Three Months with Warren
Caylor
Observations and
Rational Deductions
America, 2008
by
N. Riley Heagerty
"Read not to contradict and confute,
nor to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider "
Bacon
After having attended two
seances in Toronto with Mr. Warren Caylor in 2007 we, my wife and I, decided at
that time that we would contact Mr. Caylor and invite him to our home in
America. He arrived on October 5th, 2008 and stayed with us until
December 31st. Our sole
intention was to observe and experience his mediumship within the close
confines our own home circle. Within the course of the ninety days Mr. Caylor
was here, he was in the cabinet, as medium, for twenty-five seances, including
two private gatherings we had arranged at the home of our personal
friends. We recorded most of the
seances, and I took careful notes, which I transcribed later in the evening.
Before venturing further
with this narrative, it is necessary for the integrity of this work to
substantiate to some degree at least, our credentials and experience in this
field. This will ensure the readers that this work, as best as I can present
it, is not based on ponderous, unyielding theories born of inexperience, nor
seen as a diatribe on any intellectual level clothed as a personal attack, etc.
Spiritualism, throughout the ages, along with its legitimate wonders and
genuine practicing mediums both then and now, is famous for unsubstantiated
rantings along with blind acceptance of phenomena without any questioning and
of course, out and out fraud. Over time
this has in many ways lessened the credibility of Spiritualism by clouding the
waters of empiricism and common sense and this has distracted many keen, discerning
minds from taking an interest in the subject. This, in no small way, has aided
in preventing the natural world from a wholesale understanding and acceptance
of the true wonders of Spiritualism and mediumship. The great records of the
past, as a profound example, containing teachings that could have changed the consciousness
of the world, seem for the most part to have been swept into the vastness of
obscurity; many people know very little about the actual subject of
Spiritualism and Physical Mediumship.
Speaking of which, I have
researched, and studied the subject of Spiritualism and Physical Mediumship up
to this point, for twenty-one years and have lectured both in America and
England. My library of rare books, gathered over many, many years, numbers more
than four hundred. Along with numerous published articles, I am the author of
"The French Revelation," a four hundred page book involving the seance records
of the American voice medium, Emily S. French.(1831-1912) I was one of the
principal researchers and American contact for the late Noah's Ark Society and
have sat with Stewart Alexander in his home circle and in Cardiff, and have
seen Gordon Smith demonstrate, My wife and I have sat with Colin Fry both in
England and America and with David Thompson in England; we have had a private
sitting with George Anderson, and have seen John Edwards and James van Praagh
demonstrating in Rochester and Lily Dale, New York. Warren Caylor can now be added to this
list. My wife, besides having sat with the mediums
mentioned above with the exception of Mr. Alexander and Mr. Smith, while a
resident of Seattle from 1991 to 1995, had the fortunate opportunity to sit
with the highly developed physical medium Rev. D. La Baron more than one
hundred times in his church. The
phenomena was trumpet, independent voice and fully formed materialized spirits
in their own etheric light. Rev. La Baron had the supreme opportunity to sit
for development with Ethel Post Parish, one of the greatest American
materialization mediums and the director of the world famous Spiritualist camp,
Silver Belle, in Euphrata, PA. Mrs. Parish's
name is one of those that is synonymous with Spiritualism itself.
Our intentions with Mr. Caylor
who, for all intensive purposes, was a stranger to us, was to help him get
acquainted with our house and surroundings first, then get to the business of
regular sittings so we could engage the spirits and see where that would lead.
We had no intention of overdoing the situation or oversaturating his system.
The surroundings here alone, and the amenities thereof, were extremely
conducive to health, and our circle has been sitting without fail every week
with the same members for more than ten years. Whatever happens, we will always
be sitting, meditating and developing; it is part of the fabric of our very
existence and system of beliefs and we put no time limit on this. I had read all the available seance reports
concerning Mr. Caylor and was quite aware of some of the controversies
surrounding him. This is nothing new as
far as mediums in the public eye, especially mediums for physical phenomena.
They are all at one time or another either accused, attacked or questioned,
sometimes all the above. Accusations, etc., though, do not prove fraud, but I
am a firm 100% believer in the right to question, if it is driven by honesty,
respect and intelligence. It is the right of everyone, and should never be
discouraged on any level. We, as a
circle, were not looking to prove Mr. Caylor as a fraud; we believed otherwise,
and treated the whole experience in that light. We had seen enough in Toronto
to convince ourselves that his mediumship was worth a closer look. Our sole
intention and mission was to make contact with the cabinet spirits or operators
and then gravitate, if possible, towards contact with loved ones and personal guides. We were looking for plain, pure evidence. On
numerous occasions, I engaged Mr. Caylor in discussions about development and
how, based on what I had researched, I understood it to be a never ending
process. Every human being, medium or otherwise, on whatever plane, every
aspect of life that is, is progressing, though it depends on many factors.
Within the embrace of our home circle it was also safe to reason that we might
aid him in furthering his development and, acting as a battery, that he might aid
us in our development. We were all in agreement on these matters and all on
board. When Mr. Caylor arrived, he was physically and emotionally a wreck and
my wife, who is a practicing Acupuncturist, took his pulse and ascertained that
he had a serious infection and stated that it was, in her opinion, his teeth,
which it was. As welcoming gifts to him we arranged for him to have
expensive dental surgery; as my personal guest he had a nine week Tai
Chi(Martial Arts) session which I teach, massage therapy from our other circle
member and organic, wholesome food everyday. Since his visit was near many
holidays, he also experienced first hand, an American Halloween in full dress,
Thanksgiving and Christmas by the fireside at my parents home with many gifts
bestowed upon him, and to top it off, a once in a lifetime chance to receive a
healing direct from Tibetan monks who we hosted at our house for an entire day.
Not a bad situation for a medium's body, mind and spirit.
Seances in Toronto
When we had attended the
seances in Toronto, two in number, attended by approximately 30-40 people,
after Mr. Caylor was cable-tied at the wrists to his chair and had his legs
roped and mouth gagged and then hooded-looking like he was about to be
executed- the majority of the sessions were mostly a cacophony of physical 'phenomena' consisting of various toys and devices, trumpets, etc. set about in
front of the cabinet being manipulated by the cabinet spirits, especially "Tom"
who, garish like, delighted in these pranks, i.e., pulling off peoples socks,
and tapping their heads with the trumpets before throwing them down. The other
cabinet spirits names were 'Yellow Feather' and 'Rachel.' They engaged the audience and their demeanor
was friendly and sweet. Throughout the seance, the cabinet attendant raised and
lowered the white light and also the music.
Figures, one at a time and very faintly, could be seen at certain times 'hobbling' in the strangest fashion across the floor and also the luminous
plaque was used to show the spirits fingers.
An inordinate amount of time it seemed was spent by the spirits on both
evenings trying to prove to the audience that they were actually there but,
bewilderingly enough, this was all done within the embrace of the fact that
with the sole exception of my wife on the first night, not one person, as far
as we could surmise had on either evening a personal message directly from
someone they knew and positively recognized.
The message to my wife, at the very end of the first seance we attended,
is what prompted us to invite Mr. Caylor to our home. It needed further
examination because at the seance, the spirit message was abruptly ended before
it could complete itself and we were determined to see it through if we
could. Although astounding in its import
at the time as it dealt with development of my wife's gifts and delivered by
spirits whose names she recognized at that time, it was frustrating in the
extreme that the spirit was seemingly, not allowed, for whatever reasons, to
complete the message and the seance was called to an end. We met Mr. Caylor
afterwards and found him to be a very pleasant chap, and very likeable. To be
truthful, the superficial phenomena we witnessed did not interest us at that
time, but were it not for that one incomplete message delivered to my wife, we
would not have, with all due respect, invited Mr. Caylor to our home to pursue
anything further. The combination of
that message along with the possibility of Mr. Caylor being here at the
homestead for further sittings was a worthwhile idea to pursue. The second
seance we attended in Toronto had, to our surprise, nothing evidential to
follow up the previous seance we attended.
This was mystifying, but we went on with our plans.
Sittings & Observations
In the Home Circle at Our Home
Since we entered these
experiences with complete and total trust on every level and, that these
meetings were not venues, as such, or demonstrations on Mr. Caylor's part, we
informed him that we did not require that he be cable-tied, or gagged or any of
the various methods of pinioning be employed. We were in search of evidence and
the evidence-plain and simple- would speak for itself. To our thinking, there
was no 'in-between' area with these matters.
Regarding the lack of control regarding Mr. Caylor, I realize that my
respected contemporaries who have put their time in this field may have some
pause with this. I acknowledge this and respect it completely but my reasoning
was as follows. No one, invited at our expense to our private home to stay for
an extended period, sitting within the close confines of our home circle and
the ensuing conditions could, or would be so stupid or arrogant as to attempt
fraud or trickery on any level. It was too inconceivable. Cable-tying is
necessary it seems for public demonstrations where there are, at any given
time, inexperienced strangers to spiritual matters or promiscuous audiences,
per say, seeking physical phenomena, etc., and skeptics, of which there are
legions. Mr. Caylor was granted the full
benefit of the doubt.
From the start, the cabinet
spirits came and the physical phenomena began, usually with the trumpets, which
were our own, lighted with luminous tabs, raising up and knocking about. Yellow Feather, Rachel, and Tom came on a
regular basis and Tom usually delighted in taking the trumpets apart-until I
eventually duct-taped them together.
Also, our blankets, which we usually had draped over our legs, were
pulled off on occasion and our socks were, at times, pulled off and thrown
about. One time he took one of our circle members socks and somehow poured
water on them. This was during the Winter, and we usually pre-heated the seance
room beforehand so we could shut off the electric heater during the seance. Our reasoning was that the less amount of
electricity "moving" the better, but it did not help the sitter in this
instance. This was not something that was amusing or interesting to us for very
long, and we told Tom he had to curtail that prank if he would. He also, on the first night we sat, went over
to our CD player and grabbed the antenna-pulled it out- and bent it over to the
point that it broke off afterwards. This was an expensive portable machine. It
was very difficult to not be angry with this childish, frivolous act of destruction. In light of this he, at times, would take the
luminous tabs from the trumpets and situate them on his 'face' and walk
around showing us. This was amusing the first time but after a while we
naturally wondered where all this was going. Giving it the benefit of the
doubt, we surmised that the spirit chemists might, in some way, be working the
energy of the room in the hopes of furthering advancement and development and
Toms antics were more or less a warm-up.
I trust that the readers of
this work will understand that we, as sitters, were trying to approach this
opportunity as an on-going experiment with a physical medium in residence, and
our underlying aim was to make contact, over time, with our loved ones. We tried to remain calm with the childishness
of Tom, but we were perplexed with the fact that the other cabinet spirits were
allowing this to take place at times, for the majority of the sessions. The
pranks only seemed to increase, with our chairs being grabbed and twisted
around, large pieces of chalk from the blackboard mounted on the wall being
broken in half and thrown around and to top it off, a small wooden
trumpet-given to me by Stewart Alexander that I treasure, thrown across the
room, the rim of which hit one of our sitters squarely in the middle of the
forehead making a deep, red scratch which mildly bled. Afterwards we expressed to Mr. Caylor that
these antics with Tom were going to have to end and we, in good faith as he
knew, were sitting for evidence, not antics. These sittings were important and
time was fleeting. He was upset with Tom, agreed with us completely, and said
that we should tell him to stop. We
allowed Toms antics to go on, for almost three weeks before this. We had had
enough.
The next seance we told
Tom, in the most calm but firm way we could express, that we were not
interested in any more pranks, etc., and we wanted him to try instead to
utilize his energy in a more conducive manner. "Would he," we asked him, please try to make contact with any spirits
friends of ours that might be there in the hopes that we might have a
conversation with them, or perhaps one of our guides or teachers, etc. He became stoic, then quiet ,then said he
was leaving. It was obvious that we angered him by speaking the truth of our
intentions. We knew from this very moment, that this was going to be a turning
point in this entire experience. We attempted to level the playing field in a
mature, inquiring manner and Tom, "spoiled child" like, stormed off because of
it.
At the next series of seances, Yellow
Feather and Rachel came on a regular basis and we were able to get to know them
quite well. Yellow Feather startled us
one evening by asking us about 'venues' for his medium. Shortly after this,
the mediums grandfather, as he referred to himself, came in and inquired about
venues also. Up to this point, we had
been sitting for quite some time and although there were certain spirits who
were brought by the cabinet spirits to speak, or attempted to speak on their
own, either independently or by trumpet, we tried to ascertain as best we could
who they were, but we recognized none of them.
One evening, my wife addressed Yellow Feather concerning the issue of
these 'venues' that were mentioned. It
was a bit perplexing, she stated, that venues would be mentioned at this point,
when the phenomena was mostly of a superficial nature, with no personal
messages and messages are precisely what people are searching for, direct
connections with loved one's. The spirit Tom and his antics were also of grave
concern. Yellow Feather, when we stated
to him that Tom was not to be involved if we arranged any private or public
sittings said 'the issue had been taken care of'.
To digress from that issue for a
moment, an important example of certain manifestations I want to mention may
prove interesting to the readers and perhaps my learned contemporaries in the
field. We visited the city of Ithaca,
New York, a week after Mr. Caylor arrived.
Situated on a hill, in the outskirts of the city is a large, beautiful
obelisk with an iron dedication plaque on it inscribed to Red Jacket, leader of
the Wolf Clan of the Seneca Indians and the guide, I may add, of the medium
Emily S. French. I knew of Red Jacket,
from writing my book, as well as I know myself. The very next night a 'Native
American ' sounding Indian came in to the circle and said he was Red Jacket. He
was extremely faint sounding and he came and just as suddenly, went away. I had
no chance to speak and he never returned. Additionally, a voice came in one
night and said he was 'Harry' and addressed one of our sitters who said her
uncle was named Harry. There was no
evidence given beyond the name to substantiate who it was. With me, the line is
drawn with matters this deeply personal. If this was truly Red Jacket for instance, now
was the time to connect with me and prove it.
Things of vast importance
needed to be discussed, etc. It went nowhere. I will not say that these
spirits, both Red Jacket and Harry were not who they said they were but they
did not prove it. Add to this the fact
that Mr. Caylor had stood at the foot of the Red Jacket shrine with me earlier
that day (the plaque itself is displayed right now (Feb.09) on Mr. Caylor's
web-page) and, we were told later by our sitter, that he, Mr. Caylor, may have
seen the name 'Harry ' on her calendar where it was written, along with his
birth date, when Mr. Caylor visited her house twice, for an entire day. Can information assimilated by the
subconscious mind of the medium manifest later through a spirit at a
seance? Apparently so. It does not prove
fraud, as such, but it substantiates a worthwhile theory. In searching for a
common ground with these matters, if a spirit whose name had been previously
heard by the medium then manifests later using that very name and yet supplies
no evidence to support this, how can it be accepted as proof of survival by any
logical mind? Any spirit simply
referring to themselves by a certain name does not prove that it is that spirit
speaking. It is a signpost of astral level or earthbound activity when a spirit
manifests and gives their name, especially one of notoriety or importance and
then retires or disappears before anyone has a legitimate chance of questioning
or having an exchange with them. Many spirits, although not evil in nature, are
very capable of being imposters. It is a form of adventure for them to be able
to be near the earth-plane again. Undeveloped and unaware of their own ability
to progress, they relish the idea of being someone else. It allows them to live again within this three dimensional
vibration. If, for instance, a spirit is questioned, and then they do not
return or seem curiously confused for no
reason, in most cases you will have your answer to the astral-entity question. Unfortunately, most seance participants do
not seem to question anything or, better yet, are even allowed to. I should add
that when I mentioned to Mr. Caylor that if there was ever a possibility of him
having heard any name or any form of information beforehand and then that
information was given by him, either clairvoyantly, in the seance or otherwise,
it could not be accepted as complete evidence. This very experience happened on
a few occasions and when I informed him that he could have known the information
beforehand, he seemed disturbed by this, and not very accepting of this vital
perspective of psychic science. One of the statements he mentioned during his
reaction was 'the conspiracy theory again'
which I thought was puerile and absurdly defensive. Knowing who I was, I
was surprised at his reaction. I was
approaching this entire venture as scientifically as I could. Did he actually
expect me to be otherwise?
With the advent of the spirit Tom
gone, the seances seemed to take on a different energy altogether. Yellow
Feather seemed more determined and coordinated in his experiments with spirit
light. We as a circle felt that we
might be getting somewhere however large or small the advancement, i.e., the
complete halting of the constant siege of antics and childish play, and
superficial phenomena with actual mediumistic progress. It had been stated to
us by the medium that he wanted to develop-along with the spirit operators-full
materializations in spirit light. Well, that was precisely what we as a circle,
as far as his development, were attempting to do. We were, as I earlier stated,
approaching it from a body, mind and spirit experience, the total package.
After a few weeks more, Yellow Feather
started to 'walk out' from the cabinet holding in the palm of his hand, a small spirit
light. 'Stomps' on the floor, or
ectoplasmic thrusts as a better term, were a precursor to Yellow Feather coming
out to experiment, etc. Music, I might add, was always playing. We adjusted the volume as requested by the
spirits. The various voices that would
manifest at any given time, especially through the trumpet, or behind the
curtain, were not individuals we previously knew in this life. There were guides, such as 'Standing with
Bear,' and 'Silver Hand.' They
manifested once and never returned. There was also a stentorian voiced man, who
they said was 'Luther.' There was the constant emotional ebb and flow of the
tide with the manifestations happening and then the sinking feeling with their
sudden disappearance'. Over and over again. It was difficult to solidify a
concept or theory. We never doubted that 'phenomena' was happening.
I want to state once again that the
message given by a spirit that my wife received towards the end of the seance
we had attended the previous year with Mr. Caylor in Toronto was the underlying
reason we had invited him here and the cabinet spirits, while here, never
instigated this spirit manifesting to my wife until I asked them to do so. This was highly perplexing, considering the
nature of what we had done to facilitate their medium coming here and for what
reason. This spirit, when he came, was very engaging and encouraging on more
than one occasion but, in the long run, my wife's hopes involving these
important personal matters underlying this
entire adventure, I am sorry to say, did not come to fruition. Perhaps they
will sometime. It makes one think, believe me. Our introspection generated from
this one aspect will stay with us for a long time. My wife's mediumship was
confirmed in an extraordinary way with Rev. LaBaron in Seattle years before and
then when we received a secondary confirmation during the Caylor seance in
Toronto, we naturally assumed that this was cause for investigation. A physical
medium taking part in a development seance as a sitter can, at times instigate what is called the
'spill over' effect whereby other people's development can be advanced. (See
Towards the Stars, or Wisdom of the God's by Dennis Bradley who developed
Direct Voice by the spill over effect of George Valiantine.) The reality of
this is a fact of Psychic Science. My
wife and I both took turns sitting in the cabinet and eventually physical
phenomena began to happen. We were always hopeful and at first, naturally
excited but I myself was extremely suspicious because the phenomena resembled
Mr. Caylor's and had that certain 'ring' of coincidence. The spirits Rachel and Yellow Feather, when I
inquired about it and stated its importance to us on a deeply personal level,
swore to us on their word over and over again that Mr. Caylor had nothing to do
with the phenomena. We had been sitting for many years before the arrival of
Mr.Caylor, and determined to sit for many years still whether he was here or
not. It was not the 'be all to end all' of our lives that Mr. Caylor was here.
I full well know of the lives of many past mediums who sat for far, far longer
than we had been sitting to achieve results. When Mr. Caylor left, the
phenomena abruptly stopped and this was after the positive guarantee of Yellow
Feather that if we sat right after his medium left, it would not
alter to any degree the phenomena we had developed. We did not expect this, but this is precisely what he said. Combined with no
personal messages in twenty five sittings with Mr. Caylor, and now no
continuing phenomena after he had left, we decided that the 'roller coaster '
aspect of the experience we no longer wanted or required in our lives; we would
simply resume our sittings on our own as we always did. Mr. Caylor interpreted
this as jealously and anger when he was not invited back. I will leave this to
the readers to surmise what they will.
Seen
in the Red Light
On certain evenings, Yellow Feather
and previous to his exiting the scene, Tom, would go over to our CD player and
work the dials to find a song they wanted. This was done in the total dark with
the sole exception of the luminous tabs faintly shining on the trumpets. One night, while this CD manipulation was
taking place by Yellow Feather, speaking to us as he was doing so, he
mistakenly hit the bass woofer switch on the lower part of the machine and
this, when activated, turns on a 'dim' but in the context of a dark room,
rather 'bright' red light. My wife, who
sits by the CD player then saw, as clear as day, Mr. Caylor standing there,
about a foot from the CD player, his full body with his back to her, same
clothes, red hair, same pants, everything. He then 'shuffled' almost
fast-motion like, with small thumping steps, back into the cabinet. We had seen this mysterious, 'shuffling' the
previous year in Toronto by the spirits that had come out of the cabinet. The thumping sound of walking we had
previously heard numerous times during many seances we had here.
My wife, who is no fool for anyone,
was extremely concerned over this and later that evening spoke to Mr. Caylor
about this mysteriously disturbing circumstance. He seemed uninterested in hearing about it
and would only say, "don't know." We
also were concerned over the fact that Yellow Feather's hands, when touching or
shaking ours, felt like Mr. Caylor's, fleshy, rough and large. With us, these
were not matters to simply brush aside.
As far as my wife seeing Mr. Caylor in the sEance room, it certified
that he was able to 'navigate' on his own in the room however the method. The
dexterity employed in stygian darkness is extremely mystifying from a
scientific standpoint. We were, I want to state again, in search of evidence,
and thus far there was none. We still
did not want to cable-tie Mr. Caylor because we felt that it would enable, once again, the superficial phenomena
to start happening. You see, for all intensive purposes, we stood firm in our
convictions, proof is proof. I told Mr. Caylor-giving him the full
benefit of the doubt- that either he was most likely in trance and the spirits
were using his body, or in the most extreme situation, it was a simulacrum of
his actual self, a duplicate. I said also, as we had agreed to be truthful with
everything, that if I thought for an instant that it was him pretending to be a
spirit, or any form of deceit, barring nothing, he would be packing his bags
and be headed back to England that day and I would, in a most aggressive and
strenuous manner, broadcast it across the entire landscape of psychic research.
We seemed to have an understanding.
As time moved on, the spirits were
starting to experiment more with the ectoplasm and spirit light. From the
start, we had situated our chairs about three to four feet from the
cabinet. We were, in due course, allowed
to pull back the cabinet curtains and see Mr. Caylor sitting there with
ectoplasm covering his entire torso and legs. The bluish spirit light seemed to
emanate from underneath it. We, meaning
the circle and spirits, experimented with the use of the ectoplasm/light for
two to three weeks, and also the trumpets, placed inside one another,
telescopic-wise, were used as a light-funnel to shine all around the room and
on the floor. We assumed, always, that due to the harmonious conditions of our
circle, that the spirit operators were utilizing the energies for development
and this would lead us to our guides and that would lead us to understanding
our own development, etc., everything logically hand in hand.
Founded in 1899, the centre offers an opportunity to hear the teaching of spirit and to witness the communication of those who have gone before into the spirit world. If you wish to take part in self development and unfold you natural spiritual gifts, then this is a centre to visit.
With an all year round time table of events there is always something there to tempt those at all stages of development.
The Centre, as part of its educational work, provides a series of workshops, with leading speakers and mediums. For a programme of these events, which is available from the secretary, just press the e-mail lnk to send an e-mail to request one, or visit their website, again by pressing the link below.
e-mail: yorkspiritscentre@msn.com
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