Posted on 24 March 2025, 8:08

In White Crow Books’ latest reissue about William T. Stead – Stead, The Man: Personal Reminisces, Stead, a British journalist and author on psychic matters, recalled sitting with a clairvoyant when the clairvoyant said, “I hear another voice speaking.” The voice then told Stead that “If you go to Chalons I will go with you.” 

Stead (upper right photo) asked who was communicating. “I have been dead some time,” came the response. My name is Lefevbre. Eugene Lefevbre (lower left photo) was a stunt pilot who was killed on September 7, 1909, the first person to die while piloting a powered airplane. However, neither Stead nor the others sitting in the circle recognized his name at first. Another spirit began communicating and it was not until the next day that Lefevbre returned. By that time, Stead had figured out who this communicator might be. The dialogue recorded after that was:

Stead: “Ask Lefevbre if he was the man who was killed in the aeroplane accident.”

Lefevbre: “Yes, I thought you knew it.” (Stead had been abroad at the time and was unaware of Lefevbre’s death.)

Stead: “You can communicate directly with me. Do you understand English?”

Lefevbre: “No, not much; but I transmit my thoughts to the medium and he translates them into English.”

Stead: “What was it that caused your rapid fall?”

Lefevbre: “I did not have time to think. You scarcely have time to reflect when you fall.”

Stead: “In your rapid fall did you keep your presence of mind?”

Lefevbre: “This is what I felt. I was conscious that I was falling, but before touching the ground I had lost consciousness. I felt no pain nor any sensation in my physical body. It seemed to me that my spirit was projected out of it. I had a sensation of rapid rotation, then something gave way suddenly, and I found myself in the air, seeing beneath my mortal remains and the machine. It was not disagreeable. I observed too that a being who was very powerful and who calmed me was near me.”

Stead was planning to go to Chalons a few days later to cover a flight demonstration by Prince Serge de Bolotoff. Lefevbre told him to warn Bolotoff that his motor would not work properly. Stead so warned Bolotoff. Bolotoff tested the motor and found nothing wrong with it and then took his seat in the aircraft. However, the motor would not then start and the starting handle broke. The demonstration flight was then abandoned.

Dogfight

That story brought to mind the story of Second Lieutenant Claude Herschel Kelway-Bamber, whose plane was shot down by a German fighter pilot as they engaged in a dogfight near the Flanders region of Belgium during November 1915. Claude (bottom right photo) was just 20 years old and attached to the Royal Flying Corps at the time of his death.

Claude is one of five WWI victims I wrote about in my book, Dead Men Talking. He communicated with his mother, Liza, through the mediumship of Gladys Osborne Leonard, one of the most famous mediums of that era. “I was rather depressed as I went out to my machine that last November morning,” Claude communicated to her. “I don’t know why.  I certainly had no presentiment of evil; but, once started, my spirits rose as usual, and I felt quite cheery and singularly free from nervousness.  Many men here have since told me this rather curious fact, that on the occasion of their last fight, whether in the air or in the trenches, nervousness left them.  I don’t know whether the spirit instinctively knows its fate and braces itself to meet it, or if one’s spirit friends are able to make their presence and comfort felt at that supreme crisis, but probably it was the only occasion on which I was absolutely free of all fear.”

Claude went on to explain that when he and his accompanying observer were attacked by two enemy planes, his feeling was one of complete irritation as they were on their way back after finishing some work over the enemy lines.  “I felt harassed, too, as I climbed and turned and dived here and there to attack.  My observer said something and I remember getting the nose of the machine down to get below one of our opponents, when I felt a terrible blow on my head, a sensation of dizziness and falling, and then nothing more.” 

Claude further communicated to his mother: “It may have been a fortnight or more later – we have no account of ‘time’ here, so I can not be sure – that I became conscious again. “I felt dizzy and stupid but was not in pain, and on collecting my thoughts and looking round found myself in bed in an unknown room. Before thought took definite form I felt I had been passing through space.  My body seemed to have become light.  I wondered if I was in hospital, and if anyone had written to tell you I was wounded. Nurses moved about the room; if I attempted to talk or ask questions a doctor came to my side, and putting his hand on my head soothed me to silence again.”

What seemed like several days later, a doctor came to Claude’s bedside and explained to him that he had passed out of the physical body.  With much confusion, Claude replied,  “Great Scot! You don’t mean I’m dead!”

Very Little Suffering

Drawing from my book, The Afterlife Revealed, one of the earliest accounts of a person’s dying moments, as reported by the deceased person himself, was set forth in an 1863 book by Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, the wife of Augustus De Morgan, the famous mathematician.  She reported on the experience of Horace Abraham Ackley, M.D., of Cleveland, Ohio, as communicated through a medium: “I experienced but very little suffering during the last few days of my life, though at first there were struggles, and my features were distorted; but I learned, after my spirit had burst its barriers and was freed from its connection with the external body, that these were produced by it in an attempt to sever this connection, which in all cases is more or less difficult; the vital points of contact being suddenly broken by disease, the union in other portions of the system is necessarily severed with violence, but, as far as I have learned, without consciousness of pain.

“Like many others, I found that I was unable to leave the form at once.  I could feel myself gradually raised from my body, and in a dreamy, half-conscious state.  It seemed as though I was not a united being – that I was separated into parts, and yet despite this there seemed to be an indissoluble connecting link.  My spirit was freed a short time after the organs of my physical body had entirely ceased to perform their functions.  My spiritual form was then united into one, and I was raised a short distance above the body, standing over it by what power I was unable to tell.  I could see those who were in the room around me, and knew by what was going on that a considerable time must have elapsed since dissolution had taken place, and I presume I must have been for a time unconscious; and this I find is a common experience, not however, universal.”

Lifted in the Air

Communicating through South African trance medium Nina Merrington, Mike Swain, who died in an auto accident, told his father Jasper Swain, a Pietermaritzburg, South Africa lawyer, that he left his body an instant before the cars actually impacted.  Heather, his fiancée’s young sister, was also killed in the accident.  Mike told of being blinded by the glare of the sun reflecting off the windscreen of the oncoming car.  “All of a sudden, the radiance changes from silver to gold.  I am being lifted up in the air, out through the top of the car.  I grab little Heather’s hand.  She too is being lifted up out of the car.”  When they were about 30 feet above the car, they witnessed the collision below them and Mike heard a noise like the snapping of steel banjo strings.  They had suffered no pain.

Back to William T. Stead and his Letters from Julia, published in 1909.  Stead recorded the following via automatic writing from a woman named Julia Ames, who had died in 1891.  Julia informed Stead that she had exchanged experiences with many others on her side of the veil.  “With me the change was perfectly painless,” Julia wrote through Stead’s hand.  “I wish that it might be so always with all who are appointed to die.  Unfortunately, the moment of transition sometimes seems to be very full of pain and dread.  With some it lasts a comparatively long time; I mean the time of quitting the body.  With some it is momentary.  The envelope opens, the letter is released, and it is over.”

Julia likened “death birth” to childbirth, tough for some, relatively simple for others.  “The tranquil soul that prepares and knows need not feel even a tremor of alarm,” she explained.  “The preliminaries of decease are often painful; the actual severance, although sometimes accompanied by a sense of wrench, is of small account.” 

Giving up the ghost

Many other clairvoyants have suggested that “letting go” or “giving up the ghost” is apparently difficult for many people and depends much upon one’s spiritual understanding or, concomitantly, how materialistic the person is. Gladys Osborne Leonard (upper left photo) explained that it is sometimes difficult for the etheric body to dissociate itself from the physical envelope. She pointed out that those who lack a spiritual understanding and fear death are more “fixed” in the physical, and thus there is much more of a struggle in the release. 

According to Leonard, drinking plenty of water strengthens the etheric body and enables it to more easily separate itself from the physical body. On the other hand, food is not necessary.  “Even if they will take it, I am convinced that the dying do not need ‘nourishment,’ Leonard continued. “To ‘nourish’ the worn-out physical envelope which the soul is trying its best to shake off is only to create and prolong an unnecessary struggle between the two bodies.  In many cases it does not even strengthen the physical, because it can no longer make use of solid food, which only clogs the system, and produces more pain and suffering.”

The administration of drugs also hinders an easy transition from the physical to the etheric body, Leonard added, again stressing the need to give the dying person water, even if only a few drops at a time by means of a syringe. “Water is the one thing that the etheric body can make use of when trying to free itself from the physical at the approach of death of the latter.”

In The Challenging Light, Frances Banks, communicating through the hand of Helen Greaves, states that those making the change from material to ethereal do not recall any pain in the process.  “If they experience terror, it is because they expected it,” explained Banks, an Anglican nun in her earthly life.  “The lurid pictures impressed upon the soul-mind by mistaken teachings of hell and torturing agonies become real.”

Banks further wrote that her own transition was very simple.  She seemed to relapse into nothingness until she awoke refreshed. “The death of the human body should hold no terrors,” Banks offered, “and when this thought is allowed to be taught and understood by the various practicing religions of the world, a big bogey will have been removed in the onward thinking of the races.”

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Dear Bruce,

Respectfully, I had to stifle a laugh when I read in your comment,

“I wanted to mention a quote from the SPR group in spirit which might assist with our discussions.  Another point is that the communicators are always averse to wasting time on things which cannot be evidential. …They probably would not waste time in trying to transmit a description of the world they live in when they know that there is practically no chance of its getting through in recognisable form, and no possibility of its being evidentially confirmed.”

as just this weekend, I was reading in Geraldine Cummins’ ‘Travellers in Eternity’ (1948), where, on p.142, the discarnate Myers chastises ‘Hilda’, the principal interlocutor of the book and the discarnate sister-in-law of E.B. Gibbes, Cummins’ close collaborator of many years:

“E.B.G: Is my friend F. [whom they identify as Frederic Myers] with you now?
Hilda: Yes. He came and told me not to waste time gossiping, and to write about the geography of these worlds.”

That chastisement comes at the bottom of a page that is almost entirely filled with Myers’ summary of ‘The Geography of the Next World’.  All of this is, of course, the very opposite of the sensibility you have forwarded in my quote from you above.  And of course, Myers’ admonition to Hilda is one he himself had very much discarnately taken to heart, as per his two posthumous volumes through Geraldine Cummins, ‘The Road to Immortality’ (1932) and ‘Beyond Human Personality’ (1935).

All that aside, I would be very interested in hearing more from you regarding the SPR group in spirit.

Best,

Paul

Michael,
I try to add a medium’s perspective from time to time. Your article was an area that never occurred to me. I only receive survival messages of love and I do not ask about the transition.
Lefevbre ”I observed too that a being who was very powerful and who calmed me was near me.”

I would like to add some depth to this statement. In the early 1990s I had a friend in spirit who was looking after me. Other mediums described him as Inca so we called him Mr Inca. (Mediums cannot get a clear vision usually as they stand behind). He was around for a few years and set up contact using the prefix SBFT (Stand By For Transmission). This was the start of a long association with this spirit group.
Mr Inca had to leave and appointed Mr Wolf in his place when he needed to leave. Mr Wolf was an American scientist (bio chemist actually but used an animal name as easier for communication). I asked why was there a need for this change?
Mr Wolf said that Mr Inca was needed in the Shock and Awe War 1991 in the Middle East. His role was to comfort those killed as that was his special skill. I asked were there many like Mr Inca? They said that they need extras of such powerful spirits in time of war as there was more confused spirits and that calm was needed.  The above quote reminded me of this conversation.
I know that the smooth transition is always important. I usually deal with relatives and all I get told is that the spirits of the dead arrived safely and were met by usually two relatives or friends in spirit. I wanted to mention a quote from the SPR group in spirit which might assist with our discussions.
“Another point is that the communicators are always averse to wasting time on things which cannot be evidential. As Gurney once said about an irrelevant topic: “You won’t get proof of survival that way,” They probably would not waste time in trying to transmit a description of the world they live in when they know that there is practically no chance of its getting through in recognisable form, and no possibility of its being evidentially confirmed.
Although they claim to have a wider experience than we have in this life, they do not lay claim to any transcendental knowledge. Indeed, they are emphatic in stressing their ignorance. Thus, Myers says:  Remember there is as much room in some ways for speculation here as with you, and many mysteries remain”.
Thanks,
Bruce

Mike,
I remember people who survived a terrifying fall claiming they became unconscious just before they hit the ground. This always gave me solace as I watched those jumpers from the World Trade Center. Terrified at the prospect of death, at least they didn’t suffer physical pain.
Stafford

Hi Mike,
Regarding pain at or during death, we reap what we have sown.
If we deserve a painless and peaceful death than that is what we will have.
Pain during the death process can also be chosen by the spirit as an opportunity for further atonement.
Many spirits suffer during the death process, and afterwards due to perceived wounds or illness they believe their manner of death inflicted, especially traumatic death circumstances.
Still, the bottom line, we still reap what we have sown.
Take Care!
Yvonne Limoges  

Mike – good one. May we all give up the ghost smoothly when we pass on😄🍷👍
Mike S