How Psychic Helen Greaves First Learned about Mediumship

1975 edition cover

 

The Dissolving Veil (1967) is the earliest of five metaphysical books written by Helen Greaves, an author about whom there is sparse information available online.  I learned about her from a considerate reader (thank you, Amadeu) who described her as "a great English mental medium."  This is the concise Introduction of the book:

These are my experiences.  These are the evidences which have led me to believe in communication between the two worlds.  This is the way I feel that God has led me.

I put them out for you to read.  Perhaps they may strike an answering chord in your own life.

Helen Greaves

Kent, 1966

For some reason "All names in this book excepting that of 'Moya' are fictitious."  'Moya' is the name of a person who is one of those to have received transcendental communication via Helen.  The name representing the author is 'Lena.'  There are two parts of the book: "Autobiography" (chapters I through XVI) and "The Psychic Sense" (XVII through XXII).  The first chapter begins with the identifying of a life-changing moment in Helen's life "when a woman I had never seen before came to my Canadian home, fell into a trance, and spoke to me in the voice of my 'dead' grandmother."  Prior to this, there was a successful "first experiment" involving 'table-rapping.'

Lena was in her late teens and living in England when a young friend who was in the Royal Navy visited her family.  ". . . Reg explained that you sat around a table with fingers touching its surface . . . 'That table really moves!  Tilts right up on two legs.  And it knocks.  At least, something knocks!  By counting the raps on the alphabet, you get names and messages!'"  Two names were spelled out in succession, apparently signifying Lena's grandparents: Jim had made the transition to the other side of the veil while Sarah-Ann was among the four family members presently assembled in the room.

Many years passed and Lena was unhappily married when she first witnessed mediumship.

We had swept into married life on a high wave of infatuation.


Roger was a sailor, a man for whom the romance of sea life held more attraction than domesticity.


Michael was born in the furnished rooms I occupied, and I was so ill that my mother took me home with her; Roger sailed four days before the confinement.  I did not see him again until Michael was six years old.


I began to long for the security I had given up when I left my home.

So that, when, during the lean days of 1930, Roger told me that he had been offered a posting in Canada, and that, although he would still be going to sea, we could make a settled home in the port where his ship would always dock, I urged him to accept the opportunity.


. . . After we had been in the Dominion about seven years, I precipitated the most ridiculous piece of folly that could have happened.

Out of pride, perhaps, or out of my growing sense of insecurity, or because I was driven by frustration, I persuaded Roger to buy a house!  We had no money, but, mistakenly, I reckoned that if I saddled my husband with a big debt he might make efforts to save something out of his salary towards paying it.


If Roger was driven by an obsession which I could not understand, then I, too, was in the grip of a monomania; a pre-occupation with material security, which nevertheless was eluding me.


By the spring of 1939 we had reached an impasse.


My only confidant was our doctor.  At last, worn out by worry and fear, I went to him and told him everything, gave him proof of the terror that had attacked poor Roger, even showed him incriminating letters.  He was shocked.

"You must go away from him as soon as you can," he said.  "That might bring him to his senses."

It was at this point in her life that Helen/Lena remembered a friend, Jean Webster: "She used to attend Spiritualistic meetings in obscure front parlours . . ."  Jean advised her to learn about the future by consulting the "psychic" and "half-Indian" 'Madam K.'  The following excerpts chronicle what happened during the visit to Madame K, who lived at the other end of town.

I remember it took me nearly three-quarters of an hour to reach the district of mean little homes.


Madam K's was at the very end, a wooden cabin with a learn-to of laths and tar paper like a horrible excrescence in the bushland beauty.


I braked to a stop.  A woman stood at the door.

"Come to see me, huh?"  She had a grey cat in her arms.  She hobbled out to the car, put one hand on the door and said, "'They' tol' me you come, Missy!  Go inside."

I was so astonished I did as she said, and found myself in a crowded room that smelt of cats and stale food.  The window was dirty and the sill cluttered with plants, so that little light came in.  I stumbled over a cat.  It let out a shriek, arched its back, and spat at me.  I would have fled, but Madam's bony frame blocked the doorway.  I was frightened.  The woman's great hooked nose, swarthy skin, and the black eyes that squinted at me were terrifying.

The woman made a gesture towards a broken raffia chair.  I sat.  Madam deposited the cat in a basket, and then I noticed that there were at least four other cats.


Then suddenly I was aware that Madam K was shuffling up and down between the cat boxes, crooning to herself in a queer guttural language.  She jerked her arms, nodded her head as if she was talking to someone.  I waited, astounded.  And then a name caught my attention; a well-remembered name; but a name that had been out of my thoughts for years.

"Sarah-Ann!  The little grandmother!"  The woman came to a halt before me, standing with folded arms, like an old-time chieftain of her race.  "The little grandmother of the Englishwoman!  Sarah-Ann!"

My mouth went dry.

Sarah-Ann?  Grannie?

She repeated the name lingeringly.

"Sarah-Ann!"  Now the harshness was gone from her voice.  She sing-songed with a rhythmic lilt, and swayed a little to and fro.  "The little grandmother!  Pretty!  Pink and white like a flower.  But old.  Very old.  Blue eyes, white hair, pointed chin.  And little!  Hands and feet, they little.  Body little too!  But spirit . . . , beeg spirit inside!  She says the head of house; grandchild not like that!  You!"  She wagged a bony finger close to my face.  "The 'old one' . . . , she say you like your own way.  You never listen, eh?  So now you get yourself into beeg trouble, huh?"

I said nothing.  My heart thumped like a tom-tom.  The room was so quiet I could hear the breathing of the cats.

"The little grandmother . . . she say you all tangled in worry.  No happiness with husband man.  He not bad man.  Only weak.  And now he in bad mess!  And Missy must go away.  Yes, over water, to place of her first breathing.  Sarah-Ann say that is for Missy to do.  Much to learn in land of islands.  Missy go soon.  Missy ask how?"  She seemed to listen to some silent voice.  "No can go, huh?  Sell beeg house, then!"

I trembled.

"Sell . . . ?" I stammered.  "But I can't!"

The Indian drew herself up.  She appeared much taller, far more imposing than when I had seen her first.

"You not sell house!" scornfully she burst out at me.  "Spirit sell house!  Sarah-Ann . . . she help foolish granddaughter.  She open your eyes.  So blind!  You, so wilful.  She say . . . ," listening.  "In ten days two people come.  They like house, like see mountains and sea.  They buy house.  Not give full price.  No matter.  Missy sell all!  Pronto!"  Again the bony hand swept close to my face.  "Missy not look back.  No regrets.  The 'old one' say, let it all go.  Before new moon, Missy cross water.  New life!  Better for both of you."

The woman's head jerked; her eyes opened.

"You know grandmother?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Good.  She help.  She help always now."  Her voice had again become guttural; the nobility was gone from her.  "But she say you not listen.  Or believe.  She come again . . . tell you same thing!  Maybe you believe then . . . huh?"

A moment later Madam scooped up the black cat.  "You go now."

I scrambled up, pressed a dollar bill into her hand and escaped.

I was very glad of the sweet river air outside.  But I was trembling so much that I could hardly press the brake pedal as I drove home.  I wanted to cry.  This wasn't help.  This was only more confusion.

How could an old lady who had been away from this world for over fifteen years know anything of this world?  How could a half-crazy Indian know anything about my fastidious, dominating grandmother?

The following chapter, IV, of The Dissolving Veil presents a second mediumship account.  Lena—as with many confronted by evidence that life is spiritually more complex than previously understood—was dubious about taking seriously the information offered to her through Madame K.  As sometimes to be expected with descriptions of transcendental communication, the reader should not accept the transcript as verbatim and also be aware that the beliefs of a witness may influence the wording of what has been recalled and articulated.  Nonetheless, consistent blog readers will recognize correlations with other case studies of transcendental communication, such as the communicating intelligences using the pronoun 'We'.

"Sarah-Ann," said the voice of my dead grandmother through the lips of a woman I had never before seen in my life.  "Yes, I'm Sarah-Ann.  I'm your Grannie, Lena.  I'm not dead, child.  A dead thing couldn't speak to you . . . , or hear your cry for help.  Lena, the dead can speak!  And they do not talk nonsense!"

The words were the words of Millie Watkins, a Canadian medium, but the voice, the accent, and the tone were those of my grandmother.  It was Grannie's voice, and the way she would have spoken; even the thin clipped accents were hers.

I was astounded.  This woman, Millie Watkins, happened to be out West on a visit from Toronto.  Jean Webster had suggested that I should have a 'reading' with her.  Jean insisted that Millie Watkins was one of the best psychics in  Canada.  She was sure that through her gift I would be helped in the right way.  I would perhaps get a 'message.'

Reluctantly, I agreed to see the woman, and asked her out to my house.  I telephoned the hotel in town where she was staying.

"I'm really on vacation," the woman said.  "But you're in trouble, honey, aren't you?"

"You have been told about me?" I countered, suspicious at once.

She laughed.  "I have never heard your name in my life.  But I can 'sense' trouble.  I'll come out to you."

She came, a homely little woman with an unlined face, greying hair, and large tortoiseshell glasses that gave her an owl-like look of wisdom.  Her violet dress was  too fussy for her size, and she wore a huge cross of garnets on her bosom; it swung like a tolling bell as she moved.  She brought her husband; he was certainly comfortingly earthly, I thought, wondering whether she was going to take off and float about the room.  But she sat herself quite comfortably in an armchair, and began by admiring the house and view.


The line of the distant Vancouver Island hills faded to a blue haze.  

When Lena "heard Grandmother's voice" speaking through the medium, there were some new comments about her predicament.

"I came to you through another channel!  But you scorned the channel, Lena."


"You have made a muddle of your life, my child.  You are disillusioned and unhappy.  We know all about it.  We know, too, about your husband.  He must be saved from his follies.  There is only one way now.  A clean cut.  The surgeon's knife must be applied to his disease . . . He must be shocked into seeing his folly . . . and overcoming it.  You must go away from him. . . ."

Eventually "the medium's voice died to a whisper" and the woman's husband said: "The power has gone.  Leave her alone for a bit.  She'll be all right."

"You can turn up the lights," Millie Watkins' Canadian drawl broke in on my confusion.  She was quite normal and placid.

"Did you have somebody you knew, honey?" she asked as she sipped water.

"My grandmother," I said.  Then I blurted out, "exactly as she used to be!"

After the couple left, Lena reflected that the room was different.

It seemed alive!  A power vibrated in it; a presence was there, a presence beyond that of my little grandmother.  It was a spirit of love and beauty such as I had never before known.  I felt that loving arms enfolded me.

When Roger's ship came into port, his tempestuous relationship with Lena resumed: "He flew into rages.  He spent money madly.  He would listen to none of my urge to restraint . . . Somebody was guiding us out of the morass we had made of our lives."  Then:

Suddenly he burst out, with uncanny insight.

"You're leaving me, aren't you?"


Even before the ship sailed, I had put the house in the hands of an agent.

The agent brought to the house an elderly man and a fair-haired woman: "The two people who, Madam K had predicted, would come to me!"  A cash offer was made.  "It was smaller than I had anticipated.  But, thinking quickly, I realized that it would cover the mortgages, and leave a few hundred dollars over."  The agent cabled Roger.  A few days later, the agent telephoned and informed Lena that her husband had cabled his agreement.

Meanwhile, unhappily, I made my arrangements to leave.  A dealer bought the furniture.  Our car was already gone.  Passages to England were booked.  I wrote to Roger and told him that what he had expected had come to pass.  Our doctor also confirmed that it was imperative that I get right away; he said he would not answer for my sanity if I remained.

It was as simple as most tragedies.

Before a new moon appeared, as Madame K had predicted, Michael and I were on a trans-continental train, speeding to Montreal and the ship that was to take us to a new life in England.