For
the last five years we have been investigating the physical
mediumship of David Thompson, one of the only mediums who
demonstrates materialization publicly all over the world.
We have had the privilege of experiencing materialization
on more than one hundred occasions and on seeing more that
that number of people reunited with "dead" loved
ones. David is based in Sydney Australia where he gives
public demonstrations. He also travels regularly to other
states in Australia, to New Zealand, the United States England
and Europe. You can read details of David's physical mediumship
including testimonials on his webpage http://circleofthesilvercord.net/
You can email David at silvercordcircle@gmail.com
Here Victor talks about his experiences with David's mediumship:
A woman talks about being reunited with
her husband who was murdered and Reverend Tom Newman talks
about receiving an apport.
Reverend Tom Newman and Tom and Lisa Butler talk about their
experiences with David Thompson.
A sister is reunited with her brother, a father with his
son who was killed and a man with his grandfather.
Listen
to audios of materialised people speaking.
Ectoplasm
We are
told that groups of scientists work in the afterlife work
with physical mediums to create communication between the
dimensions. They extract a mysterious gaseous substance
from the body of the medium and from the sitters and the
furniture and use it to make a mysterious substance called
“ectoplasm”.
Ectoplasm can be manipulated into hardened rods and spirit
can direct these rods to move large object like tables and
chairs and levitate a person. It can also be moulded into
an artificial voice box or stretched out into flat like
a sheet of material with which spirits cover themselves
in order to lower their vibrations and become solid.
The word ectoplasm from the Greek meaning literally “exteriorized
substance” was coined by Professor Charles Richet,
Professor of Physiology at the Sorbonne in Paris, a winner
of the Nobel Prize and member of the prestigious Institute
de France who investigated it for thirty years.
Richet's conclusion was:
There
is ample proof that experimental materialization (ectoplasmic)
should take definite rank as a scientific fact. Assuredly
we do not understand it. It is very absurd, if a truth
can be absurd (Richet 1927: 112).
In its
primary stage he found that it is invisible and intangible
but even then it can be photographed by infrared rays and
weighed. In its secondary stage it becomes either vaporous
or liquid or solid, with a smell somewhat akin to ozone.
In its final stages, when it can be seen and felt, it has
the appearance of muslin and feels like a mass of cobwebs.
At other times it is moist and cold and, on rare occasions,
dry and hard. Its temperature is usually about 40 degrees
Fahrenheit (Butler 1947: 75) which accounts for the observation
of drop of temperature around physical phenomena
Baron
Von Schrenck-Notzing, a Munich physician, showed that ectoplasm
is composed of leucocytes—white or colorless blood
cells—and epithelial cells—those from the various
protective tissues of the body. During materialization it
is taken from the bodies of the medium and the sitters (Stemman,
1975:57).
Baron Schrenck Notzing in Phenomena of Materialization sums
up hundreds of experiments conducted for a period of five
years with Eva C.:
We
have very often been able to establish that by an unknown
process there comes from the body of the medium a material,
at first semi-fluid, which possesses some of the properties
of a living substance, notably that of the power of change,
of movement and of the assumption of definite forms.
In Munich,
with the Polish medium Stanislawa P., the Baron succeeded
in making a cinematographic record of ectoplasm as it flowed
out of the medium's mouth. Read more about ectoplasm in
Michael Tymn's well researched article The Mystery of Ectoplasm-
Part
1 and Part
2
The Mediumship of Minnie Harrison
In the video Visitors
from the Other Side Tom Harrison, son of materialization
medium Minnie Harrison, narrates the development of his
mother's mediumship from trance mediumship to actual direct
voice communication with the so-called dead to the apex
of mediumship, materialization - full form, solid bodied,
temporarily materialized spirit people returning to us from
the next stage of existence beyond nature's great illusion
we call death. Tom's book "Life After Death - Living
Proof " is available at http://www.amazon.com/Life-After-Death-Living-Proof/dp/0951453416
The Mediumship of Helen Duncan
Helen Duncan was a most magnificent materialization
medium from Scotland and one of the most important women
in psychic history.
During World War II, in January 1944, the
British Admiralty decided that it could not let Helen Duncan,
a gifted medium, continue to materialize intelligences from
the afterlife to reveal information which the Minister for
Defense considered top secret. It was a most crucial time
in World War Two, immediately before the landing at Normandy.
Throughout the war years Helen Duncan reunited
many grieving relatives with servicemen who had died. At
one such séance at Portsmouth in 1941 a sailor materialized
and was reunited with his mother. He told the assembled
sitters that his ship, HMS Barham, had recently been sunk.
The editor of the Psychic News, Maurice Barbanell, innocently
telephoned the British Admiralty to enquire whether this
was true and if it was true why the Admiralty had not advised
the sailor's mother about the loss of her son. The military
intelligence was furious because for security reasons and
for public morale, news of the sinking had been withheld
and had been classified 'top secret'.
National Security thought that a medium
of Helen Duncan's caliber could very easily get hold of
the most secretly held information: where the Allies were
going to land in Europe on D. Day. One can understand the
concern of the Admiralty for secrecy of such an important
event.
Helen Duncan was arrested in January 1944,
charged initially with vagrancy and later with a trumped
up charge of fraudulent mediumship and sentenced to nine
months in jail. According to BBC Online (2001) she was visited
in jail by Winston Churchill who, appalled at what had happened,
promised to repeal the Witchcraft Act under which she had
been charged. He did keep this promise and after the war
Spiritualism was made a legal religion in the UK.
Of tremendous significance
• at her trial forty-one witnesses who came from all
over the world for Helen Duncan all testified that they
had experienced meeting loved ones in a materialization
séance
• this meant that under oath and for
posterity at the Old Bailey highly accredited witnesses
stated in very clear terms, from their own experience, the
reality of materialization, of meeting their loved ones
• not one of the defense witnesses
was 'broken' in cross examination
• it is immaterial whether the members
of the prejudiced jury accepted the testimony or not. The
fact is that numerous highly credible people had the courage
to take on the leaders of the establishment who knowingly
and intentionally made gross errors of judgment. These brave
witnesses went to court and told ‘the truth the whole
truth and nothing but the truth’ about the reality
of materialization and how they met their loved ones because
of Helen Duncan's materialization mediumship
• the crown case consisted of the
claim that Helen Duncan or an accomplice was pretending
to be all of these 'materializations' by dressing up in
a sheet and using false beards, wigs etc. But when the police
had 'raided' her séance while she was in trance and
producing materializations they had found no sheet, no false
beards, no wigs, no accomplice—indeed no evidence
of fraud whatsoever.
Typical testimony
• Nurse Jane Rust testified on oath at the Old Bailey,
among other things, that she, through Helen Duncan, actually
met a loved one again—her husband who materialized
from the afterlife and kissed her. 'I have never been more
certain of anything in my life before', she said. She stated
that she had been enquiring for 25 years as a skeptic but
it was only when she met Helen Duncan that she was able
to actually meet her loved ones including her mother who
had passed on (Cassirer 1996: 68).
• A high ranking Air Force officer,
Wing Commander George Mackie, stated on oath that through
Helen Duncan's materialization gifts he actually met his
'dead' mother and father and a brother (Cassirer 1996:72,
115).
• James Duncan, (no relation) a jeweler,
testified that both he and his daughter had seen his wife
materialize on eight different occasions, in good light.
Duncan had seen her close up at a range of 18 inches and
they had talked of domestic matters including a proposed
emigration to Canada that they had previously kept secret.
He had, he said, not a shadow of a doubt that the voice
was that of his wife. He also claimed to have seen materializations
of his father, who was about his own height and bearded,
and his mother (Cassirer 1996:103).
• Mary Blackwell, President of the
Pathfinder Spiritualist Society of Baker Street London,
testified that she had attended more than 100 materialization
séances with Helen Duncan at each of which between
15 and 16 different entities from the afterlife had materialized.
She testified that she had witnessed the spirit forms conversing
with their relatives in French, German, Dutch, Welsh, Scottish
and Arabic. She claimed that she had witnessed the manifestation
of ten of her own close relatives including her husband,
her mother and her father all of whom she had seen up close
and touched (Cassirer 1996: 87).
Some years later a team of magicians headed
by William Goldston—founder of the Magicians Club—carried
out an experimental sitting with Helen Duncan. Goldston
and his colleagues were astounded when their dead friend,
the magician 'The Great Lafayette', materialized and spoke
to them in his own voice. Goldston wrote a report on the
event for The Psychic News in which he confirmed that Helen
Duncan's mediumship was genuine and that no magician could
possible duplicate the phenomena that he and his fellow
magicians had witnessed.
The Death of Helen Duncan
In 1956, the Nottingham police raided a séance Helen
Duncan was giving. The police knocked on the door of a private
home without a search warrant on the supposed complaint
of two police officers who had earlier attended one of her
séances. The police had technical knowledge that
materialization usually has to be conducted in semi-darkness
and that if the lights are put on suddenly very serious
injury or death to the medium can occur.
When they were admitted to the home they
made a grab for the medium's cabinet, grabbed the medium
and took flash photographs. The police raid caused the death
of Helen Duncan five weeks afterwards. Without doubt, Helen
Duncan's unique gifts which proved survival and her service
to the community make her one of the most important women
in psychic history.
Alan Crossley talks about his experiences
of materialization seances with Helen Duncan and Alec Harris.
ALEC HARRIS' BRILLIANT EVIDENTIAL MEDIUMSHIP Alec
Harris was a brilliant Welsh materialization medium who
died in 1974. According to a report in Psychic
News (August 1946) by Maurice Barbanell at the seance he
attended there were thirty different materialized figures
clearly seen in good red light. The figures walked about
ten feet from the cabinet where the medium could clearly
be seen sitting in trance. They had long conversations with
their loved ones in many different languages not known by
the medium. Sir Alexander Cannon claimed that he had conversed
with two Tibetans in their ancient language. Professor T.J.
Haarhoff claimed that he spoke with someone in Ancient Greek
and discussed something that had happened in an earlier
seance in South Africa. Read
more about Alex Harris' mediumship.
Is
it real?
Undoubtedly have been some fraudulent mediums who
tried to make money by fooling the gullible, especailly
when they are making a living from their mediumship and
the phenomena are not flowing naturally.
However there is also abundant evidence from top scientists
that physical mediumship is real, that direct voice mediumship
is real, that ectoplasm is real and that materialization
is real.
Professor Richet, winner of the Noble Prize for Physiology
studied materialization and writes of the phenomona in his
book Thirty Years of Psychical Research:
I
shall not waste time in stating the absurdities, almost
the impossibilities, from a psycho-physiological point of
view, of this phenomenon. A living being, or living matter,
formed under our eyes, which has its proper warmth, apparently
a circulation of blood, and a physiological respiration
which has also a kind of psychic personality having a will
distinct from the will of the medium, in a word, a new human
being! This is surely the climax of marvels. Nevertheless,
it is a fact.
The
archives of the (British) Society for Psychical Research
and the American Society for Psychical research contain
numerous accounts of materialization mediums who were investigated
for years by some of the top scientists and professors of
the day—people like Sir William Crookes, the greatest
chemist of the nineteenth century, Professor W.J. Crawford
and Dr Gustave Geley.
Weight
loss
Professor
W.J. Crawford was a lecturer in mechanical engineering at
Queen's University Belfast who conducted long and meticulous
studies of ectoplasm. He wrote three classic books: The
Reality of Psychic Phenomena (1916), Experiments
in Psychic Science (1919) and The Psychic Structures
in the Goligher Circle (1921). He found that during
materialization the weight of his medium dropped from 120
pounds to 66 pounds. Professor Crawford found that all of
the physical manifestations of his mediums—lifting
of tables, moving of objects etc. were achieved by the construction
of ectoplasmic rods, struts and cantilevers. In his Psychic
Structures he provides photographs of ectoplasm being used
to lift tables. In his expert opinion as a professor of
mechanical engineering: (Butler 1947: 78).
George
Meek (1987) found that during materialization séance
there is a temporary weight loss from both the medium and
the sitters as a substance is withdrawn from their bodies.
In his own experiments he found a weight loss of 27 pounds—about
10 kilos—shared among the medium and fifteen physicians,
psychologists and others who made up the research team (Meek
1987:69).
Alexander
Aksakof, the Russian psychic investigator, recorded testimonies
of ten witnesses the partial dematerialisation of the body
of medium Mme. d'Esperance’s body from the waist downwards
and, with the testimonies of those present, published the
full story in his A Case of Partial Dematerialisation
(1896).
But why can’t they turn on the lights?
One of the key properties of ectoplasm is that
some of its forms are extremely sensitive to light, so much
so that even flashing a torch drives the substance back
into the medium's body with the force of snapped elastic.
Bruises, open wounds and hemorrhage may result.
Fodor
(1932) lists the following examples of mediums being hurt
by the sudden retreat of ectoplasm:
“Kluski
received an open wound from a violent retreat of ectoplasm.
Conan Doyle quotes the case of a medium who exhibited
a bruise from the breast to the shoulder caused by the
recoil of the band. Evan Powell, at the British College
of Psychic Science, suffered a bad injury on the chest
owing to an unintended violent movement of a sitter, touched
by an ectoplasmic arm. Hemorrhage may also result from
sudden exposure to light. Dennis Bradley speaks of an
instance in which George Valiantine got a black bruise,
measuring about two inches by three, on the stomach by
the shock of returning ectoplasm when a powerful electric
light was suddenly switched on in his garage which faced
one of the windows of the seance room.”
Because
of this sensitivity to light, most physical mediums have
to work in the dark or in infrared light and those responsible
for their safety have to use absolute care in selecting
sitters who can be trusted to stay still and hold hands
during materialization.
During
a recent materialization experiment with David Thompson
in Sydney Australia (07/08/06) I was present when one of
the sitters, startled by the medium’s chair being
levitated and dumped in the middle of the room at the end
of the session, let out a sudden scream. When the lights
came on the medium’s face showed a swelling near his
eye and a number of small cuts that had not been there before
the session. As he put it, a sudden noise creates an effect
similar to glass shattering. On another occasion (11/8/06)
the control, William, had to withdraw the ectoplasm quickly
as a curtain over one of the windows was beginning to fall
down. When David regained consciousness he knew what had
happened by tenderness in his stomach area and he spent
the next few hours nursing his stomach.
What
evidence is there that all this is real?
Some of the most famous materialization mediums of the last
two centuries include Daniel Dunglas Home, who was investigated
in a laboratory by Sir William Crookes, Franek Kluski, the
Warsaw medium who was notable for materializing large numbers
of animals and mediumship was verified by Dr Gustave Geley,
who participated in Kluski's seances at the Paris Institut
Metapsychique International and by Prof. F. W. Pawlowski.
When
you read the number of testimonies of credible witnesses
of the phenomena of materialization you cannot help but
be struck by the sincerity of the witnesses and the similarities
in the phenomena.
For example see the online accounts of the following materialization
mediums:
Elizabeth
S and May E Bangs (known as the Bang Sisters) of Chicago,
Illinois,
Arnold
Clare,
Florence
Cook,
Margery
Crandon,
Stella
Cranshaw, better known as 'Stella C.',
Frank
Decker,
Elizabeth
Hope who worked under the pseudonym of Mme. d'Esperance,The
Eddy Brothers,
William
Eglinton,
Helen
Duncan
Alec
Harris whose wife documented his mediumship in the book
They Walked Among Us.
Minnie
Harrison,
Cecil
Husk,
Stainton
Moses, an Anglican clergyman,
Eusapia
Palladino,
Estelle
Roberts,
Rudi
and Willy Schneider, http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/seance/78/schneidr.htm http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/schneider.htm
Evidence for materialization is substantive not only in
England and the United States but in other countries, such
as Brazil where materializations took place in daylight
in the presence of hundreds of hard-core skeptics.
Carmine Mirabelli (1889-1950) produced fantastic physical
phenomena witnessed by scientists from many parts of the
world which up until to-day have not been rebutted, nor
are they likely to be rebutted.
In 1927
there appeared in Brazil a book entitled O Medium Mirabelli
containing a 74 page account of phenomena which occurred
in broad daylight at times in the presence of up to sixty
witnesses at the same time representing the leading scientific
and social circles of Brazil. Among those who gave their
names as witnesses were the President of Brazil, the Secretary
of State, two professors of medicine, 72 doctors, 12 engineers,
36 lawyers, 89 men of public office, 25 military men, 52
bankers, 128 merchants and 22 dentists as well as members
of religious orders ( Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie 1927
: 450-462).
The testimony of so many prominent credible witnesses cannot
easily be overlooked and in Brazil a committee of twenty
leading men, headed by the President, was set up to interview
witnesses and to decide what should be done to scientifically
investigate Mirabelli's powers. It was decided in 1927 to
mount a series of controlled investigations by the newly
established Academia de Estudos Psychicos using the same
controls as European mediums had submitted to.
The investigators divided into three groups. One group dealt
with dealing with spoken mediumship and had 189 positive
sittings (sittings which produced positive results). A second
group investigated automatic writing and had 85 positive
sittings and 8 negative sittings (sittings which produced
no results). A third group investigated physical phenomena
and had 63 positive and 47 negative sittings. Of the positive
sittings, 40 were held in daylight and 23 in bright artificial
light with the medium tied up in a chair in rooms which
were searched before and after (Inglis, 1984: 223).
Physical mediumship and materialization
At a well-attended seance in Sao Vicente the chair on which
the entranced Mirabelli was sitting rose and floated in
the air two meters above the floor. Witnesses timed its
levitation for 120 seconds. On another occasion Mirabelli
was at the da Luz railroad station with several companions
when he suddenly vanished. About fifteen minutes later a
telephone call came from Sao Vicente, a town ninety kilometers
away, stating that he had appeared there exactly two minutes
after he had disappeared from da Luz.
At a seance conducted in the morning in full daylight in
the laboratory of the investigating committee in front of
many people of note including ten men holding the degree
of Doctor of Science:
• The form of a little girl materialized beside the
medium.
• Dr Ganymede de Souza who was present confirmed that
the child was his daughter who had died a few months before
and that she was wearing the dress in which she had been
buried.
• Another observer, Colonel Octavio Viana also took
the child in his arms, felt her pulse and asked her several
questions which she answered with understanding.
• Photographs of the apparition were taken and appended
to the investigating committee's report.
• After this the child floated around in the air and
disappeared, after having been visible in daylight for thirty
six minutes.
• The form of Bishop Jose de Camargo Barros who had
recently lost his life in a shipwreck appeared in full insignia
of office.
• He conversed with those present and allowed them
to examine his heart, gums, abdomen and fingers before disappearing.
At another seance conducted at Santos at half past three
in the afternoon before sixty witnesses who attested their
signatures to the report of what had happened:
• The deceased Dr Bezerra de Meneses, an eminent hospital
physician, materialized.
• He spoke to all of the assembled witnesses to assure
them that it was himself.
• His voice carried all over the room by megaphone.
• Several photographs were taken of him.
• For fifteen minutes two doctors who had known him
examined him and announced that he was an anatomically normal
human being.
• He shook hands with the spectators.
• Finally he rose into the air and began to dematerialize,
with his feet vanishing first followed by his legs and abdomen,
chest arms and last of all head.
• After the apparition had dematerialized Mirabelli
was found to be still tied securely to his chair and seals
were intact on all the doors and windows.
• The photographs accompanying the report show Mirabelli
and the apparition on the same photographic plate.
At another seance under controlled conditions Mirabelli
himself dematerialized to be found later in another room.
Yet the seals put upon his bonds were intact as were the
seals on the doors and windows of the seance room (Inglis
1984: 226).
For
the last five years we have been investigating the physical
mediumship of David Thompson, one of the only mediums who
demonstrates materialization publicly all over the world.
Alec
Harris was a brilliant Welsh materialization medium who
died in 1974. According to a report in Psychic
News (August 1946) by Maurice Barbanell at the seance he
attended there were thirty different materialized figures
clearly seen in good red light. The figures walked about
ten feet from the cabinet where the medium could clearly
be seen sitting in trance. They had long conversations with
their loved ones in many different languages not known by
the medium. Sir Alexander Cannon claimed that he had conversed
with two Tibetans in their ancient language. Professor T.J.
Haarhoff claimed that he spoke with someone in Ancient Greek
and discussed something that had happened in an earlier
seance in South Africa. 