Raymond; or, Life and Death With examples of the evidence for survival of memory and affection after death.

Yesterday morning, Monday the 15th March, one of the subalterns was ordered to the Front; he went to a doctor, who refused to pass him, owing to some temporary indisposition. Ra...

Investigation is laborious and unexciting; it takes years, and progress is slow; but in all regions of knowledge it is the method which in the long-run has led towards truth; it...

On the morning of 3 March I had a sitting in Mrs. Kennedy's house with a Mrs. Clegg, a fairly elderly dame whose peculiarity is that she allows direct control by the communicato...

voce_ represent conversation between Feda and the communicator, not addressed to the sitter at all. I always try to record these scraps when I can overhear them; for they are of...

On 28 September my wife and I together had a table sitting with Mrs. Leonard, which may be reported nearly in full together with my preliminary note written immediately afterwar...

I now come to a peculiarly good piece of evidence arising out of the sittings which from time to time we held in the autumn of 1915, namely, the mention and description of a gro...

After Christmas I had proposed to drop the historical order and make selections as convenient, but I find that sequence must to some extent be maintained, because of the inter-l...

SECOND LIEUTENANT RAYMOND LODGE was the youngest son of Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge, and was by taste and training an engineer. He volunteered for service in September 1914 and wa...

There are a number of incidents which might be reported, some of them of characteristic quality, and a few of them of the nature of good tests. The first of these reported here...

It had been several times indicated that Raymond wanted to come into the family circle at home, and that Honor, whom he often refers to as H., would be able to help him. Attempt...

On 24 March, we had some more unverifiable material through Mrs. Leonard; it was much less striking than that given on 4 February, and I am inclined myself to attribute a good d...

On 21 December 1915 Alec had his first sitting with Mrs. Leonard; but he did not manage to go quite anonymously--the medium knew that he was my son. Again there is a good deal o...

A word may be necessary about the attitude of Raymond's family to the whole subject. It may be thought that my own known interest in the subject was naturally shared by the fami...

Although this episode of the photograph is a good and evidential one, I should be sorry to base an important conclusion on any one piece of evidence, however cogent. All proofs...

Perhaps the commonest and easiest method of communication is what is called 'automatic writing'--the method by which the above examples were received--i.e. writing performed thr...

The shorter the word the more inevitable it is that it will be used in many significations; as can be proved by looking out almost any monosyllable in a large dictionary. The te...

At length, on 17 November 1915, Raymond's brother Lionel (L. L.) went to London to see if he could get an anonymous sitting with Mrs. Leonard, without the intervention of Mrs. K...

"The vagueness and confusion inevitable at the beginning of a novel line of research, [are] naturally distasteful to the _savant_ accustomed to proceed by measurable increments...

Mrs. Kennedy desired Lady Lodge to try with a different and independent medium, and therefore kindly arranged with Mr. A. Vout Peters to come to her house on Monday afternoon an...

Whatever Life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly...

We heard first of Raymond's death on 17 September 1915, and on 25 September his mother (M. F. A. L.), who was having an anonymous sitting for a friend with Mrs. Leonard, then a...

Some letters from other officers gradually arrived, giving a few particulars. But it was an exceptionally strenuous period at the Ypres salient, and there was little time for wr...

The limitation of scope which eminent Professors of a certain school of modern science have laid down for themselves is forcibly expressed by one of the ablest of their champion...

That such a contention as that mentioned at the end of the preceding chapter is false is well known to people of experience; but so long as the demand for verification and proof...

In this "Life and Death" portion a definite side is unobtrusively taken in connexion with two outstanding controversies; and though the treatment is purposely simple and uncontr...

"In scientific truth there is no finality, and there should therefore be no dogmatism. When this is forgotten, then science will become stagnant, and its high-priests will endea...

In a Table Sitting it is manifest that the hypothesis of unconscious muscular guidance must be pressed to extremes, as a normal explanation, when the communications are within t...

Raymond joined the Army in September 1914; trained near Liverpool and Edinburgh with the South Lancashires, and in March 1915 was sent to the trenches in Flanders. In the middle...

It is sometimes thought that memory is located in the brain; and undoubtedly there must be some physiological process at work in the brain when any incident of memory is recalle...

Consider now the happenings to the discarnate body. In the first place, I repeat, it is undesirable to concentrate attention on a grave. The discarnate body must be duly attende...

I might make many more extracts from this sitting of 22 October, of which a short extract has just been quoted, because, though not specially evidential, they have instructive a...

"If man, then, shall attempt to sound and fathom the depths that lie not without him, but within, analogy may surely warn him that the first attempts of his rude _psychoscopes_...

"How often have men thus feared that Nature's wonders would be degraded by being closelier looked into! How often, again, have they learnt that the truth was higher than their i...

Life and mind and consciousness do not belong to the material region; whatever they are in themselves, they are manifestly something quite distinct from matter and energy, and y...

For people who have studied psychical matters, or who have read any books on the subject, it is unnecessary to explain what a 'sitting' is. Novices must be asked to refer to oth...

In the whole unknown drama of the soul the episode of bodily existence must have profound significance. Matter cannot only be obstructive, even usefully obstructive,--by which i...

However it be accomplished, and whatever reception the present-day scientific world may give to the assertion, there are many now who know, by first-hand experience, that commun...

There is some one here with a little difficulty; not fully built up; youngish looking; form more like an outline; he has not completely learnt how to build up as yet. Is a young...

On the 29th of October I had a sitting with Peters alone, unknown to the family, who I felt sure were still sceptical concerning the whole subject. It was arranged for, as an an...

What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? Or rather, what effect have these investigations had upon my own outlook on the Universe? The question is not so unimportant as...

People often feel a notable difficulty in believing in the reality of continued existence. Very likely it is difficult to believe or to realise existence in what is sometimes ca...

I have made no secret of my conviction, not merely that personality persists, but that its continued existence is more entwined with the life of every day than has been generall...

It may be asked why I report so much of what may be called ordinary conversation, instead of abbreviating and concentrating on specific instances and definite statements of fact...

A few things may be reported from a sitting which Lady Lodge had with Mrs. Leonard on 26 November, however absurd they may seem. They are of course repeated by the childish cont...

It is divided into three parts. In the first part some idea of the kind of life lived and the spirit shown by any number of youths, fully engaged in civil occupations, who joine...

I have been there to-day; I spoke to mother. I don't know if she heard me, but I rather think so. Please tell her this, and kiss her from me.

Towards the end 'Moonstone' began talking about himself, which he does in an interesting manner, and I shall perhaps give him an opportunity of saying more about the assumption...

It now remains to indicate how far Myers carried out his implied promise, and what steps he took, or has been represented as having taken, to lighten the blow--which it is permi...

On 27 September, as already stated in Chapter III, I myself visited Mrs. Leonard, going anonymously and alone, and giving no information beyond the fact that I was a friend of M...