs  Cook had developed her trance mediumship, was usually Shu-Shu giving an elevated discourse, full  of words I did not understand, but which I thought must be very educated.  One night when Mrs Cook was in trance, Shu-Shu said she would demonstrate through her medium one of the rituals she used to perform when she had been a high priestess in the temple of Isis.  We all said it would be a privilege to see this and begged her to do us this honour. Mrs Cook was  far from being a sylph, she was broad in the beam and her bosoms were of Earth Mother proportions. In trance, this substantial figure rose from her chair and moved to the centre of the circle  where she began to dance. She gyrated her hips and weaved her arms, all the while chanting what  sounded gibberish to me, but was enthusiastically hailed by the others as ancient Egyptian. Her  bounteous bosoms flopped alarmingly as the dance grew more energetic, first to one side then to  the other, and her arms kept weaving like the tentacles of a busy octopus. I wanted to look away, because I was embarrassed for Mrs Cook, but try as I might my eyes were glued to the spectacle. I  knew it would happen and I tried desperately to stop it, but I started to giggle. At first I subdued the  sound, by sheer will power, to a series of choked hiccups, but as the gyrating and the weaving and  the flopping went on I completely lost control of myself and I laughed and laughed until the tears  streamed down my face. The more shocked and angry the other members of the circle became, the  more I laughed until at last Mrs Cook came out of her trance and, with a look which withered me to  ashes, she sat down in her chair again.  Later, when Mrs Cook saw me to the front door to bid me goodnight it was no surprise to me  when she said, quite kindly, under the circumstances, 'I really think, dear, you are still too young  and perhaps too excitable to continue your development at present. It would be best if you didn't  come here again.' She opened the door and I saw it was raining heavily outside. On a wage of  twelve shillings and sixpence a week a raincoat was not a luxury I could afford so I prepared to sally  forth and be drenched. But kind, forgiving Mrs Cook, I suppose to soften the blow she had dealt  me, put her arms around me with the obvious intention of giving me a farewell kiss. I was touched  by her generosity but, reluctant to be pressed so close to that bounteous bosom, I stepped aside  and with all the gaucherie of my seventeen years I trod heavily on her foot. 'Ooh! Right on my corn,  you clumsy oaf! ' she cried in agony, and mumbling my apologies I went out into the night through  the rain.  Squelching home in my leaky shoes I thought over the night's humiliating events. I grew more  and more depressed and ashamed of myself. I had been given a rare opportunity to develop my 
mediumship in a circle of educated, spiritual and posh people and I had ruined my chances and insulted the leader of the circle. Added to this, the exalted Shu-Shu had said that I worked on a low  vibration so what use could I ever be to help and uplift humanity, as Valentino had promised I  would do? Now the circle did not want me, no one wanted me, I had failed miserably and I would  never be a medium of any value to the world. By the time I had reached home and was sitting in the  kitchen drinking the cocoa my grandmother had made for me, I had made my decision. I would  give up on the whole business of trying to be a medium, I would have no more to do with Spiritualism and instead I would get on with my own life and try to make something worthwhile of it.  

Four.    HIS pale eyes bored into mine and his bony finger waved in the air just an inch from my nose. 'Do  you think a steady job like this grows on the hedges? You are going to rue this day, my lad, I'm  telling you.' My guts lurched at the very thought of being out of work but I had made up my mind to  escape from the dead and I stuck to my guns. 'I'll work out my notice but I want to leave the cemetery,' I finally got out through dry lips. 'Don't you imagine you can crawl back here after you've worn  out your shoe leather looking for work.' I dodged the finger. 'Once you walk out of these gates I  wash my hands of you.' Mr Hobbs stalked off, tut-tutting at the rashness and folly of the younger  generation. I tried to cheer myself with the thought that I might find a job before my last payday at  the cemetery, but those guts of mine lurched again at the mental picture of joining the long dole  queue at the local Labour Exchange. I had burnt my boats and I had crossed my Rubicon, in one  week's time I would be a member of that hopeless queue.  During my last week at the cemetery my grandmother listened avidly to the talk about jobs in the  local post office but she heard of nothing for me, and on Friday I was paid off for the last time with  the terrifying prospect of being out of work for heaven-only-knew how long.  I read the Situations Vacant column in the local paper each time it came out and one day I saw an  advertisement that read: 'Willing Lad for duties as pageboy: Apply in person to the Manager: Regent  Cinema, Saint  Albans,' I was willing enough, so I shot off like a bullet from a gun to apply for the job.  It turned out that simply because the uniform worn by the previous pageboy fitted me like a glove, I  was lucky enough to be taken on, disappointing the many other willing lads who had applied. What  joy it was to be in work again, the scared and ashamed feeling of being out of work left me almost  immediately, and I told myself that no lad would ever be as willing as I would be. I might even learn  about film projection if I kept my eyes and ears open and I might even rise one day to be the manager of a cinema myself. A vista of golden opportunity opened out before me, and the pay was my  accustomed twelve shillings and sixpence a week, so my rash folly had paid off.  My duties at the cinema, which was the same picture-house my grandmother and I patronised,  began at nine o'clock in the morning, when I appeared punctually in working clothes to sweep out  the cinema, scrub the vestibule and make myself generally useful, until three o'clock when I had  two hours off. At five o'clock, wearing my inherited uniform, I was standing at the cinema entrance  to keep the various queues in order. I tried to stop them causing an obstruction on the pavement, I  pounced on those who sneaked ahead of others who had waited longer and coaxed them back into  line and I politely answered such questions as 'Has the ﬁlm got a happy ending?' or 'Is there a  Gents toilet?' My day ended when the cinema closed at ten-thirty. It was a long day but I did not  mind because in addition to my twelve shillings and sixpence wage, I had the delightful perk of moments when I could watch the ﬁlm from the door at the back of the stalls. These snatches of watching could add up to nearly the entire ﬁlm in three days and, as the programme changed mid-weekly,  I could see almost two films in a week, more than I could ever afford in the days when I had to pay  for a tip-up seat.  There was a dance-hall in the lower part of the cinema building where a dance was held every Saturday night. I had to be on duty in the gentlemen's cloakroom on these occasions, to hand out  numbered tickets in exchange for hats and coats, and when things were quiet in the cloakroom I  would carry trays of drinks around at the barman's behest. I was not paid extra for these dance  nights, but I was given a saucer to put on the cloakroom counter into which the customers would  drop a penny or twopence when they handed in or collected their coats, so these tips were my  bonus. On occasion the coppers in the saucer might add up to a cool three shillings and I considered myself amply recompensed.  I began to take an interest in the dancing on these Saturday nights. Whenever I was free for a few  minutes I would stand at the edge of the dance floor watching the dancers, envying their expertise.  In those days they were dancing the foxtrot, the waltz, the tango and the new craze called the  Charleston. I longed to be able to do the dances I saw and I would watch the dancers, memorising  the steps, then dash into my cloakroom to try them out before I forgot them. Eventually I thought I  might make a fair showing at most of the ballroom dances, and I longed to be able to practise with  a partner. This was impossible, it was as much as my job was worth to even dare approach any of  the lady patrons of the dance-hall, so I contented myself with the floor-mop which was kept in the  cloakroom, holding it in my arms and imagining it was one of the attractive girls I had seen on the  dance floor, and even if my imagination had to work overtime the mop was better than no one at all.  One night the floor-mop and I were practising a waltz when we were interrupted by one of the 
patrons, whose dancing I had often admired from my vantage point at the edge of the dance floor.  From the expression on his face when he saw me dancing so earnestly with the mop, he must have  thought I had gone out of my mind, so when he asked me what on earth I was doing, although I felt  a perfect ninny, I told him. To my astonishment he removed the mop from my grasp and took me  in his arms, 'Let me show you a new step which hasn't even reached St Albans yet,' he offered, and  started to waltz me around the cloakroom, illustrating the new step as we went. But I was learning it  the wrong way because I had to follow his lead as if I were the lady. I was trying to get the hang of  the new step well enough to be able to practise it the right way around with the mop later, when the  lesson ended abruptly with the entrance of the manager. The manager looked very black, and he  asked my teacher to either return to the dance floor or leave if he preferred it. The patron seemed  confused and embarrassed and hurried out, which left me to face the wrath of the manager alone. I  expected the worst, because we were not supposed to be familiar with the paying guests, but the  manager spoke quite kindly. 'Keep away from that man,' he said, 'he's queer.' Now I had never  heard the word used in a homosexual context before so I suppose I looked baffled. 'Well never  mind, just attend to your duties properly in future, and if I find you with him again, you'll be sacked  on the spot.' He went out, leaving me to wonder if my would-be teacher had escaped from old  Shenley Asylum or somewhere, but I was determined to avoid him like the plague from then on, in  case I lost my job.  As the weeks passed and I went on practising with my mop I began to long for a real girl as a partner, and finally I decided that my bonus of Saturday coppers would pay for dancing lessons on my  one free night a week. So I scouted around and enrolled in Miss Florence's School of Dancing where I  would be given lessons in modern ballroom dancing for two shillings a session.  Miss Florence's School was held in a large bare room at the back of an office building. Music for  the lessons was provided sometimes by an elderly lady pianist, and at other times by a cabinet  gramophone, which I preferred because I thought it was more like the music at a real dance.  Miss Florence was an excellent teacher and after a few months of her tuition I was proficient  enough to decide to stop my lessons and devote my nights and my two shillings to escorting a fair  haired girl I had my eye on to real dances. With this in mind I arrived at the school for what I intended to be my final lesson and when it was over I lingered after the rest of the class had gone to  tell Miss Florence I was not coming back again. To my surprise she offered to continue my lessons  free of charge if I would give her some help with her more backward pupils. Naturally I was flattered, but I wanted to have fun on my future nights off and I refused as politely as I could.  Miss Florence was tall, slim, elegant and self-assured and I could hardly believe my ears when she  actually pleaded with me to stay on in the class. The reason emerged as we talked and I soon found  myself pitying this aloof, poised lady who had seemed so far removed from the squalid little problems which bothered ordinary people like me. It turned out Miss Florence had to support an elderly  ailing mother and the school was not making enough money to employ a second teacher to give  individual attention to the slower pupils, so consequently they were threatening to take their custom  elsewhere. Whether my vanity or my sympathy was titillated the more by Miss Florence's confidence I do not know to this day, and banishing the pleasing picture of myself and a blonde heart throb gliding together over some ballroom floor to the spontaneous applause of the onlookers, I  agreed to remain in the class on Miss Florence's terms.  I was soon to discover the backward pupils were either men or overweight and rigidly corseted  matrons, and trying to instil into them the joys of the dance was heavy going indeed. How I longed  to go to a real dance with a real partner who would follow my lead and feel light as a feather in my  arms, but unless I changed my job for one which left me free in the evenings it seemed unlikely I  would ever get the chance. I remembered the shamed feeling of being out of work too vividly to risk  giving up the job I had in the hope of finding another. I tried to console myself with the thought  that at least I was keeping up with all the newest steps.  One Saturday night at work when the cinema programme was almost over, one of the usherettes  asked me to turn on the main switch which controlled the lights in the dance-hall. I rushed off like  the eager beaver I was to do her bidding. The main switchboard was housed in a small room off the  vestibule and I went inside. I surveyed the big board about which I knew less than nothing and saw  two levers, which looked to me like main switches. I had no idea which one of them controlled the  dance-hall lights so, to make sure, I pulled them both. There was a bang, a ﬂash, smoke billowed  from the switchboard and the light went out. Guiltily I crept out into the vestibule to find total darkness and chaos. Patrons were running around shouting, the manager, waving a torch, frantically  promised to refund money later, usherettes waved torches to show panic-stricken people the way  

out, women cried, children howled and strong men pushed and shoved their way to the exits. In  that pitch darkness one thing was as clear to me as day, there would be no more business done in  either the cinema or the dance-hall that night. There was the inevitable post mortem on the following Monday and I learned I had blown the main fuse of the entire building and through my stupidity the company had lost hundreds of pounds. The sentence of the manager at this drumhead  court martial was instant dismissal. I became a member of the dispirited queue at the local Labour  Exchange and for the first time in my working life I was on the dole.  Week followed hopeless week and the scared, shamed feeling of the workless was with me all the  time. I walked miles looking for work and when the soles of my only decent pair of shoes were worn  through my grandmother cut out new soles from thick cardboard. Then, when she had polished the  uppers with Cherry Blossom shoe polish and elbow grease, I was respectable again.  Eventually the clerk at the 'Labour' asked me if I would consider leaving my home town to take a  job as a barman in a London public house. This offer put me in a quandary. My grandmother depended on the few shillings I squeezed from my dole money to help her to exist and if I left St Albans I wondered how she would manage to live. I was wondering how to solve this dilemma when I  saw the contemptuous look on the clerk's face. It said, as clearly as if he had spoken, how much he  despised the work-shy lower class; that they were always moaning about jobs and houses, when  they were offered work they refused it and when they were rehoused they kept coal in the bath. I  would solve Gran's problem later as best I could and I accepted the job in London.  As it turned out, the public house was not actually in the heart of London as I had imagined, it  was in Barkingside, Essex, a fairly country district with grass and trees and not the grimy streets and  frowning buildings I had dreaded. The pub where I was to work was called the Fairlop Oak and it  was managed by a warm-hearted Irish couple who greeted me when I arrived like a long lost friend,  rather than the new potboy and general dogsbody. I was shown into a clean little bedroom and told  it was to be my very own. This was a particular joy for me because for as long as I could remember I  had had to share the upstairs bedroom in my grandmother's house with the lodger, who kept me  awake with his whistling gurgling snores. Not only was I to have the privacy of my own room but its  window overlooked the garden and I woke up to the sight of trees and the sound of birds.  Mr and Mrs Ryan were patient with my mistakes and they encouraged my efforts to learn the trade  and for this very reason I picked up the work quickly. Before long I had graduated from pot-boy and  ﬁre-lighter to more responsible duties in the cellar and to serving behind the bar. I enjoyed the bar  work and I grew quite fond of some of the regular customers, who had their own tankards with their  names on them displayed on a special shelf. 'The Oak' was a cheerful and well-run public house  and I was happy there. I remember Mr Ryan's passion for the records of John McCormack, the Irish  tenor, and how all day long we worked to the sound of his golden voice singing all the Irish ballads  the Ryans loved. Whenever I hear strains of Danny Boy, Killarney, Mother Machree or any of the others, even now I am transported back to The Oak and I wish the Ryans well wherever they may be.  On my days off I used to take the bus into town and spend my time visiting the museums and art  galleries, occasionally going to the pictures. I began to think again of cutting a swathe in some  dance-hall, but when I compared my one and only suit with those worn by the men I saw 'Up West'  I realised I was too shabby to venture into any of them. Obviously I must buy a suit, but however  long I window-shopped I found nothing cheaper than thirty shillings, which was an astronomical  sum for anyone earning my wage. It looked as if I was foiled again, but kind Mr Ryan came to my  rescue and he advanced me the thirty shillings for my suit if I agreed to repay the loan at five  shillings a week. This meant I had to postpone my dance triumphs until my debt was paid so that I  could continue to send my grandmother a small amount via postal order each week. At last the  great occasion came and, wearing my new suit, shoes shining, hair slicked flat and with ten reckless  shillings in my pocket I caught the bus and rode all the way to Piccadilly Circus in breathless excitement.  I had already decided to patronise the 'Astoria Dance Hall' in Charing Cross Road because I had  been told ladies to be found there would dance without the formality of a formal introduction.  When I arrived I was dumb with wonder, the mirror shine surface of the floor, the big band in smart  uniforms, the exotic décor and the coloured lights playing over the dancers were to me the summit  of elegance and chic. I felt I was mingling on equal terms with the gilded youth of London. For a  few minutes I stood on the sidelines to observe procedure. As far as I could judge one simply  chose one of the bevy of unaccompanied beauties, walked up to her and asked her to dance. Feeling very daring I approached a dazzling blonde. She slid into my arms and soon we were circling  the floor in fine style, exchanging brilliant snippets of small talk like 'did she come here often' and 
'what did I think of the band'. I have to admit none of the other dancers broke into spontaneous applause after our performance, but I felt I was not letting Miss Florence down.  I danced with various partners but I kept on returning to my blonde dazzler, not only because she  was a good dancer but she had a trick of welding her body to mine which I found very exciting. In  those days familiarity between the sexes was by no means as immediate as it is today and I was very  thrilled when she said I could call her Muriel.  At the end of the evening I had a problem. I wanted to dance the last waltz with Muriel but this  would imply that I should take her home and I had no idea where she lived. I would gladly walk with  her to Land's End, but a beautiful girl such as she was would undoubtedly expect a taxi and what  with the entrance fee and all the lemonades I had bought for my partners, I had half-a-crown left for  my bus fare home and to see me through until next pay day. There was only one answer, I would  not dance the last waltz at all, if I could not dance with Muriel I was not going to slight her by taking  another partner. I was standing rather gloomily on the sidelines watching the last dance when two  soft hands were clapped over my eyes, and I turned to find her smiling at me. 'Will you walk home  with me?' she asked. 'My flat is only a few steps from here.' I was caught up at once into the seventh heaven of bliss.  The soft light from the street lamps made a nimbus of her blonde hair and Muriel looked very  lovely to me as we walked down a narrow dingy street and stopped outside a door with paint peeling in strips, between a barber's shop and a wine store with its windows still lit up. Muriel opened  the peeling door with her key to reveal a steep flight of wooden stairs. 'Follow me,' she said brightly. I muttered something about catching my bus. 'Oh, come up for a short time,' she insisted and  taking my hand she pulled me up the stairs with her.  I looked around Muriel's room vaguely wondering what was wrong with it. The furniture was  shabby, but I was used to shabbiness, it was something else. It was a pink, frilly feminine room,  there was a big Kewpie doll in a feathered headdress on the mantelpiece and a pink teddy-bear lay  on the bed cover. A chintz curtain, riotous with sunflowers, concealed a gas stove and a shelf with  pots and pans. Suddenly I knew what was wrong, I missed the soap and wax polish smell which  pervaded my grandmother's home. This room was neglected, not quite clean. Muriel opened a  wardrobe and took out a black filmy garment which she slung casually about her neck, and after  excusing herself she left the room. Shortly I heard a tap running and wondered hopefully if she was  filling a kettle for tea.  Shortly the tap was turned off and Muriel came back into the room, wearing the black filmy thing  she had taken with her and underneath it she was stark naked. I had had no experience to guide me  in a situation of this kind so I suppose I just stood, rooted to the spot, looking every bit the country  bumpkin, which in truth I was. Briskly my blonde divinity pulled back the bedcover and turned  down the sheets. 'Don't be scared if it's your first time, Muriel will show you the ropes.' Five minutes later, crushed, crumpled and ashamed, I was standing in the middle of the floor again. I stammered something about the bus and really having to go and made for the door, but before I got  there Muriel was facing me like an avenging angel. 'You'll put my five bob on the mantelpiece before you set foot outside that door,' she shrilled. I stared at her in utter disbelief. In my naïvety I  thought the two of us had been carried away by a sudden irresistible urge and although I was  ashamed of giving way to what I thought was my lust, it had not entered my mind the transaction  could be financial.  When Muriel cottoned on to the fact I simply could not pay the five shillings she told me exactly  what she thought of me and she did not mince her words or spare my feelings. By the time she had  done with me I felt as if I had been pulled through a mangle and when she disdainfully ordered me  to get out of her sight, thankfully I went. As I crept stealthily down the wooden stairs she appeared  at the top to hurl a last insult, 'You and your thirty bob suit!' she spat venomously and then vanished from view.  All the way back to Barkingside in between bouts of guilt and shame I kept wondering how Muriel  could have known how much I paid for my suit, but when I reached the sanctuary of my little room  at the Fairlop Oak I saw the price tag was still hanging from the tab at the back of the jacket collar.  I had heard a great deal about the new talking picture at the Regal Cinema, Marble Arch; it was  called The Singing Fool and starred Al Jolson, and all my customers in the bar raved about it. The  more I thought about a picture talking and in this case even singing, the more wonderful it seemed  and the more I longed to see and hear it.  At last the day came when I took my place in the long queue which stretched far down the Edgware Road and prepared to inch forward with the rest for as long as it took to get into the Regal to  

see this new wonder. After standing for two hours or more I sat down in my tip-up seat feeling all  the usual thrill of anticipation and more as the lights were lowered.  The ﬁlm had not run for longer than a very few minutes before I knew its canned music could  never replace the orchestral accompaniment to the big silent films. The actors' voices sounded  strange and harsh, reminding me of very early gramophone records and the magic the silent films  had for me was simply not there. The people on the screen were no longer beautiful, glamorous or  mysterious, their voices were tinny and did not match the way they looked. This new miracle struck  me as artificial and deadly dull. I came out of the Regal convinced this new craze for talking pictures  could not last.  It was a long time before I went to a talking picture again, instead I would seek out the small cinemas which had not been able to afford to install the expensive sound equipment and I revelled in  the old silent films they were forced to show. I remember one manager of such a cinema who put a  placard outside his doors stating 'Silence is Golden' and I agreed with him all the way.  In the early days of the talkies, which to my surprise continued to thrive, many of Hollywood's  greatest stars disappeared from the ﬁlm galaxy because their voices were unsuitable or discordant  and I began to think of Rudolph Valentino again. I wondered if his voice would have matched his  grace and good looks or whether he too would have been destroyed by sound. I thought perhaps he  was fortunate to have died when he did before the legend he had created could be ridiculed out of  existence. Thinking in this way, I remembered those messages from Germany which begged me to  develop mediumship to serve the world. I wondered what Valentino thought of me now if truly the  messages had come from him. I was certainly serving spirits but hardly the kind he meant me to  serve, but I had made my decision to get on with my life in my own way, so I pushed these  thoughts to the back of my mind and forgot about Valentino.  Some time later on my day off I decided to go to a live theatre. After shopping around I decided to  patronise the Prince of Wales Theatre where they were performing what I thought was a nautical  play called Outward Bound. I had always enjoyed films about the sea and I had read Moby Dick so I  set off for the theatre expecting to be well entertained. I discovered that Outward Bound had very little to do with the sea, but it had a great deal to do with life after death. True, I enjoyed the play, I  thought it was a great and moving experience, but it seemed to me that the dead had caught up  with me again. Was I was not to be allowed to escape what I had been told was my duty to  mankind? Stupid as it may sound now, I felt my choice of this particular play had been forced upon  me, as a sort of ghostly nudge towards the path I was expected to tread.  That night in my little room at the Fairlop Oak I lay awake for hours thinking about the play, wondering if I should give up my job and go home to St Albans to try and find a new group of people  who would sit with me to help me develop my mediumship. Common sense warned me that I  could not lightly give up a job I liked and where I was happy without any real excuse, and if I did I  would get no dole money from the Labour Exchange while I was out of work. I tossed and turned in  my narrow bed wondering what to do, arguing with myself, first this way, then that, until at last I fell  asleep.  I awoke next morning bug-eyed, but knowing exactly what I was going to do. Then and there I gave  Mr Ryan the customary two weeks' notice and when my next day off came around I bought a cheap  day return ticket and took the train to St Albans.  It was pleasant to be in my own home town again, but I had a flock of butterflies ﬂuttering in my  stomach whenever I thought about how rash I had been, to give up my good job at the Fairlop Oak  without any immediate prospect of another. As I wandered up the main street on my way to grandmother's house I saw a card in the window of a tailor's shop: 'Young Man Wanted'. How I hoped  that I was the young man they wanted, because I certainly wanted them. I went into the shop and  asked to see the manager. He came out of the back premises and I asked if I might be considered  for the vacancy. I answered his every question to the best of my ability, even telling him about my  disaster in the cinema which, to my relief, made him laugh. Eventually the butterflies swirling and  ﬂuttering in my stomach folded their wings and slept when he accepted me for the job. The wage  was my standard rate of twelve shillings and sixpence a week and my duties were to include keeping  the shop clean, polishing the show windows, delivering orders and any other tasks at which I could  make myself useful. The last hurdle was crossed when he agreed to keep the job open for me while  I worked out my notice in London. Once more I had burnt my boats and crossed my Rubicon and I  wondered what I would find on the other side.  

Five.    I LIKED my job at John Maxwell's ready-to-wear shop for men. The manager and his assistant were  kindly, my duties were lighter than any I had previously known and I had my evenings to myself. In  the morning I swept out, dusted and polished the shop then standing on a step ladder on the pavement I washed and polished the big show windows until they shone. At least they shone to within a  foot of the top, because I have never had a head for heights and it was only on rare occasions that I  forced myself to the top of the ladder to do the job thoroughly. For the rest of the day I did any odd  job required of me, ran errands and delivered purchases to customers' homes.  At my grandmother's home where I was once again living, I sadly missed the privacy of my own  room, which had been such a joy to me at the Fairlop Oak. I had to share a bedroom with George,  our elderly lodger, once more and try to ignore his snoring and his morning smell of stale sweat  and last night's beer. At this time George was in his early sixties, and a taciturn man with the ruddy  complexion of the countryman and a long mournfully drooping moustache. Some time in the 1870s  he had started work as a stable lad at The Old Mile House, an old coaching inn one mile from Saint  Albans, and he still worked there. For many years George had groomed the horses and polished the  carriages of the gentry until the triumph of the motor-car had closed the stables and reduced  George to handyman at a wage of one pound a week. Like my grandmother he could neither read  nor write and he never stopped grumbling about the disappearance of his beloved horses from the  roads or failed to curse the noise and stink of the 'moty-cars'.  We had a parlour in our house which was always known as the front room. It was furnished with  stiff Victorian armchairs, a round mahogany table with a bobble-edged tablecloth and sundry whatnots filled with bric-a-brac. There was a sideboard on which stood a tantalus containing two glass  decanters, which never to my knowledge had held liquor and which in my childhood had vanished  to the pawnshop during periods of greater financial crisis than usual. There were two sets of curtains at the window, lace ones which were washed every Monday and some heavy velvet drapes,  which were kept half-drawn during the day in case the sun faded the patterned rug, which lay rakishly askew on the worn linoleum. There was red crinkled paper pleated into a fan in the empty  grate and the pottery vase holding dried bulrushes, which stood in one corner, could be thought to  provide that touch which traditionally only a woman's hand can give. It was an important part of my  grandmother's image of respectability to have a parlour and she took great pride in her own. The  mahogany furniture was polished until it shone and she would get down on her knees to scrub the  linoleum, and when it was dry she would get on her knees again to polish it with Ronuk floor polish. Once a week each worthless piece of bric-a-brac from the laden what-nots was washed in hot  soapy water and dried with loving care. She spent hours mending the holes in her lace curtains,  worn by age and too frequent washing, and darning them with small exquisite stitches, trying to  recreate the pattern which had gone.  It would have been quite unthinkable to use this 'Holy of Holies' for any lesser occasion than  Christmas Day or the funeral of a close relative, so we sat in the kitchen at all other times.  When George and I came in from our work we were given a meal which was called tea, but in reality it was our main meal of the day. We would have pie and peas, sausages and mashed potatoes or  scrag-end of mutton stew, washed down with mugs of strong tea and accompanied by unlimited  bread and margarine. When tea was over the three of us would draw close to the minuscule ﬁre in  the kitchen grate, Gran in her wicker armchair mending or knitting, George with his feet up on the  sagging horsehair sofa smoking his old clay pipe and myself sitting bolt upright on a wooden  kitchen chair, since it was the only other place to sit.  We hear a lot said these days about lack of communication between the generations but I doubt if  youngsters nowadays can imagine the almost total lack of communication which illiteracy can inflict. My grandmother and George could not read newspapers, and a wireless radio set which might  have kept them in touch with events was too expensive for them to buy. They had absolutely nothing to talk about except local gossip or the small happenings of their working days, and by night  both of them were too tired, or too dispirited to be interested in each other's daily routine. George  would stare into space, smoking his evil-smelling clay pipe and Gran would sew in silence until it  was time to retire. Often I would go out, even if I had nowhere to go, just to avoid these dull, deadly  silent evenings around the kitchen ﬁre.  I would sometimes go to Spiritualist meetings hoping I might get some message to tell me how  to set about serving humanity, but in those days there was never any message for me and since the  other older members of the congregation did not speak to me or try to be friendly, I was not able to 
contact any group of people with whom I might sit to develop my mediumship as I had been told to  do. I began to be very depressed and to wonder if the letters could possibly have been some kind of  elaborate hoax. But I kept returning to the fact that the woman in Munich could not possibly in any  ordinary way have learned the name and address of a totally unimportant young man in a small  English town, and even if she had been able to do so, what on earth would be the point in playing a  complicated joke on a total stranger whose reaction you would never see? I got very broody pondering on these matters and my grandmother offered to dose me with sulphur and syrup, which  was her cure for all ills. I turned down her offer of the loathsome sulphur and syrup and decided I  must snap out of it by my own efforts, so I made up my mind to take up dancing again.  Miss Florence said she was delighted to see me, she had been doing so well in recent months she  was hardly able to cope with all the pupils who wanted to enrol. It seemed that England had gone  dance mad, because young, middle-aged and old all wanted to learn to do the quickstep, the tango,  the new waltz, the black bottom and the rest. It was agreed I would help with slow learners and new  pupils in return for private dance lessons from Miss Florence.  I went back to dancing with all the enthusiasm of a stranded ﬁsh returned to water. I practised  steps in the shop between jobs, I practised in my bedroom under George's jaundiced eye, I waltzed  and tangoed through my grandmother's lines of washing in our kitchen and when I wasn't dancing  with my feet, I was working out routines in my head. When Miss Florence said that if I persevered I  might even make a career in dancing, I was thrilled.  The manager's assistant at the shop was unexpectedly transferred to another branch of the company and the manager offered me his job. Not only did I get a rise in pay to fifteen shillings a week  but I would be allowed to wear a black coat and pin-stripe trousers, purchased at cost price from  the shop.  Despite my rise in status I still had to sweep out, polish and dust the shop in the morning and  clean the show windows as before, but when I had finished these tasks I would slip into the back  shop and change from my overalls into my smart shop suit and I felt no end of a 'dude'. I was also  allowed a discount on clothes from the shop and I was allowed to pay by instalments. In this way I  was able in time to get together a wardrobe. I bought two suits, a dark blue serge suit and, to express my more dashing side, a plum-coloured worsted suit. I bought a pair of the new wide flannel  trousers known as Oxford bags and a tweed jacket, the two together cost me under £2, and then I  bought myself a raincoat, which set me back twenty-five shillings. Thus accoutred I thought I was  quite a dandy. Each time I brought home some new item my grandmother would remark pointedly  that clothes never yet made the man, but secretly she was very proud of my new image and she  spent hours sponging, pressing and steaming so that I should always be immaculate. George never  to my knowledge wore anything other than his working corduroys and a blue-striped union shirt  with a neckerchief, and he regarded my pretensions with sardonic amusement, because I fell so far  short of what he called real gentry. The first time I wore my plum-coloured confection he lay on the  old horsehair sofa in the kitchen and laughed until he cried.  After I had been with Miss Florence as pupil-teacher for some months a girl joined the class who I  thought was a natural born dancer. Her name was Gladys and she was small, slim and lissom as a  dryad, with brown hair and big hazel eyes. Her clothes were of the simple elegant kind, which I suspected must have cost a great deal. We liked each other from the beginning and our steps suited so  well I was sure I had found the ideal partner I had dreamed about for so long. As soon as I plucked  up enough courage I asked her to go to one of the local dances with me and to my joy she accepted  the invitation.  On the big night, wearing my blue serge and my most tasteful tie, I arrived outside the front door  of the address Gladys had given me and my heart sank into my gleaming shoes. This was the home  of wealthy and important people whose daughter was far beyond my poor reach. However, I rang  the bell thinking I would at least have one night to remember before her wrathful parents gave me  the heave-ho. The door was opened by a maidservant in black and white trim, and I asked nervously  if Miss Gladys was ready to accompany me to the dance. The maid giggled, then quickly controlled  herself. 'Go round to the side door and ring the bell,' she said abruptly and then closed the door in  my face. I walked around the house to the side door wondering if the servant's curt behaviour was  the first sign of parental disapproval, and I pressed the bell. Gladys, wearing a white fur jacket over  a flame coloured evening gown, opened the door to me. 'Cook might give us a sherry if she is in the  mood, so come in,' said this vision. I was ushered into a kitchen where a lady with a red face wearing a white coat with egg on the lapels poured out two schooners of sherry from a decanter labelled  'cooking' and handed one each to Gladys and me. Over the sherry, which even my untutored palate  

found lacking in finesse, I learned that Gladys was actually the upstairs maid in this imposing residence. Then she artlessly confided that her elegant clothes were cast-offs handed down to her by  the two daughters of the family who employed her. What with the relief of finding Gladys was not  out of reach after all and the unaccustomed drink, which had gone straight to my head, I left the  house with Gladys on my arm and felt I was walking an inch above the ground all the way to the  dance-hall.  Dancing with Gladys was to know the bliss of the perfect partner, she was light as thistledown in  my arms and she followed my every lead unerringly as we glided effortlessly over the floor in tune  with each other and with the occasion. By the end of the evening we were already planning our future as professional ballroom dancers. We thought we might first make our names in cabaret or by  winning one of the big competitions, then we would open a school together and make our fortunes.  We agreed to practise together every minute we could spare and we would go as a couple to all the  local dances, not only to try out variations on all the latest steps to decent bands, but so that we  might become known in the district as expert dancers, which might lead to invitations to give exhibition dances or even cabaret offers. Gladys and I especially enjoyed dancing the tango and on this,  our first public appearance so to speak, our version of this beautiful dance pleased the crowd so  much that they applauded and demanded an encore, just as I had dreamed might happen if ever I  found a partner like Gladys. Few people learn to dance the tango well; they may master the steps  and even feel its rhythm, but to do real justice to it one must have the right temperament and most  English people are too stiff and too inhibited to let themselves go to the romantic sensuality which  is its true meaning.  When I left Gladys at the side door of her employers' mansion in the small hours we were already  in imagination a world-famous dance team and we renewed our promises to work hard and often  with kisses.  In the weeks which followed we went to all the dances we could find and, according to plan, we  became well known in the district as experts and we grew accustomed to applause and to graciously acceding to requests for an encore. Our personal relationship remained on the level of our  ambitions, but often, moments which might have grown into tenderness were inhibited by Gladys'  insistence that she was not 'that kind of a girl' and she wanted none of 'that' before her marriage  lines were safely signed, sealed and delivered into her hand. The mere mention of marriage was like  a cold shower to me. I remembered only too clearly the misery and discord in the seedy furnished  room which had been my parents' home. But Gladys and I got on well enough and to dance with  her was sheer delight.  In the autumn of 1931 a local charity planned to hold a fund-raising dance in the largest hall in St  Albans and the organisers asked Gladys and me to appear in the midnight cabaret without a fee, as  our contribution to the cause. We were so sure this was our first rung on the ladder to fame and  fortune, we accepted it with enthusiasm. We decided to dance our tango, by now a dramatised version with added steps of our own invention, and follow it with a quickstep if we were asked for an  encore. At this point Gladys revealed an unexpected propensity for managing and she announced  we would wear Spanish costumes for the tango and I must chip in my share of the cost of materials  and she would run them up on the Singer sewing machine at the house where she worked. It  seemed to me time spent in sewing costumes would be better employed in practising our act, but  Gladys was determined we would make a dramatic impact and so I handed over my money. After  endless discussions on the merits of various fabrics Gladys contrived two very striking costumes,  although I should say I was not too happy about the Cordoban hat she found for me to wear with  mine. I was already conscious of being too short for professional dancing and I felt the hat would  extinguish me completely, but Gladys was determined I should wear it, so I did.  We were a terrific success on the big night and we finished our exhibition to prolonged, ear splitting applause which was music to our ears and in acknowledgement I thankfully removed the hat.  As Gladys gracefully curtseyed and I bowed to the non-stop applause, both of us felt we only had to  reach out and the career we wanted would be ours.  Some weeks after our almost professional début, Gladys and I were out walking when we passed a  big old Victorian house in a residential part of town. The house belonged to two elderly sisters who  ran a nursery school for the under-fives called The Hall Nursery School. In those days women did  not commonly work outside their homes and help in the nursery was cheap and readily available  and the demand for places to dump burdensome tots was not so great as it is today, so I imagine  the Hall School was rather less than a resounding financial success. As it happened, on this day  there was a hand-printed notice pinned to one of the trees offering the school assembly hall for hire 
in the evenings at a reasonable fee for parties, lectures, soirées. Gladys and I stopped in our tracks,  both struck by the same thrilling idea. Gladys' hazel eyes were dancing with excitement. 'No harm  in asking, is there?' she said, and we walked through the gateway.  I tugged the old-fashioned bell-pull and somewhere behind the massive front door a bell clanged.  Shortly the door was opened by a quiet little mouse of a lady dressed in grey silk, who looked at us  interrogatively without speaking. When we told her we wanted to ask about hiring the hall she  thought we had better see her sister. We followed her into a room which was evidently a playroom  for the children. There was a dapple-grey rocking-horse with splendid scarlet nostrils and a long tail  standing in one corner, and other toys could be seen neatly stacked in an open cupboard. The elder  sister, her hair in a frenzy, was painting a play-pen with white paint. She looked up as the grey  mouse sister ushered us into the room, she had a smudge of paint on the end of her nose. I asked  politely if we could see the assembly hall with a view to hiring it on two evenings a week to teach  ballroom dancing. The older lady remarked inconsequentially that they did not seem to dance the  gavotte or the lancers much nowadays, but she supposed 'cats could look at kings'. Miss Mouse  seemed to take this last remark as permission for us to view the hall and she invited us to follow  her.  Gladys and I surveyed the parquet floor of what had once been the gracious drawing-room of the  house and, in spite of the damage that patterings of tiny feet had caused in the way of scratches and  scuff marks, we nodded our satisfaction to each other. The room was ideal for our purpose. There  was even a grand piano in the window bay and an old cabinet gramophone standing against the  wall. Miss Mouse agreed that the gramophone was included in the hire, but said we would be responsible for any damage to the machine and must bring our own needles. We thought this was  fair and said we would call again when we knew which nights we needed the hall, then we bid the  lady good afternoon and went away to talk things over.  I was officially Gladys' follower by now and sometimes the cook would give me a meal in the  kitchen on nights when Gladys was housebound. On one such occasion, after the table was  cleared, Gladys and I concocted a brochure advertising The Hall School of Dancing. Principals: L.  Flint and G. Hayes. Our charges were one guinea for a course of five private lessons from one of the  Principals and two shillings per person per evening for the open class. Later we found a back street  printer who ran off a thousand handbills from our copy and we both spent hours of our spare time  distributing these to factories and leaving them carelessly on shop counters or pushing them  through the letter-boxes of houses. Before too long the Hall School of Dancing actually had pupils  and if we only had two people taking the guinea course we sometimes had as many as twenty in the  open class. We had a problem with the music. The gramophone was wheezy and ancient and we  had very few records, and we spent so much time changing them from one side to the other and  winding the gramophone, that pupils were complaining they were not getting their two shilling's  worth of tuition. We began to look around for someone to play the piano in return for the small fee  we could offer, but without any success.  One morning I was on the stepladder outside the shop polishing the show windows and doubtless thinking up new dance routines when a woman called to me from the pavement. I came down  from the ladder to see who she was and recognised a lady who had sometimes acted as librarian at  the Spiritualist church in the days when I was going there. She introduced herself as Mrs Mundin  and said she had not seen me at the church for so long she felt she had to speak to me when she  saw me on the steps. I thought she was probably in her early forties but still very attractive, with a  gaiety of manner which I found pleasing. I told her I had completely lost interest in Spiritualism and  my time was taken up trying to make a career for myself. 'What a pity,' said Mrs Mundin, 'I heard  you were showing signs of quite outstanding mediumship in Mrs Cook's home circle.' Although it  had happened so long before, I still felt myself turn scarlet at the memory of my disastrous final appearance in Mrs Cook's circle. 'I don't want to be a medium,' I said firmly, 'it seems a rotten kind of  life to me.' Mrs Mundin looked sad and said it was a shame to waste a gift when there were so very  few good mediums around. I answered that I probably wasn't any good anyway and I was too busy  with this world to trouble myself about the next. Mrs Mundin's level grey eyes disapproved of me.  'If you have a gift, it is your duty to develop it and use it,' she said. 'I am starting a home circle and  would be happy if you could join us.' Not wanting to appear churlish, I smiled kindly as I shook my  head. 'Come to tea on Sunday and meet my friends,' persisted the soft pretty voice, 'we will have tea  and talk, then perhaps I will play the piano.' I pricked up my ears. 'Do you play dance music or the  other kind?' I inquired brashly. When Mrs Mundin said she played both kinds I accepted her invitation.  

The minute I set foot in Mrs Mundin's pretty little drawing-room it was obvious to me she and her  friends were far above my station in life and at first I was paralysed with shyness and feelings of inferiority - which the silver tea-service and the delicate cups and saucers on the tea-trolley did nothing to dispel. Fortunately for me Mrs Mundin and her friends had that true gentility which never  discomforts those who have been less privileged than themselves and before long I found them as  easy and relaxed as old shoes. After a delicious tea Mrs Mundin, who I was ask to call Edith, played  Chopin, Brahms and Bach and I had to admit to myself that these previously avoided composers  appealed to me in a way I would never have expected. Then to please me, Edith played all the latest  dance tunes with such skill that my feet itched to dance. This was my first experience of a home  where the criterion of acceptance was not who you were or where you came from, but what kind of  human being you were. I knew instinctively that despite my uncertain grammar, my poverty and my  lack of education, these people accepted me as one of themselves and they liked me. I wanted to  see more of them and so when the question of the circle came up I agreed to sit with them every  Wednesday evening, which was the one evening which would not interfere with any of my other  activities.  As I walked home I wondered if I had been wise to start up all this spirit business again. I was  determined to not let it interfere with my efforts to build up the Hall School of Dancing with Gladys,  which reminded me that Gladys would probably be pretty scathing about the idea of me developing  as a medium. I decided discretion was the better part of valour and I would keep my own counsel.  I need hardly have worried on either score, because although I sat regularly every Wednesday  evening in Edith's circle for many weeks, absolutely nothing happened, so far as any development  of my psychic powers was concerned. I came to the conclusion that if I ever had any such powers  they must have left me forever. I would not have regretted this except for the disappointment I felt it  must have been to the other members of the circle, who had heard such tales of my wonderful  mediumship from members of Mrs Cook's circle. Yet in all the long succession of blank evenings,  not one member of the circle ever made me feel I had not come up to their expectations and I  began to feel a warm genuine affection for each one of them. While we were sitting together as a circle I could actually feel a warm tide of affection ﬂowing from them towards me and these blank  evenings were certainly rewarding in the quiet joy of repose, tranquillity and friendship we shared.  What I did not realise until long afterwards was that during the months when nothing seemed to be  happening, we ourselves were creating the very conditions of harmony and love in which the gift of  mediumship can flower best.  Gladys and I still had problems with our music, we had not found anyone who would play the  piano for us at the very small fee we could offer. We struggled on with the gramophone, but we lost  many pupils because of the long pauses caused by coping with the elderly machine. When Edith  learned of our difficulty she at once offered to play for us on two nights a week and, although I  knew she was having money worries herself at this time, she refused to accept any fee. Gladys had  become very possessive and I was apprehensive about her reaction to Edith, but the fact that we  had acquired a first-class pianist for nothing outweighed her fear of losing me. Gladys went down  considerably in my estimation when, after Edith had left for home at their first meeting, she said  bitchily, 'Your lady friend is well past it, isn't she?'  One night when our circle was sitting as usual, suddenly the whole room seemed to grow icy cold  and rush away from me and I lost consciousness. When I returned to a normal waking state I  learned that various entities had spoken through me, including Edith's late husband who had been  the brother of Herbert Mundin the comedy actor.  As months passed our circle became an ever more harmonious group. Sometimes I would be entranced and discarnate persons would speak through me. At first these were relatives and friends of  the other members of the circle, but that phase passed after a long period of time, until spiritually  progressed beings from the other side began to speak through me on matters of philosophy and  ethics. Edith would write down all that transpired while I was in trance and when I returned to waking consciousness I would marvel at the learned discourses and the cultured language which had  come through my lips.  After a further long period of months a new facet of my mediumship developed and I became  clairvoyant. I could see and describe the spirit people who gathered around us during our sittings.  As I saw them they were as solid and lifelike as any other member of the group, but they had the  same disconcerting habit of vanishing abruptly as the people I had seen as a child.  Eventually Edith's money problems became so acute she had to give up her little house. She  could no longer afford the rent so she and her son Owen, a bright attractive child of nine, moved 
into a council house on the outskirts of saint Albans and Edith took a job trimming hats in a local factory. But during this time of change and disruption there was no break in the regular sitting of our  circle, our meeting place was changed to the house of two other members, so that the development  of my mediumship would not suffer.  On the nights when I was not sitting with the circle I still went to local dances with Gladys or  taught in our school. But Gladys became ever more suspicious because I would never see her on  Wednesday nights, however desirable a dance was being held and she openly began to demand  what was the attraction which made Wednesday evenings so sacred. I knew very well she would either laugh at me or nag me unbearably to try and make me give up the circle, so I never told her  anything more than that. It was my own business.  My gallivantings with Gladys were also causing trouble with my grandmother. In spite of the fact I  was twenty-two years of age she still refused to allow me a front door key of my own. This meant  that when I was out late dancing, either she sat up to let me into the house, which she did with the  air of an affronted archangel, or she would go to bed and I would have to throw pebbles up at  George's window to waken him from his beery stupor to come down and let me in. I hardly knew  which alternative was the more grisly, but the situation certainly led to many exacerbating rows in  our house. I began to dread going home from work to have to face an embattled grandmother or a  ﬂow of verbal abuse from George, or even a concerted attack by both.  Edith was not very happy at this time either, she had moved far away from the friends and neighbours she knew and had been used to for company. Neither had she had made any new friends  among her neighbours on the council estate. I thought perhaps it was because they resented her  superior education and her more intellectual interests, but apart from Wednesday nights when our  circle met she was very lonely. So I formed the habit of dropping in to see her and young Owen on  nights when I had no other engagement, rather than stay at home in the grim atmosphere generated  by my grandmother and George. Edith was always flatteringly pleased to see me and she always had  time and patience to listen to my problems and to give me advice and comfort. I liked Owen very  much too, and I began to look on him as the young brother I had never had, and I think he grew  quite fond of me. I remember once, the day after Christmas, Edith and I planned a treat for him. We  pooled our money and took the early train to London where we queued for tickets at Drury Lane  Theatre. After a long wait we managed to get seats in the stalls to see the marvellous pantomime  which the theatre used to present every Christmas. After the show we ate at Lyons' Corner House to  the accompaniment of a string orchestra before returning to saint Albans on the late train. We had a  glorious outing and the total cost for the three of us was no more than thirty shillings.  I did not know it any more than did the other members of our circle, but the development of my  mediumship was entering its final and most important phase. I was still very much a ﬁlm fan and I  would go to the cinema as often as I could to see the talkies, to which I had now become quite  reconciled, but every time I sat in the comfortable dark of the cinema, with my eyes glued to the  screen, I became aware of strange whisperings going on around me. I could catch only an odd word  here and there but the voices were those of both men and women and it was made very clear to me  that other members of the audience could also hear them - because I was constantly being told to  shut up, or else I was thumped angrily on the back by those sitting behind me. I would protest that  I had not opened my mouth, but as the whisperings continued and more and more people began to  complain, I would eventually have to crawl unhappily out of the cinema without seeing the ﬁlm.  This happened so often that I had to give up going to the cinema altogether. I now know that this  was the earliest manifestation of the voice mediumship which was to bring me fame, if not fortune  and it was made possible by the fact I was sitting in the darkness of the auditorium surrounded by  many people, whose minds were concentrated on the screen to the exclusion of random or distracting thoughts, but at the time it puzzled me and deprived me of one of my greatest pleasures.  Things at home got more unpleasant. I would not give up my late night dancing and my grandmother adamantly refused to hand over a latch key, and the constant discord in the house made me  moody, depressed and miserable. Edith came to my rescue and offered to turn her box-room into a  bedroom for me, if I would care to be her lodger at a rent of a few shillings a week, to include breakfast before I went to work. And so without regret on either side I left my grandmother's house,  which had been my home for so many years, and moved into Edith's council house as her paying  guest. Under Edith's care and in the peace of her home I grew happier and more contented and,  doubtless because of the greater harmony within myself, the development of my voice mediumship  accelerated and we began to get the voices in our home circle. At first more of the confused whisperings, later strong clear voices who announced themselves as the persons they had been on  

Earth, giving their names and addresses and telling us about their lives on Earth. To my joy I was  no longer taken into trance while these manifestations took place, so I too could now hear and  appreciate everything that went on in the circle. Indeed I could even hold intelligent conversations  with some of the spirit entities who were able to manifest through my mediumship and I can still  do so today.  For a long time after this acceleration of my development in the circle, I had been torn between  my desire for a career as a professional dancer with Gladys and the constant urging by spirit entities  that I must give up everything to serve and comfort humanity through my mediumship. I still hankered after the lights and the applause of a professional dancer's life and I simply could not make  up my mind to give up the idea altogether. For a long time I tried to get the best of both worlds in a  literal sense and while Wednesday night was reserved for the 'other side', the other nights of the  week were devoted to furthering the ambitions of Gladys and myself.  I was wandering down the main street in saint Albans one Saturday afternoon window-shopping,  making my way among the housewives and fathers doing their weekend buying. There seemed to  be more people about than usual this Saturday and I was pleased to see Gladys walking towards me  through the crowds, although lately she and I had had many quarrels because of her possessive  jealousy which had grown almost pathological. I stopped to greet her and I was smiling as it had  crossed my mind to ask her to go for a bus ride into the country and I would try as hard as I could  to give her a happy and carefree day. She stopped in front of me and before I could get out a word  of greeting she slapped me across the face as hard as she could, at the same time shouting that I  was living with a woman old enough to be my mother. Having delivered this bombshell she turned  on her heels and marched out of my life forever.  As I stood in the middle of the pavement red with embarrassment, my face stinging from Gladys'  wallop, I was horribly conscious of the amused, scornful or sympathetic stares from the crowds  who had probably not been so entertained on a Saturday shopping trip for many a long day. Suddenly I knew, with a blinding conviction, that from now on I would give up any thought of a career  as a dancer. I knew there was something far more important I had to do with my life. I would give  all my life, all my gifts and all my devotion to serving my fellow man and to proving through my  mediumship the glorious, comforting truth of man's survival of his bodily death.  

Six    ONE night when our circle was meeting on the usual evening, something happened which convinced me beyond all doubt that I had made the right decision.  The six of us were sitting together in the quiet darkness, when a man's voice began to speak to us  in a foreign language. We listened to him without understanding a word. Finally Edith ventured  tentatively, 'I am not certain but I think it might be Italian.'  'Si, signora,' said the spirit voice, 'Italian was my mother tongue when I was on Earth but I knew  some English too and I will speak so that you may all understand. My name was Valentino and I  have come tonight to say how happy I am that this young man has at last accepted the life path he  must tread. I want to tell him that one day when he is a famous medium he will hold a séance in the  room which was my bedroom in my house in Hollywood, and I will come to speak to him there  when he does so.'  At last, after all the messages from the various mediums and all the letters from Munich, Valentino had spoken to me in his own voice through my own developed mediumship. Even if the idea of  my ever reaching Hollywood seemed preposterous at the time, his message filled me with joy and  the desire to use my gift to help people.  From that night onwards Edith began with great tact and gentleness to educate me for the public  work she knew I must do. She would ask me to read to her, then she would correct my grammar  and pronunciation. She taught me table manners and many of the small courtesies and refinements  which would make it easier for me to feel conﬁdent when I had to be in the public eye and meet  people of all kinds. Many times I must have jarred on her unbearably because of my ignorance and  the uncouthness of my manners, but she never let me know it and slowly, and with inﬁnite kindness, she changed me from the country lad I was into a man acceptable on most levels of society.  She opened out for me a new world of books, music and art, she made life a richer and fuller experience than it could ever have been without her. I owed her so much more than I could ever repay.  Some months after Valentino had spoken at our circle Edith greeted me one evening when I came  home from work with some extraordinary news. The medium of a small local Spiritualist church  had eloped with a member of his congregation, so the church committee had invited me to take his  place on the platform at the next service. I wondered if I was ready to speak and demonstrate in  public. The very idea frightened me to death, but Edith said I must have complete trust in the spiritual beings who use me as a channel in our circle, so I agreed to take the place of the missing  medium.  On the day of the service, which was to be my first public work as a medium, Edith and I went  along to the church an hour early with the idea of arranging flowers in vases for the platform. As we  arrived outside the church with our arms full of flowers and leaves we were startled to see two men  loading chairs into a van outside the entrance. In the church we learned, from a rather distracted  member of the committee, that the chairs were being repossessed by the company who had supplied them, because the hire purchase payments were so heavily in arrears. The thought of a service  where not only the congregation but those on the platform, including the medium, had to stand  throughout because there was nothing to sit on was hardly encouraging. A diligent search of our resources by Edith and me yielded thirty-odd shillings between us and we went to offer this to the  men hoping they would leave the chairs for one more night. The men sympathised with our dilemma but they told us they must have the full amount owing or take the chairs. I stood on the pavement disconsolately watching the last of the chairs disappear into the jaws of their removals vehicle  when a big friendly hand clapped me on the shoulder. 'Nay lad, no need to be down in t'mouth.  you will not let them take the chairs from under you.' I turned to see Mr Whittaker, a plain-spoken and  kindly Yorkshireman who had sat in Mrs Cook's circle with his wife. 'Ah allus knew ye had it in ye,  lad, and ah'll give ye t'chance to show it.' Mr Whittaker, bless him, pulled out his cheque book and  soon the chairs were being carted back into the church.  As soon as I stepped to the edge of the platform that night to speak I felt the familiar sensation of  the room rushing away from me and I lost consciousness of my surroundings. When I woke from  the trance an hour later I learned that I had delivered a most interesting discourse, followed by a  brilliant demonstration of clairvoyance, all under the control of a spirit who introduced himself as  White Wing - one of the spiritually evolved entities who often controlled me in our circle before my  independent direct voice mediumship developed. Since it was not possible for the voices to manifest in a fully lighted hall, White Wing had clearly come to help me out in this first public appearance by taking control of me in trance. 
After the meeting had closed, members of the congregation crowded around me to tell me about  the wonderful proofs they had been given; that the dead lived on in another plane of being and had  not ceased to care for those they had left behind them. As I saw the happiness which shone from  the faces of those who told me their stories of the way in which husband, father, son or mother had  proved their continuing existence, I felt humble and deeply grateful to have been used to bring such  joy.  That night Edith and I sat up late talking over the events at the meeting and we both agreed that if  my trance mediumship could bring such comfort to the bereaved, how much more convincing  proof could be given if people were able to talk to their loved ones and hear them reply through my  independent direct voice mediumship. We both knew that to offer this comfort to the people we  must open a mission of our own, where we could provide the darkened room which the average  Spiritualist church does not require, since trance mediumship or clairvoyance, which is normally  presented in Spiritualist churches, can be given in full light. It is only physical mediumship, materialisation, apportation or the direct voice which needs to be conducted in complete darkness. We  talked long and late about this possibility and realised we would need at least some capital and I  would have to give up my job. Before we went to bed we decided to save every penny, in the hope  that one day we would have enough to open a church of our own.  After the successful meeting at the local church I began to receive invites to take meetings at other  churches outside the area in which I lived. As I gradually became known my services were in demand throughout Hertfordshire, but always I cherished the dream of our own mission and we  saved to make it a reality.  One Sunday afternoon Edith and I were relaxing in front of the ﬁre after what I had learned to call  luncheon, when I saw Edith, who was looking out of the window, turn white and bite her lip as if  something had vexed her. When I asked her what was wrong she told me that her parents were outside with the obvious intention of ringing our doorbell.  Edith was fond of her parents but she had long since grown away from the rigid orthodoxy of their  religious beliefs and she very much resented their intolerance of Spiritualism - the truth of which  she had been convinced of long before I met her. In common with most 'psychics' I am rarely  granted any premonition of personal disaster and that Sunday was no exception. Once Edith had  ushered her parents into the sitting-room, I rose to greet them with the ingenuous friendliness of a  dog wagging its tail. Beaming a big welcome at them both, I held out my hand to her father. To my  astonishment he struck it away from him as though it were some species of poisonous serpent.  Then he embarked on a tirade against Spiritualism, and mediums in particular, the imaginative verbal abuse of which I have never heard equalled since. First, he castigated me for what he called  'dabbling and delving into the Devil's own mysteries', then he described vividly the somewhat specialised torments which awaited me in Hell for allowing myself to be used by evil and impersonating spirits; whose only aim was to seduce souls from the light. I listened to him openmouthed. I had never before heard this point of view about the gentle philosophy in which I believe.  I could hardly believe my own ears.  Edith tried to stem her father's ﬂow of denunciation but then he turned on her and to the astonishment of both of us accused her, with many an Old Testament epithet, of living with me 'in sin  and lechery'. When I attempted to intervene, to point out both the injustice and the inaccuracy of  this attack, it merely inspired him with a new fusillade of abuse. When the patriarch had exhausted  both his thunder and himself he gathered up his more introvert lady wife and swept her out of our  wicked abode where defilement dwelt.  When they had gone I dried Edith's tears and tried to comfort her. As I did so it was suddenly and  blindingly obvious to me that I truly loved this kind and gentle lady who was my friend, my teacher,  my confidante and the centre of my life. Then and there I begged her to marry me. She refused even  to think of it because of the difference in our ages, and the more I pleaded with her the more  adamant she became, and, on that occasion at least, I gave up trying to persuade her.  At long last the day came when we thought we had saved up enough to start our own mission. I  gave my notice at John Maxwell's shop and while I was working my final two weeks I found a large  unfurnished room over a shop in nearby Watford, which I rented for a very few shillings a week,  though my courage almost failed me at the thought of taking on even so small a commitment when  I would soon be without a job. Edith and I spent all our free time painting, staining and polishing  the bare floor boards and making curtains, and when we had installed a couple of dozen chairs,  bought on hire purchase, our somewhat dreary room in that Watford side street had been transformed into a pleasant and comfortable church. Finally, an advertisement in the local paper  

announced that Watford Spiritualist Mission had opened its doors.  However long I may live, nothing can ever equal the thrill of my first service in my own church.  Every seat was filled and latecomers were crowded at the back of the room. I was taken into trance  for the address and the clairvoyance and after I had returned to the waking state, the feeling of joy  and lightness I sensed in that crowded room was indescribable. I knew then that all the weeks of  hard work, penny-pinching and anxiety were all worth while.  We went on as we had started and very soon we had to buy more chairs, while we were still paying  off the instalments on the first lot. Needless to say, in spite of the number of people who came to  the Mission, many were as hard up as I was myself, so there was barely enough in the collections  taken at each service to pay the rent, light, heating and the instalments on two lots of chairs. For my  own living expenses I relied on private direct voice séances, which I held once a week in the sitting  room of Edith's council house and for which I charged one guinea for two persons.  I wanted those who could not attend private séances, either because they could not afford them or  because they were busy working when they were held, to have this experience. Of all the different  forms of mediumship, I think direct voice gives the most convincing proof of survival after bodily  death. So Edith and I decided to hold an open circle after our usual Thursday evening service.  When the service was over and the congregation had gone home a few people who had booked a  seat for two shillings would remain behind, and we would sit in darkness and people whom the  world calls dead would come and talk to us. My voice mediumship by this time was almost fully  developed and I was most often fully conscious during these group séances, so I could listen to all  that was said, both by the members of the circle and their spirit friends and relations from the other  side. Sometimes the talks between them were so intimate and so charged with emotion I often felt  like an eavesdropper. On one occasion a man's voice said he wanted to speak to his son George  and he was answered by a man sitting in the circle. The discarnate father proceeded to take the living son to task for his extravagance and begged him to cut down his drinking and to be kinder and  more considerate to someone named Anne. When the circle was closed and people were leaving for  home a lady and gentleman lingered behind to talk to me. The man introduced himself and I  learned that he was a famous ﬁlm director. He told me he was completely convinced he had been  speaking to his dead father, not only because no one else in the world had ever called him George,  which was not his baptismal name, but because the content of the little lecture and the mannerisms  of speech were typical of his father in life. Then he brought forward the lady who was with him and  introduced her to me as his wife, Anne.  On another of these Thursday open circle meetings, after various friends and relatives had spoken  in the usual way, we heard a woman's voice trying to speak to us, in the uncertain way in which new  communicators sometimes manifest. Eventually her voice became stronger, although she sounded  distressed. She told us she was Lucy Doris Covell who had lived on saint Albans Road, Watford and  she was a secretary who had been murdered, but her body had not yet been found. Her voice faded  and one of the souls who guide me from the other side came through to tell us that the girl was distressed at the manner of her passing. She was also very worried about the man who had killed her,  he was her lover and apparently less to blame for what had happened than she was herself. Naturally we watched the local newspapers after this sitting to see if the facts the girl had given us about  herself would be verified. After only a few days we read that the girl's body had been discovered and  the man she had been living with had disappeared. At our next open circle the murdered girl returned to speak to us once more and though she was calmer, she was still concerned about her  lover who had not yet been found by the police. She told us that on the night of her death her lover  had been out on his own and when he came home in the early hours he wakened her and they had a  furious row. She had said angry and bitter things which goaded him beyond endurance and he hit  out at her with the bicycle pump he had in his hand. He had not meant to do her any serious injury,  but because of a physical abnormality of her own the blow had killed her. The lover was terrified  that no one would believe his story, so foolishly he ran away. The girl said the police would find  him sitting in a local park playing with a piece of string trying to find the courage to take his own  life. A day or so later we read in the local paper that the man had been found and arrested in just the  way the girl had described. He was sent for trial on a charge of murder and during this period the  girl returned to speak to us several times. Each time she came, she told us with great confidence  that her lover would not be found guilty of her murder, and that the charge would be reduced to  manslaughter. She said he would be sentenced to five years in prison and in the end this is exactly  what happened.  One night, at another of our open circles, a woman from the other side of life spoke to a man 
sitting in the group. She said that she was his first wife who had been burned to death in a ﬁre at  their factory. She told him how happy she was that he had married her younger sister and glad that  they had so much enjoyed their honeymoon in Brazil. This man stayed behind after the séance was  over to tell me how impressed he was with my demonstration of mediumship and to ask if he could  speak to me privately on a matter of great importance. I agreed to accompany him to a nearby café  where we could talk privately over a cup of coffee.  In the café I learned my new friend was Mr Noah Zerdin, one of the founders and the head of The  Link Association of Home Circles. The object of this organisation was to bring together as many  members of Spiritualist home circles throughout the world as possible, to exchange experiences  they had in their circles and to provide a common meeting ground for people of like interests.  I was most interested to learn about Mr Zerdin's work with 'The Link' but I sat up in my café chair  with a jerk when he asked me if I realised that I was risking my life every time I held one of my open  circles for direct voice. I suppose I must have looked as shocked as I felt, for Mr Zerdin went on to  say how dangerous it was for me to allow any old Tom, Dick or Harry to attend these séances. He  explained that at such times there exuded from me a life-force called ectoplasm, by means of which  the voices of the spirit people could manifest and if any person in the circle, through malice or  mere curiosity, shone a bright light on me, this life-force would rush back into my body with such  violence that it would cause me either a violent shock or worse still, internal haemorrhage and  death.  I gaped at him. I simply could not imagine that people who were being helped and comforted by  my mediumship would want to harm me. There would always be those who doubted the genuineness of the phenomena, Mr Zerdin explained and they would consider they were acting in the interests of others if they tried to expose some medium whose powers were attracting a following. I  protested that surely common sense must tell such people that it was impossible for me to know  the intimate details of other people's lives of which the voices spoke. Nor could I, by any stretch of  the imagination, speak in the hundreds of voices and accents, both male and female, which were  heard at my séances. Mr Zerdin persisted in warning me that many people were deeply prejudiced  against the phenomena of Spiritualism, either because of religious bigotry or because of intellectual  convictions of a nihilist nature. He said such people would welcome the chance to create a disturbance at séances like mine and would think nothing of the possible harm it might cause the medium, even if they knew enough about the subject to know the damage they might inflict. Mr Zerdin  went on to say mediumship such as mine was so rare that I must preserve it, treasure it and protect  it, so that as many people as possible might be blessed by it. He suggested that I should sit regularly for a while in his own home circle, each member of which was highly experienced in psychic  science and during these sittings the circle as a whole would concentrate exclusively on the greater  development of my mediumship. Then when the time was ripe they would consider how best to  bring me out of obscurity to serve in a wider and more public ﬁeld where, instead of convincing a  mere handful of people in my little mission, I could spread the truth of man's survival of death to  thousands.  Going home on the bus that night I thought carefully over everything Mr Zerdin had said. He was  a most impressive man and I had been deeply moved by his burning sincerity and the compassion  which urged him to share his conviction with as many people as possible. Apparently he had been  an atheist for many years before his own conviction of survival had changed his life for the better  and now he was filled with the desire to help humanity, just as he had been helped. By the time I  got home I had made up my mind, not only to take his advice to be more careful about the intentions of those who I invited to my séances, but also to accept his offer of sitting in his circle for the  greater development of my powers.  For many months after that night I sat regularly in Noah Zerdin's circle, which was held in a pleasant house in Merton Park where he lived with his delightful wife Goldie. Because of the unselfish  and devoted way in which the Zerdin circle concentrated their thoughts and prayers on me, the  voices greatly increased in strength.  I still carried on with my work at the Mission during these months, although I cut down on my  open circles, owing to a new commitment with Noah's Link organisation to hold small groups for  members, in conditions where my mediumship could operate properly. I also continued to hold my  weekly séance in Edith's house while she was at work and while Owen was at school, in order to  earn the guinea which was my livelihood.  One afternoon I was standing at the window of Edith's sitting-room looking out for a 'Miss M.  Tucker' who had booked an appointment by letter. Suddenly my eyes almost popped out of my  

head like two organ stops, as an immaculate Rolls-Royce pulled up outside our house and a smart  chauffeur helped out a large lady whom I presumed must be Miss Tucker. Cars like this were hardly  a common sight on a council estate and the lady's progress to our front door was followed with  passionate interest by various neighbours, who were standing on their doorsteps or peering from  behind curtains. I opened the door when the bell rang and learned that the lady was indeed Miss  Tucker and she turned out to be a very nice person, with none of the disdainful airs and graces I  had feared the owner of such a splendid car might possess.  I ushered her into the sitting-room and when she was comfortably seated I turned off the light and  the séance began. After a few minutes the boyish Cockney voice of Mickey, the spirit helper who  acts as a sort of master-of-ceremonies at my séances, greeted the lady and told her he was going to  help her mother and sister speak to her. He was as good as his word and shortly Miss Tucker was  having an affectionate and intimate chat with her deceased mother and sister. When these two spirits had said their goodbyes a man's voice was heard announcing himself as Edison and demanding  to know why the lady had not brought Louis with her. They had a short conversation and Miss  Tucker promised to bring Louis with her next week, if the medium would give her another appointment. Naturally I was glad to do this.  The following week at the appointed hour the big Rolls Royce once again stopped outside our  house. This time Miss Tucker got out of the car with an elderly man. He was short, red-faced and  rather jolly looking and he wore a monocle. I opened the door and Miss Tucker introduced the man  as 'Mr Louis' and we went into the sitting-room for the séance.  Miss Tucker's mother communicated with her for a short while, then Mickey told her her other  loved ones would stand aside on this occasion because Mr Edison was very anxious to speak to  Louis. Shortly the same man's voice we had heard the previous week spoke, 'Hello? Louis, it's  Thomas speaking.'  'Thomas?' said the little man, 'Thomas who?'  'Don't you know me, Louis? It's Thomas Alva Edison speaking,' said the voice. 'Don't you remember when we were together in the States? Surely you haven't forgotten how we worked together,  struggled together to invent things?'  Now the little man gladly greeted the spirit who called himself Thomas Alva Edison and a fascinating conversation ensued between them which I could not help but overhear. They talked about  times they had enjoyed together in the past and people they had both known. I heard them refer  more than once to Houdini, the famous escapologist who once allowed himself to be tied and  chained inside a barrel which was sent over Niagara Falls and he lived to tell the tale. They talked  about the magicians Maskelyne and Devant who, according to the discarnate Edison, had a regular  show in saint George's Hall at the turn of the century. I listened enthralled to their talk, although most  of the people they mentioned were unknown to me, and I only found out later who they had been  and what they had done.  When the séance was over and the light was turned on again Miss Tucker confessed that the man  she had introduced as Mr Louis was really her husband Dr Louis Young, who had been very friendly  with Thomas Edison in the States during the 1880s and 1890s. She told me that Tucker was her  maiden name which she still used for her business in London, the Tucker Manufacturing Company  in Harlesden, but she had deliberately misled me about their names so that if any evidence came  through it would be more valuable. Dr Young told me he had sat with many mediums over the  years, both in this country and in America, but the evidence he had received that day was incontrovertibly the best he had ever received. Because he had devised many tricks and illusions for Maskelyne and Devant in the old days it had made him very aware of the possibility of fraud, but after talking with his old friend and sharing with him their joint memories, he was convinced that he had  been speaking to Thomas Alva Edison himself. I saw a great deal of Miss Tucker and her husband,  they sat with me on many occasions and we became great friends. Many famous people came to  talk to Dr Young, who seemed to have known many of the great men of science and letters. Sir  Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge and many others of the same eminence came regularly to talk  with him.  

After many months of sitting in the Zerdin circle, Noah and the committee of The Link decided to  organise a big London meeting at which I would demonstrate my now greatly strengthened voice  mediumship.  The meeting was advertised for several weeks in advance in the Spiritualist newspaper Psychic  News and it was to take place after the fifth annual conference of The Link Association in Bloomsbury's Victoria Hall on Saturday May 16th 1936. 'Big Direct Voice Séance: Medium Leslie Flint', said  the advertisement in bold black type and my heart quailed when I saw it. How did I know, how did  anyone know if the voices would come? I was not able to guarantee then, any more than I can guarantee today, that phenomena will occur. So why on earth, I wondered, had I allowed the enthusiasm  of my sponsors to talk me into appearing in a public hall in front of hundreds of people who had  paid to hear them? I did not know then, as do not I know now, what the most favourable conditions  are for the voices to manifest, but I began strongly to suspect that a public hall filled with hundreds  of people, all with varying motives, different ways of thinking and in or out of harmony with each  other, was likely to be less than ideal. I spent days plunged in the deepest gloom anticipating failure  and public humiliation. It was only Edith's gentle reminders that those who help me from the other  side of life have never failed me which kept me on a sufficiently 'even keel' to board the Green Line  coach with her for the journey to London on the big day. All the way there I envied all the other  passengers because they were not 'Leslie Flint' on his way to London about to make a fool of himself in public.  Once I was seated on the platform of the Victoria Hall, surrounded by the familiar faces of Noah  and his friends, I felt somewhat more relaxed, though the people packing the auditorium looked  just like one big menacing blur. I listened to various speeches without really hearing a word of any  of them, then Noah advanced to the edge of the platform and told the menacing blur that an experiment was about to take place with a new young voice medium, Leslie Flint. My hour had come.  Noah asked for all the lights in the hall to be put out with the sole exception of the exit signs which  must remain on to conform with public safety regulations. When this was done I was dismayed to  see the hall was so full of light, not only from the exit signs, but light was coming in from all directions and this was going to make any demonstration of my mediumship even more difficult than I  had imagined. With all the optimism of Daniel entering the lions' den I sat in the chair provided for  me on the platform and I waited.  After a few moments those on the platform heard a voice speak very faintly, much too faintly for  anyone in the audience to hear it. Someone on the platform suggested he could shield me from the  light with his coat, so he removed it and held it up in front of me. This seemed to help because various voices were then heard which were sufficiently loud to be heard by people in the audience. I  listened to various short conversations between the living and those from the other side of life but I  could not help thinking how unimpressive they were compared to those which took place at our  mission at Watford. A spirit voice who claimed he was Earl John Jellicoe spoke to a man in the audience who immediately stood rigidly to attention. A short conversation ensued between the man and  the spirit voice and when the voice faded away the man told the rest of the audience he had served  in the Navy under Jellicoe and what had just been said was very evidential. There were a few more  attempts at communication which I thought very poor, then the voices faded out and the meeting  was closed.  Although the demonstration was not the total disaster I had feared it might be, I was deeply disappointed with the results and so I was all the more amazed when the audience gave me a long round  of applause before I left the platform. I found this embarrassing because I did not feel the demonstration deserved such enthusiasm and I could not help thinking how these generous people would  appreciate the phenomena we often experienced at the Watford Mission. Glad the ordeal was over,  Edith and I slipped out by a side door to find somewhere to have a meal.  At the next meeting of the Zerdin circle we had a long discussion as to how we could overcome  the light problem in public demonstrations, because total darkness is really essential to voice phenomena. Noah suggested that I could be enclosed in a light-tight cabinet but leave the hall in full illumination. The microphone could be placed outside of the cabinet, which would have a heavy curtain hung in front of it secured at the sides. It was decided we would construct an experimental cabinet along these lines, although privately I wondered if I would be able to stand the heat and airlessness of such a cabinet as they so cheerfully planned, for periods which could be up to an hour long  or more.  Before there was time to construct the experimental cabinet which Noah had in mind, Miss Tucker and her husband Dr Louis Young called on me at Edith's house with a proposition. They told us  

they proposed to invest some surplus funds in property and they suggested that if they bought a  suitable house nearer to London, we could rent it from them at exactly the same rent as Edith was  paying for her council house in saint Albans. This seemed an unrealistic notion to me, but Miss Tucker disagreed. She said her motives were largely selfish anyway, because it was not convenient for  her to trail all the way to saint Albans every time she and her husband wanted to sit with me. She  added that, in any case, sooner or later I would have to move nearer to London as my work became  more widely known, so why not make the move now, on terms which would suit not only her  convenience but her pocket. I queried whether it would suit her pocket and she said she had a good  instinct for money and she felt strongly that a purchase in the Hendon area would eventually appreciate greatly in value. I kept quiet during the discussion about capital, interest, mortgage and proﬁt  which followed because though I could manage my own small income capably, I was completely  lost when it came to any higher level of ﬁnance. Eventually Edith and Miss Tucker came to an agreement and I learned that we would rent a house from Miss Tucker in Hendon, once we had found  something suitable. It was decided we would all go in Miss Tucker's car the following week to look  at various houses.  On the appointed day we set out in the car with a list of houses to view in the Hendon area. We  drove to each house on the list and looked over one or two, but in some cases we did not even  trouble to go inside. Finally we arrived at 31 Sydney Grove, which was the last house on the list.  Sydney Grove was a quiet cul-de-sac and I liked the look of number 31 the moment I saw it. A dear  old couple owned the house and I felt they had lived in it and loved it for a long time, the very air in  the house breathed happiness and serenity. Without hesitation all of us agreed this was where we  would live and within a few weeks it was ours.  The removals van stopped outside our council house and soon all our furniture and possessions  were stowed inside. We followed behind the van in the car which Miss Tucker had sent to collect  us, to our new home, Edith, Owen and myself, and Rags the mongrel dog we all loved. Rags  seemed calmer and more conﬁdent in the future than any of us. I wondered what was in store for all  of us and mourned our mission in Watford. I had done such satisfying work there. Then Edith murmured, 'It's all right, dear,' and suddenly it was.  

Seven    OUR new home in Hendon soon became such a centre of psychic and spiritual activity that members of my regular circle and I decided to form an association, with the object of providing evidence  for the continuity of life after death by the demonstration of psychic gifts. A constitution was drawn  up and a committee was elected to conduct its affairs and we named it the Temple of Light.  I continued to work with Noah Zerdin's Link organisation and at regular intervals I gave direct  voice demonstrations in some of the biggest halls in London in front of audiences of up to two  thousand people. They came from all over the country and sometimes coach-loads of people  booked whole blocks of seats. Some remarkable evidence was given, in spite of the fact that it was  impossible to completely darken these large halls and the light which streamed in made contact  with the other side more difficult. Nevertheless, the voices came and addressed friends and relatives in the audiences to give proof of their continuing existence and many thousands were given  conviction and their lives were changed for the better.  My postbag was enormous and our association was forced to employ a full-time secretary to answer the hundreds of letters which came in from all over the world. The job was no easy task, the  hours were long, the work unending and the pay comparatively small, but we were lucky enough to  find a perfect treasure in a former continuity girl from Elstree Film Studios named Bunny Parsons.  Dr Louis Young and his wife were frequent visitors to us at Sydney Grove and, because of Dr  Young's scientific curiosity and his interest in psychical research, I submitted to many tests that he  devised to establish the objectivity of the voices and the genuineness of my mediumship. Dr Young  had sat with many mediums both in the UK and in the States and had read widely the literature of  psychical research, so he had a comprehensive knowledge of the subject. Because of his work with  Thomas Edison, devising tricks and illusions for Maskelyne and Devant, he was well aware of the  tricks fraudulent mediums could contrive and he had unmasked not a few of these during his research in America. He was a friend and supporter of those mediums he found to be genuine, but he  had nothing but contempt for the frauds who prosper at the expense of the bereaved and who bring  disgrace and shame on Spiritualism.  The tests he conducted with me made fraud impossible, yet I was never made uncomfortable or  subjected to any mental strain. One simple but effective test he devised was carried out successfully in our séance room at the Temple of Light during one of our regular sittings. After I had been  securely roped to my chair and just before the light was turned off Dr Young put into a measured  glass enough coloured water for me to hold in my mouth for the duration of the séance. The lights  were then turned out and after a short wait my Cockney boy control, Mickey, was heard speaking in  his usual clear and distinctive voice. For twenty minutes various other voices spoke until the séance  ended and the light was turned on again. Thereafter, I returned my mouthful of coloured water into  the measured glass and all present saw the amount was only fractionally less than it originally was.  Anyone who cares to try this test for himself will find how impossible it is to speak with his mouth  filled with water and how difficult it is not to swallow at least a small amount of it during a period of  twenty minutes.  About this time materialised forms were beginning to manifest through my mediumship in our  regular circle, and Dr Young suggested we should sit by the light of a dim red bulb in order that the  members of the circle could see me and the materialisations at the same time. When this was done,  Dr Young and the circle members were satisﬁed that the apparitions were distinct and separate  from my body. These materialisations were quite ﬁrm and solid and they could be felt as well as  seen. They would move around the circle and sometimes they would speak to the members. I was  not entranced during these manifestations and I was aware of an icy clammy coldness that enveloped me while the forms built up and there was a faint odour about them which I found disagreeable. This rare type of phenomenon ceased after a while and we were told by our circle's spirit  guides that they had been experimenting with my physical power. They also said that the materialisations detracted from the strength of the voices, so they considered it better to concentrate on my  voice mediumship in order to reach many hundreds of people through the meetings in the big  halls. I was glad when the materialisations stopped because, apart from the unpleasant sensations  during the séances, I was absolutely exhausted and very nervy and irritable when they were over.  I was young, in my mid-twenties and at the peak of physical fitness and most of my séances were  highly successful, but I also had failures. Sometimes my sitters and I would wait in the darkness of  the séance room for an hour and nothing at all would happen. This was disappointing for those sitters who had travelled a great distance to sit with me, as many of them did. Fortunately, most of 
those who sat with me were sufficiently versed in psychic science to appreciate that phenomena  cannot be summoned at will and there is no question of any medium being able to 'call up the  dead' as ignorant critics so often allege we do. Indeed, the facts are quite otherwise. Often a sitter  will come to me with the one person they long to contact strongly in mind, yet that person will not  manifest at all, though they may obtain excellent proof of the survival of someone else in whom  they have no great interest. I have never had any means of knowing in advance whether a séance  will be a good one or not.  

picture text, A test séance with members of the Society for Psychical Research.  Leslie sits facing an infra-red telescope.  

and picture text next is, Leslie is held and gagged during another SPR séance.  Reverend Drayton Thomas sits on the far right.  

If I am indisposed or over-tired, common sense tells me the chances of a good sitting will be minimal and so I do not sit in these circumstances. On the other hand, there have been occasions  when I have felt well and in buoyant spirits and a sitting has been a total blank. I have learned from  experience that the mental attitude of the sitters is also of great importance to results. A hostile approach or a selfish and demanding one can inhibit the phenomena, but honest scepticism is no  barrier at all. A genuine medium welcomes research by those who may be unconvinced of the truth  of survival, provided the researcher approaches him or her in an honest and open-minded fashion  and realises that mediumship is, by its very nature, unpredictable and that great patience is required  by medium and researcher alike.  Among the many well-known people who sat with me at Hendon was Shaw Desmond, the Irish  novelist and playwright who also wrote several books on psychical research. On his first visit to me  he came anonymously with a woman friend whose name he also preferred not to give. I had not the  faintest idea of the identity of either of them when we sat in the séance room. After I turned out the  light, in a very few minutes, Mickey announced that he was bringing 'Jan' to speak to his father.  From the boyishness of Jan's voice it was clear he must have passed to the other side of life when  he was very young. The living father and the discarnate son had a long talk, of a kind which any father and son might enjoy, until Jan said goodbye. When he had gone I was surprised to hear the  now familiar voice of Rudolph Valentino address the unknown lady. From what they said to each  other it was clear they had known one another during his lifetime. Eventually the lady asked him if  he could remember where they had last met and Valentino replied by naming a restaurant in New  York where they had dined together and danced.  After the sitting Shaw Desmond finally introduced himself and his companion, who turned out to  be the beautiful and talented former Gaiety Girl, Ruby Miller. She told me she had often dined with  Valentino in New York, but the occasion in the restaurant he had named was the last time they met  before his untimely death. She added that whenever they were out together they spent most of their  time talking about psychic matters, in which both were passionately interested and they would often  have a quiet laugh about how disappointed the gossip-writers would be if only they could hear  them.  Shaw Desmond became a regular sitter and sometimes he would be on the platform when I gave  public demonstrations in the big London halls. He would often give a short talk on my direct voice  mediumship in which he vouched for its genuineness and then recount some of his own experiences from my séances.  At one big meeting in the Aeolian Hall when he was on the platform, the spirit voices were addressing their friends in the audience and giving proofs of their identity, when a religious bigot  shouted from the balcony, 'God is not in this!' She kept on shouting that the séance must be  stopped 'in the name of Jesus Christ!' The audience started to sing and stewards escorted the disruptive woman out of the hall and then we resumed the demonstration. When it was over Shaw  Desmond addressed the audience and said that one of the missions of the Spiritualist movement  should be to convert the Christian churches 'back to Christianity' which, he said, in the days when  its Founder walked the Earth, was made manifest by the demonstration of 'spiritual gifts' which the  Churches of today try to suppress.  At this period I was sitting regularly for a group of brave clergymen who called themselves The  Confraternity. These men had become convinced of the reality of communication between this  world and the next, after sitting with various reputable mediums over a period of years, and it was  their aim to bring Spiritualism within the framework of the Christian Church as part of the act of  worship. When they had achieved this they envisaged the mediums, whose gifts made such  communion possible, would be protected against the misuse of their gifts and their material needs  would be provided for by the Church, in the same way as those of the clergy are met.  One might have imagined the hierarchy of the Church would welcome the idea of offering proof of  its own doctrine of everlasting life within its own doors, but this was far from true and the pioneers  of The Confraternity faced considerable hostility, both with reprimands from their superiors and in  militant reaction from their own brethren.  The Reverend Arthur Sharp of saint Stephen's Church, Hampstead, was one of the members of this  band of pioneers who sat with me often, and in fact he eventually became our president at the Temple of Light.  I remember one group arranged by the Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas, another of the leading  members of The Confraternity. 'Dray', as we called him, had chosen this group of sitters with care,  employing spiritual need as the standard of entry, and I was the medium he chose to sit with them. 
Before Dray put out the séance room light I let my eyes travel over the faces of his group. I knew  poverty so well I could tell these people were very poor and I prayed I might be used to bring them  some comfort or whatever help each one might need.  Once the lights were out Mickey spoke almost at once and brought various friends and relations  to prove their continued existence. The sitting was nearing its end when a man's voice called for  'Annie Blyth'. A woman in the group spoke up and admitted to being Annie Blyth, then she inquired  somewhat suspiciously, 'Who are you, anyway?'  'I am Fred Blythe,' answered the spirit voice. 'I wasn't good to you when I was on Earth, Annie,  and I've come to say how sorry I am and to ask your forgiveness.'  'Well,' said Annie, with considerable ﬁre, 'you can just bugger off again. I had my fill of you when  you were here, a right rotten husband you were. Go on, bugger off I tell you!'  The voice of the luckless Fred faded out in confusion, then Mickey came back to beg the defiant  Annie to forgive her husband who, he said, truly regretted his ill behaviour on Earth. Though he  pleaded with her, telling her about Fred's agonies of remorse and his longing for just one small  word of forgiveness, Annie refused to budge and the séance was closed.  One day Father Sharp brought an elderly lady to one of our group séances without telling me who  she was or saying anything about her, which was invariably his practice. After we had been sitting  for a few minutes Mickey came through to say there was a man present named Alex who wanted to  speak to the lady, and soon a strong male voice called out 'Julia! Julia!' The lady responded and the  man continued, 'This is Alex, your father, I am here with Emily, your mother. We have come together to speak to you. We had our differences when we were on your side of life, mostly my fault,  but now we understand each other better. I wish I had done differently on Earth, but here is Mother  to speak to you.' A cultured feminine voice then spoke. 'Hello, Julia darling, it's Mother, I've been  watching over you all these years. I've brought Fred and Dennis and I hope they'll be able to speak  to you in a moment.' When this lady's voices had faded out, a man announced himself as Fred and  from the conversation between him and the lady sitter I realised that he was Fred Terry, the famous  actor-manager, and the lady sitter was his wife. This meant she was Julia Neilson Terry, the well  known and charming actress. When Fred had said goodbye, the voice of Dennis Terry spoke, sending his love to his sister and his two daughters, Hazel and Monica. He asked his mother Julia to  come to talk to him again and next time to try and bring his sister Phyllis. Just before the sitting  closed Fred Terry returned to say that his sister 'Nell' wanted to say a few words. Then Ellen Terry  spoke herself, in the beautiful and soft diction we later got to know so well in our séances. Ellen  Terry went on to become one of our regular and very welcome communicators and even now she  will often come and speak to members of the theatrical profession when they sit with me.  One afternoon I was waiting for two ladies to arrive for an appointment, which had been made  over the telephone in the names of Mrs Brown and Miss Smith. I was thinking somewhat wryly that  they might have shown a little more imagination in their choice of pseudonyms; the blatancy of  these made their suspicions of me very obvious. I had learned the hard way to be philosophical  about the attitudes people adopted towards me. There were those who were unflatteringly surprised  to find I was an ordinary man, neither weird nor spooky. Others would try to put me on a pedestal,  prepared to worship. Others still made it abundantly clear that their only purpose in sitting with me  was to find out what trick I employed to produce the voices. At first it used to hurt me deeply to be  suspected of fraud, I was so filled with the wonder of my own gift, so urgent with the desire to help  and comfort all who needed me, it felt like a blow in the face when I sensed suspicion of disbelief.  But now I was serenely conﬁdent in my mediumship and in those who guide and help me from the  other side of life and no one could hurt or discomfort me. When the ladies arrived I greeted them  pleasantly and showed them into the séance room. They were both in their late middle age and  dressed smartly but most discreetly.  After a short wait Mickey gave them his usual cheerful greeting and then we heard the voice of a  man who announced himself as Alec. One of the ladies responded by asking for his surname and  the entity said he was Alec Holden. An animated conversation took place between Alec and the lady  who had responded to him. It seemed she was Alec Holden's widow and that she and her friend  occupied some position of great trust, but whatever it was was not made clear. Before Alec had said  goodbye he said someone who had been an 'important personage' in life was going to speak to  them both. As soon as Alec's voice faded, the voice of an elderly man was heard, he was trying to  make himself understood, but was obviously having difficulty in doing so. After a while his voice  became stronger and clearer and whoever it was said how nice it was to speak to the ladies again.  At this point I was surprised to hear my sitters pushing back their chairs and scuffling with their  

feet. I simply could not imagine what they were doing. I was even more flummoxed when in tones  of the deepest respect they said in unison, 'Your Majesty!' and the voice replied, 'Yes, I am George,  who was known on Earth as King George the Fifth.' Some talk ensued between this entity and the  sitters and he sent his love to May and Louise and gave blessings to his sons, before his voice  faded.  Afterwards Mrs Holden and her friend made themselves known to me and revealed they had been  attached to the Royal Household for many years. They told me they had recognised the voice of the  late King as soon as he managed to enunciate clearly. They claimed the voice was so unmistakably  the late King's that both of them had automatically risen from their chairs and curtseyed as soon as  they heard it. They asked if they might come again and bring a friend whose name they would prefer  not to tell me. I agreed to give them another booking on these terms.  When they came the next time they brought with them a tall and dignified man who asked anxiously if Mrs Holden had impressed on me his desire to remain anonymous. I reassured him, but  had to warn him that often, when sitters take steps to remain unknown to me, my guide Mickey has  greeted them by name the moment he comes through.  However, it was not Mickey who blew the man's cover on this occasion but a woman from the  other side of life who called out 'James! How are you, James? I am, or rather I was, Countess  Camperdown.' This voice faded and was followed by a man who spoke in a broad Scottish accent  and announced himself as John Brown. He told us he had been the trusted servant of Queen Victoria and had also acted as the medium for her communications with her beloved husband Prince  Albert during her widowhood. He went on to say he would help Lady Camperdown to speak again  because James had served her as faithfully as John himself had served the Queen. The lady's voice  returned and was heard to ask James if he remembered the old days at 'Weston' and the house in  Hill Street. After some further talk between them the lady's voice faded and the séance ended.  When the light was turned on the man was so overwhelmed by what he had heard, he threw  anonymity to the wind and he introduced himself to me as John James. He told me he had been a  footman in the service of Countess Camperdown many years before, when he was a young man. He  had served her both at her country estate of Weston in Warwickshire, and at her town house on Hill  Street, Mayfair. Since Countess Camperdown's death in 1898 John had been in service in various  grand houses and by this point in time he had been employed for many years at Kensington Palace  as house steward to Her Royal Highness Princess Louise.  Princess Louise was Queen Victoria's fourth daughter and sixth child and she was then almost  ninety years of age. Mr James was so impressed with the evidence he had been given he asked if he  could book a regular sitting with me, so then and there I arranged a monthly appointment for him.  Once the stately Mr James had thus issued his 'seal of approval' on me, Mrs Holden confided that  she had been, for a number of years an honorary lady-in-waiting to the Princess Louise.  John James was born in a mountain village in Wales in 1872 and he was already in his sixties when  we met. All his life had been spent in the service of others more privileged than himself, but there  was none of the resentment of the truly servile in this man. He had true dignity and great integrity.  He was a man who knew exactly who he was. He expected high standards of personal conduct from  those he served and if they proved unworthy of his respect he ceased to serve them. To those who  had earned them he gave all his loyalty and all his devotion, not just for the wages or any privileges  which might come his way, but simply because he was a man who was incapable of giving less than  his best.  James became very important in my life because through him I met so many interesting people,  on both sides of life. I used to eagerly look forward to his sittings, wondering which of the once  high and mighty would come and talk with him. Queen Victoria came often and she would send  loving messages to her daughter Louise and to other members of the family. Invariably, in her messages to Princess Louise, she would give some small personal detail or recall some memory of the  Princess's childhood, so that when James gave her the message she would know it was truly her  mother who had spoken.  On one occasion Queen Victoria thanked James for the healing he had given to her daughter. I  later learned that he was a natural spiritual healer and many times he had been able to relieve the  acute pain of the arthritis from which Princess Louise suffered.  At one of James' sittings a man came through and gave his name as John Sutherland. He sent his  dearest love to Louise and asked James to tell her he had their dog Tina with him. After the sitting I  learned that John Sutherland had been the Marquis of Lorne, later the Duke of Argyll, whom the  Princess married in 1871 in saint George's Chapel, Windsor, when Queen Victoria herself gave her 
daughter away. The occasion was perhaps only slightly marred by the atrocious pun perpetrated by  Dean Alford who referred to the bride as 'the maiden all for Lorne'. It was a marriage of true love  and they were ideally happy until the Duke's death in 1914. The Duke's message meant a great deal  to her, since Tina the dog had been a pet that the princess and her husband had loved dearly many  years before and they had been deeply grieved when she was killed by a car. According to James  they had been so upset by Tina's death that the Duke had composed a verse which they had engraved as an epitaph on the headstone that marked their pet's grave.  James relied on me implicitly not to discuss his séances with anyone or to ever divulge to a soul  that he received and passed on messages to various members of the royal family. The family were  duty-bound to uphold the religion of the State, which did not regard Spiritualism with any great  favour and it could have proved an embarrassment to them if these séances had become public  knowledge. Until now no word of them has ever passed my lips or been published, but since all  those intimately concerned have now passed to the other side of life and the climate of opinion is  so vastly different today, I feel free to tell the story for the first time.  'You must find a tailor and get a suit made, Leslie,' said Edith at breakfast one morning. 'You can't  be seen on a public platform again in that frightful old reach-me-down.'  I viewed her over the marmalade with alarm. 'I paid fifty shillings for that suit. There's years of  wear in it yet. Besides, I've never had a suit made for me in my entire life. I'm not made of money.'  When you walked on to the platform at Wigmore Hall last night, in front of all those people, with  trousers like a pair of concertinas and that sagging jacket, Owen and I decided it was time you had a  decent suit made for you.'  I looked across the table at Owen, who was now a handsome lad of eighteen. He grinned at me  and said, 'All the top brass were on the platform, all wearing Savile Row bespoke suits and then  you, the star of the show, walk on in a cheap old suit. It just won't do, old chap.'  Mentally I reviewed my finances. Certainly I was better off than I had ever been before, people  from all over the country were queuing up to sit with me and I was given a percentage of the takings  at the large public meetings, which were always packed to the doors. But my expenses were heavy  and it was not my practice to charge more for my sittings than even the poorest could afford. Also,  my old fear of being out of work still gnawed at me and I tried to save as much as I could against  that evil day. So I shook my head and said, 'I just can't afford it.'  'I'll chip in a few quid,' said Owen cheerfully. Sheer human decency can always bring the tears to  my eyes and I had to swallow very hard. When Owen had left school a couple of years before, a  friend of mine had kindly found him a place as a junior with one of the camera crews at the studios  in Borehamwood. Owen loved the work and he hoped one day to become a star lighting cameraman, just like Gunther Krampf or Jimmy Harvey. Owen earned very little but he contributed to  the household budget and I knew he was secretly saving every penny he could spare to buy a  motorbike he so badly wanted. Yet here he was offering to dip into his savings for me to buy a suit.  'Don't be silly,' I said gruffly, 'of course I can find the money for a suit if your mother thinks I need  one.' As soon as I said it I felt a familiar chill of fear, but then Edith said, 'Don't worry, dear, I'll find  a tailor who won't con you and I can easily cut down on the housekeeping.' Edith could always  make the sun come out again.  It seems unbelievable now, but since our move to Hendon I had been so isolated in the ivory  tower of my work, so wrapped up in a cocoon of domestic content, that I was only half aware of the  man Hitler and the evil which was creeping over the face of Germany.  I was measured for my suit in a room above a sweetshop in Golders Green, where for a few  pounds Nathan Hirsch worked with the dedicated skill of a master craftsman. With the help of a  dictionary, which he was using to try and better his English, Mr Hirsch told me what was happening  to his people in Germany. The days passed and by the time my new suit was finished Hitler's ﬁeldgrey automata were marching into Austria. England consoled herself with eyewitness accounts in  the newspapers which described tanks made of cardboard, guns without bullets, planes unable to  leave the ground, and ill-clad teenage soldiers. We breathed again, Hitler was not ready, there  would be no war.  One day, during the summer which followed the rape of Austria, John James was about to leave  after one of his regular sittings when he said casually, 'Would it be convenient for you to call at  Kensington Palace next Thursday at three o'clock?' I gaped at him stupidly. He explained that  Princess Louise wanted to meet me and since she was shortly leaving London, the following Thursday would suit her admirably. My appointment book was crammed but I had a vague idea that royal  invitations were tantamount to commands, which gave me visions of time in a dungeon in the  

Tower of London if I refused. 

still Currently Reading: Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium.
 I would just have to re-arrange my appointments somehow. I said  Thursday would suit me fine.  Looking spruce in Mr Hirsch's navy pin-stripe suit, the cut of which I thought even a princess of  royal blood would approve, I emerged from the Underground Station at Hyde Park Corner on the  big day to find that, in my nervous anxiety to be punctual, I had left myself an hour for the fifteenminute bus journey to Kensington. I decided to stroll through the park to the Palace.  It was a glorious afternoon and halfway to my destination I sat down on a bench to feast my eyes  on a scarlet blaze of geraniums and considered how unlikely and how absurd it was that I should  be on my way to call on a royal princess in her palace. I wondered if her staff would look down their  noses at me. I had never before met a butler, but I had a feeling they might be snotty and supercilious. I consoled myself with the thought of Mr Hirsch's impeccable tailoring and dismissed  them. Then a new thought disturbed me. Did one kiss the hand of a princess on being presented  and if so how was it done? I had a sudden ﬂash of an actor in some ﬁlm I had seen planting a kiss  on a lady's palm then nibbling halfway up her arm, but I rejected this technique as inappropriate.  Unhappily certain that if there were any pitfalls of etiquette into which I might stumble, I would be  bound to do so, I proceeded on my way.  My concerns were laid to rest when John James met me at the entrance of the palace and, as he  conducted me into what he called the small drawing-room, he gave me a few hints on to how to  conduct myself towards my royal hostess.  Compared to the sitting room at 31 Sydney Grove the small drawing-room at the palace did not  look all that small to me. Her Royal Highness Princess Louise was sitting very upright on a chair  with a high carved back when James ushered me into the room. The hand-kissing problem was settled right away when she held out her hand in a friendly way like any other hostess might do. When  I had lightly touched hands with the Princess she waved me to a comfortable chair and invited  James to also be seated. I took stock of my surroundings and absurdly enough I was reminded of  the parlour of which my grandmother was so proud. This room was infinitely more rich and splendid but the heavy furniture, the velvet curtains at the windows, the wealth of statuary and bric-a-brac  and the pictures crowding the walls had the same fusty flavour of the room which was Gran's pride  and joy. There was even the smell of wax polish. The fact was of course that both rooms reflected  the taste of a bygone age and both belonged to elderly women to whom the past was more vivid to  them than the present.  The Princess started the conversational ball rolling by asking if I had noticed the statue of Queen  Victoria in her coronation robes outside the palace. She told me she had designed it herself and  had it executed from a single piece of Carrara marble to mark the fiftieth year of the reign. Princess  Louise had clearly been devoted to Queen Victoria, to whom she referred rather touchingly as  'Mama'.  With the ice duly broken, we talked easily together for an hour or more about my work and about  the evidence in the messages James had conveyed to her from her mother and her husband the  Duke. I remember the Princess saying she no longer had the slightest fear of death and she looked  on it as a kind of emigration to a new country, where she would rejoin those she had loved who had  travelled there before her. She mentioned the difficulties she had sometimes encountered because  of her royal birth and told me how she would often say to those who felt uncomfortable or inhibited  in her presence that she could not help being a queen's daughter and they must try not to mind it.  She talked most happily about her childhood at Windsor Castle and of the period she and her husband had spent in Canada while he was Governor-General there. She was very proud of the fact that  the Canadians had named their new province Alberta because it was one of her first names.  Although the Princess gave no outward sign of it I got a strong impression after a while that she  was suffering intense pain and so when she suggested ringing for tea I glanced questioningly at  James. He shook his head slightly and I excused myself and took my leave of a very gracious and  gentle lady.  When I got off the bus at Hyde Park Corner to get the Tube train back to Hendon my heart sank  when I saw the news bills outside the Underground Station. Hitler was at it again. This time he was  demanding the Sudetenland from the Czechs.  On the train home I thought back to my childhood in the aftermath of the war which was to end  all wars. I recalled the men who came back crippled, shell-shocked, with the tissues of their lungs  rotted by poison gas, waiting, patient and hopeless in the long queues for the dole. I prayed the  senseless slaughter and squalor of war would not return.  During this summer of mounting tension and anxiety over the Czech crisis my work continued, 
but now there were more failures than usual. Those who guide me from the other side of life told us  that the atmosphere surrounding the Earth was so filled with fear and thoughts of war, that it was  hard for those who live in the light to penetrate what appeared to them as a thick fog.  There were successful séances at this time too of course, and I have a letter dated June 4th 1970,  from Mr William A. Pritchard of 85 Bishopston Road, Swansea, to remind me of one of them. I do  not think I can do better than to quote an extract from it here:    "My one and only sitting with you took place over thirty years ago in the summer of 1938. My mother  was with me, she was in this country on holiday from Rhodesia where she and my father were then living.  We made our booking by phone and no names were either requested or given. There were about eight sitters and the voices came quite independently of any [séance] trumpet and all sitters had physical contact  with someone during the evening. A voice addressed me:    VOICE: Hello, I thought I would come and make myself known.  MR PRITCHARD: Very nice. But who are you?  VOICE: Dick.  MR PRITCHARD: And where did we know each other?  VOICE: We were in the Air Force together in South Africa.  MR PRITCHARD: How did you manage to get where you are?  VOICE: Well, you know how it was; I was on my motorbike and I hit a brick wall. The next thing I  knew I was here, break,    "My memory went back some twelve years to the very short time I had spent in the South African Air  Force.  Among the apprentices was a youngster known to everyone as 'Bonzo'. He was a pleasant but very  slow-witted boy with a curious affliction, which meant his hands were sort of 'over-co- ordinated'. Whatever he did with one hand, the other hand automatically did the same thing, unless Bonzo made a deﬁnite mental effort to stop it. The story of Bonzo's passing had been sent to me shortly after my return to  England in 1929. It appears he had acquired a motorbike and was out for a spin and travelling up the  stem of a T-junction. When he put out his right arm to indicate, his left arm went out in sympathy and  Bonzo went straight into a brick wall ahead of him. The year after my sitting with you, in 1939, I went  back to South Africa and when in Pretoria I took a trip up to Roberts Heights, the headquarters of the  South African Air Force. In the Orderly Room were a couple of sergeants who remembered me and also  remembered Bonzo, but even they did not know his real name. We looked up the records and discovered  it was Richard Lundin.  Whenever I am asked what I consider to be the most evidential sentence I have received at a séance, I  quote the ten words 'We were in the Air Force together in South Africa' because no one in that room in  your house had any idea my mother and I had any connection with South Africa, let alone the Air Force." 

FOR months after war broke out Britain existed in the uneasy calm of what was called 'the phony  war'. It was a period of no-man's-land in time when we accustomed ourselves to the blackout and  rationing and the infringements of personal liberty. So apparently normal was the surface of life that  many began to hope the half-hearted hostilities would peter out altogether in a negotiated peace  which they thought would be a victory for civilisation. Meanwhile, factories, shipyards and arsenals  worked full blast preparing for the real war to come.  My first public direct voice séance in wartime was held at Rochester Square Temple in north London. The Temple had a glass roof which had been coated with black paint to conform with the  blackout regulations. I cannot tell how effective this may have been at night as seen from the air but  it certainly did not prevent daylight from flooding into the hall. However, I took my place on the  platform inside a hastily improvised cabinet and hoped for the best. To quote from a report of this  meeting published by AW Austen: "in spite of the adverse conditions, spirit voices were heard all over  the hall although no microphones were used".  Towards the end of this meeting, as I sat in my dark airless cabinet wondering how long I could  last before I passed out from the heat and nervous exhaustion, I heard a woman's voice. She was  speaking so near to my cabinet she seemed almost to be addressing herself personally to me.  'I am Edith Cavell,' said the voice. 'I came to this side of life because I felt patriotism was not  enough. Although I admire the man and the woman who is patriotic, at the same time we must realise there is a greater thing than that. You must love your brother, whether he be an enemy or not.  Try to love and forgive, not to hate.'  The voice faded, but its message remained to help me to resolve a problem which had been giving me much anxious thought ever since the outbreak of war.  I had so often listened to the voices from beyond the grave of men and women who had been cut  off in the prime of their lives by sudden death. They had spoken of their confusion and distress and  how they had to cling to the familiar Earth because it was all they had ever known. I had heard their  reproaches; 'Why didn't I know? Why didn't someone tell me?' I was a patriot and my country was at  war for a cause I believed to be just. But when this dreamlike half-war turned into the real thing, the  killing would begin in earnest and like other young and ﬁt men I would be called to join the armed  services. Yet after all I had heard from the other side, about the soul's bewilderment when it is  thrust suddenly out of its physical body into the next plane of existence, how could I be responsible  for sending any unprepared human spirit into eternity? I had a quick recollection of a scene which  had taken place in my childhood during the unveiling of a 1914-18 war memorial. During the ceremony a group of women converged on a man who was standing watching. The women jostled and  pushed and shouted at him and at last the man went away. When I asked my grandmother what the  man had done wrong she told me he had been a 'conchie' during the war and these women had  lost sons in the fighting. I felt sorry that the women's grief had turned to resentment against someone they thought was a shirker, but I also saw that perhaps it took a special kind of courage to swim  against the tide of war. I only hoped I would find it myself, because then and there I made up my  mind that when the time came to stand up and be counted I would be a conscientious objector. I  would say with Martin Luther, 'Here I stand. I can do no other.'  Some weeks later I received a letter from a member of a wealthy Spiritualist organisation in America. The writer said he had attended one of my public séances in London and had subsequently sat  with me privately at my home in Hendon. He described the evidence he had been given and said it  had proved to him beyond doubt the survival after death of someone dear to him. Because he and  his colleagues feared my mediumship might be lost to the world if I remained in England they offered me sanctuary in their country for the duration of the war. My passage would be arranged and  my livelihood would be guaranteed for as long as it was advisable for me to remain in the States. It  may seem illogical that I, who had so firmly rejected the thought of taking up arms, should feel  highly indignant that anyone should imagine I would leave England at this time, but that was exactly  how I felt. As politely as I could I refused this well-meant offer by return letter.  Christmas came and the war was still in a state of uneasy stalemate. The three of us at Sydney  Grove tried hard to pretend everything was just as it had always been. We ate the traditional Christmas food, we did the traditional Christmas things and we took very special effort over the surprises  we had planned for each other. Perhaps we tried too hard because there was no heart and no real  joy in any of it. How could there be when we feared that just over the horizon in the coming year the  storm which had been gathering so long must surely break?  On New Year's Eve, Edith produced from its hiding place a bottle of sparkling wine to toast not  only the new year, but a whole new decade. On the stroke of midnight we raised our glasses and  wished each other a happy new year and sang Auld Lang Syne. Edith's velvet contralto voice gave a  new meaning and a deeper emotion to the words that we had sung, unthinkingly, so often in the  past.  Early in 1940 I gave a séance which not only produced some first-class evidence of survival after  bodily death, but I think it was one of the most unusual sittings I have ever given and it certainly  provided me with some needed light relief.  The sitter gave her name as Mrs Bowering and she appeared to be somewhere in her late sixties.  We went into the séance room and sat down without any preliminary chit-chat and I turned out the  light. Mickey spoke to the lady almost at once. 'There's a man here who says his name is Fred and  that you are his wife, Alice.'  'Yes,' said Mrs Bowering, 'Fred is my husband. Can I talk to him?' Shortly, a man's voice spoke  and he and Mrs Bowering had an intimate and personal conversation about their past together until  suddenly he said, laughingly, 'Fancy you taking the trouble to have my body taken out of its grave  after all these years and having it cremated! I see you are wearing the ring you buried with me on  your finger at this moment! I've met Bowering over here, you know, and we like each other very  much. As a matter of fact it amuses both of us that you have my ashes in one urn on the mantlepiece and his ashes in another.'  Mrs Bowering then inquired if Mr Bowering could speak to her and soon the voice of another man  greeted her. 'You know, Alice,' he said, 'even though you've put Fred's urn and mine on the mantelpiece, we are not really there. We are here and we often come together to try and help you, as much  as we can, but these ashes really have nothing to do with us any more.' To my astonishment Mrs 
Bowering then told both her late husbands that she had met a man named Wilson and was seriously considering marriage with him. She wanted to know if they would object to this. Both Fred  and Mr Bowering said they had no objection at all and the only thing they wanted was for Alice's  happiness.  I found this story of the ashes of two husbands, in urns on the same mantelpiece, so hard to  swallow that when the light was turned on again I asked the lady if it was true. She said it most certainly was true and told me what great trouble she had in getting permission to exhume Fred's body  to have him cremated. In the days she had buried Fred, cremation had not been a usual method of  disposal and so she had buried him in the conventional way. But things had changed when her second husband's time had come and so he was cremated, and the urn containing his ashes adorned  her mantelpiece. After a while she had begun to feel Fred might feel slighted, being all alone in the  cemetery and so she had started her campaign to have him exhumed and cremated to be placed  alongside the second Mr Bowering. Now that she had finally achieved this she felt much happier.  She also confirmed that the ring she was wearing had lain in the grave on Fred's finger for many  years. She was glad neither husband objected to a potential third marriage because she found life  on her own very lonely.  After this sitting I did not see this lady for a couple of years, so I assumed she had married her Mr  Wilson and was once again living happily as a married woman. As it turned out I was wrong. Long  afterwards she returned for a sitting with me in her new role as Mrs Wilson and her first two husbands came to speak to her again. She spent the entire sitting berating both of them for not warning her that Mr Wilson was not only 'a man of dirty habits' but he had no money and she was  forced to support him. Her late husbands expressed regret that matters had turned out badly, but  they pointed out the decision to marry Mr Wilson had been her own and she must take responsibility for it. However, it was Mrs Wilson's freely expressed view that they should have known in  advance how her third husband would turn out and given her fair warning. Mrs Wilson sat with me  regularly until her death at the age of eighty. She lived apart from Mr Wilson for many years and he  died before she did. Even now I sometimes wonder which husband has the pleasure of her company on the other side and how Mr Wilson fits into the picture.  Princess Louise died early in December 1939 and John James had not been able to sit with me for  his regular séances because he was very fully occupied. He was engaged in clearing the contents of  the Princess's apartments of nearly a hundred rooms, under the direction of the Duke of Kent, to  whom the contents of the Palace had been left in her will. However, in late March 1940 Mr James  telephoned to arrange a sitting and I was happy to oblige.  I think both James and I felt sad sitting together for the first time since the passing of the gentle  Princess. But if we did, it was not for long because Princess Louise herself spoke to us and told us  how happy she was to be free of pain and the infirmities of old age and to be reunited with those  she loved. She thanked James for doing what she had asked about her wedding veil and her rings.  Then after the sitting James told me that the Princess was referring to the fact that she had requested to be covered with her wedding veil and for her engagement and wedding rings to be put in  the casket with her ashes. Before he left that day James showed me with great pride a pair of monogrammed cufflinks which the Duke of Kent had given him for his help in clearing the Princess's  apartments at Kensington Palace.  In April of that year Germany invaded Norway and the war began in earnest. While the Allies were  attempting to land forces in Norway to help the Norwegians and all of Britain waited breathlessly  from one news bulletin to the next, Owen came home one evening and told his mother and me that  he had volunteered for the Royal Air Force and had been passed medically ﬁt for air crew. 'When do  you have to go?', asked Edith, trying hard to sound matter of fact. 'When they are in trouble, they'll  send for Mundin,' quipped Owen, 'I have to stay put until then.' Even this respite comforted Edith,  the evil day was not yet. When Owen lightly inquired which branch of the Forces I proposed to  favour with my presence, I told him I intended to register myself as a conscientious objector when  my call-up papers came. I watched for the contempt I dreaded to see in this boy I loved as a brother. He quirked his eyebrow in a way which was especially his and said lightly, 'Good for you. I simply don't have that kind of courage.'  In May and June we learned the new word blitzkrieg, as the Nazi hammer-blows crushed Holland,  Belgium and France and forced the British out of Europe at Dunkirk, from where, by what seemed  like a miracle at the time, most of our troops were brought home to fight another day.  They were dangerous days, highly charged with emotion, and within myself I constantly questioned whether I could really stand back and let others do the fighting. I wanted to serve, I wanted  to help, I thought the war was a just one, if any war could be considered just, but always I came  back to the fact that I could not, I would not kill.  Later that year after the Battle of Britain had been fought and won in the skies over England, Owen  was posted to an airﬁeld near Cambridge to begin his training as a pilot.  When Edith and I saw him off at the station he was cheerful and full of confidence. 'Relax, you  two,' he joked, 'any minute now Mundin, the terror of the skies, will be on the job.' As the train  started to move he leaned out of the carriage window and kissed Edith. 'I'll be back, old lady,' he  said gently. 'And we'll have a nice cup of tea,' I said, and I do not think I have ever felt so  inadequate in my life.  At last the day came when I had to appear before a tribunal to state my case as a conscientious  objector. I took the train to London and had to spend some time searching for the hall near Victoria  Station where the court were sitting, with Judge Hargreaves as president. Eventually I found the  place and I was ushered into an ante-room where a number of other 'conchies' were waiting to be  seen. I sat down next to a young fellow with a fair straggly beard who at once produced a slim volume from his pocket and began to read from it with great concentration. I took the hint and held  back the casual pleasantry I had been about to utter. When I looked around I saw that no one was  talking to his neighbour, all the young men were sitting silent and withdrawn, each intent on his  own thoughts, his own problem.  We were being heard alphabetically so it was not too long before the usher put his head around  the door and called out 'Flint, Leslie!' I followed him out of the room.  As I walked down the hall to a table where the five members of the tribunal were sitting I was surprised to see spectators in the hall. Whether they were the friends and relatives of the men being  heard or merely inquisitive members of the public I do not know, but I could have very gladly done  

without them. I was glad to see the members of the tribunal were wearing ordinary clothes, I had  had the confused idea they would all be wearing awe-inspiring robes and wigs. There was even a  woman among them, with a reassuringly frivolous hat perched on her carefully waved hair. As it  turned out the lady with the daisies on her bonnet was the toughest nut of all of them.  I stood in front of these five keepers of my conscience and I straightened my shoulders, determined not to look timid or ashamed. Answering leading questions, I agreed that I was Leslie Flint,  thirty years of age and, as far as I knew, I was fit and healthy. I also affirmed that on grounds of conscience I was unable and unwilling to serve in the armed forces in the present state of emergency.  'Kindly tell the tribunal whether your scruples are of a political or a religious nature, Flint.' Thus  the President had opening the bowling. I replied that I absolutely refused to take human life on religious grounds. An elderly man with a heavy moustache asked me what church I belonged to.  'I am the resident medium of a Christian Spiritualist church in Hendon,' I said. The elderly man  blew through his moustache, and he reminded me of a petulant walrus.  'Not a recognised denomination of the Christian church,' he said in triumph. The President  thought it would meet the case if I were described as a Christian pacifist. Then the Walrus whispered into the ear of the man next to him so loudly I heard, 'The fellow's a crank of some kind.'  A red-faced man inquired if I thought Christ was a pacifist. I said his teaching was filled with ideas  of brotherly love and peace between men, and I quoted the words about turning the other cheek.  The red-faced man asked me what good I thought it would do to turn the other cheek to Hitler. I  agreed it might be disastrous but added that this fact did not alter my determination not to kill. The  hat with the daisies now turned in my direction.  'If you saw a Nazi storm-trooper trying to rape a woman you loved would you just stand back and  do nothing?' she rapped out. Oh, no! I thought, Oh no, not that!  'Well?' persisted the daisy bonnet. I said I would defend the woman with all my strength whether I  loved her or not, but I would not kill the storm-trooper.  'If you had a knife in your hand would you use it?' From the way she spoke I thought she must  have been to a very posh school when she was young. I said I would use the knife to try to stop the  storm-trooper raping the lady, but not to kill him. The bonnet lady uttered a small chirp of outrage.  'A genuine pacifist would reason with him,' she said. A vivid picture of my five feet three inches  sweetly reasoning with a six feet tall storm-trooper who was mad with lust, intruded on my inner  eye and I felt a perilous desire to laugh.  'You would knife a man, but you wouldn't put a bullet through him in battle. Is that your position,  Flint?' demanded the man with the red face, returning to the fray. I looked at the faces confronting  me, honest, upright members of society trying to be fair, trying to understand, but not able to hide  the growing suspicion I was a coward or a shirker. I asked the President if I could explain to the  members of the tribunal the Spiritualist philosophy on which I based my determination to go to  prison, rather than join the armed forces. The Walrus was heard to mutter that he did not want to  listen to spook claptrap, he didn't believe in it, anyway. But the President told me to go ahead and  please to be brief.  With an eloquence which surprised myself I described the confusion of a soul hurled into eternity  in the heat and passion of battle with no knowledge of what lies before it on the next plane of existence. I quoted to them the solemn invocation from the Book of Common Prayer: 'from battle and  murder and from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us', which shows that the Fathers of the early  Church knew more about the afterlife than their successors do today. When I had finished, their  heads were put together and there was much whispering and conferring. Finally my Lady of the  Daisies lifted up her cool clipped voice.  'Are you suggesting that our brave men in the services will suffer remorse in the next life because  they are killing their country's enemies?'  'No, madam,' I said, 'they will not, because they do not know, as I know, the consequences to the  souls of those they send into eternity. It is precisely because I have been given that knowledge  through the exercise of my gift of mediumship that I must refuse the responsibility of taking human  life.'  'And yet you are not unwilling indirectly to help the armed forces to kill more efficiently?' This was  the calm, detached voice of the President. I said my country was engaged in a war which I considered to be a struggle of good against evil and I would play my part to my utmost, short of personally taking life. There was another whispered conference and a quiet grey-faced man who had not  hitherto spoken, looked up. 'How do we know you are sincere?' he said.  I approached the President and held out to him an envelope in which was the letter offering me  sanctuary in America and Bunny Parsons' carbon copy of my reply.  'I think these two letters will answer the gentleman's question,' I said. The President read both the  American letter and the copy of my reply and passed them around for the others to see. There was  more whispering and more conferring and finally the President told me I would be called into a  non-combatant corps some time in the near future, then I was dismissed.  I walked to the Underground Station to take the train back to Hendon and saw a great bomber's  moon sailing in the sky. As I reached the station the sound of the air-raid siren wailed and the city's  orchestra of defence started.  On the platform the tiered bunks were already being occupied by those who slept in them, night  after night, in comparative safety. Families were claiming pitches where they would spread rugs and  pillows or were already ensconced, eating from paper bags and drinking tea from ﬂasks. Here and  all over the hidden depths of the city was the identical smell of fear and sweat and musty used-up  air. These were Londoners, enduring with patience and humour and some small defiance. They  were such good people.  Walking home from Hendon station to the concerto of guns, falling shrapnel and the shriek and  crump of bombs, I worried about how to provide for Edith when I was away on war duty. I had  saved over £100 which I would leave with her and she had her own small pension, but when I  thought of the rent, the rates, the heat, the light and all the other bills, which arrived with depressing regularity, I wondered how long £100 would last? How long would the war go on? My pay as a  private soldier in a non-combatant unit would be two shillings a day, so perhaps I could squeeze  ten shillings a week to send home to Edith. I had to do something, because otherwise she would try  to solve her problem by working in munitions and she was not strong enough, nor any longer  young enough, to work long hours at a factory bench. 
When I reached home Edith told me that Miss Tucker and Doctor Young had called at the house  while I was in London, to say they proposed to forgo the rent at 31 Sydney Grove while I was on war  service. My anxieties took flight and I remembered a promise given to me long before, by one of  those who guide and help me from life's other side. 'You will never have all you want,' he said, 'but  as long as you serve faithfully you will be provided with all you need.' Then I remembered how  often help had come from some unexpected source when it was most needed and I reproached myself for my lack of trust.  The day came when I had to leave my home, my work and all that was dear to me. Edith came with  me to London to see me off at Paddington station, where I was to catch the next train to the coastal  town of Ilfracombe. We found the train and I saw it was full of men of my own age who were all  bound for Ilfracombe and the same training course as I was. Some of the men kindly moved to  make a place for me in one of the crowded carriages. I leaned out of the window talking to Edith  until the last second. Talk does not come easily at such a time and all we could find to say to each  other, when there was so much to be said, were banalities like 'don't forget to write' and 'take care  of yourself'. At last the train shuddered into movement and I kissed Edith farewell as I watched her  blink back tears and force a smile. The train hurried away from the platform and I hung out of the  window watching Edith wave until I lost sight of her in the distance. As the train carried me faster  and faster to a new and unknown life I felt very lonely in that crowded carriage.  

Nine    OUTSIDE Ilfracombe station two sergeants were cantering to and fro like bad-tempered sheepdogs,  trying to herd us into the semblance of a column. In our civilian clothes, crumpled from the journey, clutching our little cases, we must have looked a sorry sight. 'What an 'orrible lot!' I heard one  of the sergeants say. 'A regular shower!' agreed the other.  Hounded by these sheepdogs, we were out of step and straggling, but they marched us down the  hill to our billet which turned out to be a requisitioned hotel on the sea front which, efficiently  stripped of every peacetime comfort, was now a cold and desolate barracks.  When we had been fed, two new sheepdogs formed us into a line outside the Quartermaster's  store to be issued with our uniform. Some of the conchies had not bargained for a military uniform  and the thought of it was so repugnant to them they refused point-blank to accept it, let alone wear  it. After a certain amount of shouting and argument, the military police took these men away and  they were not seen again. I do not know what became of them but it was generally assumed they  would end up in a civil prison unless they changed their minds.  After I had been given the coarse, scratchy underwear, the khaki battledress, the heavy boots and  the rest of the gear which made up my kit, I was shown where to sleep and then ordered to change  into my new gear. My 'bedroom' was now a large shared dormitory lined with double-tiered bunks,  which looked identical to those I had seen in the London Underground. As I dumped my kit on a  top bunk I noticed a large young man sitting on the lower bunk with tears streaming down his face.  I felt pretty grim myself but I tried to cheer him up as best I could. Finally I managed to coax him to  change into his uniform as one of the sheepdogs had ordered us to do. When we had both donned  our new clothes we looked at each other and burst out laughing. His uniform was as tight as a  sausage skin, while mine was several sizes too big and hung on me with a scarecrow effect. We  laughed so hard at each other that both of us forgot our miseries. My new friend's name was Ernie  and he was a London Cockney who had been living more by his wits than by honest toil, a fact he  told me with some pride, adding that he was pretty good at avoiding work or any other kind of unpleasantness. I soon found this was no idle boast. He was more than pretty good at it, he was an  expert.  What I hated more than anything during my training course at Ilfracombe was the daily drill session on the sea front. I could do nothing correctly, I had two left feet, I was hopeless. Sergeant  Jones, the old sweat who drilled us, grew scarlet in the face and his eyes bulged out of their sockets  with sheer frustration as he bawled at me for my stupid mistakes. The harder I tried to do what he  wanted, the more clumsy and awkward I became and the louder he bawled. To add to the misery of  it, groups of civilians would gather to watch and their uninhibited laughter infuriated Sergeant Jones  and humiliated me. After a while I think Sergeant Jones came to believe I actually enjoyed being the  local comic act, because he stopped bawling at me and simply put me on a charge whenever I did  something idiotic. The charge was usually 'dumb insolence' against which there is no defence.  Sergeant Jones' change in tactics resulted in my spending so much time engaged in repetitive  tasks, like peeling potatoes or cleaning, that I saw very little of the town while I was stationed there.  Ernie was by no means a model soldier but he always managed to avoid trouble or undue exertion  and he was always amply supplied with funds. Later I learned he made a useful little income selling  black market ladies stockings to the locals, but he was a good friend and he gave up many of his  evenings to help me to peel mountains of potatoes or polish acres of floor.  Shortly before the course ended Ernie and I were strolling in the town when we spotted a cut-price  photographers, so we decided to have our pictures taken. When we got them they were truly dreadful. I do not know which of us looked worse. I tore up mine on the spot except for one copy which I  sent to Edith, hoping it would at least make her laugh.  At last the course was over and, in theory at any rate, we had been licked into some kind of military shape. We were given travel warrants and seven days leave and told to report back to a camp on  the Welsh border.  For my first night at home Edith had arranged a sitting of our home circle, but it had hardly begun  before the siren wailed and a heavy air-raid was soon in full swing. One or two members of the circle wondered if we should take cover and postpone the sitting, but the suggestion had no sooner  been made than Mickey came through to veto it. He told us nothing whatsoever would happen to  our house and asked us to continue the séance. We did as Mickey asked, but the raid got worse and  worse until the whole house rocked on its foundations as a particularly heavy bomb fell uncomfortably close. Mickey at once returned to speak to us and told us a land mine had fallen a few  streets from us and many people had been killed. He went on to say that hundreds of spirit people  were already at the scene of the disaster to help the victims over the border between this life and the  next, and to explain to them the fact of their physical death and their continuing life in the other  world.  Mickey is normally cheerful, irrepressible and quick at repartee, but that evening he talked to us  very seriously and as he talked, his usual treble boy's voice changed its timbre and became more  adult, more cultured and more resonant. The subject of Mickey's discourse was the enormous effort being made by the spirit world to ensure no victim of the war, whatever his nationality, creed or  state of mind, should be left to cling to the Earth because of ignorance of the life to come. He told  us thousands upon thousands of spirit people had made it their task to go wherever the need arose  to guide the newly dead, who were in a state of bewilderment, to their place in the next life.  Later that evening, while the others were drinking rationed tea and eating wartime sandwiches, I  went upstairs to fetch a cardigan for Edith. On Edith's bedside table I noticed the appalling photograph I had sent to her from Ilfracombe. Now it was in a silver frame. The thought that Edith cherished this dreadful picture touched me deeply. I made up my mind to try again to persuade her to  marry me. As we washed up in the kitchen after our guests had gone, I begged her to be my wife.  She produced all the old arguments I had heard so often before, but I put my hand over her lips to  stop her. 'It's you I want to marry,' I told her, 'no one else will do.'  Two days later we were married at the local registry office and the first thing we did after the simple little ceremony was to send Owen a telegram with the news. His simple reply read, "Dearest idiots: news long overdue, so glad. Owen." What remained of my leave we spent happily together at  home.  Very few of the men I had trained with at Ilfracombe had been posted to my new camp, but I was 
glad to find Ernie there when I arrived. Our work was laying a new railway track and from eight in  the morning until nightfall we carried and laid the heavy sleepers. It was hard, tough work, but once  my unaccustomed muscles were limbered up I rather enjoyed working out in the fresh air and daylight, as a change from years of sitting passively in a darkened room to earn my living. Also, thankfully, there was no time for drill sessions in this busy workers camp.  As far as Ernie was concerned, hard labour under the eye of a sergeant who was alert to pounce  on slackers was an outrage. 'It's a bloomin' liberty!' he would complain angrily, 'I'm a bloke wot  sees jobs get done! I don't do 'em meself. I got brains, see! They've gotta nerve!'  Ernie was never one to suffer passively and he set his undoubted talents to work to somehow  achieve a transfer to a less obnoxious job. He attended so many sick parades, for which he carefully  swotted up on medical symptoms at the local library, and once or twice he fainted so realistically at  work that the harassed and ageing medical officer eventually gave in and put him on light duties.  Ernie was then given a job in the camp kitchen and every morning thereafter, lounging gracefully in  the doorway of the kitchen hut, he would make a point of watching as our sergeant marched us out  to work on the railway.  The men I worked with were pacifists for different reasons. The majority of them were sincere and  had registered from a religious conviction of one kind or another. Some were shirkers who simply  wanted to avoid war service, particularly duty overseas. Others had political views which made  them regard the war as exploitation of the workers, or so they said. A very small number were pure  cranks and their ingrown egos and passionate illogicalities made them hard to take. I remember  one man, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, who was horror-stricken when he learned I was not  only a Spiritualist, but a medium too. He refused to speak to me or to come within yards of me because he said I was 'of the Devil'. In our dormitory hut he would ostentatiously kneel beside his  bunk and pray aloud to be delivered from 'the snares of Satan's servant' until the other men in the  hut threw boots, brushes or anything they could lay their hands on, to make him shut up. After a  few nights he disappeared from our hut altogether and peace reigned once more. Later we learned  he had been sleeping in one of the outhouses until he had been discovered by a sergeant and reported to the Commanding Officer. When the CO questioned him about his curious behaviour the  soldier said he would rather die than sleep in the same hut as 'a necromancer' and he got so overexcited about it that the CO, a humane man, told him he would be moved to another dormitory. For  a time we heard no more of our Brother until one day at pay parade he dramatically tore up the  paper money and tossed away the silver he had just been given as his pay, shouting that he would  not take 'blood money'. This caused a sensation and one or two fingers got badly trampled in the  scrum around his discarded coins. Soon afterwards the Brother was discharged from the army on  psychiatric grounds and was seen no more. I felt sorry for him, because he was sincere in his beliefs and the strain of army life must have turned his brain, but Ernie was convinced the Brother had  hit upon a brilliant way to 'work his ticket' and he was absolutely furious he had not thought of it  first.  As a result of this episode I received a fair amount of good-humoured ridicule about Spiritualism  and I was frequently challenged to 'produce a spirit'. It was all meant as fun but it was becoming  repetitious and tiresome. So one night after lights out in our dormitory hut, when the pestering  started up again, I asked the men to relax and lie quietly in their bunks and perhaps someone might  come to talk to them. After a few stifled giggles and embarrassed coughs, the men lay quietly and  after a few minutes Mickey began to speak. He spoke to most of the men individually and gave  them help and advice about various problems, of which I was unaware. Finally he introduced the  sister of one of them who had passed on only a few weeks previously. The man and his dear sister  were having a personal talk when one of the sergeants suddenly hammered on the door of our hut  and then he barged in, putting on the light as he did so, and our séance ended very abruptly. This  caused the ectoplasm, which the other side had taken from me to make the artificial larynx through  which the voices speak, to rush back into my body and I felt as though I had been kicked in the  solar plexus. As I lay winded and retching, I remembered the warning Noah Zerdin had given me  years before in the little café in Watford. For the first time in the practice of my mediumship I knew  exactly what he meant. When I had recovered and the sergeant had gone, the soldier who had been  talking to his sister told the other men that he had not told a soul in the camp he had a sister, living  or dead. There was no more ridicule and I was often asked to give another séance in our dormitory  but, fearing another kick in the midriff, I never did.  Long before we had finished our railway track, in the usual antic manner of the army a number of  men, including Ernie and me, were transferred to a camp near Salisbury, where the work consisted  of making a road near a big RAF station.  Road-making is every bit as strenuous as laying a railway track but I preferred the new camp. I was  often able to get home on weekend leave when I would give a group sitting on Saturday evening to  people chosen by Edith as being in special need of my help. I was happy to carry on with my real  work even if it was only in a small and restricted way.  For the first time since I had been in the army I met a fellow Spiritualist at the new camp. With  several men I had been detailed to clear away a broken road surface and we were working in the  nerve-racking vicinity of a pneumatic drill. Suddenly I became clairvoyantly aware of an elderly man  standing close to one of the men working with me. The spirit man was as clear and as life-like as  the soldier whose attention he was trying to attract. In spite of the hideous distraction of the drill, I  became aware that the spirit wanted the soldier to know that he regretted his opposition to something. I felt uneasy about passing on this message since, for all I knew, the soldier might share the  same religious view as the fanatic from the other camp. Then the drill ceased its exacerbating din  and for a few seconds my rapport with the elderly spirit man grew, until I knew beyond any doubt  that he wanted to tell his son he was sorry he had been so antagonistic to his interest in Spiritualism, but he knew better now. I had no reason to hesitate any longer and as soon as the pneumatic drill paused again I told the soldier what I had clairvoyantly seen and heard. He introduced  himself as Hubert Finnemore and said he recognised the description of his late father as an accurate one. He also confirmed that his father had been bitterly opposed to Spiritualism and there had  been some ill-feeling between them on this account. Hubert was deeply touched that his father had  made the effort to contact him through me in order to say he was sorry. We became friends and enjoyed many talks about our mutual interest in psychic matters. In fact Hubert and his wife are good  friends of mine to this day.  

The transfer from Shrewsbury suited me but it did not please my friend Ernie at all. No longer was  he able to watch the rest of us march out for a days' labour from the shelter of a comfortable job.  Ernie was now one of the marchers, and road-making appealed to him no more than laying railway  sleepers. He began his sick parade routine again and threw one or two impressive faints, but the  new Medical Officer was neither as aged nor as gullible as the old one, and he refused to certify  Ernie as 'too fragile' to work on the road, in spite of all the symptoms Ernie produced for him.  After the failure of his sick parade ploy, Ernie became very friendly with some members of an esoteric religious sect who used to meet in the evenings to read the Bible and sing hymns. Ernie attended these meetings and soon he was seldom to be seen without a Bible under his arm. One  night over a cup of coffee in the NAAFI Ernie told me with great solemnity that he had been saved  and, while he had no wish to hurt me, he said he could no longer be the friend of a man who had  given his soul to the devil. This was all familiar ground and I shook my head at him.  'It won't work, Ernie,' I said. 'Not so soon after the last one. Besides Sergeant Grant was at  Shrewsbury when it happened.' Ernie grinned disarmingly.  'I'd forgotten about Grant,' he said. 'Oh, well! I'll have to try and think of something else.'  I suggested he might try resigning himself to the inevitable and he gave me a scathing look.  'I'm getting out of this place if it's the last thing I do,' he said, 'I'm in the prime of life an' I'm  sweatin' for two shillings a day. It's ludicrous, that's wot it is! In the city, if you knock off a few  cases o' gin or somefink they queue up for it - for a ﬁver a bottle I'm tellin' you!'  Ernie thumbed briskly through an imaginary wad of fivers and kissed his fingers rapturously. He  was a scoundrel; but he was also kind, generous and lovable and I valued his friendship, so I  bought him a beer and wished him luck.  Owen was now on active service with a bomber squadron and Edith's letters were full of fears for  him. I thought she would not be able to bear it if anything happened to Owen. The other children  from her first marriage had left home long ago to marry and lead their own lives and though the  bond between them and Edith was strong, Owen was her youngest and her best loved child. One  morning I got a telegram to say he was wounded and in hospital near Canterbury. I was given seventy-two hours leave to go and be with my wife.  We sat on a bench outside Owen's ward in the hospital and waited for a doctor to come. We knew  only that his aircraft had been badly hit by anti-aircraft fire over Germany and he had barely managed to limp home where he had crash-landed. We had no idea how badly he was hurt or even if he  would live or die. We waited for an hour, two hours, and still no doctor came. I knew the hell Edith  must be going through and I got very angry about what seemed like torture by the uncaring hospital  staff. I stood up ready to demand someone's attention for my wife, but Edith gently pulled me back.  'There are so many anxious people, some of us must wait,' she said. I had underestimated my wife,  she really was gold all the way through.  At last the doctor came and he was young and harassed and very weary. Owen had got off lightly,  although his sergeant had been killed. There were no broken bones, but he had many superficial  cuts, bruises and a bad concussion.  'We'll have him back with his squadron in less than a month,' said the young doctor cheerfully. I  saw the quiver of Edith's lip but she managed a smile and said, 'That will please him, I know.'  When I got back to camp Ernie was nowhere to be seen. I asked everyone I saw what had happened to him and finally I was told he had been sent to a psychiatric unit. It appeared that Ernie had  bleached his hair one night while the rest of the men in his hut were sleeping and next morning he  appeared to them all, to their astonished gaze, as a radiant blond. He had then rushed around the  camp screeching in a high falsetto voice that he could not sleep another night in a hut with all those  lovely men or he would go crazy. Efforts to calm him down had been met with either hysterical  laughter or floods of tears, until finally two medical orderlies had taken him off in a jeep to a destination loosely described as 'the bin'. It was obvious to me this was a new and somewhat desperate  attempt of Ernie's to 'work his ticket', but I have no idea whether his ploy succeeded, because none  of us saw Ernie again.  When the new road was almost finished a notice went up on the camp bulletin board asking for  volunteers for bomb disposal duties. It was one of the elementary precepts of army life never to  volunteer for anything whatsoever and this invitation to play about with live bombs was regarded as  a joke in extremely poor taste. I have to say that for a long time I passed that bulletin board daily  without experiencing even the smallest urge to inscribe my name in the space thoughtfully provided  for the signatures of volunteers. This space remained totally blank for many weeks, but a day came  when I realised with a shock of annoyance that I was beginning to feel a sense of personal guilt  about this unanswered appeal. I tried to argue myself out of this and my logic was impeccable, but  the feeling persisted and began seriously to disturb me. I took to averting my eyes when I had to  pass the bulletin board, then I started to make detours to avoid it altogether, but I could not rid myself of the nagging sense of guilt. I was led to question whether my contribution to the war effort  was enough. Other men in their thousands were risking life and limb daily while I was making a  road. Granted, the road was required for military purposes but I lived and worked in conditions considerably less dangerous than those of civilians in any of the big towns or cities; air-raids were few  and far between in the Wiltshire wilds where our camp was located. One morning when I was making my usual detour to avoid the noticeboard I stopped in my tracks and without making any conscious decision to do so, I turned right around and walked firmly back towards it. Without a second  thought I wrote my name in the space provided and the moment it was done I was at peace with  myself again.  In due course I was posted to a unit stationed in a large house in a residential part of Cardiff,  where I learned how to defuse unexploded bombs and render them harmless. Every man in this  unit had volunteered to do this dangerous job and whether it was because we all faced the same  dangers or because of a fortuitous blending of personalities there was great comradeship between  us. In my bomb disposal days I encountered none of the bigotry which had condemned me out of  hand because I was a Spiritualist medium. I was accepted as the person I was and for my part in the  work of the unit. When first I arrived I had been appalled to find that our Commanding Officer was  very keen on drill and parades and military discipline. It did not take me long to realise that discipline and trained co-ordination were the very factors on which our lives would depend when we became an operational unit. I tried very hard to overcome my parade ground apathy and eventually I  became a passable soldier. 
I made a number of friends in Cardiff who were kind enough to invite me to their homes in my  free time and it was bliss to be in the atmosphere of a home again, even though it was not my own.  When the local Spiritualist church learned of my identity I was inundated with requests for sittings.  I did what I could in my free time and it was a joy to experience again the satisfaction of giving help  and reassurance to those in need of it.  By the time our unit was operational, defusing a bomb was a disciplined routine. It had become  second nature to do the right thing in the right way. Certainly we never lost our healthy respect for  the bombs we handled, but the precision with which the squad worked together and our total confidence in each other minimised both risk and nervous strain.  After many months the number of bombs our unit was called on to handle dwindled to vanishing  point and we became idle and rather bored, missing the periodic stimulus of danger. There were rumours we were about to be disbanded and eventually we were invited to volunteer for other forms  of service, because our training had been overtaken by new types of bombs and as a disposal unit  we were obsolete.  Soon I was on my way to London for a three-month course in typing, shorthand and office routine. As the train rushed through the countryside I indulged in a daydream. In my imagination there  was a general, who was not unlike the victor of El Alamein, General Montgomery, and he was studying a map. Sometimes he sat at an imposing desk, at other times he was roughing it in a caravan;  but wherever he was, he was surrounded by officers who wore red tabs on their uniforms. Impatiently he waved the officers away. 'Flint will take care of it', he said. This was my cue to enter the  daydream with my neat dispatch case. In a later version I acquired red tabs, too. This embellishment made me laugh out loud until I almost choked and an elderly man sitting on the train  opposite asked if he should thump me on the back. For the rest of the journey I contented myself  with dwelling pleasurably on the thought that while I was on my course in Holborn I was allowed to  live at home.  For years I had been a two-finger 'hunt and peck' kind of typist and I was quite proud of my speed.  On the first day of the course I was annoyed to learn I had been doing it all wrong and thenceforth I  must use all my fingers and be a touch typist. They gave me a diagram of the typewriter keyboard to  prop up in front of me and dutifully I started to learn these new ways. Filing too had a lot more to it  than I had ever suspected. It was by no means the simple matter of putting papers in a box in  alphabetical order, which I had always supposed it was. There were drawers, sliding panels, tags of  different colours, cards, folders, indexes and the ﬁling of one simple letter was a nightmare operation in which, it seemed to me, the simple letter was lost forever. As for shorthand, I found the  hieroglyphs baffling enough without the complications of heavy and light strokes, dots and dashes  and all the rest. If it had not been for the happiness of living at home and the fact that I had my  evenings and weekends to myself, I think I would have given up in despair of ever making sense of  it all, but I soldiered on with the threat of the end-of-course final exam  hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles.  Our home circle had resumed its regular sittings now that I was at home and one evening a woman's voice spoke in an agitated way, asking to speak to her son. We asked for her name and she  said it was Clara Novello Davies. One of the sitters remarked that she must be Ivor Novello's mother. The woman in spirit said she was Ivor Novello's mother and she was extremely anxious to speak  to him. We explained that we did not know her son but if there was some message she wanted to  convey to him we would make every effort to see that he got it. The spirit thanked us for our offer  but said she wanted to speak to her son personally because what she wanted to say was too private  for any ears other his own. Naturally we wondered why Ivor Novello's mother sounded so distressed, but after she had gone we thought no more about it. Some weeks later an actor friend of  mine asked me to give a séance at his flat because he was anxious to help one of his friends who  had become interested in Spiritualism. I agreed and when I arrived at his flat on the evening we had  arranged I was introduced to his friend, who turned out to be the enchanting actress Beatrice Lillie.  Almost as soon as the lights were turned out Miss Lillie's son Robert, who had been lost on active  service with the navy, spoke to her and they had a happy reunion. When Robert had gone I was surprised to hear the voice of Clara Novello Davies addressing Beatrice directly. She asked Miss Lillie  to contact Ivor and arrange for him to sit with me so that she could talk to him about something  very urgent. Miss Lillie asked Novello's mother to say something which she could repeat to Ivor so  that he would know it was really his mother who was speaking. The spirit said that Ivor had that  moment entered his ﬂat from Oxford where he had been to visit a former teacher of his. As soon as  the lights were turned on Bea Lillie telephoned Ivor Novello and told him all that had occurred at  the sitting. She found that what his mother had said about his return from visiting a teacher in Oxford that evening was true and Novello showed a great deal of interest. It was arranged then and  there over the phone that I should give him a sitting in his ﬂat one night after his show The Dancing  Years.  On the night I was to give Ivor Novello his sitting I met my actor friend at The Ivy restaurant in  London where he had invited me out for dinner. Ivor was to meet us there after his show and we  would go from there to his ﬂat. While we were having our meal Ivor phoned us at the restaurant and  he cancelled the arrangement. My friend and I were disappointed and also somewhat annoyed at  being put off at such short notice without a very convincing excuse. My friend thought Ivor had  probably had cold feet at the thought of speaking to spirits in his own ﬂat and probably imagined it  would be haunted thereafter. Some weeks later we read in the newspapers that Ivor was to be prosecuted for an offence in connection with petrol rationing. Apparently, he had been driving down to  his country home at weekends using petrol vouchers, which some girl fan had 'acquired' for him,  without realising he was committing, what was at that time, a criminal offence. Then it became clear  to me why Clara Novello Davies had made such efforts to contact her son, obviously she wanted to  warn him against accepting this illicit petrol. If Ivor had not cancelled his sitting with me at the last  moment, it is possible he might have avoided the shame and misery he suffered when later he  served a month in gaol.  I met Ivor Novello some years after these events and he sat with me many times. Often his mother would come to speak to him. Ivor told me that once during his prison sentence he was sitting in  his cell one evening feeling low and depressed and wondering if he could endure his sentence without a mental breakdown when his mother appeared to him. He said she looked as real and living as  she had in life and the look of love and encouragement on her face gave him the strength to carry  

on and save his reason.  I was in the theatre on the night when Ivor gave his first performance of The Dancing Years after  his release from prison and it was a night to remember; the whole house rose to applaud him and it  went on and on until it seemed as though the audience would never let him go. It was a wonderful  night and a great theatrical occasion, and it gave Ivor the assurance he needed that the past was behind him and he was still loved.  Beatrice Lillie sat with me a number of times after her first sitting and once Rudolph Valentino  came to speak to her. He mentioned their meeting in Hollywood and Miss Lillie asked him if he  could remember the circumstances. Valentino said it was at a beach party at the home of Constance Talmadge and he spoke of a group photograph which was taken at the time, in which Bea  Lillie appeared and Valentino was sitting on a fence with his arm around his girlfriend Pola Negri.  After this sitting Miss Lillie told me the beach party was the only time she had met Rudolph Valentino and the photograph he had described was at that moment in a trunk in her apartment in New  York.  My sword of Damocles inevitably descended and I sat the end-of-course examination designed to  weed out those without the aptitude for office duties. I never did get the hang of their ﬁling system  or master the hieroglyphs of shorthand and I still used my two-finger method on the typewriter in  preference to the ten-finger exercise. Needless to say I was weeded out and the unlikely picture of  me as an authority behind a general's desk vanished forever.  While I was still licking my wounds I was told that men were urgently needed in the mines to ensure the nation's coal supply and too few volunteers were coming forward in response to appeals.  Rashly I responded to these unsubtle hints and in no time at all I was sitting on a train on my way  to Wolverhampton to train to become a miner. For some reason, which I am sure I was told at the  time, it was not possible to remain in the army if you were a miner, so before setting out for Wolverhampton I had become a civilian again.  What I failed to take into account when I let myself be talked into ensuring the nation's coal supply was the small matter of my claustrophobia. During the relatively short periods I had been enclosed in my cabinet for the public demonstrations of my mediumship I had regularly suffered from  claustrophobia, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the size of the cabinet and how airless it  was. The symptoms were unpleasant but not so severe to seriously disconcert me and I had been  able to put up with them for the duration of the séances. Foolishly I did not consider the possibility  that working in the bowels of the Earth for hours at a time would be likely to induce these symptoms, but a thousand times worse.  During the training period I tried hard to control my feelings of being trapped and stifled and the  unreasoning terrors which assailed me every time I descended to the coal face. But as the weeks  dragged on it became more and more obvious I could never be a miner and every hour underground became an unspeakable torture. When I could stand it no longer I was returned with thanks  to the army and posted forthwith to a big camp not far from Liverpool docks. Our work consisted of  loading heavy crates of supplies for the forces overseas onto lorries for shipment abroad. Though  the work was hard and exhausting and the camp seemed to be a special kind of target for nightraids and daytime flying bombs, it was positive bliss after the horror of working in the mine and I  remained there contentedly enough until VE Day.  

Ten    IN January 1946, a few days after my thirty-fifth birthday, I swapped my army uniform for the civilian  outﬁt thoughtfully provided by a paternal government and I walked out of the demobilisation centre  with a rail ticket for home and freedom in my pocket.  As I opened the front door of 31 Sydney Grove with my key Edith was coming out of the kitchen  with a freshly made pot of tea in her hands. She was so excited to see me she dumped the teapot  on the polished top of the hall table and rushed into my arms. For years the mark made by the  scalding teapot remained to remind us of that reunion and neither of us could ever bear to have the  stain removed. Later that same day Owen, who was now a flight-lieutenant with the ribbon of the  Distinguished Flying Cross on his tunic, turned up on leave unexpectedly and the family was complete. In our house happiness was always shared with friends and we telephoned to invite several to  celebrate with us. I went to the local wine store, but did not expect to find much, because supplies  of wines and spirits had begun to dry up early in the war and by this time they were in very short  supply indeed. The keeper of the store was a man who had occasionally attended my group  séances. Before I could even ask for a bottle of wine, with a flourish he produced a magnum of  champagne. He told me it was the last of his stock and had kept it for the day I came home for  good and he would not allow me to pay for it.  Later that night when the toasts had been drunk and our friends had gone, under the overhead  light I saw the new lines which the war had etched on Edith's face. Years of uncertainty, constant  anxiety about Owen, and sleepless nights while bombs dropped around the house had taken their  toll. She looked old and tired, but to me she had never seemed as beautiful.  During a group séance held in 1940, my Cockney guide, Mickey, had introduced the spirit of a  young airman. 'There's a chap here from the Air Force,' he said, 'who wants to get in touch with his  parents. He's so excited I don't know if he will manage to speak but I'll try to help him.' Then we  heard the voice of the airman asking us to contact his father and mother. He had been to see them  often, he said, but they could not see him. He told us he had been killed when his plane crashed  over Norway. He was twenty years old and he was their only son. 'Please tell Mother I'm all right  now,' he urged, 'she is so unhappy it's making her ill.'  No one in the group could identify this communicator so Mr Walter J. West, our Vice-President at  the Temple of Light, asked the young man for his full name and address and promised to get in  touch with his parents if it were possible to do so. 'Thank you so much,' replied the dead boy, 'I  had three first names, Peter William Hansford and my surname was Kite K-I-T-E and I lived at 85  Uplands Way, Grange Park.'  But that was not all, Peter Kite next spoke to a man in the group saying, 'I know you, you're Mr  Turner, you took out my tooth.' None of the other sitters knew that Mr Turner was a dentist nor did  they know his name. Mr Turner said he remembered Peter Kite coming to him for treatment some  years before, but he did not know he had joined the RAF or that he had been killed.  After the séance Mr West went to Grange Park and found the house where Peter Kite had said he  would find his parents. Mr West rang the doorbell and the dead boy's mother, Mrs May Kite, answered the door. Mr West explained his presence and from his notes relayed the details of Peter's  comments made at the séance. Mrs Kite acknowledged one point after the next and after some conversation Mr West promised to send Mrs Kite a full transcript of the séance.  Now that the war was over I allowed myself a few days to get acclimatised to civilian life. Then the  doors of the Temple of Light were opened again and I resumed the work I was born to do. At one  séance were invited the parents of Flight Lieutenant Peter Kite and Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding,  a convinced Spiritualist, was our honoured guest.  Almost as soon as the light was turned off Mickey came to tell us that Arthur Conan Doyle wanted  to say a few words to Mr and Mrs Kite before their son came to speak to them. In his lifetime Doyle  had become convinced of Spiritualism after years of sitting with mediums and he spoke sympathetically to the parents, who had no real knowledge of psychic matters. He explained to them how,  after Peter's plane had crashed, their son had found himself still alive, but in a new body and this  spiritual, more subtle body resembled, in every respect, his physical body which he had seen lying  motionless in the wreckage of his aircraft. At first, Doyle told the couple, their son had been bewildered because, although he could see the body which he recognised as himself, he felt so gloriously alive and well that he simply did not realise he was dead. When two local peasants came to  investigate the wrecked aircraft Peter was puzzled when they seemed unable to see or hear him, but  then some friends of his, whom he knew to be already dead, had arrived and explained this new  condition of life to him and took him to his new plane of existence.  As soon as Conan Doyle had finished speaking Peter Kite greeted his father and mother with excitement. 'I've got the dog, Mother,' he said laughingly, 'it's an Alsatian.' This was a reference to a  joke he had played on his mother only a few days before his death. Peter had been fond of dogs and  he had telephoned his mother to say he was sending home an Alsatian he had acquired. Mrs Kite  was not a dog lover and the thought of a huge Alsatian tearing around the house had appalled her.  After teasing her for a while Peter finally relented and reminded her that it was April Fool's Day.  'I saw you putting my photograph in your bag with the ones from Norway before you left home,'  went on the spirit voice. Mrs Kite told us she had changed her handbag before leaving for the  séance and had transferred its contents including her son's photograph and some, which had recently been sent to her, of his grave in Norway.  'You are keeping the garden in good trim,' said Peter. 'I like the area you have turned into a garden  of memories. Do you know that the birds nesting in the cherry tree can see me, even if you cannot?'  His parents told us that when Peter had been killed six years earlier, they had turned a patch of their  garden into a memorial to him and planted a cherry tree in which the birds had built their nests. 'I  often go to my room,' Peter continued, 'and you haven't changed a single thing in it. My model  plane is still there and all my books and that wallpaper I didn't like!' It was true that the parents had  kept their son's room exactly as it had been on the day he was killed and he had never cared for the  wallpaper in it. 'I'm glad my car is still going, but it's a bit small for you, Dad, isn't it?' Mr Kite  agreed that Peter's sports car fitted him a little too snugly; he was a large and somewhat overweight  man. 'I'm saying all these silly little things so you will know it's really me speaking and that I do  come to see you. Above all I want you and Mother to know I am alive, more alive now than I ever  was.' 
For almost forty minutes the voice of Peter Kite went on providing evidential detail after detail details that were trivial in themselves, but in combination they gave his parents incontrovertible  proof of his identity and continued existence.  When the séance was over both parents declared their son's survival of death had been conclusively proved to them. 'I had never thought very much about this kind of thing before,' said Mr Kite,  'but now I am completely convinced.' Mrs Kite added, 'I have found more comfort in this séance  than from any other source since my son was killed and I have lost a great deal of the bitterness I  felt.'  During an occasion I was on leave from the army I had given a sitting to Mrs Marie Barrat, a Belgian lady living in Golders Green, whose son George had been killed on active service early in the  war. George had manifested at her sitting and had given such undeniable proof of his survival that  her grief had been assuaged and life for her had become worth living again. Mrs Barrat was wealthy  and she had a generous heart. As a sort of 'thank you' and memorial to her son, she decided to give  other mothers who had lost sons the opportunity to receive the comfort she had been given. Once I  had returned home after my army service, Mrs Barrat booked regular séances with me and would  bring mothers from all over the country, their expenses being paid from a fund she had established  for the purpose.  Before each of her séances Mrs Barrat would tell the mothers that she had told the medium nothing whatsoever about any of them, not even their names, so that any evidence obtained might be  the more valuable. Many touching reunions took place at these sittings and mothers went away  comforted.  On one occasion one of Mrs Barrat's mothers did not turn up on time for the start of the séance  and after we had waited for a few minutes we decided we must start without her. When the séance  had been in progress for a while a young man's voice was heard asking for his mother. Mrs Barrat  asked him who he was and when he had given his name she realised he must be the son of the  missing mother. Mrs Barrat explained to the dead boy that his mother had not yet arrived and the  séance was being held without her. 'Mother's train was late,' said the voice, 'but she is here now.  She is sitting on a chair on the landing outside this room. Please let me talk to her.'  Regretfully Mrs Barrat told the boy she could not open the door of the séance room to admit his  mother in case the light from outside harmed the medium. 'I must try to speak to her somehow,'  said the young man, 'she grieves for me so incessantly it makes me very unhappy and I can't settle  down in my new life here.'  Then a wonderful thing happened. As a rule the voices of the discarnate speak from a point above  my head and slightly to one side of me, within what Mickey has referred to as my 'auric emanation',  but as this spirit spoke his voice moved right away from me across the room to the door, where he  called loudly for his mother. From outside the door the mother answered him and the dead boy and  the living mother talked together through the door until the woman was convinced he was really her  own son, alive and loving as he was in life.  At another group it was a daughter who returned to comfort her mother. A Mrs Maxon who lived  in Oxford telephoned one afternoon, on impulse as she told me, and since there happened to be a  vacant place in one of our groups she was given the seat. Her daughter manifested and spoke of  her career as a dancing teacher, in a clear girlish voice with a tinge of north-country accent. The girl  reminded her mother of the last ballet they had seen together at Covent Garden, Les Sylphides, and  told her that since her passing she had met the Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, for whom  she had always had the greatest respect and admiration. The daughter also spoke of a time when  she had played truant from school years before and waited three hours in the snow for a seat in the  gallery to see Pavlova dance at a matinee. Mickey was puzzled about the dress he said the girl was  wearing. First he said it was a wedding dress, then he thought it might be a Catholic confirmation  dress, but when he described some red flowers on the skirt Mrs Maxon recognised it at once as the  long ballet dress that she herself had sewn red flowers onto before her daughter's last illness.  'I have been given absolute proof of the survival of my daughter,' wrote Mrs Maxon in a letter to  Psychic News after the séance, 'I was a perfect stranger at the séance. I booked my seat by telephone from Oxford and I was alone.'  Most of those who communicate from the other side at my séances speak of how happy they are  in their new condition of life, but I remember one entity who startled one of my groups by being  very cranky and disgruntled. He told us he was an American soldier who had been killed in the London blitz and when a lady member of the group said she was surprised to hear him talk in that way  he replied, 'Well, it wasn't any fun to come all the way over to London just to die in an air-raid!'  A direct voice séance normally has two restrictions imposed on it. One is that it must be held in  absolute darkness. The other is that only a limited number of sitters may take part. Both before the  war and during the war when I was on leave Noah Zerdin and his circle had been experimenting  with a specially constructed cabinet in which I sat during séances in an effort to lift both these restrictions. Eventually these experiments were so successful that it was decided to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of The Link Association with a huge public séance in the  Kingsway Hall, at which the Hall would be fully lit and the audience would number more than a  thousand people.  On the big night Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding introduced me to the audience and asked them  to accept his personal assurance that no fraud would take place. The cabinet was about seven feet  high and four feet square and was placed in the centre of the platform where everyone in the audience could see it. I think those seated at the extreme ends of the gallery could probably even see all  around it. The four sides of the cabinet were covered with tarpaulin to ensure no light could enter  and I sat inside on an ordinary chair. In front of the cabinet at a distance of eighteen to twenty inches stood a microphone and the members of the Zerdin circle sat around it in the form of an ellipse  with the cabinet as focal point. In these conditions, under the full glare of the hall's lighting the  huge audience was given a demonstration of independent direct voice, comparable to those usually  experienced by small groups sitting in privacy.  Mickey's clear Cockney voice was the first to be heard that evening and since it seems to be part  of his function to put people at their ease before a séance he raised a laugh by saying perkily,  'Proper crowd 'ere tonight, ain't there? I expect a lot of 'em don't know much about this kind of  thing but I'll do my best for 'em!' and from then on he did indeed.  The first visitor from the other side gave his name as Roy Marchant and was acknowledged by his  

parents in the audience. 'Hello, Mother! Hello, Dad,' said Roy excitedly. 'I want you to know I am  not dead, I'm marvellously alive and I send all my love to you and to the baby.'  His parents replied affectionately. Then Roy thanked his mother for a children's party she had  given for his child. 'Don't think of me as being a long way off, because I'm not' he went on. 'I am  often with you. I was with you in Switzerland! There isn't any real separation.'  The next communicator gave her name as Gladys Richmond and spoke to a man at the front and  was pleading to be forgiven for some misunderstanding between them when she was on Earth. 'I'm  sorry about everything,' she said, 'it was an accident - you do believe that, don't you?' The man assured her he both believed and understood.  'I'm so happy you understand,' said Gladys, 'and that you realise I love you and one day we will be  together again. You often read that last letter I wrote to you before I went to Scotland, I have seen  you reading it.'  'I feel like an interloper, but I hope you won't mind,' came the voice of a woman. 'I am Stella  Patrick Campbell and I want to introduce Leslie Howard to you.' There was a rustle of expectancy  throughout the auditorium. Leslie Howard, the famous actor, had been killed three years before  when his unarmed plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by a German fighter and his death  had been widely mourned.  A cultured masculine voice was heard. 'God bless you! I am happy to be able to come and speak  to you in this way. Many of you do not perhaps understand fully that there is no death. Those of us  over here who come in this way, come to guide and help you, to try to uplift you. Spirit guidance  does not cease, that which happened two thousand years ago has happened through the centuries  and it is still happening today. I went to meetings like this when I was on Earth and I found great  comfort and interest. I was not, perhaps, a Spiritualist but certainly I believed in man's survival of  death.'  Speaking on a more personal note the voice of Mr Howard went on: 'I would like to speak to Phyllis James, my former secretary.' Miss James answered him and he asked her to send his love to  'Ruth' and to tell his family of his appearance that night. 'Death has not robbed me of any of my  faculties,' he concluded, 'God bless each one of you here tonight.'  One of the most touching contacts of the evening began very quietly with Mickey saying: 'I want to  speak to the lady all in grey at the back because her boy's here. He was in the navy. His name is  Jim.' A woman at the very back of the gallery called out, 'Is it for me?'  The moment her voice was heard, suddenly and loudly came the pathetic cry, 'Mum! Mum! I'm so  glad you've come!'  'Darling, darling!' was all the mother could reply.  'I'm not dead you know,' Jim assured her anxiously, 'I'm all right!' In his effort to bring conviction  Jim's anxiety increased. 'I wasn't drowned. 'I'm ALIVE!'  This shouted word rang through the hall, fraught with the pain of not knowing whether the comfort he sought to bring would be fully understood. Mickey intervened at this point to provide the  anticlimax which restored a smile to every face. 'Jim's a darned sight more alive than you are, lady,  I'll tell you!'  When the séance was nearly over a woman's voice was heard speaking in the cultured and precise  diction that was so familiar to my own home circle. It was the voice of our friend Ellen Terry.  'Ladies and Gentlemen, I was asked to come and speak here tonight for a few moments, though I  know too well many have more proficiency than I. For all of you who have faith in the spirit and the  surety of knowledge that life continues after death there is no reason why you should not develop  the great gifts of the spirit in your own homes. Sometimes you may get despondent and depressed  and feel you are not making sufficient progress, but we help you from our side all we can, although  we cannot say how long individual development will take. With some it takes years, with others it  comes very quickly if they persevere; but have faith, sit in sincerity of spirit and use your gifts to  serve mankind. The aftermath of war has left the world in chaos, more than ever will you be needed  to transmit the help that can come from our side of life. Man's ignorance and selfishness has  brought great suffering to mankind, and people ask why does God allow these things? But God  gave you free will. Search to find a link with those in spirit and remember the promise of Jesus  when you sit, 'Lo, I am with you always.' Go forward in strength and know that you too will be serving. Be His servants, His children, and it will bring to you the peace which is everlasting.'  With these words the first big public demonstration of the independent direct voice held in full  light came to an end. It had been successful beyond all our hopes and it was only the first of many  more I was to give, not only in London but in the largest halls all over the country, and I felt more  assured than ever that my life was to be devoted to comforting those who mourn and giving certainty to those seeking to know what lies beyond the illusion we call death.  After that evening letters arrived at the Temple of Light by the sackful. So many people wanted to  sit with me privately or to join our group séances, so many societies all over England wanted me to  demonstrate my mediumship, that it became abundantly clear I would have to severely restrict the  amount of work I did or I would risk a nervous breakdown and perhaps as a consequence lose my  precious gift altogether. To this end the Temple of Light was reorganised and all matters of ﬁnance  and administration were taken out of my hands by the committee. This was so I would be free from  worry and anxiety and my work could be arranged in such a way that my mediumship would be  used to help as many people as possible without overtaxing my strength or my nervous system.  Reverend Arthur Sharp resigned from saint Stephen's in Hampstead, to become our president and  Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas joined the committee. I had a wonderful band of friends gathered around me at that time, they were full of enthusiasm.  At another demonstration in full light, this time at the Scala Theatre in London, was a voice purporting to be that of the Methodist pioneer John Wesley. He delivered a wonderful oration in which  he told the audience of the spirit world's plan to bring light to our darkened world and to spread the  truth of life after death. As I sat in my stuffy cabinet on the stage and listened to him I marvelled at  his eloquence and mastery of language, so far beyond the limits of my own education.  When Wesley's voice faded and after various entities had spoken to friends in the audience the  voice of a young girl was heard, she was excited and apparently overcome with emotion. Her words  halting but clear, she said it was her first attempt to communicate.  'What is your name?' asked Drayton Thomas who was sitting on the stage along with Lord Dowding and my home circle. 'My name is Doreen,' the girl answered. 'Can you tell us your other name?' 
someone asked. And as though the girl found it too difficult to speak Mickey answered for her saying that her surname was Marshall.  There was a buzz of excitement from the audience as they speculated whether Doreen Marshall  could be one of the victims of the perverted killer Neville Heath who had been hanged for the murder of another unfortunate girl not long before.  'Did anyone here know Doreen Marshall?' Drayton Thomas asked the audience. A man somewhere near the front called out saying that he lived opposite her home. Then the girl tried to speak  again. 'I am all right now,' she said, then speaking to the man who had claimed to be a neighbour,  she told him, 'I used to pat your dog.'  By that time the girl's emotion was too overwhelming and the link was broken. As I listened to the  audience who were still buzzing with excited comment I could not help feeling sad that the efforts  this poor murdered girl had made to communicate had an effect so much greater than the entire  speech made by the voice of John Wesley.  After Owen had returned to civilian life he went back to his old job at Elstree Studios, but as the  weeks passed both Edith and I noticed with concern that he was not the happy-go-lucky young man  he had been before the war. He was restless and unsettled and he had taken to spending his  evenings shut away in his room instead of going out with his friends as he used to do. I thought  this uncharacteristic behaviour was the result of his years of strain as a bomber pilot and I made allowances for his unaccountable mood swings and ﬂashes of irritability, which were so unlike his  old self. Remembering the concussion after his crash landing we anxiously kept asking him if he  was suffering from headaches, blurred vision or symptoms of vertigo. He would answer us with  exasperated sighs or calmly cast his eyes up towards heaven. Edith began to talk rather glibly about  neuroses and the splitting of personalities under stress and I discovered she was taking psychology  textbooks from the local library and hiding them behind cushions in the sitting-room if Owen or I  were about.  The answer to Owen's malaise turned out to be simpler than anything that had occurred to his  mother or I. During a period of flight training in California he had fallen in love with an American  girl. They had corresponded throughout the war and as soon as he was back in civilian life Owen  had written to her proposing marriage. Since he had been completely honest about his financial  prospects, which were less than dazzling, and this girl was the daughter of wealthy parents Owen  waited anxiously for her answer, alternating between euphoric hope and the blackest despair. As  soon as she got in touch to say she was taking the first available boat to England to marry him  Owen was himself again.  Owen and Jane were married by Father Sharp in his former church of saint Stephen's. Jane was a  beautiful bride and Owen a very proud bridegroom. What remained of Owen's squadron formed a  guard of honour and since the bride's parents were unable to travel to England for the ceremony, I  stood in to give Jane away. It was a happy wedding, but Edith still shed a few tears as the couple left  for their honeymoon on the coast.  Later they settled into a small ﬂat in Maida Vale and in due course a daughter was born who gave  Edith and the young parents great joy.  When the blow fell it was sudden. We had been out to dinner with friends and it had been a happy  evening. On the way home on the train Edith remarked that she felt rather strange and when I  looked at her under the train lights her face was grey. I wanted to telephone for the doctor as soon  as we got home but Edith would not allow it, so I gave her some brandy which put the colour back  into her face and reassured me.  It was dawn when I awoke with a start, feeling uneasy. I looked at Edith and she seemed to be  peacefully sleeping. The feeling of unease persisted, and when I looked more closely at her I saw  one corner of her mouth was drooping. I sprang out of bed and ran to the phone. When the doctor  came he told me Edith had suffered a stroke. From the cheery, bright personality she had been, my  wife was suddenly helpless and five years of illness had begun.  One of Edith's married daughters helped me through the first most difficult period, by nursing her  mother devotedly, but soon the time came when she and her family had to move to another area, so  I had to manage as best I could on my own.  Although I am able to talk to those who guide and help me from the other side as easily as my sitters, I do not usually ask for help with material problems. They have always made it very clear that I  must not expect my life to be easy, nor must I imagine I am entitled to special privileges because I  am their medium. But when the shopping, the cooking, the care of my wife and trying to do my  spiritual work at the same time became a burden of almost nightmare proportions I decided to ask  them for help. At the next sitting of my home circle I asked for someone to be sent to my assistance.  'Someone has already been sent,' said Mickey, 'he's working in this house and he was at your last  big meeting at the Kingsway Hall.' I could not imagine what Mickey meant. The only person working in the house was a young man hired to redecorate one of the bedrooms.  'You can't mean the painter?' I said to Mickey. 'Yes I do,' he answered perkily. 'His name is Bill  Willis and he is wondering what on earth he will do when he finishes the job here because his work  partner has walked out on him. Ask him and he will take over your worries and become interested  in your work.'  It was true there had originally been two painters when the job was started and for the past few  days one of them had been missing, but even so Mickey's solution to my problems seemed highly  unlikely. 'Ask him! I'm telling you, he'll do it,' said Mickey with a trace of impatience at my obvious  incredulity. 'Very well,' I said. 'If you say so, Mickey.'  The next morning very diffidently I took a cup of tea into the room where Bill the painter was working. To check on Mickey's statement, I was about to ask him if he had been at my Kingsway Hall  meeting when he told me how interesting he had found it. He told me he had sat next to a woman  whose son, killed in the war, had spoken to her at the séance. She told Bill that the voice was exactly  like the voice of her son when he was on Earth.  'Is it really true?' said Bill, 'It's almost too wonderful to really be so.' I assured him it was true,  then, testing Mickey further, I asked if his partner had left him in the lurch. 'Yes,' said Bill. 'He has  left me in a right old mess. I can't carry on the business without someone else and he's walked out  for good. I don't know what I'll do when I finish this job. I'll probably end up with a job in a factory.'  'Would you like to come and work here?' I asked. 'I need someone to run the house and help me  

to care for my wife.  Bill hesitated, then asked if a room went with the job. When I said it did, he offered to try it out, so  long as I did not mind being experimented upon while he learned to cook. He also said he would  like to know more about 'this spirit business'.  Soon it became obvious that Bill was a treasure. Quickly he mastered such routine as we had in  our house and began to study cookery books and then to serve up delicious and imaginative meals.  He became devoted to Edith and fussed over her like a hen with one chick. He also did all he could  to make life easier for me and he soon became a regular sitter in my home circle. In due course  someone he had known and loved on the other side came to speak to him and gave him his personal conviction of survival. Many of my friends and sitters remember Bill with affection. Sadly, a  few years later, he suffered a premature death from an inoperable cancer.  The committee of the Temple of Light organised another huge demonstration for me at the  Kingsway Hall. As on the former occasion I was to sit in my stuffy cabinet on the stage while the  hall would be fully lighted. Weeks before the advertised date all available seats were booked and on  the night itself hundreds had to be turned away at the doors and all standing room was taken.  As usual Mickey spoke first, but this time, unusually, he told the huge audience that Mickey was  only the name by which he was known in the world of spirit and to his medium. He said that during  his Earth life he was called John Whitehead and had sold newspapers outside Camden Town  Underground Station, until he was run over and killed by a lorry when he was ten years old. 'I'm a  lot happier over here than I ever was on your side,' he assured the crowded hall, 'you could say that  'kicking the bucket' was the best thing I ever did!' This caused a general laugh and the tension  throughout the hall reduced noticeably.  The next spirit voice claimed to be 'Jack Hickinbottom, who used to live at 76 Albert Street, Tipton, Staffordshire'. From the gallery a woman's voice answered, 'Yes, son, I am here!' Mother and  son then talked together, across the gulf of death, about such trivialities as the colour of a mackintosh, the name of a neighbour's dog and the nature of the son's last illness. All of these things  were of no importance whatsoever in themselves, but to his mother - who had travelled from her  home in the Midlands that morning and knew no one in London - they provided convincing evidence that it was to her son she was speaking, although he had been 'dead' for the last eight years.  At the end of the meeting the Reverend Drayton Thomas gave a short address, in which he tried to  impress on the audience that there was more to these demonstrations of ours than the mere fact of  communication between this world and the next. 'Scientific, domestic and emotional proof were all  very well', he said, 'but if that were all that was taken away from the meeting, then the orange had  been peeled and the fruit thrown away. The real meaning of it all,' he went on, 'is life moving onwards from level to level and ever reaching up towards God.'  A few days later the following letter appeared in Psychic News:    "A number of the audience at Kingsway Hall attending the Temple of Light direct-voice demonstration  have wondered if the public address [audio] equipment is quite genuine. Being the engineer responsible  for the equipment, I can assure these people that the apparatus is installed on the Saturday morning, several hours before any official from the organisation arrives. It is tested by myself, and during the whole of  the meeting the microphones are under my sole control.  Five standard 'velocity' type microphones are used. The two in front of the cabinet are wired back to the  amplifier separately. The one used by the chairman and the one at the side of the table are unidirectional, i.e. will only pick up a signal from the front and are wired in parallel. A ribbon desk-type  microphone with a switch is put at the other end of the table and is only 'alive' when the switch is depressed. This is used for asking people in the hall to speak up or to give an explanation during the demonstration. It should be noted that if that switch is used, an immediate automatic indication is given to me.  It is quite impossible to use this microphone secretly.  The microphones in front of the cabinet are switched on a few minutes after the medium entered [the  cabinet] and at the same time the table microphones are switched off and are not put on again until the  control indicates he has finished. This leaves only the two cabinet microphones which can pick up any signal.  Frankly, when I first installed this equipment some time ago I did not expect the microphones to pick  up very much, if anything at all, because in between them and the medium is a curtain of fairly thick  material and if the reader would like to try a simple experiment, let him hang a towel over a radio when  someone is talking. Of course it goes muffled and similarly the voice of Mickey should be the same, but as  everyone who has heard it knows, it is not so.  Now, and this is important, I am not a Spiritualist or a personal friend of any of the officials nor do I  know any of the staff at Psychic News, but I would like two questions answered.  Is the voice inside or outside the cabinet? If inside, why so clear? Why don't people in the immediate  vicinity of the cabinet hear what is going into the microphones? Because in order to get the result that is  obtained it is necessary to speak about two feet away [from the microphones] in a voice about twice as  loud as in normal conversation. It makes you think."    The letter was signed by Mr George A. Muirhead of 99 Drewstead Road, London, SW16, who was  a sound engineer with the Tannoy Public Address Equipment Company. 

Bill hesitated, then asked if a room went with the job. When I said it did, he offered to try it out, so long as I did not mind being experimented upon while he learned to cook. He also said he would like to know more about 'this spirit business'.

Soon it became obvious that Bill was a treasure. Quickly he mastered such routine as we had in our house and began to study cookery books and then to serve up delicious and imaginative meals. He became devoted to Edith and fussed over her like a hen with one chick. He also did all he could to make life easier for me and he soon became a regular sitter in my home circle. In due course someone he had known and loved on the other side came to speak to him and gave him his personal conviction of survival. Many of my friends and sitters remember Bill with affection. Sadly, a few years later, he suffered a premature death from an inoperable cancer.

The committee of the Temple of Light organised another huge demonstration for me at the Kingsway Hall. As on the former occasion I was to sit in my stuffy cabinet on the stage while the hall would be fully lighted. Weeks before the advertised date all available seats were booked and on the night itself hundreds had to be turned away at the doors and all standing room was taken.

As usual Mickey spoke first, but this time, unusually, he told the huge audience that Mickey was only the name by which he was known in the world of spirit and to his medium. He said that during his Earth life he was called John Whitehead and had sold newspapers outside Camden Town Underground Station, until he was run over and killed by a lorry when he was ten years old. 'I'm a lot happier over here than I ever was on your side,' he assured the crowded hall, 'you could say that 'kicking the bucket' was the best thing I ever did!' This caused a general laugh and the tension throughout the hall reduced noticeably.

The next spirit voice claimed to be 'Jack Hickinbottom, who used to live at 76 Albert Street, Tipton, Staffordshire'. From the gallery a woman's voice answered, 'Yes, son, I am here!' Mother and son then talked together, across the gulf of death, about such trivialities as the colour of a mackintosh, the name of a neighbour's dog and the nature of the son's last illness. All of these things were of no importance whatsoever in themselves, but to his mother, who had travelled from her home in the Midlands that morning and knew no one in London, they provided convincing evidence that it was to her son she was speaking, although he had been 'dead' for the last eight years.

At the end of the meeting the Reverend Drayton Thomas gave a short address, in which he tried to impress on the audience that there was more to these demonstrations of ours than the mere fact of communication between this world and the next. 'Scientific, domestic and emotional proof were all very well', he said, 'but if that were all that was taken away from the meeting, then the orange had been peeled and the fruit thrown away. The real meaning of it all,' he went on, 'is life moving onwards from level to level and ever reaching up towards God.'

A few days later the following letter appeared in Psychic News:

"A number of the audience at Kingsway Hall attending the Temple of Light direct-voice demonstration have wondered if the public address [audio] equipment is quite genuine. Being the engineer responsible for the equipment, I can assure these people that the apparatus is installed on the Saturday morning, several hours before any official from the organisation arrives. It is tested by myself, and during the whole of the meeting the microphones are under my sole control.

Five standard 'velocity' type microphones are used. The two in front of the cabinet are wired back to the amplifier separately. The one used by the chairman and the one at the side of the table are uni-directional, i.e. will only pick up a signal from the front and are wired in parallel. A ribbon desk-type microphone with a switch is put at the other end of the table and is only 'alive' when the switch is depressed. This is used for asking people in the hall to speak up or to give an explanation during the demonstration. It should be noted that if that switch is used, an immediate automatic indication is given to me. It is quite impossible to use this microphone secretly.

The microphones in front of the cabinet are switched on a few minutes after the medium entered [the cabinet] and at the same time the table microphones are switched off and are not put on again until the control indicates he has finished. This leaves only the two cabinet microphones which can pick up any signal.

Frankly, when I first installed this equipment some time ago I did not expect the microphones to pick up very much, if anything at all, because in between them and the medium is a curtain of fairly thick material and if the reader would like to try a simple experiment, let him hang a towel over a radio when someone is talking. Of course it goes muffled and similarly the voice of Mickey should be the same, but as everyone who has heard it knows, it is not so.

Now, and this is important, I am not a Spiritualist or a personal friend of any of the officials nor do I know any of the staff at Psychic News, but I would like two questions answered.

Is the voice inside or outside the cabinet? If inside, why so clear? Why don't people in the immediate vicinity of the cabinet hear what is going into the microphones? Because in order to get the result that is obtained it is necessary to speak about two feet away [from the microphones] in a voice about twice as loud as in normal conversation. It makes you think."

The letter was signed by Mr George A. Muirhead of 99 Drewstead Road, London, SW16, who was a sound engineer with the Tannoy Public Address Equipment Company.

picture text, Above: A public demonstration, with members of Leslie's home circle  on the platform facing the cabinet. Kingsway Hall 1946.  Next page: A full house for another demonstration at Kingsway Hall.  

still
Currently Reading: Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium.
 WHILE the Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas served on the committee of the Temple of Light and  was a member of my own home circle, he wore quite a different hat as a member of the Council of  the Society for Psychical Research. This Society was founded in 1882 by a group of scholars and  scientists whose purpose was 'to make a systematic investigation of certain phenomena which appear inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis', and as a body the SPR is generally considered to be the most sceptical in the world. However, once Drayton Thomas had been convinced  by various stringent tests of his own that the phenomena produced by my mediumship were not  only genuine, but of a high order, he had the courage of his conviction and appeared on the platform at many of my demonstrations to testify publicly to the reality of the voices.  It came to Dray's ears that some of his colleagues in the SPR who had attended one of my demonstrations were suggesting the voices were produced by my lips and that I might be obtaining the  messages clairaudiently. Dray was determined to devise a test which, if successful, would dispose  of this suggestion once and for all. Naturally I agreed to whatever test conditions he laid down as I  have always agreed to co-operate when I felt a researcher was honest, sincere and openminded. As  to the outcome of Drayton Thomas' experimental test, I cannot do better than to quote from the account of it which he had published in the Psychic News on February 14th 1948.    "On February 5th, I placed over his tightly closed lips a strip of Elastoplast. It was five and a half inches  long and two and a half inches wide and very strongly adhesive. This I pressed firmly over and into the  crevices of the closed lips. A scarf was then tied tightly over this and the medium's hands tied firmly to the  arms of his chair; another cord was so tied that he would be unable to bend down his head. Thus, supposing he endeavoured during trance to loosen the bandage, it would be quite impossible for him to reach  it.  Anyone can discover by tightly closing the lips and trying to speak how muffled and unintelligible are  the sounds then produced. My experiment was designed to show that under the above conditions clearly  enunciated speech and plenty of it could be produced by the direct voice. The experiment was entirely successful. Voices were soon speaking with their usual clarity and Mickey emphasised his ability several times  by shouting loudly. Some twelve persons were present and we all heard more than enough to convince the  most obdurate sceptic that the sealing of Mr Flint's mouth in no way prevented unseen speakers from  saying anything they wished. At the close of the sitting I examined the cords and the plaster, finding all  intact and undisturbed. The plaster was so strongly adhering I had considerable difficulty in removing it  without causing pain."    Not long after this account appeared in print I gave a demonstration at Kingsway Hall and afterwards Drayton Thomas described this test and its successful outcome to the two thousand people  in the audience.  Dray was very anxious to repeat his test in the presence of the Research Officer of the SPR who at  at that time was Dr D. J. West. I agreed to cooperate and so on May 7th 1948 Dray brought Dr West  and three other guests to my séance room at Sydney Grove.  After Dr West and Mr Denys Parsons, an SPR colleague of his, had examined the cabinet to make  certain no microphone or other apparatus was concealed in it, I took my place inside sitting on an  ordinary upright chair. Dr West and Mr Parsons then strapped my extended arms to the side posts  of my chair, then bound each arm to the chair by winding a long thread of embroidery silk round  and round. They then put adhesive plaster across my lips, two strips overlapping horizontally, held  in place by criss-cross strips vertically and marked the position of the plasters by tracing around  them with indelible pencil. The cabinet was then closed and the light in the séance room was left  on. This is from a shorthand transcript that was taken of what followed:  "The Reverend Drayton Thomas gave the invocation. There was a little music and within a few minutes  a voice said, 'Good evening.' This voice was very loud and clear and Drayton Thomas replied, 'Very glad  to hear your voice!'  ANOTHER VOICE: Hello, can you hear?  A SITTER: Yes, we can hear you quite well.  MICKEY: Hello, Dray!  DRAYTON THOMAS: Hello, Mickey. Delighted to hear you, especially under these difficult conditions.  A SITTER: Is Leslie all right? Is he comfortable, Mickey?  (No reply)  VOICE: Hello, can you hear me?  A SITTER: Yes, we can hear you, friend, quite well.  (Mr Flint's breathing becomes very heavy.)  VOICE: Yes, I think so...wonder if they would like to have, break,  MICKEY: Hello, how are you? Dray, how are you?  DRAYTON THOMAS: Cheered by hearing you, Mickey, try and see how loud you can shout in these  difficult conditions.  VOICE: All in good time!  (There were two voices in discussion, talking quite quietly. Not every word was clear enough to be  heard, but one voice said, 'Yes, we must do that. Yes I know, we will do that. He is all right now.')  A SITTER: We cannot hear so well, can you speak a little louder?  VOICE: There is a certain tenseness there. We have to make allowances. Would you like to have a  look at the medium?  DRAYTON THOMAS: You know we have full light here?  VOICE: Just to satisfy yourselves.  DR WEST: Do you mean we may look at the medium now? We are ready to raise the curtain if you  are ready for us. We are willing to look now if you say so.  VOICE: Go ahead.  (Dr West then raised the curtain. Mr Flint was in his chair in a trance, with straps and adhesive  tape intact. Dr West made a close inspection and then closed the curtain.)  (This was at 8.15pm)  VOICE: Quite all right?  DR WEST: Thank you, friend. 
DRAYTON THOMAS: You seem to have him in very deep trance.  VOICE: Very necessary for such an experiment.  DRAYTON THOMAS: Willis! Music please, break,  VOICE: Don't be impatient, Mr Drayton Thomas!  DRAYTON THOMAS: I suppose I am impatient just now, but for this I have really a lot of patience and  staying power.  VOICE: How long have you been in this now?  DRAYTON THOMAS: Thirty years.  VOICE: How is your wife?  DRAYTON THOMAS: Thank you, she is very well, better than she has been for a very long time.  VOICE: I am very glad. I want you to realise we are working here under great difficulties.  DRAYTON THOMAS: That is obvious, but we are getting so many voices!  MICKEY: What about me? I'm here, you know.  DRAYTON THOMAS: Yes, Mickey, we are very glad to hear you so clearly.  VOICE: (very loud and clear) God bless you all. This is White Wing. I am very pleased to be here. I  want you to realise we are working under difficulties but we are very happy to be here with you.  A SITTER: Thank you very much, we are very glad to hear you.  WHITE WING: You know, Mr Willis, your cabinet is not dark, no! The light comes in through the top, not through the vent, through the curtain. It makes it more difficult. Never mind, we are very anxious to help you and co-operate with you all.  DR WEST: We are very pleased to hear that.  WHITE WING: I want you to know we do all in our power to help you, and we wanted you to see your  medium half-way through your sitting. Do you realise it did not affect the medium? We want you to  know we have many experiments we want to make with you, and want to show you so much, but be  patient, do not lose heart. All of us here on the other side send you our love and greetings. Until we  meet again, farewell!  "The curtain was raised slowly. Mr Flint was still in trance. Dr West again examined the straps and adhesive tape, then removed the tape. Mr Flint said he had not been aware that the curtain was raised during  the sitting. On behalf of the four guests present Dr West expressed appreciation at having been allowed to  witness such an interesting demonstration and particularly to thank Mr Flint for his arduous part in making the experiment possible."  Although I had been in trance throughout the test sitting, which had saved me from experiencing  the actual discomfort of the straps binding me to my chair or the plasters sealing my mouth so  tightly I could hardly breathe, when I came back to myself after the séance I was absolutely exhausted. This exhaustion persisted even after a night's rest and so, knowing my sitters were unlikely  to get results while I was in this depleted state, I cancelled all my appointments for some days to  give myself a chance to recover my normal vitality. To say the least I was dismayed to hear from  Drayton Thomas that one of the psychical researchers present at the test had decided that I could  speak from my stomach!  A few days later I received a letter from Dr West to say he was not satisﬁed with the test sitting because at the end of it he had observed that one of the plasters sealing my lips was no longer in line  with the indelible pencil marking. He accepted blame for not taking sufficient care in applying the  plaster, but said that since it had moved the test was spoiled and without value. He asked me to  submit to a further test at the premises of the Society for Psychical Research under conditions of his  own design and offered to pay a fee for my services if I did so. I am afraid I was disappointed  enough and hurt enough to refuse to consider this invitation.  My temperament is mercurial and an unexpected treat can lift me from the depths of depression  to the peaks of happiness. So when I found a letter from Mae West on my breakfast table asking for  a sitting all my misery and resentment (over what I felt, probably quite wrongly, to be the unfairness  of the psychical researchers) vanished and I was sitting on 'cloud nine'. At that time Mae West was  appearing in her own Broadway success Diamond Lil at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London and  it was arranged that I would give her a sitting in her suite at the Savoy Hotel after her evening performance.  A man introducing himself as Mae West's manager, who I later learned was named Mr Timoney,  met me when I arrived at the Savoy Hotel and conducted me to Mae's suite, which was as grand  and luxurious as one might expect a star to have. I was hardly surprised to see several well tailored  men sitting around among the many ﬂoral tributes and gift-wrapped packages which littered the  drawing room of the suite. Mr Timoney gave a casual wave in their general direction and muttered  something about show business and I never did get any of them sorted out into individuality.  When Miss West herself entered, the standardised luxury of the hotel apartment at once took on  life, personality and glamour. She was in her fifties at this time but I found it hard to believe she  was not a girl. She was dazzlingly attractive and her complexion was truly lovely. I was surprised to  find how tiny she was because I had always imagined she was tall and statuesque. She came over to  sit beside me and we talked about her films, all of which I had seen and enjoyed. Shortly Mr Timoney shepherded the anonymous show business gentlemen out of the apartment and I was alone  with her. We continued talking and soon we were discussing psychic matters. I learned that Mae  West was very far from the blatant sex symbol she represented on stage and screen. She neither  smoked nor drank and her moral standards were more stringent than most. Her conversation was  both witty and highly intelligent and she had spent years reading widely in the fields of psychic research and comparative religion. She eventually found her own truth in Spiritualism and then  through meditation and self-discipline developed psychic power of her own. She was and still is a  most remarkable woman and I count it a privilege to be one of her friends.  During our séance various entities spoke to Mae before her mother came, referring to herself as  Matilda. Mae and her mother talked affectionately together for some time then Mae, no doubt as a  test, asked her mother to mention the special pet name Mae had given to her in her lifetime. The  mother answered 'Diamond Tilly'. Later, Mae told me she had called her mother by this somewhat  extraordinary name because after the success of each of her Broadway shows Mae had presented  her mother with a brooch, a ring or earrings made of diamonds. Mae's mother also told her on request that her name before marriage to Mae's father had been Doelger.  After this sitting at the Savoy Hotel Mae came to sit with me in my house at Hendon on several  occasions. No one could possibly mistake Mae for anything but a great star and her arrival created.

WHILE the Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas served on the committee of the Temple of Light and was a member of my own home circle, he wore quite a different hat as a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research. This Society was founded in 1882 by a group of scholars and scientists whose purpose was 'to make a systematic investigation of certain phenomena which appear inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis', and as a body the SPR is generally considered to be the most sceptical in the world. However, once Drayton Thomas had been convinced by various stringent tests of his own that the phenomena produced by my mediumship were not only genuine, but of a high order, he had the courage of his conviction and appeared on the platform at many of my demonstrations to testify publicly to the reality of the voices.

It came to Dray's ears that some of his colleagues in the SPR who had attended one of my demonstrations were suggesting the voices were produced by my lips and that I might be obtaining the messages clairaudiently. Dray was determined to devise a test which, if successful, would dispose of this suggestion once and for all. Naturally I agreed to whatever test conditions he laid down as I have always agreed to co-operate when I felt a researcher was honest, sincere and openminded. As to the outcome of Drayton Thomas' experimental test, I cannot do better than to quote from the account of it which he had published in the Psychic News on February 14th 1948.

"On February 5th, I placed over his tightly closed lips a strip of Elastoplast. It was five and a half inches long and two and a half inches wide and very strongly adhesive. This I pressed firmly over and into the crevices of the closed lips. A scarf was then tied tightly over this and the medium's hands tied firmly to the arms of his chair; another cord was so tied that he would be unable to bend down his head. Thus, supposing he endeavoured during trance to loosen the bandage, it would be quite impossible for him to reach it.

Anyone can discover by tightly closing the lips and trying to speak how muffled and unintelligible are the sounds then produced. My experiment was designed to show that under the above conditions clearly enunciated speech and plenty of it could be produced by the direct voice. The experiment was entirely successful. Voices were soon speaking with their usual clarity and Mickey emphasised his ability several times by shouting loudly. Some twelve persons were present and we all heard more than enough to convince the most obdurate sceptic that the sealing of Mr Flint's mouth in no way prevented unseen speakers from saying anything they wished. At the close of the sitting I examined the cords and the plaster, finding all intact and undisturbed. The plaster was so strongly adhering I had considerable difficulty in removing it without causing pain."

Not long after this account appeared in print I gave a demonstration at Kingsway Hall and afterwards Drayton Thomas described this test and its successful outcome to the two thousand people in the audience.

Dray was very anxious to repeat his test in the presence of the Research Officer of the SPR who at at that time was Dr D. J. West. I agreed to cooperate and so on May 7th 1948 Dray brought Dr West and three other guests to my séance room at Sydney Grove.

After Dr West and Mr Denys Parsons, an SPR colleague of his, had examined the cabinet to make certain no microphone or other apparatus was concealed in it, I took my place inside sitting on an ordinary upright chair. Dr West and Mr Parsons then strapped my extended arms to the side posts of my chair, then bound each arm to the chair by winding a long thread of embroidery silk round and round. They then put adhesive plaster across my lips, two strips overlapping horizontally, held in place by criss-cross strips vertically and marked the position of the plasters by tracing around them with indelible pencil. The cabinet was then closed and the light in the séance room was left on. This is from a shorthand transcript that was taken of what followed:

"The Reverend Drayton Thomas gave the invocation. There was a little music and within a few minutes a voice said, 'Good evening.' This voice was very loud and clear and Drayton Thomas replied, 'Very glad to hear your voice!'

ANOTHER VOICE: Hello, can you hear?

A SITTER: Yes, we can hear you quite well.

MICKEY: Hello, Dray!

DRAYTON THOMAS: Hello, Mickey. Delighted to hear you, especially under these difficult conditions.

A SITTER: Is Leslie all right? Is he comfortable, Mickey?

(No reply)

VOICE: Hello, can you hear me?

A SITTER: Yes, we can hear you, friend, quite well.

(Mr Flint's breathing becomes very heavy.)

VOICE: Yes, I think so...wonder if they would like to have...

MICKEY: Hello, how are you? Dray, how are you?

DRAYTON THOMAS: Cheered by hearing you, Mickey, try and see how loud you can shout in these difficult conditions.

VOICE: All in good time!

(There were two voices in discussion, talking quite quietly. Not every word was clear enough to be heard, but one voice said, 'Yes, we must do that. Yes I know, we will do that. He is all right now.')

A SITTER: We cannot hear so well, can you speak a little louder?

VOICE: There is a certain tenseness there. We have to make allowances. Would you like to have a look at the medium?

DRAYTON THOMAS: You know we have full light here?

VOICE: Just to satisfy yourselves.

DR WEST: Do you mean we may look at the medium now? We are ready to raise the curtain if you are ready for us. We are willing to look now if you say so.

VOICE: Go ahead.

(Dr West then raised the curtain. Mr Flint was in his chair in a trance, with straps and adhesive tape intact. Dr West made a close inspection and then closed the curtain.)

(This was at 8.15pm)

VOICE: Quite all right?

DR WEST: Thank you, friend.

DRAYTON THOMAS: You seem to have him in very deep trance.

VOICE: Very necessary for such an experiment.

DRAYTON THOMAS: Willis! Music please...

VOICE: Don't be impatient, Mr Drayton Thomas!

DRAYTON THOMAS: I suppose I am impatient just now, but for this I have really a lot of patience and staying power.

VOICE: How long have you been in this now?

DRAYTON THOMAS: Thirty years.

VOICE: How is your wife?

DRAYTON THOMAS: Thank you, she is very well, better than she has been for a very long time.

VOICE: I am very glad. I want you to realise we are working here under great difficulties.

DRAYTON THOMAS: That is obvious, but we are getting so many voices!

MICKEY: What about me? I'm here, you know.

DRAYTON THOMAS: Yes, Mickey, we are very glad to hear you so clearly.

VOICE: (very loud and clear) God bless you all. This is White Wing. I am very pleased to be here. I want you to realise we are working under difficulties but we are very happy to be here with you.

A SITTER: Thank you very much, we are very glad to hear you.

WHITE WING: You know, Mr Willis, your cabinet is not dark, no! The light comes in through the top, not through the vent, through the curtain. It makes it more difficult. Never mind, we are very anxious to help you and cooperate with you all.

DR WEST: We are very pleased to hear that.

WHITE WING: I want you to know we do all in our power to help you, and we wanted you to see your medium half-way through your sitting. Do you realise it did not affect the medium? We want you to know we have many experiments we want to make with you, and want to show you so much, but be patient, do not lose heart. All of us here on the other side send you our love and greetings. Until we meet again, farewell!

"The curtain was raised slowly. Mr Flint was still in trance. Dr West again examined the straps and adhesive tape, then removed the tape. Mr Flint said he had not been aware that the curtain was raised during the sitting. On behalf of the four guests present Dr West expressed appreciation at having been allowed to witness such an interesting demonstration and particularly to thank Mr Flint for his arduous part in making the experiment possible."

Although I had been in trance throughout the test sitting, which had saved me from experiencing the actual discomfort of the straps binding me to my chair or the plasters sealing my mouth so tightly I could hardly breathe, when I came back to myself after the séance I was absolutely exhausted. This exhaustion persisted even after a night's rest and so, knowing my sitters were unlikely to get results while I was in this depleted state, I cancelled all my appointments for some days to give myself a chance to recover my normal vitality. To say the least I was dismayed to hear from Drayton Thomas that one of the psychical researchers present at the test had decided that I could speak from my stomach!

A few days later I received a letter from Dr West to say he was not satisﬁed with the test sitting because at the end of it he had observed that one of the plasters sealing my lips was no longer in line with the indelible pencil marking. He accepted blame for not taking sufficient care in applying the plaster, but said that since it had moved the test was spoiled and without value. He asked me to submit to a further test at the premises of the Society for Psychical Research under conditions of his own design and offered to pay a fee for my services if I did so. I am afraid I was disappointed enough and hurt enough to refuse to consider this invitation.

My temperament is mercurial and an unexpected treat can lift me from the depths of depression to the peaks of happiness. So when I found a letter from Mae West on my breakfast table asking for a sitting all my misery and resentment (over what I felt, probably quite wrongly, to be the unfairness of the psychical researchers) vanished and I was sitting on 'cloud nine'. At that time Mae West was appearing in her own Broadway success Diamond Lil at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London and it was arranged that I would give her a sitting in her suite at the Savoy Hotel after her evening performance.

A man introducing himself as Mae West's manager, who I later learned was named Mr Timoney, met me when I arrived at the Savoy Hotel and conducted me to Mae's suite - which was as grand and luxurious as one might expect a star to have. I was hardly surprised to see several well tailored men sitting around among the many ﬂoral tributes and gift-wrapped packages which littered the drawing-room of the suite. Mr Timoney gave a casual wave in their general direction and muttered something about show business and I never did get any of them sorted out into individuality.

When Miss West herself entered, the standardised luxury of the hotel apartment at once took on life, personality and glamour. She was in her fifties at this time but I found it hard to believe she was not a girl. She was dazzlingly attractive and her complexion was truly lovely. I was surprised to find how tiny she was because I had always imagined she was tall and statuesque. She came over to sit beside me and we talked about her films, all of which I had seen and enjoyed. Shortly Mr Timoney shepherded the anonymous show business gentlemen out of the apartment and I was alone with her. We continued talking and soon we were discussing psychic matters. I learned that Mae West was very far from the blatant sex symbol she represented on stage and screen. She neither smoked nor drank and her moral standards were more stringent than most. Her conversation was both witty and highly intelligent and she had spent years reading widely in the fields of psychic research and comparative religion. She eventually found her own truth in Spiritualism and then through meditation and self-discipline developed psychic power of her own. She was and still is a most remarkable woman and I count it a privilege to be one of her friends.

During our séance various entities spoke to Mae before her mother came, referring to herself as Matilda. Mae and her mother talked affectionately together for some time then Mae, no doubt as a test, asked her mother to mention the special pet name Mae had given to her in her lifetime. The mother answered 'Diamond Tilly'. Later, Mae told me she had called her mother by this somewhat extraordinary name because after the success of each of her Broadway shows Mae had presented her mother with a brooch, a ring or earrings made of diamonds. Mae's mother also told her on request that her name before marriage to Mae's father had been Doelger.

After this sitting at the Savoy Hotel Mae came to sit with me in my house at Hendon on several occasions. No one could possibly mistake Mae for anything but a great star and her arrival created

a local sensation each time she paid me a visit.  A spirit who quoted word-for-word a verse from her own memorial card was a highpoint of another of my demonstrations in the Kingsway Hall. The spirit voice of a woman said her name was  Beatrice May Strude and she wanted to speak to Laura. A woman in the crowded hall called out saying she was Laura. 'It's me...it's Beatie!' said the spirit voice, 'Oh, I'm so glad I can speak to you.'  'Speak up and tell me something, Beat,' called Laura. 'I'm doing my best,' answered the spirit, 'I  died on the 6th February 1945 and I was fifty-seven, or was I fifty-eight?' 'Where did you come  from?' asked Laura and Beatrice answered at once, 'New Zealand.' Then Laura was herself questioned by the spirit voice. 'Are you going back to New Zealand? Did you go down to Bedford?  Remember that time we were together last,' said Beatrice, 'I remember the verse you wrote on my  memorial card.' We learned later on that Beatrice and Laura were cousins as well as dear friends  and Bedford was where Beatrice's body was buried.  'Can you tell me the words on your card, Beat?' asked Laura. 'I'll try,' responded the spirit voice,  then very slowly she recited nine lines of a sentimental verse, word-for-word. 'That's right, Beat,'  said Laura. 'I know you are going back to New Zealand in two weeks,' continued the irrepressible  Beatrice, adding, 'Do you remember Hetty Court?' Laura said she did, then Beatrice told her their  friend Hetty was now in the spirit world and 'she had to change a few of her ideas. You know she  was a Christian Scientist?' Beatrice suddenly announced, 'Spurgeon is here!' Whereupon Laura  stood up and informed the audience that she and her cousin Beatrice were direct descendants of  the famous preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  When my wife Edith was again able to lead a normal though sadly restricted life and the household was running smoothly under Bill's management, my committee sent me further and further  aﬁeld to demonstrate in as many provincial towns and cities as possible. I would leave London on  the day of the demonstration accompanied by either Father Sharp or Drayton Thomas or whoever  was to act as chairman at my meeting and when we reached our destination we would remain in  each other's company until the demonstration. The chairman could then honestly assure the audience that I'd had no opportunity to glean information by looking around local cemeteries, studying  directories, listening to local gossip or by any other means. After the meeting I would travel back to  London. These out-of-town meetings were especially tiring because of the double journey and the  unfamiliar conditions, but I never begrudged the effort they cost me, because many thousands who  might otherwise never have had the opportunity experienced the most comforting of all contacts  with their dead through the direct voice.  I remember an occasion at the Salem Central Hall in Leeds when one of the most evidential communications of the meeting made the audience of twelve hundred people rock with laughter. Mickey spoke to a woman sitting in the front of the hall and asked her if she let rooms to 'theatricals'.  When the lady admitted she did, Mickey told her there was a 'bloke' who wanted to speak to her  who had played the part of the cat in Dick Whittington seven or eight years before, adding, 'He was  so small he seemed like a dwarf.' The woman started to say she thought she knew who it was when  she was interrupted by the spirit himself speaking excitedly. 'This is a rum do, isn't it?' he said, 'I  never thought I'd ever speak to you like this! Do you remember when I was in Dick Whittington at  the Theatre Royal?' 'Of course I do,' replied the lady, 'do you still like fish and chips?' This prompted a reminder from Mickey that such things were not needed in the spirit world. Dick Whittington's  cat chipped in again to say, 'I was the best cat in the business, there wasn't anyone to touch me.'  His friend in the audience replied, 'I always thought you were.' Dick's cat then reminded the lady  that she had a photograph which showed him in his cat's costume, holding the head in his hands.  Then he asked if she still had the bed with the brass knobs and the lady, who was later identified as  Miss Hennessey of Brunswick Terrace, Leeds, said she had disposed of it. Mickey then spoke again  telling her that the Cat was now talking about Bella and saying 'she was letting it rip now!' When  Miss Hennessey informed the audience that Bella was the Cat's wife, the hall rocked with laughter.  A psychical researcher, whose name I have long since forgotten, once published a theory that the  voices my sitters hear are not real voices. He suggested that through a combination of hypnotic  power on my part and the subconscious longing of my sitters, auditory hallucinations are induced  which say whatever the sitters are longing to hear. This glib little theory was smartly knocked on the  head when in September 1948 during a demonstration at Denison House in London, an American  wire recorder was used in order to produce gramophone records of the spirit voices. This experiment was highly successful, every message was recorded as clearly as when it was first spoken by  the discarnate communicator. I hoped for a long time that the creator of the 'auditory hallucination'  theory would come forward to explain how it was possible to record delusionary voices, but as far  as I know he never did.  In his capacity as a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research Drayton Thomas  had made contact with another psychical researcher; an electronics expert who was able to provide  various devices which could be used to prove or to disprove the reality of my voices. So a series of  tests were held, some at the home of the electronics expert and others on the SPR premises. They  were conducted under the direction of Reverend Drayton Thomas and held in the presence of such  notable researchers as Brigadier Firebrace CBE, Father Arthur Sharp, Mr F. Sibley and others.  The conditions under which I sat for these tests were: (a) my lips were sealed with plaster, (b) a  throat microphone was attached to my throat and wired to amplifiers so that the slightest sound  made through my own larynx would be magnified enormously, (c) the researchers were able to  watch my every movement in the dark by means of an infra-red telescope and finally, (d) my hands  were held by a sitter on either side of me.  Spirit voices spoke at many of the tests under these conditions and on more than one occasion a  researcher viewing through the infra-red telescope was able to see the ectoplasmic voice-box or larynx through which the discarnate people speak. It formed on my left side some two feet distant  from me, which is the same point in space that the spirit voices are normally located during my  séances.  My thanks are due to Brigadier Firebrace for his courtesy in allowing me to quote an extract from  one of his letters to me, which I think speaks for itself:  "I well remember the test sittings I had with you and Drayton Thomas. At these sittings during the  séance we had an infra-red telescope focused on you and you had a throat microphone around your  throat. There was an electronic expert present who watched the instruments which were attached to the  throat microphone. I can well remember that under these conditions we got the direct voice without any 
indication on the instruments that it was registered by the throat microphone. But the voices were fainter  than on previous sittings I'd had with you. An interesting point was on the final occasion when, with a  voice speaking faintly, the infra-red telescope suddenly fused. The voice immediately doubled in volume.  This indicated to me that infra-red rays weaken mediumship in some way. I must add you could not possibly have known that the infra-red telescope was out of action. Altogether an impressive exhibition of  mediumistic power."    I think I can safely say I am the most tested medium this country has ever produced and, I will  add, the medium most willing to be tested whenever I have felt truth would be served by submitting  to conditions imposed on me by those I believed to be genuine researchers. I have been boxed up,  tied up, sealed up, gagged, bound and held and still the voices have come to speak their message  of life eternal. I have given impromptu sittings in hotel rooms and in the homes of strangers, I have  demonstrated in foreign countries, in halls, theatres and churches, often under conditions where it  has been impossible to obtain complete darkness or when the atmosphere has been extremely  sceptical or even downright hostile, and still the voices have come.  When first I began to allow myself to be tested I was naïve enough to believe that if the tests were  successful the scientists and researchers who had carried them out would proclaim to the world  the truth of life after death. All too soon I learned the hard way that many of those who call themselves researchers have immutable values of their own, which preclude belief in a meaning or purpose in man's existence or in the possibility of a life after death. Their concern was rather to disprove the reality of my voices and they would postulate any alternative, however far-fetched or absurd, sooner than admit the implication of their own successful experiment. I was therefore doubly  blessed when I was tested by men of the calibre of Reverend Drayton Thomas, Father Sharp and  Brigadier Firebrace who, when their tests were successful, came forward to state their conviction  publicly.  A favourite explanation of my voice phenomena is that I am some kind of super-ventriloquist and  mimic. I fear those who seriously entertain this absurd theory display complete ignorance of the art  of ventriloquism. Any ventriloquist will tell you it is impossible for him to work in complete darkness. He needs a dummy or a puppet with movable jaws to help to create his illusion and to distract the attention of the audience from the slight movements of his own facial muscles, which are  inevitable because he is using his own voice. As for my supposed talent for mimicry, literally thousands of different voices of discarnate persons have been tape-recorded for posterity, speaking in  different dialects, in foreign languages unknown to me and even in languages no longer spoken on  this Earth, so I think mimicry as a theory does not hold even one drop of water.  When all other theories have been found to be untenable a cast-iron sceptic will not hesitate to  suggest that downright fraud explains the phenomena of the voices. It has been hinted that I might  have a two-way voice channel to another room where accomplices mimic the voices of the departed  or that I might conceal tape-recorders which play previously prepared messages from the dead.  There is no end to the ingenious tricks which have been dreamt up by those determined not to believe and who, more often than not, have never even had a sitting with me. If I were to pay any attention to the nonsense talked by such silly and obdurate persons I might with justice ask them how  these hidden accomplices or concealed tape-recorders can hold long two-way conversations with  sitters, in which a mass of personal detail and reminiscence on the part of the discarnate entity  builds up irrefutable evidence of his or her continued existence. I could also ask these stubborn  cynics how these supposed accomplices of mine, however skilled in their mimicry, contrive to  reproduce the recognisable voice of a wife, a husband or other dead relative of a sitter, who may  have only just arrived from Australia, India or even Timbuktu? I do not however waste my time or  my precious energies exchanging words with these sceptics, who are as illinformed as they are  prejudiced. I and the many thousands who have sat with me know the truth.  When war broke out and I turned down the kind offer of refuge in America for the duration of hostilities I imagine my feelings as I did so were akin to those of Caesar refusing the crown of Rome.  Because ever since I was a film-struck and star-struck small boy there was no country I longed more  ardently to visit. And so I was overjoyed when, in the summer of 1949, I was given another chance  to visit America.  After the initial shock of discovering that £5 sterling was the total amount I would be permitted to  take with me, and once the flurry of getting visas, guarantors and medical certificates was over, I  settled Edith in with her daughter for the duration of my trip and I sailed for New York.  

picture text page 209, Leslie around the time of his first visit to the USA.  

Twelve    THE Queen Mary was still a beautiful ocean liner, but years of wartime trooping had left her shabby  and run down, a tired and ageing lady badly in need of a face-lift. We were three in a small cabin  and I did not need to be psychic to sense the hatred between the two other men. One was German,  the other was a Polish Jew, and neither spoke English nor the language of the other. Noncommunication was total, except for the implacable loathing which filled our cabin like a live and  malevolent thing. During the five days of the voyage I wondered what personal tragedy each man  might have left behind him, in the post-war chaos of his country, which could have bred such  malignance.  One morning after we had been at sea for a couple of days a steward knocked on the cabin door.  Before I had time to escape the oppressive miasma surrounding my room-mates and into the fresh  air on deck, he entered the cabin. 'The Captain presents his compliments to you, Mr Flint,' began  the steward politely, 'he wonders if you would be good enough to take the Holy Communion Sevice on Sunday at eleven?' The notion that such an august person as the Captain should know I  even existed was dumbfounding enough, let alone his curious request. I suppose I must have stood  stupidly open-mouthed, trying to work it out. 'You are down on the passenger list as a Minister of  Religion,' said the steward with a patient sigh, 'will you take the service?' 'Of course not!' I blurted  out. 'I'm not that kind of minister at all!' The steward heaved a bigger and even more patient sigh  and left, clearly wondering what kind of a nut I was. I wondered why I had listened to Father Sharp  when he had instructed me on how to complete my passport application.  On the morning of our fifth day at sea we sailed into American waters and there ahead of us was  the Statue of Liberty and the thrilling skyline of New York City.  In the customs and immigration building I was hit by a sudden panic. Suppose the friends who  had invited me to America failed to meet me? I had no money except for the paltry remains of my £5  and no prospect of earning any. I would be stranded in a strange country without even the price of a  bed that night. The cavalier treatment given out by the customs official did nothing to reassure me.  By way of searching for contraband he simply turned my neatly packed case upside-down so that  the entire contents just fell on the ground. He rummaged through them and I was left to repack.  When he was finished with me, in my imagination I was already haggard, unkempt and panhandling  for dimes on Skid Row. As soon as I emerged from customs the warmth of my friends' welcome  banished my hungry panhandler persona to the recesses of my consciousness.  When I saw the apartment my friends had rented for me my heart sank. This temporary home of  mine consisted of an entire floor of one of the old brownstone houses in West 88th Street, once a  smart residential district of New York but at that time had fallen on less prosperous days. The furnishings of the apartment seemed to me the epitome of extravagant comfort and the bathroom was  the biggest and most luxurious I had ever seen in my life. I immediately began to fret about how I  was going to pay for it all, but before my worries gave me an ulcer I learned that I was the guest of  the Reverend Mrs Bertha Marx; noted medium and the head of the WT Stead Memorial Center. This  was a Spiritualist Society which occupied the ground floor of the brownstone house and was  named in memory of WT Stead; editor, reformer and Spiritualist who was lost at sea in the disaster  of RMS Titanic. Dear Bertha Marx! She not only provided me with a roof over my head, she organised my workload and introduced me to many of the best-known Spiritualists in America. In every  way in her power she made my stay in New York a happy and memorable one.  I also made a new and delightful friend in Caroline Chapman. Known as 'Chappie', she was one of  the most loved mediums in America, as well as one of the few whose psychic gifts were endorsed  by the American Society for Psychical Research, which is just as tough and just as sceptical as its  British counterpart.  I loved New York and I spent many hours just walking its streets, discovering it, getting the feel of  it. Sometimes I got lost in its great confusion and it took me a while to master the subway sufficiently to get on a train going in the right direction, but even getting lost was fun in that city of inﬁnite variety.  The most impressive spirit communications are those in which information is given by a discarnate person which is unknown to anyone present, and is sometimes even rejected as untrue, but  after subsequent inquiry proves it to be correct. Such a communication rules out the overworked  theory of telepathy and can be regarded not merely as evidence of survival, but as cast-iron proof.  Such a communication was given at a séance I held for seventy-five persons at the Stead Memorial Center and the American recipient was a Mr Robert F. Bolton, then living at 40 East 49th Street  in New York City.  After various spirits had spoken to their friends, Mickey announced the presence of one who was  known on Earth as Carl Schneider. No one in the room responded, apparently no one knew him.  Mickey persisted, declaring someone in the room knew Carl Schneider and that the person must  speak up to help him communicate. 'I know a man of that name,' said Mr Bolton, finally, 'but to the  best of my knowledge he is alive and well.' Undaunted, Mickey asserted that Carl Schneider was on  the other side and he was about to speak. Carl's voice was then heard and he and Mr Bolton conversed. 'When did you pass away?' inquired Mr Bolton. 'About twelve months ago, maybe a little  over a year,' the spirit replied. 'It was Carl's voice!' declared Mr Bolton after the séance, 'I recognised its unmistakable husky quality.'  Mr Bolton found the spirit return of his friend Carl Schneider so totally unexpected he was in a  state of agitation, until he could conﬁrm whether his friend was alive or dead. On the morning after  the séance the first thing he did was to call the telephone number which Carl had once given him.  When the phone was answered he asked to speak to Carl Schneider and the answer came, 'I am  sorry, but Carl passed away.' Because he still could not believe it, Mr Bolton then asked, 'Are you  sure?' The voice at the other end of the line replied, 'I ought to be. I am the one who found him. He  committed suicide about a year ago.'  When Robert Bolton attended another group séance of mine Mickey singled him out to tell him  his friend Carl was glad he had 'checked up' because now he would know the truth of survival.  My account of Mr Bolton's experience is taken from a letter which Mr Bolton wrote, completely  unsolicited, to Psychic News in London describing what happened at that group séance. In his letter, Mr Bolton, in assessing the value of his experience, comments:  "I am not so naïve as to believe this account will cause belief in the spirit world to come as a revelation 
to a scoffing sceptic. This report however may inspire some honest sceptic to expose himself to the possibility of such an experience. It is the only scientific approach to truth..."  Too soon I had to leave New York for Chicago where a big public demonstration had been organised for me at the Kimball Hall. When I sallied forth from my hotel on my first evening there to take  a look at the city, almost the first thing I saw was my old friend Bea Lillie's name in lights over the  entrance to a theatre. She was starring with Ray Bolger in Hey! Hey! USA and I went to see the  show. I enjoyed it enormously and Bea and Ray together made me laugh so much it hurt. I went  around after the performance and found Bea the same charming and friendly person as ever, in  spite of her fabulous success in the States and all the adulation it had brought her.  When I turned up at the Kimball Hall the following evening to give my demonstration I was met  with a bombshell. My sponsors had arranged to borrow a cabinet for me from another medium, but  the medium had left town and the cabinet was still locked in his apartment and no one had the  keys. Furthermore, it was impossible to darken the hall and every ticket had been sold, every seat  was filled and they were standing in the aisles. 'Give them a lecture and follow it with clairvoyance,'  said one of my sponsors with what I thought was maddening calmness. I told him it was years  since I had given clairvoyance in public, but without a word this incurable optimist just pointed to  the packed ranks of the audience who were waiting for 'the famous London medium' to appear.  Even if I were to give a lecture followed by clairvoyance, what would be the reaction of an audience  who had paid for a demonstration of direct voice? My confident friend thought they would understand once we had explained it to them, and to my amazement, they did. When I walked onto the  platform, I was greeted by warmhearted applause. Almost at once I had thoughts and impressions  come flooding into my mind and I started to speak. I finished my lecture to applause, and with my  self-confidence restored and the butterflies in my stomach at rest, I began my clairvoyance. If I may  use the term in this context, it was a brilliantly executed performance. For one solid hour the evidence simply poured out of me. Not one name went unrecognised, not one message went unclaimed. Apart from the pleasure of giving happiness to the recipients it was sheer joy for me to discover this facet of my mediumship was still able to function so well. When I left my hotel the next  morning to go sightseeing, I was surprised to be stopped in the streets by complete strangers who  wanted to thank me for evidence they had been given. Some pleaded with me to sit for them privately, but I had to disappoint them all because I was soon to be on my way to Los Angeles.  I had been invited to LA by Dr Carl Menugh to be a guest at his Long Beach apartment, where I  had agreed to hold séances for a few of his friends. Our only contact had been by correspondence,  so when I arrived at Los Angeles station I looked around for a cosy 'family doctor' type of man who  might be my host. I saw no one who fitted this description so I stood around trying to look like 'the  famous medium from London' by gazing alooﬂy into the middle distance, while wishing fervently  that I had worn a quieter tie. Shortly I was greeted by a man no older than myself who introduced  himself as Carl Menugh. His doctorate, I later learned, was in philosophy.  Perhaps the most dramatic séance I held in Los Angeles was one at which a father returned to tell  his son the truth about his death and to exonerate the driver of the vehicle which killed him.  The son, whom I will call Bill, was brought with his wife to a group séance by their friend Miss  Artie Blackburn of Los Angeles. All Miss Blackburn had told me about these friends was that the  husband Bill was a brilliant inventor and scientist, who would analyse any evidence he might receive and would refuse to accept anything which could not be proved.  At the sitting Mickey spoke to Bill and asked if he was associated with the Texaco Corporation. Bill  answered that he was, but he supposed Miss Blackburn had given me this information previously.  Both Mickey and Miss Blackburn stoutly denied this, and in fact, I never allow friends of sitters to  give me any information about them. Not only would it render any evidence which may come valueless, but I have found that when someone inadvertently gives me information before a sitting it  makes me so selfconscious that the sitting is just as likely to be a blank. 'Was your father killed  very suddenly in an accident?' was Mickey's next question to Bill, who said this was correct.  'What is La Brea?' asked Mickey next.  'It's the name of the bus which killed my father,' was Bill's reply. (I learned that it is the practice of  some passenger vehicle operators in the States to name their vehicles.)  'Your Dad says it wasn't the driver's fault as you all thought. He says you sued the company,  which was too bad, because it was all his own fault. He thought he was agile enough to get across  ahead of the bus. He says the driver hadn't a chance, but it wasn't his fault at all.'  Prompted by the voice of Bill's father, Mickey then went on to describe the exact circumstances of  the accident, then he suddenly changed the subject, 'Your Dad is saying that you didn't do what he  wanted with his Masonic watch and chain.'  Bill, rather hurt, replied that he had given it to a friend of his father's, thinking that was what his  father wished. 'You gave him the watch,' said Mickey, 'but what about the chain?' Then Bill's wife  chipped in, 'Oh, dear,' she said, 'I kept the chain, I wanted to wear it myself.'  The next message Mickey relayed from Bill's father was to ask him not to visit the cemetery so  often. 'Your Dad says you take flowers from his own garden to put on his grave, but he would rather  see them growing than placed on a grave when he isn't there.' It was true that Bill took flowers to  the grave from his father's own garden, because he and his wife were now living in his father's former home.  'What about your Dad's stick?' Mickey asked.  'My father never walked with a stick in his life,' answered Bill.  Undaunted, Mickey replied, 'Well he's talking about the stick he kept in the chest. He went around  with it at night rapping on doors and locks to see everything was fastened up tight.'  'Oh, that stick!' said Bill, 'it's still in the chest.'  Afterwards, when Bill was asked what he thought of the sitting, he said, 'This is the most wonderful night of my life. This is the night my spiritual unfoldment begins.'  On a subsequent evening Bill had another sitting with me and on that occasion his father was able  to speak directly to him and his wife, in a voice which Bill recognised as his father's own.  I had got used to the way the warm-hearted Americans telephoned complete strangers like myself  to offer hospitality, so I was not unduly surprised when a Mr Robert LeFevre suggested driving me  to Hollywood to spend the day with his wife and himself. Hollywood! The very name of it uttered  casually on the telephone by a stranger was enough to thrill me with memories of past enchantments at the cinema. In spite of the years which had passed, at heart I was still the star-struck boy  

in the four-penny seats at the cinema.  As we drove along Sunset Boulevard and began the climb into Beverly Hills, Mr LeFevre told me  he and his wife had recently sold their chain of hotels in San Francisco and bought a Hollywood  home for their retirement. 'It once belonged to the film star Rudolph Valentino,' said my new friend.  'Did you ever hear of him?'  An echo from years before came to mind, as I recalled the voice of Valentino, 'One day when he is  a famous medium he will hold a séance in the room which was my bedroom in my house in Hollywood,  and I will come to speak to him there.' Then I saw a sign by the road which said 'Falcon Lair' and the  car turned off towards the house.  It was a charming house and Mr and Mrs LeFevre were the kindest of hosts, so when they asked  me to hold séances for them and a few of their friends I was happy to agree. When they asked me to  choose a room in which to hold the séances I said I thought the room opening off the patio would  be most suitable and it did not surprise me at all when Mr LeFevre remarked, 'That room used to  be Valentino's bedroom.'  Valentino came through at the first séance at Falcon Lair and almost the first thing he said after  greeting us was how happy it made him to be able to fulfil the promise he had made to me so many  years before. He thanked Mr and Mrs LeFevre for inviting me and told them he was glad they were  happy in his old home, but he was afraid they would be selling it again before long. This brought a  gasp from Mr LeFevre since he had acquired the house only a few months previously and intended  to make it the headquarters of a World Peace movement. Valentino must have sensed Mr LeFevre's  uneasiness because he quickly assured him there was no unpleasantness impending. He said the  LeFevres would continue their work for World Peace in the house for a short time, then they would  simply prefer to live elsewhere and they would sell Falcon Lair.  

picture text page 231,

An unusual photograph taken during Leslie's séance  in Valentino's former home of Falcon Lair.  

After the séance we sat in the big drawing-room of the house with the curtains open and we could  see the whole of Hollywood spread out before us. It was a glitter of lights, romantic and beautiful in  the distance. I found it hard to believe I was really sitting in Rudolph Valentino's drawing-room  looking out over the 'ﬁlm city' just as he must have done so many times in his life. As I sat marvelling, suddenly I knew with certainty that Valentino had never been happy in this house, nor would  anyone else ever be happy in it. Months later when I was back in London someone sent me an article from a Los Angeles newspaper which said the LeFevres had sold Falcon Lair to Doris Duke the  tobacco heiress and they had moved elsewhere.  I made another vicarious contact with Valentino when I met Mae Murray. In the days of silent  films Mae was MGM's most glamorous star, the uncrowned queen of Hollywood. Her blonde  curls, 'bee-stung' mouth and lithe dancer's figure fascinated the 'Jazz Age' generation. It brought  her riches, fame and adulation, but the coming of sound pictures and a disastrous marriage to  Prince David Mdivani toppled her from her throne. When I met her she was living in circumstances  sadly reduced from the days when her Rolls-Royce had solid gold and Cloisonné fittings and sable  rugs. Mae was still vividly attractive and she was a joy to be with, because of her delicious sense of  humour and a complete lack of selfpity. Although I think few women have been so dishonestly exploited as Mae was in the days when her name on any film brought in revenue at the box office.  It was Mae and her first husband, the director Bob Leonard, who had given Valentino his first  chance as a leading man in films, at a time when he was an unknown dancer on the fringes of the  film industry. From then on a true and deep friendship had grown up between Mae and Valentino,  which endured until his untimely death. Talking to Mae and listening to her stories about Valentino,  I came more and more to know and admire the good and gentle man behind the screen image of  the 'Great Lover'.  I also saw my friend Mae West, who invited me to her Hollywood penthouse, which was in a huge  block of luxury apartments known as Ravenswood Apartments. Mae not only lived there, she owned  the whole block, for unlike many big stars she is an excellent businesswoman and over the years  she has invested her enormous earnings wisely and well. I found the decor of her home startling to  say the least. It was almost entirely white. Walls, carpets, curtains, furniture, everything was white,  with occasional splashes of dramatic colour here and there; a spray of scarlet flowers in a white  bowl or a jade cushion on a white settee. It all seemed to be designed to highlight and dramatise a  life-size statue of Mae in the nude, which dominated the room. As a setting for Mae's blonde good  looks and vivid personality it was superb, but I could not help feeling homesick for Edith and the  shabbiness of our home on Sydney Grove.  The day before I left Hollywood was the anniversary of Valentino's death so I made a sentimental  journey to Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery to put some flowers on his grave. When I found his  white marble mausoleum, it was already heaped with blooms. A cemetery attendant told me that  even though it was more than twenty years since his death, tributes from all over the world had  been arriving at the cemetery all day. The attendant pointed out a vase in the crypt which held thirteen roses; twelve red, one white, and then told me I had just missed seeing the 'Lady in Black'.  This was the name given to the mystery woman, in deep mourning, who visited the tomb with the  thirteen roses on each anniversary of the star's death.  Some years after my near-encounter with the Lady in Black she herself revealed the story behind  her annual pilgrimage to Memorial Park. Because it throws light on a side of Valentino's nature with  which the public was not familiar, I will briefly retell the story here. The Lady in Black was a violinist  and pianist and her name was Ditra Flamé. She had met Valentino in 1918 when he was poor and  unknown and trying to make a career as a dancer. Ditra was then fourteen years old. Soon after their  meeting she became gravely ill and was sent to hospital. The child was frightened that she would  die and was obsessed by the idea that no one would care or remember her when she was dead.  Valentino spent hours at her bedside, comforting her and trying to give her the will to live. Each  time he came to see her he brought red roses, which at that point in his career he must have struggled to afford. One day he found her crying and insisting that death was near and she told him she  would end up lonely and forgotten in her grave. Valentino promised that if she were to die he would  bring red roses to her grave every day. 'But remember,' he added, 'if I die first I don't want to be  lonely or forgotten either.' Well Valentino did die first, but Ditra never forgot.  Although letters from home had been unfailingly cheerful I began to feel uneasy about Edith's  health, and as soon as I returned to New York I booked my passage back home on the Queen Mary.  When I walked into our sitting-room in Sydney Grove the way Edith's face lit up when she saw me  was my reward for cutting short my stay in America. She was sitting in a chair by the open window,  and since it was a warm summer's day I wondered why she had a blanket draped over her knees.  When I knelt by her side to hold her hands and ask her all the questions that crowded into my mind  I discovered the reason for the blanket. Edith was hoping to conceal from me, for as long as possible, that she was in a wheelchair. When Edith saw my face she knew, as she always did know,  what was on my mind and she smiled, almost the old radiant smile. 'I love my chair, darling,' she  said, 'I can get about so marvellously, into the garden, everywhere.'  Later that night I called to see Edith's doctor and asked him to tell me the truth about my wife's  health. He told me Edith had suffered another minor stroke during my absence and it was unlikely  she would ever walk again. When I asked the inevitable question he gave his opinion that my wife  would not live longer than two years at most. I became determined that they would be two of the  happiest years of her life.  While I had been away the Temple of Light committee had organised a heavy schedule for me.  There were big meetings arranged in London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and many other towns  and cities, and these were to be held in halls or theatres holding up to two thousand people. I have  never owned a car but whenever it was possible to get a train home after these meetings I would  dash to the station to catch it, no matter how late it was. When I arrived I would make a pot of tea  and take it on a tray up to our bedroom where Edith and I would drink it together while I told her  everything. I would tell her about the evidence which had come through at the meeting and all the  amusing little happenings. I would look forward all day, in whatever strange town or city I happened  to be, to our late night talks.  Bill's affection for Edith was expressed by his constant care for her comfort and in his efforts to  create imaginative and tasty meals to tempt her appetite. I would sometimes make arrangements  with the manager of the local cinema and Bill and I would take Edith in her wheelchair to see a ﬁlm. 
She loved these outings, they made her feel part of ordinary life and it cheered her enormously.  At one of my large meetings at the Kingsway Hall a spirit with an urgent desire to communicate  with his parents found a way to do so, even though his parents were not present among the audience of two thousand. A number of messages had been relayed when Mickey spoke of the presence  of a young man, who refused to give his name, but who described how he had taken his own life.  His parents had been at the Empire Theatre in Hackney at the time, so he was alone at home. 'It  was done in a mad moment. I regret it now,' said the young man. 'They came back from the Empire  and found me hanging from the banisters.' Immediately a man named Mr Shead, who was sitting in  the auditorium, remembered meeting a man a few weeks before who had told him of his son's inexplicable suicide. The circumstances matched those described by the spirit communicator and Mr  Shead called out, 'I know about that boy! I met his father recently and he told me about his son's  death.' Mickey returned to speak to Mr Shead. 'The boy is desperately anxious for his parents to  know he is alive and that he is sorry for causing them such grief. Will you tell them?' Mr Shead  agreed and promised that he would.  At this same meeting another suicide manifested to express regret for what he had done. Mrs Bullock of Kenton was greeted by the voice of her husband and he spoke of being accompanied by a  young man whose name he gave. Mickey chipped in to fill in some details, 'The young man was in  the Home Guard and he wants you to tell his mother how sorry he is for what he did. He knows  what a terrible shock he caused when his mother found him in the kitchen. Please give his love to  Pearl.' Mrs Bullock then told the audience the young man had lived in her village and he had shot  himself in the kitchen of his parents' home. Pearl was his girlfriend.  Not all my public meetings went smoothly. I remember one at the Corn Exchange in Bedford  where Mickey accepted a challenge. A persistent interrupter alleged there was a hidden microphone  in the hall, through which an imagined accomplice of mine was playing the part of Mickey. Mickey  was quietly speaking to a lady in the audience, a Mrs Bonning, and he introduced a spirit communicator called Mr Punter. Mrs Bonning agreed that she had known Mr Punter, then the spirit spoke  for himself. In a clear strong voice he said he came from Luton, where he had owned a hat factory.  'We had a ﬁre and I tried to save some of the girls who were trapped,' he said.  Mrs Bonning recalled the fire and added, 'You were connected to Luton Spiritualist Church.'  'No,' replied the spirit, 'that was my brother.'  The spirit of Mr Punter was still speaking when suddenly a young Air Force sergeant loudly demanded that the microphone be moved away from the cabinet. My chairman at the time, Mr  Bernard Abdy Collins, spoke to him and asked what difference this would make and the sergeant  replied saying that for all he knew 'Mickey' might be speaking over another microphone concealed  somewhere in the hall. In the midst of this altercation Mickey himself shouted out that the microphone could be moved if necessary. Someone volunteered and it was then placed a good distance  away from the cabinet and to one side of it. Then Mickey positively bawled out, 'Can you hear me at  the back of the hall?!' Never before had I heard Mickey shout so loudly, his voice filled the entire  hall with sound.  Mr Collins patiently asked the sergeant if he was now satisﬁed that there was no concealed microphone and then somewhat sheepishly the young man agreed that he was. But in a hostile manner  he added that he supposed the recipients of the messages must be accomplices that we had planted in the audience. Hearing this as I sat in my cabinet I was furious at the suggestion, until I  remembered this was exactly what I had suspected myself of other mediums in my early days of investigating Spiritualism. Mrs Bonning, who, like everyone else, had heard every word, was angry at  this slur on her integrity from the sergeant's final accusation and she stood up and replied to him  with such vigour that he was silenced once and for all. Unfortunately the harmony of the conditions  in the hall were now so disrupted by the incident that Mr Collins had to bring the meeting to an  early end.  The highlights in Edith's increasingly restricted life were Owen's visits with his adorable small  daughter. Days before they arrived she would plan with Bill what they would eat and discuss with  me what small toy we could buy to surprise and delight her granddaughter. From the time they arrived until they had to go home Edith would shine with a little of her old radiance and it was almost  like the old days again.  Owen's face could never hide his feelings, so one day when he came alone to see Edith I knew as  soon as I saw him he had news that he hated to tell. As gently as he could he told his mother that  Jane's father had offered him an executive post at his business in California and he and Jane were to  leave England to make a new life in America. When he had finished what he had to say his mother  replied, 'Of course you must go, darling, it's a wonderful chance. I'm so happy for you.' I had never  admired Edith more.  On the day that Owen and Jane were leaving I cancelled all my work so I could be with Edith until  after their ship had sailed when I felt she would need me badly. She sat patiently in her wheelchair,  her hands made clumsy and uncertain by her illness, picking at a tangle of wool and trying to unravel it. Her eyes seldom strayed from the clock as the hour of Owen's departure grew nearer. When  the clock hands reached the hour Edith sighed, and again I heard myself say with the same painful  inadequacy, 'I'll go and make a pot of tea.'  From that day Edith's health deteriorated rapidly until the time came when she was too ill to leave  her bed and the doctor warned me that the end could not be far off.  One evening as I sat by her bed telling her all the business of the day, as she always liked me to  do, I saw her face change in some indefinable way and in a small voice she said, 'I do love you so!'  then she slipped into a coma which lasted for two days until her spirit was released.  The cremation was at Golders Green and the chapel was filled with our friends and was bright  with flowers. The organist played music Edith had loved and our old friend Father Sharp said the  last farewell. There was no mourning, no tears, just the sadness of seeing a dear one off on a journey where the time of reunion is not known yet.  That night when all our friends had gone and I was alone in the room that Edith and I had shared  for so many years, a wave of desolation swept over me as I realised I had not yet come to terms  with the loss of her physical presence; the hand she would place on mine for encouragement, her  smile, the small private jokes we had. I wondered if I could go on living in a house filled with  memories of past happiness.  The next morning two letters arrived from California, one from Owen inviting me to his home for  

an indefinite stay and the other from a psychic society in Los Angeles asking me to become their  resident medium. As always when a decision touches on my spiritual work I decided to ask the advice of my unseen helpers as to which of these offers I should accept. At the next meeting of my  home circle I put my question to them. To my surprise and, I must admit, to my disappointment  they asked me to refuse both of these offers, and said I must remain in England to perform some  new and special work they had in mind. They told me that the public phase of my mediumship  must now cease because the big demonstrations and the travelling involved, coupled with my other  work, were depleting my energies to such an extent that not only my health but my mediumship itself was in danger. Finally they told me that a large unfurnished flat in the heart of London would  soon be offered to me at a rent I could afford and I must accept it. At the time there was not the  smallest possibility of anyone offering me any such thing. There was an acute shortage of unfurnished accommodation in the city and landlords were charging high rents and demanding large  bonds as security from would-be tenants.  Three months later I was standing in the garden ﬂat of a big house in Westbourne Terrace in  Bayswater, instructing the removal men where to put my furniture and wondering about the special  new work I was to do in the future.  

picture text page 231,
140 Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, London.  

Thirteen    IN all my years as a medium I have never yet disregarded advice from my spirit helpers, nor did I  now ignore their warning that my gift was in danger because I had been overworking. As soon as I  was settled into my new home, to which against all probability I had been led, I retired from public  work. I adamantly refused all invitations to demonstrate in public in the great halls throughout the  country, no matter how tempting the financial inducement offered. My new telephone number was  not listed in the directory and I shunned publicity of any kind. I strictly limited the number of my  private séances and I sat only with sincere researchers or those whose need was great.  Although my income was now much reduced and the rent I paid to Leon and Rose Creet, who  owned the house which contained my new flat, was modest, I could still earn enough to live quietly  and to continue to pay Bill's wages. For the first time in my life I had time to rest, to meditate, to  pursue my hobbies of photography, the art of the silent cinema and to enjoy the company of  friends. I grew calmer, more relaxed, and my health was greatly improved.  During these months I waited to be shown the new work which I had been told by my helpers that  I must do. One séance out of many during this time stands out in my memory, because of the  reluctance of a sceptical mother to accept or even respond to the almost frantic efforts of her deceased son to establish his identity.  Patrick Selby was the public relations manager for an organisation which controlled the activities  of two leading West End theatres. He came to sit with me accompanied by seven of his friends,  among them was a lady whom I shall call Mrs Carr. As soon as the séance started it was obvious  that all that transpired was designed towards trying to convince Mrs Carr that her son, Justin, had  survived his physical death. After Mickey had greeted Mr Selby and his friends we heard a faint  voice say, 'Mother, this is Justin. It's wonderful to have this moment.' Mrs Carr answered, with  some prompting from the other sitters, but she sounded full of disbelief. With his voice never rising much above an urgent whisper Justin began trying to convince his mother of his identity by  mentioning various bits of information from the past, but whatever evidence he offered Mrs Carr remained aloof and disinterested. Finally, as though to clinch the matter, the dead boy asked, 'Do you  remember that time on the river with the swans?' With the same cool detachment Mrs Carr replied,  'I don't believe I do.' The spirit voice took on a tinge of despair, 'But you must remember it Mother.  The swans attacked the boat!'  It seemed that Mrs Carr had no recollection of this incident at all, however, another sitter intervened to say that she remembered the incident very well. It had apparently occurred during a time  when she and her parents lived near water and the two families often went sailing together. Doubtless encouraged by this support, Justin went on reminding his mother of small events in his life on  Earth, all of which she received with the same lack of enthusiasm and palpable disbelief. At last,  and one could hear the exasperation in his voice, the boy burst out with, 'Mother! I'll convince you  if it kills me!' In spite of the seriousness of the occasion the other members of the group and I  could not help dissolving into laughter at this statement. Sad to say, that although additional evidence was given in the attempt to convince Mrs Carr of her son's survival, she left my séance room  as stubbornly sceptical as she had entered it.  One morning I was waiting for two friends of Reverend Drayton Thomas to arrive for an appointment he had made for them by telephone. Like the experienced researcher Dray was, he had told me  nothing about these friends, apart from the fact they were named Mr and Mrs Newton. When Bill  showed them into the séance room I was annoyed to see an Alsatian dog follow them in. Bill knew  very well that I did not allow animals into the séance room and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask  him why he had permitted it, when it dawned on me that this was not an earthly dog.  During the séance Mr Newton's father spoke and gave evidence of his identity, then told his son  he had Rex the dog with him. The spirit father added that at first Rex could not understand why he  had been sent away, but said now he was settled and quite happy 'with mother and me'. At this  point and to my surprise and embarrassment, I heard Mr Newton sobbing.  When the séance was over I learned from Mrs Newton that the couple had recently arrived from  Australia with the intention of settling in England. Before sailing Mrs Newton had persuaded her  husband to have his Alsatian dog Rex put to sleep, because the move to a new country would be  simpler without him. Her husband had not yet forgiven himself for reluctantly agreeing to the destruction of the dog he had loved.  This séance was not the first, nor was it by any means the last, at which I have heard evidence  given to my sitters that a beloved pet continued to live on in another dimension. I am convinced  that the love we give to our animals on this side of life actually lifts them to a higher plane of existence, higher than that which many other forms of life achieve, and that when we die we shall find  them waiting to greet us.  Now and then two people will make a pact that the first one who dies will make every effort to  communicate from the other side. They will often agree on a code word or message between them,  which will identify the communicator and prove their survival after death. Mrs Grover, who now  lives in Dulverton, Somerset, booked a sitting with me when she was living in London some years  ago. Her hope was that she might bring comfort to her younger daughter by making contact with  the girl's husband, who had recently died. At the sitting Mrs Grover's son-in-law, William, spoke to  her calling her 'Gerry' as he had done in his lifetime and asked about her health and other things.  Then in a voice which was fraught with strain he said, 'Mummy Bear, Daddy Bear and Brumas.' He  repeated this pointless phrase many times and then, in a puzzled way, he said, 'I don't know why I  am saying this except to prove identity.' When Mrs Grover left, she was disappointed with her sitting and she was mystified. The phrase which William had repeated with such urgency meant nothing whatsoever to her. When she returned home and told her daughter about the nonsensical message William had given at the sitting, the young widow was radiantly happy. The silly phrase, which  her deceased husband had repeated with such great effort, was the actual code message the girl  and her husband had agreed to use in their attempt to communicate from the other side should  one of them die first.  Some years later Mrs Grover had another sitting with me at which William manifested. I do not  think I can do better than to quote an extract from her own account of this sitting, which she was  kind enough to send me:  "We sat for several minutes and I was beginning to fear that dear Mickey would not come through, but 
he did and, after his usual little chat, he said, 'Bill is here, Aunty Gerry.' To my astonishment my son-inlaw's first words were, 'Gerry, you are very worried about your health?' I must explain that Mr Flint had  no idea I had been ill for a year with an internal complaint which was still troubling me. While I was in  London I had taken the opportunity to see a surgeon and I had spent a whole day having x-rays and various tests at a clinic a few days previous to my sitting. The surgeon had been called away to Scotland on  an emergency and so his secretary told me it would be some time before he could see my x-rays. Therefore  I answered Bill that I was rather worried about myself. Bill replied, 'There's no need for you to worry at  all. I have seen your x-rays and there is no malignancy. You will not need to have an operation. Surgery  cannot cure a bug! But in the future you must be very careful about your diet and avoid roughage.' My  son-in-law was a doctor and a specialist in radiology during his life on Earth. I should add that on the day  following this sitting the surgeon's secretary telephoned me to say that the surgeon had just seen my xrays. Then she repeated almost exactly the reassuring words Bill had said to me in Mr Flint's séance  room."    I had sat on many occasions for Mr Sidney George Woods, a psychical researcher and a man of  great integrity. Mr Woods, George, was in the habit of bringing a recording machine to his sittings  with me (they used fragile paper tapes in those days) and he would play his recordings to others.  He played them to members of his local Spiritualist Church and anyone else he thought might beneﬁt from the knowledge that they live on after death, whether they liked the idea or not.  One day George telephoned to ask if he might bring a friend with him for his next sitting and I  readily agreed. When he arrived for his appointment he was accompanied by a charming lady whom  he introduced as Mrs Betty Greene. George explained that this would be her first experience of the  direct voice, although she had listened with great interest to the recordings he had made at his  séances with me. There were other sitters present when George Woods and Betty Greene sat together in my séance room for the first time. The main communicator on this occasion was Rose  Hawkins, a spirit who had spoken at other of my séances and so she was sufficiently versed in the  complexities of communication between the two worlds. She was able to talk fluently and intelligently in what I suppose must be a reasonably good facsimile of her Earthly voice. She was strident,  cheerful and had a Cockney twang which I thought was even more pronounced than Mickey's.  According to Rose's own account of herself she had been a street flower seller whose pitch was  near Charing Cross Station in the heart of London, and her life had been one of hardship and extreme poverty. Rose has always been willing to answer questions put to her by sitters, although she  modestly makes it clear she has not yet advanced very far in the spiritual sense and claims she has  no knowledge of conditions in the higher realms where more evolved souls dwell. When George  asked Rose what it was like in her present condition of life she replied, 'Now you've asked me! You  want me to describe our world in your material language, I don't know which way to start. I suppose  if you could think of all the beautiful things in your world, without all the things which aren't pleasant, then you'd 'ave a vague notion of what it's like.'  Another sitter asked if the people in Rose's world ever thought about money and Rose was scornful. 'You can't buy anything over 'ere with money! The only things you get 'ere are by character and  the way you've lived your life and how you've thought and acted.'  When a member of the group wanted to know if there was law and order on the other side, Rose  said, 'There's the natural law, my dear, which we all begin to recognise soon after we get 'ere. There  ain't no laws and rules and regulations, like governments and that, but there are laws which are  common laws and we all recognise them.'  Then Rose spoke about the creative work that spirits do and she emphasised that, 'they do it because they love to do it. Everything here is done for love and anyone on your side who wanted to be  a musician, for instance, who never 'ad the chance in life can do all the things he wanted to do.'  Looking back down the years I can see that George Woods' invitation for Betty to sit in my group  that day was the last link in a chain of events which led to news of my work being spread even more  widely than ever before.  George and Betty sat with me privately many times after that first occasion and they always recorded their sittings on tape so that others might share their experience. During these early years of my  association with them I became more and more aware of the very special atmosphere of harmony  which was created in the séance room whenever we sat together. As part of the very nature of mediumship, unfortunately, some of their sittings were blank, but at other times they would receive  communication from souls who had evolved far beyond our material world.  Since the move from Hendon Bill's health had slowly worsened. When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer Bill faced his condition calmly, serenely and without fear, because he knew death was  only a step into a larger life. When Bram Rogers came to live with us Bill trained him in the duties  he had himself performed so faithfully and then, as he had wished, he went back to spend what  time was left to him in the town where he had spent his boyhood.  By this time George Woods and Betty Greene had been sitting with me for two or three years and  one day during a sitting the actress Ellen Terry came to speak to them and this is what she said:  "You are going to have some remarkable communications and I suggest you keep this contact regularly  to build up the power and strengthen the link, which has been deliberately arranged for your tapes. There  are souls on this side of life with a great desire to make use of these opportunities, to pass through information about life in our world and the mechanics of communication between your world and ours. The  tapes you record will give us the means to reach people in your world and we shall use them to the best of  our ability. We shall bring various souls, from different spheres of life over here, to give talks and lectures  which can be sent out and played all over your world to millions of people. That is why we want you to sit  regularly with this medium, to build up the power and make possible the way for these various entities to  come and talk to you about themselves and about many things of importance to mankind."    I had never doubted the reality of my voices, nor had I ever questioned the integrity of my spirit  helpers, but as I listened to the familiar voice of Ellen Terry, I suddenly felt miserable and uncertain.  How could George's tape recordings be heard by millions of people all over the world? I knew that,  during many years of psychical research, George had received such proof of survival that his great  desire was to share his conviction with as many people as possible, but millions? It did not make  sense. When Ellen Terry's voice faded and the séance was over, I leapt from my chair to switch on  the light and to ask George if he would play back his recording. When I heard Ellen's extraordinary  message for the second time I knew that, however fantastic it might seem, sooner or later George's  

tapes would be heard all over the world by millions of people. Then and there we agreed that George  and Betty would sit with me regularly and from that day to this they have done so.  Mrs Bryant, a lady who lived in Palace Gate, Kensington, also came to sit with me from time to  time. More often than not her late husband, George, would come and talk to her and give her such  advice and help as was now in his power. One day Mrs Bryant arrived for an appointment accompanied by a stranger. He was a tall gaunt man whom I judged to be in his fifties and Mrs Bryant  asked if he might share the sitting with her. Quite correctly Mrs Bryant did not tell me her friend's  name, but by way of introduction she brightly informed me that he was a complete sceptic who  thought communication with spirits was at best a delusion and self-deception or at worst downright fraud. She added that she had persuaded him to come with her against his will, in order to  prove to him how wrong he was and to make him 'eat his words'. Mrs Bryant's outline of this new  sitter's mental attitude was hardly a recommendation and as I looked at him standing in my hallway, ramrod straight and with a supercilious smile, I was not drawn to him at all, but I was touched  by Mrs Bryant's conﬁdent faith and so I agreed to her request.  At the sitting Mrs Bryant's husband did not come through as he usually did, but after Mickey had  spoken to both sitters for a short while a man's voice was heard to say that his name was 'White'  and he was glad to be able to speak to his son after such a long time. In spite of the pitch darkness  I had the impression that Mrs Bryant gave her friend a sharp dig in the ribs to make him answer. He  did answer but in such a bored and condescending way he would have been better to keep quiet.  The spirit tried again but was met by the same lack of warmth from my reluctant sitter. A short  pause ensued during which we could hear two spirit voices engaging in whispered dialogue which,  from the occasional phrases I could catch, sounded like a discussion on strategy. Suddenly, all  three of us were jolted in our seats when the voice of the discarnate Mr White boomed out loudly,  'I'll tell you a few things to make you sit up, son!' From then on, until the end of the sitting the father poured out proofs of his identity, anecdotes of the sitter's boyhood, memories of things only  he and his son had done together, places they had been together and all manner of irrefutable  proofs that it really was his father speaking. Before long my sceptical sitter was animatedly keeping  up his end of this intimate and evocative conversation.  When the sitting was over and Mrs Bryant had left, I must admit I was astonished when the sceptical gentleman stayed behind and proceeded to almost put me through a third degree interrogation. He said I knew perfectly well who he was, didn't I? Mrs Bryant had phoned me early that  morning, hadn't she? Where was the microphone? The loudspeaker? What was the name of my  friend in Warwick? Could he see my copy of the Police Almanac? These and many other mystifying  questions were rattled out in short gruff barks faster than machine-gun ﬁre or so it seemed to me at  the time. At long last when my head reeled with the effort of answering each bark before he barked  again, my inquisitor's grim expression relaxed into warmth. 'You are all right!' he said. Then he held  out his hand in friendship just like someone in an old movie about the upper classes. Once I had  recovered a little we shook hands, and he introduced himself as Colonel Geoffrey White, the Chief  Constable of Warwickshire police force. Then he thanked me for a most interesting experience. Privately I thought the Colonel's experience had been much more than merely interesting, but years of  mediumship had taught me that for the true sceptic, it is almost a point of honour to not be impressed by whatever evidence they may be given. As I stood at the front door watching the  Colonel's upright figure stride off down the street, I did not expect to see him again.  As it happened I was wrong, because some months later he telephoned me early one Sunday  morning and asked if he could have a sitting right away. I explained I did not sit with anyone on  Sundays and offered him an appointment later in the week. He told me his stay in London was  short and asked me to make an exception in his favour. I was so impressed by the urgency in his  voice that I agreed to sit with him that morning.  I had hardly switched off the light in the séance room when Mickey said that Colonel White's father wanted to talk to him about 'the new post in Cyprus'. Then a long talk ensued between the  Colonel and his father, which I had no choice in overhearing. It appeared that Colonel White had  been summoned to the Home Office on the previous Friday where he had been asked if he would  accept a secondment. This duty involved serving under the Colonial Office to undertake the reorganisation of the police force in Cyprus, which was then in the throes of the Greek/Turkish troubles. The Colonel was due to attend another interview at the Home Office on the following day,  when he would be expected to give his decision, and he was uncertain what that decision should  be. His spirit father told him with some intensity that he must accept the assignment, because his  particular capabilities were needed in Cyprus at this dangerous time. The father assured his son he  would perform the task well and no harm would come to him while he was on the island. He added  that the Colonel would return home to England very much sooner than was presently thought possible. When I switched on the light at the end of the sitting, Colonel White was leaning back in his  chair with an expression of stupefaction on his face. 'That was absolutely fantastic,' he said, 'not  only am I utterly convinced that it was my father who was speaking to me, but no one on Earth,  apart from myself and the very important official I saw at the Home Office, knew I had been asked  to go to Cyprus. It is so highly confidential a mission that I haven't even told my wife yet!'  The Colonel went to Cyprus in July 1956 and after eighteen months, having done the work he had  been sent to do, he came home safe and sound, far sooner than he had anticipated. Once he was  back in England Colonel White made a point of sitting with me whenever he was in London, until  one day in 1961 I read in my daily newspaper that he had suffered some kind of seizure. He was at a  police banquet and as he rose to make a speech he collapsed and died instantly. I like to think that  the Colonel's father was there with him at the time to welcome him to the other side.  Atheists and some members of Christian orthodoxies (especially those who have never sat with a  medium of any kind) often ridicule the guides who help mediums to act as the bridge between this  world and the next. Red Indians? Ancient Egyptians? Tibetan Lamas? Children? How deluded and  ridiculous can these Spiritualists get? Doubters with aspirations in the ﬁeld of psychology talk  knowingly about secondary personalities, fragmented consciousness, subconscious dramatisation  and auto-hypnotic phenomena. I do not pretend to know what they all mean and I doubt if they  know it themselves. Some believers in the more rigid orthodoxies do not hesitate to denounce our  guides and communicators as evil and impersonating spirits, but they seem forgetful of verse  eleven in Psalm ninety-one which says: 'For he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all  thy ways.' 
Of course I know some Christians accept the concept of guardian angels, but since religious art  has visualised them over the centuries as Caucasian supermen improbably equipped with wings,  one might be forgiven for supposing that spiritual evolution is a privilege only of the white race.  The truth is simpler and more wonderful.  Angels, guides, spirit helpers, call them what you like, were once men and women of all races and  all creeds who once lived on Earth. And now, from whatever plane of existence they inhabit, they  continue to evolve spiritually by trying to help and uplift mankind through the physical organism  of those on Earth who have psychic gifts of one kind or another. It is not only psychics and mediums who have spirit helpers of course, to paraphrase saint Paul; 'we are all compassed about with a  great cloud of witnesses', which does not mean that a host of prying spirits hang around to observe  our every action, however private. Simply put, those that we love who have gone ahead of us, care  for us still and they draw near to us when we think of them with longing or when we send out a  prayer for help.  At my home circle during the war my spirit helpers were joined by someone who introduced himself as Dr Marshall who said he once lived and practised medicine in Hampstead, London. The personality, which his warm sympathetic voice suggested, was that of everyone's ideal family doctor.  From snippets of information Dr Marshall had given us about himself from time to time, we were  able to verify some facts about his life on Earth. Dr Charles Frederick Marshall was born in Birmingham in February 1864 and received his medical training at Bart's Hospital in London where he  gained a reputation for brilliance in both medicine and surgery. He was also interested in psychic  research, at a time when the subject was still considered to be cranky, and he eventually became a  convinced Spiritualist. Originally Dr Marshall specialised in diseases of the skin but he later turned  to research in cancer. After years of study he believed he had discovered a new method of treatment  for the disease and in 1932 he published A New Theory of Cancer. In this book he presented his  theories and described a number of advanced cases, which he claimed had been cured by his  method. Unfortunately, the medical profession were not interested in this work and he died on May  22nd 1940 a disappointed man. But since he first came through, Dr Marshall has advised and  helped literally thousands of my sitters about their physical health and emotional anxieties.  My good friends George and Lynn Archer came to sit with me one day, accompanied by their  twenty year old son Roland, who was in the Merchant Navy. I noticed one of Roland's eyes was  swollen, bloodshot and watering profusely and asked him what was wrong. He told me the eye had  been giving him pain and discomfort for months but none of the doctors he had seen were able to  find the cause of the trouble. It was obvious the young man was worried and particularly so because he had recently seen an eminent ophthalmic specialist who had also failed to find any reason  for the symptoms. During the séance Dr Marshall came to speak to the Archers and immediately he  touched on the subject of Roland's eye. He reminded the young man of an occasion some months  before when he had been on board ship and was cleaning portholes with a bundle of steel wool. Dr  Marshall told him that a tiny particle of the steel wool had broken off and become lodged in his eye  and this was the cause of the pain and irritation. He advised Roland to go back to the eye hospital  and tactfully suggest this possibility to the specialist there. Roland took Dr Marshall's advice and  the particle of steel wool was successfully located and surgically removed.  More and more I began to look forward to my sittings with George Woods and Betty Greene. The  souls who came to speak to them were so varied and so interesting. Some were famous during  their time on Earth, others had lived in obscurity, but all of them had something interesting or uplifting to say. These informative talks were recorded on tape so that Betty and George could share  their sittings with all who cared to listen. In 1968 at one of these sessions a spirit with a clear  French accent introduced himself as Richet. In the course of the conversation with him, we learned  that he was the late Professor Charles Richet, the eminent French physiologist who in 1905 was  President of the Society for Psychical Research in London and in 1913 was awarded the Nobel Prize.  Professor Richet explained to me how my mediumship was used by those on the other side. He  said that every living being has a substance known as 'ectoplasm' which is a life force, and a physical medium like myself has a great deal more of it than most people. During a séance this substance, which is sometimes also referred to as 'the power', is drawn from the medium and fashioned by spirits who understand such matters into a replica of the physical vocal organs. This then  is called the 'artificial voicebox' or sometimes 'the mask'. The communicating spirit concentrates  his or her thoughts into this voice-box and in doing so creates a frequency or vibration which reaches the sitters on Earth, objectively, as audible sound.  The professor went on to describe the difficulties faced by using this method of communication,  from the spirit's point of view. He told us that not only must the communicating personality lower  their own frequency to match that of Earth, but simultaneously they had to remember what their  voice sounded like during their lifetime and recapture memories of events to give proof of their  identity to the sitters present. When the professor was asked by Mrs Greene whether he could see  and hear people at a séance he replied that it depended on the amount of concentration he put into  the effort to do so. If he focused his mind sufficiently he could both hear and see people on Earth,  but he found it simpler to comprehend their thoughts before they were uttered as words. He became a little grumpy when someone suggested that sometimes the voices of spirit communicators  did not sound exactly the same as their voices had during their life on Earth. He said it was hardly  likely they would sound the same, since they were not using the same vocal organs they had used  in life. He added that we must also take into account that the communicating spirit was trying to  concentrate on three different things at the same time while communicating. Most of what Professor Richet said to me made sense. I had often heard communicators complain of their difficulty  in 'speaking through this box thing' which 'wobbles about all the time', or speak plaintively about  how confusing it was to remember some event that would prove beyond any doubt who they were,  while also concentrating so hard on other things. As the discarnate Professor Richet remarked; "The  miracle is that we can communicate at all."  Although some communicators speak in what I regard as 'standardised voices', by this I mean  that one elderly gentleman can sound much the same as another from a similar educational level,  and young officers killed in the last war tend to speak in voices which resemble one another. But it  is what the entities say and the personality that the voices express, together with the evidence they  give, which establishes their identity to those they seek to communicate with. Some spirits however, perhaps because of their superior mental powers or because of their previous vocation when  

on Earth, manage to reproduce voices which are unmistakably like those they had during their lives  on Earth. One of these was Lord Birkenhead, a former Lord Chancellor of England, who died in  1930.  Under the 1957 Homicide Act there were five categories of murder punishable by hanging. At a  séance I held in 1962 when this Act was law, Lord Birkenhead manifested in my séance room and  spoke eloquently and quite urgently for almost an hour, on the necessity for total abolition of the  death penalty. After he had introduced himself simply as 'Birkenhead', he said, "This is an aspect of  criminal law most in need of change. Whether it is through the hangman's noose or whether it is done by  some other supposedly more humane method, nothing justifies the taking of life outside the law or inside  it."  Admitting that the views he now expressed were quite opposed to those he held on Earth, he explained by saying, "I have seen the effects on this side of life, when the law sends souls here who are  unprepared and unready; their minds in turmoil, filled with thoughts of hate, revenge and fear." He told  us that these revengeful souls can linger near the Earth and impinge their thoughts on individuals  who may be mentally unstable and cause them to commit the same kind of crime for which the  spirit had forfeited his life under the law. As an alternative to capital punishment Birkenhead suggested, "the unfortunate people who commit murder could be put to useful work, they should be made  to serve society in some way and given the opportunity to work out their own salvation and repentance."  Towards the end of his impressive speech he declared, "If only it were possible to show you that there  is no death. We live and we try constantly to inspire you. I beg of you, I plead with you, to do all in your  power to bring this truth to all humanity."  When a recording of this communication by Lord Birkenhead was played to one of his former colleagues, Mr Charles E. Loseby, QC, he said, "It is Birkenhead all right. There is not a shred of doubt in  my mind. As Birkenhead was responsible for my being called to the Bar [become a barrister] I knew him  particularly well during virtually the whole of his legal career." Mr Loseby was later interviewed on television and repeated this statement in front of millions of viewers. I heard about this and remembered Ellen Terry's promise, which at the time had seemed an impossibility.  Lilian Baylis, the indomitable woman who owned the world famous Old Vic theatre, unexpectedly  made a dramatic speech at a séance I held in 1963. Two days earlier the curtain had been brought  down at her theatre for the last time before the National Theatre company took over. Miss Baylis expressed her dismay that the 'Vic' had not been retained as a training school for aspiring students of  the theatre and asked if it were really necessary to lose a name which had for so long upheld English drama. "Surely it could have been kept as a memorial to the past," she asked sadly.  When one of the sitters asked if she had been present at the final performance in her theatre, Miss  Baylis answered with a trace of impatience, "Of course I was there! Do you think I would be missing for  the last act? It was a sad night, but for me a proud one. I am sure the [new] National Theatre must be a  success because its roots were in the Old Vic and those roots were strong."  Miss Baylis told us many other famous theatrical figures from the past were also present on that  farewell night, including her aunt, Emma Cons, who years before had run the Old Vic as a people's  theatre.  When a recording of Lilian Baylis' dramatic séance talk was played to Captain P. Newcombe of  Hove, he wrote:  "The tape recording did certainly bring us an exact picture of the late Miss Baylis as I remember her, the  voice and mannerisms were unmistakable. I am most grateful for the opportunity of hearing my dear old  friend once again."  When the god-daughter of the late Lilian Baylis, Mrs Alys Watson, also heard the recording she  wrote: "I am only too happy to conﬁrm that it was the voice of Lilian Baylis I heard."  One evening I was visiting Rose Creet, who lived in the upper flat at Westbourne Terrace. We were  chatting about this and that when I began to feel a strong personality suddenly impinge on me psychically. Although I tried to ignore this awareness, eventually it became too strong to resist and I  suggested that if we drew the curtains and put out the light we might find out who this personality  was. The curtains were drawn and the light put out, but only partial darkness was possible. Fortunately Rose had a tape recorder. The incomplete black-out did not stop the personality I had sensed  from speaking almost immediately, in a strong voice with a decidedly Irish lilt. At first we did not  know who the voice belonged to. He mentioned his plays and said that despite their success he  had no desire to return to Earth again. When he said, "Having been George Bernard Shaw is enough  for any one!" we greeted him with delight. In his lifetime Shaw had always expressed his disbelief in  a life beyond the grave and when Rose asked him to tell us something about his arrival in the spirit  world he flippantly replied, "I never knew a woman who was so anxious to know about death before!  Why don't you wait until you come?"  When Rose persisted with her question Shaw answered,  "I was very much surprised and very much perturbed, break, but at the same time I was elated, if one can  have three such different emotions at once."  When one of us tried to get him to criticise the theatre of today, he refused saying that he no  longer condemns because he had learned it was a sin. "I have never been terribly keen to be a sinner,"  he said. "In fact, when I tried to be a sinner, I was never very successful, much to my great disappointment. I wanted to sin once or twice with several very charming ladies, but they would only sin by  correspondence, which was no satisfaction to me at all! I was a bit of a sentimental old fool, you know,  but I wouldn't let people know it. At least I tried to avoid them realising it. I used to put on a brusque  manner, you know, and try and waggle my beard and frighten them. I didn't always succeed; I did it  much better by postcards., break, I was much more successful with my pen than ever I was with my tongue.  When a tape of Shaw's spirit voice was played to his friend Laurence Easterbrook OBE, he wrote:  "I found the GB Shaw recording interesting indeed. The more I think about it, the more impossible it  seems for anyone but himself to have been responsible. It brought back to me the sense of infectious gaiety you got with him when he was in the family circle and not showing off."  Concerning the same recording the Reverend William Allen Barham wrote in June 1970:  "I played the GBS tape to George Bishop, dramatic critic of the Daily Telegraph, and a close friend of  Shaw for many years. After Mr Bishop had listened to the tape, he declared, 'The mind and the mood are  Shaw's'."  Not all the personalities who came to speak to George Woods and Betty Greene at their regular  sittings were well-known in life. There were many men and women who had lived and died quite 
unremarkably, but who came to talk about themselves and to tell us how they died and what they  found on the other side of death. One of these was Edward Butler, who spoke in a warm Yorkshire  accent and invited us to call him Ted. He told us he had lived in Leeds until one Saturday morning  in 1923 when he went shopping with his wife. As Ted put it himself, "I was crossing the high street  and before you could say 'Jack Robinson' something hit me. It was a lorry and it got me pinned against  the wall and I was out!" Then he told us he saw a crowd looking down at something, so he went to  have a look and to his surprise he saw a man on the ground who looked just like him. "I didn't realise it was me at first," he said, "I thought that fellow looks exactly the same as I do, break, he could be my  twin brother." Ted did not realise he was looking at his own body lying on the ground. When he saw  his wife in the crowd, she was crying. He tried to tell her he was all right but she ignored him completely. When the ambulance arrived Ted got inside with his wife and the body, and during the ride  to the hospital he finally realised what had happened. Later Ted talked about attending his own funeral, "I thought at the time, all this fuss and expense for nothing, because here I was in the horse-drawn  carriage with the wife and nobody took any notice of me."  According to his own account Ted had been a material kind of fellow, he had given no thought to  religion and had no belief in an afterlife. It seems he was Earth-bound for a time, because he hung  around his home, travelled on tramcars and visited friends, but no one could see him or hear him  and he began to be lonely and unhappy. Sometimes he even longed for a glass of beer, but even  though he felt solid enough to himself, when he tried to pick up a glass his hand went right through  it.  At another sitting we heard a male voice with a German accent. Speaking with some difficulty he  gave his name as Dr Franke and told us that during the war he had been a prisoner in Dachau concentration camp, where he was killed because he refused 'to do certain things...' he did not like.  He went on to describe the miserable conditions of life in Dachau and told us that when he was  first sent there he had been allowed to use his medical skill to help other prisoners. Then Dr Franke  tried to explain how his captors had insisted that he cooperate in some of the horrific surgical  experiments performed on the prisoners and when he refused to participate he was executed.  He told us that over the site of Dachau camp, even today, there hangs an atmosphere of misery,  unhappiness and evil because of all the things which were done there. When Dr Franke was asked  about his current life in the spirit world he told us he was still a doctor, but now he treated souls by  helping them to get rid of their old stagnant ideas, fear, hatred and prejudices which impede their  spiritual progress. Before he left us Dr Franke said, "If people would realise that thoughts in themselves are powerful and that as a man thinks, so he is, break, he creates for himself his own heaven and hell by  his thoughts."  In 1963 the John Profumo scandal shook Britain and Stephen Ward, a fashionable osteopath and  artist of some talent, stood trial at the Old Bailey on charges arising from the affair. While he was  still on bail and before verdict or sentence could be given Ward took his own life. I had never met  Stephen Ward nor any of his friends, the social circles in which we moved were too far apart for that  and I knew nothing of him apart from what I had read or heard in the mass media. I was therefore  all the more surprised when soon after his lonely and pitiful death Stephen Ward was brought to  speak during one of my sittings. In a hoarse, strained whisper Ward said that he regretted the circumstances of his passing, but his conscience was clear regarding the crimes of which society had  accused him. "I admit that I was foolish, break, of course I made mistakes, break, a lot of the rubbish they've spken about and printed is quite untrue, break, I ought to have stuck it out to the end."  Not long after his first communication, Stephen Ward returned to speak again and this time his  voice was stronger and he was able to talk for a longer period. Once more he expressed regret for  ending his own life but said he had felt a net of lies closing in on him. He told us he had kept his  mouth shut to protect others, yet those who could have supported him "were thinking of themselves  all the time. They deliberately kept out of court, break, It was a dirty business," he said. Ward believed he  was "the scapegoat in an affair which was basically political, but behind it was something more sinister."  He told us his suicide had not solved his problems but had made them harder to bear. He also  spoke about some writings he had left behind for publication and seemed to think they would be  suppressed in England but might be published in another country before long. In fact, I believe his  memoirs were published in France not long after this second communication.  Stephen Ward continued to communicate at my séances for a number of years and I can report  that he has progressed spiritually, to the point where he forgives himself for his actions and his  vanity and no longer bears any resentment towards the friends who deserted him in his hour of  need.  Ethel and Alfred Scarfe who live in Ipswich had been sitting with me for some time and sending  out copies of their séance recordings to inquirers, in the same way as George Woods and Betty  Greene had been doing for so long. In a sitting in January 1964 Mr and Mrs Scarfe were contacted  by an evolved soul who told them he was once a member of the Catholic Church. He said he had  been a monk in a great monastery in the place we now call Bury saint Edmunds. He told them to call  him Brother Boniface and described himself as 'something of a rebel' in his day. Since that first  communication Brother Boniface has spoken with Mr and Mrs Scarfe on many occasions and always with a fluency and a beauty of phraseology at which I can only marvel. He raises all kinds of  moral questions and one of his recurring themes is the evil folly of discrimination on grounds of  race, colour, class or creed. The Scarfes have sent many recordings of his talks on this theme to  friends in South Africa and letters constantly come back from there asking for more copies.  On one occasion I played a recording of Brother Boniface to the pastor of a church in the West  End of London. He listened with interest and then asked if he might borrow the tape to play to one  or two friends. Gladly I agreed to lend it to him. Some time afterwards another friend of mine, who  was a member of the pastor's fashionable congregation, reported to me that the pastor had delivered Brother Boniface's discourse practically verbatim as his Sunday sermon, but needless to say  he had not mentioned his source.  By the beginning of 1970 George and Betty had built up a library of more than 200 tape recordings  of spirit voices. The communicators speak in all manner of accents and dialects and though many  were famous in their lives on Earth, others were ordinary women and men who returned to tell us of  their experiences when they died and what they found when they reached the other side of life.  There is one recording in this comprehensive collection which had us puzzled for a long time. At  that séance Mickey announced that he was bringing two people who had lived in ancient times to  

speak to George and Betty. Soon we all heard a male and a female voice talking together in some  unknown tongue. After a time the woman sang several little ditties. We still hope that one day we  will find someone who will not only be able to identify the language but to translate the recording  into English.  I had been living and working quietly and obscurely for almost eighteen years when, without warning, one Sunday morning I opened the newspaper to find a double-page spread on my work with  George and Betty. A further article on the following Sunday concluded: "This was an extraordinary  case with evidence to suggest a conscious life after death."  As a result of this unsought publicity I was invited to be interviewed on television. Some of the  spirit voice recordings from George and Betty's sittings were played during the programme, one of  them, fittingly, was the voice of Ellen Terry, so I did my best to explain the truth as I know it, to the  millions of people watching.  

picture text page 259. Betty Greene, George Woods and Leslie Flint,  interviewed on television in 1970 by Eamonn Andrews.  

Fourteen    WHEN my old friend Father Sharp died in 1960 he was 94 years of age. He had never ceased to  hope that one day the brave dream of The Confraternity of Clergymen would become a reality and  Spiritualism would be brought within the framework of the established church. One of the most  grievous disappointments of his life was the suppression of the 'Report on Spiritualism' by the  Church of England.  A committee of ten church members had been appointed by William Temple, Bishop of Manchester and Dr Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of York, with the intention of investigating the claims of  Spiritualism. By the time their investigations were completed Lang had been made Archbishop of  Canterbury. By a majority verdict, his committee reached the conclusion that the claims of Spiritualism to communicate with the dead, through specially gifted persons were true, but Lang suppressed the findings and the report was never published.  Cosmo Lang died in 1945 and one year later he spoke to Father Sharp in our home circle through  my mediumship. This is what he had to say: "If only I could have my life over again with the knowl  edge I now have, how differently I would act. I could have done so much, but I was afraid." He went on  to speak of the thousands of young souls sent into the next world by the war and were resentful, because the Church had not taught them that death is not the end and that a bridge can be made between the two worlds.  In 1959 Cosmo Lang spoke on another occasion in my séance room when George Woods and  Betty Greene were present. He said he felt strongly that Spiritualism was so vital and so important  that everyone should know about it, but he admitted he had been afraid it could 'undermine the  Church and probably even destroy it.' He also felt that knowledge of spirit communication could be  dangerous if used in the wrong way, so he suggested that colleges or societies should be organised  where mediums "could be trained in the proper manner, break, where they could be sheltered and fed, break, where  they can make mediumship a vocation." Although he warned that, "if you are to contact the highest  forces, break, those who can help the world to uplift mankind" we must have mediums "of like mind and of  like thought" because unfortunately many were "of a very low order."  More dangerous still, Lang said, were séances led by poorly trained mediums which could allow  us to be "obsessed by entities who will distort you and distort truth, who will give to you falsehoods and  mislead you." He told us how important it is to choose our mediums carefully and conduct ourselves in the right way when we sit and that first we should 'approach God', not only when we pray  but in our daily lives. The former Archbishop went on to say:  "I don't want you to think I condemn. Far from it. I am anxious to help, of course. But I do feel that  only when Spiritualism is placed in its right perspective, when it is used and applied in the right way,  when it has the instruments who are of a higher mental and spiritual level, who will give up all in true  service to God, looking upon themselves as mere instruments of his Divine power to serve the children of  the Earth and who have that feeling of desire for self-sacrifice, to give up all in service and to tune in with  the highest and the finest that can come through from our world, break, then it seems to me that while you  are, as it were, only scratching the surface of the astral worlds, of which 90% of your instruments seem to  be doing, then, it is not only bad, but it can even be dangerous. Because 'like can attract like' and also  lower entities who are Earth-bound, who cling to the Earth, can come through and speak to people of  things which are not true and can also be the cause of much unhappiness, much misery."  Lang told us how far adrift he felt the church of today had gone; away from its original teachings  and its original 'spiritual force for good.' He said he realised where it went wrong after it "strayed  and erred from the simple path that Jesus prepared." He told us the teachings of Spiritualism were  akin to the essence of the Early Church and those first Christians "who gathered together and who  were possessed of the power of the Lord and who overcame the flesh and gave up all to follow Jesus." He  concluded by saying, "I know that if this great and glorious truth were proclaimed and if it were demonstrated and made manifest in the true sense, the whole world would be changed."  In September 1960 a recording of Lang's communication was played at the London conference of  the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies. It brought much discussion among those  members who had known Dr Lang during his lifetime. In 1965 George Woods received the following letter from the notable psychical researcher, writer and member of the Society for Psychical  Research Mr Conan Shaw:  "Dear Mr Woods,  Re: Tape Recording of Dr Cosmo Lang, (the late Archbishop of York) 1 October 1960, through the Independent Direct Voice Medium, Mr Leslie Flint.  After hearing and studying this tape I should like to place the following on record:  As a chorister in York Minster (1908-15) I had many opportunities of coming into direct contact with Dr  Lang. His slow style of speech comes out well on the tape as do his mannerisms, break, he would build up to a  climax on one word or one phrase, as he does on the tape. Yes, I have every confidence it is Dr Cosmo  Lang who is the communicator as he claims to be on the tape.  (signed) Conan Shaw."    The former Archbishop's critical remarks about mediumship today are not without foundation. In  recent years Spiritualism has come to rely more and more on mental mediumship to prove its case  and although there have been many wonderful clairvoyants, clairaudients and trance mediums in  the past, today's mental mediumship, with a few notable exceptions, is not of a high standard. Except possibly in the privacy of home circles, physical mediumship, like my own gift of independent  direct voice or the gift of materialisation (where spirits can materialise into recognisable forms,  solid to the touch and capable of speech) is practically non-existent. For this I blame the times we  live in and the speed at which we live our lives. Physical mediumship is an inborn gift but it takes a  long time and much patience to bring it into full development.  In my case it took seven years of sitting in a dedicated circle, regularly and without fail, to bring  my gift to its fruition. The rush and bustle of today with its demand for instant success, instant results, instant mediumship, cannot produce the great mediums, both mental and physical, who were  available to researchers in the past. In those more leisurely times we had intellectual giants like Professor William Barrett, Sir William Crookes, Frederick Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge and others of similar  eminence, who were able to experiment with mediums and finally reach the conviction that human  personality survives bodily death.  It is a sad and sobering thought that there has probably never been a time when this knowledge 
has been more desperately needed. All around us we see the disintegration of moral values, the failure of authority, stagnation in the Churches and the breakup of family life. Our young, who are  rebellious and searching, are driven to a false chemical perception of something 'other' which  hallucinogenic drugs can only give momentarily and at such damaging cost. Among these depressed and deceived young people may be found potentially great mediums, but their gifts will  never develop because there is little understanding and so few of us who can give them support  and show them the way forward.  In August 1967 Cosmo Lang spoke to us once again, this time in my own home circle, and I  would like to quote the following edited passages, taken from the recording we made of his talk:  "The study of the human race from time immemorial is a lesson to us all. Yet we do not heed the  lessons we have learned, break, for centuries man has turned his back on truth and he does not see that within  himself, in his innermost soul, is the paramount truth of all; the indestructible truth that man is truly  Spirit and thus immortal.  I think back to my earlier years and how I spoke from the pulpit to the many souls that had gathered  around to listen...how often I did strive to give out the truth as I saw it.  What was lacking was the simplicity and the reality of the knowledge of the power of the Spirit within.  If only I could have known what was truly underlying the teachings of Christ and the many Prophets and  the great reformers and teachers of earlier times. If I could have only seen the golden thread which runs  from earliest times through all the great religions, break, that simple thread was the basis of all truth, break, that all  men are Spirit, that all men are part of the great plan, that all life, no matter what form it takes, is  indestructible, that even the lower creatures of the Earth have their place and their purpose, not only in  your world but in ours also, break,  There is a place for all God's creatures , who give so much to humanity. Indeed they do so much more  than [we] realise or understand. For they are placed in the world...equally with man, full of good purpose.  Our great difficulty when on Earth is to see God's meaning and purpose. With a different understanding  and a different realisation we could truly change the world, break,  If we would understand...not only the great truth of survival, but how important are all the creatures  that share our lives, whether they be our little domestic pets or even the simpler forms of life. But we are  so bound up in our own personal lives that we cannot see there is more wisdom in the simple creatures.  They often live nearer to God than man himself, in their simplicity and humility, in their dumb acceptance of things. They are more conscious, more aware of the true realities of spirit than any of us.  It is vital that man should see spirit for what it is. It is not something that is presented to you on a gold  plate when you arrive here because you are one of the fortunate ones who happened to have been on the  right side. No. We must remember that spirit animates us all, whether in human form when on Earth or  whether in the beauty of nature and the varying aspects of life all around us. No matter how lowly a form  of life may be, it is all part of the same spirit and indestructible.  When on Earth we look upon kingdoms, break, we think of this country or that country, as if there were something vastly different between them and the people who dwell therein, break, Of course there are differences in  custom, in background, in education or lack of it, in varying experiences, break, But underneath all the veneer is  the same spirit. Man may look different in the eyes of another race, yet it's the same spirit animating  him. Spirit is the force which animates all who live in human form, everything in nature, and all manifestations of life in the universe. While you live on Earth you are on the same wavelength, vibration or fre quency as all others around you, break, your physical senses perceive your surroundings as real and solid, but  science tells you that nothing on Earth is solid; the chairs you are sitting on now seem solid to you, but in  reality they are open networks of electrical charges whirling around a central nucleus at a frequency which  is the same as your own. When you die you will continue to live in your more subtle spiritual double,  which is often called the astral body, which vibrates at a greater frequency than your physical body. This  astral body is on the same wavelength as the plane you will inhabit after death, so for this reason, everything there will be as real and as solid to you as your Earth surroundings once appeared to be."    Sometimes a person's astral body or 'etheric double' is projected away from its physical counterpart. This projection can happen involuntarily as the result of a shock, or under anaesthesia, or  hypnosis, but some people are able to master the technique of projecting the etheric body at will.  Those who have had the experience say that the etheric body is connected to the physical one by a  pulsating cord of silver light, which elongates as the etheric double moves away from the physical.  They often say they can see their physical body lying inert on the bed or couch whenever the projection occurs. Some people report a feeling of great reluctance to return to the physical body because  they felt so light and joyous in the etheric body. While out of the physical body they describe finding none of the usual restrictions and have no difficulty in walking through walls or by merely thinking of a location, they can find themselves there. Some having the experience have even described  how, when they try to pick up material objects, that their hands move right through whatever object  they tried to lift. This, if you remember, was the same experience described by Ted Butler the spirit  communicator who spent his days as an Earthbound spirit.  The majority of people who report these experiences not only stress the joy of being 'out of the  body' but they are convinced their spiritual counterpart is the form in which they will continue to  live after they die. I am told that the science of psychiatry has another and more mundane explanation for this experience of separation. I do not claim to know what that may be, nor am I likely to  understand it if I were told, but if any psychiatrist has humility enough to learn from the Bible, perhaps this quotation from Ecclesiastes chapter twelve, verses six to seven, may give him food for  thought:  'Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, break, then shall the dust return to the Earth  as it was, and the spirit shall return to God...'  On rare occasions it has happened that a living person has spoken in my séance room through  my mediumship. And when the sitter exclaims in wonder that this friend or cousin or aunt is still on  Earth, the voice, which is usually a weak whisper, has faded away. When the sitter, at my request,  has checked up on the living communicator, it has been found that they were either ill, in coma, or  deeply asleep at the time of the attempted communication. The conclusion to me seems irresistible, that it was the spiritual counterpart, the astral or etheric body, perhaps even an ectoplasmic double, which manifested to make the communication, while the physical body was  unconscious and uninvolved.  Recently the tenants of a council dwelling had to be re-housed, because they asserted that their  

home was troubled by a poltergeist. Since the council acted on the complaint, I think we can say the  poltergeist was given official recognition.  Poltergeist phenomena; lights which switch themselves on and off, crockery which sails through  the air and smashes, weird noises and other more frightening manifestations, are generally accredited to the presence of ill-intentioned spirits. Sometimes the rite of exorcism is performed by a  priest in such disturbed homes, but often the poltergeist will stubbornly continue to make life intolerable for the unfortunate occupants. It has been observed by those who investigate phenomena of  this kind that the disturbances tend to occur in the vicinity of a youngster at or near the age of puberty. If a physical cause for the occurrences can definitely be excluded; including the child's own  mischievousness, intentional fraud or other shenanigans, then in my opinion it is likely that the  youngster may be unconsciously responsible. That is, they could be one of those people, like myself, who are born with an excess of ectoplasmic power, but because of inexperience and a lack of  knowledge of this power, entities from lower planes can use the potential mediumship to manifest  in an irresponsible and mischievous way. In view of the almost complete lack of physical mediumship today, it is my opinion that if such young persons are found they should be made the subject of careful and responsible study. Thereafter, their inherent mediumship should be developed  along the highest ethical and spiritual lines.  People living in haunted homes who seek the help of an exorcist to get rid of their unwanted  guest, may find this is not always the best nor the kindest way to clear a haunting. Exorcism, with  its opening volley of 'Retro me, Sathanas!' presupposes the entity is an evil one, but it may simply  be a lonely and unhappy Earth-bound soul. The kinder way is to engage in the services of a reputable medium, preferably accompanied by members of his or her home circle. Whether they be a  trance medium, clairvoyant or clairaudient is not important, because the entity can be reached  through any one of these psychic gifts. Once a contact is made the medium and his friends can  establish why the spirit is tied to the place where it lingers. Then, by offering their sympathy, their  prayers and with support of their guides, they can persuade the restless soul to cease troubling the  living and depart to find its own place on the next plane of existence. This service to the dead is  often known as 'rescue work' and many home circles devote their weekly meetings to work of this  kind.  There is another kind of haunting where a spectral figure or figures may pointlessly and endlessly  reenact some scene from the past in the place where it originally occurred. The scene is usually  one which would have generated strong emotions or desperate thoughts at the time, like a murder  or battle or similar tragedy. The spectres who are witnessed endlessly re-enacted the scene are not  necessarily the spirits of those who originally participated in it. Emotions and thoughts which are  strong enough can be registered on the atmosphere of the location where the event originally occurred. Someone with a strong psychic faculty, of which he may not even be aware, can then, for a  fleeting moment of time, often re-activate these historical impressions and emotions and visually  witness the scene 'as it happened'. We know so little about the effects of time, but I imagine there  is some parallel to be drawn from radio and television today; if our receivers are sensitive enough  and tuned to the proper vibration or frequency, they can pick up and register live transmissions  from the atmosphere of the words and actions of people who are half a world away. It seems to me,  not an impossible hope, that one day our scientists may discover the wavelength, frequency or  vibration on which the next plane of existence operates and when they do, communication between  the two worlds could become a fact of everyday life.  On June 9th 1969, some weeks before the American astronauts landed on the moon a communicator, who gave his name as John Grant, predicted that the landing would be successful and that  the men involved would return safely.  One of the happier events in the life of a medium is when his mediumship is used to conﬁrm the  mediumship of another. I had this privilege recently when Rosemary Brown came to sit with me.  Rosemary is known as the 'musical medium' through whom various dead composers, including  Liszt, Chopin, Busoni, Beethoven and others, give new compositions to the world. Almost as soon  as I turned off the séance room light the orchestral conductor Sir Henry Wood announced himself  as 'compère' for the séance. Sir Henry brought many of Rosemary's musical inspirers to speak to  her, including Chopin, who said of her:  "The group of musicians in spirit chose Rosemary because of her simplicity. If they had communicated  through an accomplished musician the experts would have questioned this proof of man's survival of  death!" He went on to say it was necessary for them to find someone who was uneducated in  music, but he told her, "You have great sensitivity and a love of music." After the séance Rosemary  said, "If someone imitated a voice on the telephone it would eventually be recognisable as an imitation. I  have no doubt that these were the genuine voices of my musical directors as I know them through my  own mediumship, and what is more important they made an impression of their individual personalities."    I am often asked what my own feelings are during a séance. Am I fully conscious of what transpires? Do I in any way influence the phenomena? Or do I ever go into trance during a séance?  I seldom go into trance, unless the power is very weak and my spirit helpers urgently want to  communicate for some good purpose. Usually I am very wide awake and I can hear all that is said,  both by my sitters and the spirit voices. Often I speak to the voices and I can converse with my own  spirit helpers to ask their advice about problems which trouble me. There are recordings of séances  where more than one spirit can be heard speaking at a time and sometimes I am heard to laugh or  talk or cough while a spirit is speaking.  I have always been certain that my own vocal organs are never used for spirit communication and  recently this was confirmed by an expert in his ﬁeld, William R. Bennett, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in New York City. I first sat with Professor Bennett when he was in  London during the summer of 1970 and I subsequently had a number of pleasant meetings with  him when I was visiting New York. The following statement by Professor Bennett is quoted with his  permission:  "My experience with Mr Flint is first hand. I have heard the independent voices. Furthermore, modern  investigation techniques, not available in earlier tests, corroborate previous conclusions by indicating that  the voices are not his. But to be thorough, one should consider the possibility of live accomplices, particularly when the séance takes place in the medium's home environment. This suggestion became 
untenable for me during his visit to New York in September 1970, when, in an impromptu séance in my  apartment, the same voices not only appeared but took part in conversations with the guests. The logistics of transporting a concealed company of performers for this purpose appear to be too formidable for  serious consideration."  As far as influencing the phenomena goes, I am certainly unaware of ever being able to do so, although on very rare occasions I have mentally received some comment or remark a split-second before a spirit voice utters it. I am of course clairvoyant also, so I can often see as well as hear the  spirit communicators, and when they are unable to speak and we sit in the dark waiting, I may  sometimes receive an evidential message for the sitter, which is at least some consolation for a  poor sitting. As a rule, these 'blank sittings' occur when the conditions are not quite right or there is  insufficient power available for the voice communication to be possible. On these occasions we  wait hopefully, but usually after an hour or so, if nothing happens, we give up the session.  The only unusual feeling I have positively observed in myself during a séance is that I sometimes  experience a feeling of intense cold while sitting, even on a hot day when my sitters are complaining  about the heat.  I have used my rare and strange gift as honestly and as selflessly and devotedly as I have been  able, and now that my sixtieth birthday is almost here that amounts to thirty-five years of mediumship. I do not know how much longer I have left to serve and I am deeply concerned that I know  of no one who can follow me.  I will end my story with an extract from a séance recording of a talk given in September 1963, by a  spirit who gave his name only as 'Pierre'. This is what he had to say:  "Why is it that Spiritualism has not swept the whole world and changed the face of life in your world?  It is because the average Spiritualist has not yet begun to realise what it means to be truly a Spiritualist  in the real sense, break, to be prepared to give himself in love and in service to God, realising that the power  which flows from Spirit can change not only himself, but through him possibly the whole world. There are  many, many different religions in your world. There are many confusing, conflicting ideas and thoughts,  but there is one truth, and that is the truth of everlasting life, that all who die, live. And that those who  come from this side of life, who truly desire the welfare of the human race are concerned with those souls  that they can find, here and there, who can be used as instruments in the highest sense. That is why we  must protect this instrument, there are so few of his calibre and quality. We will protect this wonderful  channel we have built over the years, even against himself.  People think a medium is like a machine; you put the money in the slot and the machine automatically responds. It is not so. Even they can be broken. For any medium to be persuaded to sit all the time  for this person or that person, just at the whim and at the moment they desire it, would be futile and  most unwise. This is why we protect this medium more and more and not only do we expect him to do  less and less, we intend to conserve his power so that it can be used to obtain communications of value for  the whole world."  

Addendum.    FOR sixty years, countless thousands of spirit people communicated at Leslie Flint's séances.  Some were world famous names, many were unknown individuals. Most were the loved ones and  friends of sitters, who returned to prove their continued existence in public and private séances.  Many thousands of these communications were recorded.  After his death in April 1994 Leslie's friends; Gwen Vaughan, Larry Taylor and Aubrey Rose began  'The Leslie Flint Educational Trust' to help preserve and promote his work. A website was created  and some of the first digitised séance recordings were made available online.    The work of the Leslie Flint Trust continues today with a new website containing enhanced séance  recordings, many complete transcripts, together with lectures, articles, photographs and testimonials. New material and previously unpublished recordings are continually added to the growing  online archive.  To hear all the recordings mentioned in this book and the voices of many others, including; Rupert Brook, John Ellis, Amy Johnson, Harry Price, Saint Francis, Frédéric Chopin, Dorcas, Mahatma  Gandhi, Oscar Wilde, Nellie Wright, Valentino and Mickey, visit the official website: leslieflint.com 

Illustrations.   1. Leslie aged 4 with his mother and father.    2. Dr Louis Young, with Edith and Leslie at saint Albans in 1935.    3. Owen, Edith and Leslie on holiday in 1936.    4. A test séance with members of the Society for Psychical Research. Leslie sits facing an infra-red telscope.    5. Leslie is held and gagged during another SPR séance. Reverend Drayton Thomas sits on the far right.    6. Leslie Flint, inside a wooden séance cabinet, for a public demonstration in London in 1948.    7. A public demonstration, with members of Leslie's home circle on the platform facing the cabinet.    8. A full house for another demonstration at Kingsway Hall.    9. Leslie around the time of his first visit to the USA.    10. An unusual photograph taken during Leslie's séance in Valentino's former home of Falcon Lair.    11. 140 Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, London.    12. Betty Greene, George Woods and Leslie Flint, interviewed on television in 1970 by Eamonn Andrews.    

end book.

end comment. the book written by Johannes Greber mentioned in the beginning here, is from almost a hundred years ago and which in English is called, Communication With the spirit world, and explains how direct voices are created, by materializing physical vocal cords from the etheric, also called od energy, which the medium and possibly others present emit. This Greber book  is found online and also copied on 
galactic.no/rune/lydboker/may2016upload/JohannesGreber_Communication-With-the-Spirit-World/johannes_greber_communicateSpirit_world.pdf and included audiobook in English, German and Norwegian for downloading free.