Glimpses Of The Next State.Pdf - Spiritualists' National Union

81History of a stranger in English, written backwards. I had kept up the writing each night,expecting that it would return to the “direct” style and that we should get some personal message.Curious to say, all my early script had not a private sentence in it, but referred to people of whomwe had no knowledge whatever ; but as the forces grew stronger, the messages became personal,and gave my mother and myself much comfort.A strange feature of this psychic writing is that I feel great reluctance to write for outsiders.Until I wrote for you, I had steadfastly refused to do much of it for anyone but my dear mother,who derived great happiness from these messages. Had it not been for her influence I shouldnever have continued the script, as I always felt a strange personal dread when occupying myself inthis way ; an uncanny and weird sensation like one feels when walking in a strange and unknownplace. I have never been able to shake this off.About the fall of 1908, Mr. A. W. Moore, of this city, asked me as a favour if I would consentto write for an English friend of his who was coming to America to investigate spiritualism.Naturally Mr. Moore wanted to show his countryman some phenomena out of the regular channels.I therefore agreed to do what I could when the stranger should arrive.I had never heard of you, and attached very little importance to the above conversationuntil, in my nightly messages for my mother, there came references to “The man of the Sea.” Iwas at this time writing a drama for the S—— brothers, and on the days when I was too indolent togo on with it, there would come a threat in the evening automatic script, “Unless you work on yourplay we will humiliate you before the Englishman.” My script was always signed “Leader of theBand.”On the afternoon in December, 1908, when you first called, you sent up a letter from Mr. A.W. Moore. In it you were introduced as Mr. Moore. I had an engagement, but, owing to a strongimpression early in the afternoon broke it. I could not explain why, even to myself, for I hadplanned it with pleasurableAnticipation ; as matters turned out it left me free to receive you ; and, as I told you at the time, Ifeel sure that some outside influence was at work to prevent me being absent when you came to thehouse ; all goes to show “there is a destiny which shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.” Iwas as much astonished as you were when the first of our messages were written.I had no knowledge of the various persons who wrote to you through my hand, nor of thosereferred to in the script. I had, indeed, heard of Sir W——C—— : but I had never heard of hisinventions, nor that he was married. Of Professor L——, Dr. Funk, Dr. Hodgson, and Mr. MyersI had not heard at all. I was aware that Mr. James had a chair of some sort at HarvardUniversity, but of nothing else about him ; nor did I know anything of Professor James Hyslop,except his name, before February 1909.Of Dr. Thomson Jay Hudson, who controlled me during my sittings with you, I knew thisonly ; That some years before I had read, in a desultory manner, a book called The Law of PsychicPhenomena, written by a man called Hudson ;the Christian names I did not know. I recalled thebook vaguely as one I had taken up in a course of general reading ; it was the only one I had everread along this line of thought. I never herd of the Widow’s Mite.Until we met I had not heard of the Society for Psychical Research. As to Mr. W. T. Stead,I had read some of his political articles in the American (a so-called yellow journal of this country).I do not remember the subject he wrote on ; and I have no recollection of his crusade against socialevils.Up to the time we met, I had not seen or heard of any mediums in Toledo, Detroit, orChicago. As a young girl (fourteen years old), in 1889, I once visited Detroit, Michigan, with myparents. We stopped at the Russel Hotel, which was the best at that time in the city.You asked if I had any unusual experiences as a child. When I was seven or eight I saw theface of Christ, so plainly that I never forgot the impression ; but my parents thought this vision wasnothing but pure imagination. The first evening on which I wrote automatically I thought I sawthe outline of a woman who was a seamstress in our family, and who died just before my father wastaken ill. I was never interested in ghost stories.I never learned “mirror-writing”; in fact, never saw such a thing in my life before reading“Jennie Reutlinger” in my glass.