My maternal gran was a spiritualist and medium who ran her own church in Plymouth in the 1920’s and 30’s – “The Temple of Faith”. She held daily séances there as well as in the front room of her house in Fleet Street.
My gran (on the left) with her helper at the altar
of her Church in Plymouth.
To say that life with gran in the 1940’s was exciting and unpredictable is to understate how it was in reality. We would be sitting at the table eating a meal when she would go into a trance with her eyes wide open and rolling a piece of bread in her fingers as she listened to what her spirit guide had to say. She had four spirit guides although the most senior one was White Star who would speak to her when she was in a trance giving her messages she would never talk about.
This was for us young children, an amusing interlude just as it would be when she got the tin bath out to give us a bath in front of the fire and go into a trance rolling the soap between her fingers until she came back to reality – often are the times we sat in cold water!
Because room was in short supply my sister and I shared a large bed with gran and every night she would regale us with tales about the spirit world and suddenly go into a tirade of foreign languages as she spoke to her spirit guide. We never knew when it was going to happen and so we often used to encourage her to get into contact with her spirit guide just so we could be amused at her antics and of course, to be able to stay up late.
One day my gran took my mum (aged fourteen) along to a church séance and once in a trance, she started to have a lengthy conversation with a member of the congregation (a Russian sailor). Nothing unusual here other than my gran spoke to the sailor in his native tongue (Ukraine) although she never spoke any foreign languages and had never left her native county, Devon. Another time she was holding a séance in the front room of her house when she started to argue with one of those present but this time speaking in the Sioux language, the Native American tribe White Star was from. No one knew what she was saying and of course, once out of the trance, she never remembered any of the proceedings.
Sometime in 1938 she was holding a séance again in her front room. After several minutes, her face screwed up in a grimace and she went pale. She had an audible conversation with her spirit guide again in his native Sioux language. She came out of her trance, gave the sign of the cross and refused to talk to anyone. That same week she closed her church and never again involved herself with spiritualism or held a séance.
The last séance my gran held.
No explanation was given for this radical and unexpected decision until many years later (1968) when she told me that during her last séance, her spirit guide told her that he was instructed to stop being her spirit guide and had to become my mother’s guide for reasons she was not allowed to say. She ended by saying that there were things that I should not know until it was felt by the spirit world that I needed to know.
My gran died in 1971 and in 1976 I experienced my first of four NDE’s where all the questions I had, were answered to my satisfaction*.
*Explained fully in my 2008 autobiography “Climbing with Angels and Ghosts” along with a detailed account of my gran and her work.
Frank Grant
Carlisle
