Posted on 27 January 2025, 8:00

When Hamlin Garland, a renowned American author and reputable psychical researcher (lower left photo) searched for a medium to help him locate and uncover some buried artifacts in California, he was referred to Sophia Williams, a direct-voice medium who had recently moved to Los Angeles from Chicago (upper right photo).  In checking out Williams, Garland communicated with a dentist and a psychologist in Chicago, both of whom had treated or examined Williams.  The dentist, Dr. Leon Poundstone, informed Garland that while he was holding a celluloid matrix in Williams’s mouth for a three-minute duration, his deceased wife’s voice came in very distinctly and spoke with him.  The psychologist, Professor Arturo Fallico, wrote that he had examined, observed, and tested Williams’s psychic powers and had concluded that some principle was operating in her “which is not included in the orthodox categories of natural facts.”  He added that he was especially impressed by her “psychic visions in which temporal and spatial limitations are or seem to be no barrier whatsoever.”

The story of the The Mystery of the Buried Crosses was told by Garland in his 1939 book of that name.  It has been republished by White Crow Books, and it was summarized in my blog of August 27, 2013.  However, there are still many readers unfamiliar with the story, so I’ve attempted to summarize it again, with the focus on Sophia Williams rather than on the search for the buried crosses.  I consider the story one of the two or three most intriguing stories in the annals of psychical research. 

Garland (1860-1940), was the author of 52 books and a Pulitzer Prize winner who was intimately involved with major literary, social, and artistic movements in American culture. A 1936 book, Forty Years of Psychic Research, relates mind-boggling phenomena long before he was told of the buried crosses. The University of Southern California now houses the Hamlin Garland collection in its Doheny Memorial Library and The Hamlin Garland Society exists today to disseminate information on Garland’s literary works.  His early home in West Salem, Wisconsin is a national historic landmark and museum.

Garland met Williams, an amateur medium, during July 1937, after he had come upon evidence that another medium, Violet Parent, had been directed to various buried crosses and artifacts by spirits of the dead.  There were indications that there were more buried artifacts to be found and Garland thought Williams might help him in that pursuit.  She had been recommended to Garland by Dr. Nora Rager of Chicago.

Williams was a somewhat unusual direct-voice medium in that she required neither darkness nor the trance state.  Moreover, she required no prayers, no hymns, no rituals of any kind, and the voices came in daylight.  They could be heard coming from somewhere around her, but they were only whispers.  To amplify them, Garland would place the larger end of a megaphone against her chest while he would listen for voices at the smaller end and relay them to a stenographer.  Garland first thought that Williams might be a master ventriloquist, but quickly ruled out that possibility, requiring her to hold a large lollipop in her mouth, the stick of which was held between her teeth, all the while closely observing her lips and throat as the voices came through.  Williams told Garland that she was as mystified by the voices as he was and that she had no physical sensation of producing them.

Hearing from an old friend

In his very first test of Williams, Garland was greeted by one of his oldest friends, Henry B. Fuller, who had helped him research cases of mediumship when Fuller was alive.  Always on the lookout for fraud, Garland wondered if Williams had read of Fuller in his book, Forty Years.  A few minutes later, another voice was heard.  The spirit identified himself as Lorado, his wife’s brother, who had died the prior year.

Garland noted that Fuller called him by his last name, while Lorado addressed him by his first name, exactly as they had done when they were alive.  He further noted that the voices, which were high in vibration, sometimes seemed to be coming from the megaphone and at other times from the air above the medium’s head.  Moreover, Fuller referred to an old mutual friend as “Ake,” the name given to Carl Akeley, another very evidential point. Garland further noted that Augustus Thomas called him by his first name and Edward Wheeler by his last name, just as they had when alive in the flesh.
 
The most convincing evidence came when a voice addressed the stenographer, Gaylord Beaman.  “Gay, this is Harry,” the voice was heard.  When asked for a last name, “Friedlander” was given.  The astonished Beaman explained to Garland that Harry Friedlander was a friend who had died in a plane crash in San Francisco Bay.  “Harry” then gave some details concerning the crash.  Garland was certain that Williams knew nothing of Beaman and could not have researched this information beforehand.  Garland then asked Fuller if he could contact Violet Parent, the deceased medium with whom the buried crosses mystery began in 1914.  Fuller replied that he would try, but it would have to be at another sitting. 

Two days later, the second sitting took place.  Garland first heard a voice say, “This is Turck, Dr. Turck.”  Turck went on to tell Garland that he (Turck) was an “old fool” for having called Garland’s psychical research so much “humbuggery” when he was alive.  Here again, Garland concluded that the medium could have known nothing about Turck’s attitude, which had been expressed to him at a luncheon.

Beaman then heard from his old friend Harry Carr, who made reference to his travels in the Orient for the Times, and asked Beaman if he could get his manuscript to a mutual friend named Chandler.  It was all meaningful to Beaman.  Garland’s old friend, Burton Babcock, also communicated, Garland describing Babcock’s speech as “hesitating and incoherent,” which was characteristic of him when he was alive.

Other spirits totally unrelated to Garland’s search continued to speak at times.  One identified herself as Leila McKee, an old Wisconsin neighbor.  Another Wisconsin acquaintance, Wendell McIldowney, also came through.  While Garland had by this time concluded that Williams was not a charlatan, he knew he had to be ready for claims by skeptics that Williams had done some research before meeting him.  It would have been virtually impossible, he concluded, for any researcher to turn up either of those names from his past. 

Ruling out telepathy

Still, Garland, a very skeptical researcher who leaned toward a telepathic explanation of mediumistic activity rather than a spiritistic one, wondered if Williams was somehow unknowingly tapping into his subconscious.  But Garland reasoned that digging up a name from one’s subconscious doesn’t explain how that name takes on a personality and dialogues with the conscious self, especially on matters that neither he nor Beaman had given any recent thought to. 

Garland was relentless in testing Williams.  After the first few sittings with her, he devised a transmitting box with 60 feet of wire connecting with another box containing a receiver and amplifier.  The purpose was to isolate the medium from his questions to the spirit communicators.  With the medium two rooms away and behind two closed doors in Garland’s home, she could neither hear Garland’s questions nor see what he was pointing to or looking at, and since the spirits answered him with detailed information, Garland concluded that this was further evidence that Williams was not providing the answers.

Irish novelist Donn Byrne communicated at one such sitting as famed author Stewart Edward White and his wife sat in with Garland.  At first, they could not understand his whispers, but Byrne eventually succeeded in making himself known.  Garland and Byrne exchanged compliments on their writing endeavors, after which White, apparently as a test, asked him to speak a sentence in Gaelic, which Byrne did before resuming in English “with a delightful Irish brogue which was assumed for our pleasure.”  Garland noted that Williams, two rooms away behind closed doors, could not have heard White’s request and was fairly certain she knew no Gaelic or could have produced Byrne’s humorous Irish accent.

The mechanism significantly amplified the voices, which had been just whispers through the megaphone.  After he completed it, Garland was greeted by Edward MacDowell, an old friend and noted composer who had been dead for more than 30 years.  Garland recorded that MacDowell “spoke to me as clearly, as informally, as if we had been parted only thirty days.” 

When Garland’s Uncle David communicated, Garland asked him if he could play “Maggie” for him.  Garland first heard a whistling tune that turned to a violin playing “When you and I were young, Maggie.” Garland’s wife was present and also heard it. Garland was certain that Williams could not have smuggled a violin into his house.

In one sitting, Garland’s daughter Constance sat in and heard from Candace Howard, an old childhood playmate, who talked happily and fluently about their old Catskill home. She also gave an intimate account of dying while giving birth. 

All that was enough to convince Garland that Williams was a genuine medium.  He then set out with her to find more buried artifacts. At the direction of “invisibles” who spoke through the medium’s megaphone, Garland and Williams traveled hundreds of miles through southern and central California and Mexico, discovering 16 artifacts, similar in substance and design to those collected by Violet Parent, in 10 widely separated locations throughout California.  Some were in deep gullies, others high on cactus-covered hills far from the highway.  One was hidden in a ledge of sandstone behind a wall of cactus plants which Garland had to chop away before finding it. 

Eight of the crosses are now on display at the West Salem Museum, although it is not entirely clear whether they were found by Garland or came from the original batch found by Mrs. Parent and her husband. 

Can mediumship be any more evidential?

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.

Amos, Michael et alia,
Amos, I keep finding articles for you about Pearl. If you go to Hathai Trust books and search for
Index to psychic science; an introduction to systematized knowledge of psychical experience page 69 has her photo and references.
Michael this book has a plethora of photos, lists and references which may delight your journalistic heart.
It was in a recent search. I found the needle in the haystack that I was looking for with some assistance from my friends.
Thanks,
Bruce

Amos,

I always enjoy your comments. Entertaining and concise. Phinuit plays to the audience but Lodge had previous contact with Gurney. I have collected these conversations. My reply is that there were better conversations which are relevant to our discussions. I do like the concept of Christ remembering the children. Mediums know that spirit contact drops off around Christmas when you would expect more intense contacts. Note the phrase “We have to express it in your language”. I suspect handing out ipads would be the present day expression. The conversations are:
A communicator who holds a place somewhat apart was Edmund Gurney, who had died the year before the sittings. He was one of the very few who seemed to use the organism of Mrs. Piper instead of the intermediation of Phinuit. When the latter had once said about a spirit; ” She can’t come and speak herself,” and Sir Oliver objected; ” Mr. Gurney does,”
Phinuit exclaimed with some indignation: ” You are greedy. Yes, Mr. Gurney does, but Mr. Gurney is a scientific man, who has gone into these things. He comes and turns me out sometimes. It would be a very narrow place into which Mr. Gurney couldn’t get.”
Edmund Gurney appeared for the first time at a sitting where Sir Oliver had handed in a letter from him. This circumstance, of course, detracts very much from the evidentialness of the case. In return, it is rather dramatic. Sir Oliver writes: ” The personality seemed to change-the speaker called me ‘Lodge’ in his natural manner (a name which Phinuit himself never once used), and we had a long conversation, mainly non-evidential, but with a reference to some private matters which were said to be referred to as proof of identity, and which are well adapted to the purpose. They were absolutely unknown to me, but have been verified through a common friend.”
In his first conversation with Sir Oliver, Gurney had already spoken of the doctor.  Very few,” he said, ” you will get like Dr. Phinuit. He is not all one could wish, but he is all right.” At their next meeting, he described him at great length in reply to a question from Sir Oliver, saying; ” “Dr. Phinuit is a peculiar type of man. He goes about continually, and is thrown in with everybody. He is eccentric and quaint, but good-hearted. I wouldn’t do the things he does for anything. He lowers himself sometimes-it’s a great pity. He has very curious ideas about things and people; he receives a great deal about people from themselves (?) And he gets expressions and phrases that one doesn’t care for, vulgar phrases he picks up by meeting uncanny people through the medium. These things tickle him, and he goes about repeating them. He has to interview a great number of people, and has no easy berth of it. A high type of man couldn’t do the work he does. But he is a good-hearted old fellow. Good-bye~ Lodge. Here’s the Doctor coming.”
At a later seance Sir Oliver asked whether Phinuit was reliable. Gurney replied; Not perfectly. He is not a bit infallible. He mixes things terribly sometimes. He does his best. He’s a good old man ; but he does get confused, and when he can’t hear he fills it up himself. He does invent things occasionally, he certainly does. He’s a shrewd doctor. He knows his business thoroughly. He can see into people—’, Sir Oliver asked: ” Can he see ahead at all? Can anybody? “
Gurney answered: “I can’t. I haven’t got into that. I think Phinuit can a little sometimes. He has studied these things a good deal. He can do many things that I can’t do. He can look up people’s friends and say what they are doing sometimes in an extraordinary way. But he is far from being infallible.” It is worth noting that Gurney did not seem to have an eye for Phinuit’s mediumism. He believes that he is foresighted, and that he has ” studied these things a good deal,” but else he only refers to the information Phinuit gets from spirits, and his extraordinary faculty to look up people’s (living) friends and say what they are doing.

Thanks
Bruce

I would like to comment about the quote Bruce kindly provided of a session of Leonora Piper when Phinuit was in control during the early seances in 1889 with Mrs. Piper.  It is interesting to read now as I think that concepts of the afterlife have changed considerably since Piper’s time at the end of the 19th century and the first couple of decades of the 20th century.  Today, I think there is a more sophisticated idea of what survival may be like thanks to near death experiences and out-of-body experiences, direct voices, modern-day mediums, as well as reincarnation stories from children as young as 2 years old.

Today, survivalist thought tends to go toward survival of consciousness rather than survival in an etheric form or personality similar or identical to the body in which the consciousness inhabited on Earth.  Today, more people are willing to consider reincarnation over many lifetimes in various forms and the ability of consciousness to appear in different forms in the afterlife than people would have entertained during Victorian era.

I think that Phinuit, whoever he was, gave people what they wanted to hear, perhaps tapping into their subconscious mind.  In this quote of Phinuit to the Lodge brothers, Phinuit speaks of Christian beliefs in Christmas, not acknowledging that nobody knows the exact date of the birth of Jesus, yet celebrating December 25th of the Gregorian calendar as Jesus’s birthday “It’s the day Christ was born isn’t it,” he asks, “and he always appears to us on that day.”  (Are there days and dates in heaven?)  Apparently, Jesus plays along with that myth and celebrates that date too, making this the heaven for Christians only. 

The image of Jesus skipping all over heaven with a basket full of “forget-me-nots” (how appropriate) flinging out flowers to little children is almost too much for me to bear. They must not have been the “Forget-Me-Not” of this day and age (and also of Victorian times) since it is known today as it was then, as a little blue flower just several millimeters in diameter.  I can’t image that little children would be impressed by that flower.  And there is an assumption by Phinuit that “little children” know all about Jesus and would wait with great expectation to see him on his birthday.  But since Jesus is “very high up” they don’t get a chance to see him often. (Actually, the concept of “little children” in heaven is a topic for another discussion.)

Phinuit speaks of Edmund Gurney, recently passed in June 1888 whom the Lodge brothers knew in life and though Phinuit may have been aware of Gurney when his was alive, this seems to me to be an attempt to develop some camaraderie between Phinuit, Gurney and the Lodges and authenticate that Phinuit knows what is going on in life.  And how nice that Phinuit brings in the Lodge’s mother and that she knows Gurney, “a nice fellow he is.”

I just can’t believe that Phinuit can be trusted but that he is more likely to be a lower-level entity elevating himself with some gullible sitters. And I don’t think I am alone in this belief. I am so sorry that I think the Piper material is outdated and it only makes me think that it is all bosh!  - AOD

The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual includes in the definition of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), the constant need for reassurance.  Some people call it the “Doubters Disease.”  That definition is often applied to hypochondriacs who have a constant need for reassurance that they are not dying of some fatal disease.

After multiple tests show that they are healthy and without disease, the reassurance wanes after a few days and they think that either the tests were not accurate or that the physician didn’t interpret them correctly or missed something or that the correct test was not ordered; hence the “doubters disease” label.  Then the hypochondriac is back to square one, doubting that they have received a proper diagnosis.  That prompts most hypochondriacs to go on a continuing search for information that might help them to self-diagnose their condition.  Today there is a ready source of medical information on the internet that hypochondriacs have available to them for self-diagnosis. But there is never enough information to provide the reassurance they seek and they go on and on seeking something else to reassure them that they are not going to experience some dire outcome.

I was at a meeting of physicians one time discussing various medical conditions and one of the physicians asked me if I were a physician since I seemed to know a lot about what was being discussed.  I said, “No, I’m a hypochondriac!” The doctors nodded knowingly and we all had a good laugh.

I think I can see a similarity between hypochondriacs and people who continually search for evidence of life after death but are never satisfied they have found enough.  I think it is a type of OCD, falling under the “scrupulosity” category of OCD and just like other manifestations of OCD it is based on fear, usually a fear of death and dying. There will never be enough evidence for life after death to provide the needed reassurance that will satisfy a person with ‘religious’ obsessive compulsive disorder other that perhaps a telephone call from the beyond and even that may not be enough to assuage all doubt.  - AOD

Newton and Michael,
An interesting comment. This “desire or need to keep reading about one spirit manifestation after another, what fuels our seeming inability to find a place of repose or sure and quiet confidence in the existence of the afterlife?”
I would like to present an expansion of this idea to include the perspective of one of those on the other side.
“The subject is evidence. Over the years strong evidence has been presented by writers, by mediums. Demonstrations (materialisations, messages from loved ones) last for a short time, books last longer. Both convey the same message. Love God is the message. Each soul will improve, advance in purity.”
I feel that the desire to advance souls is the common link between those on both sides of the veil. I thought I might slip in an interesting script.
Evening of 25th Dec, 1889. Control at first Phinuit. Present—0. J. L. and Professor Alfred Lodge.
Captain, do you know that as I came I met the medium going out, and she’s crying. Why is she crying ? (” Captain ” was the humorous nickname employed by Phinuit to designate 0. J. L.)
0. J. L. Well the fact is she’s separated from her children for a few days, and today being Christmas day she is feeling rather low about it.
Christmas day ! Do you think we don’t know that
O. J. L. Oh do you?
Certainly, it’s the day Christ was born isn’t it, and he always appears to us on that day.
0. J. L. Do you not often see him ?
No, he’s much higher. I have only seen him two or three times. He’s very high up. I have got your mother’s influence very strong : she’s been talking to Edmund Gurney—a nice fellow he is —she’s very fond of you ; he’ll tell her all about you. She has got on a good way since she passed out. Do you know what we mean by Christ’s appearing?
0. J. L. No.
We have to express it in your language. He comes to-day with a basket of flowers, forget-me-nots, and gives them to the little children. They are awfully pleased when they see him coming.
Thanks,
Bruce

Newton, well stated and ties in with my next blog post.

Mike

Do we ever ask ourselves what fuels our desire or need to keep reading about one spirit manifestation after another, what fuels our seeming inability to find a place of repose or sure and quiet confidence in the existence of the afterlife? While what I offer here will not be a popular explanation, let me suggest that this failure to reach a resting point, this never-ending quest to convince ourselves over and over again that life does indeed continue on in a better, more beautiful world—this haunting emptiness, impossible to fill, has its root cause in the fact that so much of the spiritualism that came after the movement’s classic text and original “bible”, Spirit Teachings, is ungrounded in, if not antagonistic to, the traditional Christian faith, which it was the sole purpose of Spirit Teachings to clarify and correct. All spiritualist manifestations, the text told us,  were merely methods to attract attention to the spirit world, in which progress could be made, here and hereafter, only by gaining ever loftier conceptions of God, coupled with the fulfillment of our ethical duties to our Creator, our fellow human beings, and ourselves. That, it seems, is the only road to peaceful assurance, the quenching of our otherwise insatiable spiritual thirst.

I read this book some years ago. At times for whatever reason I have difficulty imagining an afterlife due to what I consider the random nature of our earthly existence. I struggle trying to piece together a coherent logic to account for why we are here in the first place.
However I keep the faith when I return to the evidence such as this. The experience of the dentist alone points to clear evidence for the survival of consciousness!
Best wishes
Pete

Pete,
I fully understand what you are saying and agree with you.  I’ve given up on attempting to apply earthly standards to celestial matters and am content with the little I understand.  So much of what comes through mediums is, as William James called it, bosh, but I like what I read in 1 Thessalonians 5:21—“test them all and hold on to what is good.” 
Mike

Michael,
Did Sophia Williams Produce the Best Evidence Ever?
(I love any articles about mediums named Williams). From her book You Are Psychic written in 1946 I have taken a few words.
Mrs. Williams turned out to be a worldly and utterly charming lady. She is not classed as a professional medium and rarely accepts fees for her psychic work, as she is said to have an independent income
Page 16 The process of obtaining knowledge direct from the overmind or stream of intelligence through psychic channels is a perfectly natural one. It takes time and patience however, to develop. In my experience, the information I “receive” by means of this channel seems to come through intermediaries. It comes in the form of words and conversations from distinct personalities who have passed through the change called death. They always identify themselves and their identities can be checked and proved.
When your extra-sensory faculties are developed and understood it is found that what we call past, present and future are in reality all one — a constantly molding cycle of events, each one an integral part of the other. It therefore becomes possible to know and observe what has already taken place and why, what is now happening, and what potentially should happen in what we call the future.
I might ask a couple of questions about what constitutes evidence. Is there good evidence? To mediums evidence is the number of correct hits. To scientific people they would like to eliminate other explanations. Some material is liked by scientific minds and regarded as good evidence. I was asked to reflect upon the following:
(a) The impact on each area of proof. For example I would rate Palm Sunday Case as Gold Standard. How would readers rate Sophia work?

(b) The types of mediumship.  Do we believe evidence from one type of mediumship over another?
In the book Maurice Zolotow writes
“One of the strangest experiences in my life commenced rather prosaically last autumn when Halsey Raines, a publicity man for M-G-M in New York, telephoned and asked me if I knew of Mrs. Sophia Williams. He said she was the Chicago medium who, some years ago, engaged in a remarkable series of experiments with Hamlin Garland, during which various voices identified themselves as the spirits of ancient Spanish missionaries in California and related where and how forgotten mission crosses and old Christian relics could be found. Garland, on her instruction, had dug and found several hundred crosses. The incidents are related in full in Garland’s “Mystery of the Buried Crosses.””
He describes her various types of mediumship

Thanks,
Bruce

Thanks for this excellent review of Sophia Williams, Michael. I hope you will not mind my piggy backing on this blog to tell folk about 2 documentaries I have made directly related to this story. The first is about Hamlin Garland himself, who chose Sophia Williams for the buried crosses investigation but this was about his last-ever investigation. With the title ‘Rejecting the Afterlife: the Case of Hamlin Garland’ it is a stunning report on the investigations Garland made right across the United States with the most amazing mediums & during decades of research. Despite the evidence, he was totally unwilling to accept the survival hypothesis, even though it was staring him in the face. The link is here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz_-9NQxTK8

The second doc has the title “Forgotten Mediums, part 1” with a focus on the buried crosses case itself, plus Hamlin Garland’s skepticism, and Sophia Williams remarkable help to find these crosses. It was virtually the last of his investigations and there was speculation at the time that at last he had evidence allowing him to accept the survival hypothesis. The link is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad7X0Wf1jBc&list=PLLB-82YMhiPFPKSm2Ke69aK0DKTftpvo0&index=41
Your ability and willingness to churn out one excellent blog after another in quick succession is a remarkable achievement, Michael, quite apart from the afterlife evidence books you have also published. Well done, and keep it up. No reason not to since you’re only 87 years old, going on 88 shortly !