above:  Professor Archie Roy

Whenever psychical researchers discuss the best evidence on record for the survival of consciousness after physical death, the so-called "cross-correspondences" are often listed as number one.  However, the researchers always point out that the cross-correspondences are so complex that they are beyond the comprehension of anyone who is not a classical scholar and not prepared to spend years in studying the messages. "Whatever else they are, they are eminently communications from a man of letters, to be interpreted by scholars, and they are full of obscure classical allusions," wrote Sir Oliver Lodge, the distinguished British physicist and psychical researcher.

  

 Dr. Archie E. Roy, professor emeritus of astronomy and honorary research fellow in the University of Glasgow, has studied the cross-correspondences and written about the key cases in a book, The Eager Dead, recently released by Book Guild Publishing of England.    While the cross-correspondences are the core of the book, it is also a story of love and intrigue during the Edwardian age.  Chief among the characters still in this realm of existence at the time are Arthur James Balfour, prime-minister of England from 1902-06,  Lord Gerald William Balfour, his brother, Winifred Coombe-Tennant, an affluent English woman (British delegate to the League of Nations) who used the pseudonym "Mrs. Willett" so that no one would know that she was a medium, and Henry Coombe-Tennant, her son, who was completely unaware for most of his life of his mother's mediumship or his own involvement in many of the cross-correspondences.

After receiving his B.Sc. from Glasgow University in 1950, Roy earned his Ph.D. in 1954.  He then spent four years as a science master in Shawlands Academy before returning to G.U. as a lecturer in the Department of Astronomy. "It was a few years later when I received my ‘call up,'" Roy recalls his introduction to psychical research. "I lost my way in the old university library and found shelves of books on spiritualism and psychical research.  My first ignorant reaction was ‘What is this rubbish doing in a university library?' But curiosity made me open some of the books.  I was surprised to recognize some of the authors of this ‘rubbish,' such as Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor William James, Professor Sir William Crookes, and so on.  My balloon of ignorance was punctured by the needle of my scientific curiosity and I found myself called up to a new career.

Ever since then, Roy has pursued a scientific career in both astronomy and psychical research.  He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Astronomical Society, the British Interplanetary Society, the Society for Psychical Research (of which he is a past-president) and Scottish Society for Psychical Research (of which he was the founder).  He is also a member of the International Astronomical Union, which honored him for his work in astronomy by naming an asteroid after him.

         

I interviewed Professor Roy several months ago for the June issue of "The Searchlight," a quarterly publication of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies.  Here is that interview.

Professor Roy, your nearly 600-page book, was clearly a monumental project.  What prompted you to undertake such a book? 

         "I well remember the first visit Monty Keen and I made to Honiton to meet Lady Alison Kremer, granddaughter of Gerald, 2^nd Earl of Balfour. She had been left the large archive of documents collected by her mother Jean, Countess of Balfour, who had added to them from 1930 onwards, when the Sidgwick Group appointed her their official archivist of anything related to the Cross-Correspondences (C-C). Very little of this archive had ever been published and I could see why.  After a preliminary study of the archive I knew I had to accept Lady Kremer's invitation to prepare it for publication.  I also knew it would be a long and formidable task assessing the material, ordering it in importance, balancing it and bringing into a more readable form the scores of letters, memoranda, hundreds of automatic writings, considered and confidential opinions of Gerald, his sister Mrs. Sidgwick, Sir Oliver Lodge, Mr. Piddington and others, the part played by Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister in the first decade of the 20^th century.  And from behind the curtain of death, so to speak, came compelling evidence in the archive that the group of seven, Myers, Gurney, Sidgwick, William Balfour, Edith Lyttelton, Annie Marshall and Mary Catherine Lyttelton, still existed, still had an astounding agenda to be pursued, the Story and the Plan.

        "The majority of psychical researchers have long considered the C-C to be a major -   possibly the major - survival-related material in existence. But to tackle it required certain qualities. My colleague Monty once likened a serious attempt to research the C-C, in mountaineering terms, to be akin to an assault on the north face of the Eiger. My own feelings were that I required time, patience and optimism. Optimism, well, I was beginning the task in 1998, when I was 74 years of age. And I learned patience in my teens when I spent three years in a TB sanatorium.

       "In fact it took almost ten years, studying the material, doing additional research to check data, writing successive drafts and persuading numerous colleagues to read and criticise them, revising and cutting down the length, finding a publisher and collaborating with Book Guild over many months in producing the book - they did a marvelous job.

      "The most difficult part of this long slog was to cut out innumerable parts of the material concerning fascinating events in the Victorian era and the 20^th century, little-known items of real interest regarding real people. But that is always the way in authorship and I am deeply grateful to all who helped me."

If you could go back in time and meet one of the people involved with the cross-correspondences, who would it be?

 "Inevitably I choose Frederic Myers as the one. Ever since I obtained many years ago a copy of the two-volume edition of his book Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, I have placed him as the greatest, most talented pioneer of psychical research. His brilliant insight into the nature of human personality lifts him to the same elevated rung of the ladder of human genius as Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Clerk Maxwell, Einstein and those others whose contributions to humanity have been gloriously illuminating beacons amid the darkness of unreason, prejudice, violence, cruelty and downright evil acts of our species.  What can I say about Myers that hasn't already been said by those who knew him, admired him unreservedly and acknowledged his fabulous contribution to our subject?  Luminaries such as Charles Richet, William James, Theodor Flournoy, Oliver Lodge, William Barrett and many others then and since have testified to Myers' many-faceted stature.  He was not valued by those who knew him solely because of his contributions to it but also because of his loveable and endearing personality. I have said elsewhere that if William Wordsworth demonstrated that he was the psychical researcher of poets, Frederic Myers was the poet of psychical research. 

        "I will content myself with just one quotation. Charles Richet said: ‘If Myers was not a mystic, he had all the faith of a mystic and the ardour of an apostle, in conjunction with the sagacity and precision of a savant.' And yet just a few years ago, a young parapsychologist at the International Conference of the Society for Psychical Research could begin his presentation by referring to him vaguely as ‘Some guy called Myers.' The audience's frisson of surprise was akin to that we  would expect at a modern physics conference if a young speaker had used the phrase ‘Some guy called Einstein'.

        "To me Myers is one I would dearly love to meet, not because I could teach him anything but simply because I would enjoy the company and friendship of a superb, enormously-talented and loveable man, one of the three major founding fathers of psychical research, Sidgwick, Gurney and ‘some guy called Myers'."

         

If the cross-correspondences are actual communication from the spirit world, do you think Frederic Myers and the other spirit messengers realized they would be so difficult to understand?  Couldn't they have come up with something less complicated and still made their point?

     " Essentially, the C-C originated in a deceptively-simple idea. Someone who has died        transmits to a number of mediums or automatists scattered round the world snippets of a        theme dreamed up by him. The snippets received by any one automatist do not make any

sense whatever to him or her. Only by bringing all the snippets together does the theme

become clear. Moreover, that theme is characteristic of the intelligence and learning and

personality of the sender who even, when he finds the group of investigators having serious difficulties in interpreting the collected snippets, speaks through the scripts directly to them, chiding and teasing them in the manner of a kindly teacher with an obtuse class.  He then gives hints to them to aid them in their interpretation of the scripts.

      "The difficulties really begin to mount when we realise that the group of seven on the other side of death had a decidedly complicated agenda.  They continued to ‘dictate' scripts for over thirty years.  They, especially Myers, cleverly used levels of classical allusions and literary references that to very few modern people make any sense at all, so philistine have our educational standards become. Add to that the fact that there are many thousands of pages that anyone nowadays would have to study and so would require a very long time to do so. But the idea is a brilliant one and one might well ask if there is anything better in the history of psychical research. That to me is a very important question. Almost all of the psychical researchers of the past  right up to the present, who have died, have included scientists of many kinds, many of them top rank. If they have survived the death of the body, why have they not used their expertise to give us a far more dependable post-mortem communication method? As far as I know, they haven't. Therefore to me, Myers' method is still the best."

 As I recall from reading one of the books on the Scole experiments, you were involved.  Would you mind relating a little of what you observed?

      "I played a very small part in the Scole experiment.  The principal researchers were

 Professor Arthur Ellison, Professor David Fontana and Montague Keen.  I was taken to the Scole site on one occasion, not because of a lack of interest on my part but purely because of distance. Nevertheless every time I met Monty he kept me informed about events at the circle.  On the evening I was present I sat where I could satisfactorily see and hear what was happening. The conversation between the experimenters and the mediums' controls was fascinating. The proceedings became even more interesting to me when the ‘control' known as the scientist spoke to me, welcoming me and saying that he had carried out some of the pioneering work of calculating periodic orbits of planets and satellites. He discussed with me some of the technicalities and difficulties he had experienced and referred to the fact that in his day there were no computers such as I could now use. Afterwards I realised that there were only about a score of people in the UK who would have been able to have a conversation with me at that level of expertise on that subject. And as far as I know, the mediums had not been given my identity and profession. I also realised that the scientist bore quite a resemblance to George Darwin, related to Charles Darwin, who had indeed carried out such pioneering calculations on periodic orbits. But again, as seems to happen to many circles that terminate unexpectedly, the Scole circle did likewise on the grounds that it had to cease because its operation was interfering with the ability of time-travelers to pass from one galaxy to another!  As we say laconically in Glasgow when our boggle-factor is surpassed: ‘Aye, that'll be right.'"

What other cases have you found especially interesting and evidential?

      "Apart from the crucially important cases in my book The Archives of the Mind, none of which I personally investigated, over 30 years of my own investigations have provided me with  a wide variety of ostensibly paranormal cases. Usually studied with a colleague, they often originated as cries for help from people convinced that they or their homes were haunted. Some cases were found to be non-paranormal, for instance as imaginative misinterpretations of unusual noises - the peremptory knocking of a water-hammer, or sadly, mental trouble. But some did involve paranormal phenomena. Some were poltergeist cases,  others were apparitional and some were mixed. In some we found evidence of intrusion from the other side of death, of  ‘unfinished business',  of maliciousness, of a wish to dominate. In some we could identify the problem and even take measures to solve it, operating not so much as psychical researchers but more akin to psychical plumbers! Hopefully we learned from  every case but our prime concern in each was to help the unhappy family who called us in."

Does any one case stand out in your recollection?

      "One case stands out in my mind. In 1972 I became involved in the Maxwell  Park case with my colleague, the Rev. Max Magee, chaplain to the students of Strathclyde University. It was a powerful poltergeist case which had lasted half a year before I was called in. The family members were terrified by the physical manifestations that tormented them.  When they fled to a relative's house, the phenomena did likewise and even continued there,  after the family in despair returned to their own house,  as though in some way the relative's  family had been infected. In time some fifty people were witnesses, including cynical journalists, town councilors, doctors, policemen and others, turned from original scepticism to utter conviction that they had witnessed the paranormal. A police officer told me, ‘You know, I had to take some of my men off that  case. They were turning in reports like ‘The bed was proceeding in a northerly direction.'

      "Most of the phenomena included classical poltergeist events such as alarming noises,     fires breaking out, floods of water, psychokinetic movements of a wide variety of objects,          many seemingly perpetrated by malicious intent. It became clear to Max and I that there

were attempts to control the two boys - at times they carried out feats of strength or skills 

that they could not possibly have acquired normally. We found it necessary over many months to,  turn about, stay until late at night to support the family who were losing weight, exhibiting extreme stress bringing them to the edge of complete nervous breakdowns. Finally Max, in his capacity as a minister of religion, aided by myself, persuaded the family one Sunday evening to go to church. While they were there, Max and I went through the house room by  room, carrying out a service of ‘cleansing' in each.

      "I wish I could say that that was what got rid of the haunting. The poltergeist phenomena did cease, the boys no longer exhibited symptoms of possession and the family's lives were  transformed. But to be accurate, about the same time, the man downstairs, with whom the family had been having a vendetta for years, died. In addition we persuaded the father to send the older boy, who seemed the main focus, up north to stay with his grandparents for some weeks. So we were unable to achieve a complete understanding why the phenomena ceased. But we did learn a lot, perhaps the most important being that if you embark upon such an investigation, you must sign on for the duration, for a family in the middle of the poltergeist hurricane desperately needs support, sympathy and led to understand that these cases have happened innumerable times, but like an illness, will run their course, exhibit their symptoms and some day, hopefully, we will be able to do more than simply offer moral support."

What are your present views on survival?

     "To me, at the present time, the evidence for the survival of bodily death is of such strength that it is the most parsimonious theory accounting for much more than any other. Even the file theory, which supposes that throughout a person's life a record of that person's life from their point of view (POV) is made until their bodily death, is not so convincing. Certainly the file cannot be supposed to be physical, for long after the death of the brain, children recall the details of a previous life, accepting it as a former life they had, since memories of that life are recalled from the POV of the former person. To me, the researches of Stevenson and Haraldsson are convincing in this area that survival of death in some way takes place. Possession cases such as those of Lurancy Vennum, Uttara Huddar, Sumitra, Jasbir Lal Jat add strength to that concept.  Certain ‘drop in' cases also strengthen the concept.

     "Indeed the wide variety of such cases are so evidentially strong that they support a challenge I made in print twelve years ago to any sceptic that if s/he believes no proof of a paranormal event has ever been produced they should submit in detail normal explanations for the long list of cases I gave. The silence from the sceptics has been deafening, a silence that reminds me of Sherlock Holmes chiding of Dr Watson because of his non-appreciation of the significance of the dog that did not bark in the night. Or the trick of young children who, displeased with the real world, close their eyes and believe that by so doing, they have cancelled that displeasing world. Or the late Sam Goldwyn who allegedly shouted, "Don't confuse me with facts! My mind is made up!"

Are you working on anything now?

     "My colleague Tricia Robertson and I have almost finished the first draft of a new book, PRESENCES,  Facets of Human Personality Before, and After, Death.  In a way it is a sequel to my book, The Archives of the Mind and assesses evidence for a large additional variety of paranormal phenomena.  I am also working on a true detective story, written almost in a manner of a CSI program.  But in this case, CSI stands for Celestial Sphere Investigation into a particular event, the deliberate creation of the stellar constellation figures." 

                    

                    

    

above:  Alfred Russel Wallace with spirit photo
 

If you have ever seen pictures of spirit materializations or of spirit photographs, you've probably had a good laugh.   Some of them are so ridiculous and hokey looking that one wonders how the "trickster" medium could possibly have thought he or she could fool anybody.  Certainly, they could have come up with better and more believable "tricks."

Perhaps a little self-experiment will help you better appreciate the problems involved in both materializations and spirit photography.  Imagine, if you will, that you were once a great athlete. Further imagine that you are sitting at home when you receive a phone call from the director of your sport's Hall of Fame.  He or she tells you that you have been voted into the Hall and will be inducted next month.  Two photographs of you are needed - an action shot and a portrait.  The director tells you that the Hall has the latest in photographic technology.  All you have to do is visualize the two photos you want put on the Hall of Fame wall and transmit those visualizations over the telephone lines.   Those visualizations will be recorded on a special machine and photographs made of them.

Now, visualize the action shot you want to transmit over the telephone wires.   Then, visualize your portrait shot.   If you are a man, it's unlikely that you imagined yourself as you appear looking in the mirror when you shave in the morning, and if you are a woman it's highly unlikely that you imagined yourself as you appear before putting on your makeup in the morning. If you are much over 40, you probably transmitted an image of yourself at a younger age.

The fact is that most of us really have a somewhat distorted image of ourselves.  Often the image is based on photographs, including portraits, of ourselves when we are looking our best, both younger and slimmer.   Moreover, we don't always visualize ourselves from head to foot.  Was the action image you sent a full body shot or just an upper body shot?  When I took this simple test, I focused in on a photograph of myself during the 1977 New York City Marathon, the photograph that now appears on my home page of this blog.  I am crossing a bridge over the East River with the Twin Towers in the background.    Only my upper body is shown.  Although I ran scores of races during my younger years, I cannot really visualize a moment in any one of those races that is not recorded on a photograph; thus, I had to rely on a photograph of myself.  

And so with this little self-experiment we might appreciate the problem spirits had in transmitting photographs of themselves in the phenomenon known as spirit photography.  Many of those old photos were supposedly debunked because they looked very much like photographs or portraits that were taken of the person when he or she was alive.  It was assumed that the photographer somehow got hold of an old photograph of the person,  doctored it a little, and used it to trick his gullible customer.  

Likewise, this appears to have been the problem with the phenomenon known as materialization.   The spirit had to project an image of him- or herself into the ectoplasm being exuded by the medium. The quality of the image was based on the spirit's recollection of what he or she looked like.    Dr. Charles Richet, the 1913 Nobel Prize winner in medicine, reported witnessing a number of partial and full spirit materializations.  In one case, the spirit communicated that he was unable to materialize because he could not remember what he looked like when in the flesh.  Often the materializations appeared doll-like and totally fake, probably due to difficulties in the projection process, including the awareness of the communicating spirit, i.e., how awake the spirit was in the spirit world.   The next time you are dreaming, try to focus in on what you look like.    

After dying in the Titanic disaster of 1912, William T. Stead, a renowned author and social activist, began communicating through several mediums. He explained that there were souls on his side who had the power of sensing people (mediums) who could be used for communication.  One such soul helped him find mediums and showed him how to make his presence known.  It was explained to him that he had to visualize himself among the people in the flesh and imagine that he was standing there in the flesh with a strong light thrown upon himself.  "Hold the visualization very deliberately and in detail, and keep it fixed upon my mind, that at that moment I was there and they were conscious of it."

Stead added that the people at one sitting were able to see only his face because he had seen himself as only a face.  "I imagined the part they would recognize me by."   It was in the same way he was able to get a message through.  He stood by the most sensitive person there, concentrated his mind on a short sentence, and repeated it with much emphasis and deliberation until he could hear part of it spoken by the person.

On March 14, 1874, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-originator with Charles Darwin of the natural selection of evolution theory, visited a professional photographer with Mrs. Guppy, a medium, in hopes of obtaining a spirit photo.  In the first photo, a half-figure of a man holding a sword appeared.  Wallace could not identify the man.  In the second and third photos, Wallace's mother appeared, although it took close examination by both Wallace and his brother to realize it was her.  "How these two figures, with these special peculiarities of a person totally unknown to [the photographer] could appear on his plates, I should be glad to have explained," Wallace wrote.  "Even if he had by some means obtained possession of all the photographs ever taken of my mother, they would not have been of the slightest use to him in the manufacture of these pictures.   I see no escape from the conclusion that some spiritual being acquainted with my mother's various aspects during life, produced these recognizable impressions on the plate.  That she herself still lives and produced these figures may not be proved; but it is a more simple and natural explanation to think that she did so, than to suppose that we are surrounded by beings who carry out an elaborate series of impostures for no apparent purpose than to dupe us into a belief in a continued existence after death."  Wallace added that he was in the dark room when the plates were developed and he saw the images take form.

 Wallace's mother may not have been able to rely on a photograph to remember what she looked like, because she died before photography was in existence.  This might further explain why it took a close examination by both Wallace and his brother to recognize it as their mother.  The best she could do was project an image of herself as she remembered herself. 

The unrecognized man with a sword in the first Wallace photo may have been a person who best remembered himself as a warrior and managed to focus only on his torso in projecting the image.  It could have been an ancestor of Wallace's or a simple "gate crasher," as many communications have indicated that low-level spirits are hanging around the medium waiting to communicate or take part in whatever was going on.  There were also many reports of ‘impostor" spirits - spirits pretending to be famous people or someone known by the sitter.  

 As Wallace and other researchers came to understand them, the spirit photographs were "thought-forms" projected onto the photographic plates by the communicating spirit, not actual images of the spirits in their celestial form.  The quality of the photographs depended upon the ability of the spirit to project his or her image onto the photographic plates. Apparently, such abilities vary widely among spirits, just as artistic ability and the ability to focus or meditate varies widely with humans.   

Skeptics often laugh at the idea that spirits wear clothes.  If you were a spirit and projecting an image of yourself, wouldn't you project that image with clothes on?  

 
Above:  Eileen Garrett

      If you come across some antique pots and pans during your travels, you could be looking at pieces of aviation history.   More than that, though, that old cookware might be connected with some of the most amazing evidence of life after death on record.

     The salvaged parts of Great Britain's giant airship R-101, which crashed in France on its maiden overseas voyage, on October 5, 1930, is said to have been turned into cooking ware.  A dirigible, the R-101 was the largest airship ever built at that time.  After several test flights, the giant airship departed Cardington in England on October 4 at 6:24 p.m. with 54 passengers and crew headed for Karachi, then part of British India.   As a result of high winds, it crashed near Beauvais, just north of Paris, early the next morning, killing 48 of the 54 passengers.

      The intriguing story of what followed may best be understood by a chronological look at the dates.  The more complete story of Capt. Raymond Hinchliffe is told in the preceding blog entry, but is summarized in the first six entries below.  

     March  13, 1928 -  Captain Raymond Hinchliffe is lost at sea when his plane goes down while attempting a trans-Atlantic flight.

      March 31, 1928  - Beatrice Earl is experimenting with a Ouija Board attempting to contact her deceased son when Hinchliffe breaks in and asks her to contact his wife, Emilie.  Anticipating that she will not be believed, Mrs. Earl makes no attempt to contact Emilie.  

     April 11, 1928 - Hinchliffe again communicates through the Mrs. Earl's board, appealing to her to contact his wife and providing her with the name of his solicitor.   Mrs. Earl sends a letter to Emilie care of the solicitor with a copy to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the physician turned mystery writer (author of Sherlock Holmes) and Great Britain's best known spiritualist.  

     April 18, 1928 - As arranged by Conan Doyle, Beatrice Earl sits with trance medium Eileen Garrett to see if anything more evidential can be obtained.   Hinchliffe communicates and gives details of his demise, again saying he wants to talk to his wife.

     May 14, 1928 - Conan Doyle writes to Emilie Hinchliffe and persuades her to sit with Eileen Garrett.

     May 22, 1928 -  Emilie Hinchliffe sits with Eileen Garrett.  Her husband communicates, providing very evidential information about the fatal flight as well as more personal information.  Emilie moves from skeptic to believer and continues to sit periodically with Garrett, writing a book on her experiences with Garrett and other research into spirit communication.        

     

       Late September 1929 - Raymond Hinchliffe tells Emilie (through Garrett) that the R-101, which is in the final stages of development, will meet with an accident.  "I do not want them to have the same fate that I had, as Johnston (the R-101 navigator) was a good friend of mine," Hinchliffe communicates.  Emilie informs Captain John Morkham, her husband's good friend, of the messages.  Morkham has come to believe that the messages from Hinchliffe are real as he feels the technical language communicated by Hinchliffe is beyond either Mrs. Garrett or Emilie.  Morkham informs Johnston, but Johnston laughs it off.

 .

       July 7, 1930 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dies and soon begins communicating through various mediums around the world.  Lady Doyle, a sensitive herself, reports receiving numerous messages from her deceased husband. 

     October 2, 1930 - Three days before the R-101 is to set off on its fatal flight, Ian Coster, a London journalist, contacts Harry Price, a psychical researcher, to see if Price can arrange for a séance and hopefully contact Doyle  (unrelated to R-101).  While Price was known primarily as a debunker of mediums, he has come to accept that some are real.  He recommended Eileen Garrett, and a sitting is scheduled for October 7.

    October 5, 1930 -  The R-101 crashes, north of Paris.

     October 6, 1930 --  Emilie Hinchliffe sits with Beatrice Earl.   "I am in the state of despair," her husband communicates through Earl's board.  "I hoped that the crash could be averted, and even at the last moment we were working in some way to warn those in command of the ship.  I know that death is not the end, but I hold life on earth as important to progress as life here, and willful disregard of warnings is suicide."

     October 7, 1930 -Like everyone else in England, Coster and Price are shaken by the news of the R-101 disaster, but they decide to go ahead with their October 7 appointment with Mrs. Garrett to see if Conan Doyle will communicate.   After Garrett goes into trance, Uvani, her spirit control, begins speaking and says that someone named Irwin or Irving wants to communicate.  Garrett's voice changes again and a man appears to be speaking.  He identifies himself as Flight Lieutenant H. Carmichael Irwin, captain of the R-101.   The initial words are weak and he appears to be under great stress.    "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity," the somewhat garbled message begins.    The messages continue in staccato sentences.  "Flying too low altitude and could never rise...Disposable lift could not be utilized...Load too great for long flight...Same with S.L.8.  Tell Eckener.,..Cruising speed bad and ship badly swinging...Engines wrong...Too heavy - cannot rise...Never reached cruising altitude...Too short trials...No one knew the ship properly...Weather bad for long flight...Fabric all waterlogged and ship's nose is down.  Impossible to rise...Cannot trim."

        The voice goes on to mention that the fuel injection was bad and the air pump failed.  Also the cooling system was bad, as was the bore capacity.  Irwin says he knew before hand that the bore capacity was inadequate, but was unable to get the engineers to correct the situation.  He also mentions that the ship almost scraped the roofs at Achy and that he was guided by the railway tracks. 

      Both Coster and Price feel certain that there is no fraud involved.   While the aeronautical terminology is evidential in itself and is later confirmed as technically correct, the most evidential item is mention of the small town of Achy.  It is so small that it could not be found on most maps and had not been mentioned in any of the newspaper stories.  Yet, it is confirmed that the ship passed right over the town.  Perhaps even more evidential was mention of the S.L.8.  Even air command officials don't at first understand what this refers to until they dig further and realize it is the designation of a new ship that is being developed by the Germans.

       After some 45 minutes, Irwin fades out and a different voice begins speaking "Here I am," the voice says, "Arthur Conan Doyle. Now how am I going to prove it to you?"       Doyle goes on to talk about the difficulties in communicating and about the conditions in which he finds himself - not much different than the world he had just left.

       October 31, 1930 - Apparently hearing of the communication concerning the R-101, Major Oliver Villiers, an air command intelligence officer, sits with Garrett.  He goes anonymously, careful not to give any indication of his military connections or his interest in the R-101 disaster.   Nothing happens for the first 30 minutes and Villiers is about ready to give up when a voice is heard saying:  "Irwey, Irwey - louder - Irwing, Irwin,  Don't go, please. Stay, I must speak!"

       Taking notes in improvised shorthand, Villiers reports that it sounds very much like Irwin's voice.  Villiers then asks Irwin how the end had come, pointing out that the evidence shows the ship had dived, straightened out, dived again, and then crashed.  "Yes, that'so," Irwin responds.  "One of the struts in the nose collapsed and caused a tear in the cover.  The wind was blowing hard and it was raining. Now you see what happened.  The rush of wind caused the first dive and then we straightened again and another gust surging through the hole finished us."

       Villiers asks if the electrical installation had caused the explosion.  "No. Not that.  It was the engine," Irwin responds, going on to explain that the diesel engine had been popping or backfiring after crossing the channel because the oil feed was not right.  "You see the pressure in some of the gas bags was accentuated by the under girders crumpling up, and since gas had been escaping, extra pressure pushed the gas out with a rush and at that moment the diesel engine backfired and ignited the escaping gas.  That caused the first explosion and others followed."

      Many names and technical details that Garrett could not possibly have known are mentioned by Irwin, leaving Villiers convinced that he was actually speaking with Irwin.  

   November 2, 1930 - Villiers again sits with Mrs. Garrett.   Uvan describes a man who is there to communicate but says he wants Villiers to figure out who it is.. He says early 50s, grey by the ears, used to have a moustache and wears a monocle.  "Now, use your intelligence," Uvani relays the words of the communicator.  Villiers immediately recognizes him as Sir Sefton Brancker, another victim of the R-101.    Brancker was the director of the British Air Ministry and was one of several dignitaries on the flight.  Villiers had worked under Brancker and the expression to use his intelligence was something he had heard Brancker say many times.  "Little did I think when I saw you last that we'd meet again with things so upside down," Brancker says, Villiers again noting that the cadence of the voice was the one he had identified with Brancker.  "No parties here, nothing in bottles.  But spirits of other kinds, if you know what I mean." 

       Brancker admits that Irwin and other flight crew members wanted to postpone the flight because of the weather conditions, but he nixed the idea because Lord Thomson, British Secretary of Air, felt the honor of the country was at stake. "I felt awful," Brancker ends.  "Of course, we never had a run for our money."

        There is a pause when Uvani announces that a man with a round, jovial face and big head wants to communicate.   The voice tells Villiers that it is "Scottie" (Major George Scott, officer in charge of the flight).  "Villiers, it's all too ghastly for words.  It's awful. Think of all the lives, experience, money, material.  All thrown away. What for?  Nothing."

        Villiers agrees but wants more detail about the fatal flight.  Scottie refers to girder and engine trouble. He mentions there was some damage to a girder on one of the trial flights, but that it was just a strain, not a crack.  Villiers asks if he had reported it to the Air Ministry.

       "My dear man, you know all the damned red tape," Scottie replies.  "This was purely technical, and when possible we always avoided technical reports.  Otherwise, we should never have gotten our work done." 

       Villiers further records that there is a long explanation about the pressure of the gas being too strong for the valves.  Scottie then explains that the rent in the outer cover was on the starboard side at 5C. 

       Villiers asks if the ship then nose-dived.  "Well, Villiers, now imagine the picture.  We have a bad rent in the cover on the starboard side of 5C.  This brought about an unnatural pressure and the frame gave a twist which, with the external pressure, forced us into our first dive.  The second was even worse.  The pressure on the gas bags was terrific. And the gusts of wind were tremendous.  This external pressure, coupled with the fact that the valve was weak, blew the valve right off, and at the same time, the released gas was ignited by backfire from the engine."

       Villiers is confused because Scottie previously told him that the engine had oil trouble and the valve that went was near the front starboard engine.  "Quite right," Scottie replies.  "But both engines had caused trouble.  At the least the engines were quite OK, only the oil feed was wrong. This engine backfired at the same time, and caused the igniting.  It was all simultaneous.  Johnnie was killed instantly. I was knocked out and knew no more.  But Irwin, poor man, was crushed with tons of metal and had a terrible time."

    November 5, 1930 - Villiers has his third sitting with Eileen Garrett.  This time he hears from Wing Commander R. B. Colmore, director of airship development.  Colmore asks about his wife, but Villiers is unable to answer him.  Villiers asks Colmore about the weak girder at 5C.   Colmore explains that the V-shaped end of the girder had apparently widened in flight and split the cover to expose the interior of the ship to untenable strain.  After the split had widened, the crash had become inevitable.

      Colmore tells Villiers that the history of the trouble can be found in a progress book marked A-5-7.

      Scottie then returns.  Villiers asks him when the rent appeared.  "I should say ten minutes to two, about ten minutes before the end came," Major Scott replies.. 

       Villiers asks him if it was steep dive. "No, it was hardly a dive," Scott responds. "You see, the rent had become bigger, and the gusts of wind were hitting her hard, making her difficult to keep steady and steer.  And also the fourth and third girders were badly strained.  Our only chance was to try a slow turn, and land downwind, which would enable the damaged starboard side to get shelter from the wind and the terrific gusts.  We tried to correct the bump downwards, but she would not respond. Then she practically went into a perpendicular nose dive."

       Villiers points out that the evidence showed that the nose did not strike the ground, but Scott explains that the gusts of wind blowing on the port side caused the ship to heel to port and it more or less crashed on an even keel.

        Colmore comes back in and tells Villiers that the progress book he had referred to was his own personal book and could be found in his room (office).  It has a brown-backed cover and on the back is marked A-R-101.

November 25, 1930 - At this fourth sitting with Mrs. Garrett, Sir Sefton Brancker wishes Villiers the best of luck in bringing all his findings to the attention of Sir John Simon, who was presiding at the Court of Inquiry into the disaster.  Colmore then breaks in and mentions that First Officer N. G. Athersone also had two diaries which might shed some light on the pre-flight condition of the R-101 as well as the flight up until the time of the crash.  However, Colmore and the others are unable to get Atherstone to take part in such strange communication.

November 28, 1930 - Atherstone is persuaded by the others to communicate. He tells Villiers that he had only one diary, not two, and that he does not feel they will be of much help.  "But I don't count or cut much ice,' he says.   Moreover, the diary was apparently destroyed in the crash.

Colmore's progress books could not be found in his office, but his widow verified their existence, telling Villiers that her husband would often dictate entries to her directly.  Villiers took all the information he had gathered from the séances with Mrs. Garrett to Sir John Simon. However, Simon said that the information would not be admissible in a court of law and therefore rejected Villiers' report.   The Board's findings, however, were consistent with Villiers' report.

    Primary references:  The Millionth Chance by James Leasor, Reynal and Co., 1957; The Airmen Who Would Not Die by John G. Fuller, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979;

Next Post:  June 11

On March 13, 1928, nearly a year after Charles Lindbergh made history by flying across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris, Captain Raymond Hinchliffe, a veteran fighter pilot, and Elsie Mackay, a British actress and pilot, took off from Cranwell aerodrome in England in their small plane, Endeavor, in an attempt to complete the first east-to-west transatlantic crossing, considered riskier than the west-to-east crossing of Lindbergh because of the head winds. They were not to be heard from again, at least in the flesh.

About 2 a.m. on March 14, Colonel G. L. P. Henderson and Squadron Leader Rivers Oldmeadow, two Royal Air Force friends of Hinchliffe’s, were asleep on a ship in the Atlantic, headed from South Africa to England, completely unaware of their friend’s flight. Oldmeadow was awakened when Henderson pounded on his cabin door. “Hinch has just been in my cabin. Eye patch and all,” Henderson exclaimed. (Hinchliffe had lost an eye in the war). “It was ghastly. He kept repeating over and over again. ‘Hendy – what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I’ve got this woman with me, and I’m lost. I’m lost!’ Then he disappeared in front of my eyes! Just disappeared.”  Henderson needed three fingers of straight Scotch to calm down. The two flyers learned three days later that Hinchliffe was missing after a trans-Atlantic attempt and then related their story.

Seventeen days later, on the evening of March 31, Beatrice Earl was experimenting with her Ouija board, hoping to hear from her deceased son. However, instead of hearing from her son, she received a message that read: “Can you help a man who has drowned?” (No spaces or punctuation in the actual messages.) She asked who was communicating and the reply came: “I was drowned with Elsie Mackay.” Mrs. Earl asked how it happened and the reply was: “Fog storm winds went down from great height.” The communicator further stated that he went down off the leeward islands and requested that Mrs. Earl get a message to his wife as he wanted to speak to her.

Although Mrs. Earl had read about the disappearance of the Endeavor, she could not bring herself to attempt contact with Emilie Hinchliffe. On April 11, she again sat at the board and Hinchliffe again appealed to her to get word to his wife. Mrs. Earl requested an address and Hinchliffe responded with the name and town of his solicitor. After mulling over the situation, she sent a letter to Emilie Hinchliffe in care of the solicitors as well as to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Great Britain’s most famous Spiritualist.

Emilie read the letter but not believing in Spiritualism or even in life after death, she ignored it, apparently assuming it came from a depraved woman. Moreover, her friends pointed out that there were no leeward islands on her husband’s route. But Doyle did follow up, checking the maps and speculating that Hinchliffe could have been blown off course to the Azores Islands. He arranged a sitting for Mrs. Earl with Eileen Garrett, the famous Irish medium who was living in London at the time. After Garrett went into a trance, Uvani, her spirit control, began speaking through Garrett’s voice mechanism. Mrs. Earl asked Uvani if he could tell her anything about Captain Hinchliffe. Uvani responded: “Yes. He has been about you a good deal. He has been trying to get messages through, but thinks he has succeeded well with you.”

Mrs. Earl then asked what happened to Hinchliffe. Uvani said that he went far off course far to the south.  After a pause, the voice coming through Garrett changed and it was Hinchliffe talking. Mrs. Earl asked him if he had suffered and he replied that he did not as it happened too quickly. But Uvani then again took over the medium’s body and said that Hinchliffe is very confused and needs to speak to his wife.

It took a month for the report of the sitting with Garrett to reach Doyle. Impressed, he wrote to Emilie Hinchliffe and informed her of the information that had come to his attention. Emilie could not ignore a letter from someone as famous as Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. So she immediately wrote to Mrs. Earl and arranged to visit her. Over tea, Mrs. Earl explained to her that she was hesitant about using the Ouija board again because “low-grade spirits” could intrude. She recommended a sitting with Mrs. Garrett.

On May 22, 1928, Emilie Hinchliffe sat with Eileen Garrett at the London Spiritualist Alliance. As was policy, Garrett was not given Emilie’s identity. As Emilie knew shorthand, she showed up prepared to take detailed notes. After Garrett went into trance, Uvani began speaking and said that “he shows me portraits. He mentions the name Joan, little Joan. He was full of strength, full of speed. Perhaps cars or planes. He passed after having flown in an airplane. He says it was no one’s fault. He was 33.”

While Hinchliffe called their daughter “Little Joan” and his age was correctly stated, Emilie remained skeptical as the information could have been researched. Uvani then said the communicator was referring to an eye problem and said that the man must be her husband as he kept pointing to the ring on her finger. He then gave some specifics about his own watch which he was wearing when he went down as well as her watch, bits of information which Emlie found very evidential.

Uvani then said that “he mentions the names Hermann and Wilhelm He has seen them both here…” Emilie clearly recalled Hermann Hess, her husband’s close friend who had been killed in a crash in 1925, and Wilhelm Hepner, also killed in a crash, in 1925. Slowly, Emilie was beginning to believe that this was all real.

Then details of the plane’s problems were communicated, going back and forth between Uvani’s voice and Hinchliffe’s voice. “…left strut breaks…He hovered near water…At 3 a.m. abandoned hope...Plug oiled...Terror never...But anguish…Knew every half hour it might be the end…Had to change course..I did go south, tell my wife. I went deliberately, deliberately south. I told her I would go north. I never lost my course. I knew exactly where I was, but went deliberately south hoping to find land.”

Details continued to come and Hinchliffe’s voice seemed to take over. “Have you seen Brancker? Brancker told you not to hope any more. I curse myself I did not listen to Brancker. I went against all observations. Everyone said the weather was bad…I was drowned 20 minutes after leaving the wreck.”

While none of the information about her husband’s demise could be verified, there were enough bits and pieces – references to their watches, a photo of their daughter that he carried on the flight with him, his two deceased friends, Sir Sefton Brancker, who had been helping Emilie – that Emilie was now convinced that it was for real.

The tone of the voice changed as Uvani again took over, mentioning that Emilie had been worried about finances but she would soon have good news. Wilhelm was again mentioned, this time stating that he was headed for Brussels when he crashed, a fact. After a pause, Uvani passed on a message from Hinchliffe: “Tell them there is no Death, but everlasting life. Life here is but a journey and a change to different conditions. We go on from unconscious perfection to conscious perfection.”

Emilie arranged another sitting with Garrett, on May 24, but this time Emilie took special precautions. While it was the policy of the Alliance not to disclose the name of the sitter to the medium beforehand, Emilie asked the secretary of the London Alliance to have Garrett go into trance before she entered the room. Uvani greeted her in a sonorous and masculine voice and said he had recognized her as having been there before. Hinchliffe came through and referred to Betty, the woman who was caring for their two children and also made reference to details of their home. But Emilie had been told that mediums can read minds and therefore did not consider this particularly evidential. However, her husband also referred to having changed the spark plugs on the plane to a different brand just before the flight, something she knew nothing about but later verified with one of the mechanics. He also mentioned that he had left two of his studs in a box in a cupboard, something Emilie did not know about until she got home and confirmed it as fact.

A week or two later, Emilie persuaded Mrs. Earl to go back to the Ouija board and brought along her husband’s friend, Captain John Morkham. Some technical information concerning the plane was communicated, things which Emilie concluded could not have been known to Mrs. Earl. At the end, Hinchliffe instructed his wife to look behind a drawer on the left of his desk and she would find a document concerning their house that she had been looking for without success. Upon returning home, she found it exactly where the Ouija board messages said it would be.

“Life used to be so jolly on earth at times, but this life is so much freer,” Hinchliffe communicated to Morkham. “Be good to my wife. I am anxious about my darling Joan baby is all right (sic).”

Hinchliffe continued to communicate with Emile through Eileen Garrett and would soon start sending warnings about an air disaster that would kill many people. That will be discussed in my next post here, about May 21.

Note: One of the very best references on mediumship has been the SurvivalAfterDeath.org website. Tom Jones, who created and maintains that site states that it is down due to technical difficulties, but he says it should be back up and running within the next 2-3 weeks.

 
avove:  Dr. Charles Richet

      Winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Dr. Charles Richet (1850-1935) was a physiologist, chemist, bacteriologist, pathologist, psychologist, aviation pioneer, poet, novelist, editor, author, and psychical researcher.  After receiving his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1869 and his Doctor of Science in 1878, he served as professor of physiology at the medical school of the University of Paris for 38 years.

       Richet was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on anaphylaxis, the sensitivity of the body to alien protein substance.  He also contributed much to research on the nervous system, anesthesia, serum therapy, and neuro-muscular stimuli.  He served as editor of the Revue Scientifique for 24 years and contributed to many other scientific publications.

      After attending experiments in Milan with medium Eusapia Palladino in 1884, Richet began taking an active interest in psychical research.  He befriended many of the top psychical researchers of the day, including Frederic W. H. Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Dr. Albert von Schrenck-Notzing.   In addition to Palladino, he studied Marthe Bèraud (Eva C.), William Eglinton, Stephan Ossowiecki, Elisabeth D'Esperance, and others.  He served as president of the Society for Psychical Research of London in 1905.

      While clearly accepting the reality of mediumship and other psychic phenomena, Richet remained skeptical as to whether the evidence suggested spirits and survival.   "I oppose it (spirit hypothesis) half-heartedly, for I am quite unable to bring forward any wholly satisfactory counter-theory," he wrote.  Publicly, he leaned toward a physiological explanation, but privately, at least in his later years, he apparently accepted the spirit hypothesis as the best explanation,
   

     This "interview" is based on Richet's 1923 book, Thirty Years of Psychical Research.

Except for word in brackets, inserted to provide a transition or flow, the words are his.  The questions have been tailored to fit the answers.  I did the "interview" for the current issue of the Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, a quarterly publication of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc.   The Academy is holding its 33rd annual conference at DeSales University, Center Valley, PA May 30 to June 2. The theme is "Beyond the Veil:  Evidence for Life After Death."  There's still time to sign up for the conference.  For more information, go to http://aspsi.org/  or e-mail bateyb@infionline.net  


      Dr. Richet, your book is dedicated to Sir William Crookes and Frederic W. H. Myers.  I gather, however, that when Sir William was reporting on his research with D. D. Home and Florence Cook back during the early 1870s, you did not have a particularly high opinion of him.

     "[True], the idolatry of current ideas was so dominant at that time that no pains were taken either to verify or to refute Crookes's statements.   Men were content to ridicule them, and I avow with shame that I was among the willfully blind.  Instead of admiring the heroism of a recognized man of science who dare then in 1872 to say that there really are phantoms that can be photographed and whose heartbeats can be heard, I laughed.   This courage had, however, no immediate or considerable effect; it is only today that Crookes's work is really understood.  It is still the foundation of objective metapsychics, a block of granite that no criticism has been able to touch."

     Would you mind explaining the difference between objective and subjective metapsychics? 

      "Objective metapsychics deals with certain mechanical, physical, or chemical effects perceptible to our senses, not proceeding from known forces, but seemingly directed by intelligence.  It states, classifies, and analyzes these material phenomena. Subjective metaphysics studies those phenomena that are purely intellectual.  These are characterized by an indication of some realities that are not revealed by our senses.  Everything takes place as if we had a mysterious faculty of cognition - lucidity - was the classical physiology of sensation cannot as yet explain.  I propose to call this faculty cryptestheisa, i.e., a sensibility whose nature escapes us.  Frequently, the phenomena pertain to both kinds and it is difficult or impossible to distinguish between them."

     Thank you for that clarification, Dr. Richet.   I would like to focus this interview more on the objective as I know you have had considerable experience with materialization phenomena. Who are the best among these objective or physical mediums?

    "To mention Home, Florence Cook, Stainton Moses, Eusapia, Mme. D'Espérance, Eglinton, Linda Gazzera, Slade, Marthe Béraud, Miss Goligher, and Stanislawa Tomczyk is to name nearly all; it is obvious that they are but few.  The number of those who give raps is very much larger, but I have no statistics regarding them."

        With the possible exception of Home and Moses, all of those you just mentioned have been accused of fraud at one time or another.    

       "Unfortunately physical mediums often misuse their powers; they think to enrich themselves and give public séances for profit.  The Fox sisters, the Davenport brothers, Eglinton, and Slade all did this, and from thence to fraud is but a step that has often been taken, so that professional mediums of this class are always to be looked upon with suspicion and the most rigid precautions must always be taken against trickery.  Indeed, this is always necessary, even when there is no possible suspicion of conscious fraud."

      Conscious as opposed to unconscious fraud?

     "We have defined metapsychics as the science whose subject matter is phenomena which seem to arise from an intelligence other than the human intelligence.  Mediums are therefore those persons who, in partial or total unconsciousness, speak words perform actions, and make gestures that seem not to be under control of their will and to be independent of their intelligence.  Nevertheless, these unconscious phenomena show intelligence and system, and are sometimes most aptly coordinated.  Therefore, the first thing to be discovered is whether they are due to a human or to a super-human intelligence."

     So you are agreeing with Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Barrett, both of whom concluded that various movements on the part of the medium which have been interpreted as cheating or fraud are in fact prompted by the controlling intelligence and are involuntary movements as far as the medium is concerned?

      "[Exactly], trance turns them into automata that have but a very slight control over their muscular movements.  When a medium is nearly or quite insensible, his eyes shut, sweating and making convulsive e movements, unable to answer any questions put to him, I do not think he ought to be reproached for anything he may do.  He is not himself; he has not that poised and quiet consciousness which can decided between right and wrong.  He has forgotten who he is and what he ought to do."

     But, clearly there has been much conscious fraud?

     "[No doubt], completely criminal are such acts as those of Eldred or Mrs. Williams preparing paraphernalia for deliberate fraud, hidden in a chair or upon their person; this is radically different from the suspicious movements of an entranced medium."

    Your reports talk about ectoplasmic arms extending from Eusapia and touching sitters or moving objects.

     "[Yes], the ectoplasmic arms and hands that emerge from the body of Eusapia do only what they wish, and though Eusapia knows what they do, they are not directed by Eusapia's will; or rather there is for the moment no Eusapia.   It is also quite easy to understand  that when exhausted by a long and fruitless séance, and surrounded by a number of sitters eager to see something, a medium whose consciousness is still partly in abeyance may give the push that he hopes will start the phenomena....There is a quasi-identity between the medium and the ectoplasm, so that when an attempt is made to seize the latter, a limb of the medium may be grasped; though I make a definite and formal protest against this frequent defense of doubtful phenomena by spiritualists.  More frequently, the ectoplasm is independent of the medium, indeed perhaps it is always so; though I do not mean to imply that the severance or capture of the ectoplasm can be effected without danger to the medium.  The case of Mme. D'Espérance is on record to show that a medium may incur a long illness by reason of such an attempt."

     I recall reading that there was much of this cheating that really wasn't cheating   going on when you, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Frederic Myers studied Eusapia at Ribaud Island.  

     "At Ribaud Island, experimenting with Eusapia in company with Sir Oliver Lodge, Frederic Myers, and J. Ochorowicz - three objective observers whose competence and honesty cannot be called into question - I held one of Eusapia's hands firmly in each of mine.  I then felt a third hand touch my shoulder, my head, and my face.  This was not in darkness; there was a lighted candle in the room.  All kinds of absurd hypotheses must here be eliminated: first that I was hallucinated - that is, disposed of by the fact that the slap on the shoulder given by ‘John King' (Eusapia's spirit control or guide) was heard by all present; then that Myers, Lodge, or Ochorowicz should have perpetrated this bad joke; then that I had let go of one of Eusapia's hands, which could not be, for my friends could all see her hands held far apart, one in each of mine.  Further, the same phenomenon of the materialization of a hand while Eusapia's hands were held separate by one person has been observed by Oliver Lodge, by Myers, and by Ochorowicz."

     Would you mind explaining a little more about the séances with Eusapia?

     "Provisionally, the sequence of materialization phenomena, as observed with Eusapia, may be stated as follows:  At first, touches and raps produced both easily and frequently; this is the first stage, in which nothing is visible, for the material energy disengaged from her body is formless.  In the second stage the hand is formed, but still cannot be seen, though it can execute well-defined mechanical actions, can take hold of a bell or book, and can touch one's head with fingers that are felt to be warm and jointed.  Finally, in the third stage, which was rarely reached in my experiments with Eusapia, the hand becomes visible and can be photographed.  In a still rarer, fourth stage, not only a hand but a whole body is formed and detached.  Vassallo, Porro, Morselli, and Bottazzi have been able to witness these complete materializations.  [And], luminous phenomena are relatively frequent."

     History has not been particularly kind to Eusapia and others you mentioned earlier, treating them as either charlatans or as a mixed mediums (producing both genuine phenomena and fraudulent phenomena).  

     "Even if there were no other medium than Eusapia in the world, her manifestations would suffice to establish scientifically the reality of telekinesis and ectoplasmic forms...  A powerful medium is a very delicate instrument of whose secret springs we know nothing, and clumsy handling may easily disorganize its working.  It is best to allow the phenomena to develop in their own way without any attempt at guidance.  It is probably a great mistake to try to educate mediumship...Mediums have not hitherto been treated with justice; they have been slandered, ridiculed, and vilified.  They have been treated as animæ viles for experiment.  When their faculties faded away they have been left to die in obscurity and want; when rewarded it has been with a niggardly hand, giving them to understand that they are only instruments.  It is time that this inhuman treatment should cease."

      But you observed much more dramatic phenomena with Marthe Bèraud, correct? 

     "[Correct], the materializations given by Marthe Bèraud are of the highest importance.  They have presented numerous facts illustrating the general processus of materializations and have supplied metapsychic science with entirely new and unforeseen data...[Marthe is] the daughter of an officer, betrothed to General Noel's son, who died in the Congo before the marriage.  She is a very intelligent and lively young lady, wears her hair short, and is a bright-eyed brunette...The first experiments at which I was present [in Algiers] impressed me greatly, but I always distrust first impressions.  In the following year, I returned to Algiers resolved to repeat experiments under more rigorous conditions."

     Please tell me what you observed on the second trip.

    "The materializations produced were very complete.  The phantoms of Bien Boa appeared five or six times under satisfactory conditions in the sense that he could not be Marthe masquerading in a helmet and sheet.  Marthe would have had not only to bring, but also to conceal afterwards, the helmet, the sheet, and the burnous (hooded cloak worn by Arabs).  Also Marthe and the phantom were both seen at the same time.   To pretend that Bien Boa was a doll is more absurd still; he walked and moved, his eyes could be seen looking around, and when he tried to speak his lips moved.  He seemed so much alive that, as we could hear his breathing, I took a flask of baryta water to see if his breath would show carbon dioxide.  The experiment succeeded.  I did not lose sight of the flask from the moment when I put it into the hands of Bien Boa who seemed to float in the air on the left of the curtain at a height greater than Marthe could have been even if standing up.   While he blew into the tube the bubbling could be heard and I asked Delanne (editor of Revue de Spiritisme), ‘Do you see Marthe?'  He said, ‘I see Marthe completely."

      I know you said the room was checked and you were certain that nobody else could enter, but isn't it possible that Bien Boa was a confederate hiding in the materialization cabinet or some secret entrance or trap door  into the room?

      "It is absolutely impossible that this phantom should be a stranger invading the cabinet; and it is impossible that Marthe could have invested herself with a helmet and sheet, and induced at the same time the white cloud in front of the curtain.  Everything happens as though fluidic vapour emerged from her head and her right side, masking both, and rising into the air without any means of support but her head and body."  
  

     I believe you reported an even more dramatic materialization with Marthe, didn't you?

     "However striking [that experiment] was, another experiment seems to me even more evidential:  Everything being arranged as usual, after a long wait I saw close to me, in front of the curtain which had not moved, a white vapour, hardly sixteen inches distant.  It was like a white veil or handkerchief on the floor.  This rose and became spherical.  Soon it was a head just above the floor; it rose up still more, enlarged, and grew into a human form, a short bearded man dressed in a turban and white mantle, who moved, limping slightly, form right to left before the curtain.  On coming close to General Noel, he sank down abruptly to the floor with a clicking noise like a falling skeleton, flattening out in front of the curtain.  Three or four minutes later, close to the general, not to me, he reappeared, rising in a straight line from the floor, born from the floor, so to say, and falling back to it with the same clicking noise."

      I know the cabinet is required for the materialization to take place in complete darkness, but it still sounds so hokey to the skeptic. 

      "It seems to me impossible, however slight and supple Marthe may be, that she should creep under the curtain without disturbing it and give the illusion of a person rising straight from the floor; and how can the head, standing as if decapitated, be explained, and the sinking into the floor afterwards, when very shortly after we saw Marthe sitting quietly in her chair, asleep.  Several photographs were taken by Delanne and myself, stereoscopic and other.  They show some interesting details on which Sir Oliver Lodge has made some acute criticisms, saying that they were the best metapsychic photographs that he had seen."

     These so-called ectoplasmic figures are often quite ridiculous looking and it is easy to assume that they are some kind of dolls.  Of course, it is difficult to understand why a fraudulent medium would think she or he could dupe anyone with something that doesn't even resemble a human form.  

      "[True], it is imagined, quite mistakenly, that a  materialization must be analogous to a human body and must be three dimensional.  This is not so.  There is nothing to prove that the process of materialization is other than a development of a completed form after a first stage of coarse and rudimentary lineaments form from the cloudy substance.  The moist, gelatinous, and semi-luminous extensions that come from the mouth of Marthe are embryonic formations which tend towards organization without immediately attaining it.

     What exactly is ectoplasm?  The skeptics would say that it nothing but cheesecloth stuffed into some cavity of the medium and then exuded at an opportune time. 

     "The word ‘ectoplasm,' which I invented for the experiments with Eusapia, seems entirely justified...Thanks to Ochorowicz, Schrenck-Notzing, and Mme. Bisson, and Crawford, who carried on Crookes's work, it seems now fairly proved that materializations are ectoplasms; that is, sarcodic extensions emanating from the body of a medium, precisely as a pseudopod from an amoeboid cell.  All zoologists are aware that an amoeba can project a sarcode to seize upon alimentary matter and infest it.  In a similar fashion fluidic filaments or extensions like clouds, veils, or stems may proceed from the body of the entranced medium, can then become organic, and take on the semblance of human limbs and occasionally of whole bodies...The ectoplasm is a kind of gelatinous protoplasm, formless at first, that exudes from the body of the medium, and takes form later.  This embryo-genesis of materialization shows clearly on nearly all the photographs.  In the early stages there are always white veils and milky patches and the faces, fingers, and drawings are formed little by little bin the midst of this kind of gelatinous paste that resembles moist and sticky muslin...[I observed] gelatinous projections come from the mouth or shoulders of Marthe.  I saw the arm of Bien Boa formed in this way.  At first it resembled a thin, rigid rod covered with drapery and became a stretched-out arm.  The same phenomenon was very clearly observable with Eusapia.  A kind of supplementary arm seemed to come from her body.  Once I saw a long, stiff rod proceed from her side, which after great extension had a hand at its extremity - a living hand warm and jointed, absolutely like a human hand."

    I'm confused on something here.  Is ectoplasm always visible?

   "In their first stage these ectoplasms are invisible, but can move objects and can give raps on a table.  Later on they become visible though nebulous and sketchy.  Still later, they take human form, for they have the extraordinary property that they change their forms and their consistence and evolve under our eyes.  In a few seconds, the nebulous embryo that exudes from the body of the medium becomes an actual being; though the human ovum requires thirty years to evolve into the adult form. Sometimes the phantom appears suddenly, without passing through the phase of luminous cloud; but this phenomenon is probably of the same order as the slower development.  This ectoplasmic formation at the expense of the physiological organism of the medium is now beyond all dispute.  It is prodigiously strange, prodigiously unusual, and it would seem so unlikely as to be incredible; but we must give in to the facts."

    Doesn't the materialization of garments discredit the hypothesis that a deceased human is materializing?

     "What about the astral presentment of a garment, a hat, an eye-glass, or a walking-stick?  This is the height of folly.  It seems to me much wiser to verify without pretending to understand, and to admit that any explanation we can give can hardly escape being ridiculous.  Instead of claiming that unknown powers pertaining to deceased humanity are capable of producing these phenomena, it is better to admit that we are dealing with facts as yet inexplicable, and await further elucidation.  But there is no reason to deny a fact because it is inexplicable.  Can anyone have the unpardonable presumption to claim to give an adequate explanation of all natural phenomena?  In metapsychics we come up against the inexplicable at every turn."

      In spite of your standing in the scientific community, mainstream science doesn't seem to accept the research on ectoplasm.

     "Assuredly, it is possible that I may be mistaken, even grossly mistaken, along with Crookes, De Rochas, Aksakoff, Myers, William James, Schiaparelli, Zöllner, Fechner, and Oliver Lodge.  It is possible that all of us have been deceived.  It is possible that some day an unexpected experiment may explain our prolonged deception quite simply.  So be it! But till it has been explained how we have all been duped by an illusion, I claim that the reality of these materializations must be conceded...What man of science worthy of the name could affirm that science has classified, analyzed, and penetrated all the energies of immeasurable nature, or could make the strange and pretentious claim that we know all the dynamic manifestations in the world!  To admit telekinesis and ectoplasms is not to destroy even the smallest fragment of science; it is but to admit new data, and that there are unknown energies.  Then why be indignant, when, on the basis of thousands of observations and experiments, we affirm one of those unknown energies?"     

      You've often used the word "absurd" when referring to the various phenomena.

     "Yes, it is absurd; but no matter - it is true." 

Above:  Steve Beckow 
 

       Steve Beckow, a resident of Vancouver, B.C., has a very unusual pastime.  You might call him an afterlife cartographer.   A sociologist, historian, and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Beckow prefers to call himself a student of cross-cultural spirituality.   His primary interest now is in making sense of the afterlife from revelations that have come to us through various forms of mediumship, including the mediumship of the Bible and other sacred texts.   I recently had the opportunity to interview Beckow by e-mail.  Here are my questions and his answers:

Steve, what prompted your interest in charting the heavens?

       I followed what must have been a common path for my generation in the 1970s - through encounter groups, off to India, into spirituality.  At one point I spent time in a British-spiritualist development circle and at another time I had an out-of-body experience. It was these two latter influences that made me resolve to write a book on the conditions of life after death.
 

      Other spiritual experiences and the writing projects they inspired intervened, but a few years ago.  I returned to the original promise I had made myself and, drawing on my sociological training, began to piece together a picture of life beyond physical death.

What did you find?

     Well, first of all, working on the subject is a little like piecing together a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, all of whose pieces are in soft shades of blue.  It is only by nuances that one can tell the pieces apart.   For instance, the flora, buildings, and art of the Astral and Mental Planes are alike, both dazzling and indescribable. How is one to distinguish between them from an earthly standpoint?    Moreover, unlike earth, which is arranged geographically, the spirit planes are arranged hierarchically.  As Julia Ames said, "there are degrees in heaven."

       This has several impacts. First, examining the communicators themselves, I found that I was mostly reading accounts by the newly-arrived.  They occupied planes nearest to earth and knew the least about what they were describing. Second, the conditions of life become increasingly hard to describe as one mounts higher in the spiritual realms. Third, communicators lose their desire to communicate with us on this side the further up they mount the ladder of the planes.  All this biases communication in the direction of the least well-informed, speaking on the most familiar territory.

Have you succeeded in drawing a new map of heaven?

       Like all early explorers, I and other afterlife investigators so far have only mapped out known "continents," mostly the Borderlands or the Higher Summerlands.  Most spiritual communications, in earlier times, were primarily proving that we survive. Following them was a raft of spirit teachings. It is only rarely that a spirit communicator actually turns his or her attention to the conditions of life on the other side.

       Moreover, of the planes above the Astral (that is, above the Winterlands and Summerlands) and perhaps the Mental we know little at all. Theosophical commentators give only a general paragraph to what they called the Buddhic and Nirvanic Planes and confide that they are forbidden to say anything at all about higher planes.  All of this means that afterlife cartography is very much in its infancy.

What are the "Winterlands"?

      The Winterlands are the bottom planes of the astral - the Stony Plane and the Dark Plane. These are the equivalent of what Christians call "Hell."  The Stony Plane is described as resembling the American desert regions with much less heat and light. The Dark Plane is a quite miserable place to land in, cold, dark, and, in many respects, noxious.  Some people spend hundreds of years wallowing in self-pity before climbing their way back out of it.  Others work hard and make a mad dash to leave them behind.

      Nonetheless, they are not the same "Hell" as pictured in orthodox religion. In the first place, they are not everlasting; spirits are given the opportunity to mend themselves and leave. In the second, there is no hellfire in which souls are tormented.  The worst torment that occurs arises from the individual's own mind. An example of that would be a murderer condemned mentally to endlessly relive his or her crimes, which is what I understand occurs.

      Incidentally, one of the questions I had in the back of my mind that spurred this research was to discover what happened to the Nazis after death.  Almost all of them ended up in the Dark Planes, but I learned something else that startled me. I have encountered several spirits who say that the worst among evil spirits - Philip Gilbert even named one Nazi (google "Irma Grese") - have been, shall we say, re-assimilated back into the cosmic Spirit. They no longer exist as individuals. That was one of the sobering revelations from this work. Until then I thought not one sheep would be lost, but apparently this is not the case.

If there is a Hell, is there a Purgatory?

        Purgatory is a state rather than a place.  There are several purgatories. The Borderlands are a "place of purging," where we undergo a "full-life review" immediately after death. You probably already know that some people may undergo this review during an out-of-body experience.
 

       But there is a second place of purging, after one has become established in the "Mental Plane" or "Heaven" proper, which lies "above" the Astral Summerlands. Here one goes through a much more intensive review than the first, in concert with one's spirit teachers, which communicators call "the Judgment."  After this second review, there follows a time of making amends for one's errors and then what is called the "Second Death," when the remaining earthly traces fall away and one emerges in the mental body. I have heard that there are other purgations, or purgatories, as well.

Does your research confirm the existence of "earthbound spirits"?  If so, exactly what are they?  Do they know that they are dead?

      Yes, there are large numbers of earthbound spirits.  They share in common an unfinished longing for continued experience of mortal life.  Some may not know they are dead; some may know.
 

      Some may be malevolent spirits, spurring embodied people on to excesses and crimes so that the earthbound spirit can enjoy the sensations if even in a limited and vicarious fashion. Some may be loving spirits, unable to bear the pain of separation from loved ones. Others may simply miss their old castle or their old flat.
 

      Others can be mistaken for earthbound spirits, but are actually souls who remain near the earth for exalted purposes. The fascinating Nirmanakaya are one example.  The Nirmanakaya are incredibly-developed souls, who have renounced the right to enter Nirvana and agreed to remain more or less stationary in the spirit plane showering it and the earth with love.  Occasionally Theosophists would bump into one of these "stones in the guardian wall."

What is the highest plane from which we have communications?

      Again, spirits do not often say what plane they are communicating from. One who does is John Heslop, who communicates from an exalted region called the Christ Sphere.  This sphere is mentioned by others, but Heslop actually describes as many details of it as can be captured in our language.  Unfortunately these details are fewer than I would like, but listening to Heslop we can, from his words, get a sense of the caliber of inhabitants of that exalted sphere.

      Here I might add that two sources - John Heslop and Julia Ames - actually describe being taken up into heaven, Julia by an angel, meeting the Lord Jesus with a heavenly host behind him, and experiencing enlightenment at his hands. I mention this because some people - incarnate and discarnate - debunk Biblical descriptions like the "Rapture" these days, but I have found interesting examples bearing these descriptions out. They simply do not happen to most folks (and so are little known to, and sometimes denied by, the average spirit communicator).  They happen to more highly-developed beings.

      This raises the interesting question of the fallibility of spirits. Because most communicators are recently transitioned, they can be mistaken in their assessments of what does and does not happen on the other side. It was the newly-arrived Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson who said that there was no "rapture" and no "judgment."  But in fact he was in error on both points.

      The other source that is well worth studying is Stainton Moses' Spirit Teachings. His chief communicator, "Imperator," last incarnated as the prophet Malachi, who was one of those responsible for putting the Old Testament in the form it takes today. He is assisted by a band of 49 lofty souls and his teachings are fascinating.  Unfortunately Imperator does not talk about his own plane specifically, but still gives much valuable information on spirit life in general.

      I haven't read the Seth books again since long ago, but expect the same high-quality information from that source too.

 How many planes are there? Can you name them all?

        No, I cannot name them all. No classification scheme I have seen so far takes them all in - not those of the Theosophists or the Rosicrucians or anyone else.  A comprehensive map would have to include the Buddhic and Nirvanic Planes, the two planes above them that the Theosophists refuse to discuss, and the realms of the Dharmarajas, Elohim, Lipika, and nine orders of angels.  No cartographical scheme that I have seen shows where they all fit in or even names (or numbers) them in a consistent manner.
 

     Most schemes of description go no farther than the Third Heaven or third subplane of the Mental Plane.  There may very well be no words to describe them even if they were named or numbered. 

       Moreover, there are no maps that I am aware of that also include the life streams parallel to but independent of humans that exist alongside our planes, such as fairies, sylphs, etc. I have not concerned myself with these or, for that matter, with the spiritual planes that are associated with life forms on other planetary and star systems. (Yes, they exist too.)

      Not only can I not name all the planes, but I am faced with a plethora of names which appear to point to the same region while lacking spirit confirmation that they actually do.  Thus, the Borderlands are called the Near-Earth Plane, Kamaloka, Hades, Purgatory, the Vestibule, and the "Blue Island." That would be well and good if someone like Annie Besant did not come along and extend the word "Kamaloka" to the whole of the Astral Plane or someone else point out that there are many Purgatories, etc.  There is frighteningly little agreement on matters of prime importance in surveying the Heavens.

Your website mentions that there is a convalescence period in the Borderland realm.  Does the time spent there vary for different souls?  Do earthbound spirits undergo convalescence?  If so, why are they still earthbound?

        Spirits may or may not convalesce after their deaths. It depends on a number of factors. First, it depends on the degree of their familiarity with life after death. Those familiar may pass quickly through the Borderlands and take up their residence on the higher Astral Planes - Robert Hugh Benson, for instance.  Some will move quickly through the Astral Planes before taking their residence on the Mental Planes - W.T. Stead, for example. 
  

       It also depends on the nature of their death conditions. Those who have suffered a long illness or a sudden and violent death will generally need more time to convalesce than those who died, say, peacefully in their sleep.  Some people may need only a day's sleep and they are ready to function. Benson is an example of this too.   

       In Grace Rosher's The Travellers' Return, there is a wonderful description of the joyous reception Sir Winston Churchill received on the Astral Plane from former prime ministers and other historic figures. Prior to that reception, Sir Winston was convalescing. One detail that was interesting to hear was that he was awakened temporarily from his rest to hear the trumpets at St. Paul's cathedral and then sent back to bed. What a nice touch!

      Most earthbound spirits are surrounded by a mental wall of unconsciousness that spirits who help with transitions cannot penetrate.  Sometimes these earthbound spirits do and sometimes they do not know they have died. Others consciously choose to be earthbound and transition guides will not violate their freedom of choice.  Most of us are "earthbound" in a manner of speaking. Even Julia Ames sought permission to leave Jesus and return to tell her loved ones on earth the good news. We all spend a certain amount of time around those we have left behind.

      Again, certain spirits receive permission to work with their mediumistic relatives - Philip Gilbert, for instance, or "Sigwart" of The Bridge Across the River.  While we don't usually consider them "earthbound," they do account for some sustained spiritual activity around mortals.

Which have been your best or favorite resources for this information?

       I certainly have my favourites.  I have mentioned some already. I have found invaluable the books communicated by Philip Gilbert through his mother Alice (Philip in Two Worlds, Into the Everywhere, and Philip in the Spheres), Julia's letters in W.T. Stead's After Death, T.E Lawrence's Post-Mortem Journal, and Benson's Life in the World Unseen series. F.W.H. Myers is informative but idiosyncratic. It is difficult to know where to fit some of his information. Again I have not finished my reading for this project. 
 

      Among the books by incarnate scholars, my favourite is Paul Beard's Living On. The Theosophists are also wide-ranging and informative.  I should mention that there are a great number of primary and secondary texts available these days online.

 What does this research show us?

      Well, even more distinctly than research on earth life, research on spirit life shows us the Divine Plan: namely, spiritual evolution, from God to God.  (All of what follows is covered in clearly-marked sections of my website.) We have all of us come from God and are destined, at some distant future time, to return to God after we have experienced a very advanced stage of enlightenment.

      God's Will, as I understand it, is that, through Its created life forms, the Formless will enjoy the experience of Its own Bliss. And that moment of enjoyment occurs during enlightenment. The purpose of our lives therefore is enlightenment and our journey down and up the spirit planes, as depicted in Jacob's ladder, is to serve the Divine Plan of which our enlightenment forms a part. 

     Following spirit travel from plane to plane shows Jacob's ladder of spiritual evolution about as plainly as anything we could ever expect to see. The march from the Winterlands to the Summerlands to Heaven and beyond is a graphic illustration of the trajectory of our return to Divinity.  Revealing a picture of the Divine Plan at work is one of the major contributions of afterlife research.

 Is there anything else you are hoping to achieve by drawing new maps of heaven? 

        I know that spirits listen to us as much as we listen to them. While drawing maps, I am also trying to convey to them the message that we need them to tighten up the process of communication. One way would be to ensure that all communicators be required to tell us specifically from which plane (and subplane) they are communicating. Location on the other side is of critical importance to us who are trying to fit the pieces together.

       I also ask for the help of spirit teachers in correlating the different terminologies that spirits use. For example, I do not know what planes names like the "Christ Sphere" or "Empyrean Plane" refer to in general, but also how they correlate to numbering systems like "the seventh plane," etc.

      Even more importantly than that, I hope to persuade spirit and physical folks to get together on some really broad anthropological projects that would subject spirit planes to rigorous social-scientific study. Until recently, most accounts have resembled tourist guides.  We can do better than that and, I think, we are ready for intensive, scholarly examinations carried out by groups on this side co-operating with groups on "the other."  I still don't think this research should be affiliated with universities, though, who still appear to adhere to a paradigm of empirical materialism and can be influenced by the state.

      I think of the various interviews carried out by Robert Leichtman in the Seventies, collectively called From Heaven to Earth (unfortunately out of print now and har