Michael Prescott's Blog

In like Flint

As part of my continuing series on the controversial direct-voice medium Leslie Flint, I have a few excerpts from a 1980 book called Love after Death, by Victoria Stevenson. To be honest, I don't find this material very interesting or evidential, but for purposes of thoroughness, I've decided to include it.

After losing her husband Bob, Victoria spent a good deal of time trying to make contact with him via mediums, electronic voice phenomena, and other means. In 1972 she had her first of two sittings with Leslie Flint. She notes:

He is so much sought after by people from all over the world that I had to make the appointment months in advance .…

Seven of us gathered in his sitting-room, settled on easy chairs and settees, and one couple even sat on the floor at Mr. Flint's feet with their tape-recorders .… [I wonder if they were Betty Greene and George Woods? - MP]

The lights were turned out and we all sat in complete darkness. Mr. Flint gave the date of the sitting and introduced himself, saying that no medium could guarantee results. We might, he said, sit there for an hour with nothing happening. There was nothing one could do about it. The important thing was to be natural .…

"The voices vary," he went on. "Sometimes they're loud, distinct, clear, with a personality and characteristics. At other times they don't sound a scrap like the person they are. It's one of those things! One doesn't know what the answers will be .… But even if you don't recognize the voice let it realize you respond. It's not so much the sound of the voice but what it says that really is important, I think."

He went on to say he didn't go into trances. "It would be very unusual if I do. I'm quite normal, and if I think it necessary to talk to the voices I will, but I prefer to keep out of the picture."…

If anyone for any reason, he told us, was not satisfied with the sitting he didn't want a fee.

The sitters talked among themselves in darkness until Mickey, Flint's spirit control, started speaking. When he got to Victoria, he told her that her husband was there.

"He knew you were coming this afternoon," Micky [sic] said, "and … I don't know what he means by … changing your route … but he says you weren't quite sure whether that was the right way."[Ellipses in original.]

"You are quite right," I said. Mr. Flint's flat is in a part of London I didn't know well.

"And you couldn't quite make up your mind and he had to lead you because he didn't want you to get lost!" 

Since many first-time visitors to Flint might have had trouble finding his place, this comment is not necessarily very evidential.

Rather curiously, Mickey then turned his attention to another sitter, asking, "Are you Bobby?" She was not. "That's funny. Someone here is talking about Bobby. Is there someone here called Bobby?" Victoria's husband was Bob, so she identified "Bobby" as a message for her.

What's odd about this, if we assume that genuine communication was going on, is that Mickey was just talking to the husband a moment earlier, and yet now he seems to be hearing from a different person altogether – "someone here is talking about Bobby." Bobby is a pretty common name, and it's hard to resist the conclusion that Mickey was simply fishing in the expectation that one of the seven sitters would know somebody with that name or a similar name. It's possible, however, that someone else in the crowd of communicators was talking about the husband (we are told that a whole bunch of family members showed up on the other side). 

In any event, Bob himself was next to speak. Victoria tells us:

It didn't sound like Bob's voice – and I told him so. He sounded so grand.

"That's because I'm having to speak through this confounded box!" he said.

He spoke about voices that Victoria had recorded on tape – which might sound evidential, except that she and the other sitters had been talking about these voices before Mickey showed up. (The fact that she freely discussed these personal details in front of the medium does not speak well for her understanding of the protocols necessary to guard against fraud.)

She adds, "He talked of our home and put personal questions." But unfortunately we get no details, so it's impossible to know if Bob said anything specific or merely offered generalities that Victoria, who was clearly eager for contact, seized upon.

Then quite suddenly a voice called across:

"Doris! Doris!"

This is my first name, the one my family always called me by.

"This is Mother!" It was a light, bright, feminine voice. I recognized it at once as Mother's.

Well, she "recognized it" after it had been identified to her. The fact that the name Doris was used may or may not be significant, depending on how much Flint knew of his guests, and what name she used when making the appointment. 

She concludes, "It was a marvelous sitting and afterwards people crowded around me and congratulated me .…"

A year later, in 1973, she had a second sitting with Flint. Mickey came through as usual, asking one of the sitters, "Did you come with that lady, Vic? ... Are you with Vicky?… It's one of the names people call you, but it's not the name commonly used."

This seemed to me remarkable evidence: my Christian names are Doris Victoria, the first used by my family, and the second I use as my pen-name. I replied:

"Quite right, Micky [sic]. How did you know?"

"Because your Mum's telling me."

Again, it's unclear how much Flint knew about his guests. A year had passed, long enough that a fraudulent medium would have had time to find out that his sitter in 1972 used a pen name.

 Then, "Victoria!" came over the air, very faintly.

"Victoria!" A soft feminine voice whispered this a second time. "I'm not sure whether you can hear what I'm saying. Can you hear me? It's Mother."

"But – you never called me by my second name before!"

"I know." The voice was audible, but faint. "But I thought today I would, because it's not usual for you to use that name .…"

This doesn't make much sense to me. If anything, it seems counter-evidential. Assuming that the mother normally referred to her daughter as Doris, then calling her by the other name would seem like a "character error," as we say in the writing trade.

Victoria goes on to say that the voice did not sound "quite like" her mother's voice. The mother blamed "this box, I suppose. I don't understand much about it. All I know is that I could come and speak through – this box business – and I hope you can hear what I'm saying!"

She added that Bob was with her, as was Charles. Victoria didn't know anybody named Charles. Another very common name. Another fishing expedition?

Mickey assured her that "there was a Charles on your father's side of the family." There's no indication that Victoria ever confirmed this. Mickey then gave Victoria's married name, and a little later, a lady, "pushing herself in," introduced herself as Nell. Victoria tells us, "I'd recently lost a dear friend of that name." But she doesn't say whether the Nell communicator was specifically addressing her, or whether the name was simply thrown out there for any sitter to pick up on. Nor does she indicate that Nell said anything evidential about her passing, her relationship with Victoria, etc.

After this, Bob came through again.

He mentioned music and I asked him if it helped when we played it at home.

"That's what I mean. I try my utmost to draw near to you, and I must say I find music's a great help."

Without a transcript, it's impossible to be sure, but it sounds like Bob made a very general statement about music, which Victoria interpreted in a specific way – music that she played at home – an interpretation that Bob picked up on by saying that the music helped him to draw closer.

Following some other business with Mickey, the name Doris was again offered by a voice identifying itself as Bob. He said he was "so amused at Mother calling you Victoria," explaining that her mom "thought it would be interesting to let her know [she] hadn't forgotten [Victoria's] second name."

This doesn't help to clarify the character error. It sounds to me as if using the name Victoria was a mistake from which the "communicators" were still trying to recover.

At the end of the chapter, Victoria betrays her lack of knowledge of direct-voice mediumship in general, saying that for a long time she had no idea why the sittings were held in darkness or what the term "box" meant.

It was not until this book was about to be published that I put the question to Mr. Flint, who told me that Physical Mediums work in darkness as power and energy are drawn from the body of the medium and exude, as ectoplasm, a living substance which forms the artificial voice box.

It's hard to understand how somebody could attend two séances with Leslie Flint and even write a book about it without knowing these rather elemental facts.

Overall, as you can tell, I'm not impressed with this author or with these accounts. But there really isn't much to go on. Everything we've been told could probably be accounted for in terms of cold reading, warm reading (generalized statements that apply to most people), and hot reading (research into a sitter's background). The voices apparently did not sound much, if anything, like their living counterparts, and nothing that sounds particularly evidential was communicated. Victoria was obviously eager to be convinced and accepted whatever she was told (though she does say that she continued her quest, seeking still more proof), and she doesn't seem to have taken any precautions to protect her personal information. 

I don't think we can conclude much from this narrative, but there it is. The investigation continues! 

 

A close Shavian

Continuing our ongoing discussion about controversial direct-voice medium Leslie Flint, I'd like to quote some material from Allan Barham's 1982 book Life Unlimited: The Persistence of Personality Beyond Death. The book includes two chapters on Flint, whom Barham knew personally. Barham says he attended many Flint séances, often bringing friends along.

In the first chapter, he quotes from Flint's alleged spirit control, Mickey, who explains why the voices don't always sound quite right:

What one must bear in mind is that all methods of communication, whether it is in this form or any other, is basically a mental thing. And therefore, when a person comes to speak to you – when the scientist whose job it is to build up the voice-box from the ectoplasm supplied by the medium [has finished his work]: when it is all arranged and built up ready for the communicator, the transmission of their thought into sound, via the voice-box, is quite an art in itself. One has to learn how to manipulate it, and you've got to concentrate the mentality on saying certain things – invariably things that really are evidential to the recipient.

And what one has to bear in mind most of all is that all communication is artificial – it must be. You see, the majority of people who go to a séance – to this kind of séance, that is – they say "If that voice speaks to me in so-and-so's voice I'll believe it." And the point is that it doesn't always sound like the identical voice, because what produces the actual voice is, and must be, artificial. It cannot be under any circumstances the identical voice, because they are not using the same physical body or the same vocal organs under the same conditions.

What is actually happening is that they are trying to convert their thoughts into sound via the voice-box; the voice-box being artificial; temporarily constructed from ectoplasm, and kept in being, as far as possible, by the scientist who produces it and utilizes it. And I don't see how you can get the identical voice, the identical tone. Occasionally the voice is reproduced; another time it takes a long time to get anything like the original voice.

Whether or not we find this convincing, it is at least an attempt to explain why the voices often do not sound like the originals and why they sometimes sound too much like one another.

Most of the rest of Barham's coverage of Flint concerns a tape recording allegedly of the deceased George Bernard Shaw, known familiarly as G.B.S. This tape was not produced under anything like controlled conditions. According to Flint, he was having tea with a certain Mrs. Creet, his landlady, in one of her rooms (not the room he rented) when he had the feeling that someone was trying to come through. Barham tells us that a tape recorder was switched on and soon after, Shaw showed up. Barham was not present – the only people there were Flint and Mrs. Creet – but he did go to the trouble of interviewing the landlady. He concluded:

Mrs. Creet believed implicitly in the phenomenon of Direct Voice. She could have been called gullible, but she was certainly a woman of integrity. She confirmed what Leslie had told us, and in particular she confirms that the questions which she had asked G.B.S. were entirely spontaneous.

Naturally, we will have to take Barham's word for this. A skeptic could reasonably assert that Mrs. Creet was in on the trick and simply pulled the wool over Barham's eyes. The transcript of the tape, however, certainly suggests that she was enthralled by the conversation and entirely convinced of its genuineness.

Barham went further in his investigations. He made an effort to play the tape for various people who had known Shaw in life.

The first really impressive evidence for the authenticity of Shaw's communication came from George Bishop, a former dramatic critic of the Daily Telegraph, who had been a friend of G.B.S. for a great many years. It was with some reluctance that he consented to listen to the tape; he had no faith in psychic phenomena of this nature. But as soon as he heard the voice on the tape his attention was riveted, and he sat unmoving for the thirty minutes of the recording. When it was finished it was apparent that he was deeply moved, and he told me, "The mind and the mood are Shaw's."

The only difference that he had noticed, he said, between the voice of Shaw post-mortem and the Shaw whom he remembered was that the latter had a faster delivery than that on the tape. But he was in little doubt that it was Shaw himself who had spoken.

Barham, however, was not quite satisfied with this testimony because "it was an old friend who was concerned, who might have been influenced by the mechanism of wish-fulfillment." To get around this problem, he arranged to have the tape heard by some people who had known Shaw but had not been particularly friendly with him.

Like George Bishop, the writer Lawrence Easterbrook had known Shaw for many years, but was not, I think, a close friend. After he had heard the recording he wrote to me, "I found the G.B.S. recording interesting indeed. The more I think about it, the more impossible it seems for anyone but himself to have been responsible. It brought back to me the sense of infectious gaiety one got with him when he was in the family circle and not showing off. You felt the world with all its follies was tremendous fun, to be laughed at with gentleness and understanding."

Dame Sybil Thorndike did not agree about the "not showing off." She told me, "It sounds like Shaw putting on an act for people whom he despised intellectually."

J.B. Priestley did not believe that the voice was that of Shaw, but he admitted to me that George Bishop had known G.B.S. better than he had himself.

Barham concludes that the reactions were mixed. As for his own personal view:

I don't know whether Shaw communicated through Leslie Flint or not. Nevertheless I have an opinion about it. First, as I have indicated, I do not believe that Mr. Flint has a mind which is capable of producing the spontaneous conversation that is heard on the tape. I refer here to his conscious mind, as I have learned to know it over the years. What the unconscious mind contains provides one of the largest question marks in the area of psychical research.

It is conceivable that some other mind in an earthly body, capable of Shavian expression, telepathically provided the material that emerged at the séance. It is also conceivable that a mischievous discarnate being personated Shaw deceased. Some people might even believe, I suppose, that the devil was responsible for what took place, in order to mislead the faithful and attract them to Spiritualism. All that can be done is to consider the evidence, and to decide, if you can, where the probability lies.

In the second chapter dealing with Flint, Barham includes the greater part of a transcript of the G.B.S. tape itself. This is too long to quote in its entirety (it runs about ten pages), but it does convey a definite sense of personality and what you might call intellectual joie de vivre. The excerpts below were mainly chosen to highlight the humor of the exchange. Following the book's practice, "Shaw's" remarks are italicized.

Well, my name probably will not convey very much to you. You may have casually heard it mentioned in conversation; or it may be possible that you were one of the very disappointed people who came out of the theater grumbling about wasted money, after having seen one – or more perhaps if you ever went to second time, that is, to one of my plays....

I am very grateful indeed for many of the compensations of the earthly existence; but I have no desire whatever to return, should it be possible, that is; to return to live it all over again, and become, as I believe some people say one does, someone else. The fact of having been George Bernard Shaw is enough for any one person for any time.

Mrs. Creet: Oh, your name will last everlastingly I should think.

What a dreadful thought that is....

Mrs. Creet: You were a wonderful old man, you know. You lived to a very great age.

I don't mind "wonderful"; I rather object to the "old."…

Well, I must admit [the afterlife] was a very great surprise. I think the surprise of finding that I was still alive, and yet I was dead, was in itself a very great disappointment to me.… I could see no point in continuing. After all's said and done, I could see no point in a life after death. I think that an earthly existence such as I experienced was enough for any one man….

Mrs. Creet: The continuation is very much more pleasant than it has been on the earth, isn't it?

You seem to know more about it than I do! May I be allowed to say, madam, since you have not yet arrived here, by what right can you tell me that it's better over here?…

Of course, I realize now that me – or I, if I should speak in the so-called correct English – that I was more than the body. The same as a lot of people said that the preface to my plays was more to the point and more important than the play itself.

Mrs. Creet: That's quite true.

Oh, you agree with that do you?

Mrs. Creet: Oh, I do. I think your prefaces are marvelous.

Well, it's a pity they couldn't act the preface, and just leave the play out.…

[As an aside, I find Shaw's pique at having his mock self-effacing remark taken seriously rather amusing and very much in keeping with the touchy egos of many creative types. - MP]

I've never been terribly keen to be a sinner. In fact, when I tried to be a sinner, I was never very successful – much to my great disappointment. I wanted to sin once or twice with several very charming ladies, but they would only sin by correspondence, which was no satisfaction to me at all!… I was a bit of a sentimental old fool, you know, but I wouldn't let people know it. At least, I tried to avoid them realizing it. I used to put on a brusque manner, you know, and try and waggle my beard and frighten them. I didn't always succeed; I did it much better by postcards. Now I come to think about it, I was much more successful with my pen than ever I was with my tongue.…

Mrs. Creet: When you were passing over… Tell us something about that. I'm always very interested…

I never knew a woman who was so anxious to know about death before! Why don't you wait until you come?… Surely, my dear, it's more interesting to know something about life rather than death.

Mrs. Creet: Yes, but then you can start with death, you see, and as you gradually go on, we will hear a bit more.

One usually starts with birth and ends up with death. But now I've had to reverse the procedure and start with death.… But I must admit that I was very much surprised, and very much perturbed … and at the same time very elated; if one can have three such different emotions all at once. I was elated because I realized that I hadn't lost the opportunity to do something which I had always wanted to do – and that was write a successful play. Because you know although financially my plays were successful, I was never really satisfied with them myself. But I'm just telling you that as a secret. You must never let anyone else know. Otherwise they might think that I wasn't so good as they thought I was!…

Well, I met my own parents, of course. I can't say I was exactly elated about that, but they seemed to be much more excited about it than I was.…

Where were we? Oh, I was talking about Oscar [Wilde]. Of course, you know he was a fool, but then again most of the best people are! Most of the most intellectually brilliant people, as far as the world is concerned, are considered fools; so there's hope perhaps for you!…

[Another rather clever jab at the happily oblivious Mrs. Creet. - MP]

The only people, I think, who really had any affection for me were the children, who were never really frightened of me like the adults. I think children are much more trusting; they have much more faith in human beings. Whereas as you get older you become suspicious; and children are very rarely suspicious, especially of old men, because I think that they realize that old men might be Father Christmas in disguise, and bring them a nice present at Christmas if they treat them nicely.… I probably would have filled the position very nicely, now I come to think of it. In fact I think I'd have made a much better Father Christmas than a playwright!…

I'm just joking; because I realize that you are in rather an invidious position, poor dears, sitting up here in this room in the dark, listening to a voice coming out of the void, and not knowing quite who, what or how. After all, I say I'm G.B.S. You haven't the faintest idea. I might be Jesus Christ for all you know. But there you are; that's a matter of opinion.

[Possibly another witticism, suggesting that it's a matter of opinion whether or not Shaw is the equal of Jesus Christ. If this is a joke, it passes completely over Mrs. Creet's head. - MP]

Mrs. Creet: Oh, but we know you're G.B.S. by what you say.

But you know, when you come to think of it, people do accept things too much on face value.…

I know Oscar's very interested [in producing more plays]; and as for that chappie friend of yours, Chopin, he's rounding us all up.

Mrs. Creet: Isn't he a wonderful soul, GBS?

He's a very fine fellow indeed; but you know there's such a thing as letting the dead rest! And if I know him, he's not going to let anybody rest!…

I don't think there are the artistes of the caliber of the old days [in the theater today]. I think that is partly because there are no great actor-managers. I think it is that in the old days they used to, as you know, tour the provinces; they use to learn their work the hard way. I mean they were trained; they knew every aspect of their art. They weren't fêted and courted by society like they are today. Today the theatrical profession seems more interested in the social register than it actually seems interested in "the boards," which I think is a pity. You can't divide yourself. There are exceptions, of course.

In [Henry] Irving's latter days he was very much courted and fêted; but he always kept his distance, more or less, from the general public. But then again, I think that he had the theater at heart; he wanted to make it respectable because, you know, in my early years the theater wasn't exactly a respectable place. No, it was the sort of place where one went to be entertained, and one admired the actors of the day. One went to see special types of plays and special types of theaters; and the orchestra-pit was put there to separate the public from the vagabonds. That was the only reason they ever had an orchestra-pit, because it wasn't particularly so much the musicians that mattered, because they were just put there with their instruments to keep the two apart. Usually somebody would blow on a trumpet to let people know there was a difference between the angels and the devils.

It can certainly be argued that there is nothing especially evidential in all this, apart from a few references to figures known to Shaw in his earthly days. Still, the quoted comments do not seem out of character or markedly below the intellectual level Shaw attained in life. There is an engaging blend of exaggerated self-deprecation and touchy vanity, a certain amused scorn for his interlocutor, combined perhaps with a touch of pity, and a persuasive nostalgia for the great old days of his youth, when men like Irving (a towering figure in London stagecraft) dominated the scene. If this is merely a performance – and an improvised one, at that – by Leslie Flint, a man of very limited education, then it is a small masterpiece.

Barham concludes:

It is doubtful whether any Irish intonation is discernible in the communication. If this is indeed what it purports to be, the reason for the lack of an appropriate accent may be the artificial method of the production of the voice, as was suggested earlier. Apart from this, I remember what one of Shaw's friends told me, namely that the Irish accent was put on when he spoke on public occasions.

Natural born killers?

Some time ago we had a discussion about whether some people are just born bad — the "bad seed" idea. Here's a lengthy article from The Atlantic dealing sympathetically but realistically with this issue. (You may be required to disable ad blocking on that page.)

Starting at age 6, Samantha began drawing pictures of murder weapons: a knife, a bow and arrow, chemicals for poisoning, a plastic bag for suffocating. She tells me that she pretended to kill her stuffed animals.

“You were practicing on your stuffed animals?,” I ask her.

She nods.

“How did you feel when you were doing that to your stuffed animals?”

“Happy.”

“Why did it make you feel happy?”

“Because I thought that someday I was going to end up doing it on somebody.”...

Samantha had just turned 6. Suddenly Jen heard screaming from the back seat, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw Samantha with her hands around the throat of her 2-year-old sister, who was trapped in her car seat. Jen separated them, and once they were home, she pulled Samantha aside.

“What were you doing?,” Jen asked.

“I was trying to choke her,” Samantha said.

“You realize that would have killed her? She would not have been able to breathe. She would have died.”

“I know.”

“What about the rest of us?”

“I want to kill all of you.”...

Four months later, Samantha tried to strangle her baby brother, who was just two months old....

Samantha was diagnosed with conduct disorder with callous and unemotional traits. She had all the characteristics of a budding psychopath.... Researchers shy away from calling children psychopaths; the term carries too much stigma, and too much determinism. They prefer to describe children like Samantha as having “callous and unemotional traits,” shorthand for a cluster of characteristics and behaviors, including a lack of empathy, remorse, or guilt; shallow emotions; aggression and even cruelty; and a seeming indifference to punishment. Callous and unemotional children have no trouble hurting others to get what they want. If they do seem caring or empathetic, they’re probably trying to manipulate you.

Researchers believe that nearly 1 percent of children exhibit these traits, about as many as have autism or bipolar disorder....

Researchers believe that two paths can lead to psychopathy: one dominated by nature, the other by nurture. For some children, their environment—growing up in poverty, living with abusive parents, fending for themselves in dangerous neighborhoods—can turn them violent and coldhearted. These kids aren’t born callous and unemotional; many experts suggest that if they’re given a reprieve from their environment, they can be pulled back from psychopathy’s edge.

But other children display callous and unemotional traits even though they are raised by loving parents in safe neighborhoods. Large studies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have found that this early-onset condition is highly hereditary, hardwired in the brain—and especially difficult to treat. “We’d like to think a mother and father’s love can turn everything around,” Raine says. “But there are times where parents are doing the very best they can, but the kid—even from the get-go—is just a bad kid.”

Still, researchers stress that a callous child—even one who was born that way—is not automatically destined for psychopathy. By some estimates, four out of five children with these traits do not grow up to be psychopaths. The mystery—the one everyone is trying to solve—is why some of these children develop into normal adults while others end up on death row.

There's a lot more. Read the whole thing.

All rats go to heaven

Back in 2014 I published three blog posts on a study that showed a surge of electrical activity in the brains of dying rats. (First post, second post, third post.)

The surge was suggested as a possible naturalistic explanation of the near-death experience. Some NDE researchers countered that the electrical surge was so extremely minute (too small to be detected by a standard EEG) that it could not account for the complexity of the subjective experience reported by patients.

Recently a reader sent me two more studies on same subject. The first article, "Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest," was originally published in 2015. Its findings: 

Asphyxia stimulates a robust and sustained increase of functional and effective cortical connectivity, an immediate increase in cortical release of a large set of neurotransmitters, and a delayed activation of corticocardiac functional and effective connectivity that persists until the onset of ventricular fibrillation.... These results demonstrate that asphyxia activates a brainstorm, which accelerates premature death of the heart and the brain.

The second article, "Neural Correlates of Consciousness at Near-Electrocerebral Silence in an Asphyxial Cardiac Arrest Model," appeared in April of 2017. It concludes: 

In summary, we found asphyxial CA [= cardiac arrest] to induce a period of near-electrocerebral silence that was marked by hypersynchrony in the frontal lobes and increased power in the visual cortices, which suggests potential markers of consciousness.

The material in both cases gets very technical, as would be expected of articles written by and for neuroscientists.

My first reaction is that the electrical activity reported still seems to be extremely minimal and restricted to narrow bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. This would (I think) make it hard to account for the persistence of consciousness according to currently accepted models of brain functioning, which posit widespread "global" information processing. In addition, the surge is very brief, yet some NDEs take place considerably later and last longer (as estimated by patients' veridical observations).

These points were part of the rebuttal offered by Bruce Greyson, Edward F. Kelly, and W.J. Ross Dunseath after the earlier rat study was published: 

[T]he activity observed following cardiac arrest represents a tiny fraction of the total neuroelectric power present just before arrest ..., and thus it is misleading to describe these rat brains as being “hyperaroused.” All that can be concluded is that activity of unknown functional significance occurred at a few places in the EEG frequency spectrum in the context of near-total obliteration of activity accompanying the waking state. The pertinent question here is not whether there is any brain electrical activity at all after cardiac arrest, but whether there is activity of the type currently thought to be necessary for conscious experience....

[M]any reports of near-death experiences include verifiable perceptions by the experiencer that are anchored to specific time periods far longer than 30 s after cardiac arrest, the duration of the electrical surge in this study.

There was also a response by Robert Mays, who, like Greyson et al., argued that the electrical activity post-cardiac arrest was too small to account for consciousness.

The original researchers responded forcefully to Greyson et al. in this letter.

I think the NDE researchers' objections would apply to the new studies also. But I'm no expert, and perhaps there is something new in these papers, so I'm putting them out there to see if anyone more knowledgeable than I am in matters of neuroscience would like to comment.

More on Flint

I figured that before ordering another book about Leslie Flint, I would check my own fairly large collection of paranormal literature to see if he was covered in any of the books I already own. Admittedly, many of these books are too specialized to touch on Flint's mediumship; I wouldn't expect a book devoted to near-death experiences, for instance, to talk about a direct-voice medium. Even so, I was surprised to find Flint mentioned in the index of only one book (other than the Neville Randall book I discussed in my last post).

It would appear that Flint does not occupy a particularly prominent position in parapsychological studies, despite his own claim of being the most tested medium in history.

The one book I did find was Is There an Afterlife? by the late David Fontana. As the subtitle (A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence) suggests, the book is a compendium of cases relevant to the question of life after death. Pages 233 through 237 cover Leslie Flint. Here are some excerpts:

So strong and consistent were the voices that Flint soon attracted the attention of researchers, and three of the experiments set up by them to test him deserve mention. In the first of these, organized by the Reverend Drayton Thomas in 1948, Thomas closed Flint's mouth with adhesive surgical tape over which he secured a scarf, then tied Flint's hands to the arms of his chair. Another cord was tied at his forehead so that he could not bend his head an attempt to remove scarf and tape by rubbing his mouth against his shoulders. The sitting proceeded as normal, and Drayton Thomas reported that independent voices were heard with all their usual clarity, sometimes even shouting loudly. At the close of the sitting, it was found that everything securing Flint* was still firmly in place.

[*The text reads "Ford," an obvious typo.]

This appeared to dispose of the theory held by some researchers, that although Flint might perhaps receive genuine spirit communications, the supposed independent voices were not independent at all but came from his own lips. A few weeks later Drayton Thomas arranged for the Research Officer of the SPR, Dr. Donald West (subsequently Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and twice President of the SPR) and other SPR members to attend a sitting of Flint's circle. Donald West was invited to secure Flint's arms to his chair and to seal his mouth with both horizontal and vertical strips of adhesive tape, and to trace around each strip with indelible pencil to ensure that any movement of the tapes during the sitting would be readily apparent. Flint, entranced on this occasion, sat in the darkness of a cabinet as it was agreed that the lights would remain on in the room. Again voices were heard, and Dr. West was given permission by the communicators to raise the curtain of the cabinet briefly during the sitting, with the lights still on, to check that everything securing Flint was still intact. All seemed well, but on checking at the end of the sitting Donald West discovered that one of the pieces of tape was no longer in line with his pencil markings. Although no suggestion was made that this was Flint's doing (one of the tapes may have moved slightly with Flint's labored breathing) this invalidated the test .…

There was no claim that Flint himself was responsible, and no explanation as to how, bound as he was, he could have displaced the tape deliberately or of how, with only a small displacement, he would have been able to fake independent voices. Nevertheless, Donald West's concern was to close every loophole that might permit critics to argue a normal explanation for the voices, the matter how unlikely this normal explanation might be. He was also doubtful that the cords binding Flint were fully secure owing to the thick coat that Flint insisted on wearing even though the cabinet was hot and stuffy, and would have preferred that the medium's hands were held throughout the sitting by disinterested observers.

Donald West attended two other sittings of the Flint circle, both of which took place in darkness and both of which left him unable to reach conclusions as to the genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena; he then invited Flint to participate in a more thorough investigation at the SPR offices. The conditions he suggested for the test were that the sitters would include "a majority of sympathetic spiritualists," that the medium should have his lips sealed and his hands held by sitters on either side, and that he should wear a throat microphone. The sitting could take place in complete darkness if Flint preferred, but in this case he should be under observation through an infrared viewer. Disappointed that he had not already satisfied Dr. West that the voices were genuine, Flint tells us in his autobiography that he refused.

It is a pity that Flint did not agree to be tested under Dr. West's conditions, none of which was in any sense unreasonable (a decision that he tells us in his book that he subsequently regretted) .…

However, two years later Leslie Flint again agreed to be put to the scientific test, this time under the supervision of Professor Bennett, an electrical engineer from Columbia University, and under the aegis of Drayton Thomas and Brigadier Firebrace, another prominent researcher. This time, in addition to the usual taping and trussing, Flint was fastened to a throat microphone wired to an amplifier that would detect even the slightest attempt to use his voice; his hands were held by investigators, and an infrared viewer that detects movement even in the dark was trained upon him throughout. Once again independent voices were heard, though more faintly than usual, and Professor Bennett was able to confirm that Flint's vocal cords were not involved in their production. Very near the end of the sitting the infrared viewer failed, and immediately the voice heard speaking at the time increased in volume. Flint tells us that Brigadier Firebrace confirmed these facts in writing to him, and testified that the medium could have had no knowledge that the viewer had failed, yet the independent voice "immediately doubled in volume." Firebrace concluded from this that infrared may weaken mediumship in some way .…

Flint worked at a time when it was possible to tape record independent voice settings, and two of Flint's regular sitters, George Woods and Betty Greene, were able to put on record over 500 of their conversations with communicators. These were later transcribed, and a selection published by Neville Randall (Randall 1975). George Woods and Betty Greene were concerned primarily to investigate the experience of dying and the nature of the afterlife (Betty Greene's opening question to communicators was "Can you describe your reactions when you found yourself alive?"), and although this material carries its own interest, it is regrettable that once again no consistent attempt was made by investigators to obtain the kind of personal details from communicators that could be verified later. It also seems odd that communicators did not themselves offer these details, and request that contact be made with their surviving relatives and friends. As many of the communicators were what is now generally called drop-ins (i.e. unknown to anyone present, and thus immune to the charge that their details came telepathically from the sitters,), this failure to collect verifiable information is doubly disappointing.

Flint was never identified in fraud, and his mediumship further supports the survivalist argument that communications through at least certain mediums do not appear to be due to any psychic abilities in the living so far identified in laboratory experiments.

Fontana's references include Flint's autobiography Voices in the Dark and Randall's Life After Death.  It's not clear if he used any other sources, or if Flint's claims about the independent validation of these tests were confirmed by the other people involved.