My Experience With Leslie Flint - by Alan Crossley.
Prior to moving to Cardiff,
South Wales, I had the opportunity to attend a mass public demonstration of the
independent direct voice, held at the Kingsway Hall, London. Demonstrating this
type of phenomena before a large gathering in a public hail was completely new
and was somewhat in the nature of an experiment.
Previously, the direct
voice had always been held in private circumstances with usually only a dozen
or so people present. The idea on this occasion was to construct a soundproof
and lightproof cabinet, placed in full view of the audience. Instead of the
s�ance being held in total darkness, normally essential in the case of direct
voice, the house lights would remain on. The medium would then be isolated in
the cabinet during the meeting.
Immediately outside and in
front of the cabinet, three microphones were placed to pick up the voices
emanating from within the soundproof wall of the cabinet. The sound system was
arranged, checked and tested by qualified technicians on the staff of the
Kingsway Hall. I understood that during testing of the equipment, they had
turned the amplifier up to its capacity and with a colleague inside the
cabinet, shouting at the top of his voice, failed to pick up hardly a
sound.
The medium for this
demonstration was Mr. Leslie Flint, a specialist in direct voice phenomena. The
hall was packed to capacity for this first ever public demonstration. Leslie
entered the cabinet, where he would remain for about the next two hours. He
once told me that he suffered from claustrophobia and I can imagine that he
must have found the confined space something of an ordeal.
The Chairman, the Rev. C.
Drayton Thomas was a man of considerable experience in physical mediumship. He
gave a short talk on the modus operandi then handed the meeting, as he put it,
�over to the spirit world.�
There was a hushed and
expectant silence throughout the hail waiting for the first sign of sound
through the loudspeakers.
Suddenly, the first voice broke through the silence. �Cor, what a lot of
people.� The voice was that of �Mickey,� Leslie Flint�s spirit guide.
Mickey was a London cockney
newspaper boy when on earth and acted as a kind of master of ceremonies by
introducing the various spirits wishing to communicate. It was obvious that
Mickey was something of a comedian, for he had the audience in raptures, his
humorous and down-to-earth chatter setting the scene for the first
communicator.
�There is a lady here who
wishes to speak to you all. She says her name is EllenTerry.� A gasp of
excitement rose from the audience as a powerful voice, cultured in tone,
proceeded to give a discourse about the fear of death and the philosophy of
survival. My mother had known Ellen Terry, she was a well known actress. As the
voice began to speak, my mother turned to me and said �I knew that voice well,
it belongs only to Ellen Terry, it�s uncanny.�
Several others communicated
and appeared to be identified by people in the hail. The spontaneous reaction
to the spirit communicators was evident by all those receiving the voice
messages.
However, the drama of the
evening came toward the end of the s�ance. Mickey had been busy bringing through
one person after another, enjoying the odd joke with certain members of the
audience. Then he became very serious. �1 have someone here now who has only
been on our side of life for a few hours. He is telling me that he is the
policeman who was shot last night.� Murmurs rippled through the hail.
That same morning, the
national press had reported the murder of a P.C. Edgar, who lived in Finchley,
London. Yet here, one day later, in the Kingsway Hall, he was purporting to
communicate from the spirit world. Mickey continued. �He is asking for someone
named Florrie, you�re up in the gallery somewhere. Will you please speak to
him, it will help him get through to you.�
A shout from the gallery was immediate. �I�m Florrie, I�m his sister.�
Only a heavy breathing at
first could be heard from the loudspeakers, then a few words, gasped out in
desperation. The voice was quite weak and one had to listen intently as the
voice attempted to convey a message to his sister.
�The man they are looking
for is in a Hastings boarding house, the gun is hidden under the mattress in
his room.� The policeman had great difficulty in sustaining communication and
the voice faded completely. Mickey intervened to explain that a spirit which
had passed only a few hours before, especially in these circumstances, needed
time to adjust to the new dimension and therefore it was extremely unlikely
they would be able to communicate effectively.
Mickey brought the
proceedings to a close because the �power� had all been used up. He ended by
telling the audience that they were responsible personally for their actions,
but that redemption was open to every soul by their own efforts.
During the singing of a
final hymn, two assistants entered the cabinet to help a very tired Leslie
Flint from his confined space, which he had endured for the past two hours.
The experiment, the first
of its kind, had been a success.
As
published by Zerdini on: http://www.spiritualistchatroom.forumotion.com