Prologue

It is highly unusual for an autobiography to be updated and expanded after the death of its author. But George Chapman’s Surgeon From Another World is not a normal life story. It recounts the astonishing connection that he, a young Liverpudlian, established with a dead ophthalmic surgeon, William Lang, resulting in the healing of many thousands of people around the world.

I was privileged to collaborate with Chapman on Surgeon From Another World, which was first published by W.H. Allen in 1978, when the two-world partnership was at its prime and achieving remarkable healing results in various countries.

Chapman’s death in 2006 brought to an end the remarkable 60-year association that enabled Lang to carry out spirit operations through his medium’s entranced body.

Since Chapman’s passing, at the age of 85, there have been developments that provide new insights into this already incredible story.

His son Michael, also a healer, agrees with me that the time has come to share this information publicly. We are doing this by reprinting the last, updated version of the book, printed in 1988, and adding new material.

The following pages provide you first with the original book in its entirety, as told by George Chapman. To this I have added new chapters which reveal aspects of his collaboration with the medical profession that he was not ready to share while he was still healing the sick.

I have also taken the opportunity to refer to the healing work of Michael Chapman – who worked alongside his father for many years – and his close association with Basil Lang, also a surgeon and the son of William Lang.
The partnership between the Langs and the Chapmans is one of the most remarkable stories of spiritual interaction with this world that you are ever likely to encounter.

ROY STEMMAN
January, 2017

Introduction

I am a spiritual healer working in partnership with William Lang, an English surgeon who died over forty years ago.
That statement, I know, will meet with derision from those people who have been conditioned to believe either that death is the end or that the next world is separated from this life by an impenetrable barrier. Neither belief is true.

This book provides sufficient proof to convince any reasonable person of two facts. The first, and most important, is that William Lang continues to exist after his death and is able to communicate with us. The second is that, from the next world, William Lang is able to bring about remarkable healing results, often when conventional medicine has failed to help a patient. He enjoys the active support and cooperation of several doctors on Earth, some of whom even refer their more difficult patients to him.
I would like to express my gratitude to all those kind people who have helped me and Dr Lang to do this work and, particularly, to those who have contributed their testimonies to this book.

GEORGE CHAPMAN

Chapman’s House
Pant Glas Tre’r-ddol Machynlleth Mid Wales
March, 1984

CHAPTER ONE

The Secret

My son, Michael, phoned me from our Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, home one afternoon in Apri1 1977 to say that Auntie Lyndon had fallen in her flat and had broken the femur in a leg. Her maid had just contacted him with the news.

I was in Lausanne, Switzerland, on a short working visit and was about to travel on to Paris to continue work. Instead, I cancelled my appointments and rushed back to England. A car met me at Heathrow and took me home, then on to London.

By the time I reached St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, the surgeons had operated on Auntie Lyndon and she had just been moved to the intensive care unit. She was ninety-four and at that age, of course, a fall can be extremely serious. I sat in the waiting room and prayed that she would be helped.

Slowly she recovered. I saw her every day while she was in St Mary’s and, in addition to cheering her with my visits, I provided bottles of Sauteme and Barsac: a small glass of white wine was one of her delights. When she was strong enough Auntie Lyndon was moved from the hospital to the Eastside Nursing Home in a tree-lined road in the north-west London suburb of Golders Green. I continued to visit her regularly while I was in England, but I also had commitments abroad which had to be honoured.

For several years I had been travelling overseas to give spirit healing to the sick. As a result I have established clinics in a number of European countries, and there are long waiting lists of people seeking appointments. And in the month that Auntie Lyndon had her fall I was also scheduled to work in the United States as well as Europe. I first visited the USA exactly one year earlier, and made my second trip in October 1976. Now, on my third visit, I was going to New Jersey and I had five fully booked days ahead of me. I see thirty patients a day, so there were 150 people seeking healing from me and, much as I would have liked to stay in England to be near Auntie Lyndon, I did not want to disappoint my American patients. Besides, she had always taken a keen interest in my healing work and I knew that she, too, would want me to go.

When I got back to England I hurried to the nursing home. The staff were taking great care of her and she was mending well after her leg operation, but, sadly, the accident seemed to have hastened the ageing process. Whereas Auntie Lyndon had always been alert and sprightly, despite being a nonagenarian, she now began showing increasing signs of senility. She still liked to join me in a glass of wine, and we sat and chatted about many things, but her mind was wandering. On one visit she welcomed my arrival with the exclamation: ‘George! What funny boots you are holding in your hands. You must put them on or cook will laugh at you.’ I was not holding any boots, but her cook, Ada Collop, who had died at a great age, always wore lace-up boots, and we often joked about them. Now, time seemed to have lost all meaning for Auntie Lyndon. Her mind seemed to be simultaneously in the present and in the past, unable to distinguish between the two.

By the middle of May she was continually falling asleep and rambling: telling stories which made no sense. Though I have dedicated my life to helping sick people recover their health, there are times when death is a welcome release from suffering. In such circumstances, healing usually makes the passing easier. I am helped in my healing work by a team of spirit doctors and so the next world is very real to me, for they use my body to treat patients. Auntie Lyndon – with very good reason – was equally convinced of an afterlife and so I had no hesitation in praying that the silver chord, which links the physical and spirit bodies, would be severed and she would be allowed to enter the next realm of existence.

Senile dementia is very upsetting for relatives as they watch their loved ones lose their mental equilibrium and even revert to childlike behaviour. It is brought about by the shrinkage of brain tissue and the widespread loss of nerve cells, though the cause remains a mystery. Some recent research suggests a slow virus may be responsible. It is unfortunate that our fond memories of those we love should he over­ shadowed by the effects of senile decay, but my knowledge of a spirit world enabled me to be untroubled by the deterioration in her mental state. The real Auntie Lyndon, the spirit inhabiting that old body, was as alert and intelligent as ever. All that was happening was that the body she had used for over ninety years was rapidly wearing out and breaking down. As soon as she was released from this world, these temporary problems would vanish.

When I arrived at the nursing home on Thursday, 19 May 1977, I found Auntie Lyndon sitting in a chair. She reached out for me and said: ‘George, please hold my hand tightly. Father is here now. I don’t want to die because I have taken care of you all these years. I have loved you as my son. Who will take care of you now? But really, I must go. Father wants me to go. I am so tired. George, I am not hungry. Let’s have a glass of wine.’

A member of the nursing staff uncorked a bottle of Sauterne for us, and I poured the drinks. Then, much to everyone’s pleasure, after sipping her wine Auntie Lyndon ate rather a good meal of soup and minced chicken. This was fed to her by one of the staff. When she had finished she asked to be put to bed. I sat with her and prayed that her passing would soon take place.

At 6.00 a.m. on the following morning my prayer was answered and Auntie Lyndon passed to the spirit world. I gave thanks to God and my spirit helpers that her transition had been a peaceful one.

I was due in Paris later that day for a regular healing clinic and so, soon after I left the nursing home, I phoned Auntie Lyndon’s accountant to ask that arrangements be made for her cremation on Tuesday, 24 May when I would be back in England. This he promised to do. And so, when the Air France Airbus lifted off the tarmac at Heathrow Airport later that day, I was feeling relieved and happy. Auntie Lyndon’s suffering was over and, though I would miss her physical presence, I knew there were those in the next world who had also missed her, and now it was their turn to enjoy her company.

I was happy for another reason, too. For thirty years Auntie Lyndon and I had kept a secret. I promised her that I would not reveal it until her passing, and now I was free to do so. The secret concerns the work I do, but before I reveal it I think I should tell you something about myself and how I became a healer.

I was born in Liverpool on 4 February 1921. My mother died when I was five years old; she was only twenty-nine and I was brought up by my grandparents. We lived in the Merseyside dockland area and I went to a Church of England school, St Mary’s in Bootle. When I left school, Britain was still in the grip of the Great Depression and jobs were hard to come by. I worked as a garage hand, a butcher, a docker, and a professional boxer during this period. In 1939 I joined the Irish Guards, then transferred to the Royal Air Force as an air gunner. Later I joined the RAF regiment known as the Air Force Commandos, followed by periods of service with the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, and many other branches of the armed forces, both British and foreign, such as the Polish and French forces. Then in 1944 I was posted to RAF Halton to train apprentices and recruits in unarmed combat, self-defence, small arms and battle drill.

Apart from a keen interest in animals and a natural ability to nurse them back to health, there were no signs in the first twenty-ftve years of my life that I would become a healer.

During my days at RAF Halton, near Aylesbury, I met Margaret, my future wife, in 1944. We married and in 1945 we had a daughter, whom we named Vivian. Shortly after her birth, however, we were told that Vivian would not survive. I was shattered. I left the hospital and walked into the woods nearby and wept bitterly. I also prayed that the doctors would be wrong and that she would live. Four weeks later she died. We were heart-broken and I can well remember feeling that no true, loving God would allow our child to be taken from us.

But I now realise that this traumatic experience had a purpose.

Although she lived for only a month, little Vivian’s birth and death were a turning point in my own life. For the first time I began to think seriously about the possibility of an afterlife. Had Vivian ceased to exist? Was she now in Heaven? Or was she in a spirit world? I asked as many people as I could. Clergymen, to my dismay, were of little help apart from warning me not to dabble with the supernormal. Despite the lack of information about an afterlife from those who, I had always thought, knew the answers, I continued to seek an answer. In May 1946, I was demobbed and I exchanged my Air Force uniform for another: that of the Aylesbury Fire Brigade. Among my fellow officers was Leslie G. Miles who, when we were passing away the hours between calls, would sometimes demonstrate his ability to receive messages with an upturned tumbler and alphabet. Leslie had seen an RAF officer doing this and had been surprised to discover that he, too, could make it work without really knowing what was happening.

Naturally we argued about who was pushing the glass, and whether the messages were from the dead. Soon Leslie and I were discussing Spiritualism and we interested quite a large group of the Aylesbury fire-fighting team, including the then deputy chief. On every duty day we would sit with our fingers lightly resting on the top of an upturned tumbler in the centre of a circle of letters and watch as it glided around. We were aware that sceptics usually dismiss such communications as the workings of the subconscious mind, but sometimes the content of the messages was so astounding that this theory could instantly be ruled out.

My wife and I also sat alone with a glass and alphabet at home and received messages from my mother. She, you will recall, died when I was five and I knew very little about her. But by checking what we were told during these sessions I became convinced that it was my mother who was communicating. She told us she was looking after Vivian and spoke about her own life in the next world. As a result of these experiences I became convinced that life does continue beyond the grave.

I had read about astral travel, the ability of the spirit to leave the body, travel to a place in this world or the next, and to return with a memory of the journey, and so I decided to experiment along these lines. Each day I sat alone for about three hours as I developed the ability to astral travel. In this way I made contact with my mother and with Vivian, retaining a vivid memory of these meetings for a long time afterwards. Since then, I have always been aware of the closeness of my mother’s spiritual presence.

I should point out that Spiritualists usually frown upon this method of psychic development. They say that to sit alone is dangerous because, without the help of a medium, an individual may lay himself open to evil or unpleasant influences. I do not argue with this advice but, in my own case, I was able to develop trance mediumship without any misfortunes.

During the early glass-and-alphabet séances I often received messages about possessing healing powers. I was quite happy to try my hand at healing but I did not know how to go about it. The problem, however, was taken away from me when I began going into trance. By that time I had got together with a group of people who were interested in the subject and we met each week. During these sessions I was entranced by several entities who addressed the members of our circle, and one of the first to do so was Lone Star, who identified himself as a member of the Cree tribe of Red Indians. He had communicated at the early Fire Brigade glass and alphabet seances and had said that a chain of control would be formed by spirit friends who would come together as a healing band to work through my mediumship. Now, speaking through me, he gave more details. Among the other spirit visitors at this stage were Ram-a-din-i, an Indian, a young man named Leopoldi, and Chang Woo, a Chinese surgeon. I realise, of course, that sceptics make a lot of fun of Red Indian and Chinese spirit guides. I am aware, too, that the human mind is capable of manifesting secondary personalities which are totally different from the conscious personality of an individual. However, these spirit entities were very real to us, though I had no knowledge of what they said through my lips. The other sitters told me what had transpired when I returned to consciousness.

Very soon a new communicator began talking to us. He was introduced to us as Dr Lang. He revealed that he was to be the main instrument and would use my mediumship to treat the sick. As a result, the other communicators stepped into the background as members of the healing band. What made the appearance of Lang so important was that here was a spirit who had lived in the twentieth century and of whom we were able to demand and receive evidence of identity.

Too many alleged spirit guides do not stand up to critical examination. I believe it is essential for those who develop trance mediumship to ensure that their spirit controls are examined thoroughly to prove their identities. The spirit communicator should speak as near as possible to the way he spoke on earth, using the same phrases and mannerisms and manifesting other personal characteristics. He should be able to give dates, names and details of his earthly experiences that can be verified, and be able to discuss intimate matters with relatives and colleagues still on earth. All too often, a ‘spirit control’s’ claimed earthly existence is outside the memory of those living, while others deliberately cloak their identities in a shroud of mystery, intimating that behind their humble exteriors they are really great and famous. William Lang, however, satisfied all my demands. When he began working through me there were colleagues of Lang still in practice. There were also patients who had consulted him while he was a surgeon on earth and who later came to Aylesbury to receive treatment from him again, through me.

They confirmed that it was the same Dr Lang they had known.

Over the years we have been able to piece together the story of William Lang, thus providing a remarkable case of human survival of death. At first the healing was confined to local people, but the demand for healing from him increased, and we have built up a file of impressive cures which he has brought about, often in cooperation with medical men on earth, by performing spirit operations.

A number of books have been written about our healing partnership. The Return of Dr Lang, for example, by S. G. Miron, LDS, RCS (Eng.), tells not only of our work but also of the cure which Dr Lang brought about for his wife after the roof of her mouth had been perforated when a tooth was removed. Mr Miron’s testimony is particularly remarkable because he was a dental surgeon and yet he confirms that Dr Lang achieved a dental result that would have been impossible by ordinary means. I published Mr Miron’s book in 1957 and it is still in print.

The story of Mrs Miron’s cure is told in even more detail in Bernard Hutton’s book about me, Healing Hands, which was first published in 1966. The author has updated the book and I am delighted that a new Healing Hands was published in 1978 (by W. H. Allen). This excellent book tells of my early life and that of William Lang (which I will deal with in a later chapter) and quotes numerous case histories. Joe Hutton cites several instances of people who knew Dr Lang while he was on earth and who have since met him and confirmed his identity during healing sessions with me. These include a doctor, Kildare Lawrence Singer, who had received instruction in ophthalmology from Lang at the Middlesex Hospital. Dr Singer had cancer and when he learned that some people had been cured of this disease by a ‘Dr Lang’ in Aylesbury he made an appointment. He was totally unaware that this was the same man who had taught him in his early days. Recognition came instantly when he walked into my sanctuary and Lang, speaking through my lips, greeted him with the words, ‘Hello my dear boy, I am happy to see you again.’

In the same book Hutton tells of meeting Mrs Katherine Pickering who, as a child, had been a patient of Dr Lang’s. She had known him for fifteen years, from the age of four years and nine months and, when she met him again through my mediumship, she recognised him instantly. He knew her, too, for he said: ‘It’s nice to see you again after all these years, Topsy. I remember you when you were so high.’ Dr Lang was recalling their first meeting ... over sixty years earlier. And Mrs Pickering confirmed that he always called her Topsy.

I should explain that William Lang was a surgeon, not a doctor, and so he is correctly addressed as ‘Mr Lang’. However, such was his friendly manner that patients frequently called him ‘Dr’ when he was on earth and I, and most people who know him, continue to do so now. So he will be referred to as Dr Lang throughout this book, unless a patient or researcher insists on using the correct title.

In this book I will have to duplicate a small amount of material that has appeared in earlier books in order to give the necessary background and explain to readers unfamiliar with Dr Lang’s work just how he performs spirit surgery. But my main intention is to take up the story where Healing Hands ended: to describe how my healing mission expanded in the 1970s and, above all, to reveal the secret I have kept for forty years.