A PRIVATE HOME CIRCLE by
Maurice Barbanell
When I come to describe the third home circle I
visited, I must refrain from giving the mediums name, or any indication of
where he and his wife live, except to say that it is in the Home Counties. The
nature of his occupation makes it essential for him to shun publicity. Not only
is this man a remarkable medium for direct voice and materialisation, but he is
also one of the most brilliant clairvoyants I have met in my long experience.
Among the spirit communicators were people I had known very well and so was
able to identify their voices and to understand their references which were
sometimes of a private nature. Thus I clearly identified the voice of Harry
Boddington, a veteran Spiritualist pioneer, who had passed on less than a year
earlier.
Similarly I recognised the tones of Jack Webber who in his day had been an
outstanding physical medium. And there was a communication from a former member
of my staff who gave her full name. Another dramatic happening was the return
of a man who had recently committed suicide. He too gave his full name.
Boddingtons was a short but evidential communication. In a clear voice,
through the luminous trumpet poised in mid-air, he greeted me and recalled the
comment I made when last we met. This was that he was looking younger despite
his advancing age. I had jokingly referred to him as Spiritualisms Peter
Pan. An indication of the wonders of spirit life was indicated by his
statement, I thought I knew everything. . . He followed by telling how much
he was learning. This, mark you, came from a man who had devoted over half a
century to spreading our truths and whose book, The University of
Spiritualism, is rightly regarded as a classic dealing with every phase of
this subject.
The séance began with one of the most remarkable demonstrations of ectoplasm I
have ever seen. The third member of the circle is an electrician. Some time
earlier, he had wondered what the effect of introducing an ultra-violet lamp
into the séance room would be. They experimented, with heartening results.
It enabled me to see that two kinds of ectoplasm are used, one coloured white
and the other brown. The white strip streamed from the mediums nose and the
brown strip from one ear - later there were
two brown strips, one from each ear. Yet when the red lamp was switched on,
only one colour, a whitish hue, was visible in all the strips. The brown
ectoplasm, I was told, was of a lower vibration. It was composed out of the
material in the room, furnishings, carpets, curtains, etc. The white ectoplasm
came
from the mediums body.
The entranced medium was brought round the circle to each member in turn. We
clearly saw the ectoplasm streaming from his nostrils and were invited to
examine and handle it. It was bone dry and felt like fine cloth. Later we were
allowed to see it form a rod, attached to the trumpet, to enable it to move.
In some photographs, taken with a white flashlight, during the years, spirit
faces are seen to have been built up in this ectoplasm. There are two pictures
of levitation, one showing a stool off the ground, and the other a chair almost
touching the ceiling.
The séance that night was perfectly organised. The mediums wife played the
piano throughout to produce the vibrations necessary for the spirit voices. She
stopped only when there was a communication. The guide in charge of this part
of the séance is Robbie, a sixteen-year-old relative of the mediums wife.
Robbie always spoke in between each communicator, indicated who was coming and
for whom the communication was intended. Occasionally, when the communication
had ended he added evidential details.
A suicide addressed two friends of mine. This communicator, I learned, is the
husband of their daily help. With a marked Cockney dialect, he thanked them for
their help, saying that, as a result, I can see the light. Expressing regrets
for all the trouble he had caused, he said: I was silly. . . I should not have
done it.
Robbie indicated that the next spirit speaker, who was named, a little lady -
an accurate description - was for my wife. She has not been over here very
long, he said. Her passing was caused by a very bad internal condition. This
was true - it was cancer.
Because it was her first return in the direct voice - I believe it is
equivalent to dying all over again - it obviously entailed a great effort. She
was almost overcome with emotion. My two friends to whom the suicide returned -
they are frequent sitters - say they clearly heard her repeat her Christian
name, but my wife and I missed that and heard only the surname, an unusual one.
She did not stay very long. She gave a message for a member of her family, whom
she named, and expressed gratitude for the help given her.
There were short but clear communications from some guides of the sitters. Then
came Jack Webber - he had been a famous physical medium, who announced himself,
by name. It is many years since I sat in his séances. He gave me two messages
for his great friend, Harry Edwards, the celebrated spirit healer, who
originally sponsored his mediumship when he came to London.
Jack mentioned that his own guide, Rueben, whose singing was always a joy,
sometimes came to these séances. He followed Webber and sang, in his musical
voice, one verse of Lead Kindly Light.
Finally the trumpet moved over to the mediums wife at the piano. It was
obviously an experienced communicator, who was able to whisper into the
recipients ear, so that others could not hear, all she
wanted to say. Later she told me it was her mother.
I was intrigued, during the séance, by the supernormal behaviour of a luminous
tambourine. This, suspended in mid-air, whirled rapidly round and round.
Another striking feature was the playing, by an invisible hand, of a luminous
miniature xylophone in tune with our hymn-singing.
I asked the medium to tell me how he discovered his psychic gifts. It all began
just under a score of years earlier when at 9 p.m., one September night, he saw
what he thought was a radiantly white-dressed figure of a nurse walking in the
rain. She approached him as he was cycling home. After she had passed him he
was struck by her supernormal appearance. He turned round to overtake her - but
she had vanished.
Determined to solve the mystery, he went to a Spiritualist church where they
were having an open circle. The visiting medium told him about his own latent
psychic gifts. He determined to develop them, with the wonderful results that I
had seen.
As an example of this mediums remarkable clairvoyance I quote an incident
which happened when he and his wife visited my London flat. He turned to one of
my friends and asked, Is there a Vale Court not far away in Maida Vale? Told
the answer was yes, he said there was a spirit communicator giving the name
Nathaniel Nathan. With him there was somebody named Phillips. These names were
known only to my friend and the address was correct. When he made inquiries, he
discovered that Nathaniel Nathan had passed on only three weeks earlier.
Phillips was a relative.
One of the members of my own home circle is Vernon Moore, a former Methodist
missionary and now a business executive in a leading industrial company. He has
frequently attended this mediums séances.
On more than one occasion he has been asked by an unknown communicator to
comfort a loved one left behind. Whenever this has happened the communicator
has not only given the full name but the complete address where his close
relative was to be found.
Vernon was also involved in another remarkable happening. At one of this
mediums séances a strong voice announced through the trumpet that his name was
Roderick McDonald. He said that he was interested in
some work that Vernon was doing. The name was unknown to my friend, so he asked
for more information.
The communicator said that he had been a missionary and a doctor of medicine
whose earthly career had ended some 46 years earlier by being murdered in
Canton, China. Vernon experienced some difficulty in trying to confirm these
statements. Finally he contacted the missionary society and the relatives
mentioned by the communicator.
The society kindly offered to search through the records for the early part of
the century. The result was corroboration that Roderick McDonald was a
missionary in China. He had been a doctor of medicine and was murdered in
Canton. The only variation was a difference of a year in the date of his
passing.
As
first published by Zerdini on the website: http://www.spiritualistchatroom.forumotion.com/