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.
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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.
