Testing the Voices Heard on Leslie Flint Seance Tapes

 

One of the books presenting transcripts of the Leslie Flint Direct Voice seance tape recordings is Life After Death by Neville Randall.  Utilizing the collection of more than 500 tapes made by Sydney George Woods and Betty Greene during their sittings with the medium, the book was published in 1975 and republished in a Corgi paperback edition (as shown) in the 1980s.  The author reported results of tests involving Flint that proved the authenticity of the anomalous voices heard as disembodied speech during seances.  The book also presents confirmatory reactions of friends and relations upon evaluating the recognizability of communicator voices.

The first chapter of the book presents "Alf Pritchett's story" about a World War I soldier who is on the battlefield when he makes the transition to another sphere of existence with the help of Billy Smart, a friend previously killed during combat.  The source recording is currently presented in a YouTube video link and transcript at The Leslie Flint Educational Trust.  Randall found possible matches for these two soldiers with the names of A. Pritchett and William Smart of the Machine Gun Corps, killed in 1917 and 1916 respectively.  Below is the book's table of contents.

Chapter 20 "Voice Test" includes a quotation from a 1947 report by Rev. Drayton Thomas that was published in an issue of Psychic News.  Testing of the medium had entailed closing his lips with Elastoplast and a scarf while his hands were tied firmly to the chair.  Then: "Voices were soon speaking with their usual clarity and Mickey (Flint's guide) emphasized his ability several times by shouting loudly."  Randall reported that during another series of tests utilizing an infrared telescope the investigators actually saw the ectoplasmic voice box take form two feet away from Flint's head.

 Leslie Flint was bound and gagged during tests to prove the anomalous voices were not coming from him.

  

Members of the Society for Psychical Research participated in test seances of Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint. An infrared telescope was among the testing instruments.

 

This is an infrared photograph showing an ectoplasmic voice box emanating in front of Flint.  (The Leslie Flint Educational Trust photos)

The following excerpt is from chapter 20 "Voice Test" of Life After Death.

From the time he began his recordings, Woods has issued an open invitation to anyone who knew the people they claim to be when they were on Earth to listen to  the tapes and tell him if they sounded genuine.

One of the first voices claimed to be Michael Fearon, who appears earlier in this book [see previous blog article].  Woods went to the sitting with Michael's mother, Mrs. Fearon.  The voice held a long and lively conversation with them both.  Mrs. Fearon was convinced she had been talking to her son.

From time to time friends and relations of the voices have taken up Woods' invitation to hear the tapes.

On 19 April 1962, a voice claiming to be F. E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, one time Lord Chancellor, came through to announce that he had changed his mind about capital punishment, and gave his reasons for thinking it did more harm than good.

The tape was played to the late Charles Loseby, M.C., Q.C. who had been a student under Smith at Gray's Inn.  He wrote to Woods on 21 November 1965 from his home in Guernsey in the Channel Islands:

I, CHARLES LOSEBY, M.C., Q.C., hereby affirm that I am satisfied that I have heard the voice of the late F. E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, one-time Lord Chancellor of England, on a tape recording made by Mr. S. G. Woods at a direct voice seance in London in the presence of Mr. Leslie Flint, the well-known medium.

I am completely satisfied after careful scrutiny that every precaution had been taken to avoid the possibility of fraud, misunderstanding or error.

I listened to the voice of Lord Birkenhead, still living, anxious apparently to  only to assist humanity.

On 4 March 1963, and again on 25 April 1966, a voice came through claiming to be Sir Oliver Lodge, the most famous English physicist of his day and an equally famous psychic researcher.  The tape was played to Mr. J. Croft, a retired physics schoolmaster who had studied under Lodge and knew him well.

On 1 August 1966, Croft wrote to Woods from his home at Angmering-on-Sea, Sussex:

At the invitation of Mr. S. G. Woods and Mrs. Greene, my wife and I listened to a tape recording of statements which we were told had been made by the late Sir Oliver Lodge.

We felt that the voice had the qualities which we had associated with the voice of Sir Oliver Lodge, we having heard him speak on a number of occasions.

There was a characteristic sibilance, an easy fluency of expression, and a choice of the apt word and phrase which we remembered were a feature of Sir Oliver Lodge's speech.

On 17 June 1963, a voice claiming to be Lilian Baylis, founder of the Old Vic, came through.  On 21 August that year Woods played an extract from her tape on Southern Television.  This brought him a letter from Mrs. Alys F. Watson, Lilian Baylis' goddaughter who had stayed with her at her home and worked with her at the Old Vic.  She made the short journey from her home in Hove to visit Woods and hear the whole tape.

On 21 November she wrote to Woods, "I shall be only too happy to confirm that it was Lilian Baylis' voice that I heard which I am sure it was."

The most extensively tested tapes were those of the voice who claimed to be Cosmo Lang.

The first communication came on May 1959, when he told Woods and Betty Greene of his changed views on religion and Spiritualism quoted in the last two chapters.  [A previous blog article is about the Cosmo Lang recordings.]

In September 1960, the Rev. John Pearce-Higgins, then vicar of Putney and Chairman of the Research Committee of the Churches Fellowship for Psychical Study, appeared on Associated Television's Sunday evening programme "About Religion," in a discussion on the relationship between Christianity and Spiritualism.  He mentioned the recording as evidence of a link between the two.

At the same time, as a feature writer on the Daily Sketch, I was briefed by my editor, Colin Valder, to write a series of articles on the latest evidence for a life after death.  Woods heard of my assignment and asked me down to his flat in Brighton to hear the tape for myself.

As an undergraduate I had heard Lang preach a sermon in my college chapel, St. John's, Oxford, in either 1937 or 1938.  But unwilling to rely on my memory of an event more than twenty years before, I tried, in the limited time available, to collect opinions from those who had known him well or heard him often.

Pearce-Higgins was fairly certain.  "Provided the seance was genuine," he said, "I think the probability is that it is Cosmo Lang.  It bears all the signs of Lang.  Those who have heard this tape and Lang say the voice is very similar.  It's just the sort of thing he would say.  When you take it in conjunction with a lot of other similar types of communications which can be more accurately corroborated, it seems probably true."

An old family friend, the Hon. Mrs. Herbert Lane, who lived near Wareham, Dorset, seemed equally convinced.  Lang had often stayed with her and she with him.

"My first impression," she said, "was that it is genuine.  As far as I could see it felt like him talking.  I feel it's exactly what Archbishop Lang would say.  It was just like him not to criticize without putting forward constructive ideas."

Pearce-Higgins helped to arrange a test which we hoped would be decisive.  At his suggestion I borrowed from the Director of Religious Broadcasts of the BBC a record of the living voice of Lang.  The famous broadcast he made on the Abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936.

I took this and Woods' recording to the home of the Bishop of Southwark, Dr. Mervyn Stockwood.  I played them one after the other, then both at the same time to him, his Chaplain and the principal of St. Stephen's Theological College, Oxford.

The test was not decisive.  The voice of the living Lang was stronger and firmer than the voice from the dead.

"I assume," said the Bishop, "we can rule out any possibility of conscious fraud.  Where the voice comes from one doesn't know.  It might be Cosmo Lang.  It might be anyone.  I cannot prove or disprove."

A point that worried the Bishop and the other two clergymen was that the discarnate Lang was less lucid in his arguments, less clear than they expected.  Lang when alive was a brilliant speaker.

It did not worry Pearce-Higgins.

"It is impossible," he said, "to expect the voice of a discarnate person to be exactly the same as the living voice when you consider the difficulties with which it is produced.  It seems the intelligence gets clouded in the descent from their high levels to our low ones.

"It is difficult for them to get through to us at all.  They cannot express themselves as clearly as they can in their normal state — or even as well as they did on Earth.  They do sometimes, therefore, seem to function on a lower level than they did when they were alive on Earth."

Soon after Pearce-Higgins received support from an unexpected quarter.

Towards the end of September 1960, the Churches Fellowship held their annual conference.  The Lang recording was played and discussed.  On 1 October Woods and Betty Greene had a routine sitting with Flint.  The voice claiming to be Lang came through again.  And explained why.

"I was at your meeting," he said, "when you gathered together with the members of the Churches Fellowship, and I realize only too well the reaction that has been felt in certain quarters in regard to my talk which you played on this occasion.  I have nothing to take back.  In fact I have more to say on this subject."

Another long lecture followed.  Towards the end Betty Greene snatched a chance to pop in a question.

"Were you with us the other evening?" she asked.

"Yes, child," he replied.

"Well, you know there was controversy over your voice?"

"There will always be controversy unfortunately."

"A little surprise," she said, "was shown as to certain words you had used such as 'afeard' and 'stratus,' and it was suggested that should you ever come through to us again, we should mention these points to you."

"The answer," he replied, "is simplicity itself.  You must remember that all sound is created artificially.  You in your world, using your natural human body, vibrating the atmosphere as you do using your own vocal organs, couple with your background and education, create what you term your voice peculiar to yourself.

"What constitutes an ordinary voice in itself, after all, is only conveying the thoughts of an individual.  When I, or others, come to speak to you, you must remember that we are speaking via an artificially reproduced box.

"Personally I do not think it matters whether one's voice is identical.  I doubt very much if anyone coming from this side can identically reproduce their voice.  After all, what is a voice?  A reproduction of thought by sound waves.  Do not forget, my friends, that we who are outside your world, no longer having the same physical body, no longer able to speak to you in a normal sense as you understand it, transmitting thought as we do by the power of an instrument or medium, can hardly be expected to reproduce identically, or even remember what the sound of our voice would have been like.

"Time itself robs us of many things, but what it does not rob us of is truth.  For we gain greater truth and knowledge by experience, and we are in a position to present you with truth if you will receive it.

"Do not be affected by the small things which so often people deliberately point out to try to destroy, because they are afeard — and afraid.  After all it does not really matter whether my voice is the voice that I had when on Earth, or not.  In any case my voice, like many other voices, no doubt changed from age to age.  My voice at my latter years of life was not like my voice when I was twenty.  And the change of word in itself here and there is of little import.

"I speak to you as I am — remember this.  Not as I was.  Remember that I have changed — thank God I have.  And I am proud to be able to say, if pride were in my nature but it is not, that I have changed.  My thoughts are not the thoughts that I once had, so what matters it if my voice be not the same?

"To those who doubt, I say the time shall surely come when you shall believe.  But it is better if you believe while you are yet on Earth, for then you can do much that is good, than to wait until you come here.  For many are they who look back and wish that they had known truth when on Earth.  How different their lives would have been: how different their actions: and how much more could they have served their fellow men, and God in consequence."

This recording was played to Mr. Conan Shaw of Angmering, Sussex.  He thought the voice was identical.

"As a chorister in York Minster 1908/1915," he wrote, "I had many opportunities of coming into direct contact with Dr. Lang.

"On a number of special occasions I was chosen to carry the Archbishop's train.  Dr. Lang used to row us choristers in a boat on the River Ouse, from Bishopthorpe Place.

"His slow style of speech comes out very well in the tape, as do also his mannerisms.  Both hands would clasp the top of his stole, then he would build up to a climax, to one word or one phrase as he does on the tape to the word "Now" and the phrase ". . . then shall they stand up in the church and proclaim it."  (This refers to communication.).

"His head would turn (1) left to right (2) right to left (3) centre observantly getting his three points home to the whole congregation.

"Yes, I have every confidence that it is the communicator Dr. Cosmo Lang whom he claims to be on the tape."

Corroborations are encouraging.  But are they essential?  In view of what Lang says, probably not.  The evidence from the other side supports his argument that no one in the next world can reproduce their voice identically in this.

"Many people from this side," complained Oscar Wilde, "try to say a great deal and in consequence say very little.  For the simple reason we are having to utilize this extraordinary method of communication.  Why they cannot invent something more congenial and more suitable and more successful than this I can't imagine!"

Ellen Terry explained the problem at length in 1965.

"It is not easy even for the most experienced communicator to always be able to come through and make a contact, and to hold a natural, normal so-called conversation.  I think the fact that we are able to make any contact is, in itself, a miracle.  And yet there are people in your world who, in spite of the evidence that they might have received in the past, in spite of the communications that have been highly successful, still have problems and still at times have doubts.

"All this of course we sympathize with, and we understand.  But you see, I think it's so important to realize that all communication is fundamentally a mental process, a transmission of thought which in reaching you may have become perhaps to some extent altered, or distorted.  And when one realizes that there are many, many words that convey very much the same thing, and sometimes a word will come through that has a similar meaning, and yet perhaps not exactly defines what we are trying to say.

"I wish I could explain to you that the 'voice box' itself must be by its very nature an artificial reproducer of the individual character, personality, sound, voice, impressions, ideas in fact everything that you receive.  Although it may sound at times — and we hope it does of course — highly natural, very real, yet at the same time it is the 'voice box' that is doing for us what in the ordinary way if we were on Earth our vocal organs would be doing.

"When on Earth you have your own particular body, and your own vocal organs, and you are living under normal conditions and your vocal organs are responding automatically and naturally; you're vibrating the atmosphere creating sound under natural conditions.  We are having to do all these things artificially.

"We stand in front of the voice box.  We concentrate our whole personality as best we can, and our thoughts.

"You know how difficult it is to keep one's thoughts clear, and how to be accurate in what you are trying to suggest or to say in the normal way on Earth.  How much more difficult it must be for us."

5/13/2018 Update: A series of 16 Leslie Flint articles was presented at this blog between 12/17/15 and  5/15/16.