mE VOID
*s' Experience in
ic Communications
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VOICES FROM THE VOID
VOICES FROM THE VOID
SIX YEARS' EXPERIENCE IN
AUTOMATIC COMMUNICATIONS
BY
HESTER TRAVERS SMITH
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
PROFESSOR Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S.
NEW YORK
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
68 1 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1919, by
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
AU Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
IN introducing this book to the pubHc, I
should like to say that my deepest thanks
are due to Sir WilHam Barrett, who has helped
and encouraged me in every possible way, and
to whom I largely owe my interest in Psychical
Research.
I also thank the sitters at my circle, who
have always been most patient, friendly, and
helpful ; what I have written is quite as much
a record of their w^ork as my own.
I am grateful to the Rev. Savell Hicks and
Mr. Lennox Robinson, both of whom helped
me by valuable suggestions.
And, lastly, I dedicate "Voices from the
Void" to my friend and fellow-worker
"Dorothy."
CONTENTS
CHAPTEB PAGE
Foreword v
Introduction ix
I. Introductory i
n. The Personality of the Control . . .13
in. The Communicator — Evidence of the Sur-
vival 34
IV. Telepathy and Automatism . . . .65
V. "Prevision" 89
VI. Mediumship and the Mental Sensations
OF THE Medium 104
VII. PSYCHOMETRY THROUGH THE MeDIUM AND
THE Control 118
VIII. Summing up 139
Appendix: Hints to Experimenters at the
ouija-table 158
vu
INTRODUCTION
By Professor Sir W. F. Barrett^ F.R.S.
THE widespread and growing interest in
psychical research has led to the publica-
tion in recent years of many books on this sub-
ject and on the problem of survival after
bodily death. Many of these books are of no
real value, owing to the uncritical habit of
mind of the writers. The present little book
is of a very different order, and it is therefore
with much pleasure I heartily commend it to
the reader. We have here the personal ex-
periences of a gifted psychic or automatist,
who is an educated lady, the eldest daughter
of that distinguished man, the late Professor
Edward Dowden.
X INTRODUCTION
Mrs. Travers Smith has for many years
been a friend of mine, and has given me the
opportunity of being present at numerous sit-
tings since the development of her psychic
power. I can therefore testify to the con-
scientious care, the patience, and the wisdom
which she has show^n throughout the long and
tedious experiments she has conducted, her
only aim being to enlarge our knowledge in
this difficult but important field of inquiry. As
the reader will notice, ]\Irs. Travers Smith is
not a credulous or hasty investigator; on the
contrary, the trend of her mind is healthily
skeptical, and hence the opinions at which she
has arrived cannot be dismissed as the product
of morbid curiosity or the mere will to believe.
The experimental study of automatism
which this book presents will therefore, I am
convinced, be of great interest and value to
the student of abnormal psychology. As the
author states, at the outset of her investiga-
tions she held the view that the phenomena ob-
INTRODUCTION xi
tained were merely due to the emergence of
that part of the personality of the sitters
below the limen or threshold of consciousness.
Our conscious waking self speaks through the
voluntary action of our muscles, whereas our
subconscious or subHminal self reveals itself
through the involuntary or automatic action
of our muscles. Hence in automatic writing,
or spelling messages through the so-called
"ouija board," the simplest explanation is that
which Mrs. Travers Smith at first adopted,
that automatism was merely a method of
studying ourselves: a method by which the
hidden part of our personality came to the
surface, so that incidents we had forgotten, or
impressions made upon us which were too
feeble to excite consciousness, were unex-
pectedly revealed.
Doubtless this explanation covers much of
the ground, but the careful investigator soon
finds it is inadequate, and it becomes necessary
to add to it telepathy from other living minds,
xii INTRODUCTION
and also to assume the existence of higher
faculties in the subliminal than we are aware
of in our ordinary conscious personality. As
Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, one of the most critical
and able students of the whole subject, has re-
marked, "This extension of human faculty in
the subliminal self shows that there is more
of us than we are normally aware of, and sug-
gests that the limitations imposed by our
bodies are temporary limitations." The ex-
periments recorded in this volume certainly re-
veal supernormal faculties, such as clair-
voyance of seeing w^ithout eyes — i.e., the
psychical perception of objects, as, for ex-
ample, when the disarranged letters of the
alphabet were correctly indicated although the
sitters were effectively blindfolded. Further-
more, we are driven to the conclusion that
occasionally telepathy from some unseen intelli-
gence— which purports to be a deceased per-
son— is operative, and directs the messages
received. These conclusions, which have been
INTRODUCTION xiii
reached by many competent investigators, have
been independently arrived at by the author of
this book from her own experiences.
But the most interesting part of the experi-
ments recorded by Mrs. Travers Smith is the
evidence they afford of the origin and nature
of what are termed the "controls" operating
upon the automatist at different sittings. The
word control is usually appHed to the intelli-
gence which acts directly upon the automatist,
and which is often employed as the amanu-
ensis or interpreter of the so-called communi-
cator from the Unseen. Mrs. Sidgw^ck, in her
critical monograph on the psychology of Mrs.
Piper's trance phenomena, considered the con-
trols of Mrs. Piper were nothing more than
a real or imaginary dissociation of the person-
ality of the medium during the trance state.
There is much to support this view, though it
was abandoned by Dr. Hodgson in the later
stages of his prolonged study of Mrs. Piper, in
favor of the spiritistic hypothesis. Hence
xiv INTRODUCTION
the value of Mrs. Travers Smith's study of
these controls as affording fresh evidence of
their origin. As will be seen, they present to
us a collection of what appear to be wholly
different personalities, which retain their dis-
tinctive character throughout. If I may ex-
press an opinion on the matter, it seems to me
more difficult to suppose these coherent, consis-
tent, and varied controls are merely phases of
the personality of Mrs. Travers Smith or some
other automatist, than to accept the conclusion
to which Dr. Hodgson was eventually driven.
In spite of the unquestionable personation of
deceased individuals which is a familiar ex-
perience among spiritualists, so cautious and
critical an investigator as Mrs. Henry Sidg-
wick admits that through Mrs. Piper and other
trustworthy automatists " VeridicaF (truth-
telling) communications are received, some of
which there is good reason to believe come
from the dead." If this be admitted, the origin
of the control as well as of the communicator
INTRODUCTION xvii
hypothesis, I venture to say, as a mere cloak
for our ignorance.
Returning to the different controls described
by Mrs. Travers Smith, I am strongly disposed
to consider many of them as distinct psychic
entities, and not in all cases mere phases of
the personality of the automatist. Doubtless,
in some cases the "controls" are merely the
ephemeral dream creations of the automatist,
and have therefore only a fleeting, and appar-
ent, personality of their own; but in other
cases they appear to be distinct souls, and may
once have lived in another body on earth, or
they may be the products of the evolution of
life in the unseen universe, temporarily pos-
sessing the brain of the automatist.
However, these are mere speculations, and
we must await more evidence before we can
arrive at any definite conclusion, beyond the
need of extreme caution in taking these "per-
sonations" at their face value. The general
reader will turn with greater interest to the
xviii INTRODUCTION
evidence which Mrs. Travers Smith's experi-
ments give of the proof of survival after bodily
death. It is only necessary to point out that
it is imperative, especially in psychical re-
search, to distinguish between the facts nar-
rated and the inferences we may draw from
these facts. There does undoubtedly appear to
be good ground for drawing the inference that
some of the evidence here given strongly sup-
ports the belief in survival. In this awful and
devastating war such evidence comes "as the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
"My son, the world is dark with grief and graves,
So dark that men cry out against the heavens.
Who knows but that the darkness is in man?
The doors of Night may be the gates of Life."
VOICES FROM THE VOID
VOICES FROM THE VOID
CHAPTER I
Introductory
SO many valuable books have been offered
of late to the public on the subject of
psychic phenomena that I feel some apology
should be made by a totally unscientific person
like myself for adding to their number. I have
not even the excuse that I have anything excit-
ing or sensational to tell ; I have never attended
a seance for materiahzation ; I have never seen
a ghost. Nearly all my experiences have come
to me through automatism, and, such as they
are, I venture to bring them into the light on
2 VOICES FROM THE VOID
the chance that they may be interesting to the
student of these matters; I can vouch for the
fact that what I have to tell is the result of
patient research, at private sittings, chiefly in
my own house, and with the help of various
friends, who were as anxious as I to add some-
thing, however small, to the vast mass of evi-
dence which has been accumulated on the sub-
ject of survival after death.
I have great faith in practical experiment —
in fact, I feel sure that those who have actually
taken part in seances or sittings get a view of
psychic phenomena impossible to persons
whose investigations have been merely theo-
retical. Both points of view are of great
value; in many ways the observer is better
fitted to weigh the evidence produced by the
practical worker than is the worker, for the
sense of another personality controlling the
automatist is apt to warp the judgment of the
sitter. Many things are clear and evidential
to the practical experimenter which appear
INTRODUCTORY S
vague to the theoretical student. My reason
for laying the results of my sittings before the
public is that they are genuine as far as they
go; they represent the work of a small circle
of people, all of whom desired to get nearer to
the truth, and approached the subject of
psychical phenomena in a spirit unbiased as
to the source from which such phenomena
arise. What we accomplished may seem small,
but it must be borne in mind by the reader that
no help from any professional medium was
given in any of the sittings for automatism
quoted by me.
Those who are willing to devote some of
their time to the study of what is commonly
called "spiritualism" should bear in mind that
results are slow, uncertain, and cannot be
forced. Indeed, one asks oneself whether time
is well spent seeking for the few grains of gold
one finds in the huge dust-heaps of disappoint-
ment and dullness. The value of these golden
grains seems immense when one has wandered
4 VOICES FROM THE VOID
about in a Hades of dim trivialities and even
absurdities, spending evening after evening re-
ceiving messages from known, or unknown,
persons of a kind which would not do credit to
a very mediocre letter-writer. Yet these com-
munications purport to be what the unknown
control has an ardent desire to get through
from the world of mystery to those still alive!
Then, quite unexpectedly, a few minutes may
atone for the hours of boredom! Many times
I have felt inclined to give up this apparently
hopeless pursuit, elusive and baffling as it is.
I have even persuaded myself that I might ven-
ture to come to a definite conclusion on the sub-
ject, that each experiment made it more obvious
that automatism, at any rate, is the sitter's sub-
liminal self — neither more nor less. This theory
simplifies the whole problem; it sets aside the
most disturbing matter connected with things
psychic, the possibility of an external influ-
ence, and one can start from a firmer basis —
i.e., that we are studying ourselves under ab-
INTRODUCTORY 5
normal conditions, and not holding converse
with the spirits of other human beings, alive or
dead.
I must confess, however, that having w^orked
more or less steadily at automatism for six or
seven years, having started w4th no theory on
the subject, and having been persuaded by
turns that I have found this or that explana-
tion of the phenomena which came under my
notice — I must confess, I repeat, that for some
time past I have been quite clear and decided
on one point — in feeling that the subliminal
self accounts for much and many things, but
not for everything. I am convinced, in fact,
that external influences of some nature work
through us, using our senses, eyes, ears, brains,
etc., their messages, however, being highly
colored by the personalities of their mediums.
I feel sure that hardly any of the communica-
tions I have had are entirely due to subcon-
sciousness. \"\'hat the nature of these ex-
ternal influences may be is another and a most
6 VOICES FROM THE VOID
interesting question, and one still more diffi-
cult to answer. I cannot say I have found any
satisfactory reply to it so far. I am inclined
to think that the communications which reach
us come from different sources. In a few cases
I have felt almost certain that I had spoken to
those I knew who had passed over; they ap-
peared to preserve their earth-memory, and
continued to interest themselves in the mun-
dane affairs of those they loved.
I now pass on to the kind of experiment in
which I personally have had long and interest-
ing experiences. This subject will occupy
much of my little book, so in this chapter I
only explain, for the benefit of my less ex-
perienced readers, the different methods of
communication so far as I know them.
First comes the game called "planchette,"
the apparatus for which can be purchased in
any children's toy-shop in the "games'* depart-
ment. I need hardly describe planchette to
any person who troubles to read a book on
INTRODUCTORy 7
psychical research. I only say here that plan-
chette is the clumsiest, most primitive, and least
satisfactory "autoscope" possible, and I should
recommend anyone who desires to experiment
in this field of research to avoid this particu-
lar method.
Next comes automatic writing and draw-
ing. This mode of communication has pro-
duced most interesting results without doubt,
but there are objections to it. A pencil is held
generally between the first and third fingers of
the hand of the medium ; it touches the paper,
and as a rule, after some preliminary flourishes
and twirls, the pencil begins to write coherent
words and messages. These messages vary ac-
cording to the communicator, and the hand-
writing changes as different personalities ap-
pear. Sometimes the writing is that of a child,
then of an old person, etc. One of my objec-
tions is that the script is generally difficult to
decipher, as (in the nature of things) the
pencil cannot be lifted as in ordinary handwrit-
8 VOICES FROM THE VOID
ing, and the MS. is full of scrawls and hard to
read. This is not my only objection to auto-
matic writing, w^hich, for some unknown rea-
son, leads in certain cases to continual pain in
the arm, an irresistible desire to write, nervous
upset, and consequent physical prostration.
However, without doubt most interesting and
evidential results have been obtained by auto-
matic writing, and my objections to this
method do not hold good in all cases.
As to automatic drawing, this phenomenon
seems very wonderful in the case of persons
possessing no normal faculty as artists. I have
seen automatic drawings executed by persons,
who in their normal state, were without either
artistic taste or training, which would do credit
to an art student of many years' standing.
The third method of obtaining automatic
messages is the one I can speak of most con-
fidently, as almost all my work has been accom-
plished through this "autoscope."
In his work On the Threshold of the Unseen,
INTRODUCTORY 9
Sir William Barrett suggests the term "auto-
scope" for any mechanical means whereby
communication from the unknown may reach
us. The unknown may be merely the medium's
subconscious self; or it may be some super-
normal faculty, such as clairvoyance, possessed
by the medium; or it may be the influence of
some extraneous mind, living or dead, acting
upon the subconsciousness of the medium. The
forked rod used by the dowser or water-finder
is an autosGope, so is planchette, the ouija-
board, etc. Although the last-named may ap-
pear slow and tedious, it becomes rapid in the
hands of an expert sitter. Aloreover, as wdll
be seen directly, the ouija-board we use, and
which I now proceed to describe, has many
advantages.
The ouija-board is a table or board on which
the letters of the alphabet are printed or writ-
ten. The automatisms fingers rest on a small
triangular table or "traveler," the underside
tipped with three pads of felt. This traveler
10 VOICES FROM THE VOID
glides lightly over the board and spells out
messages, darting rapidly from letter to letter.
The best ouija-board, the one I invariably use
myself, is a card-table covered with green
baize, on which the letters of the alphabet, the
numbers from o to 9, and the words "yes" and
"no" are laid, cut out separately on small pieces
of cardboard; over this is placed a sheet of
plate glass, the same size as the table. The
traveler consists of a small triangular piece of
wood, about half an inch thick, shod with three
small pieces of carpet felt and having on top
a piece of soft rubber material on which the
fingers rest. I think experimenters, who try
the ouija-board, will, if they have any psychic
power, soon be amazed at the rapidity with
which the traveler flies from letter to letter.
In our own circle the words come through so
quickly that it is almost impossible to read
them, and it requires an experienced short-
hand-writer to take them down when the
traveler moves at its maximum speed. At the
INTRODUCTORY 11
ouija-board the co-operation of two autom-
atists seems best; three seems to create
confusion.
Automatism, practiced with patience and
perseverance by any of the methods I have
mentioned, presents very interesting phe-
nomena. By means of it resuhs of many and
varied kinds may be obtained. During the six
years in which I have sat more or less regularly
at the ouija-board, I have had many interesting
and evidential messages purporting to come
from those who have passed over or those w^ho
were asleep or in a state of trance. I have
found, as I shall show later, that for some un-
explained reason automatism awakes in the
medium supernormal powers w^hich he or she
does not possess in the normal state. Success-
ful experiments in so-called psychometry may
be made in this way, and a faculty for previs-
ion undoubtedly shows itself sometimes. Of
course, it is an open question whether these
powers are merely awakened in the medium, or
n VOICES FROM THE VOID
whether an external influence is at work, as it
professes to be. It is, I think, not advisable
that an experimenter should advance any posi-
tive opinion on this subject. I am quite con-
vinced that he or she is in a supernormal state
when sitting, and consequently is handicapped
in criticising results. j\Iy own impression is
that in most cases results are not by any means
due entirely to the sitters* subconsciousness,
but it is a matter which it is almost impossible
to prove one way or the other.
It is best I should leave my readers to form
their own opinions about the incidents which
follow; but for the sake of convenience, and
to avoid the constant repetition of qualifying
phrases, I shall set down occurrences in the
form in which they came to m^e; that is, I shall
assume that the messages come, as they pur-
port to come, from intelligences outside the
medium's subconsciousness, although this is a
matter in which I still prefer to hold my per-
sonal judgment in suspense.
CHAPTER II
The Personality of the Control
I HAVE headed this chapter 'The Person-
ahty of the Control," and before I proceed
further perhaps it is best that I should define
the terms "control" and "communicator."
By "control" I mean an influence which
associates itself with the medium and his sit-
tings, and which appears to act in many cases
as organizer at the other side. These controls
introduce and fetch communicators, and fre-
quently advise and help the mediums by ex-
plaining how matters stand in the Unseen.
Many people, who have worked Vv4th these con-
trols, believe that they act as amanuenses or
13
14 VOICES FROM THE VOID
interpreters between the medium and the un-
seen communicator. As far as I can tell, this
has not been proved to be the case. I should
say, rather, that controls arrange the seance
and decide who among those who wish to speak
from the other side shall communicate. These
controls generally give themselves quaint
names, and sometimes say they have lived in
distant countries many hundreds of years ago.
This is not always the case, but it has been so
with the majority of those I have come across.
By "commmiicator" I mean the influence in-
troduced by the control, or who comes without
the help of a control, and gives his personal
history, or states that he is a friend or relative
of someone present. Such communicator may
either have passed over or merely be asleep or
drowsy.
In the course of sittings extending over six
or seven years many influences have spoken
through our small circle. Of these some were
obviously frauds, and impersonations were
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 15
frequent. These disappointments are most
dispiriting to the novice in ps}xhic experi-
ments. It must always be borne in mind that
in order to attain to any firm ground from
which one may review one's work and venture
to form a judgment as to whether we are or are
not in touch with the spirit world, a mass of
evidence must be accumulated. This, of course,
demands great patience and perseverance, and
the experimenter must judge for himself
whether the achieved results justify the expen-
diture of time and labor. If the results are
important to him, he must not be discouraged
by many back-sHdings, and he must be pre-
pared to keep careful records of sittings, good
and bad ; this is essential when he comes to the
summing-up of evidence.
I propose to deal here with the most marked
personalities among our controls, showing
how — even allowing that these entities are
merely subconsciousness, parts of our men-
tality which appear only under abnormal con-
16 VOICES FROM THE VOID
ditions — they preserve certain characteristics
which are so striking that there is no pos-
sibiHty of confusing one personaHty with
another.
I shall first describe a control who has been
of great service to us in experimental work.
He is, in fact, the only influence who has aided
and abetted us in applying tests to our experi-
ments, who is willing and ready to do so and
proud of his powers in this line. As a rule we
find controls most unwilling to submit to tests
of any kind; indeed, they are as indignant at
such a suggestion as one miight expect a per-
son to be who walked into a drawing-room and
w^as subjected to a personal examination by his
host. During the winter of 1914 a small circle
of sitters — the Rev. S. H., Mr. L., and my-
self— did very regular work at the ouija-board
twice weekly, and a great deal of interesting
matter came through from various controls.
We worked blindfold. I can answer for my-
self, and I believe for my fellow-sitters, that
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 17
never in the course of all the months we sat
together did we see the board while communi-
cations were coming through, nor did any of us
know at the time what these communications
were, as they wxre recorded in silence by a
friend, who was obliged to take them down in
shorthand, such was the rapidity with which
the traveler moved from letter to letter.
At the second or third sitting of the circle
referred to, Peter Rooney made his appearance.
He stated that he was an American Irishman ;
that he had had a most undesirable career and
spent much of his life in jail; that ten days
before he communicated with us he had thrown
himself under a tram-car in Boston and had
been killed. Sir William Barrett, having made
careful inquiries both from the Governor of
the State prison at Boston, Mass., and from
the Chief of Police in that city, found Peter
Rooney's tale an entire fabrication. A certain
Peter Rooney had fallen from a tram-car in
August, 1 9 10, had suffered from a scalp
18 VOICES FROM THE VOID
wound, but was alive in 19 14, as far as could
be ascertained.
On being upbraided by us for assuming a
name and identity not his own, Peter admitted
that he had no desire that we should know who
he was, and that he had adopted this name as
''it was as good as any other." He stated that
he had been interested in psychical research in
his lifetime, and wished to assist investigations
of supernormal phenomena now that he had
"passed over." He refused absolutely to give
us any further information about himself.
Peter has a burning desire to shine as a
"test" control ; he prefers us to work blindfold,
and he is rashly desirous to attempt experi-
ments. He is most uncertain in results, but,
given a quiet room and his own mediums, he
can do remarkable things. He is a rather
primitive creature, has very strong likes and
dislikes, and is very vain and fond of a dis-
play of his powers.
Early in our sittings he explained that he
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 19
used various movements on the board to ex-
press his f eehngs — love, hate, pleasure, annoy-
ance, surprise, etc. We became quite familiar
with these movements, and, blindfold as we
always were, we quite realized Peter's changes
of mood. Working under new conditions, a
strange sitter, a disarranged alphabet, etc.,
Peter begins by a very careful examination of
the alphabet ; he moves in and out between the
letters until he has traversed the entire board,
and in case the letters are not in the usual order
he notes the fact carefully. He is most sensi-
tive to noise; it seems to disturb and annoy
him. He starts at the sound of a clock strik-
ing or any noise in the street, and asks what it
is. He is most impatient, and makes no allow-
ance for any hesitation on the part of the per-
son reading and noting down his messages, ad-
dressing the unfortunate individual occupied in
this somewhat difficult task as "Fool!" if he
asks that a word or sentence be repeated.
Among the experiments which proved sue-
£0 VOICES FROM THE VOID
cessful with Peter, I note a few of the most
remarkable. He was asked on one occasion to
read something in the room, a sentence from a
book or newspaper of which the sitters knew
nothing. He selected a page from a calendar
of twelve pages ; the calendar was taken from
the wall by one of the recorders ; it was turned
over at random, the recorder carefully avoid-
ing looking at it, and also taking the additional
precaution of placing a screen between it and
the medium, ]^»Ir. L., who was already blind-
folded securely. The exposed leaf of the cal-
endar was then placed under the glass, still
carefully screened. It proved, when the trans-
script and calendar were compared, that this
calendar had rather long quotations for each
month. The page which was copied turned
out to be an early spring month, which had
been covered over long before; the sitting was
in the late winter.
Peter read the entire page, including the
long quotation, perfectly correctly. Of course,
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 21
in this case it may be open to question whether
Mr. L., in whose house the calendar was, might
not have had the quotation in his subconscious
mind. I do not think this was probable, but
I quite admit that it was possible. But even
then it must be taken into account that there
were twelve pages for his "subconsciousness''
to choose from, and it would be at the best ex-
ceedingly good guessing, as well as remark-
able memorizing, if this were the explanation
of what occurred.
Peter was, and is still, very fond of tele-
pathic experiments. He used to ask the people
present to choose a number or a letter or even
a word unknown to the sitters, and to write it
on a piece of paper, and hold it under the ouija-
table out of their range of vision. The
traveler would then make a sudden dive over
to the place where the paper was held, examine
it most carefully by dipping over the table,
touching the paper on which the numbers were
written, and generally dart back to the correct
22 VOICES FROM THE VOID
letters or numbers on the board. It must
always be borne in mind that the sitters were
blindfolded, and knew nothing of the result
at the time. Peter is a fairly expert grapholo-
gist, and can tell character by handwriting as
well as the average professional. If a letter is
laid under the glass the traveler goes over, ex-
amines it carefully, rubbing the glass above the
writing several times, darts back, begins gen-
erally by mentioning the sex of the wTiter, then
by degrees and with many careful examina-
tions of the writing gives a character-sketch
which generally proves fairly correct. With
this experiment care is always taken, of course,
that the handwriting is that of persons un-
known to the sitters. Another successful ex-
periment w^e have tried with Peter is that one
sitter should be blindfolded, and that the other,
with eyes open, should receive a short message
from him. The message is not read aloud.
Conditions are then reversed: the sitter who
was blindfolded has his eyes open; the other
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 23
sitter is blindfolded, the letters of the alphabet
are mixed, and Peter is asked to repeat the
message. Having done so, both sitters are
blindfolded, the letters are mixed again, and
Peter, for the third time, spells out the same
message. The average success of this experi-
ment was about 90 per cent.
I mention these experiments as they serve to
illustrate Peter's character as a test control.
Who Peter is or was we do not know, but from
years of acquaintance with him on the ouija-
board he has become a very clearly marked
personality to us. He evidently belongs to the
lower middle class ; is far from polished in his
manners; has very strong likes and dislikes;
is a very vain and rather capricious creature,
rejoicing in his own importance, and very fond
of display; intelligent, but not in the least in-
tellectual; very unwilling to admit other con-
trols to any sitting he takes part in — he is, in
fact, an amusing and rather inelegant person,
and seems to regard the ouija-board as a means
24 VOICES FROM THE VOID
of displaying a limited number of conjuring
tricks. He is very particular about the me-
diums through whom he communicates, and
seems to gather his power to "see without
eyes'* from some unknown quality in certain
sitters. I have found only a few people with
whom he can do blindfold work; he rather
despises sittings with open eyes, and unless a
medium is present who has the quality neces-
sary for blindfold sitting he seldom comes.
I now pass on to a control who is an entire
contrast to Peter Rooney in every respect.
This entity calls himself "Eyen,'' and says he
was an Egyptian priest who served in the
temple of Isis in the reign of Rameses 11. He
professes to have been attracted to the sittings
at my house by the fact that I possess a piece
of cerecloth in which his mummy was wrapped.
Eyen is not a test control like Peter; he cannot
do any ouija-work with blindfold sitters; he
avoids all experiments as quite beneath him.
He is extremely sentimental, much inclined to
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 25
flatter his mediums, and most untrustworthy in
his statements and in the controls he professes
to send us, who generally prove to be Eyen
himself in fancy dress. He also is most re-
tentive in his hold of sittings, and anxious to
exclude other controls. I have known him to
"block the telephone,'' as he calls it, for a
month at a time, and exclude any communica-
tion except his own; the only means we have
found useful in driving him away has been to
hypnotize both mediums and suggest that Eyen
should not be permitted to speak. This has
generally proved successful — for a time at
least; in my own case the driving out of Eyen
always produced a struggle. When the sug-
gestion that he should go has been made to me,
when under hypnotic influence, I have been
considerably shaken by him in a rather un-
pleasant way.
Eyen interested me for several reasons ; he
professed in the beginning of our acquaintance
to cultivate my psychic powers and those of
26 VOICES FROM THE VOID
my fellow-sitter. I had repeatedly tried auto-
matic writing without success. One evening,
about three or four months after he appeared,
Eyen told me he had brought a spirit-light for
me, and that I was to give mine to the friend
who sat with me, who had none. I asked how
this could be done. The reply was that Eyen
would put his hand on my head, and I was to
place my hand on the head of my friend, and
thus the lights would be transferred. I asked,
"What will the result of gaining more light
be?" Eyen replied, "You will gain psychic
power — you will soon find you can do auto-
matic writing, and your friend will perhaps
draw automatically." On the particular night
I speak of no further power was developed in
myself or my friend, but on the next occasion
on which we sat Eyen suggested that I might
try to write. I did so with a completely suc-
cessful result ; automatic writing came through
quite easily to me. The drawing also was suc-
cessful to a certain extent; the subjects Eyen
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 27
permitted to come through were very Hmited!
At first only mummies were drawn, and later
what Eyen called "Nile flow^ers." These were
conventional in design and somewhat like the
lotus. At first these results could only be ob-
tained when my friend and I sat together;
after a short time Eyen said that while Mr.
X.'s influence vv^as still in my hand I should be
able to write. This I found was the case, but
my ovv^n strength must have increased, as grad-
ually I found I got automatic writing by my-
self without difficulty. Eyen has proved a
fraud and a liar in most ways, and he has been
driven repeatedly from the board by us in con-
sequence; but he has a very definite person-
ality, and his smoothness, flattery, and false-
ness are part of it. He is a most sentimental
person, full of imagination, and he possesses
decided powders in the direction of fiction.
More than once he has spelt out most sensa-
tional tales to us, the plots of which might
quite well be of service to a writer in search of
28 VOICES FROM THE VOID
melodrama. He tells us stories of life in
ancient Egypt, and describes the rites in which
he took part in the Temple of Isis. He has
also told us most sensational stories of the
present day, and one very striking Italian tale
which came through at 12 a.m. while the clocks
were striking one New Year's Eve.
The tale runs as follows:
Long ago in an Italian town there lived a
most beautiful woman. She was much sought
after and had many lovers, but she cared only
for one. Now, this beautiful woman was a
most enigmatical creature, and was possessed
of a strange smile that reminded one of the
picture of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
Her lovers made no way with her. She always
kept them at a distance.
She was attracted by this particular man
because he had never loved any woman; he
did not seek her company or friendship in any
way, and she determined to conquer him.
Long and hopelessly she strove to attract him.
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 29
with no success. But at last she had her wish;
he fell desperately in love with her. Step by
step they came nearer and nearer to each other,
until, at last, one night he asked her to give
him all a woman can give a man. She was
furious at this insult to her honor, and refused
indignantly, and in a rage the man put an end
to her life. (When Eyen came to this point I
asked, "Is that all? It's not a very original
story.")
"Wait," said Eyen. "The murdered woman
left her lover something as a revenge for her
death. She left him the Mona Lisa smile,
which had protected her from men, so that he
might be protected from all women and never
love again."
Eyen's latest development is in the role of
poet! He has taken to writing verse, in-
variably addressed to one of his original medi-
ums, Mr. X. or myself. Mr. X. has driven
him from the board of late years, and refused
to hold any converse with him. The verses
30 VOICES FROM THE VOID
which Eyen addressed to Mr. X. consist of
curses, reproaches, and regrets for this insult,
while those addressed to me are all suavity and
most flattering in tone. These verses came
through me, and a friend, Air. W., who "sits"
here frequently. They are more or less cor-
rect as to versification, though neither this
friend nor I are guilty either openly or secretly
of writing poetry!
The next control who occurs to me calls him-
self "Astor." He professes to be the ''guide"
of an intimate friend of mine, ]\Iiss C, who
lives in my house. We frequently sit together,
and Astor appears invariably and opens the
seance. He controls ]\Iiss C.'s hand most
powerfully; all the force, mental and physical,
seems to come through her, and I add probably
a kind of balance only. Astor is, of course,
chiefly interested in Miss C.'s concerns, but
in so far as hers are connected with mine, he
is deeply interested in me also, and often de-
votes most of his attention to me at a sitting.
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 31
He dives across the table towards me, and
presses the traveler against my arm, as if con-
tact with mie gave him insight into my mental
state.
Astor is an intelligent creature, not given
much to flattery — indeed, often very plain-
spoken. His leading characteristic is that he
is clairvoyant and sees vivid pictures of the
future. His prophecies are indefinite as to
time. He admits that time cannot be measured
in his sphere. He has predicted some quite
unforeseen events in a most remarkable way.
In one case he made what seemed a most rash
and absurd prophecy about a business affair
of my own, at which I laughed, I remember,
but within a week this totally unlikely event
came true. Astor is very clear in his state-
ments, does not hedge when questioned as
Eyen does, and holds on to his predictions
stoutly, although the course of time may not
have justified them. He always maintains that
they will come true if we have patience, and
32 VOICES FROM THE VOID
that he cannot measure time. He is a much
more rational creature than Peter or Eyen;
generally ready to have his say, and then to
allow others to speak, he is grave and moderate
in tone, and allows no trifling on the part of
his mediums.
The last control I shall speak of here is one
of my own who is not yet an intimate ac-
quaintance, as she came only a few months
ago. She calls herself "Shamar,'' says she was
a Hindoo, and that she is my spirit guide, Eyen
being merely "the guide of my astral!"
Shamar has undertaken to conduct most of my
sittings lately; she devotes herself to culti-
vating my powers by sending me genuine com-
munications. She says she is very fond of
sending me messages from living persons who
are asleep or drowsy. In these cases absolute
proof is, of course, possible sometimes. Twice
lately I had conversations with friends who
stated they were in a drowsy state, and the
information I received through them proved
PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 33
true in every respect. So far as I know her,
Shamar is sincere; she makes no magnificent
promises, and she has been very faithful in
bringing interesting communicators. She is
quite different from Peter, Eyen, and Astor.
She has no sense of humor; she never indulges
in anything of an imaginative nature; she
never foretells future events; she comes and
offers to bring someone who will interest me,
or if I (as I seldom do) ask for any special
person she will send him if she can. She does
not indulge in any platitudes; she is simple
and apparently truthful; she seems to believe
she has certain work to do at a sitting, and
she does it to the best of her ability.
I may add that both Astor and Shamar have
remarkable gifts for elucidating the history of
objects placed on the board. "Psychometry,'*
as it is commonly called, is a gift which both
controls possess, apparently; but how much of
this is due to special sitters I am unable to say.
CHAPTER III
The Communicator — Evidence of
Survival
1HAVE now arrived at the most vitally in-
teresting question for us all in connection
with psychical research. Have we any evi-
dence of the survival and identity of those who
have left the visible world? Is any Hght
thrown on this great problem by messages re-
ceived through the medium? And from my
small personal experience I can reply with sin-
cerity I have had some evidence which, if not
entirely convincing, points so strongly to the
fact that we survive what is called death that
it requires more credulity to doubt the fact
than to believe it. But any evidence I have
84
THE COMMUNICATOR 35
had of the survival of those who have died is
sHght, and part of what has been convincing
to me is not so from a scientific point of view.
In this chapter I shall review briefly my ex-
perience with what seem genuine communi-
cators. I shall give an account first of those I
think evidential from the ''test" point of view
and secondly some cases which, though not
conclusive, were most convincing from the
nature of the messages. I leave my readers to
draw their own conclusions. If I may venture
to advise persons who long to speak once more
with those they have loved, who have vanished
into darkness, I should say it is wise and sane
not to make the attempt. The chances against
genuine communication are ten to one; the dis-
appointments and doubts connected with the
experiment are great.
Personally, I would not make any effort to
speak to the beloved dead through automatic
writing or the ouija-board. The evidence they
offer of their identity is too ephemeral and un-
36 VOICES FROM THE VOID
satisfactory; and as I would not undertake
these experiments for myself, I would not
willingly help others to risk them, unless in
very exceptional cases, when I had fully ex-
plained my own doubts on the subject and had
undertaken no responsibility that the messages
would be genuine. On the other hand, if, in
the course of sittings at the ouija-table, dear
and familiar names have appeared, I have
patiently tried to discover whether they were
genuine or the reverse, and in some cases, I
am bound to admit, I was inclined to think
that they were not impersonations.
I fear the observations I have just made
may be very distasteful to many who approach
this subject from the spiritualist point of view.
I cannot offer these people any apology for my
attitude. It may be that they receive genuine
help and comfort from their faith in these
manifestations from the Unseen ; if so, I only
trust that they may continue to find this com-
fort and help. But I do not attempt to address
THE COMMUNICATOR 37
them. \^^at I have to say will interest the
student of psychic matters only.
In almost all cases where a discarnate spirit
professes to speak I ask for an account of its
passing over. These accounts vary very little;
they all retain the same features, though some
are more detailed than others. In all cases a
period of darkness is described as occurring
almost immediately after death. This dark-
ness appears to be a penance or purgatory for
the soul left thus in lonely and silent medita-
tion, and it is evidently a period of consider-
able suffering. Yet during this time of dark-
ness the spirit seems to be permitted to speak
to those on earth if such opportunity be offered
to it. This state does not seem to last long,
not more than a week or ten days, so far as I
can judge from communicators who come re-
peatedly and speak of their present condition.
They frequently say that when light came,
someone was near them, who led them away to
the place where their 'Svork" was. What the
38 VOICES FROM THE VOID
nature of this "work" is, they seem unable
to explain. Many communicators, when de-
scribing their "passing," appear to have had a
vision of the body before the darkness en-
veloped them. Frequently when soldiers killed
in battle have spoken they became aware that
they had died. They tell how the battlefield
lay below them, with all the horror of its de-
tails, and how they saw their own bodies lying
on the field. Sometimes the vision extends,
and they see the body being carried away and
buried. In the same way, some of those who
die in their beds describe the body lying there
as when the spirit rose from it. They can
see the nurses preparing it for burial, the
coffin, etc.
Beyond the period of darkness, I have had
no clear or definite account of the region in
which the spirit dwells or the nature of its oc-
cupations. Some sitters known to me, who
approach the subject in a more religious and
less experimental spirit than myself, have had
THE COMMUNICATOR 39
perfectly lucid accounts of the future state —
even the flowers and animals in the sphere to
which the spirit is led after the first darkness
is past were described in detail. And in the
communications received by this circle the
meeting of those who had been dear to each
other on earth seemed assured. All was peace,
love, and tranquillity. The only promise of re-
union I have obtained from any communicator
is that those whose spirits are merged in each
other in the fullest sense of the word — souls
created at the same moment (though perhaps
sent on their earthly pilgrimage at different
times) — will be merged in each other in the
future state.
From reviewing hundreds of messages from
those who have passed away, I gather that the
spirit retains its earth-memory for a time. The
time seems to vary with the nature of the indi-
vidual. The more rarefied and exalted the
soul during its earth-life, the shorter its span
of earth-memory seems to be after it has
40 VOICES FROM THE VOID
passed through the barrier. These more
highly developed souls seem gradually to rise
into a region from which it is perilous to touch
the earth atmosphere, except for a few minutes
at a time. After this they disappear
altogether. Quite lately I had an instance of
this. The communicator was a connection of
my own, a very refined, gentle, intellectual per-
sonality in his earth-life. He came to the
ouija-board repeatedly for some time while I
happened to be in touch with his family, and
spoke in a way which was very evidential to
them ; he appeared to find it impossible to com-
municate for more than a few minutes at a
time. Then there would be a long pause, and
he would come again. He told us that after a
time he would be unable to speak. He had died
very suddenly, and seemed to have passed
quickly to a state of great peace and happi-
ness, though he gave us no account of his sur-
roundings or occupations ; he said it was for-
THE COIVIIMUNICATOR 41
bidden, and would, in any case, be incompre-
hensible to those still alive.
I shall now give details of two cases of com-
munications received by me in conjunction
with another sitter (different in each case)
through the ouija-board, which consisted of
facts absolutely unknown to the mediums, and
which were subsequently verified in every de-
tail. The first of these two cases came through
in the winter of 191 3. Our circle — which I
have already referred to in Chapter II — con-
sisted at that time of three sitters — Air. L., the
Rev. S. H., and myself, and a friend who acted
as amanuensis and shorthand-writer. During
the sittings of this circle, which continued
twice weekly for a year or more, we had most
remarkable results — the more so because we
sat blindfolded. I shall give a fuller account
of these sittings in my chapter on Thought
Transference. It seemed that the really mar-
velous power of "seeing without eyes" rested
in this instance largely, or perhaps completely.
42 VOICES FROM THE VOID
with Mr. L. After he had left Dublin and the
circle was broken, the Rev. S. H. and I re-
peatedly tried to get messages blindfolded, but
without success. I have succeeded in getting
blindfold work through with other mediums,
but none of them have the rapidity and cer-
tainty possessed by Mr. L.
The message in question came very slowly —
quite unlike others we had had, which were
spelt out so rapidly that our shorthand-writer
could scarcely put them down quickly enough.
It seemed that this communicator was very
weak. She gave her name (I shall call her
"Alice Franks"). Her address was a house
in Upper Norwood, and she told us the name
and date of the newspaper in which her death
was announced. The message was not a long
one; she described her last illness, and said
death had just occurred, and had been a happy
release from pain. The communication was
not in itself especially interesting — many such
come to a circle of practiced sitters — the evi-
THE COMMUNICATOR 43
dence of identity was what was remarkable.
The lady was absolutely unknown to anyone
present, but on investigation every statement
made by her at the ouija-board proved correct.
Sir William Barrett was in a position to
make a careful investigation of this case,
which he kindly did, and learnt from the lady's
relatives that the information we had received
was undoubtedly genuine, and must have been
conveyed to us in some supernormal manner.
I give here a portion of the scrip of this
message :
Mrs. Travers Smith, the Rev. S. H., ]\Ir. L.
(All blindfolded.)
(For whom is this message?) Everybody.
( Spell your name. ) Alice Franks. ( Can't you
work quicker?) No. (Go on, please.) Your
overbearing attitude will not make me go any
faster. I lived and died at . . . Upper Nor-
wood. (Did you die recently?) Yes. (What
date?) ... I was unconscious for many days;
believe that I passed over between Friday
44 VOICES FROM THE VOID
and yesterday morning. (Have you anything
special to say?) My pain was intense, and I
am still in pain. Good-bye."
A more striking instance of evidence of
identity is one which is quoted by Sir William
Barrett in his recent book, On the Threshold
of the Unseen, the "pearl tie-pin case.'' This
came through one evening when my friend
Miss C. and I were sitting together. As in the
case of Alice Franks, this message was very
brief, and ]\Iiss C. and I attached no impor-
tance to it at the time. The name of a young
cousin of Miss C.'s was spelt out on the board.
He had recently been killed at the front, and
he stated that he had been engaged to a girl
whose name and address he gave in full, and
asked that his mother should be told that he
wished her to give his fiancee his pearl tie-pin
in memory of him. The boy was only nineteen
when he was killed, and this seemed a most
unlikely story. Miss C. laughed at it, and
would not have investigated it but that I asked
THE COMMUNICATOR 45
her to write to the address given and discover
if the person mentioned lived there. This let-
ter was returned to Miss C. as incorrectly ad-
dressed, and we dismissed the case as hopeless.
Some time afterwards the young officer's rela-
tives heard that he had willed all his posses-
sions to a girl whose name was the same as the
one spelt out to us on the ouija-board — though
the address was different — and to w^hom he
had been privately engaged. This fact was ab-
solutely unknown to his relatives.
Now, these two cases, to my thinking, can
only be explained in one way — an ardent desire
on the part of some external influence to com-
municate with this world. Surely it seems
irrational to think that these messages came
from any source other than the discarnate
spirits of these two persons. Something more
improbable and incredible may be suggested by
way of explanation. I am inclined to believe
what is obvious.
I give these instances as being two of the
46 VOICES FROM THE VOID
most evidential we have had of survival.
Others have come to us of a hke nature, but
they are few and far between compared to
those to which I now pass : cases which do not
furnish definite proof of identity, but w^hich
were most convincing in their substance and in
the manner they were expressed.
The first I mention came from a brother of
Miss C.'s, who was killed in Gallipoli. Miss C.
did not sit until some time after his death, but
almost immediately after she began, he came
with urgent messages for his mother. Mrs. C.
had been overwhelmed with grief at the loss
of her son, and even after more than a year
and a half she was quite inconsolable. Lieu-
tenant C. had been a most pure and innocent-
minded young man — a very spiritual person, in
fact, and these messages were all of the same
nature, begging Miss C. to tell his mother that
her grief was keeping back his progress in the
new sphere, and that he was unable to rise
until she ceased to mourn for him. He de-
THE COMMUNICATOR 47
scribed himself as "caught in the miasma of
desire that shrouds the earth." Miss C. told
her mother, who made every effort to be more
cheerful and forget her sorrow, and the last
time Miss C/s brother spoke to her he seemed
to be getting free from the fetters which
bound him to earth. He said he did not ex-
pect to be able to speak again. These messages
were very convincing to Miss C. Those urg-
ing her to speak to her mother came through
very rapidly, and gave her the sensation of in-
tense anxiety and excitement.
I had a strange experience myself with a
communicator — a man who had been a friend
of mine for many years, and from whom I had
been estranged for a long time before his
death. This man died very suddenly of acute
appendicitis, and on the evening of his death I
happened to be sitting. A mutual friend of
his and mine, who had passed over, communi-
cated by the board, and asked me whether I
knew that Mr. V. was dead. I said I did not,
48 VOICES FROM THE VOID
and she suggested that I should ring up the
private hospital where he was. I did so, and
found that he had died about half an hour
before. I returned to the board, and the same
communicator told me that he would speak to
me at the next sitting. He came the following
week and for six weeks after, and we could
get no other communications through. He
seemed intensely anxious to explain the very
complicated circumstances which had induced
me to drop his acquaintance. This he did in
a way w^hich, I am bound to confess, I should
never have thought of. At last his persistency
wearied us, and I told him I could not speak
to him any more. He replied that he would
not try to come again, and bid me farewell
with the remark, "Love and hate make life
a ride in the dark."
The wording of these communications and
the anxiety this man showed to explain very
strange drcumstanoes connected with his life
left no doubt in my mind that I wa^ speaking
THE COMMUNICATOR 49
directly to his discarnate spirit; but this is one
of the cases that, from its private nature and
also because there was no direct proof of
identity further than what I have mentioned,
could only appeal to those who knew him in-
timately.
Although Sir William Barrett has described
the "Hugh Lane case" in his latest book, I feel
my readers may be interested to hear w^hat I
have to say of it first hand. The circum-
stances were these: I knew Sir Hugh Lane
personally, and had heard he had gone to
America about a fortnight before the sinking
of the Lusitania. I had no idea why he had
gone or how long he intended to stay. About
five o'clock on the day we heard of the loss of
the Lusitania, I saw posters on my w^ay home
saying ''Lusitania reported sinking." I did
not buy a paper, and had no personal interest
in the sinking ship, as I knew of no one on
board. Sir Hugh Lane's name did not occur
to me, probably because he had been in Amer-
50 VOICES FROM THE VOID
ica such a very short time. A sitting was ar-
ranged for 8.30 o'clock that evening, and
before we began I felt a strange sensation of
depression, so much so that I went up to my
bedroom and sat alone for a short time. I
could not have said why this feeling got hold
of me; there was no special reason for it that
I knew of. At 8.30 o'clock I came down, and
w^e began our sitting. The Rev. Savell Hicks
recorded in silence, while Mr. Lennox Robin-
son and I sat blindfolded and talked to each
other while the message was being spelled out
by our hands. After a couple of minutes Mr.
Hicks said, "Would you like to know who is
speaking? It is Sir Hugh Lane, and he says
he has been drowned, and was on board the
Lusitaniaf' We were terribly shocked — we
both knew Sir Hugh — and asked Mr. Hicks to
read the message to us. It ran as follows:
First the name of our usual control, Peter;
then, "Pray for Hugh Lane." Then, on being
asked who was speaking, "I am Hugh Lane;
THE COMMUNICATOR 51
all is dark," came through. At this moment a
stop-press edition of the evening paper was
called in the street, and i\Ir. Robinson ran
down and bought one. When he came up to
me he pointed to the name of Sir Hugh Lane
among the passengers. We were both much
distressed, but continued our sitting. Sir
Hugh Lane described the scene on board
the Lusitania. Panic, then boats lowered —
"Women went first," he said. He stated that
he was last in an overcrowded boat, fell over,
and lost all memory until he "saw a light" at
our sitting. He sent me a message about our
last meeting which was quite evidential so far
as I could tell, and gave me greetings and
advice for very intimate friends of his and
mine in Dublin. The number of his cabin and
the name of a fellow-passenger given by him
were incorrect, so far as I can discover.
This communication was very striking, but
what followed was more evidential in my opin-
ion. Sir Hugh Lane continued to come, and
52 VOICES FROM THE VOID
at each sitting at which he appeared he begged
us to restrain any efforts of those who might
wish to erect a memorial gallery to him in
Dublin. This he seemed to have a horror of.
At the same time he was most anxious that
we should make every effort to have the con-
ditions of the codicil to his will carried out.
He wishes his pictures to come back to this
city, and is much disturbed because the trus-
tees of the National Gallery are very justly re-
luctant to restore them to Dublin.
We had a very strange sitting — Mr. Len-
nox Robinson and I — last September, at which
Sir William Barrett was present. Before the
sitting I had said to Sir William Barrett that
I thought the remarks of various people were
justified who considered the "Hugh Lane
case" evidential to the sitters — w^ho knew him
personally — ^but not to the outside public. After
a communication had come through from a
man who said he died in ShefHeld, and which
in some particulars proved to be correct — it
THE COMMUNICATOR 5S
was not possible to investigate them all — Sir
Hugh Lane came to the board, seized Mr. Rob-
inson's arm, as he always does, and after much
difficulty in reading the message we discovered
that he w^as much annoyed with me because of
the way I had spoken to Sir William Barrett
about his first communication on the night
after the Liisitania sank. He w^as most violent
on this occasion, seizing Mr. Robinson's arm
and driving it about so forcibly that the
traveler fell off the table more than once.
Since then whenever we — Mr. Robinson and
I — have sat together, the same thing has hap-
pened. Sir Hugh has come repeatedly, and
always with the same message. He begs that
we shall believe that it was really he who spoke
to us that night when the Liisitania sank. He
says any future w^ords he speaks to us or any-
one else will be discredited if we put no faith
in the first he spoke after he died.
The latest message w^e have had from Sir
Hugh referred to the Lane Picture meeting
54 VOICES FROM THE VOID
which was to be held at the Mansion House,
Dublin, on January 29th, 1918. It came to
Mr. Robinson and me on January 22nd, 191 8.
It ran as follows:
"Hugh Lane." (We said we wanted Peter
instead, as we wished to do telepathic experi-
ments.) "I will not go. I want to speak, and
this is my chance. I want you to go to that
meeting and tell them I can still let the world
know my wishes. Those pictures must be
secured for Dublin ; tell them I cannot rise or
get rest: it tortures me. Do you believe me?
I am Hugh Lane!" The last sentence was
spelt out very passionately. Air. Robinson's
arm was seized furiously.
These communications from Sir Hugh Lane
are very evidential and convincing to us who
knew him; to the scientific observer I do not
think there is anything which could be called
a genuine proof of identity, although certainly
one fact was mentioned entirely outside our
subconsciousness — i.e., that Sir Hugh was q»
THE COMMUNICATOR 55
board the lost ship. It must be remembered
that this was spelt out before we bought the
stop-press with a list of the passengers. I am
bound to confess that the fact that the com-
municator was so excitable on and after the
sitting in September did more to persuade ]\Ir.
Robinson and me that it was really Sir Hugh
than the whole Liisitania message. I have little
or no doubt that the influence w^hich came was
actually Sir Hugh Lane, but I do not ask my
skeptical readers who have not felt the tre-
mendous energy of this communicator to share
my belief.
It seems to me that it is very difficult for
persons who are not practical workers to
criticise these very intricate psychical phe-
nomena. The outside public is first thrilled by
the supernatural nature of a communication
such as Sir Hugh Lane's on the night after
the shipwreck; then comes the very natural re-
action towards doubt, unless the absolute
identity of the spirit is proved. I find, when
5a VOICES FROM THE VOID
I begin to criticise the experiences of other
people, that this doubt increases until it seems
almost impossible that there is a fragment of
proof of survival in most of the messages
which appear very convincing to sitters. From
long experience, however, I know that it is
best to suspend judgment in matters of this
kind until one has had ample time to consider
the circumstances.
Let us, for a moment, consider this case of
Sir Hugh Lane from the point of view of the
convinced spiritualist; let us allow that the
spirit of the drowned man made a supreme
effort, and succeeded in speaking to us; let us
endeavor to analyze his position.
The communication came through only a
fevv' hours after the sinking of the Lusitania,
There had without doubt been a period of in-
tense excitement and anxiety for Sir Hugh
while he was still alive ; then a period of uncon-
sciousness, let us hope, and then the slow
awakening to find "all was dark," and that he
THE COMMUNICATOR 57
was no longer in this world. Did he speak to
us as if in a dream? Was he fully conscious?
Did he communicate directly or through a con-
trol ? Who can tell ? Living persons who have
passed through intense nervous excitemicnt are
generally dazed; their memories are confused
and their statements are frequently far from
accurate. If we questioned them at such a mo-
ment about the past, we should probably have
very hazy and distracted replies to our ques-
tions. Take the case, so fresh in the minds of
many at the present time, of persons who have
just escaped the perils of a severe air-raid and
have been close to the danger zone. How
many of such persons could give small details
a few hours afterwards of the circumstances in
which they were placed — the number of the
house they rushed into, etc. ? When we analyze
the messages of those who have gone suddenly
through the gates of death, are we not some-
what unreasonable if we expect them to stand
a cross-examination as though they stood in a
58 VOICES FROM THE VOID
law court? If their answers to our questions
are vague and unsatisfying, let us remember
that we are speaking normally of earthly
affairs with our earth-memories strong and
fresh, and that our communicators' difficulties
are unknown and probably incomprehensible
to us. I feel that if we interest ourselves at
all in such messages from the dead, we should
extend our sympathy to the spirit; we should
invariably assume at sittings that communi-
cators are genuine. How can we hope to ar-
rive at any fair conclusion if we judge super-
normal circumstances by those that are
familiar to us, without making any allowance
for the fact that our difficulties are probably as
nothing compared to those at the other side?
Many persons appear to think that when we
die we become possessed at the moment of
supernatural powers. In fact, they believe
that "we shall be changed" means far more
than that we lose the body. I do not think
there is any indication from any source that
THE COMMUNICATOR 59
when we wake again we shall have suddenly
acquired powers other than those we possessed
in the earth-life.
The spirit of Sir Hugh Lane, after regain-
ing consciousness and memory, found in some
mysterious way that it was possible to send a
message back to the earth through us. We
had been friends of his, though not very inti-
mate with him. In the dazed and confused
state in which he was, he grasped at anything
which would identify him in our memories.
"Pray for Hugh Lane" came, he said, from
the control who permitted him to speak. We,
very naturally, asked him questions which
would admit of concrete proof — the number
of his cabin, etc. — and his replies were, I be-
lieve, incorrect ; they came slowly, I remember,
as if it was an effort to try to recall these de-
tails. What he seemed ardently to desire was
that we should give messages to very close
friends of his in Dublin, to let them know he
had not suffered. He hardly mentioned his
60 VOICES FROM THE VOID
pictures, which were the great interest of his
Hfe; his state of mind can hardly have been
clear and calm. Allowance should be made
for all this by those who criticise the message
in cold blood. I hold no brief for the identity
of Sir Hugh Lane on this occasion; I merely
take the case as an example. I am almost con-
vinced it was he who spoke to us at this and
at many other sittings, but I do not ask my
readers to believe me on the slender evidence
I give them. I ask them, before making up
their minds that such communications are true
or false, to analyze them and weigh and bal-
ance the situation.
Before I finish this chapter I wish to drpv
attention to a point which is a very interesting
one in my opinion. W^hy should any influ-
ence— control or communicator — be attracted
to the seance-room? What draws his atten-
tion to the fact that a sitting is taking place?
This is a question I almost invariably put to
controls and communicators, and their replies
THE COMMUNICATOR 61
to the question are almost always the same.
They state that a bright light attracted them —
and the stronger the medium, the brighter the
light. When I am sitting myself, and ask,
"What attracted you to this room?" the an-
swer generally is, "I saw a woman wrapped in
flame." Sometimes they describe a brilliant
light on the head of the medium, but as psychic
strength increases the light seems to envelop
the whole body of the sensitive. This light or
flame appears to be pale — "a clear white fire,"
which seems to grow more vivid as the medium
becomes more in touch with the "spirit world."
I often ask the communicator when several
persons are present, "How many people can
you see in this room?" Generally the reply is,
"I can only see you." But if any particularly
sensitive person is there, the traveler moves
towards him, and, having apparently had a
good look at him, says he can see him dimly,
as if in a mist. Voices other than the me-
dium's seem difficult to hear. A question is sel-
62 VOICES FROM THE VOID
dom replied to unless asked by one of the
sitters.
I have observed that controls, when in doubt
about some fact concerning one of the sitters
or anyone else present involved in the message
which is being spelt out, dart across towards
the person in question, and make obvious
efforts to get into personal contact with him
or her. The traveler waits opposite the indi-
vidual whose ideas it desires to analyze, and
presses against his arm, or is obviously glad
if his hand is laid for a moment on the in-
dicator.
Another interesting point is the association
of the controls with certain communicators.
Each control seems to have his or her private
circle of acquaintances to draw from, and if
you can "tell a man by his friends,''' you can
do so in the case of controls. Sir Hugh Lane
never comes through any control but Peter
Rooney, who professes to "keep the unseen
barrier that is supposed to separate this world
THE COMMUNICATOR 63
from the other sphere," and who admitted Sir
Hugh in the first instance. Eyen's communi-
cators are most untrustworthy, and generally
parade fantastically in fancy costumes of an
improbable kind, whereas Shamar's circle is
an interesting one. She is careful to send peo-
ple who are worth talking to, and takes some
time to find them.
A curious fact, perhaps worth mentioning,
is that I find w^hen a pause comes while the
control is seeking a communicator, or when
the traveler is at rest for any reason, quite
foolish and irrelevant little messages are liable
to be spelt out. These are the silliest things,
and suggest that spirits of the "poltergeist''
type are playing with the traveler. I have also
sometimes observed a struggle at the board.
This is conveyed to the mediums by a very
broken communication and very spasmodic and
violent movements on the part of the traveler.
We are generally told when this happens that
84 VOICES FROM THE VOID
one entity has had a struggle with another to
gain access to the sitting.
In the chapter which follows I shall speak
of telepathy and thought transference and its
connection with automatism, which is one of
the most interesting subjects in the range of
psychic study.
CHAPTER IV
Telepathy and Automatism
'T^ELEPATHY or thought transference is
-■- to my mind the most interesting of all
psychic studies. When we have convinced
ourselves by simple experiments that thought
can be transmitted from one brain to another
without speech, even when the agent and per-
cipient are separated from each other by a
considerable distance, we are in a better posi-
tion to criticise and understand much that
comes through by automatic methods. On the
other hand, the ultra-skeptical person seems to
me to be too completely dazzled by thought-
transference results. Telepathy accounts for
so much that one is inclined to beheve it ac-
65
66 VOICES FROM THE VOID
counts for everything, or at least divides the
field with the subliminal self. Much as has
been done by telepathy and the subliminal
theory in throwing light on psychic matters, I
believe that in the case of certain people their
range of vision has been narrowed by too close
a study of these two subjects, and it has there-
fore been more difficult for them to take a fair
view of the evidence before them.
The first point for those who propose to ex-
periment in thought transference is to discover
who can transmit and who receive. These
two qualities seldom go together, and the only
method by which the agent and the percipient
can be discovered is by a series of experiments,
most of which are likely to be unsuccessful.
When, however, the conclusion has been ar-
rived at as to which experimenter is likely to
transmit and which receive, a step in advance
has been made. The simplest tests of thought
transference are the best to begin with. Two
operators sitting in the same room quitely de-
TELEPATHY AND AUTO:\L\TISM 67
cide what the agent shall concentrate on — a
card, a number or letter written on a sheet of
paper, or a person known to both of them. I
have tried some of these simple experiments
very successfully with Mr. X., who has re-
markable power as a transmitter : the propor-
tion of successful experiments of this kind was
about seven unsuccessful against ten success-
ful. In almost every case in which i\Ir. X.
touched my hand I got the right letter or num-
ber immediately, but we usually avoided con-
tact. On one occasion, in the case of his
choosing persons we both knew, tw^o out of
three experiments of this kind succeeded very
rapidly. In the first case I got the name of
the person chosen most vividly. I saw the
name "William'' written very distinctly, and
asked at once if that was correct. In the sec-
ond case, almost immediately after I attempted
to "receive," the face of a mutual friend of
ours came before me perfectly distinctly, as if
it was a framed portrait. This picture came
68 VOICES FROM THE VOID
almost at once, like a flash. I find invariably
that if the thought is not transmitted at once
it is useless to make an effort to receive it; I
find precisely the same result with automatic
experiments in which a control acts as receiver.
Experiments carried on when the agent and
percipient are separated from each other by
a long distance are often very fairly success-
ful, I believe, but I have no personal experi-
ence of them.
I have seen more of telepathy in connection
with automatism than as practiced in the class
of experiment I have mentioned. I believe
from long observation of many sensitives that
automatism of any kind produces an abnormal
condition in the sitter; I imagine under these
abnormal conditions various qualities come to
the surface which are dormant in the normal
state. I think that clairvoyance may appear
in a person (who shows none of that power
otherwise) when at the ouija-board or when
doing automatic writing, and I believe that
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 69
tdepathic powers are developed under the
same circumstances. I think further that, if
the atmosphere is full of some important pub-
lic event unknown to the sensitive, it may reach
him through automatism.
I had a striking instance of this in my own
circle. One evening Miss D. and I sat at the
Guija-board, and to our surprise no results
whatever came through. This w^as most an-
noying, as we generally had most interesting
sittings. We had given it up in despair, and
Miss D. was about to go home, when I asked
her to try once more for a few minutes. We
sat down and the following message was spelt
out immediately and very rapidly: "Ship
sinking; all hands lost. William East over-
board. Women and children weeping and
wailing — sorrow, sorrow, sorrow." We had
no idea what the message meant. No more
came through. Just then I heard a "stop-
press" being called in the street, and, wonder-
ing what could have happened, I ran down and
70 VOICES FROM THE VOID
bought a paper. The news was that the
Titanic had gone down. I beHeve that the
name "William East" was incorrect — we had
no one present to follow the message, which
came very rapidly and excitedly — I believe the
name must have been "William Stead." For
from that day forth and for weeks after he
came persistently to the ouija-board, telling us
about his death and begging to be allowed to
materialize, that we might be sure it was really
he. Whether telepathy would account for the
first Hugh Lane communication I am not sure ;
I am much more inclined to believe that it was
really Sir Hugh who spoke to us.
Mr. X. and I have had some very interesting
sittings with Mr. E., who seems to have re-
markable power as a transmitter. He is not in
the least mediumistic; his presence at a sitting
leads to most curious telepathic results. Mr.
E. has lived abroad a great deal, chiefly in
South Africa, and has many stories of adven-
ture to relate of a striking kind. On two occa*
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 71
sions he sat with us, no other person being
present. He did not touch the board either
time. His "spirit guide" professed to come to
us, and he questioned her as to whether she
could give him any information about certain
persons of whom Mr. X. and I had never
heard. On these tv/o evenings amazing tales
were spelt out by Mr. E.'s guide, all the par-
ticulars of which — so far as he could verify
them — were correct. One of these tales con-
cerned a man whose death had been very mys-
terious. He had been found drowned in a lake,
and it was never known whether he had com-
mitted suicide or whether it was a case of
murder. This man described circumstances
before the night of his death which Mr. X.
and I were, of course, quite unaware of, and
which Mr. E. says were accurate. He then ex-
plained how his death occurred, and described
his mental state beforehand. The other tale,
which was long and circumstantial, was also
7« VOICES FROM THE VOID
correct in every detail, with added informa-
tion, new to Mr. E.
Now, these cases may be taken in two ways.
Either Mr. X. (or more probably I myself, as
I am a better recipient) caught these reflec-
tions from the mind of Mr. E., and subcon-
sciously added suitable endings to both tales,
or — as I must confess I think more probable —
the communicators were the persons they pro-
fessed to be. In any case I think Mr. E.'s
presence influenced our sittings, and these
stories, drawn directly from his mind without
contact with the autoscope, may take their
place fittingly in a chapter on thought trans-
ference.
Another interesting instance of the same
kind occurred one evening when Miss C. and I
were the sitters, Air. Y. being present. The
control described an old castle which had just
been bought by Mr. Y., and told him the place
was haunted. The hauntings, as described by
the control, involved in their explanation a
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 73
romantic story of old times. At last I said to
Mr. Y., "Do you think we should let this com-
munication wander on like this ? Does it inter-
est you?" He replied, "Very much. This is
the plot of my new play." Miss C. and I knew
nothing whatever of the work Mr. Y. was en-
gaged on just then.
Another development of telepathy with the
ouija-board is the transmission of messages
from living persons who are asleep. My
Hindoo control, Shamar, is very fond of send-
ing these to us, and lately two or three came
through w^hich I have verified. I was in Lon-
don in December, 191 7, and spent Christmas
with a relative at South Kensington. On De-
cember 26th my cousin and I had a short sit-
ting, rather late at night, about 10.30 or 11
o'clock. Shamar came, and promised us some-
thing interesting. The name of my cousin's
brother was spelt out on the board; he de-
scribed in what room he was sitting, and said
he was asleep before the fire. The message
74 VOICES FROM THE VOID
was a short one, and I have not the record of
it by me, but it was proved correct in every
detail.
After this the name of ^Ir. D. — an intimate
personal friend of mine — appeared. He stated
that he was not sound asleep, and therefore the
message would come in jerks, which it did.
He said he was sitting before the fire in his
drawing-room; no one else was in the room.
I asked him to give my sister a message from
me; he said, "Sorry, I can't; I shall forget all
this when I wake." He then went on to tell
me what had happened on Christmas night —
quite a long communication — and mentioned a
friend of his and mine who had come in, and
whom I certainly should not have expected
would be there. He then said good-bye, and
that he could not speak any more, as he was
getting more wakeful. This was an absolutely
correct statement of facts, as I found out when
I came back to Dublin.
Now, I leave it to my readers to decide
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 75
whether these last cases should or should not
be included under "telepathy." Did ]\Ir. D.'s
spirit escape from his body and speak to me,
or did I get in touch with him in some mysteri-
ous way and read his mind ? I do not attempt
to answer the question.
The last instance of Shamar's powers in
this way occurred only two nights before I
write this. I sat for a very few minutes, at
her request. I had been sitting earlier, and
she asked me to sit again late, as she wanted
to try an experiment, at about 12.30 o'clock
A.M. She sent a friend of mine, who said he
was asleep. He gave me a short message ex-
plaining a circumstance which had been rather
puzzling to me in a manner I had never
thought of. I attached little or no importance
to this, but next morning I received a letter
from this friend, explaining the same matter ex-
actly as he did at the ouija-board on the occa-
sion I have mentioned. These communications
during sleep seem to me to offer a verv inter-
76 VOICES FROM THE VOID
esting problem to the investigator. I hope to
make further attempts of the kind with
Shamar's aid.
During the sittings which I alluded to in an-
other chapter, in which the circle consisted of
the Rev. S. H., Mr. L., and myself, w^e made
various interesting telepathic experiments.
Perhaps, as these sittings were carried on
under unusual conditions (I mean that few
circles, so far as I know, succeeded in getting
''blindfold'' results at the ouija-board) I may
as wtVi describe them here. The very remark-
able mediumistic powers of Mr. L. were dis-
covered in this way. A circle of seven or
eight people used to meet at my house once a
week. We had two boards in the same room
at that time, which I found was quite a mistake,
One evening the Rev. S. H. brought a gentle-
man with him, who was quite unknown to me,
and asked me to sit with him. Mr. L. had
never done much psychic work before. He
and I tried to get results in the usual way, with
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 77
open eyes, but though the traveler moved a
good deal, no word or sentence was spelt.
After a short time the Rev. S. H., who had
often attempted blindfold work with me with
no success, suggested that Mr. L. and I should
try the experiment. I laughed, and said it was
hardly likely that w^e should succeed, consider-
ing we had not got one coherent sentence or
even a word with open eyes. However, we
were both blindfolded, and almost immediately
messages began to come through, to our
amazement. That night we had three short
but quite coherent messages. We then decided
to sit regularly; the Rev. S. H. joined us, and
Mr. W., who was an expert shorthand-writer,
kindly undertook to read the board and record
for us. We arranged that he should do this
silently, so that none of us sitters should know
what was spelt out. We chatted to each other,
and often when we were laughing Mr. W.
would tell us something very tragic was com-
ing through. These sittings continued for a
78 VOICES FROM THE VOID
year or more, twice weekly; w^e never had an
evening without ample and generally interest-
ing results. The method of blindfolding was
as f ollow^s : A close black satin mask was fitted
for each sitter; no glimpse of the board could
be had through these unless the head w^as tilted
far back. We did not consider these masks
sufficient for "test" conditions, however, so
when visitors were present we w^ore outside
our masks opaque veils of black cotton ma-
terial extending from the forehead to the
waist, which greatly added to our discomfort.
During these sittings wx had a most remark-
able prophecy about the Balkan War which
had just broken out. We had long messages in
French and German, and we did many inter-
esting experiments, some of which I have de-
scribed in Chapter XL Early in the course of
these sittings Peter Rooney appeared, and as-
sisted us in every way. He was most amusing
in the manner in which he reproved us if we
missed a sitting, declaring he had wasted his
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 79
time waiting for us, and grumbling steadily for
the first quarter of an hour. Peter Rooney
has undoubted telepathic power as a receiver.
He seems sometimes to require a human mind
to work through, and sometimes he can do
without, which is strange. One of the cases
in which he was able to read something un-
known to any sitter present was when he spelt
out the sheet of the calendar which I described
in Chapter II, and in that instance it is just
possible, though very unlikely, that Mr. L. may
have had a "picture" of the sheet in his sub-
conscious mind. Other times, when letters,
words, numbers, or colors were placed under
the glass, they were generally known to at least
one person present. I remember on one occa-
sion when the Rev. S. H. was observing, Mr.
L. and I being the sitters, the Rev. S. H. wrote
a number on a scrap of paper and asked Peter
to read it from his mind (he did not lay it
on the board). Peter paused, then gave 3,
which was wrong — the number w^as 5. The
80 VOICES FROM THE VOID
Rev. S. H. told him he was mistaken; Peter
then asked the Rev. S. H. to touch Mr. L.'s
hand, and when he did so spelt out 5 immedi-
ately. Another way in which we tested Peter's
powers of thought transference was by the ob-
server taking a scrap of colored paper at ran-
dom from a box and laying it on the board
without seeing it. In the case when I was
sitting this invariably succeeded. Peter touched
the color with the traveler, and spelt it out cor-
rectly without apparent difficulty. What
seemed curious was that another lady sat with
Mr. L. and the Rev. S. H. several times at my
house, and although the fact of her taking my
place made no difference whatever otherwise,
Peter, could do no "color-reading" with her.
Another case in which Peter failed to work
without a transmitter occurred at Sir William
Barrett's house at Kingstown one evening
when Dr. MacDougall of Oxford was present.
I had arranged that in my absence one of my
maids should disarrange my drawing-rocmi in
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 81
some way unknown to me; that she should de-
cide beforehand what she would do, write it
down, and give it to me to take to the sitting
in a sealed envelope. I hoped that Peter would
go to my house — which was six miles away —
and bring me an account of what my maid had
done to the room, which could be verified by
my opening the envelope. This experiment
was a total failure. Peter went off to my
house obediently when we told him what was
wanting, and for full three-quarters of an hour
the traveler never moved. When at last he
came back he was indignant, and asked how
we could have given him all this trouble when
there were no human eyes to see through. It
was one of the experiences which fully con-
vinced us that our own will, desire, and inten-
tion had little or nothing to do with the results
obtained.
Our telepathic experiments with Peter had
exactly the same results as those carried on
between two living human beings. Peter is
82 VOICES FROM THE VOID
evidently very receptive of thought, and usu-
ally requires a transmitter whose mind he
can read.
After this circle had broken up and these
first sittings had come to an end (Mr. L. left
Dublin soon after), the Rev. S. H. and I were
sure he and I should get blindfold experiments
through. We were mistaken, however; for
months we tried patiently evening after even-
ing with no results w^hatever, blindfold or
otherwise! We both seemed to have lost all
power to do automatic work of any kind.
One evening about seven or eight months
after Mr. L. had gone away, Mr. X. and an-
other friend were at my house, and it occurred
to me that we might try the ouija-board as a
mild amusement. ^Ir. W. and I tried first,
with little or no success ; then Mr. X. sat with
me, and the traveler flew about and spelt out
messages in great style. Since then (four or
five years ago) Mr. X. and I have sat con-
stantly, and Peter has come to us and helped
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 83
us to get blindfold work through. The results
were not so sure as those which came through
with Mr. L., but Peter has done test work for
us, telepathic experiments, etc. I find that in
these experiments the particular sitter natur-
ally makes an immense difference. If ]\Ir. Y.
is present at a sitting and he concentrates on a
card, number, or letter, or even a word, the
proportion of successful results is very large
compared to those achieved through other sit-
ters. Mr. Y. is not a sitter himself, but he has
a very remarkable influence on a seance, and
undoubtedly he has great power of conveying
thought to controls. The mere fact that he has
glanced at the word or number to be conveyed
seems to make it clear to Peter.
Before I close this chapter perhaps I should
say a few words about telepathy during hyp-
notic trance. Of this I have only slight experi-
ence, and I shall not go outside what has come
under my personal notice. The Rev. S. H. is
an expert hypnotist, and he has frequently
84 VOICES FROM THE VOID
hypnotized Mr. X. and me and other friends
of mine. We found that ouija-work, blindfold
and otherwise, could be accomplished under
these trance conditions, though the messages
were spelt out slowly and nothing of special
interest came through. Lately we had the fol-
lowing results in thought transference, etc.,
under hypnotism. The subjects were Mr. X.
and myself, and I do not think we had got
beyond an early stage of trance in any instance.
On one of these occasions the Rev. S. H.
tried to convey "taste" to Mr. X. He did so
in this way: Having got his subject into a
sufficiently drowsy condition, which took about
five minutes, the Rev. S. H. tasted first salt,
then sugar, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and
lastly ginger. In each case after tasting he
took Mr. X.'s hand, and suggested that he was
tasting something, and asked what it was. In
every case but one Mr. X. recognized immedi-
ately what w^as in the Rev. S. H.'s mouth at
the time, smacking his lips when the sugar's
TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 85
turn came! The ginger was the only case not
perfectly successful. Mr. X. thought it was
cloves, but by that time the Rev. S. H. had
tasted so many condiments that it might well
have been difficult to catch the exact flavor of
this last one!
At another sitting, the Rev. S. H., having
hypnotized Mr. X. and me, tried the following
experiments with us : He held any object picked
up at random in the room in one hand, while
with the other he took the hand of Mr. X.,
concentrated his own thought on the object,
and asked what it was. The first object chosen
was a fountain-pen. Mr. X. almost immedi-
ately described the object as "long, black, and
thin,'' but couldn't say exactly what it was.
The second chosen was a penny. Mr. X. de-
scribed it as ''rather small, flat, and round,"
but did not see anything further. The third,
a roll of paper, was a complete failure; it pro-
duced no impression whatever.
Similar experiments were then tried with
86 VOICES FROM THE VOID
myself as the subject. The first object at-
tempted was a round crystal. I saw some-
thing round and luminous which seemed full
of reflections, and which appeared to retreat
from my eyes, become tiny, and then enlarge
again. I could not say what it was. The sec-
ond object was an ordinary briar-wood pipe.
After a minute or two I knew that whatever
it was it had two dark colors, was not lumin-
ous, and was oval in shape. I got no more
than this. The pipe was dark-brown wood
with a black mouth-piece, and had an oval
bowl, which the Rev. S. H. held in his hand.
I did not visualize the stem of the pipe, which
his hand did not touch.
Further experiments done the same evening
were as follows: While still hypnotized, Mr.
X. and I were put sitting at the ouija-board,
our hands on the traveler. When we touched
it, it began, as usual, to move rapidly. The
Rev. S. H. suggested forcibly that no control
should come. He then concentrated his mind
TELEPATHY AND AUT0:M.\TISM 87
on the word "butter/^ and very slowly and
with much fumbling, I believe, the word was
distinctly spelt out on the board.
The next experiment, in which the Rev. S.
H. concentrated on one letter on the board,
pointing to it with his finger while he held a
hand of one or other sitter, failed with both
of us. The Rev. S. H. suggested that it was
very difficult to concentrate satisfactorily on
a single letter when the whole alphabet w^as
spread before him.
The last of these little experiments was that
the Rev. S. H. held one of my hands, the other
being on the traveler. My control, Shamar,
spelt out her name. The Rev. S. H. asked her
whether if he held an object under the table
she could tell him what it was. She said she
would try. He held a match-box underneath
the table. The traveler moved over to the edge
of the table where it was tilted over, touching
it lightly, and slowly spelt out "paper." The
Rev. S. H. said, "So far right, but describe it
88 VOICES FROM THE VOID
further." Having had another look at it,
Shamar spelt out "box" and then "match."
I describe these experiments as Mr. D., who
was recording them at the time, took them
down, as I myself was in a state of hypnotic
sleep. From my own experience, I consider
that no field of psychic study offers more in-
teresting possibilities than telepathy, and es-
pecially so when practiced through autom-
atism with the control. In some of the cases
I mention no conclusion seemed possible, other
than that an external and intelligent influence
was at work in co-operation with us. In the
case of these latter experiments we are, how-
ever, not dealing with a possible external entity
but are face to face with the, as yet, almost
unexplained possibilities and mysteries of the
subconscious mind, whose abysmal depths
afford a fascinating field for investigation to
those who are not directly interested in the sub-
ject of survival after death.
CHAPTER V
*Trevision"
T TAD I not decided that this would be purely
-■•-■- a record of my personal experiences, I
should make an attempt to speak of "clair-
voyance" in the full sense of the word, but my
space is limited, and what may be called "pre-
vision" is the only kind of clairvoyance with
which I have come into touch and of which
I have had first-hand evidence. Prevision is,
I think, an inexplicable faculty, but it is a
power which some persons undeniably possess,
and, allowing that an external agent is at work,
in automatic experiments one meets certain
controls who also possess the marvelous quality
df lodcing into the future.
89
90 VOICES FROM THE VOID
I think, I may say I believe, that a living
person, through what I can best describe as
his "atmosphere," attracts or repels certain in-
dividuals as that atmosphere may be sym-
pathetic or antipathetic to them, and thus the
clairvoyant, who is supersensitive, may be en-
abled to reach farther than the average indi-
vidual, and enter for the moment into the
associations and memory of a person w^hose
atmosphere is sympathetic to him. In the
frequent instances in which a clairvoyant,
perfectly successful with one person, fails
totally with another, I think this is the explana-
tion. An antipathetic atmosphere must make
it almost impossible for the sensitive to grasp
the past, present, and future of an individual
psychically out of touch w4th him. One real-
izes this when one considers how apparently
unreasonable one's likes and dislikes to certain
people are, which I account for in the sam^e
way.
With regard to prevision, while it is com-
"PREVISION" 91
paratively easy to explain how the sensitive can
describe past and present situations by saying
that the subject may convey these impressions
telepathically to the clairvoyant, in the case of
prevision of future events no such explana-
tion— so far as we are aware — can be offered.
We may carry about with us the more impor-
tant future events of our lives, and if so, we
may be able to transmit them subconsciously
to the sensitive. But who has had any proof
of this? I am unable to entertain any doubt
whatever that certain persons possess the
power of prevision, more especially when they
attempt to foretell the future to a really sym-
pathetic subject. I have had some amazing in-
stances of this in my own experience. If free-
will has no existence at all, and if events are
predetermined from birth to death, it is con-
ceivable that we carry the future as well as the
past and present with us ; but allowing that we
are in any way agents in determining our own
fate, how does the clairvoyant foretell our des-
n VOICES FROM THE VOID
tiny, which is as yet undetermined? Of
course, when we use the term "prevision" we
must bear in mind that there are many degrees
of that power. In some cases only a gUmpse
of the future a very short w^ay ahead is per-
mitted, and in cases of this kind the view is
very narrow and restricted; the clairvoyant
gets on one line, as it were, and sees nothing
beyond or beside it. On the other hand, in
my own experience, I have had my past and
present pictured most accurately and my
future for four years ahead, and this reading
included the most unlikely and important
events. A point which is interesting is that,
unless in exceptional cases, the "fortune-teller"
seldom foresees great public events, such as
the War. This, again, substantiates my con-
tention that the personal atmosphere is the
window by which the clairvoyant is permitted
to gaze into the future.
To illustrate what I speak of I shall give
three cases of prevision or prophecy, all of
"PREVISION" 93
which concerned myself, and which demon-
strate three entirely different degrees of this
power. The first of these ''readings of the
future" was a most remarkable one. Mrs. S.,
the lady I mentioned before in connection with
my letter to Miss C, was the sensitive. I
visited this lady in June, 1914. She knew
nothing whatever about me, not even my name,
and she did not even recognize the fact that I
am Irish by birth. She persisted that I was
American! Mrs. S. did not focus her clair-
voyant power by cards, crystal, or any of the
usual methods, nor did she look at my hand
or even hold it. She merely sat opposite me
and told me the most astonishing things ! She
recognized immediately that I had done psychic
work, and said that fact helped her. She de-
scribed my past for fifteen years back, my pres-
ent position, and the future for four years
ahead, a prediction which seemed so preposter-
ous that, though I took down what she said, I
could not let such improbabilities weigh on my
94 VOICES FRO]M THE VOID
mind. And yet she made no mistake in any
particular.
The circumstances were as follows: In De-
cember, 1 91 3, we had moved into a new house,
and spent a great deal on fitting it up, etc. As
my husband was a physician, practicing in
Dublin, he and I considered we had settled
down for practically the rest of our lives there.
Mrs. S. prophesied that two years after I saw
her I should leave this house, and that my hus-
band would go away from me. She could not
tell why, but he would "drop out of my life,"
she said. "Yet he would not die." All she
prophesied has come true, and the War —
which she did not foresee — accounts for what
has occurred.
The next case I shall mention here was one
of an entirely different nature.
Miss ]\I. has remarkable mediumistic power
in many different directions; she can do psy-
chometry, has a great sense of the influence of
"PREVISION" 95
locality, and is decidedly clairvoyant, though
in a different manner from ]Mrs. S.
In October, 1916, ]\Iiss ^I. looked into a
crystal for me, and described a scene which she
thought was symbolic. She saw a tent in a
desert-place — wild, dark figures crouching
round, and told me this scene meant that some-
one very dear to me was in the tent and would
be in great danger from these wild, dark peo-
ple. I could not place what she saw. My son
was in India at the time, but his regiment had
no prospect of active service, and I did not
connect him with the scene in the crystal. In
January and February, 191 7, however, a dis-
turbance on the Afghan frontier broke out,
and my son's regiment was ordered off to a
desert region, where there w^as severe skirm-
ishing for some timxC. What called my atten-
tion to the crystal scene was a letter written
by him while in this desert-place, in which he
described his tent and the district in which he
was in a way which immediately recalled the
96 VOICES FROM THE VOID
crystal picture to my mind. Now, I give this
case as an entire contrast to the power of pre-
cognition possessed by Mrs. S. She saw the
future for years ahead for me most accurately;
while in Miss M.'s case only one small event
was pictured, though this one scene was very
vivid and distinct. I have found Miss M.*s
power for reading future events follows on
one line at a time. She gets a glimpse of the
future, and a very accurate one; but once an
incident seizes her, she will get it again and
again, and nothing else.
The last instance of prevision I shall give
was a very striking one, and of a very differ-
ent nature from those I have already spoken of.
Mrs. M., a remarkable trance medium, not
professional, came to my house once or twice
for seances. On one of these occasions the
circle present sat round a table, holding hands,
imtil Mrs. M. dropped the hands she was hold-
ing (she was not under control, apparently)
stared at me, and said : "I »ee a tall lily stand-
"PREVISION" fsr
ing in front of you. Someone near and dear
to you is going to die." I said : "You may be
mistaken; it may be myself/' Mrs. M. said:
"No; it is someone very near to you, perhaps
your father or mother. It is close; the lily is
bowing towards you. It will be in a very short
time and sudden." I attached very little im-
portance to this incident, being of a skeptical
turn of mind. That day month, however, my
father died very suddenly. Now, this was a
very clear and distinct case of prevision, as it
happened that this was not in my subconscious
mind; there was no indication that my father
was especially ill until within half an hour of
his death.
So much for clairvoyance from the sensi-
tive. I now venture to speak of a much more
difficult matter — clairvoyance and prevision in
connection with the control as it occurs in
automatism. Here the question arises. From
what source does this power come? If we allow
the agency of an external influence or control,
98 VOICES FROM THE VOID
is the control clairvoyant? Or if we discard
the possibility of any external influence, how-
can the phenomena be accounted for? Does
the sitter become clairvoyant under abnormal
conditions while using the autoscope?
I cannot reply to any of these questions with
any confidence, but as I have said before that,
from my personal experiments, I am inclined
to believe that there is an external influence at
work, I am still further inclined to believe that
in the case of some controls (as in the case of
living human beings) we meet one occasionally
who has the power of reading future events.
But I feel it would be most presumptuous in
anyone with my limited experience to attempt
more than the putting of the slight evidence I
possess before my readers.
The first cases I had of prevision through the
ouija-board concerned the very sudden death
of my father in April, 191 3, of which I have
just spoken. Looking up old records of sit-
tings which took place in the winter of 1912
"PREVISION'* 99
and the early months of 1913, I find that three
or four near relatives who had passed over
came repeatedly, and in every case gave the
same message : that my father was much more
seriously ill than the doctors supposed, and
that he would die suddenly of angina. These
little messages were depressing, certainly; but,
though my father had been suffering from in-
somnia and was not in good health, there was
nothing to indicate heart trouble, and we at-
tached no importance to them. And yet they
proved to be perfectly correct. There was
nothing especially evidential, so far as I re-
member, as to these relatives being the persons
they professed to be. In this case I do not con-
sider, howxver, their identity was a question of
much importance. The point that is interest-
ing is whether some external influence, pos-
sessed of clairvoyant power, conveyed a very
clear and direct prophecy to me — a prophecy
the details of which were certainly not in
my subconscious mind — or whether a latent
100 VOICES FROM THE VOID
prophetical power was developed in myself
under abnormal conditions.
Another case of prevision from the ouija-
board was the following: In August, 191 6, I
was in a very remote part of County Kerry.
One afternoon I received letters from Dublin
concerning the sale of my house, which I was
trying to dispose of under rather hopeless con-
ditions at the time. These letters decided me
to hurry up to Dublin next morning, and that
evening, before going to bed, Miss C. and I
had a little sitting. Astor, Miss C.'s control,
whom I have mentioned before as having
prophetical powers, came and told me that I
was right to travel up to town, that the ar-
rangement I hoped to make about the sale of
my house would not come off, but that within a
week I should find a new purchaser and dispose
of the house to far better advantage. This
seemed a most improbable forecast of future
events at the moment, as I had spent some
months in fruitless efforts to get rid of the
•'PREVISION" IW
house, and everything was against me in Au-
gust, when few people were in town. Astor,
however, was right. The arrangement I ex-
pected to complete failed, and quite unex-
pectedly a new and better purchaser appeared
within the week, and the bargain was con-
cluded.
Astor has prophesied most stirring events
lately for Miss C. and me, and so far, five of
these predictions have come true. A year ago
Astor was most persistent about a play in
which Miss C. was much interested, and
which he said would be performed in London.
This seemed more than improbable at the time
(Astor says he is unable to calculate, within
a year or so, when an event will occur, and
could not tell us when we should hear about the
production), and now in the most unexpected
way this play has been "put on" in London.
I leave it to my readers to suggest an ex-
planation of these cases of prevision through
automatism. Is Astor clairvoyant? Or if
102 VOICES FROM THE VOID
Astor is merely Miss C.'s subconsciousness, do
she and I become clairvoyant under abnormal
conditions ? Or shall we put these readings of
future events down to coincidence? I do not
venture to make any definite reply to these
questions.
The instances of prevision which I have
given in this chapter may seem trivial to the
reader, but I make no apology for them. They
may not be striking, but they go with all the
other evidence we heap together to help to con-
vince the world that if progress is to be made
in the study of the Unseen, it must be slow to
reject what seem improbabilities at a first
glance.
The most useful work the student of psychi-
cal research can do is to accumulate results
good or bad ; no sitting, however trivial, should
go unrecorded. When possible, no case which
might prove identity should remain uninvesti-
gated. No psychic phenomena, however im-
probable, such as chiromancy, etc., should be
"PRE^^SIOX" 103
despised. The smaller and rather tiresome ex-
periments in telepathy should not be neglected.
It is by the sifting of mountains of such evi-
dence that we advance towards a clearer under-
standing of what is now called the "super-
natural," but what may some day be considered
"natural" if we continue our work with
patience.
CHAPTER VI
Mediumship and the Mental Sensations
OF THE Medium
IN the four preceding chapters I have tried
to record and classify some of the most in-
teresting experiences which have come to me
personally through automatism, the only
method by which I have endeavored to hold
communication with the Unknown. These are
records of some six or seven years* work,
which was never strenuous and always inter-
mittent, and that for many reasons, one being
that, although psychical research has offered
me many fascinating problems and has given
me many delightful friends, it is not my chief
interest in life. Indeed, I will go further, and
say I am glad it has never absorbed me.
104
MEDIUMSHIP 105
This may seem discouraging to the en-
thusiast but I make the statement advisedly,
partly because I believe that, for the average
sensitive, good results can only be obtained by
great moderation in the expenditure of psychic
power. Evil results follow almost invariably
on too constant sittings. I am entirely con-
vinced that, in practicing any artificial branch
of psychic study or in the cultivation of medi-
umistic power, great and incalculable dangers
are run: an exhausted sensitive is practically
useless for experimental work, and may lose
his or her power completely, in addition to seri-
ously impairing his or her health.
When I speak of "artificial" branches of
psychic work, I mean that work which is pro-
duced by a deliberate attempt to obtain re-
sults— seances or sittings of any kind, table-
turning, etc. A ''natural" sensitive comes
under a different heading. When this gift ap-
pears early in life its exercise cannot be
avoided. Results oome to the medium; the
106 VOICES FROM THE VOID
medium does not seek them, and probably in
these cases they are not injurious, and cer-
tainly they are inevitable.
The "cultivated" medium who has limited
gifts and who wishes to strengthen these
gifts should be content with the limitations set
on the work he can do, and should not attempt
to force them in any way. He should never
"sit" when he is ill or tired, and in his best
condition he should deliberately make up his
mind that this subject is not going to absorb
him.
In this way more satisfactory work can be
done. When I reflect how irregular our own
sittings have been, and that we have never
ventured on more than two in a week, I am
fairly well satisfied with the modest results we
have achieved, and I am quite convinced that
these results would not have been achieved had
we w^orked our small fund of psychic power
more strenuously than we did. If all circles
MEDIUMSHIP 107
would be content to work patiently and slowly,
not to become possessed by this one topic, and
not to expect anything sensational, I believe
the mass of evidence thus accumulated would
throw more light on the study of the Unseen
than they realize. In the formation of small
circles many matters have to be considered,
the chief one being a combination of really
suitable sitters. At the ouija-board, where two
persons work together, it is all-important to
discover mediums whose respective qualities
balance and assist each other. The control will
generally say he requires "a negative and a
positive.'^ What this means exactly it is hard
to understand, but from watching many com-
binations at the ouija-board I have gathered
that a "positive" medium receives the message
through his or her brain and transmits it to
the board, while a negative possesses the driv-
ing force — I mean that, apparently, one sitter
supplies mental, and the other muscular power.
108 VOICES FROM THE VOID
Force is necessary, and the sitter whose brain
and eyes are used does not seem to supply as
much force as the negative, whose senses are
less suited to serve the control. In arranging
a circle for automatism, two sitters should be
chosen who possess respectively the qualities I
mention as far as can be discovered. A quick,
intelligent recorder should be the third element.
Great care, accuracy, and rapidity are neces-
sary to read the ouija-board, and this office
should be taken entirely off the sitters'
shoulders. They should be in a quiet and re-
laxed state of mind — in fact, the less they
realize what is taking place the better.
The gift of "seeing without eyes" is cer-
tainly comparatively rare. I have sought dili-
gently for mediums who possess the power of
working blindfold, and find they are few in
number. In fact, I have only met four out of
the many I have tried who have this gift. I
generally distinguish a blindfold worker by the
fact that before he has had any suggestion that
MEDIUMSHIP 109
we should close our eyes he will close his of
his own accord, and prefer to sit without look-
ing at the letters. Blindfold sitting is very ex-
hausting as a rule; I find it so especially when
the control or communicator works chiefly
through me, as it invariably does when my
fellows-sitter is a beginner. Here I should like
to refer to the mental state of the sitter for
automatic experiments, for it is difficult for
persons who have not been sitters themselves
to judge how^ far the psychic is in a normal
condition when practicing automatism.
The crux in deciding whether or not an ex-
ternal influence is at w^ork consists in determin-
ing how far the subliminal self plays a part in
these experiments. No one present is in a
more difficult position to judge of this than the
automatist himself. When at the board I am
not conscious that my condition is other than
normal, but if I were asked whether or not I
used my hand to push the traveler to certain
letters I should be quite unable to reply. If
110 VOICES FROM THE VOID
I do this, it is an entirely subconscious action
on my part. What I can state confidently is,
that after a short time messages come through
my brain before they are written down, and
I am again unable to say whether they are
suggestions from an external entity or not. I
am inclined to believe they are. For sometimes
sentences come through which are quite con-
trary to what I should expect, and again, when
I am most desirous that the traveler should
move for me, it stands stock-still.
I am absolutely certain that the sitters' con-
dition is abnormal once the control or com-
municator takes possession of the arm. In the
case of Mr. X., he closes his eyes and turns
involuntarily away from the board, and often,
after a few minutes, gets into a state of half
trance. He appears to become seized by the
emotions of the control in communication;
grief, anger, etc., overcome him, and if the
emotion is intense he becomes hypnotized and
is unable to continue the sitting. A point
MEDIUMSHIP 111
which IS very marked in ouija-board work is
the obedience and caution of the influences that
speak. It is quite easy, as a rule, to get rid
of an unpleasant entity; it is easy also to call
up any special person, though I have a great
objection to doing this, as it seems to leave
the field open for fraud and impersonation. If
a dangerous or unpleasant subject is spoken of,
it quite amusing to observe the prudence and
tact displayed by the control. It rather points
to the subconscious theory. Only once in all
my experience have I known a control make a
really untactful remark.
An interesting point I have noticed in
automatism, as practiced by two mediums
working jointly at the ouija-board, is the trans-
ference of force from one to the other accord-
ing to the nature of the control or communi-
cator. For instance, in the case of Peter and
Eyen the force seems to come chiefly from me.
With Astor (who professes to be her spirit
guide) Miss C.'s hand is powerfully controlled,
112 VOICES FROM THE VOID
and I appear to add practically nothing to the
force which moves the traveler from letter to
letter. In the case of Sir Hugh Lane, Mr.
Lennox Robinson's hand and arm are literally
seized and pushed about so forcibly that it is
most difficult to read the communications
which come through. The traveler has more
than once been flung off the board in a violent
way with this communicator.
Those w^ho are inclined to dismiss w^hat we
psychical students have to tell as foolish and
unconvincing should always bear in mind the
difficulties we labor under. The evidence of
survival laid before the public is at best only
a small fraction of what we possess. From the
very private and intimate nature of most of
the messages we receive it is impossible that
the really convincing part of our work can be
exposed to the public gaze. Personal feeling
constantly stands in our way. We may be
quite positive ourselves that we have spoken to
those we loved who have passed out of our
IVIEDIUMSHIP 113
lives, and yet a seal may be set on our mouths
and we dare not say the word which would
silence the skeptic.
I have already said that the messages re-
ceived from the Unknown, so far as I have had
any knowledge of them, are essentially per-
sonal messages. The control, and still more
the communicator, appear to be out of touch
with the earth, except so far as they enter into
the "aura" of some living human being. The
only instance I can recall of a message con-
cerning a public event coming directly to my
circle was a very vivid and perfectly correct
prophecy concerning the Balkan War which
was sent to us by Peter through a communi-
cator who called himself "David Isaac Solo-
mons," during our first blindfold sittings on
October 19th, 1912. It ran as follows:
"Blood, blood, everywhere in the Near East.
A great nation will fall and a small nation will
rise. Blood everywhere. A great religion will
stand in danger. News that will astonish the
114 VOICES FROM THE VOID
civilized world will come to hand within the
next week/'
A wxek after this message came the first
Bulgarian victory — Kirk Kilisse — was an-
nounced, and later Turkey fell and Bulgaria
rose.
I do not consider the news of the sinking
of the Titanic an instance of information of a
public event through a communicator, as I be-
lieve that case to have been telepathic, and in
the Liisitania case a personal interest was
involved.
Before closing this chapter I have only a few
remarks to make. One of these is on the value
of practical experiment.
I urge anyone interested in this subject to
try his own powers as a medium. Until prac-
tical experiments are attempted, no fair esti-
mate of the subject can be arrived at. Many
admirable books have been written concerning
every branch of psychical study, but the reader
of these who has never been at a seance or
MEDIUMSHIP 115
used an autoscope has, with all respect to him,
no notion of what he is talking of. As I have
said, much that cannot be explained to the pub-
lic is what is most convincing to the student,
and I say further, there is much of what is
convincing to the medium that cannot be ex-
plained to the student. If possible, sit your-
self, with the precaution necessary; analyze
your feelings, and try to do so with a clear and
open mind, not starting with any prejudice,
religious or otherwise.
The personal element is really the chief ele-
ment in psychic matters. Messages received
through the autoscope are usually personal.
Hence the great difficulty in handing them
over in their entirety for public dissection.
Personality counts in sittings more than any-
thing else. One uncongenial person can upset
a whole evening. A cold or unsympathetic in-
dividual, an ultra-skeptical or contemptuous
person, is detected at once from the other side,
116 VOICES FROM THE VOID
and can reduce the results of a sitting to mere
nonsense.
Again, a sitter who is even slightly ailing re-
tards results. The controls talk of nothing else
when this happens ; physical conditions seem to
count even more than mental ones. What is
strange and entertaining to the observer is that
the personal element tells as much on this side
as on the other. I have often watched, with
infinite amusement, how someone contemptu-
ous or indifferent to a distressing degree be-
comes keen and vivid when some element con-
cerning his own personality enters into the
message! Something said by a friend of his
own, or relative, or, better still, a visit from
his own "spirit guide," who, no matter what
nonsense he talks, can rouse and excite him.
In fact, one of the interests one finds in
psychical work is that it not only reveals the
personalities of controls and communicators,
but also human personalities. For nothing calls
human emotions into play more vividly than
IMEDIOISHIP 117
this converse with the Unknown! Pleasure,
anger, grief, joy, vanity, common sense, curi-
osity, and wonder, all appear at the ouija-
board, both in sitters and spectators.
I trust that what I have said in this chapter
may serve the purpose which I have intended
it should — that is, that it may help the really
earnest student to approach these investiga-
tions in a sane and inquiring spirit, without
prejudice, and realizing that great patience and
perseverance are required if even a few
grains of gold are to be found among the
mountains of dross.
CHAPTER VII
PSYCHOMETRY THROUGH THE MEDIUM AND
THE Control
PSYCHOMETRY is a term which may
possibly be unfamiliar to some of my
readers. I define it for their benefit, there-
fore, as "a psychic power possessed by certain
individuals which enables them to divine the
history of, or events connected with, a ma-
terial object with which they come in close
contact."
Incredible as the fact may appear, neverthe-
less the evidence that this power exists is most
remarkable and difficult to explain away. The
cases of psychometry which I describe in this
chapter have all come under my personal
118
PSYCHOMETRY 119
notice ; I have no gift of the kind myself, but I
have endeavored to observe what has come
before me carefully, and to note anything of
special interest. I think persons who possess
the gift of psychometry are not necessarily
sensitive to locality, as one might suppose. I
mean that it would seem natural that a per-
son who could read the history of an object by
touching it could also "sense" a place in which
anything striking had happened. So far as I
have known them, the psychometrists are not
by any means influenced by locality. Their
power manifests itself chiefly by physical con-
tact with a material object.
The first case I shall mention is one which,
though not specially striking, had one feature
which interested me greatly. Mr. and Mrs.
M. were at my house one evening at a seance.
Mrs. M. has remarkable powers as a trance
medium. She is not a professional. Mr. M.
mentioned to me casually soon after he arrived
that he had found he had power as a
120 VOICES FROM THE VOID
psychometrist, and was trying to cultivate this
gift; he asked me to give him something to
hold which I wore constantly. I gave him a
pearl ear-ring I had on, and he held it in his
hand during the seance. Late in the evening,
when I had forgotten all about It, Mr. M. re-
minded me of this ear-ring, and said he had
received many impressions from it. He told
me many things about myself, all of which
were quite correct and most detailed. He de-
scribed my father most accurately — ^his appear-
ance, clothes, occupation, and the house he
lived in. Then he came to a tale about myself
which concerned a man in India. I knew noth-
ing of this, and told him he was wrong. Mr.
M. seemed very clear about it, and said I
should remember it later, he was sure. I told
my sister of this, and at first she failed to
place the incident, but a few days after she
said to me: "Mr. M. was quite right, after all;
I have been thinking about it. The ear-ring was
mine first; I gave it to you, and the story of
PSYCHOMETRY 121
the man in India concerned me." And she re-
minded me of the circumstances which Mr. M.
had made no mistake about — even to the de-
tail of a pet dog possessed by the man in ques-
tion, which my sister verified.
The interesting point here was that telepathy
from me could not explain the fact, and also
that the ear-ring should have retained part of
the history of the person it first belonged to.
This reading made by IMr. M. contained, like
most of the readings of psychometrists and
clairvoyants, scraps of this and that. Every-
thing in the case was perfectly correct, but the
mental pictures came, as they always do, like
cinema pictures — no sooner there than gone,
and an entirely different scene revealed — and
one of these moving pictures illustrated a scrap
of my sister's life. Hence the puzzle it pre-
sented to me.
Another and even more interesting case of
psychometry occurred with my friend Miss C.
In June, 1914, a lady in London, Mrs. S., did
122 VOICES FROM THE VOID
a most remarkable reading of the present and
future for me, of which I have spoken already.
This lady appeared to get in touch with me in
a most complete and rapid manner ; she recog-
nized at once that I had some power as a
medium, and seemed to find that fact helpful
to her.
In May, 191 6, Miss C. was in London, and
visited the same lady, hoping for a good re-
sult in clairvoyance. When starting for Mrs.
S.'s house. Miss C. received a letter from me,
and, not having time to read it, carried it with
her in her hand. Mrs. S. was not very suc-
cessful with Miss C, and, having made a few
not very interesting remarks, she suddenly
said: "You have a letter in your hand from
someone whose name begins with H. ; give it to
me.'' Miss C. handed Mrs. S. my letter, and,
having held it to her forehead for a moment,
she proceeded to pour out my history to Miss C,
past, present, and future, and this, as events
showed, with perfect accuracy in every detail.
PSYCHOMETRY 123
Now, Mrs. S. had only seen me once two years
before, and did not then even know my name,
and she had never seen ]\Iiss C. and me to-
gether, so that so far as she knew — even allow-
ing that she remembered me — she could not
have associated us with each other in any way.
I consider this the most notable case of
psychometry I have come across. The fact
that Mrs. S. detected my letter in Miss C.'s
hand, gave the initial letter of my name, and
then, by some supernormal faculty, holding the
writing in her hand, gathered a long and most
complicated story from it, was, to my thinking,
astounding.
Another case of a different nature, perhaps
almost as remarkable as the last, came through
Miss M., a personal friend of my own, who is
gifted with telepathic and clairvoyant power
and can psychometrize in a most remarkable
way. In December, 191 7, I was at a friend's
house one afternoon, and met Miss M. there.
My friend had brought a parcel with her from
124 VOICES FROM THE VOID
the country, containing a stone, a piece of
mortar, a piece of charred wood, and a frag-
ment of molding from the outside wall of a
building.
Miss M. took up these objects one by one,
and, selecting the piece of molding, held it in
her hand for a considerable time. She began
by saying she saw a "place" in the country
where it seemed dark — figures were moving
about. She noticed one man particularly. He
wore rough clothes, was not a peasant, and not
a gentleman! She felt there was treachery
about him. The "place'' had a history; some-
thing had happened there more than once.
There were outhouses behind the place, and
she saw animals being driven hastily out of
them. She saw a fire smoldering there; it had
been a great fire. She saw a woman in the
place and a man, whom she thought was her
husband. The woman had far the stronger
personality of the two.
Now, the house in question had been burnt
PSYCHOMETRY 125
down three times. The fires had taken place
at night, and it had never been discovered how
these had occurred. The cattle had been
driven out of the barns on the last occasion by
some unknown person. The owners of the
house were as Miss M. described them. The
woman had a far stronger personality than her
husband. I need hardly add that Miss M.
knew nothing of any of these circumstances —
neither where the house was nor that a house
was in question, unless she guessed the fact
from the piece of molding.
This reading was very wonderful, I thought,
and what puzzled me most was why the piece
of molding carried this history with it when
the stone, mortar, and wood told no tale! Pos-
sibly this was because the molding was a more
essential part of the building. Psychometry is
a complete mystery to me. I cannot form any
satisfactory theory as to why an inanimate
object should stimulate clairvoyant power as I
have described.
126 VOICES FROM THE VOID
I have seen far more psychometry coming
through the control than through the medium.
I mean that in the course of recent sittings we
have had a large group of cases in which vari-
ous objects were laid on the ouija-table and
psychometry was obtained through the help of
Shamar or Astor, when no human being was
present who possessed psychometric power
even in a slight degree. These experiments
have been made lately, but so far we have not
tried any case in which no one in the room
knew anything about the object placed on the
table; so possibly I am wrong in classing the
larger number of them under the head of
psychometr}^ : they may come more fittingly
under the head of telepathy. However, as they
all consist in elucidating the history of an ob-
ject apparently through contact with the
traveler, I add them to this chapter.
In the cases I now quote various objects
were laid on the ouija board. My guide,
Shamar, purported to give us their history by
PSYCHOIVIETRY 127
touching them — i.e., the traveler touched the
object from time to time, sometimes vio-
lently, nearly knocking it off the table — and
once when her own knowledge failed her by
bringing some other entity better qualified to
speak on the subject than herself. In one case,
perhaps the most interesting of the group.
Miss C. w^as one of the sitters, and the psy-
chometry came through her guide, Astor, who
seemed quite as proficient as Shamar in psy-
chometric power.
I give several of these cases in the order in
which they came, but it is impossible to em-
body the entire script of each in the small space
I have at my disposal.
I. Fountain Pen: Sitters, Mrs, Tr avers Smith
and Mr, B.
In the first case we tried in this way: an
ordinary fountain-pen was placed on the table;
128 VOICES FRO:\r THE VOID
it belonged to the Rev. S. H., who was present.
(He was not sitting.) Having examined it
carefully, Shamar told us that it had belonged
to someone else before it came to its present
owner; the man who first possessed it was
dead; it had not been left to the Rev. S. H.,
but given to him by a woman connected with
the dead man. Shamar described this man as
a hard-headed business person.
All these details were correct; it was the
first and least remarkable case we tried, but it
was interesting, as the object was quite an
ordinary fountain-pen, which could suggest
nothing to the sitters.
2. Opal Set in Silver: Sitters^ Mrs, Travers
Smith and Mr. B.
In the second case I quote a jewel was put
on the table, an opal of a peculiarly pale color
set in a curious way. Shamar gave us the his-
psycho:metry 129
tory of this stone from the time it was found
in a quarry in China ; she described many per-
sons who had possessed the stone, and how it
had passed from hand to hand chiefly because
its psychic properties brought misfortune to
those who wore it. She told us of many forms
in which it had been set ; that it had belonged
to a French Prince whose initial was L. ; that
he had been killed by some man deliberately;
that after his death it had passed into the
hands of a woman, who possessed it for a very
short time, and that she also met a violent
death. Her initials were 'M. A.
Now, the owner of the ring was sitting, and
he could verify several of the facts mentioned
by Shamar — among them that the stone had
belonged to Louis XVIth just before his execu-
tion ; that he had had it conveyed to ^Marie An-
toinette, in whose possession it had remained
until her execution.
130 VOICES FROM THE VOID
3. Ruby Ring: Sitters, Mrs. Traver^ Smith
and Mr, B.
In the third case a very fine sixteenth-
century ring, set with a large and beautifully
cut ruby, was on the board. Shamar gave us
a good deal of its history herself, and when
her own knowledge failed her, she brought us
a priest named Shamouni, a Zoroastrian who
had worn the stone in former times. He told
us he was the head of some Eastern occult
order, and had had the power (when alive) of
leaving the body ; he said the ruby was full of
magic, and had helped him to do this. He gave
us information about the Zoroastrian religion
which was unknown to us, but which we have
verified as being quite correct; he told us that
when the ruby was in his possession it was not
cut as it is at present. He explained some of
the symbols that are on it, and described an-
other which he said was in the place which is
PSYCHOMETRY 131
now engraved with a fine head of Jupiter (ob-
viously of Western workmanship). We in-
quired carefully about this symbol (the priest
traced it for us on the board with the traveler) .
We have succeeded in drawing it, and it
proves to be the sign of Leo. After this
Shamar came again, and continued the his-
tory of the ring. She described it as having
been presented to one of the Popes by some
religious order in Rome, and it was handed
down from one Pope to another. The owner
of the ring was in the room, but not sitting; he
believed the stone had belonged to the head of
some occult order in the East, and he had also
been told it had been in the possession of sev-
eral of the Popes. Shamar gave the date of
the present setting quite correctly; also the
nature of the stone, which was not an ordinary
ruby; the communication was very long and
detailed.
ISa VOICES FROM THE VOID
4. Cross: Sitters^ Mrs. Tr avers Smith and
Mr. B.
The next case I mention is an interesting
one. A cross was the object in question. It
suggested Httle in the rather dim Hght we have
at our sittings, except that it was embossed and
made of some white metal. Shamar stated
that it was made in Italy, the metal being a
mixture of bronze and silver. It then came to
France, and was sold to a woman w^ho always
wore it as a "kind of amulet." She described
this woman as beautiful, and a Princess or
noble person. She stated that this woman had
brought the cross wath her to England; that
there she had been unhappy, and had met her
death suddenly. She was killed by a *'knife,"
and had no time to prepare her soul for its
journey to the other world, as she only knew
she was to die a few hours beforehand. The
owner of the cross was present. He knew it
PSYCHOIVIETRY 133
was said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of
Scots ; it was a reliquary made of some white
metal (not pure silver) enameled. Strangely
enough, the word "Scotland'* was in my mind
during the whole sitting, though I did not asso-
ciate the object with Mary, Queen of Scots — in
fact, her name never occurred to me. The
word ''Scotland," however, was never spelt
out on the board, which tells against the sub-
conscious theory.
5. Piece of Alabaster: Sitters, Miss C. and
Mr. B,
In this case a piece of alabaster was on the
table. It conveyed no suggestion to the sitters
further than a rather large egg-shaped pebble
would — in fact, no one present recognized it as
alabaster. The object belonged to the Rev.
S. H., who was in the room; the sitters were
134 VOICES FROM THE VOID
Miss C. and Mr. B. The control in this case
was Astor. A very long communication came
through, in which it appeared that the object
had come from the Pyramids, which were de-
scribed with many details unknown to the sit-
ters; the tombs in the desert and the funeral
rites of Ancient Eg}^pt were also described
most rapidly and in very excellent English.
The whole communication presented a picture
of Ancient Eg}^pt quite remarkable in its vivid-
ness. It was only at the conclusion of the sit-
ting that the owner told us that the piece of
alabaster had been brought to him from one of
the Pyramids.
6. Silver or Steel Ring with Coat of Arms
Engraved on it: Sitters, Mrs. Tr avers
Smith and Mr. A.
A beautifully chased ring was laid on the
board. The metal from which it was made
PSYCHOMETRY 135
appeared to be steel or silver; a coat of arms
was engraved on it, but that conveyed no idea
to me. Shamar was the control. She said the
ring was made in Italy, and brought from that
country to France^ It was sold to a man of
high degree, a nobleman, she thought. She
described him as being closely connected with
the French Court. She saw him wearing
scarlet robes and a closely fitting scarlet cap;
she said that he was cunning and full of guile,
not so much through his own efforts as
through a woman's assistance; he was Italian
by birth. Mr. B., who had just bought the
ring, was in the room; he did not know its his-
tory, but the coat of arms was that of the
Medici family, and he thought the psychometry
clearly pointed to the ring having possibly be-
longed to Cardinal Mazarin, though this had
not been told him when purchasing it.
136 VOICES FROM THE VOID
7. Large Gold Ring, Finely Chased: Sitters,
Miss C. and Mr. B.
Astor said : 'This was worn by a person of
rank with a dark face. He was very proud
and stood upon his dignity. He was involved
in many intrigues of a somewhat mean and
despicable nature. He was crafty and full of
guile. He trapped some innocent people and
led them to ruin, I think. (What was his
nationality?) I would not like to say, but it
was once in Spain; I think it was not there
long. It was given to a woman as the price
of her beauty, and that was not the end.
(What country did the man belong to?)
France, perhaps, but I think the man had
Southern blood. (What was his name?) He
was a man engaged governing people despoti-
cally. He was tyrannical by nature, and he op-
pressed the weak and caused great suffering.
I think he was not long-lived, because he seems
PSYCHOIVIETRY 13T
not to have died naturally. He was in some
great trouble or difficulty, and that affected his
health. He did not die in the natural way
from age. (What country did he die in?) It
was not in France, I am sure. I think he was
on a bare spot in close proximity to the sea.
He might have been a soldier. He might have
been a I have got a name. I think it is
Napoleon. (Why did you not get his name
at once?) I can only get slowly into the
atmosphere."
The ring was Napoleon's coronation ring.
A locket containing Napoleon's hair was
now placed on the table. Astor said: "This
was not so close to him, I imagine. He was
not so close to it, because I cannot get his
atmosphere from it." The locket was modern,
and the traveler did not come into contact with
the hair which was enclosed in it.
I have related these cases for what they are
worth. In each of them the owner of the ob-
ject psychometrized was present, and knew
138 VOICES fro:m the void
more or less of its history. I acted as medium
and Shamar as control in all but two in-
stances— that of the piece of alabaster from
the Pyramids and in the case of Napoleon's
coronation ring, when Miss C. was the me-
dium and Astor the control.
This kind of work may quite reasonably be
described as "telepathy." I have not come
across any case of psychometry yet through
medium or control where no one was present
who knew anything of the object psycho-
metrized; but even allowing that these cases
were due to thought transference, I think they
are sufficiently interesting and remarkable to
be recorded here.
CHAPTER VIII
Summing Up
IN this, the last chapter of my book, I have
set myself a difficult task. I shall make an
attempt to sum up and lay before my readers
whatever evidence I have received for and
against the presence of an external influence
working through us as we sit at the ouija-
board. I limit myself strictly to my own line
of research: I do not propose to go outside
my personal experiences. What makes any
definite pronouncement on this subject almost
impossible is that, no matter what theory one
holds, it is difficult to adhere to it rigidly, for
the simple reason that, although the results of
nine sittings might be accounted for by our
139
140 VOICES FROM THE VOID
subliminal self or telepathy, at the tenth sitting
something may occur which upsets and puz-
zles us and leads us to believe that, after all,
something supernormal has got possession of
us. It must always be borne in mind that I
write as a sitter, not as an observer, therefore I
am in a position to speak of the personal sen-
sations of the medium. It seems simplest to
take my chapters in the order I have written
them, and give my conclusions on each separate
subject. First as to the nature of what calls
itself "the control."
The control, as I have explained it in my
second chapter, is exactly of the nature of an
intimate acquaintance; the word "familiar'' ex-
presses it admirably. We say, "Oh, here is
Peter or Astor or Shamar," and we know the
kind of communication we may expect, and we
are never disappointed. Peter, Astor, and
Shamar have always the same personalities,
and we can count on the communicators each
will call up for us.
SUMiVIIXG UP 141
Shall we decide, then, that once having de-
termined the characteristics of a control^ our
subconsciousness supplies the rest? We have
had a certain suggestion made to us, and our
subliminal self sets to work, spins web after
web for us; each web is woven on the same
plan. We call our webs Astor or Eyen or
Peter, but Astor, Eyen, and Peter are three
suggestions which have been offered to our
minds, and proceed to spin Astor's pattern or
Eyen*s or Peter's as any of the three names is
spelt on the board.
But now comes the question. From what did
the original suggestion arise? Where did
these names come from, and the histories at-
tached to them ? Had the circle been chatting
about the East when Shamar appeared and de-
scribed herself as a Hindoo? Had the conver-
sation turned on America when Peter Rooney
introduced himself? I can say confidently,
"No." I have no clue as to the origin of these
influences. I cannot account for them. They
142 VOICES FROM THE VOID
are so vivid to me that I feel as if I could de-
scribe their appearances and manners; the
courtly, slippery Eyen, the rough and practical
Peter, the dignified and simple Shamar, the
fiery and headlong Astor, with his arrogant
prophecies. The manner in which the arm is
controlled in each case is quite different.
Shamar and Eyen are smooth and easy, though
the motion in each case feels different to the
sitter; Peter is violent and erratic; Astor is
amazingly rapid, and seizes the arm in a very
powerful way. They quite remind one of the
personages in Schumann's "Carnival," which
he explains as his different moods; Florestan,
Eusebius, etc.
The human mind has been described as a
rock of which three-fourths is submerged in
water; the fourth part, which is not sub-
merged, is the conscious mind. It is a danger-
ous matter to pronounce on the powers of the
submerged three-fourths of ourselves, of
which we know little or nothing; we may be
SUMMING UP 143
capable under certain semi-hypnotic conditions
of much that we are totally unconscious of in
our normal state. I consciously find it hard
to believe that I, who have made no special
study of India or Persia, could spin out long
tales about the East without stop or hesitation,
putting ideas and sentences together at a rate
which makes it difficult to take down the com-
munication unless in shorthand; but my sub-
merged portion may possibly be able to do this.
I feel that I have, as I said before, no explana-
tion to offer as to where the original sugges-
tions of these controls came from; no positive
proof of their origin can be obtained, I think,
and it seems simplest to accept their own ac-
count of themselves and pass on to their work
which they help us to accomplish.
In my third chapter I summed up as far as
possible the evidence I have of survival. In
the case of the communicator, proof of the
presence of an external influence seems to me
stronger than in the case of the control. The
144 VOICES FROM THE VOID
control is very remote ; he is vague and unsat-
isfactory in his statements; nothing can be
proved about him; we have to take him more
or less on faith; whereas the communicator has
frequently made statements which have been
a mixture of fact and fiction, and occasionally
has stated facts only, without any fiction, as in
the case of "Alice Franks" and the "Pearl
Tie-pin" case. The only two explanations
possible in cases such as these are — (a) That
we are in actual communication, directly or in-
directly, with a person who has passed through
the experience which we call death; or (b)
that in some mysterious and inexplicable way
we have read the minds of persons who are
not in touch with us in any way, and that for
no reason which we can understand. I mean
the minds of the living friends or relatives of
the dead person.
This explanation appears to me more mar-
velous than the first, which many of us are
inclined to reject because it involves belief in
SUMMING UP 145
what we call the "unreal/' After all, if we
admit that three-fourths of our mentality is
submerged and that one-fourth only consti-
tutes our consciousness, are we qualified to
pronounce on what is "real" and what is "un-
real''? Possibly we see these words in an in-
verted w^ay; the large reality may be outside
us ; at most we may only be permitted to grasp
an atom of it while we are here on earth — in
other words, our consciousness may be less
able to grasp reality than our subconsciousness.
I am not by any means convinced, but I am
inclined to believe that under certain unex-
plained conditions we are enabled to communi-
cate with the dead. I think we have had,
through the reports of the S.P.R., indisputable
proof of premonitions of death in the form of
visions of persons, immediately before or after
they have passed over. In the same way,
through the ouija-board, the intense emotion
awakened by the act of dying seems to give the
spirit the power to communicate the fact of
146 VOICES FROM THE VOID
his or her death by means of the sensitive or
medium. The term "telepathy" may explain
these cases, and also cases of appearances and
communications long after death; but in in-
stances such as the "Pearl Tie-pin'* case, in
which the communication came through a
month or six weeks after the death had oc-
curred, "telepathy" is a natural explanation,
but we must admit that this is telepathy be-
tween a living mind and a discarnate spirit.
With regard to "prevision" througlr the
ouija-board, so far as I have come across in-
stances of this, it seems to me likely that an
external influence is at work; I make this state-
ment chiefly because of the extreme improba-
bility of some of the predictions I have come
across, many of which proved true, and which
have made me smile when the messages were
received. If prevision is not explained as the
work of an external influence, we must at-
tribute it to an awakening of latent clairvoyant
power in our subconsciousness under the semi-
SUMME^G UP 147
hypnosis produced by automatism. This is a
perfectly rational explanation, and one which I
am inclined to accept, but it does not quite
solve the problem. Take a person gifted with
clairvoyance in any form, and consider how
difficult it is to account for this power of look-
ing into the past or future. From careful ob-
servation I believe that no clairvoyant vision
comes except in a state of semi-hypnosis; the
mind must be quite lax and ready to receive the
impression. I am inclined to think that these
impressions come from some source external
to the medium, who may have the past and
present in his or her subconsciousness, but so
far as we know cannot have the future. No
psychic subject is more difficult than that of
prevision, and I merely mention what seems to
me the simplest and most probable explanation.
Prevision through a medium who does not
possess that power in his or her normal state,
coming by means of automatism, is a puzzle
which I do not venture to solve.
148 VOICES FROM THE VOID
The psychometry of objects through the
ouija-board affords some evidence of the pres-
ence of an external entity. In many of our
experiments we have had persons in the room
who knew certain facts about the object psy-
chometrized; these cases can reasonably be
called simple cases of telepathy, but I maintain
that the telepathic powers of the sitters must
be considerably heightened when sitting; in my
normal state I could not possibly produce the
results we obtained.
In a few instances w^e have psychometrized
letters or objects, the contents and histories of
w^hich were unknown to anyone in the room.
An interesting case was a letter written by
Miss V. to a friend of mine. The letter w^as
psychometrized. The control (Shamar) de-
scribed rather peculiar circumstances con-
nected with two ladies concerned, and also gave
a very detailed description of Miss X.'s room,
furniture, pictures, and view from the win-
dows, etc. — all quite correct. No one at the
SUMMING UP 149
sitting knew anything about the room in ques-
tion. It seemed clear that some external entity
caUing itself Shamar was responsible for this.
Automatic psychometry affords more proof
that we are being handled by something out-
side ourselves than any other branch of this
work. Since writing the earlier chapters of
this book I have had two most striking cases
of what I shall call "human psychometry"; I
mean the elucidation of striking events con-
nected with the history of human beings
through the ouija-board.
One of the cases I am going to speak of
afforded a more remarkable proof of the pres-
ence of a discarnate spirit than anything else
that has come under my notice ; I may, indeed,
call it conclusive. At one of our usual sit-
tings last spring two persons quite unknown to
me were present. I had no idea that they had
any special object in coming to our circle be-
yond a general interest in automatism. I sat
with Mr. B., who knew nothing of the visitors.
150 VOICES FROM THE VOID
It soon became clear that they desired a special
message from a near relative who had passed
over a long time before. The name of this
relative was spelt out quite correctly, and a
message w^hich meant nothing to me, but
seemed quite evidential to those concerned.
The sitting was a long one; it continued for
about two hours, and the results seemed very
amazing to my visitors. Of course, I was quite
vmable to judge of them, as the circumstances
were unknown to me.
A few nights later, when our usual circle
only was present, we had another sitting, and
the same communicator spoke to us. Mr. X.,
who had not been at the previous sitting, came
in by chance and sat away from the board, not
even listening to the message w^hich was being
spelt out. He fell into a state of semi-trance
and complained that something terribly de-
pressing was in the room. We broke off the
sitting accordingly.
We had a third sitting a few nights later,
SmiMING UP 151
and the same thing occurred; the same com-
municator spoke to us, and Mr. X. came in and
sat at a distance from the board. Almost im-
mediately he fell again into trance conditions
and appeared greatly distressed, complaining
of some very depressing influence, and we
broke off the sitting as before. Later in the
evening the Rev. S. Hv hypnotized Mr. X.,
put a pencil in his hand, and asked him to do
some automatic writing. He wrote very vio-
lently the same message again and again:
"Send this terrible thing away; it's coming
again." We thought it best to put an end to
the sitting. Next day my sister, who knew
nothing about these sittings beyond the
visitors' names, told me a most tragic tale con-
nected with this communicator; he had com-
mitted suicide ! I had heard nothing whatever
of this story before. That evening I arranged
to go to the theater. About the hour I should
have started I got a violent headache, and was
much upset for about two hours. I was con-
152 VOICES FROM THE VOID
scious of abnormal depression, which took such
complete possession of me I was unable to go
out. I could not account for this attack in any
way. I have never experienced such sensa-
tions before or since.
This was, I presume, a clear case of at-
tempted obsession, first of Mr. X., then of me;
it seemed quite clear that some external entity
of a most dangerous kind was present at these
sittings ; it illustrated one of the greatest dan-
gers connected with psychic work.
I cannot urge too much on my readers that
the greatest caution should be used in the
choice of sitters, and also that unpleasant com-
municators should be dismissed; the dangers
of obsession are hardly realized by those who
have not had some experience of them.
What I have said in this book must be taken
as simply distilled from my own work; I
should be glad to put forward some definite
theory as to the origin of automatic communi-
cation, but I candidly admit that my experi-
SUMIVIING UP 153
ences have been so contradictory that no
theory covers the whole field. I feel pretty
well assured that we are dealing with external
entities of some kind, and a few^ messages I
have had, purporting to come from persons
who had passed over, seemed impossible to ex-
plain except as direct or indirect communica-
tion from them. This, of course, is the point
of vital interest for most people — this evidence
of survival beyond the grave; it seems fairly
clear that those who have joined the majority
continue to exist in some form; nebulous or
not, who knows ? The earth-memory remains,
for a time at least, but w^hether the spirit
speaks to us directly, through a "control," or
only when dreaming, no one can say; the ex-
treme uncertainty of the messages received
and the mixture of fact and fiction point to
the latter idea.
Before I close I should like to refer to one
more point which has interested me lately.
Some people cherish the idea that much literary
154 VOICES FROM THE VOID
and artistic work might be accomplished
through the agency of controls, or shall we
merely say through automatism? There is a
good deal of evidence, I think, that stories and
poems have been written, pictures painted, and
even music composed, by psychic means. Of
the actual artistic merits of these works I
know nothing. In our circle, poor doggerel
has come through Eyen, and tales, some of a
very striking nature; through him and other
controls, plots have been unfolded which
might well afford material for fiction or drama.
What is remarkable when these fabrics are
woven at the ouija-board is the amazing
rapidity with which the pattern of the plot de-
velops; the traveler flies from letter to letter,
seldom pausing for a word; the story reveals
itself quite as quickly as if one were telling a
well-known tale. It would be flattering to be-
lieve that this is a mere awakening of latent
creative power in the sitters; I cannot credit
that idea. These plots are certainly not in the
SUiVIMIXG UP 155
consciousness of the mediums. At these sit-
tings one is reminded of deep-sea fishing; one
cannot predict whether a flat fish, an eel, or a
whiting will be drawn up by the line. Some of
these tales are modern, some are ancient; most
of them are melodramatic, some very original.
I am convinced that they come through an ex-
ternal influence, though they may be tinged
by the medium's literary taste. I do not antici-
pate that artistic work of the highest order
will ever come through automatism, but I
think the development of fiction by the control
is most interesting and well w^orth attention,
whether one admits the presence of an influ-
ence outside the medium or attributes this phe-
nomenon to an abnormal quickening of the
medium's creative power in a state of semi-
hypnosis. I should greatly like to have the ex-
perience of many sitters in this line of
research.
The question may fairly be asked, "Is the
game worth the candle?'' With such small re-
156 VOICES FROM THE VOID
suits is it worth while to sit night after night
and endure much dullness and fatigue for the
sake of an occasional thrill? I find it hard
to decide; I have been fairly satisfied that the
dead survive, though the proofs I have had
were not at all sensational. Surely that is an
important point. I should be glad to give hope
and comfort to those who have suffered during
the past four years of w^ar; whose happiness
has been shattered by the loss of those near
and dear to them. All I can tell them con-
scientiously is that I believe the spirits of those
who have gone out into darkness live on, and
for a time, at least, preserve their memory of
earth.
So now that I have arrived at my final
words, I feel I cannot have satisfied anyone;
not the eager believer — for any faith I pos-
sess rests on very small foundations; not the
keen student of psychic matters — for I can-
not say that I think these studies should ab-
sorb anyone while the world provides work to
SUMMING UP 157
be done which brings in so much richer results ;
and not the determined skeptic — for my in-
clination is to smile at him as one would at an
obstinate child; not to argue with him, but to
leave him firm in his faith, for he is the really
credulous person, the true believer in himself
who never pauses to consider our limitations.
APPENDIX
HINTS TO EXPERIMENTERS AT THE
OUIJA-TABLE
BE careful that the room in which the sit-
ting is to take place is a quiet one; a noisy
street or sounds in the house are very disturb-
ing to a sitting, a ticking clock in the room even
may annoy the control.
Be sure that the seats at the ouija-table are
high enough to allow the sitters' hands to be
on a level with it so that there is no strain on
the arm and the hand can rest on the traveler
in a completely relaxed state.
The light in the room should be sufficient for
the person reading at the board to see clearly,
but not so brilliant as to strain the eyes. It is
158
APPENDIX 159
important that the temperature of the room
should be agreeable. Any discomfort to the
sitters keeps back results.
Not more than two people outside the sitters
^re desirable. Any crowd or feeling of strain
or even whispered conversation is sure to in-
terfere with the controls.
Everyone present should be calm and
patient. Do not press for results. One dis-
turbing presence in a room can ruin a sitting.
Select those who habitually come to your sit-
tings with great care.
Be sure that you have all that is necessary
for the sitting conveniently at hand before you
begin. A silk duster for polishing the glass, a
bottle of methylated spirit and some French
chalk are generally useful. It is essential that
the glass should be well polished and the
traveler properly shod so that jerking and
creaking may be avoided.
Arrange that no one is admitted to the room
during the sitting. The most interesting com-
160 VOICES FROM THE VOID
munications may be broken off by a servant
entering the room or even knocking at the
door. The sitters should rest at the end of
every half hour or so. No sitting should ever
continue for more than two hours.
It is almost useless to sit in disturbed or
stormy weather. Turmoil in the atmosphere
seems to affect psychic communication.
Never sit when you are tired and ailing.
This is a useless expenditure of force and the
controls will at once recognize your physical
condition. If a control (no matter how
familiar you are wdth him) suggests seizure or
obsession take your hand off the traveler at
once and break off the communication.
Treat your controls and the communicators
they bring with courtesy as you would any
guest at your house. If they are undesirable
you will probably soon discover it, if you ob-
serve carefully. A mocking or discourteous
attitude very naturally retards the com-
munication.
APPENDIX 161
Never encourage communicators who pro-
fess to have led evil and criminal lives. The
fact that they tell you these facts generally
means that they will eventually attempt
obsession.
It is best not to call up any special communi-
cator. There are two obvious objections to
doing so; it may bring the subsconsciousness
of the sitter into play and assuming that im-
personation is frequent it opens the door to
fraudulent spirits.
Do not interrupt your communicators with
frequent questions. Let them talk as much as
they will and only say what is necessary.
Otherwise if you reflect on what has passed
you will find the communication comes chiefly
from yourself.
Do not sit more than twice a week at most.
It is far better to sit regularly in this way for
a reasonable time than to have an occasional
sitting of longer duration.
Take a record of every sitting whether in-
162 VOICES FROM THE VOID
teresting or the reverse. It is only by heaped
up evidence, good and bad, that you can attain
to any conclusion as to the nature of your
results.
If either sitter shows signs of trance con-
ditions coming on or becomes excited or hys-
terical, break off the sitting at once. You can-
not foretell the result if you continue.
The preceding hints may be useful to begin-
ners for whose benefit I have jotted therti down.
I have perhaps hardly emphasized enough the
importance of the careful selection of sitters
and the fact that good work must be the result
of patience and regularity. Strangers in the
room nearly always check free and satisfactory
communications. The control or discarnate
spirit or sub-conscious mind seems more sensi-
tive to atmosphere than the living human
being.
Curiously enough I find sex is a factor in
the choice of sitters. The best combination for
ouija-work is a man and a woman. Two
APPENDIX 163
women sometimes work excellently together,
but I have never come across an instance of
any results worth speaking of being achieved
by two men.
Many inexperienced people think that be-
cause a discarnate spirit professes to speak to
them this entity must of necessity possess
miraculous powers. "Can it tell what horse
will win the Derby?" or "Ask it when the AVar
will end." These persons must learn that, so
far as we can tell, discarnate spirits and con-
trols are much in our own position unless spe-
cially gifted with prevision, and that when this
quality is present it is almost invariably per-
sonal— connected with some sitter in whom the
control or communicator is interested. Dis-
carnate spirits seem to lose touch with this
world rapidly; they have only an occasional
flash of memory at most I believe.
My last word to those who purpose to ex-
periment in automatic communication is, be
patient, be prudent, never let an unbalanced or
164 VOICES FROM THE VOID
hysterical person be present at your sittings;
be satisfied with small results and look for
nothing sensational, work regularly and do
not let dull sittings discourage you. With
caution and wisdom much may be achieved.
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