This essay is on Spiritualism, and I doubt if any subject has had so many essays written with the same title. This is because the question is fundamental to the practice. When a medium attempts to contact the dead, she asks a double-edged question. So IS there anybody there? Is the question a general inquiry as to if anyone has come through yet, or is it more fundamental? Or is it a skeptical inquiry, trying to decide whether there could be anyone there in the first place? Gladys Leonard: A typical medium was Gladys Leonard. When her mother died, Gladys opened her eyes one night and found her standing by the bed. It wasn’t a shock to her, for she had been having heaven-like visions since she was a child. But it was the final piece of the jig-saw which turned this Lancashire woman into one of Britain’s most famous Spiritualist mediums. Going on to work for forty years with her spirit guide, Feda, her greatest fame came during World War One, when she would contact the war dead. Amongst those she spoke to was the recently departed Raymond Lodge, son of Society for Psychical Research founder Sir Oliver Lodge. Of course, she was often accused of being a fraud. But despite repeated investigations by private detectives, when she died in 1968, Gladys Leonard’s reputation was intact. Roots of spiritualism: Despite claims to the contrary, the medium is the world’s oldest profession. Identified from the earliest known pre-history he, or she, can be identified as the instigator of hysterical tribal ritual, known throughout history as the shaman, witch-doctor or medicine man.
However, in the Spiritualist medium, the talent came into its own. But how did Spiritualism begin? Fundamental to the beginnings of Spiritualism was American clairvoyant Andrew Jackson Davis. During the 1840s he toured America arguing that upon bodily death the spirit remained alive and moved into another existence. Hence, since it was not dead, communication with the living should be possible.
Essay by Anthony North
