Some Observations about My Direct Voice Phenomena Articles

 
After writing many articles reporting about the audio recordings and books chronicling the Leslie Flint Direct Voice mediumship case, it is pitiable how such a profusion of evidence can remain unknown among most of society.  And yet numerous other 'paranormal people' are also ignored, including extensively documented 'channelers' as well as the contemporary family who witnessed phenomena of what is sometimes called the 'Centrahoma Talking Poltergeist' case.  As with the Leslie Flint case, the Centrahoma case involves a succession of diverse manifesting voices — the topic inspired 21 articles prior to this now concluding series of 21 articles about Flint and other Direct Voice mediums.

Hundreds of Leslie Flint Direct Voice audio recordings may be heard without charge on the Internet at wholejoy.com.  Some of the communicator voices have commented about the nature of life in the ascended state with Flint's control 'Mickey' quoted in the December 27, 2015 article while last week's blog article presented transcript excerpts concerning this subject as voiced by the often-recurring communicators 'Rudolph Valentino' and 'Dr. Charles Marshall.'

At times seance participants recognized earthly characteristics of one or more of the manifesting voices after having a personal relationship with the named individual/s prior to their passing to 'the other side.'  For example, in the memoir of one woman's metaphysical research encompassing Direct Voice seances The Voice of Valentino (1965), author Lynn Russell mentioned her mother's voice having "her very own, particular, infectious laugh."

In addition to Leslie Flint, previous blog articles have chronicled events during the seances of other Direct Voice mediums, such as John Campbell Sloan (1, 2, 3, 4), Peter Clarke (1, 2), Emily French (1), A. W. Kaiser (1, 2) and Henrietta Wriedt (1, 2, 3).  One variation between what Findlay has chronicled and the Leslie Flint audio recordings is a Direct Voice (disembodied speech) response to a question about reincarnation.  The following is an excerpt from a 1923 seance transcript included in Findlay's 1931 book On the Edge of the Etheric.

Question: Do we re-incarnate again on earth?

Answer: Now that is a question I find difficulty in answering.  I have known no one who has. I passed over many years ago, and I have round about me those who lived thousands of years ago on earth.  That is all I can say, because my knowledge does not permit me to say more.

As mentioned in a previous blog article, Flint's 'control' Mickey once stated during a seance: ". . . various people coming from various spheres can only give you an insight into the knowledge that they have appertaining to their particular advancement or development . . ."  Lynn Russell in The Voice of Valentino quoted Mickey on the topic of reincarnation: "Reincarnation is so obvious that I can't understand intelligent people doubting it!  The fact that you can't remember is neither here nor there.  The point is, if you remembered too much you would always be on the defensive, avoiding mistakes, instead of overcoming them . . ."

The reader who is a novice to the annals of transcendental communication may find that the statements given about life might differentiate from one's own perspectives of earthly experiences.  An example of this are some of the sentiments expressed by 'Shafir'—a guide of Direct Voice medium Peter Clarke—provided through seance transcripts in Behold I Live (1966) by L. C. Bridges and quoted in the blog article profiling this book.  The realization left unspoken is that what an individual desires to experience in life may not be possible when the totality of conditions are considered.  Factors encompass the influence and 'free will' of other individual people and perhaps even the will of 'God' or what Direct Voice communicator 'Douglas Conacher' is quoted as having expressed as "a force, a vital, living power that is dynamic, and within every human soul."  The Universal Mind being an omnipresent Superconsciousness greater than the expression of the totality of individual units or personalities is comprehensible through the selectivity involved with when, where and how manifests individual personalities or 'units of consciousness.'  The spiritual Oneness expressed by such terms as 'God' or 'the Christ Force' also manifests in other forms of 'paranormal' manifestation such as automatic writing, Ouija Board messages, Tarot cards, Electronic Voice Phenomena and Instrumental Transcommunication.

In my own case, I first learned about aspects of the life of medium Leslie Flint upon reading The Voice of Valentino.  At one sitting with Flint, Lynn expressed a worry that her experience of 'clairvoyant vision' "might be looked on as association of ideas or imagination."  The voice identified as that of 'Sister Teresa' was quoted: "You must believe it is given to you by us."  The following passage recounts some of the surprising moments chronicled by Lynn in the book.

During the years that we have been recording these sittings we have frequently noticed that a lengthy discourse comes to an end when there is no more than a few feet left on the tape, and at first we thought it was coincidence, but it has happened too often for this to be the case.  On this occasion I am positive a Spirit operator had noticed our recorder was not registering, and Mickey's thundering chorus fading away into a whisper was in actual fact a volume test, because he had never done such a thing before, and has never done it since.  Had anyone else been in the flat it might have been noticed that the cord was disconnected, because we leave the recorder in the lounge, and only the microphone is in the seance room.

One night in July in our home circle John described a clairvoyant picture of a tower from which came a peal of bells.  He did not hear them, but he saw the tone-vibrations of the notes as bands of colour flowing outwards in increasing circles.  Then he described a light that resembled a star in the sky, and as it came nearer to him it assumed the shape of the Cross.  He was very moved by this inspiring vision, and at the same moment I too saw a similar light, which as it descended became a cross made from amethyst.  This was carved out of one complete jewel, and the top and cross-members ended in rounded crosslets.

Some details about Valentino's second wife Natacha Rambova's interest in Spiritualism and Theosophy are provided in Madam Valentino — The Many Lives of Natacha Rambova (1991) by Michael Morris.  Rambova attended seances conducted by medium George Wehner, who wrote about his life and career in the autobiography A Curious Life (1929).  In Madam Valentino, Morris described the havoc that ensued when Valentino's corpse was presented for display at Campbell's Funeral Church in New York City.  When the doors of the funeral parlor swung open, the crowd surged forward.  As the mounted police attempted to control the frantic situation, windows were broken, cars overturned and more than one hundred people were injured.

survivalebooks.org—the website where I was introduced to an Internet edition of The Voice of Valentino—offers other free ebooks on the subject of psychical research and Spiritualism, including Raymond or Life and Death (1916) by Sir Oliver Lodge; and two case studies of Direct Voice communication: Proof (1933) by V. G. Duncan and Broadcasting From Beyond (1952) by A. E. Perriman.  The latter is about the mediumship of Perriman's wife Mollie and includes Dr. H. Coulthard's report on seeing the materialization of "a phosphorescent replica of a typical anatomical larynx."  Early in Perriman's account, the sitters are told that "a little girl, a daughter of a maharajah, would be attached to the circle in the role of doorkeeper and messenger."  Although the 'little girl' didn't know English at first, the sitters were told "the spoken word would be mentally interpreted by the spirit control to the little girl, and by this procedure she would in time get to understand."

We started with the alphabet, then with small words like cat, dog, top, etc., until we got her to repeat and understand small sentences.  Later, we introduced nursery rhymes, which she thoroughly enjoyed when she became proficient.  We taught her to sing many of the Sunday School hymns, her favourite being, "Now the day is over."  It was a sheer delight to hear her singing this hymn.  In the end, she spoke perfectly apart from her sweet little accent.  The spirit name of the child was Belle, known to Spiritualists all over the world who heard her speak on varying occasions.

One may compare the articles in this blog series with trivializing BBC coverage of Flint's mediumship.  One 13-minute "BBC Tonight" radio interview may be heard at the "Flint Speaks" page at The Leslie Flint Educational Trust website.  This BBC report presented Flint in relation to Valentino in 1976 at the time of the 50th anniversary of the Hollywood star's passing.  "BBC Tonight" interviewer John Pitman described Flint as "a widower in his 60s" who "has devoted his life to keeping alive the legend of the great lover . . . and he apparently has more power than most because he's a medium . . ."   The news and evidence—a clip of the voice of Valentino from a seance—apparently cannot be considered seriously by the reporter whose primary concern is probably how the audience and advertisers might react to new spiritual information beyond the reporter's ability to explain.

The voice of Valentino is heard to say in one 1958 seance audio recording: "Today more than at any time the voice of Spirit is needed to guide particularly those who hold the destinies of nations of the world."  

Today in 2016 it remains urgent for spiritually and metaphysically aware journalists to make the effort to help expand the spiritual awareness of the public.  Just as antipathetic mainstream media coverage of Leslie Flint during his lifetime seems to have inspired little interest in him, a television documentary segment about the Centrahoma 'talking poltergeist' case was broadcast in 1995 on the ABC network with the title "Ghosts, Mediums, Psychics: Put To The Test" and the footage also later presented on "20/20" only for the case to thereafter be left ignored among the mainstream media.  The anomalous phenomena on display in the video footage included a chair moving with no observable impetus.

When it comes to investigating books, perspectives, entities and cases involving so-called 'paranormal' or 'unexplained phenomena,' a novice reader must learn to differentiate the commercially sensational with the metaphysically relevant and persevere with the research to develop one's understanding because—quoting a proverb channeled in one documented case—"For as far as you shall look, that is as near as you shall come."

In last week's blog article, one of the quotations of  transcendental communication divulged that making sense of patterns may be an important aspect of developing metaphysical insight.  In many of the hundreds of extant Flint seance recordings, the voice of 'Mickey' can drolly be heard telling individual sitters: "You're a case."  Other Direct Voice or channeled communicators also have exhibited their own patterns of expression.  For example. in the Edgar Cayce channeled reading transcripts the comment is often found at the conclusion of a session "We are through for the present."

It is a revealing aspect of human creativity that artists of diverse media cannot always explain the basis of facets of self-expression in their own work beyond it all resulting from the functioning of their imagination.  Nobody should overlook that although the ways are perhaps less flamboyant than with mediums and channelers, each of us with our own talents and proclivities is a channel for the font of all possibilities.

 

 1994 Instrumental Transcommunication image (worlditc.org Klaus Schreiber page)