TALKS WITH THE "DEAD”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3825, 23 October 1936, Page 9

TALKS WITH THE " DEAD”

HOW THEY ARE ABLE TO SPEAK TO THE LIVING. (By Shaw Desmond.) Mr Shaw Desmond, the distinguished author and psychical investigator he wrote “We Do Not Die,” founded the International Institute for Physical Research, and is president of "The Survival League”—tells in this article resulting from his investigation of Spiritualism, how speaking with the “dead” is no more unusual for him than speech with the living, and describes remarkable conversations he has had with people, famous and otherwise, who have "passed over.” In this article, published in the Sunday Mercury, he concludes: “I, who it may be said by the scoffer will get paid for this article, would gladly write for nothing if it would help the broken-hearted to get into touch with the living-dead.” Either we have spoken with our dead or we have not. You cannot have it both ways! For my part I have so often spoken with mine, that if you were to tell me that a dead man w’as waiting to speak with me in the next room, I should be no more interested nor in any more hurry to go to him than I would if you were to tell me that a living man wished to speak with me! lam almost tired of talking with dead men! Some time ago I happened to be sitting with some friends, one of whom has mediumistic powers, in p London room. One of those present had been confidential secretary to a famous newspaper proprietor, whose name was known in four continents and whom I myself had known slightly, who had passed over to the Great Beyond some years before. Nobody there expected this newspaper colossus to materialise, either by voice or otherwise. All at once there came out of the middle of the room (out of the air, so to speak) the well remembered and characteristic voice of the great man, and he addressed one after the other of those who had known him in lile, so that they could vouch for his identity. His views of things had undergone a strange change, and he had become, incidentally, a strong, almost bitter opponent of all war, as he let us know. The voice, the manner, all were exactly as in life. And when he spoke to me personally it was as though I were speaking with the original—as indeed I.was! To make sure that no impersonation had taken place, it is interesting to record that the editor of a London daily, himself a sceptic, who had also on another occasion conversed with the same “ghost” (his former chief), insisted to me that it could only have been that chief. “Every inflection, and especially one particuar phrase, were his to the life,” he said. Yht he hated to believe—a sceptic dyed in the wool! If dead men cannot speak to us, perhaps the unbeliever will explain the following recent occurrence: When I went to dine with the editor already mentioned he told me that just as he was going to sleep a night or two previously a woman's voice very distinctly said in his ear: “Tell Desmond when he comes that the Union is dead!”—giving clear proof that not only did the “dead” informant know that I was coming to dinner, but that she knew all about what was at the time a very secret business. Nobody knew of it except that “dead” woman herself, whom alone is concerned. I have purposely modified one of the details. How did a “dead” woman know that? No trickery was possible, for it was in the editor’s own room in the dead of night. THE VOICE WITH WHICH THE DEAD SPEAK. Now I come to an important phase of this speaking with the dead. How do they manage to speak with us? Direct communication is made through what is called, a "medium.” But what about when the medium is a passive spectator and the “dead,” who keep on insisting that they are “living,” themselves speak directly to us in their own voices in what is called therefore “the direct voice”? Now, if you wish to speak to a friend at the other end of the city, unless you visit him, you have to use an instrument which we call a telephone. The spirits use exactly the same kind of instrument! There is no hocus-pocus about this, tor not only have I had the method personally demonstrated by the invisible communicator, but the voice is vouched for by leading scientists, who have heard it themselves—-in-cluding Professor Gildo Passini, Professor Bozzano, Sir Oliver Lodge and many others. All this under watertight conditions, sometimes in their own rooms. The “direct” voice differs from the "soundless” voice which the medium alone can hear with her hypersensitive ear, in that you can hear it as plainly as the medium, whether you are what is called “clairaudent” or not. It is as loud, usually, as the normal speaking voice of a man, but it can rise to a roar that is terrifying. Not so long ago a hall full of people beard it in London, and it is my own belief 'that before very long lectures will be given in it in our largest halls by the scientists of the astral world—as the world next to this is called.

The old theories of the materialist scientists about this voice, until they completely broke down, were: (a) That the whole thing was trickery, someone being concealed and speaking through a trumpet. This theory fell to pieces when the voice was heard by several in good light. (b) That the medium is the originator of the voice. The now famous “Margery-Walter” experiment in Boston has for all time disposed of this. A microphone was placed in a sealed box weighing 100 lbs, electrically insulated, it being connected only with a loud speaker situated in a distant part of the building. The voice of the spirit (Walter) emerged from the loud speaker, but not a sound was heard in the room in which the box stood! The result has been that many spirits to-day admit the fact of the voice. So far they have been unable to find any other plausible origin than that it is that of a so-called “dead” man or woman. The spirit scientists in their lectures (and I have heard many such) or in other ways tell us that just as the human voice can only make itself heard when the breath vibrates the larynx, so also the spirit voice can only make itself heard by operating some such larynx. The larynx is called by them the “voice box.” It is into this box that the spirit voice enters when it wishes to speak to those still in the flesh. This box is not fashioned of vulcanite, as is the telephone which is its earthly counterpart. It is built, they tell us, of two substances, one drawn from the body of a human being, the other taken from the spirit world. The former is called “ectoplasm,” a word coined not by humans but by spirits, and the latter “psychoplasm”; the combined conglomerate being called by them “teleplasm.’ This box is not “somewhere in space”—it is actually in the room where the voice is heard; it has coming from it seven cords or “rays,” and it can be seen by anyone who is clairvoyant. I might say that I have repeatedly seen this ectoplasm pour from the body of a medium; that it has been held in the hand, and vouched for by the world famous Professor Crawford, of Belfast University. You can regard this box as a kind of microphone, which at once increases enormously the vibrations of the spirit voice and amplifies that voice. I have sat night after night with friends in a large room in a London suburb and listened to the voices of tiny tots coming out of the voice box and telling their mothers present that they live—“and, Mummy, we’re alive, and we’re waiting for you over here.” I have seen or heard strong men weep as their “dead” sons and daughters came through to tell them the oldest story in the world —that “there is no death.” WHAT MY DEAD SON HAS TOLD ME. Finally, I myself have not once, but many times, heard the voice of my little dead son telling me proudly that he is now a strapping six footer (for children grow up in the world beyond the grave) that he comes to all my lectures, and that he “is proud of »me”—God bless him and forgive me, for indeed I am not always too proud of myself. I have listened with a few friends (as you might listen in your own room to your friends) to a fine young man speak to his loving mother out of the next world, and comfort her breaking heart by telling her, “I am not dead, mother.” Then he told her of how he left her for what turned out to be his fatal motor cycle ride; how at the gate he turned to see her (though he did not know it) for the iast time; and the story of his accident. The broken-hearted woman sits there, tears rolling down her face, as she listens to her beloved only boy; and there steals through the tears the smile that comes from the knowledge at last that Herbert is not dead, but very much alive. This boy has spoken to me directly, and he is one of the regular attendants at my lectures, he or others telling me what I have said and how they think about it. For every lecturer on this earth, unless we are all mad people (as the materialists used to say, but don’t say any longer) has an invisible audience of the spirit world far transcending any earthly audience. Some time ago I was speaking in the Fortune Theatre, London, and incautiously I used a plural where I should have used singular. Afterwards one of the world invisible who had "listened in” sent a message that I should not have added the “s,” which was quite true.

Speaking to my wife a little time ago privately about a matter known only to her and me in all the world, a Guide whom I know said to me himself in his own voice, but delivered through the larynx of a medium, “Don’t be afriad, Desmond, man—what you and your wife spoke of” (he repeated the subject matter) “will not happen.” And if you who read these words feel that this “overhearing” of our most sacred words — at times even thoughts—savours of impertinence—please remember that the spirits never are other than extraordinarily tactful and regard all such things as confidences. They are just like doctors —there to help us, but in order to do so they must know the facts!

What I am trying to impress on the reader is that everything has changed in regard to the scientific and social attitude on these matters. It would be a daring man who to-day would deny point blank that we can talk

with our dead—and seek to prove his argument. A TALK WITH SIR CONAN DOYLE. I have sat with earls, doctors, scientists, hard headed financiers, who all bear witness to the truth of the things I am saying I have spoken, before others as witnesses, under safe conditions with such famous men as Sir Henry Segrave (this many times, with his wife, Lady Segrave, present and vouching for the genuineness of the communications); Lord Northcliffe, Dennis Neilson-Terry, the actor (whose friends were there with me), and my friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. To the last I put a poser. Coming through one night,, he said he “wished to speak with Shaw Desmond about certain matters.” I was determined to cross examine this spirit to the “third degree,” so that there could be no question of "impersonation.” At last I asked him: "Tell me, Doyle, where and when you and I last met on this earth?” There was a pause, and I thought I had stumped whatever was speaking to me out of the air. Then the voice said distinctly and in the hearing of all those present the place in which we had met under what had been certain queer and unusual conditions in a certain part of London. It was correct. WHY NAMES ARE NEVER GIVEN. Many correspondents have asked me why our dead friends have such difficulty in remembering their names. They can often give the minutest details about other happenings to prove identity—but when it comes to getting the name—there is nothing doing! The answer is simple. A name to discarnate being means little or nothing. They do not recognise one another by “names,” but rather by "vibrations,” ahd to them (as one of them said to me once) “a name is a neutral thing—it causes no vibration—and therefore we cannot make communication easily.” Nevertheless others and myself have in the course of a single evening had perhaps 40 or 50 names correctly given from the Other Sire—but the communicants were “trained” and accustomed to the “voice box.” I was seated one evening in the room of one of the best known musicians in the North of England when a lady, whom I had never met before, was announced. There was a bright fire and all at once, for no known reason, became as it were of a rosy vibrancy. The air had become "electrical.” Instantly I felt that there was an invisible presence with us, which proved correct when the. automatist (as an automatic writing medium is called) took pencil and paper and at a terrific pace began to scribble down, sometimes as she spoke with us, the most minute details of what the unseen visitor asserted was my own life and that of the presence I had suspected. As I sat there I felt myself enveloped with this strange “electricity,” as though someone were bending over me. The medium, knowing nothing of this feeling, said to me, quite pleasantly and normally: “Lady So and So is now bending over you behind the chair. She says she is indebted to you for something you did for her long ago” (here she described the little service) “and she is anxious to held in every way she can with your work.” That old friends of mine has kept her word, and as a matter of fact, as she told my friend the musician and the medium, “often visits Shaw Desmond in his home, though I, not being a clairvoyant canont see her. Now comes that test: To prove her identity and the fact that no telepathy was involved, Lady sent through the hand of the medium, who does not know a word of any ancient language, string after string of idioms in a certain ancient tongue in which she was an expert; and these idioms and tricks of phrase have to my knowledge been passed as marvellous examples of this particular ancient tongue, going back thousands of years before Christ, by one of the highest authorities on this little known language! More, Lady has herself come through to me and others, and after speaking for some minutes in an unknown tongue, which she afterwards said was the particular tongue in which she was expert when alive turned and spoke to me in that enchanted room in the purest, finest English as loudly as she would in life, and with a turn of phrase and humour rare even among living people.