More medium evidence: Mishlove excerpt #12

By psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death.”

Gladys Osborne Leonard’s mediumship.

There were many examples of information coming through Mrs. Leonard’s mediumship that convinced the eminent physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, that his son Raymond who was killed in World War I was alive on the other side. Lodge’s book, Raymond or Life and Death: With Examples of the Evidence for Survival of Memory and Affection After Death, was a best- seller and immediately catapulted Gladys Osborne Leonard to international fame as a trance medium.

She continued her mediumship for the next half-century, during which members of the Society for Psychical Research studied her extensively. There have been over thirty articles about her in the publications of the Society, and seven more in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. Nea Walker, Oliver Lodge’s secretary, made a long-term study of Leonard that ran for nineteen years. One researcher, the Methodist minister, Rev. Charles Drayton Thomas, had over 500 sittings with her. Throughout this entire time, there has never been a single, credible instance when Leonard’s integrity or sincerity has been questioned.

In 1921, Katie Dawson-Smith heard from her son who had been killed in WWI in a session with Leonard. He was insistent she find an old leather wallet, which she did. He said it held a tiny, yet important check stub. The significance of this became clear when, in 1924, she received a demand from a Hamburg firm for the repayment of a debt incurred by her son in 1914. However, the check stub enabled her to show that her son had already repaid the ten-year-old debt. She received an apology from the company. Dawson-Smith later sent the relevant documentation of this incident to the Society for Psychical Research.

Under the supervision of William McDougall at Duke University, John Thomas earned a doctoral degree in psychology for his extensive study of Gladys Osborne Leonard’s mediumship. Thomas was seeking evidence of his wife’s afterlife existence. She had died in 1926. His study ran for nine years. It included 2,964 specific points of information – a point being a single statement of a possibly verifiable fact. Of these, 2,358 were correct; 196 incorrect; 231 inconclusive; and 179 unverifiable. The percentage correct of the total verifiable points was 92.3%.171 Psychical researcher Trevor Hamilton describes Thomas’ approach as meticulous:

…he often had someone else sit with Leonard as a proxy on his behalf, ensured they were accurately recorded, looked for verifiable sources for the medium’s statements among his own records, and discarded unverifiable points, no matter how seemingly persuasive.

These examples merely represent some highlights from Gladys Leonard’s long career as a medium.

Forensic evidence via Eileen Garrett.

On October 5, 1930, the R101 dirigible crashed in France, killing 48 crew members and passengers. Two days later, Eileen Garrett, one of the twentieth century’s greatest mediums, experienced an unanticipated drop-in communicator, i.e., an unexpected visitor, during a sitting. The communicator identified himself as Herbert Irwin, the vessel’s deceased pilot. Irwin described the technical failures and design flaws that caused the crash.

This disaster was fraught with politics. The British Air Minister Lord Thomson, who had overridden the captain’s desire for more test flights, died in the crash.

Will Charlton, a former supply officer for the R101 who knew the airship and its personnel well, independently reviewed the mediumistic information. He confirmed the accuracy of many details provided.

William H. Wood, an airship pilot and a frequent contributor to the Freethinker, an atheist publication – conducted another independent review. In 1949, Wood shocked the British rationalist and atheist world by announcing the data convinced him of postmortem survival. He wrote in the Freethinker,

If this case does not prove survival, then nothing ever will. I consider the R-101 case to be cast iron.

While accepting survival, Wood kept up his status as an atheist.

Medium Ena Twigg and Bishop James Pike.  

Bishop James Pike famously resigned his post as California’s Episcopal Bishop after ongoing mediumistic communications with his son Jim who had taken his own life.180 Shortly after his son’s death, Bishop Pike, who was devastated by the suicide, began noticing poltergeist-like phenomena in the Cambridge apartment he had been sharing with Jim a few weeks prior. He drew up a list of 55 inexplicable events he suspected were signs of Jim’s surviving presence.

This led him to seek advice from Canon Pierce-Higgins, an Anglican Church official, who recommended a visit to the respected medium Ena Twigg. Eventually, Pierce-Higgins arranged a sitting, and Peirce-Higgins drove Bishop Pike to the séance. He took copious notes that he eventually shared with my next interviewee Roy Stemman, a journalist who covered the story for Psychic News in England.

Bishop Pike also confirmed that Ena Twigg provided information about his son she couldn’t have known or guessed. Through Ena Twigg, the late theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) also appeared. Tillich had been both Pike’s friend and Jim’s godfather. Communications with Jim continued through other mediums Pike consulted.

Bishop Pike’s book, The Other Side, documents a lengthy conversation he held with his deceased son and Paul Tillich. The topics touched upon personal friends, family, educational matters, and the emotional turmoil that led Jim to take his own life. Another topic discussed was the poltergeist- like phenomena seen at the Cambridge apartment – which were Jim’s initial attempts to communicate. The conversation also touched upon the controversy swirling around Bishop Pike’s liberal attitudes toward church dogma. Each time, the responses given by the discarnate spirits, Pike’s son Jim or Tillich, were knowledgeable and appropriate. Pike regarded the session as highly evidential.

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”