Case Profile: Medium Ena Twigg

Ena Twigg (1914-1984): "We are all interconnected with the same life-force."

The remembrances and perceptions of Ena Twigg are shared in the autobiography Ena Twigg: Medium (1972) written with Ruth Hagy Brod.  Ena became renowned as a psychic and trance medium yet attested about mediumship: "Nobody can guarantee anything.  We are dependent entirely on the conditions . . . We still don't know why we can sit with a person a dozen times and get results and the thirteenth time get nothing, or vice versa."
 
She commented that throughout her career she cooperated willingly with psychic researchers: "I have subjected myself to the most critical analysis, I have been trussed up with wires and electrodes like a chicken prepared for roasting, I have been tested and retested by physical and psychic scientists from around the world." 
  

Ena was born in Gillingham, Kent just prior to World War I.  Her future husband became a neighbor when Ena was thirteen and the Twigg family began residing across the street.  Harry, Jr. was a few years older and married Ena when she was 17.  During the years preceding the marriage, her father died in an accidental fall after the "misty people" warned her: "You're not going to have your daddy much longer."  After marrying, Harry joined the navy and Ena became a housewife.  She remembered a "strange experience" after Harry's father had a heart attack.

He wanted the two of us at his bedside day and night.  He died early one Sunday morning, and I heard a voice saying to me: "Mr. X [naming a certain person] will come here this very morning and will discuss business with Harry's mother involving a sum of money.  He will make her an offer."  The voice told me what the man would say and what it would mean for Harry's mother if she accepted the offer.  The voice concluded with: "It will not be good for her to accept the offer."  It was an extraordinary thing to happen, and I immediately repeated the entire conversation to Harry.

At 10:30 a.m. Mr. X arrived, and from the moment he appeared, everything unfolded as the voice had predicted . . .

When her husband was posted to Malta, Ena began her "years of globe-trotting from post to post to be with him as much as possible," describing occasional precognitive experiences.  She experienced an out-of-body experience during appendicitis surgery.  Following the operation, she grew steadily weaker and returned to England.  Her condition improved after a series of visits from "three spirit people."

I made up my mind I was not going to die.  I was going to try to get well.

Then one evening the door of my bedroom opened, and three people walked in.  One was an old man, the other a young man, and the third a woman, carrying a tray covered with a towel.  They were quite real, but transparent.  I thought, Oh, here are my "misty people" again.  I suppose I am about to die.

They asked her to tell them her medical history and informed her they were going to make her well.  As the young man made notes, the "senior member of the trio" filled a syringe from ampules and inserted the needle into the base of Ena's neck.  She then lost consciousness.

The three spirit people came regularly every Tuesday night and Ena began to recover.

The visits continued for six months.  Then, my spirit friends came for the last time, and they said, "Our job is done. You are well."

I asked them how I could repay them. They answered, "By giving to others that which you have received."


"I will gladly give the rest of my life to you, for it belongs to you," I told them earnestly, meaning every word.

She was given an address and told to go to the house.  When Ena and her husband arrived and rang the doorbell, the lady greeting them said that it was "our circle night."  The couple joined the seance circle participants upstairs and almost immediately Ena went into a trance and transcendental communication ensued: "When I returned to consciousness, I was told that I had been in a trance and that spirits had communicated through me."

The people in this circle, the first I had ever encountered, asked me if I would replace the medium they had just lost.  I had no training and I hadn't the remotest notion of how to begin, but the spirit people did the job.  One of the first communicators who came through me was a man who said he was Ajax, from ancient Greece.  We subjected him to all kinds of tests, and he seemed to pass them.


They seemed quite sane, truthful, and accurate. We treated our spirit visitors as real friends and with respect; they reciprocated in kind.

When a friend who participated in a Direct Voice seance group gave her the message that she was soon going to demonstrate clairvoyance on a spiritualist platform, Ena reacted: "Why, I wouldn't know the first thing to do, I would be petrified."
 

The answer came back: "Just take your body along to the service, old girl; we'll do the rest."

And that is the way it happened, and that is the way I began.

Her husband realized the authenticity of the trance mediumship when Masonic "passwords and the grips between the second and third degrees" were shown that were unknown to Ena.  Harry's description of the incident is included in the book: "Then my father, speaking through Ena, described the unusual incident that had occurred during the ceremony, which was very evidential to me, since no one knew it, least of all Ena."

During World War II, Ena at times experienced spiritual communication that consoled her, such as when Harry was involved in maritime attacks while serving in the Royal Navy.  On one occasion his ship was torpedoed.

One evening I saw Harry in the water with blood on his face, and I heard my father say: "It's all right.  We have him quite safe.  He will be all right."

The following is Ena's description of her career during the 1950s.

My mediumship was growing, sprouting new branches in all directions at once.  I had not yet learned the necessity of limiting oneself to one job done properly, so I kept exploring the various facets of my gift.  I was eager to do everything.  I gave sittings one day a week at the Marylebone Spiritual Association* (*Later the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain [currently at 11 Belgrave Road in London]), spent as much time as possible at the London Spiritual Alliance, kept up my public demonstrations and propaganda meetings, and organized and ran a group of ten healers, for whom I was the diagnostician and administrator.
 
I had become very interested in healing.  After working with some doctors, I discovered that I was able to make a diagnosis merely by holding an article belonging to a patient.  The doctors, of course, checked my diagnosis against the results of their orthodox medical and chemical tests—and spirit and the information received from spirit were seldom wrong.

She recalled that after a trance session with the grieving father of a child who had passed over, one night "I had just gone to bed when I saw a little girl at the foot of my bed . . . 'Please give my daddy this message,' she said.  'Tonight I am being born again.'"  Ena commented:

. . . I had not given a great deal of thought to reincarnation, although now I cannot believe that the whole of our existence can be encompassed by one lifetime.  Reluctantly I've come to the conclusion that it is often desirable and necessary for us to inhabit a physical body a number of times . . .

 

An uncommon aspect of Ena's life is the attention and great demand for healing or sittings that resulted from several television appearances, beginning with a barrier-breaking TV debut in 1957.  She was the guest star on the 30-minute BBC-TV "Press Conference" with an estimated audience of five million people: ". . . I was introduced as a clairvoyant, a medium, and a minister of the Spiritualist National Union; and thus the broadcast ban [concerning Spiritualism] was broken."  The questions from four participating journalists included if there was "any possibility that these visions and voices have the same kind of relationship to you as a medium as they would to a schizophrenic . . ."; "Why are there so many red-Indian guides?" and "What is the difference between faith healing and spiritual healing?"  The question "Where do spirit people live and what do they do . . ." brought the reply from Ena: "You are preparing your home right now, by every action and thought.  You are conditioning your own future."  The experience prepared Ena for future TV appearances: ". . . when I am on TV I fight like a tiger for the things in which I believe."

The book includes a description of two seances in 1966 when Bishop James A. Pike received communication expressing the perspective of his son Jim who had recently committed suicide.  Ena reported that there was trance mediumship during the second seance.  "A great deal of what was said at the sitting is too personal to repeat here, and many of the passages Bishop Pike remembered are in The Other Side [Pike's memoir] . . . I explained that I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of what comes through me when I am in trance . . . the communicator is using my body and voice."  A third session with Pike took place in 1967 and brought further information about Jim's mentality in the afterlife.  Ena quoted from Pike's book about what was heard from 'Jim Jr.':

"You know I came over here in a state of mental confusion and great—not antagonism toward the world, but in a state of not understanding and being almost afraid to trust many people.  And when I came over here they said, 'Now, come along.  Let's get down to the basics,' and you see we tried to find out what are the things that really matter—to have compassion and understanding and to be kind—yes, you have to put them into operation."

Another chapter relates the circumstances of Bishop Pike's disappearance in 1969.  A tape recording was made that provided evidence through trance communication about what had happened to him.  Prior to the discovery of Pike's body in the desert, the BBC broadcast Oliver Hunkin's documentary on Bishop Pike, "The Other Side." 

The whole turmoil on the telephone began again, just as it had after every TV program.  It was the same after the Look magazine article, the book The Other Side, and the later magazine and newspaper serializations of the book.  I was driven almost to complete exhaustion by the phone calls and letters that came pouring in at that time.  It went on for months and months.

Other chapters of the book include "Lord and Lady Dowding," "Douglas Fawcett—a Philosopher Proves Survival," "Psychical Research" and "The 'Spiritualist of the Year' Award."
 
The following passages are excerpts from Ena's description of her mediumship in the chapter "'The Discerning of Spirits . . .'"

I am a mental medium and a trance medium.  I am clairaudient and clairvoyant, meaning that I hear and see psychically.  When I am clairaudient, I hear voices, usually coming from just over my left shoulder.


My clairaudience can function anywhere.  I often get near people on buses and trains, and messages begin to rush in clairaudiently.  It has happened in crowded hotel lobbies, in air-raid shelters during a bombing raid, once in an airport waiting room—anytime, anyplace, often unpredictably.  When I get these messages, I long to approach the people for whom they are meant, and sometimes I do.

When I am clairvoyant, I see spirit forms, both mentally and objectively.  When I am seeing them mentally, with my eyes closed, they are always in miniature, much smaller than when my eyes are open and seeing objectively.  Before a spirit form actually appears, I see a piercingly bright light, and then the form builds up under the light.  I can always see through the spirit forms, and that is why, when I was a child, I called them my misty people.


When I go into a trance, I get a sensation at the back of my neck, right at the top of the spine.  It is as if there were a blockage.  I may be sitting, giving clairaudience or clairvoyance, and I feel myself being gradually subdued.  What I want to say won't come, and everything gets muzzy.  I'm aware that I'm breathing deeply.  Then I am gone.  It is difficult to tell the precise moment that it happens.


I return to consciousness and everyone is discussing what they have been listening to and I don't know a thing they are talking about.  One day two dear friends were here, Canon John Pearce Higgins, vice-provost of Southwark Cathedral in London, and the Reverend William Rauscher, from America.  The canon reminded us that once while I was in trance, a guide said, "This isn't Ena speaking, this isn't the medium speaking; she is far away!"

When I come back to consciousness, I need a few moments to adjust myself and to coordinate all my faculties.  Sometimes when the passing has been very sudden or violent or shocking in some way, as happened in the Bishop Pike case, I may feel dreadfully shaken, weak, ill, and upset.  Even in less traumatic circumstances, I need to go away from everyone for a little while and collect myself.


I am often asked to discuss my guides.  My father helps all the time.


Then there is Philip, a wise friend and teacher who has been a continuing part of our life now for many years.


He [Philip] is on a high spiritual plane; he shares the wisdom and guidance from the Other Side with us, and occasionally he reveals their plans when he thinks we are ready to receive them.

I have already described the sensations I feel when I am delivering clairaudient messages before an audience.  There is one other manifestation that I should like to share with you.  Sometimes, without any form of communication at all, I just know things inside myself.  I might be going to a strange house for a meeting, a sitting, or a social call, and I receive evidence that tells me a great deal about what to expect.  On arrival, there are few surprises to me because I already know by a feeling in my solar plexus.  Similarly, I always know when a message is right because of the same feeling that I get in my solar plexus.


When I see evolved spirit beings such as teachers and philosophers, I am filled with wonder; a tremendous light surrounds them, and the colors of their garments are beautiful.

The chapter "The Church Doors Open" reports about the founding of the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies in 1954.  A prophetic statement from Philip mentioned in another chapter is that Ena would "speak in Southward Cathedral," which came to pass three years later.  There is also a chapter recounting the events of Ena's 17-day, four-city tour of Sweden and Finland.

Ena Twigg estimated that the most convincing evidence of human survival beyond an Earth life is what is known as 'Cross-Correspondence' concerning patterns discernible in transcripts of transcendental communication.

The scripts were sent into the Society for Psychical Research by such mediums and automatists as Mr. Leonard Piper in Boston; Mrs. Alice Kipling Fleming (Rudyard Kipling's sister), who used the nom de plume Mrs. Holland, in India; and Mrs. Margaret Verrall, Miss Helen Verrall, and Mrs. Winifred Willett in Britain.  None of the mediums understood the bits and scraps which had to be assembled . . .

The autobiography of Ena Twigg is among the diverse annals of unusual life experiences that allow readers to become more aware of metaphysical aspects of life involving each person's 'non-local' relationship to the omnipresent spiritual Force often expressed with the word 'God.'  Keeping in mind the physical limitations of earthly reality to which we are accustomed, the nature of life in the ascended realm may surpass what can be articulated in words — even from the 'Other Side.'  The range of manifestations to be considered are in many different forms, reminding about the varied experiences possible for individuals during an Earth life and in the hereafter.