The Voice Box

 When Lillian Bailey went for a sitting with William Hope, the psychic photographer she surprised both Hope and herself with a sudden acquisition of the gift of clairaudience. Instead of Hope giving her evidence of survival, she was able to give evidence to Hope!

This so intrigued Hope that he took her under his wing and invited her to join his home circle. At her first sitting she was in trance for nearly an hour.

But she was afraid, in her ignorance, that if she encouraged the trance condition she might go into trance suddenly in the street. She thought she might recover her normal consciousness in an asylum!

She could not lose her interest in Spiritualism, however, and had frequent sittings with Hope, both at his house and at her own—they both lived at Crewe.

She attended sometimes a Spiritualist church in Crewe and then one day she went to a sitting with Helen Duncan, the materialisation medium.

It was this sitting with Mrs. Duncan that really started Mrs. Bailey off on her psychic career. 
She originally went to Hope in the expectation of getting a psychic extra of her mother, who had passed on shortly before. She had read Sir Oliver Lodge’s book. Raymond,” and argued logically that if Lodge could get a spirit message from his son she could get a communication from her mother.

But she did not get a picture of her mother. On her photograph there appeared an extra of a young man with a mark over one eye and he was unknown to her or anyone to whom she showed the picture.

At the Helen Duncan séance, there materialised a young officer, killed in the war, whom she recognised as the original of the psychic picture. It was he, too, who had entranced her at Hope’s circle.

This young man told Mrs. Bailey he wanted to use her as his medium and pleaded with her to take up psychic work. He had important work to do, he said, and he “could only do it if she would co-operate with him and use her mediumistic gifts. At last, she promised to do so. It is this young officer who Mrs. Bailey regards as her chief guide and during the six or seven years she has been practising her mediumship he has proved Survival to hundreds of sitters.

The medium tells an interesting story of how he proved his identity to her. He gave his name as William Hedley Wootton, said he was an Army captain, killed in the war, declared his mother was still on earth and gave her address in America.

Mrs. Bailey was able to confirm Wootton’s story from the War Office records. Wootton was an ex-Grenadier Guards captain who was shot in the eye and killed instantly at Ypres in 1914.

Then she wrote to his mother to check the rest of the facts. The address was correct, for there was a reply from his mother to the effect that she liked to think of her son dying courageously for his country. She was sure he would not be interested in Spiritualism!

Another very good story this medium tells is how another guide, a little Indian girl, proved to her sceptical husband that she was a real person and not a creation of the medium’s mind.

The child materialised at one of Mrs. Duncan’s séances, but still the medium’s husband would not accept her. She challenged him to name any test that would prove to him she had a separate existence from his wife.

“I shall be in London in a few days’ time,” he said. “Take notice of what I do at seven o’clock that evening, and then tell me afterwards what it was.”

The guide accepted the test.

When Bailey was in London, he was invited by a friend to go to his home for dinner. He arrived shortly before seven o’clock, just as his friend’s child was going to bed. He did not know the name of the child—she was called “Baby” by the family.

The child kissed her father “Goodnight” and then, just as the clock struck seven came over to Bailey and placed her doll in his hands. The striking of the clock reminded Bailey of the spirit test.

“What did I do at seven o’clock that night?” he asked the guide, later.

“You were nursing Barbara’s doll,” was the reply.

“Who is Barbara?”

“That is the name of the little girl where you went for dinner,” the guide said.

This turned out to be a much better test than Bailey had intended, for he did not know the name of the child.

He wrote to his friend in London, asking the name of his daughter, and the friend replied, “Barbara.”

Mrs. Bailey is known for her trance work and her clairaudience - she uses trance for private sittings and clairaudience for platform work - but she has known many other phases of psychic phenomena.

Mrs. Bailey had some very interesting experiments with Hope during the time that she was undecided about using her mediumship. Hope used to call on her several times a week for about three months.

She would buy her own plates and then, after she and Hope had held them, she would watch them developed. Frequently there were on the plates written messages from the spirit world.

Some of these messages outlined exactly the course her mediumship would take, even to the fact that she would eventually work at the British College of Psychic Science—which is now incorporated in the International Institute for Psychic Investigation. It was while she was working at the Institute that Psychic News interviewed her.

Once Hope asked her to try an experiment by writing a question on a piece of paper and making sure that he could not see what had been written. Then he developed a photographic plate. On the plate was an exact reproduction of the question she had asked—and an answer to it from the spirit world.

“I am sorry I cannot give you a more interesting story” she apologised to the Psychic News reporter. She thinks that stories about herself are not very important. “It is the work that matters,” she says. “All the credit belongs to those on the Other Side, I can do nothing but keep the channel clear.”

Wootton, the guide, is extremely humble, too. He will never accept thanks and when a sitter says “marvellous” evidence has been given, he replies, “It is not marvellous; it is natural.”

As published by Zerdini on http://spiritualistchatroom.forumotion.com