A PROPHETIC MESSAGE

Interesting as is the episode recorded in a previous chapter, in which the warning to an aviator was almost immediately fulfilled, yet it is not alone in our experience of fulfilled prophecies. Long before the aeroplane accident, which I told as relating more particularly to the Morning Circle, an equally definite warning was given, through another source, to Lady Warwick about her motor-car.

Three months after the opening of the Bureau, Mr. Stead wrote a brief, comprehensive summary of its progress. This appeared in the International Magazine, published in English, French, and German, and in the Harbinger of Light, an Australian paper, published in Melbourne, devoted to the study of psychology and occultism. It was published again in 1910 as a booklet, under the title Bridging the River of Death. The address quoted in the foregoing chapter was bound up in the same small volume, entitled The Unseen World a Reality.

In this article Mr. Stead referred to the second example of a warning prophecy mentioned above. It was a species of psychic communication to which he attached special importance, for it absolutely excludes telepathy as an explanatory theory, i.e. the class of messages relating to events unknown to any living person, events still in the future when the messages are received.

As the story has often been told, and has been much distorted in the telling, it seems well to relate it once more. And as I was one of those most immediately concerned in it, I am able to give the facts.
When sitting in the library at Cambridge House, on the evening of Whit Monday, 1909, my mother felt a strong impulse to place her hands on a small table. She called to me to join her, for she felt impressed that some unseen presence wished to communicate with us. At the moment she spoke I was playing an American organ near the farther end of the room. I finished the phrase, then came and sat with my mother at the table. Though I did not feel the influence of which she spoke, I had, a few moments before, noticed a small oval-shaped light, about the size of a large walnut and of a bright golden colour, travel swiftly across the library floor and disappear. It appeared to be an inch or two from the ground. I had watched it as I played. I have never seen a light exactly similar, neither before nor since. It was early in the evening, and the room was still in clear daylight. There was no one in that part of the house except ourselves. I may say that we were not much given to “table sittings,” though like most psychic students we had experimented in that simple form of communication—the Morse code of the spirit world—at different times. But we did not incline to it, considering it a rather clumsy method of obtaining information which came with greater facility through automatic Writing, nor did we need our friends to move the furniture about in order to prove to us their continued existence, could they prove it otherwise. On the evening in question I felt no particular inclination to take messages at all, either in writing or in any other form, and it was more to please my mother than for any other reason that I acceded to her suggestion that we should “sit.” I mention this, as it shows we were not in any sense “invoking the spirits,” nor clamouring for communications from “the Other Side.” We had spent the afternoon with friends in the neighbourhood, to whom matters psychic were anathema.

We had sat for some twenty minutes without any result, and were just thinking of giving it up, when suddenly the table began to tilt. It spelt out a man’s Christian name, which I shall give here as N——. We had no friend of that name, therefore we asked why N—— had come. In answer, the table slowly spelt out the name of Lady Warwick. But there was nothing in the name of N—— to lead us to associate him with that lady. Indeed it had for us no association at all. So we did not feel we were much nearer. I knew nothing of Lady Warwick’s movements, and had then only met her once. However, on asking whether N—— had a message for Lady Warwick the table rapped “Yes” the familiar three tilts then by the usual process of question and answer a message was rapped out, the table spelling each word letter by letter. The communication was short but very definite, begging Lady Warwick not to use her motor-car during the next week, saying in effect that if she did use it in that week she would have an accident and be run down. If she postponed her journey till the following week, no accident would happen. He then spelt “Send message,” adding that he was a friend of Lady Warwick and that she would know from whom it had come.

I duly noted down the exact words of the communication at once, though I confess I did not take it very seriously. Next morning I took my notes to Mowbray House, and gave them to the Chief who had just returned that morning from Hayling Island, where he had been spending Whitsuntide. He said I ought at once to have transmitted the message to Lady Warwick, within a few minutes of receiving it. I replied that I had no idea from whom it had come, nor even whether such a person as the communicating spirit claimed to be, had ever existed. Also that I did not attach any importance to such “warnings.” It was probably nonsense, and so forth, adding that but for my promise to inform him of all communications that came, I should have said nothing at all about it. Moreover, I remember saying that if I had sent it, and Lady Warwick had acted upon the warning and postponed motoring until the following week, no one could ever know whether the warning had been justified. The circumstance had for me no importance whatever. My mother was evidently much more open to impression in the matter than I, for it had been by her suggestion that we had “sat,” and she had also been anxious that I should transmit the message to Mr. Stead and leave him to deal with it as he thought fit.

Mr. Stead immediately wrote to Lady Warwick, enclosing the message. His letter was posted between one and two o’clock on Whit Tuesday, within an hour or two after I had made it known to him. He heard nothing more till next day Wednesday evening about six o’clock, when to his joy he had a telegram from Lady Warwick saying that she had just received his letter, on her return to Easton Lodge, from which she had been absent since the previous day. She had left home on Tuesday morning Mr. Stead’s letter had arrived on Tuesday evening; she however being absent had not received it till next day, Wednesday, when she returned. But, while driving through London on her way home on Wednesday afternoon, a motor-omnibus had turned the corner of the street on the wrong side of the road; the road being slippery and wet with rain the motor-bus “skidded,” crashing into the rear of Lady Warwick’s car, and wrecking it completely. The remains of the car had to be left in London, and its occupants, in a more or less bruised and wounded condition after their narrow escape from death, took a cab to Liverpool Street station, whence Lady Warwick travelled home. On arrival she found Mr. Stead’s letter containing the warning from N——,which had reached her just too late to prevent a catastrophe that might so easily have been fatal.

Meanwhile, we at Wimbledon remained in ignorance of the affair, and the startling sequel to the message, until next morning, Thursday, when I received a jubilant letter from my Chief, announcing it in these words:—

“You remember the N. message? Well!

“Lady Warwick’s motor was smashed this afternoon by a motor-bus. She and her maid were flung out and motor smashed.

When she got home she found my letter with your message warning her to postpone her motor drive!

“Is it not glorious!

“I think she is almost pleased it happened because it confirms her faith!”

N—— was a friend of Lady Warwick. He had passed away some time before. When in this life he had promised to watch over her from the other side, should he be the first to leave this world.
Members of Lady Warwick’s family and household gave corroborative testimony in regard to the accident, from their several points of knowledge, and those of Mr. Stead’s staff to whom he mentioned the “warning” when forwarding it, confirmed the time at which his letter was written and despatched. The documents are all in order, without a single weak link in the chain of evidence.

When Mr. Stead quoted this case of prevision in Bridging the River of Death, it was thought better to tell it merely in outline, without giving any names. My mother and I had no wish for publicity, and our psychic experiments were then, as always, purely private. But the story spread, in various incorrect forms, and I am glad of this opportunity to give its full details for the first time, Lady Warwick having been good enough to permit me to mention her name.

So much were we interested in the result of our impromptu table séance, we from that time ceased to consider this method an inferior means of communication with those free from the body of flesh. No doubt, like the planchette, ouija-board, and similar contrivances, it may more easily lend itself to foolish and undesirable manifestations on the part of beings who dwell in the “lower levels,” especially if the sitters are inexperienced, or sitting “for the fun of it!” But, after all, every means of communication is open to abuse, and has its drawbacks and dangers, if not investigated in the right spirit. Mr. Stead was well aware of this, and all applicants to the Bureau had this caution placed before them. Like all blessings, spirit-communion may become a curse, as a beneficent drug may easily become a poison, or as “wine that maketh glad the heart of man” may reduce him to depths of degradation.
Early in the beginning of his quest into the mysteries of the Borderland, Mr. Stead wrote:

“Even if we can only make a single pin-hole in the curtain that hangs between the two worlds, that will at any rate show that there is light on the other side.”

We may surely claim that in the two experiences I have just related, regarding prophetic messages, something larger than a pin-hole was made, and that for a few moments the curtain was drawn aside.

Curiously enough, we have been told that there is often as much scepticism among those who have left the earth-conditions, as there is with us on this side, regarding the possibility of intercommunication; and that as with us also, some spirits are more highly gifted and more powerful than others in breaking down the barriers.

“A PROPHETIC MESSAGE” is an excerpt from Stead: The Man: Personal Reminiscences by Edith K. Harper