More excerpts from A Venture in Immortality, by David Kennedy. I'm finding this book very worthwhile. Yes, it's true, as Amos Oliver Doyle pointed out in the previous comments thread, that all these stories tend to blur together after a while. But it's also true, as Art observed in the same thread, that if we don't remind ourselves of the uncanny accuracy and specificity of these narratives from time to time, they will lose their persuasive power.
Anyway, here are more reported after-death communications from David Kennedy's wife, Ann.
While Kennedy was riding on a train with the medium Albert Best, there was this spontaneous communication:
Albert put down his book and in his excited typical stammer which I had come to recognize as the indication that he was getting something, he said, "Ann is just behind me, she asked me to tell you about the slipper". I said nothing and Albert paused for a few seconds as he often does while getting a message right. Then in more confident tone and slower and louder voice, "When your wife's personal effects were brought back from hospital were there blue slippers. No wait. There was only one blue slipper, the other was missing."
He continued in his confident tone as he seemed to see things more clearly, "Your wife is giving this as evidence, you understand? In your wife's toilet bag she says there were three complete sets of dentures which came back from hospital. She is also saying, Teresa. The same toilet bag had a blue container of talcum powder and a triangular small bottle of toilet water." Albert continued, "Your wife was with you this morning when you took out a large silk handkerchief and used it to wrap something in. This morning before you left the house". "Now," said Albert, "she is singing a song which you should recognize. She is singing 'C'est si bon'. She is going now but says as she goes she knows about the Royal Stuart tartan."
Here indeed is concentrated evidence. Nothing vague but precise facts, one after another. First the blue slipper. This evidence was completely accurate. One blue slipper only came back in Ann's effects from hospital, the other was missing.
There were precisely three complete sets of dentures in Ann's toilet bag returned from hospital.… I should also say I was completely unaware of how many sets of dentures she took to hospital or how many were in her plastic toilet bag.… [Kennedy had to check in order to confirm the report. He had been understandably reluctant to go through his late wife's personal effects.]
The name, Teresa, is Anna's mother's baptized Christian name. She has never used his name since she was married.…
The blue container of talcum and triangular bottle of toilet water was [sic] in the bag as described.
At nine o'clock that same morning, in my home alone, I took out the only silk handkerchief I possess, a large white silk handkerchief and used it to wrap the microphone of my pocket tape recorder to protect it when I placed it in my traveling case. Albert had never seen this handkerchief at any time. "C'est si bon" was one of Anne's favorite songs which she used to hum. Finally, a week earlier Ann's mother and sister had brought had bought a Royal Stuart tartan large traveling rug as a cover for the sofa.
Kennedy is at pains to point out that he is "not on close personal terms" with Albert Best. "During the last six weeks I have only spoken to Albert Best by telephone and then only when he telephoned me. In many of these telephone calls Albert Best asked me for information or advice, particularly in relation to orthodox churches. [Kennedy was a minister.] ... Although Albert Best telephoned me, I very rarely telephoned him, unless it was for the purpose of trying to arrange a private sitting for someone. From the very beginning I made a point of guarding against the danger of being on familiar chatting terms with Mr. Best because I was always conscious of the over-riding necessity of reducing to a minimum the possibility of conveying information to him. After over twenty-five years experience of psychical research, I am at least aware of the danger of saying in someone's company such remarks as 'Anne and I loved that tune' or 'We had a wonderful holiday there, once'. It may sound calculating, but I have throughout this period and before it, always been aware that the unique mediumship of Albert Best would be the keystone of much of the evidence of survival which I hoped to make available to others. Thus the necessity of keeping myself aloof from this gifted medium, not to cloud the value of the evidence."
While Best was performing a healing procedure on someone else, he spoke to Kennedy, who happened to be in the room:
Once again, in trance and while healing, Albert Best said, "Who is Mrs. Murray, East Kilbride," addressing me. I replied, "That is my wife's sister". "Ah, yes!" replied Albert Best. "Your wife was talking about her. She says that she was with you when you posted a postcard to her sister when you were in London. You posted two postcards at the same time, on Monday of this week. She also says that she was with her sister when she got your postcard."
After a short pause, "You had fish before you came out here, sole, and it wasn't Dover sole. Your wife says you cooked it in a pot and you didn't clean the pot properly. Clean it again when you go home, will you?"
All of this was accurate, including the poorly cleaned pot, which still had traces of fish clinging to it. His wife had been a stickler for cleaning the dishes.
Here is a possible example of EVP, electronic voice phenomena. It comes up in a sitting with another medium, Mrs. Findlater, who says:
"When you bought that new recorder," (I had bought a new cassette pocket recorder a few weeks previously) "you relaxed and spoke into it. Your guide was there and when you played it back you heard a word spoken twice which startled you because you didn't remember saying that word. The word was OM – OM or God." This again is startling. I did speak a little poetry and some nonsense into my recorder and thought it curious that I had spoken the word OM twice. I concluded that I must have said this word out of my subconscious without being aware of saying it. Yet the voice did seem strange. Yet here almost a month later a woman, Mrs. Findlater, claims that my wife is speaking to me and that a group of those on the other side were responsible for this word which startled me on playing back what I had spoken into my recorder. No living soul knew of this except myself.
Kennedy remarks on "a curious piece of evidence in this series of communications…. This is, in the case of the mediumship of Albert Best the lapse of two months before the first sporadic messages from Ann begin to come through. I would describe Albert Best as pathetically eager to be able to bring me the comfort of a solid reassuring item of evidence from Ann in the two months following her passing and yet he was perfectly honest with me. 'I simply get nothing at all, not even a sense of her presence.'… Now if the telepathy hypothesis is a valid one, or if the more elaborate and speculative theory that somehow a gifted medium has access to the forgotten memories of anyone who ever had any contact with Ann [i.e., super-psi], be correct, the question arises, why should this extended telepathy or access to a universal pool of knowledge not operate from the moment of Ann's death? Why should there be eight blank weeks following Ann's death, when there is complete silence on the part of this gifted medium?… On the telepathic hypothesis this delay is unaccountable. On the other hand in terms of descriptions given by our loved ones and others from the other side, this delay is understandable and consistent."
The delay, as he goes on to say, is normally explained by spiritualists as the time necessary for the recently deceased person to adjust to afterlife conditions and recover from the trauma of dying, as well as from any lingering medical conditions that may obsess the mind. In Ann's case, she apparently continued to feel a shortness of breath – a condition that plagued her in her final months on earth – even though, in her postmortem existence, it was all in her mind.
Though I'm quoting some (but not all) of the best evidence in this book, I'm not able to include the author's extended ruminations on the relationship between spiritualism and the Christian church, his analysis of philosophers like Kant and Heidegger, and many other interesting subjects. The book, though sadly out of print, is worth seeking out.
Thanks for the recommendation Michael. Very interesting posts.
Posted by: Paul | May 17, 2018 at 05:42 AM
"Now if the telepathy hypothesis is a valid one, or if the more elaborate and speculative theory that somehow a gifted medium has access to the forgotten memories of anyone who ever had any contact with Ann [i.e., super-psi], be correct, the question arises, why should this extended telepathy or access to a universal pool of knowledge not operate from the moment of Ann's death? "
Pow! That is an excellent point!
Posted by: Eric Newhill | May 17, 2018 at 09:28 AM
The additional anecdotes of David Kennedy are impressive Michael. You have convinced me to get a copy of his book. More importantly, these stories by Kennedy have introduced me to Albert Best, apparently an exceptional Irish medium. Best as reported by Kennedy was able to provide precise information transmitted from spiritual entities that perhaps rivaled or exceeded the mediumships of Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard with less theatrics. Best, apparently being a shy man did not get the publicity that Piper and Leonard received. Apparently no one kept notes about the sessions with Best as they did with Piper and Leonard. I could not find any books written about him (except Kennedy's) although there are several websites that provide information about his life, most of them cut and pasted from each other.
Surprisingly, I find myself reacting to these anecdotes of Kennedy in the mode of Prof. Stephen E. Braude, PhD who wrote an excellent book discussing the possibility of life after death titled "Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life After Death" which I highly recommend. Although I don't totally agree with Braude's evaluation of some of the cases of spirit interaction with physical life he discusses, especially his assessment of the Patience Worth case. I must admit, following Braude's lead, that I am reluctant to allow full-fledged belief that Kennedy had made contact with the spirit of his deceased wife . Other possible explanations of Kennedy's experience need to be considered before accepting the possibility that the reported contacts may actually have been contacts with his deceased wife. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 17, 2018 at 11:01 AM
Michael,
I am not convinced of spirit survival after physical death but there are three little words that would totally convince me of life after death.
I have heard tales of newborn infants speaking one or two words or sometimes a complete sentence immediately after birth. Of course these stories may be made-up but if it were possible that a newborn should speak I would be convinced of life after death , specifically reincarnation, if the infant said, upon emerging from the birth canal,
"F*ck! Not again!"
Now that would convince me! (provided of course that it was reported by a reliable source---preferably a professor at Cambridge or Stephen Hawking (ideally I should be in the delivery room); that it was tape recorded or a video was made at the time; that there were signed affidavits from the mother and physicians in attendance; that ventriloquism by Edgar Bergen was not a possible explanation: that Super-Psi was considered and rejected; that professors of philosophy and psychiatry all agreed that it was true and that all Skeptics accepted it as evidence of life after death.) - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 17, 2018 at 11:44 AM
The mind is very powerful especially when there is grief. A lot of these mediums mentioned here are from a time where it became popular and many were deceiving clients. There was a book that I really enjoyed about the afterlife a Monsignor experience in the afterlife and George Anderson books, but again with a very skeptical eye.
Posted by: Bernardo Navarro | May 17, 2018 at 02:43 PM
It's off-topic, but I have found an outstanding and brilliant discussion and debate concerning the profound questions about evil and suffering and the nature of the reality that allows these things, that Michael has so excellently posted on. This is on the Skeptiko forum, the thread is at http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/is-westworld-our-world.4149/ . Just one highlight - the "human life is a school" reincarnational perspective is having severe difficulties. One notable discussion summary referred to is by poster Laird, at http://skeptiko.com/can-science-answer-big-questions-317/ . This is a quite comprehensive survey and analysis of most of the various different concepts that have been debated attempting to understand reality especially as it pertains to the reasons for incarnation, evil, and suffering.
Posted by: doubter | May 17, 2018 at 04:07 PM
AOD I am also not convinced about survival after death although I was I was.
Posted by: Bernardo Navarro | May 17, 2018 at 07:57 PM
Bernardo,
I would guess that many people, even people who believe in alternate realities think as you do, that is, they are skeptical of reports relating to the paranormal or an after-life. I know that I am and I agree with you as I suspect that some books about these topics are written because the author sees an opportunity to gain recognition and money. ( Actually I think many of these types of books don't really make a lot of money.)
I have to guard against all of the over-intellectualizing about spirit survival and all that goes with it. One can get caught-up in verbiage that after all turns out to be just someone's opinion, opinions which probably have little relevance to anything. Most of the opinions I find to be just a lot of gobble-de-gook that I can't understand (My bad!) but I do think that most of them are meaningless as one get lost in all of the BS.
I suspect that some people get tired and/or annoyed with me for mentioning the Patience Worth/Pearl Curran case so often. To those people I apologize for saying that I think that the Patience Worth case provides a kind of evidence of spirit survival that can't be found in convoluted discussions with the 'experts' in physics, philosophy, medicine or logics. It is not communication with one's dear departed loved-ones. It does not involve spectacular floating apparitions, apports or direct voice mediumship. I think the case appeals solely to people of a literary bent, not impressed by people with position or degrees. It is a giant literary puzzle demanding an explanation.
Give it a try, Bernardo - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 18, 2018 at 09:05 AM
My problem with the Patience Worth case is that there’s no historical record of a Patience Worth. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But without empirical proof of Patience's existence, it’s hard to see how the communications channeled by Pearl Curran count very far toward postmortem survival.
They do indicate, at minimum, some unexpected abilities of the human mind. Curran, when in an altered state of consciousness, could compose poetry and prose very rapidly, by dictation, using arcane vocabulary that dated to an earlier era. She produced hundreds of thousands of words of publishable fiction, highly regarded and quite popular in its time (though not easy to read today). Her impromptu responses to challenges were perhaps most impressive. When asked to produce an acrostic poem (in which each line begins with a consecutive letter of the alphabet), she instantly recited an original, rhyming composition in 25 lines that ran from A to Z, excluding only X. This was apparently accomplished with no hesitation at all. See:
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/patience-worth-analysis#Stunts_of_Composition
Amazing! But I would put it in the same category as the ability to hear any date and instantly know what day of the week it was, or to calculate the square root of any number off the top of your head. (A few rare people can do such things.) In other words, I see it as a mysterious savant-like talent, but not as necessarily as evidence of life after death.
The fact that Patience herself insisted that she was a discarnate spirit is perhaps evidence in favor of survival. But since these events took place when spiritualism was all the rage, this claim may have been a cover story concocted by some dissociated part of Curran's personality.
It’s a fascinating case, but I wouldn’t include it among the best survival evidence. For me, a better example of a literary puzzle indicating survival would be the famous cross-correspondences.
Here is the extensive Patience Worth site maintained by our commenter AOD:
http://www.patienceworth.org/patienceworthpoems_001.htm
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 18, 2018 at 03:34 PM
Actually there is documentation of four Patience Worths, two living in New Jersey in the later 1600s and early 1700s and two in England, none of which match exactly the Patience Worth of Pearl Curran. The Patience Worths in New Jersey were in the family of William Worth and Faith Patterson. William named his daughter Patience and his son also named his daughter Patience Worth. It could be that 'Patience Worth" was a family name in the William Worth's family. If he had a sister or aunt or other spinster relative named Patience Worth, perhaps they memorialized her (after she was killed by the natives) by naming their girls after her. Prof. Stephen Braude, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Maryland who had written about the Patience Worth case has said that ,". . . we might wonder how much the discovery of a real Patience Worth would bolster a survivalist interpretation of the case. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is that it would make almost no difference."
It is a disappointment of course not to find evidence of Pearl Curran's Patience Worth as having lived in England with documentation of her birth in 1649 but do we really expect to find evidence of a rural teenage or twenty-something girl in 17th century England, engaged from dawn to dusk in household tasks who would have left a library of her writings documenting her improvisational prowess or that she would have achieved notoriety among the aristocracy warranting preservation of her writings for posterity and conveniently accessible for us to peruse---preserved in pristine condition in a 300 year-old thatch-covered hut, I presume. Patience was a young unmarried farm girl who owned no property, paid no taxes and had no children. She claimed she was a Puritan and Puritan girls received little education beyond reading the Bible and caring for children so to expect to find writings of Patience Worth one has to presume that as a rustic Puritan girl she was able to write and that she had reams of paper available on which to write.
Patience was once asked by a lady if when she lived on earth she had an ambition to write, since she was writing so much now. According to Dr. Franklin Prince who studied Patience and Pearl for a couple of years and wrote in a comprehensive report of his investigation, "The instantaneous answer was: "Dame, what wench that has a tongue and a mind to wag it e'er itched for a quill?"
For the sake of discussion if it is admitted that Pearl Curran had a savant-like talent, then where was that talent for the first 31 years of Pearl Curran's life? Most savants manifest their abilities early in life, even as children. Pearl Curran and Emily Hutchings sat with the Ouija board for a year before any of the communication from Patience Worth came through. If Pearl Curran had savant-like talent, why did she sit quietly at the Ouija Board for a year before she allowed her talents to be on display?
There is a problem of knowledge when it comes to savants specifically, in Pearl's case, the knowledge of Biblical, Medieval and Victorian history as evidenced in Patience Worth's novels. This is not something musical savants, artistic savants or calculating savants have. They have an ability or skill that normally requires practice but they don't have extensive knowledge of history. In Curran's case it would have required an input of actual facts related to various periods of Middle Eastern and English history for her to be able to color her novels with so much that was verifiable. There is no evidence that Curran ever had an opportunity to gain such knowledge. She was a rather average grade school student who wasn't interested in learning and dropped out of school at age 14 never having seen any place other than Texas, Missouri and Illinois during her formative years. The one available poem that she wrote as a school girl was typical of teenage efforts to write poetry, needing to be annotated by her father. Classifying Curran with savants just doesn't fit the facts of this case.
If Curran was in an altered state of consciousness when she received dictation from Patience Worth then perhaps all of us who write creatively are in an altered state when we write. Pearl Curran didn't seem to be in a trance of any sort when she took dictation from Patience. She was able to converse with those present around the Ouija board, smoke, scratch an itch, think about what she would have for a snack after everyone left or when necessary answer the telephone when it rang.
There were questions asked about whether Patience was a secondary personality of Pearl. Patience answered by saying "I say 'tis well that the wench be she. There be within mine words a thing she may not deny and within hers a thing I may not deny. There be two streams runnin' forth from one fountainhead, I say, the throat with two songs. And earth shall be confused before the task of knowin' what be upon them, and in the confusion they shall be drawn within the net, for they shall look upon the flesh of me for the flesh of her and see it not. Yet shall she take in the ears of them that list unto her for the words of me."
Even Ian Stephenson wrote that, "These productions [poems and novels of Patience Worth] were far beyond the ordinary powers of Mrs. Curran. For this and other reasons, some observers regarded 'Patience Worth' as a discarnate personality communicating through Mrs. Curran. This is not an unreasonable interpretation of the case; one of the greatest of psychical researchers, W.F. Prince (1929) , thought it the best explanation for the case, although he remained clearly aware of alternative ones."
I am of a like mind with Dr. Prince. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 19, 2018 at 10:05 AM
Interesting points, AOD.
I assumed there were historical records of some women named Patience Worth - probably not a wildly uncommon name in that era (Puritan women were often named after Christian virtues) - but what I meant was that there’s no record of a Patience Worth corresponding to Pearl Curran's Patience. I disagree with Dr. Braude that such a discovery wouldn’t do much to strengthen the case; if records could be found of a Patience Worth born in the right place and time, who emigrated to America and was killed by the natives, I think it would vastly strengthen the survival aspects of the case.
It's not totally unreasonable to expect to find a record of her birth. England was generally pretty good at keeping such records, even of rustic provincials. Shakespeare’s life is not very well documented, but we do have official records of his birth (or at least his baptism), his marriage, and the births of his children. This was several decades earlier. Shakespeare and family were rural folk, though they occupied a somewhat higher social stratum than Patience would have. There also were records of emigrants to the New World. We have a list of the passengers on the Mayflower, for instance. Of course, over the centuries, some records have inevitably been lost.
I certainly wouldn’t expect any writings from Patience to be preserved; I was thinking only of official records.
I mostly agree with your other points. There are cases of savants developing late, but only after some physical trauma, which wouldn’t apply to Curran. And it’s true that her knowledge of history and archaic vocabulary can’t be explained as the savant hypothesis.
It’s certainly an interesting case. I linked to your website in an earlier comment; it's the best resource I know on Pearl Curran and the enigma of her writings.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 19, 2018 at 12:44 PM
Michael,
I read somewhere that the early passenger lists only contained names of men and their wives. They did not contain names of single women many of whom may have been servants. I don't know if that is true or not.
The .org website is 15 years old and I have not done anything with it for a long time. My newer .com site was destroyed by hackers and I was not able to salvage it. It was much better than the older site, but alas! it is no more.- AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 19, 2018 at 01:15 PM
Sorry to hear that, AOD. But the existing site is still very good.
Have you tried using the Wayback Machine to find your lost web pages?
http://archive.org/web/
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 19, 2018 at 04:26 PM