SEANCES THROUGHOUT THE AGES    1  

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Here I had better put down what exactly a seance is.

Put simply a seance is a gathering of people of like minds who are trying to communicate with the world beyond, we call it the Spirit World. This is where we will all end up in after our lives have come to the natural conclusion on this earth plane. The name seance has swapped and change over the centuries with the name Circle. All that it is, is ordinary people sitting [sitters] around [mainly] facing into the centre of that group gathered [a Circle].

The number of people can be from two facing each other to many, but there again, I suppose you could call the sitting of a person on their own trying to contact the Spirit World a seance and that starts with one individual.

Most people in general terms know the seance as being with two or more people trying to contact the Spirit World.

A Seance can be for Mental Mediumship, Physical Mediumship, or Healing Mediumship, either development or production and experience of each and any one of those disciplines. It is always best to try and stick to a single discipline when developing as they all work on slightly different levels of vibration. Many of the new comers to this sort of a thing go into seances/Circles at first to investigate them out of curiosity. The best place I would suggest would be a good and well run Spiritualist Church with a knowledgeable committee. The saddest thing I must say here is, NOT ALL in the churches or their committees are knowledgeable by any means.

Many years ago, I went to a Home Circle run by a president of Leigh Spiritualist Church,  Lancashire, UK and she had not done her homework on Circles and how to run one. I had been invited to attend to help out and the first thing that struck me was the boy scout bugle [a boy scout trumpet] in the middle of the table. The lady thought this was needed to get the Spirit World to talk through to the sitters. A trumpet used in Physical Circles is made in the shape of a megaphone, and is not used in Mental Seances or Healing Seances. I go back again, do your homework on your subject  [read Meditation Oneness for the best guidance].

In some Circles the sitters hold hands [best] to build up the energy, others just sit near each other not touching BUT all face the centre of the Circle.

In the strong Seances the trained mediumistic person often goes into an altered state of awareness [a Trance].
I will not go into details of what can happen in seances, only to say read the details of the different seances I am placing on this page and the others in the series.

For an idea of what can happen in Physical Seance Circles in good conditions please read and learn throughout. These are extracts gleaned from my personal experiences, the web, books and of many sources.

PLEASE NOTE, SOME OF THE SEANCES ARE IN RED LIGHTING, GAS LIGHT, MOONLIGHT WITH WINDOWS OPEN, NOT IN COMPLETE DARKNESS.

The Mediums of the past when fully developed had nothing to hide. I strongly believe that infra-red lighting should be used to record in complete darkness, the Spirit World allowed infra-red still cameras to be used many years ago, so why do so many alleged Mediums of the present day say they will not allow any photography to prove that truthful phenomena exists, why hide TRUTH. Physical Mediums many times use to sit in subdued white light and still produced physical phenomena.

Some people say talking to the Spirit World and allowing the ordinary person to be used by the Spirit World to show there is life after death is the work of the Devil, BUT NOW the Roman Catholic Church in Rome has now said it is OK for the ordinary person in the street to talk to the dead, this is after they, in the church, have been having seances in their monasteries and convents for centuries. So you can now go ahead with your own seance with the blessings of the Church of Rome without fear of getting stoned, hung drawn and quartered, thrown in prison, drowned in a ducking stool or burned at the stake. It is amazing how things in religion change just to suit the mood of the times. They must be losing more people and their money, more than previously thought, what an another amazing UUUUUU  turn from this man made religion.

George Cranley describes an Alec Harris materialisation seance where he was invited to touch one of the temporarily solid Spirit Forms. As George tells, he also talked to one of the materialised figures for ten to fifteen minutes. Moreover, as the seance ended, 'hundreds' of miniature faces appeared, enclosed in ectoplasm: This is George's account:
I met Alec Harris through a friend of my mother. She was a lifelong Spiritualist and on a visit to Cape Town, knowing of my burgeoning interest in Spiritualism, asked if I would like to sit in a Materialisation Circle.
A regular sitter in Alec Harris' Circle she told me that her husband had, on one occasion, materialised in his Royal Marines uniform, walked out of the cabinet, kissed her and called by a pet name that was not known even to their children. Naturally I was very excited at the prospect, particularly as I had read many dramatic accounts of his Mediumship in Two Worlds and Psychic News.
One Friday morning I received a telegram which simply said: 'Seance tomorrow night. Can you come?' I wired back that I was on my way, went down to the airport at Cape Town with my whole month's wages, bought a ticket and flew to Johannesburg. I arrived three hours later, stayed in an hotel overnight. Next day, my friend took me along to a modest house where I was introduced to the Medium, Alec Harris, and his wife Louie. A small bedroom, part of which had been curtained off to provide a cabinet, was used as the seance room. There were eight of us, four in the front row and four immediately behind. I was invited to sit next to the Medium's wife, directly in front of the opening in the curtains.
Louie led the singing, which went on for about twenty minutes. I was beginning to feel a bit restless when, all of a sudden, I heard a voice from behind the curtain. 'That's Alec's Guide, Christopher', said Louie. 'He speaks with a lisp'. The curtains parted as if drawn by unseen hands and there stood, what looked to me, a vague white outline next to the medium. There was more singing. The curtains opened again revealing a more fully formed figure, but still not clear enough as far as I was concerned.
'That's Alec's mother', said Louie. 'She comes quite often now that Alec is getting older'. The room was lit by a number of red bulbs. No dimmer switches were used, which made it very easy to distinguish everything quite clearly. Suddenly, after more singing, there appeared from the side, not the front, of the curtains, a Red Indian. He stood in front of my friend. 'Greetings, Black Feather', she said. He was her Guide and regularly materialised whenever she was present.
After exchanging a few words he turned towards me and said, 'Will the young man from Cape Town come forward?' Before the seance, Louie told us not to touch the materialisations unless invited to do so, as it could harm the medium. I stood up and walked over to him. He was bare from the waist upwards, with one black feather in a band round the back of his head; the lower half of his body was just draped in ectoplasm. 'Feel my skin', said the figure. He was very tall, well over six feet. I had to stretch up to touch the side of his face. Copper-coloured, the skin had a leathery feel about it. Then he said, 'Feel my chest'. I did as requested and noted the chest was quite solid. 'Hit me on the chest', he said. 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'Yes', he replied. I did. 'Harder!' he said. Using the palm of my hand, I hit him on the chest. He never flinched and again said, 'Harder'. Summoning up all the energy I could muster I hit him on the chest. My hand just bounced off. The figure turned to me with a half-smile on his face and said, 'You may sit down now'. I sat down absolutely staggered, thoughts flashing through my mind. How did he do it? Was there a trapdoor in the floor? Was it Alec Harris on stilts?

As he walked back behind the curtains, simultaneously, the curtains parted in the front and a young woman came out and stood in front of me holding a little baby in her arms. One of the sitters recognised her and explained afterwards that she had died while giving birth. Both mother and baby had passed together. During the course of the seance, which lasted around three hours, about fourteen people materialised.
One I found particularly interesting was a figure which appeared half in shadow and draped in ectoplasm. Only half the face was visible: he didn't speak. I heard crying behind me. One of the ladies asked, 'Is that you Uncle Arthur?' The figure just nodded. After the seance, I was told that Uncle Arthur had died from a particularly nasty type of cancer. Half his face was eaten away so he was unable to speak before he died. Every circle seems to have a child Guide whose job it is to lighten the proceedings when things become too emotional. Theirs was no exception. A little Cockney boy named Ginger materialised and said to me, 'Feel my nose'. I bent down to touch his nose which felt as though it had been squashed. 'I was hit by a tomato', he said, 'in a can!' This was followed by peals of laughter which immediately lightened the tension in the room.

Ginger then walked round greeting all the sitters, returned to the cabinet and disappeared. As he walked, I noticed a trail of ectoplasm behind him which flowed under the curtains and back towards the Medium. The most fascinating part for me was when a guide dressed in the most beautiful white robes walked out of the cabinet and said, 'The young man from Cape Town, come forward'. I did...and found myself literally looking straight into his eyes. I asked who he was. 'I am one of your Guides', came the reply. He told me his name and the area he came from. I asked if I might touch his robes, but he said, 'Please don't, but I will show you something'. He then fully extended his arms so I could see the whole of the Spirit drapery.
Neither his face nor neck were covered with any sort of ectoplasm. I stood there thinking, 'How can I touch you?' so I said, 'May I touch your hands?' He said, 'Yes' and held them out. I took them in mine and thought to myself, 'Now I've got hold of you, I'm not going to let go until I've got to the bottom of this'.
I was determined that, whoever he was, he wasn't going to get away from me! We chatted for 10 to 15 minutes about my future spiritual work. Much of what he said seemed impossible at the time, but a lot has been fulfilled. Suddenly he said, 'I have to go now', so I thanked him for coming, but still held onto his hands. Something made me look down at his feet. As I did so I saw the bottom half of his body dissolving away, but his hands were still solid. Then his hands melted away between my fingers yet my hands were still closed.

The last thing I saw was his head slowly sinking to the floor saying, 'I am going now', disappearing under the curtains like a streak of light. At the very end of the seance the curtains parted. Christopher said, 'We have no more power left'. As he spoke, from the Medium's solar plexus came two great clouds of ectoplasm to the left and to the right. In the ectoplasm appeared literally hundreds of miniature faces. The Guide said these were some of the people who had been present, but unable to get through.
What was very noticeable during the seance was the earthy smell unlike anything I had smelt before or, indeed, since. I wouldn't describe it as pleasant, but I had a headache for about three days afterwards. Louie described it as the 'power' which had been drawn from the sitters.

Alec Harris passed to the Spirit World on February 12th 1974. The full story of Alec Harris and the development of his Mediumship is told in They Walked Among Us by Louie Harris.

Postscript:by Geoge Crandley
Some weeks after the seance described above, the friend who had invited me decided to visit Cape Town. I arranged for a small group of friends to join us for a sitting with the guides of Mona van der Watt. Mona's Red Indian Guide came to my friend and without any preliminaries described the presence of Black Feather exactly as I had seen him saying, 'I greet my Indian brother'.
Alec Harris first returned to me through Joe Benjamin at an Alliance Hall meeting and has, together with his wife Louie and three of their Guides, continued to make his presence known through the brilliant Stoke-on-Trent Medium, Gerard Smith.

It may be fairly argued that all evidential seances are naturally memorable, and undoubtedly they are, and certainly so for those who actually gain the evidence forthcoming. Nonetheless, in modern Spiritualism's short history, there have been a number of seances providing outstanding evidence with which few could remain unimpressed. One such occasion was a seance with Estelle Roberts, details of which were given by Maurice Barbanell in his book, This is Spiritualism.(1) Despite the very considerable extent of his encounters with quality evidence, he referred to this as a 'most moving experience'.
Barbanell related how, halfway through the seance, Red Cloud, the guide of Estelle Roberts, advised him there was a girl who wished to communicate with regard to her mother. Barbanell asked whether he knew her, and Red Cloud simply replied 'No...but you can help her'. The trumpet then moved towards Barbanell and he could hear a young girl speaking; aware that encouragement often assisted communicators, he asked her to talk to him. Whereupon she 'very slowly, but distinctly' said that her name was Bessy Manning, and she had died during the previous Easter from tuberculosis. She then added that Tommy, her brother, was with her; he had been killed in a road accident. She went on to explain that her mother, having read some of the accounts written by Barbanell, was praying that Red Cloud would bring her daughter to one of Estelle's seances.
Bessy then told Barbanell: 'Tell mother that I still have my two long plaits. I am twenty-two, and I have got blue eyes. Tell her I want her to come here. Could you bring her?', adding 'She is poor'. Barbanell assured Bessy that he would do his best and she thanked him and stressed how important it was, as her mother was very distressed having lost two of her children. Barbanell asked for the address where the mother could be contacted, and Bessy advised him this would be at '14 Canterbury Street, Blackburn'. He then discussed the matter with Red Cloud and it was clear that the mother was to be contacted and invited to the next seance.
Without delay or hesitation, in view of his absolute confidence in Red Cloud, Barbanell sent a telegram to a Mrs Manning at the address given saying: 'Your daughter, Bessy, spoke to us at Red Cloud's circle last night'. However, there was no reply to the telegram, and Barbanell therefore despatched a further one. A few days later, Barbanell received two letters from Mrs Manning; the first expressing her absolute joy on having received the first telegram saying, 'I laughed and cried all at once' and that the telegram, telling her of Bessy's communication, was worth 'more to me than untold gold'. In the second letter, she apologized that Barbanell had needed to send a second telegram but she explained that she lacked the funds to reply by anything other than letter (in fact she had other children and her husband was unemployed). Once again, she expressed her joy and said the telegrams were beyond value. She further explained that Bessy had died the previous Easter and her son had been killed nine years earlier, and if she had not been helped by a Spiritualist family, 'I would have gone raving mad'.
At this stage, Barbanell viewed Bessy's seance communication: 'as flawless evidence for the after-life. No theories of telepathy or the subconscious mind can explain it away...Mrs Manning had never met Estelle Roberts, or corresponded with her or any member of her family'.
Barbanell arranged for Mrs Manning to travel to London and took her to where the seance was to be held. It was not long before Bessy was speaking with her mother, with the trumpet on one occasion falling to the ground with the excitement. After Bessy had told her mother that Tommy was with her, Mrs Manning asked whether she ever returned home. Bessy replied that she did and commented on how she saw her mother pick up her photograph and she would speak to, and kiss it. Barbanell reported that Mrs Manning later told him this was absolutely correct. Bessy continued by telling her mother that she had seen her talking with her father that same morning and referred to the subject of their conversation; this was followed by yet further evidence, all of which was correct.
Before Mrs Manning returned to Blackburn, Estelle Roberts gave her another sitting, when, once again, Bessy 'continued to prove her identity with detail after detail, none of which the medium could have known'. Only a matter of days later, Mrs Manning wrote to Barbanell thanking him for his involvement and supplying him with a statement that he could use: in this she detailed all that had occurred and confirmed that, 'I heard my own daughter speak in me, in the same old loving way, and with the self-same peculiarities of speech. She spoke of incidents that I know for a positive fact no other person could know'.
Barbanell added a note that after some years had elapsed, he attended another seance with Estelle Roberts and after Red Cloud announced that he had a visitor, Barbanell heard someone attempting to speak through the trumpet. After some encouragement, he heard: 'You helped me very much by enabling me to talk to my daughter'. Barbanell recognized the communicator as Mrs Manning who continued by saying, 'I have got Bessy and Tommy here. Can you tell my family?'. Barbanell wrote to the old Blackburn address but the letter was returned. However, he then received a letter from Mrs Smith, one of Mrs Manning's married daughters who had been told by someone about an article written by Barbanell regarding Mrs Manning's return. The daughter confirmed that her mother had suffered a seizure while alone, and by the time her children reached her, she was unable to speak before she died. The daughter said that her mother's passing was 'a cruel blow' but went on to express her joy on receiving news about her survival and successful communication.
Estelle Roberts added an amusing footnote to the account in her own book. She explained that Barbanell would recount the incident of Bessy Manning's return 'in the scores of lectures up and down the country' because of its remarkable evidential value. Eventually, he decided that he should no longer mention it as he had referred to it so often, and he realized that he would have to use later evidence. On the first occasion that he gave a lecture, this being in Blackburn, and omitted the account, 'he was approached by a woman whose face seemed vaguely familiar'. He suddenly realized that it was Mrs Manning who gently chided him saying, 'I thought you would have told them about my Bessy'.(2) Despite the omission in his later lectures, as the account is recorded in his book, Maurice Barbanell in fact continues to tell the world about the evidence of survival for Bessy Manning.
 

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