Following the beginning of the mysterious rap phenomena that began in 1848, there arose different types of persons calling themselves mediums. There were mediums such as Daniel Dunglas Home, who were classified as physical mediums, because the mysterious effects reported around them were mainly physical effects such as musical instruments playing by themselves, and levitations of tables (or perhaps even a levitation of the medium himself). There were also mediums classified as mental mediums, who were involved with mysterious mental effects. A mental medium might claim to be able to contact the deceased by means of mental techniques long practiced by the medium, or by means of entering into a trance. Many of the mental mediums have used methods similar to methods that have been called "channeling" in recent decades.
Some mental mediums held up very well to prolonged examination by scientists. Perhaps the most successful mental medium was the American medium Leonora Piper. A long account of her case is given in my post here. Leonora Piper held up very well to many years of very close and careful examination by members of the Society for Psychical Research. The main person examining her case was a person (Richard Hodgson) who was very skeptical at first, but later became convinced that Piper was actually communicating with the deceased.
Innumerable times Leonora Piper seemed to display detailed knowledge of things that were known to her visitors, but should have been unknown to her, with the most impressive cases coming when Leonora did not even know the identity of her visitor. Such knowledge often seemed to include knowing about obscure events or little-known persons known to her visitors, which she should have known nothing about. This occurred around years such as 1897, where it was impossible to easily gather obscure information by techniques such as using the Internet.
A British medium of the early twentieth century (Gladys Osborne Leonard) seemed to produce equally impressive results, results so impressive she was often called "the British Leonora Piper." The most impressive existing record of the results of Gladys Osborne Leonard is the 1916 book Raymond, or Life After Death by Sir Oliver Lodge, which can be read online for free here. The book is a meticulous account of interactions Lodge had with mediums after the death of his son Raymond, which occurred on September 14, 1915. The book has transcripts of quite a few sessions Lodge had with mediums such as Leonard.
Summarizing these cases would be quite a chore, so instead I'll try to tackle the much easier task of describing out-of-body experiences reported by mediums such as Leonard. An account of such an experience appeared on page 149 of the July 1926 edition of The International Psychic Gazette, and is entitled "Travelling in the Astral: Remarkable Experiences." At the time the report was published, the term "out-of-body experience" was not in common use, and almost no one had heard of such experiences. There had developed the idea, however, that each human has a soul-like or immaterial "astral body" that might leave the physical body. It was sometimes said that such an astral body was made of "finer matter" or energy or matter that moved at a higher rate of vibration than ordinary matter.
Gladys stated this:
"Then I felt a tingling sort of thrill as if a slight current of electricity were passing through my body, and I again had a sensation of not resting on the bed. I could think quite clearly, but taking a lesson from my previous disappointment I held my mind under quiet control, saying to myself that I would notice anything that happened but would not anticipate or wonder. What happened I shall never forget; it was wonderful ! I did not move consciously in any way, either limb or muscle, and my eyes were closed. I wondered how far my body might be above the bed, and by a little mental effort I opened my eyes and looked down and saw my physical body resting on the bed, while I in my astral body seemed to be resting above my physical body. To show you how clear my thoughts were, I noticed that the head of my physical body was lying on a particular nightdress case with an embroidered corner. I was surprised at seeing it there, because I was not aware of its having been changed that morning for the one I had been using. I thought, too, how funny it was that my head was resting on it, because I don’t usually do that. I was pleased at myself for noticing these things."
"The next thing I felt was that my astral body was getting farther away from my physical body, and I seemed to be hovering over the edge of the bed for a few seconds. Then I began to feel just a little nervous, and the thought flashed across my mind—' Shall I be able to get back easily ? ' That question and slight fear drew me back about a foot towards my physical body. But my interest got the better of my fear, and I thought—' Whatever happens, let me go through with it !' "
"The moment I so determined I became aware of my husband opening our flat door, which makes a slight noise on being opened, and speaking to someone in the hall outside. He was speaking in a low voice, so as not to disturb me. I thought—' I should like to go and see to whom he is speaking,' and I don’t know how it happened, but I found myself at once standing at my husband’s elbow at the flat door. I was not aware of passing through the bedroom door, which is kept closed, but here I was. I looked through the open door, and saw that the man he was speaking to was from the Gas Company. What they were speaking about I did not notice, because just after I joined them (in my astral body) a maid from one of the upstairs flats passed them, and I saw my husband, without speaking to her, take a coin from his pocket and hand it to her. I thought—' That’s funny! Why did he give that servant a coin ? ' I thought also— ' I will remember that and ask him.' I arranged all this methodically thus—Two things to remember: (i) the gasman, and (2) the upstairs servant."
"Then I found myself again back in the bedroom without knowing how. I noticed my clarity of thinking was leaving me, making me less conscious, and I thought that was possibly because I was about to return into my physical body. So I gave myself up to it, and ceased thinking, so as to make the return easier. In a moment or two I was surprised to find my mind begin to work again, but on looking around I saw at once that I was not on my bed, nor even in my bedroom, but in some other room I had never seen before. What interested me most was, I saw that the lady and gentleman I was expecting that afternoon were in this room, talking to a gentleman I had never seen before. I heard my own name mentioned by the lady. There was quite a conversation which I could not wholly catch, but I gathered that my sitters were inviting the stranger to share their sitting that afternoon. I pulled myself up at this and thought—' I must be dreaming, because these two people would never allow anyone to join them in what they regard as a very private and sacred matter.' I looked at the stranger and saw he was a man of striking personality, not of an ordinary type at all. I got the impression of his appearance well in my mind, to carry it back with me into my physical body. I thought— ' I will hurry back and tell my husband at once, for it will be a good test if this gentleman should after all come with them.' "
The out-of-body experience continues, and Gladys reports hearing of a Gertrude she had not met. Later Gladys told her husband about the experience. He confirmed that he had been talking to a man from the Gas Company, and that he had then paid a woman a coin for some favor done a few days before, doing this while not seeing Gladys nearby. Later the other part of the "astral body observation" was also apparently confirmed. Gladys says, "When I went into the room and saw the stranger he was so identically the same man as I had seen when in my astral body that I scarcely knew how to pull myself together and speak in an ordinary way to my sitters." Gladys also reports getting a confirmation about the reality of the Gertrude seen in her out-of-body experience. The account is too long and complicated for me to directly quote the whole account.
We seem to have here a "veridical out-of-body experience" like the "veridical near-death experiences" described in my widely-read post here, both involving people seemingly having trips out of their body, and observing things they never should have seen while in their body, with the details later being confirmed by regular in-the-body observations.
Another case of a female medium reporting an out-of-body experience can be read in the 1936 book 'Twixt Earth and Heaven by Annie Britain, which you can read here. On page 50 she states this:
"When I leave my body my mental volition is not entirely suspended, although my consciousness is directed towards certain things, and away from others. I am sometimes aware of my 'spirit body' and sometimes not. On one occasion I had sufficient volition to try an experiment. I tried to grasp and move some cups and saucers in the room, but my fingers passed through them as if they were shadows. On the same occasion I tried to slap and pinch the faces of the people in the room but could make no impression on them, and they did not take the least notice of me. I walked through a table as though it were an optical illusion. I remember feeling amused to think that I was so superior to flesh and blood, which usually comes off second best in encounter with wood, stone or steel. Tables, chairs, walls, the bodies of humans, seem as unsubstantial as shadows when one is out of the body. Yet whenever my attention is directed to my own spirit body, it seems solid and real, and as far as I have been able to observe, an exact replica of my earthly body."
Although the account above may seem too fantastic to believe, there are actually quite a few other people who claim to have had similar experiences during out-of-body experiences: experiences recorded as being able to pass through solid matter. I list five other such experiences in the third section of my long post here, which is one of the most extensive discussions ever published of the phenomenology of out-of-body experiences, and all of the strange types of things that people report when having such experiences.
Annie states this about how her out-of-body experiences begin and end:
"I should mention in passing that I am seldom conscious of leaving the body. I simply find myself standing beside my sleeping form. The sensation on returning is always distinct; it is a sort of shock-the kind of physical shock one experiences when one wakes from sleep with a start. How I really enter I cannot explain; we seem to fuse into each other with a sort of snap."
Annie then states on page 52 this very interesting passage in which she seems to describe out-of-body experiences that take her beyond this earthly realm of existence:
"In my spirit travels I am not always moving among earthly scenes, but sometimes I have the sensation of being propelled upwards through a bright atmosphere into a more ethereal world. It is a world in which I see trees and flowers, houses and people. And yet I am aware that I see other things that no earthly eye will ever see; but they do not seem strange to me, it is as if I had always known them, or had known them long ago, and had forgotten them. When I wake I can recall the trees, the flowers, the houses, but these other things elude me. It is, I think, the effects of light and colour that linger with me longest when I return. How shall I ever forget that radiant, light-drenched atmosphere! The sky is blue, but it is like blue fire. In some landscapes the colours are bright, in some they are of the softest shades, the most attenuated hues, but they blend and fade into others as they do in no earthly landscape. I have seen green forests rise up tier above tier, and fade away into blue night. I have seen the most vivid colours; meadows of a richer deeper green than those in which our lakeland cattle wade; valleys so verdant as to assuage all sorrow; blues that are soul searching; reds that are deeper than sunset or blood. In those happy regions an indescribable spell lies upon every flower and hedgerow and tree; it is like a sixth sense, and I seem to recapture the first fresh glory of earliest childhood."
The language reminds me of language that often appears in accounts of near-death experiences, in which people will often report seeing some strange ethereal realm that is very unworldly but also something that causes a person to have a feeling that he is "coming back home," as if he once lived in such a place. I discuss such accounts in my post here.
On page 54 Annie makes these claims regarding a missing person. The reference to "the mesmeric sleep" is a reference to being hypnotized:
"My husband put me into mesmeric sleep, and suggested that I should trace the young woman if alive, or find her body if dead. I left the body, and found myself walking by a canal or river. It was dark and I could not see beyond the path and the water. I walked along till I came to a spot where the water was wider and there were rushes. I felt immediately that this was the spot, and saw in the distance an inky-blue coppice of trees and the shadowy outlines of a colliery. I did not see the body; I knew the experience would be gruesome and shrank from it. Soon afterwards I awoke and described my adventure. A few days later the body came to the surface in the very spot amongst the rushes that I had seen in my vision."
On page 56 we hear an astonishing tale which begins like this:
"I woke to find myself standing outside my body, gazing at the sleeping form in the chair. My cousin was by my side, a young man who had died some years before, and to whom I had been deeply attached. I was not greatly surprised to see him, as he had often escorted me on my spirit travels. Now he offered to take me out for the afternoon and see some of the spirit people. We passed out through the walls of the room, seeming to glide rather than to walk, with no more sense of motion than if we had been in a balloon."
Annie's accounts of her travels out of the body go and on, with many a fantastic adventure reported. I'm sure many of her 1936 readers must have thought that mere runaway imagination was involved. But about 1975 and thereafter many reports started to be published of near-death experiences, with people often reporting floating out of their bodies, and finding themselves traveling to unearthly mystical realms sounding like the one described by Annie. And such reports often involved claims of encountering the deceased, claims similar to those Annie made. In the light of such near-death experience reports occurring so frequently, the accounts in Annie's books may not seem as hard-to-believe as they might have seemed to readers in 1936.
A wide variety of mysterious psychic phenomena were reported in connection with Frederica Hauffe, a visionary (dubbed the Seeress of Provost) born in 1801. In an 1845 work by the physician Justinus Kerner, we read about such phenomena. Hauffe reportedly did quite a lot of spirit seeing, so we can classify her as a medium. On the page here and the next one we read that she had out-of-body experiences (like many others):
If the topic of this post interested you, check out my free 292-page book "Eeriest Events," now available on www.archive.org using the link here. The book discusses phenomena such as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, apparition sightings, deathbed visions and precognitive visions. Using the native www.archive.org file viewer in single-page mode, you can conveniently read the whole book by finger swiping. Scholars who are interested in following the links may prefer to download the book as a PDF file, which will allow opening links by right-clicking on a link. Those interested in whether modern scientists are able to explain accounts such as those discussed above may enjoy my recently uploaded 160-page free online book "Near-Death Experiences and Out-of-Body Experiences," which can be read at www.archive.org using the link here.
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