Crisis Apparitions: Ruickbie excerpt #10

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: 

“I had this weird dream last night,” said my wife on the morning of April 27, 2017. “You were talking to me, saying that someone had died, three times. I couldn’t make out the name.” She had woken up, convinced that I was trying to tell her something, only to find me fast asleep. She checked the clock – 05:00 – and went back to sleep. She thought that the dream might have been caused by her worrying about an elderly colleague and friend who had recently had a heart attack. Later that morning, the telephone rang. It was my father. He was in tears. My mother had died. Although she had been suffering from a long and debilitating illness, we had been planning to visit my parents in two weeks and had every expectation of seeing her again. My wife had never had a dream like this before and we were not especially anxious about her condition at the time. We later found out that my mother must have died at around 05:00 that morning.

Whereas we had received a message in a dream, other experiences can involve actual apparitions. The famous medium Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882–1968) had a powerful experience just as she was beginning to explore her interest in Spiritualism in her early twenties. Her mother’s health had deteriorated, but Leonard did not think it was serious. She was away from home on the night of December 18, 1906, when she awoke “with a feeling that something unusual was happening.”

Leonard had an unmistakable vision of her mother, looking younger and healthier, with radiant eyes and a happy smile. When the vision faded, Leonard looked at the clock: just after 2 a.m. She went back to sleep. She slept late and awoke to find a telegram from her brother: “Mother passed away two o'clock this morning.”

Born in 1882, the same year as the Society for Psychical Research was founded, Leonard’s fate would be interwoven with that of the SPR, becoming the subject of indepth research into her mediumship. She helped Sir Oliver Lodge apparently communicate with his son Raymond, killed in the First World War, and was retained by the SPR in 1918 for three months of extensive testing involving 73 sittings, of which 70 involved anonymous sitters. In her report, the largely skeptical Helen Salter conceded that the sitters were satisfied that the medium was wholly trustworthy and had provided evidence that the human personality survived death. She also convinced the even more skeptical Eleanor Sidgwick, wife of the SPR’s first president Henry Sidgwick.  

On September 29, 1917, a young lady sat with the professional medium Mrs. Annie Brittain. Æta Highett had lost her fiancé, Eldred Wolferstan Bowyer-Bower, killed in action on the Western Front, and like many in her situation sought solace in Spiritualism. She had not been to see Mrs. Brittain before, but the medium was able to tell her many things about her fiancé, including the following:

She said, “He has a sister.” I said, “yes, Cicely.” She said, “No, that’s not the name.” She waited a few seconds and then said: “Joan. She has a little girl called Joan, now I get Dorothy.” I said, “yes.” He says, “Tell Dorothy she has the power to communicate.” He also said, “She is not in this country.”

It was all true, but that was not the end of it. Bowyer-Bower’s half-sister, Dorothy Spearman, lived in India at the time, and when she heard about Mrs. Brittain’s message she wrote back with a strange story to tell:

On March 19 [1917], in the late part of the morning, I was sewing and talking to baby, Joan was in the sitting-room and did not see anything. I had a great feeling I must turn round and did, to see Eldred; he looked so happy and that dear mischievous look. I was so glad to see him and told him I would just put baby in a safer place, then we could talk. “Fancy coming out here,” I said, turning round again, and was just putting my hands out to give him a hug and a kiss, but Eldred had gone. I called and looked for him. I never saw him again. At first [I] thought it was simply my brain. Then I did think for a second something must have happened to him and a terrible fear came over me.

That same morning in Bournemouth, Bowyer-Bower’s sister Cecily Chater was still in bed, when her two-year-old daughter Betty came into the room, saying that “Uncle Alley Boy is downstairs” (Alley Boy was his pet-name since childhood). Cecily explained that he was in France, but the girl was insistent.

In the afternoon later that day, Mrs. Watson, an elderly friend of Mrs. Bowyer-Bower wrote to her about Eldred, saying “about tea time, a certain and awful feeling came over her that he was killed.” Mrs. Bowyer-Bower wrote back that he was “fit and happy.”

At dawn on March 19, 1917, Captain Bowyer-Bower, 59 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, took out a lumbering RE8 two-seater biplane on a reconnaissance mission over German lines, with 2nd Lt Eric Elgey as observer. A second RE8 flew as an escort. About an hour into their flight, German fighter planes of Jagdstaffel 2 found them, and began firing at Bowyer-Bower’s aircraft, shooting it down near Croisilles, Pas-de-Calais, behind enemy lines.

Cecily received a telegram from the War Office on March 23, with the news that he was missing in action. About two weeks later, Dorothy read the news in the Indian newspapers. At this point he was still listed missing.

His father, a captain with the Corps of Royal Engineers, was also fighting on the Western Front. On May 10, 1917, as the British advanced during the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, he came across a makeshift cross made from aeroplane wreckage on which someone had written “Two unknown captains of the Royal Flying Corps.” It was the grave of his son and Elgey – Eldred Bowyer-Bower was only now confirmed killed in action.

In late November or early December, 1917, Eldred’s mother, Margaret Bowyer-Bower, was woken in the night, first feeling too hot, then “extraordinarily cold with a most unnatural coldness.” As she tried to return to sleep, “a yellow-blue ray came right across the room.” She thought that the maid had not drawn the air-raid curtains properly, but as it continued to move, “I watched, not at all nervously, and something like a crumpled filmy piece of chiffon unfolded and the beautiful wavy top of Eldred’s head appeared.” The apparition continued to develop, apparently in full and realistic colour, as she noted “his lovely blue eyes.” He turned and looked at her. The development of the form stopped at the chin and “quivered and shook so much.” Worried that it would disappear, Mrs. Bowyer-Bower reached out her hands, saying “Eldred, I see you.” At once, “it all flickered quite out, light and all.” She considered that it “might have been a dream,” but “in my own mind I am satisfied it was not.” She also mentioned that “Eldred referred to it through Mrs. Leonard in Jan. 1918.”

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.