Mediums Rare (8 page)

“Oh, my,” said Nellie, returning quickly. She did not attempt to seat herself at the table, believing that her negative influence had prevented it from moving.

Instead, she picked up a pad and pencil and waited while Florence addressed whatever force she assumed was moving the table, asking it to tilt once for the letter A, two of the letter B and so on.

“My name is Feda.” Nellie spoke aloud the first message after it had come through. “I am an ancestress of Gladys. I have been watching over her since she was born, waiting for her to develop her psychic power so I can put her into a trance and give messages through her.”

Gladys and the two sisters stared at each other in wordless amazement.

It was the beginning of Mrs. Leonard’s six decades of mediumship.

A typical sitting (one of hundreds) by Mrs. Piper went as follows: Sitting on an armchair in front of a table on which three pillows are placed, she carries on a casual conversation with the sitters.

More or less consciously, she slows her breathing and begins to look sleepy, her eyes becoming fixed and staring.

Soon the eyes become rigid, the breathing slows even more and, within five or six minutes, her head falls forward on a pillow, her pulse rate and breathing dropped well below normal.

Soon she sits up and her spirit control—at one point a so-called French physician named Dr. Phiniut—takes over the sitting.

“I get the name Sarah,” Dr. Phiniut says.

The sitter does not recall the name.

“Is there something wrong with your mother’s foot?” asks Phiniut.

The sitter recalls some dropsical trouble her mother has with her foot.

Later, she remembers an aunt named Sarah.

Dr. Phiniut tells another sitter that “Agnes” will be ill that year. The month is March.

In the fall, Agnes becomes ill for the first time since childhood, spending a week in bed.

Phiniut also predicts the death of the sitter’s uncle who is, at that time, in good health as far as the sitter knows.

Two weeks later, the uncle dies.

A Mrs. Pitman is told by Dr. Phiniut that she will have stomach trouble in Paris and it will be taken care of by a “sandy-complexioned” gentleman.

A short time later, Mrs. Pitman, traveling in Paris, is taken ill with stomach trouble and attended by a sandy-haired doctor.

“You will leave your home soon and settle in the city in a corner house,” Dr. Phiniut tells a Mrs. M.E.C.

This presently comes true.

Phiniut addresses one of the sitters with a nickname unknown to anyone present.

Later, the widow of the deceased man (who supposedly spoke through Phiniut) reveals that the nickname was used by her husband’s mother and sisters.

Phiniut tells a Mr. Perkins that his father believes he has heart trouble though he really hasn’t.

Later, the father admits this, telling his son that he had not revealed this fear, even to his doctor.

The Thaws (in whose house the sitting is taking place) are told that W. was coming to them soon and that his kidneys are out of order.

This condition is not suspected at the time but is discovered two months later after W. shows up at their house.

“Your mother tells you again to put the thing you have on your lap around your neck,” Dr. Phiniut instructs Miss Heffern.

Miss Heffern has always supposed the object—which is wrapped in paper—to be a lock of her mother’s hair.

It turns out to be a religious necklace.

Mrs. Leonard’s most dramatic sitting came on December 3, 1915, in the house of Sir Oliver Lodge.

Approximately a week earlier Sir Oliver had received a letter from a B. P. Cheves mentioning a photograph taken of his son and a group of officers.

Lodge’s son had been killed in France on September 14
^th
.

At the séance, Lodge asked his son (through Mrs. Leonard’s spirit contact Feda) if he recollected the photograph.

“Yes, there are several others taken with me,” Raymond (through Feda) replied.

“Friends of yours?” asked Lodge.

“Some of them,” Raymond answered. “They were not all friends.”

“Are you standing in the photograph?” asks Lodge.

“No, sitting down. Some are standing and some are sitting.”

“Were they soldiers?” asked Lodge.

“Yes, a mixed lot.”

“Is it outdoors?”

“Yes, practically,” Raymond answers.

Lodge is perplexed. “It must have been out of doors or not of doors. Do you mean
yes?
”

Mrs. Leonard (via Raymond and Feda) says it looks like a black background with lines going down.

She keeps drawing vertical lines in the air.

The photograph had been taken twenty-one days before Raymond’s death.

He never mentioned it in his letters.

Raymond, in the sitting, is explicit about the following points:

1. His walking stick is visible.

2. There are considerable number of men in the photograph, the front row sitting.

3. A
B
. is prominent in the photograph. Also a
C
.

4. He is sitting down, the man behind him with his arm on Raymond’s shoulder.

5. The background is dark with vertical lines.

When the photograph arrived, the following items were on it:

1. Raymond’s walking stick is visible.

2. There are twenty-one men, the front row sitting on the ground. They are a “mixed lot” in that they are members of different companies.

3. Captain S. T. Boast is prominent. Also several officers whose last names begin with
C
.

4. Raymond is sitting, the officer behind him resting his hand on Raymond’s shoulder.

5. The background is dark—with six, conspicuous vertical lines on the roof of the shed in front of which the officers are gathered. Sir Oliver Lodge summed up the incident as follows:

The amount of coincidence between the description and the actual photograph surely is quite beyond chance or guesswork. Not only are many things right but practically nothing is wrong
.

Of the two mediums, Mrs. Piper was probably the more outstanding.

Surely, she suffered more with her mediumship.

To begin with, her childhood was a dreadful one what with hearing voices, seeing faces and suffering with her bed rocking back and forth.

Although Mrs. Leonard was quoted as saying, “My childhood to me was a time of pain and torture,” it seems evident that Mrs. Piper’s childhood—and life—were more traumatic.

Certainly no medium in the history of Spiritualism was ever—willingly—so harshly treated by investigators.

Her nostrils tickled by a feather while she was in trance.

Her entire body pinched.

Lighted matches held to her arms.

Needles plunged into her hands while she in trance.

Pain pressure applied to her palms to a weight of twenty-five pounds.

A harsh price to pay for William James’ opprobrium that Mrs. Piper was the one “white crow” disproving the “law” that all crows (mediums) are black.

Two of the more noteworthy aspects of the mediumship of Mrs. Leonard and Mrs. Piper were Mrs. Leonard’s “book tests” and Mrs. Piper’s “cross-correspondence.”

One of Mrs. Leonard’s “tests” came about after the Reverend C. Drayton Thomas heard knocking sounds in his bedroom which he took to be spirit knocks.

At his next sitting with Mrs. Leonard he asked Feda if this was true.

Mrs. Leonard had never been in the Reverend’s house but Feda’s reply came as follows:

“You will be amused by the following test. There is a book behind your study door, the second shelf from the floor and fifth book from the left end.

“Near the top of page 17 you will see words which serve to indicate what Feda was attempting to do when knocking in your room.”

Thomas located the book, a volume of Shakespeare. Near the top of page 17 was a line from
King Henry VI
, Act I, Scene 3.

“I will not answer thee with words but blows.”

Between November 10, 1906, and June 2, 1907, Mrs. Piper gave 94 sittings during which 120 experiments in cross-correspondence were made.

These ran to allusions from classical literature and were like parts of a jig-saw puzzle being fitted together at a distance from each other.