The Eager Dead & Undying Love

On September 19, 1903, Alice MacDonald Fleming, the sister of author Rudyard Kipling, began receiving automatic writing messages purportedly coming from Frederic W. H. Myers, a Cambridge University classics scholar as well as a pioneering psychical researcher, who had died on January 17, 1901.   Fleming, the wife of a British army officer, was living in India at the time.  Because members of her family disapproved of her "dabbling in the occult," she used the pseudonym, "Mrs. Holland."   The initial messages were short and apparently an attempt by Myers to convince her of his identity.  He told her that much of what he would write through her is not meant for her, that she was to be the reporter.  She was asked by Myers to send the messages to the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London, an organization which Myers had helped organize in 1882.

 On January 17, 1904, the third anniversary of Myers' death, Fleming recorded another message from Myers for the SPR.  Her hand, controlled by Myers, wrote:  "...I am unable to make your hand form Greek characters and so I cannot give the text as I wish - only the reference I Cor. 16:12.   Oh I am feeble with eagerness.  How can I best be identified!  It means so much apart from the mere personal love and longing...I am trying alone amid unspeakable difficulties." 

 On the very same day, January 17, thousands of miles away in England, Mrs. Margaret Verrall, an automatic writing medium who was a member of the SPR, wrote, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong," which is the wording of 1 Cor. 16:12.  (It is unclear as to whether she wrote it in English of Greek)  This biblical passage is inscribed over the gateway of Selwyn College, Cambridge, under which Myers frequently passed.  When alive, Myers knew Mrs. Verrall and  had pointed out a slight verbal error in the Greek lettering.  It was obviously Myers's way of attempting to confirm his identity - the same passage being delivered through two different mediums in different parts of the world. 

This was apparently the first and probably the most simple of what came to be known as the "cross-correspondences" - similar messages through different mediums around the world, or fragmentary messages sent through different mediums which in themselves had no meaning until the SPR linked them up and made complete coherent messages out of them.  Mrs. Fleming in India, Leonora Piper in the United States, Mrs. Verrall and Winifred Coombe-Tenant, both in England, were the four principal mediums used by Myers and other in delivering these messages.

Besides Myers, the primary communicators included Professor Henry S Sidgwick of Cambridge and Edmund Gurney, another Cambridge scholar.  Both died before Myers.  All three men were instrumental in forming the SPR, but Myers' has been referred to as  the "father of psychical research."    Harvard professor William James said that Myers "will always be remembered in psychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon [psychical research]."

As the story goes, these three men and several others continued their work after they crossed over to the Other Side, Myers taking the lead, finding gifted mediums in different parts of the world to communicate messages back to members of the society which they helped establish several decades earlier.  As Sir Oliver Lodge, the distinguished British physicist and electricity pioneer, saw it, the cross-correspondences were part of a scheme devised by the "other side" to get messages through in a way that cannot be attributed to any ordinarily recognized variety of subconscious activity on the part of the medium, nor to telepathy or mind-reading between the medium and the person receiving the messages.    

Whenever psychical researchers discuss the best evidence on record for the survival of consciousness after physical death, i.e., life after death, these so-called "Cross-Correspondences" are often listed as number one.  "...the Cross-Correspondences are considered by many knowledgeable judges to be among the very best - if not the very best - evidence we have for survival of death, and moreover for survival of death with memory and intellectual vigor apparently undimmed," says Professor David Fontana, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. 

However, the researchers always point out that the Cross-Correspondences cases are so complex that they are beyond the comprehension of anyone who is not a classical scholar and not prepared to spend dozens of hours in studying the messages. "Whatever else they are, they are eminently communications from a man of letters, to be interpreted by scholars, and they are full of obscure classical allusions," Sir Oliver Lodge offered.    

Anyone interested in a more detailed account of the Cross-Correspondences should consider reading The Eager Dead, a book just released by Book Guild Publishing of the United Kingdom,  Archie E. Roy, professor emeritus of astronomy and honorary research fellow in the University of Glasgow, closely examines the Cross-Correspondences, including the spirit communicators, the researchers receiving the messages on this side of the veil, the various mediums through whom the messages came, and the messages themselves, putting together a fascinating story of love and intrigue during the Edwardian age.

As one reads this near-600 page book, the characters come alive.  Chief among the characters still in this realm of existence at the time are Arthur James Balfour, prime-minister of England from 1902-06,  Lord Gerald William Balfour, his brother, Winifred Coombe-Tennant, an affluent English woman (British delegate to the League of Nations) who used the pseudonym "Mrs. Willett" so that no one would know that she was a medium, and Henry Coombe-Tennant, her son, who was completely unaware for most of his life of his mother's mediumship or his own involvement in many of the Cross-Correspondences.

Three love stories unfold, two of them of frustrated love made manifest on the Other Side and the third a somewhat scandalous affair resulting in a love child.  One of first two is known as the The Palm Sunday Story.  "Many who have studied this case have accepted that it is a remarkable demonstration of undying love and devotion by people on both sides of that inevitable and inescapable appointment we call death," Professor Roy writes.

There are some interesting sidebar stories, such as Henry Coombe-Tennant's escape from a German prison camp during World War II and his trek across Germany and France with two other prisoners.  On his return to England, he was on his way to visit his mother with a brother officer when their car broke down. As they were walking up the road, they were offered a ride by a charming young woman - the current Queen of England. 

Even if one is not interested in the subject of life after death, the book offers much as a period piece.  "There are still many of the older members of the present population who have at least a vague knowledge of that era, though in this philistine age of dumbing-down, even more people, in their lack of an adequate and systematic education in history, might be excused in their ignorance, for confusing Victoria with the first Elizabeth and, if asked, hazard a guess that her first major war was fought against Hitler," Roy offers.

The entire story would make for a great movie, but a movie would no doubt fail to capture the intricacies of the people, their stories, and the messages so thoroughly researched by the author.

The Eager Dead is not available in the U.S. at this time, but it can be ordered from the publisher at http://www.bookguild.co.uk/ or through www.Amazon.co.uk