Leslie Flint's Life as a Direct Voice Medium

 

People who attended Direct Voice seances conducted by medium Leslie Flint (1911-1994) heard communicator voices from 'the other side' share details of Earth lives and the afterlife.  Audio recordings originally made with tape recorders offer remarkable evidence of Direct Voice Phenomena personally witnessed by thousands of people.  Today hundreds of Leslie Flint Direct Voice audio recordings may be heard without charge on the Internet at wholejoy.com and other websites.
 
The Leslie Flint Educational Trust website makes available an inexpensive copy of Flint’s 1971 autobiography, Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium as told to Doreen Montgomery.  The Trust Recordings Archive includes 40 recordings featuring seances where was heard the voice of one of the early Hollywood movie stars, Rudolph Valentino.  The author of The Voice of Valentino (1965), Lynn Russell is one of several authors to chronicle their experiences at Flint's seances in a nonfiction book. 

About 'Mickey'—whom Flint described in Voices in the Dark as "the spirit helper who acts as a sort of master of ceremonies at my seances"—Alexander Walker appraised, "This perky and impertinent boy would engage his master in Cockney chitchat and occasionally turn his sharp tongue on the guests sitting expectantly a dozen strong around the big Paddington dining-room in the 1960s or when Flint's health had permitted him to tour in earlier decades, packing the churches, halls and theaters in their hundreds and thousands all over Britain, the continent of Europe and America."  There were also occasions when Mickey's voice manifested with a boisterous adult emanation while at other times was heard a somber modulation with profound knowledge of humanity and spirituality expressed.

Flint was careful to specify that not all of his seances were successful: "Sometimes I and my sitters would wait in the darkness of the seance room for an hour and nothing at all would happen . . . I have learned from experience that the mental attitude of the sitter is of great importance to results.  A hostile approach or a selfish and demanding one can inhibit the phenomena, but honest skepticism is no barrier."
 
Flint commented about the voices that were heard during the seances:

Sometimes those who speak from beyond the grave achieve only a whisper, hoarse and strained, at other times they speak clearly and fluently in voices recognisably their own during life, and even after thirty-five years of my mediumship I do not fully understand what are the conditions which cause the phenomena to vary in this way.  I do know I have learned more about life and people and human problems and emotions by sitting in the dark than I could possibly have learned in any other way, and those who have taught me the most are people who, dead to this world, are living in the next.

The homepage of the Trust website presents quotes from Flint's memoir: "I think I can safely say I am the most tested medium this country has ever produced . . . I have been boxed up, tied up, sealed up, gagged, bound and held, and still the voices have come to speak their message of life eternal."  A brief biographical profile at the website is attributed to Alexander Walker of London's Evening Standard newspaper.  Walker himself had attended several sittings conducted by Flint and wrote about these experiences: "Although tolerantly skeptical, I had to concede that those who addressed me, claiming acquaintance with a recently deceased parent, answered test questions about childhood, family and pets with fluency and total accuracy."  A homepage photo has been described as showing an infrared photo of Leslie Flint with ectoplasm emanating from his neck to form what has been called the 'Voicebox.'

As mentioned by Alexander Walker in the biographical article, the voices of famous men and women manifesting in Flint's presence were outnumbered by voices of ordinary people that included recognizable voices of loved ones speaking "messages of hope, comfort and occasional clairvoyance to their friends and relatives." 

Flint's book begins with sad details of his childhood in the southeast England city of St. Albans.  His parents were "pitifully young, desperately poor, and they had been coerced into maturity by their elders long before they were ready for it."  While his father was in the army, his mother would leave the boy watching silent films at the local cinema while the manager's wife kept an eye on him.  When his mother eloped with one of her admirers, Flint went to live with his grandmother whom he called 'Gran.'  Illiterate, she lived on a few schillings a week and her modest living quarters didn't have a bathroom.  She was so poor that a Sunday suit for the boy would be returned to the pawnshop on Monday.

Flint related two incidents in Gran's kitchen where he saw after their death his Uncle Alf and a townswoman named Mrs. Pugh.  Gran's reaction was to give the boy a clout for saying such things.  He wrote: "My grandmother was a wonderful woman.  She gave me all she could from the little she had but her life was too harsh, the daily struggle for a bare existence too grim, too unrelenting for tenderness between us."  After Gran qualified for a small old age pension, they were able to attend the local cinema.

In the hungry twenties the working class was neither as sophisticated nor as educated as its modern counterpart, millions could not read or write and lived in squalid poverty.  The cinema brought romance, glamour and excitement into their lives and even if the intellectuals called it the opium of the masses at least it was a relatively harmless drug and retailed at a price even the poorest could afford occasionally.

At the gala local premiere of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" starring Valentino, Gran and her grandson waited for hours to succeed in obtaining two of the "few cheap seats available for those who queued on the great night."

At the age of thirteen, Flint left school to work in a job assisting cemetery gardeners.  He helped dig new graves and became distressed when he was called upon to climb down into graves to disentangle coffin cords.  Flint acknowledged that listening to arguments about the hereafter and his recollection of seeing Uncle Alf and Mrs. Pugh motivated him to first contemplate life after death.

Attending a Theosophical Society lecture at the local library heightened his interest to learn more and he eventually discovered a Spiritualist Service was going to be held at the Quakers' hall.  There, he watched the medium Mrs. Annie Johnson go into a trance and relay messages to audience members from people that only the medium could see.  Flint became startled to find himself confronted with convincing evidence of a message from a deceased schoolmaster who'd once been an acquaintance.  Mrs. Johnson told Flint that among the spirit people around him was a guide — not really an Arab, he was someone who dressed as an Arab.  "In the not too distant future," Mrs. Johnson insisted, "you will be doing the same kind of work as I am doing and you will become a very famous medium."

Although not all the mediums observed by young Flint impressed him favorably, a "young Arab 'who was not really an Arab'" again turned up at a seance with the same message.  Flint wrote that for a long time he refused to accept becoming a medium because he couldn't imagine himself giving messages in public.  On the same night that he agreed to join Mrs. Cook's home circle, he went home and found a letter from Europe.  A woman in Munich informed him she'd been sitting regularly in a home circle for years and had received a message through the medium from a spirit who called himself Rudolph Valentino.  The spirit had given her Flint's name and address in England and asked her to give him the message that he must develop his mediumship and be of service to his fellow men.  Flint wondered if the mysterious Arab he'd heard about was Valentino, whom he'd seen play the part of an Arab in "The Sheik" and "The Son of the Sheik" before the actor's death at the age of 31.

During a home circle meeting, raps were heard that indicated alphabet letters and there were messages from Valentino.  There were further paranormal demonstrations and when the table raised up, Flint could hardly believe his eyes.  Further messages instructed the group that they could in future dispense with the table and just sit quietly in a circle.  As Flint remembered: "They would experiment with the power, we were told, and particularly with me because I had remarkable physical mediumship, in fact they hoped later on to be able to speak to us in direct voice."

At the next meeting of the home circle, Flint thought he'd fallen asleep but the others told him that deceased loved ones had communicated through him.  Mrs. Cook told him "a film actor came through, Valentine or whatever he called himself, the one that died a couple of years ago . . . he said to tell you to continue with your development."

Mrs. Cook couldn't conceive of a Hollywood actor being a very advanced soul.  Her own spirit guide 'Shu-Shu' was said to have been a high priestess in the temple of Isis during her life on earth.  Following a year of Flint entering a trance and spirits speaking through him, Mrs. Cook fell into trance and Shu-Shu presided.  From that night on, Flint's trances became less frequent and then stopped altogether.  Flint's participation in the home circle ended following a demonstration of temple dancing and chanting by Shu-Shu through her medium.  Flint wasn't able to hold back his laughter and he recalled that "at last Mrs. Cook came out of her trance and with a look which withered me to ashes sat down in her chair again."  She told him it would be best if he didn't continue attending the sessions.

After deciding to leave the cemetery and find a new job, Flint worked in stints at a cinema, pub and tailor's shop.  After turning 20, Flint was planning to be co-proprietor of a dancing school and found himself in need of a pianist when a past acquaintance from the Spiritualist church, Mrs. Edith Mundin, invited him to join the home circle she was starting.  He agreed when she mentioned that she might play the piano.  He estimated Edith to be in her early forties.  While he found her group to be "far above my station in life," Flint found the others in the home circle "had that true gentility which never discomforts those who have been less privileged than themselves . . ."  He felt accepted "as one of themselves and they liked me."   After many months of sitting as a member of the circle every Wednesday evening, although there were no indications of any psychic development Flint realized that he found rewarding "the quiet joy of repose, tranquility and friendship shared.  What I did not realize until long afterwards was that during the months when nothing seemed to be happening we ourselves were creating the very conditions of harmony and love in which the gift of mediumship can flower best."

The trances resumed, allowing discarnate friends and relatives of circle members to speak through Flint, including Edith's late husband.  Flint's development as a medium entered a new phase when Flint went to the cinema to see the talkies and strange voices of men and women could be heard whispering around him.  ". . . it was made very clear to me that other members of the audience could also hear them because I was constantly being told to shut up or thumped angrily on the back by those sitting around me."  This happened so often that he had to give up going to the cinema altogether.  He later recognized that this was the earliest manifestation of his Direct Voice mediumship.

Edith's financial circumstances required her to move into a council house with Owen, the youngest son from her first marriage.  Flint became a lodger for a modest rent and in the circle sittings spirit voices became audible, first whispering and then "strong clear voices who announced themselves as the persons they had been on earth, giving their names and addresses and telling us about their lives on earth."  To Flint's joy, he was no longer in a trance during these manifestations: ". . . I, too, could hear and appreciate everything that went on in the circle.   Indeed I could even hold intelligent conversations with some of the spirit entities who were able to manifest through my mediumship . . ."

One of the voices first spoke in Italian before continuing in English:

". . . My name was Valentino and I have come tonight to say how happy I am that this young man has at last accepted the life path he must tread and I want to tell him that one day when he is a famous medium he will hold a seance in the room which was my bedroom in my house in Hollywood and I will come to speak to him there when he does so."

Flint wrote that ". . . his message filled me with joy and the desire to use my gift to help people."

From that night onwards Edith began with great tact and gentleness to educate me for the public work she knew I must do.  She would ask me to read to her, then she would correct my grammar and my pronunciation.  She taught me table manners and many of the small courtesies and refinements which would make it easier for me to feel confident when I had to be in the public eye and to meet people of all kinds.  Many times I must have jarred on her unbearably because of my ignorance and the uncouthness of my manners, but she never let me know it and slowly, with infinite kindness, she changed me from the country lad I was into a man acceptable on most levels of society.

A small local Spiritualist church was the setting for Flint's first public work as a medium.

As soon as I stepped to the edge of the platform that night to speak I felt the familiar sensation of the room rushing away from me and I lost consciousness of my surroundings.  When I woke from the trance an hour later I learned that I had delivered a most interesting discourse and followed it by a brilliant demonstration of clairvoyance while under the control of a spirit who introduced himself as White Wing, who was one of the spiritually evolved entities who often controlled me in our circle before my independent direct voice mediumship developed.  Since it was not possible for the voices to manifest in a fully lighted hall White Wing clearly had come to help me out in this first public appearance by taking control of me in trance.

This experience made Flint and Edith realize a church of their own was needed to provide the necessary darkened space to make his Direct Voice mediumship available to people.  Appearances at other Spiritualist churches helped him to become established and when Flint's Watford Spiritualist Mission opened its doors, he was able to devote all his time to his mediumship for the first time in his life.  His living expenses were provided by the private seances Flint held once a week in the sitting-room of Edith's council house. 

One afternoon, the voice of Thomas Alva Edison spoke to sitter Dr. Louis Young and in following seances there were other voices of famous people who had also been acquainted with Dr. Young during their Earth lives, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge.

Dr. Young and his wife helped Flint and Edith to move to a new home nearer to London in the Hendon district and Flint began to give public demonstrations in London for audiences of up to two thousand people.  Among the new sitters were individuals who'd been attached to the Royal Household for many years and found themselves greeted by the voices of King George the Fifth and Queen Victoria.

About this time materialised forms were beginning to manifest in our regular circle through my mediumship, and Dr. Young suggested we should sit by the light of a dim red bulb in order that the members of the circle could see me and the materialisations at the same time.  When this was done, Dr. Young and the circle members were satisfied that the apparitions were distinct and separate from my body.  These materialisations were quite firm and solid and they could be felt as well as seen.  They would move round the circle and sometimes they would speak to the members.  I was not entranced during these manifestations and I was aware of an icy clammy coldness enveloping me while the forms built up and there was a faint odour about them which I found disagreeable.  This rare type of phenomenon ceased after a while and we were told by the Guides of the circle that they had been experimenting with my physical power only to find that the materialisations detracted from the strength of the voices, and they considered it better to concentrate on my voice mediumship in order to reach many hundreds of people through the meetings in the big halls.  I was glad when the materialisations stopped because apart from the unpleasant sensations during the seances I was absolutely exhausted and very nervy and irritable when they were over.

During World War II, Flint was a conscientious objector and an account is shared of the tribunal where he attempted to explain his determination not to kill.

"Are you suggesting our brave men in the services will suffer remorse in the next life because they are killing their country's enemies?"  "No, madam," I said, "they will not, because they do not know, as I know, the consequences to the souls of those they send into eternity.  It is precisely because I have been given that knowledge through the exercise of my gift of mediumship that I must refuse the responsibility of taking human life."

Flint was called to serve in a noncombatant regiment and when he visited home he conducted sittings.  When a bomb landed in the vicinity, Mickey informed those gathered that a land mine had fallen a few streets from them and many people had been killed.

He went on to say that hundreds of spirit people were already at the scene of the disaster to help the victims over the border between this life and the next and to explain to them the fact of their physical death and their continuing life in the other world.  Mickey is normally gay, irrepressible, quick at repartee, but that evening he talked to us very seriously and as he talked his treble boy's voice changed its timbre and became more adult, more cultured, more resonant.  The subject of Mickey's discourse was the enormous effort being made by the spirit world to ensure no victim of  the war, whatever his nationality, creed or state of mind, should be left to cling to the earth because of the ignorance of the life to come.  He told us thousands upon thousands of spirit people had made it their work to go wherever the need arose to guide newly dead in a state of bewilderment to their place in the next life.

The same evening, Flint finally persuaded Edith to marry him.

A guide who began recurring at the Direct Voice seances during this period was known as 'Dr. Charles Marshall.'

During the war my spirit helpers were joined by another who introduced himself at my home circle as Dr. Marshall who once lived and practised medicine in Hampstead, London.  The personality which his warm sympathetic voice suggested was that of everyone's ideal family doctor.  From snippets of information Dr. Marshall gave us about himself from time to time we were able to verify some facts about his life on earth.  Dr. Charles Frederick Marshall was born in Birmingham in 1864 and received his medical training at Bart's Hospital in London where he gained a reputation for brilliance in both medicine and surgery.  He was interested in psychical research when the subject was still considered cranky and eventually he became a convinced Spiritualist.  Originally he specialised in diseases of the skin but later he turned to research in cancer.  After years of this study he believed he had discovered a new approach to the disease and a new method of treatment.  In 1932 he published A New Theory of Cancer in which he propounded his theories and described a number of advanced cases which he claimed had been cured by his method.  Unfortunately, the medical pundits were not interested and he died a disappointed man in May 1939.  Since he first came, Dr. Marshall has advised and helped literally thousands of my sitters about their health or emotional anxieties.

Upon his return home after army service, Flint chronicled a surprising occurrence during a sitting for a group of women who'd lost sons.  One woman didn't turn up at the scheduled time and when a young man's voice was heard asking for his mother, the group soon realized he must be the missing woman's son.  The voice insisted: "Mother's train was late but she is here now.  She is sitting on a chair on the landing outside this room."  Flint described what happened next.

As a rule the discarnate speak from a point above my head slightly to one side of me within what Mickey has referred to as my 'auric emanation,' but as this spirit spoke his voice moved right away from me across the room to the door where he called loudly for his mother.  From outside the door the mother answered him and the dead boy and the living mother talked together through the door until the woman was convinced he was really her own son alive and loving as he was in life.

At large group seances, a specially constructed cabinet was utilized so that the auditorium could be left fully lit.  Seven feet high and four feet square, Flint sat within it while seated on an ordinary chair.  The sides of the cabinet were covered with tarpaulin to ensure no light could enter with the microphone standing around twenty inches in front.  At one of these seances, there was an incident recalled by Flint that he used to explain his understanding of 'Mickey.'

As usual Mickey spoke first, but this time, unusually, he told the huge audience that Mickey was only the name by which he was known in the world of spirit and to his medium.  He said that in his life on earth he was called John Whitehead and he had sold newspapers outside Camden Town underground station until he was run over and killed by a lorry when he was ten years old.  "I'm a lot happier over here than I ever was on your side," he assured the crowded hall, "you could say kicking the bucket was the best thing I ever did!"  This caused a general laugh and tension throughout the hall relaxed noticeably.

Flint reported about the testing of his mediumship by members of the Society for Psychical Research under the aegis of the Rev. Drayton Thomas.  Working with a group of men that included an electronics expert, a researcher viewing Flint through an infra-red telescope was able to see the ectoplasmic larynx forming on his left side some two feet distant from him.

While the men involved in these successful tests publicly stated their trust in the reality of the voices, Flint divulged that this wasn't always the result.  The responses of some researchers suggested to Flint that they "have immutable values of their own which preclude belief in a meaning or purpose in man's existence or in the possibility of a life after death.  Their concern was rather to disprove the reality of my voices and they would postulate any alternative however far-fetched or absurd sooner than admit the implication of their own successful experiment."

Flint observed that those who'd never sat with a medium of any kind ridiculed the preponderance of American Indians, ancient Egyptians, Tibetan Lamas and children as guides.  Flint reflected about many aspects and attributes of the phenomena he'd experienced.

As far as influencing the phenomena goes I am certainly unaware of ever being able to do so, though on very rare occasions I have mentally received some comment or remark a split second before a spirit voice utters it.  I am of course clairvoyant also so I can often see as well as hear the spirit communicators, and sometimes when they are unable to get their voices through I may receive an evidential message for the sitter which may be some consolation for a poor sitting . . .

During a Los Angeles visit, Flint conducted a series of seances in Rudolph Valentino's former home as had been foretold.  The recordings present occasional indications that the Direct Voice communicators have vast knowledge of the lives of seance participants.  Here is another example from the book.

. . . when the shopping, the cooking, the care of my wife and trying to do my spiritual work at the same time became a burden of almost nightmare proportions I decided to ask them for help.  At the next sitting of my home circle I asked for someone to be sent to my assistance.

"Someone has already been sent," said Mickey, "he is working in this house and he was at your last big meeting at the Kingsway Hall."  I could not imagine what Mickey meant.  The only person working in the house was a young fellow who was redecorating one of the bedrooms.

"You can't mean the painter?" I said to Mickey.  "Yes I do," he answered perkily.  "His name is Bill Willis and he is wondering what on earth to do when he finishes the job here because the partner he had walked out on him.  Ask him and he will take over your worries and become interested in your work."  It was true there had originally been two painters when the job was started and for the past few days one of them had been missing but even so Mickey's solution to my problem seemed highly unlikely.  "Ask him!  I’m telling you, he'll do it," said Mickey with a trace of impatience at my obvious incredulity.  "Very well," I said.  "If you say so, Mickey."

The next morning very diffidently I took a cup of tea into the room where the painter was working alone.  To check on Mickey's statement, I was about to ask him if he had been at my Kingsway Hall meeting when he told me how interesting he had found it.  He told me he had sat next to a woman whose son, killed in the war, had spoken to her in a voice the woman had told Bill was exactly his voice when he was on earth.  "Is it really true?" said Bill, "It's almost too wonderful to be really so."  I assured him it was true, then, testing Mickey further, I asked if his partner had left him in the lurch.  "Yes," said Bill.  "He has left me in a right old mess.  I can't carry on this business without another fellow and he's walked out for good.  I don't know what I'll do when I finish this job.  Get a job in a factory, most likely."

Bill accepted the job upon learning that he would have his own room in the house.  Flint wrote: "Many of my friends and sitters will remember Bill with affection before his sadly premature death from an inoperable cancer."  At the time of Bill's passing, Edith had already made her transition and Flint had moved into "the garden flat of a big house in Bayswater."  Flint wrote that a new assistant, Bram, had been trained by Bill.  The autobiography dedication reads: "For Rosie and Bram."

George Woods and Betty Greene recorded more than 500 sittings on tape.  One of the many spirits who provided information about life on the other side at Flint's sittings was Rose Hawkins, who'd been an impoverished street flower seller in London.

When George asked Rose what it was like in her present condition of life she replied: "Now you've asked me!  You want me to describe our world in your material language!  I don't know which way to start.  I suppose if you could think of all the beautiful things in your world without all the things which aren't pleasant, you'd 'ave a vague notion of what it's like."

Another sitter asked if the people in Rose's world ever thought about money and Rose was scornful.  "You can't buy anything over 'ere with money, mate!  The only things you get 'ere is by character and the way you've lived your life and how you've thought and acted!"

Among the diverse communications described in the autobiography are those of young men who committed suicide and wanted to express their regret.  Flint mentioned that on rare occasions a living person was heard to speak during a seance, usually in a weak whisper.  A unique incident was happily mentioned by Flint as showing an example of his mediumship being used to confirm the mediumship of another.  Flint described what happened when Rosemary Brown attended one of his sittings.

Almost as soon as I turned off the light Sir Henry Wood announced himself as 'compère' of the seance.  Sir Henry brought many of Rosemary's musical inspirers to speak with her, including Chopin, who said of her: "The group of musicians in spirit chose Rosemary because of her simplicity, if they had communicated through an accomplished musician the experts would have questioned this proof of man's survival of death!"

Brown wrote about her sittings with Flint in Unfinished Symphonies (1971) as reported in a previous blog article.

Lynn Russell in The Voice of Valentino described the response from Mickey when she asked about information provided by another guide, 'Ram-a-Dahn,' through the entranced Ursula Roberts at the Spiritualist Headquarters in Belgrave Square: "Gone was the Cockney accent, gone was the shrill little voice and pitched laugh, and now, speaking in smooth modulated tones, he [Mickey] allowed his true character to be revealed.  'You must realize we have all been brought together for a purpose, for a  great Truth.  Some of us you know, like Rudy and Ram-a-Dahn, others you do not know . . . Each one is here to bring enlightenment and the ways of the Spirit are often strange . . . we're all here to give service and help.'"