Awesome Phenomena at The Saturday Night Club

As Tom Harrison remembers it, Saturday nights were sacrosanct from April 6, 1946, just after the end of World War II, to 1958, when his mother, Minnie Harrison, transitioned to the spirit world.   It was on those Saturday evenings that Tom and a small circle of family and friends met at the home of Sydney and Gladys Shipman in Middlesbrough, northern England, to reunite and converse with their friends in spirit through the mediumship of his mother.

The phenomena included trance voice, direct voice, telekinesis, apports, spirit lights, spirit writing, and full materializations with voice.  "The most remarkable means of communication is when the ectoplasmic materializations of the Spirit person stands before us and converses with us, face to face," Tom Harrison wrote in his 2004 book, Life After Death - Living Proof.   "This is indeed the most exciting and wonderful of all forms of phenomena."

Harrison, who served as an officer in the Royal Army Ordinance Corps, had just been demobilized the month before the Saturday Night Club gathered for its first home circle. Minnie Harrison, then 51, had been clairvoyant and clairaudient since her teenage years and had developed into a deep trance medium, controlled by a North American Red Indian named Sunrise.  The other regular members were Tom's wife (Doris, who passed over in 1976) his father ("Tosher"), the Shipmans, Florence Hildred, and William Brittain Jones.  Jones was a senior surgeon and superintendent of Middlesbrough General Hospital. 
  

According to Harrison, who served as manager at the Arthur Findlay College of Psychic Science from 1966 until 1969, there was never any intent that it be a scientific research circle, because  that would have involved putting his mother through the discomfort and indignity of tying her to the chair and taping her mouth shut.  He asks what possible motive his mother could have had to try and trick her husband, her son, and close friends week after week, year after year.  All the while, trickery would have involved phenomena requiring her to have had the assistance of confederates, requiring access to the Shipman's home and avoiding detection in the red light that was permitted by the spirits after the first eight months of sittings.  

Harrison kept detailed notes.  In that very first sitting in 1946, the group was thrilled to hear from "Aunt Agg" (his mother's sister, Agnes Abbott), who had passed over in 1942, at age 57.   Aunt Agg had been a prominent medium with the Marylebone Spiritualist Association in London when alive.  She informed them that they could facilitate things by using a trumpet (a light-weight megaphone).  Until that time, they did not suspect that Minnie Harrison was capable of the "direct-voice" phenomenon.  

In their 13^th meeting, two of Minnie Harrison's deceased sisters sang a duet through the trumpet and the sitters observed materialized fingertips for the first time.  By the 17^th sitting, on August 24, the spirit visitors managed to produce two materialized ectoplasmic hands and spirit signatures were produced. 

It was not until their 32^nd meeting, on Dec. 7, 1946, that they were privileged to witness a full spirit materialization.  "On this particular evening we sat in the red light with my mother in full view of everyone in the room, sitting on her usual dining chair at the end of the semi-circle of sitters around the fireplace," Harrison explains in the book.  He goes on to say that they sat for at least 30 minutes with nothing happening before they saw a white disc, about two feet in diameter, on the floor between his mother and himself.   The column grew to about five feet of solid ectoplasm  "Then, as I was watching it, the top of it twisted towards me and I could just see there was the semblance of a face in it," Harrison recalled, but it was not distinct enough to tell who it was.  He saw two hands and arms covered by ectoplasmic robes emerge from the spirit form standing in front of him.   He was given four carnation apports before the hands and arms went back into the column and shrunk slowly towards the floor, as the ectoplasm returned to his mother.  He later learned that it was Aunt Agg who had incompletely materialized.

 In their 33^rd meeting, Florence Hildred's husband, Sam, materialized and handed his widow an orchid.  Jones' mother materialized and called him "Brittain, my boy," just as she had when alive in the flesh.   Aunt Agg also materialized and went around the circle greeting everyone and shaking hands.    In meeting 34, Jones took Aunt Agg's pulse, which suggested that she was a solid ectoplasmic person and not just a phantom.  Moreover, Aunt Agg stood directly under the red light so that those who knew her could clearly recognize her.

 The group was told that some 20 spirit scientists were working to help build the ectoplasmic materializations.  All in all, the circle witnessed some 1,500 spirit materializations over the years the Saturday Night Club met.   Harrison mentions that as the ectoplasmic forms moved around the room, they were always connected to his mother by means of an ectoplasmic cord emanating from her body. 

 One of the visitors to the circle during 1948 was Roy Dixon-Smith, a lieutenant-colonel in the army.  In his book, New Light on Survival, Dixon-Smith tells of his deceased wife Betty materializing at the Saturday Night Club.  He saw a tall, slim figure emerge from behind the materialization curtain.  "I rose from my chair and walked up to the figure, taking the extended hand in mine," he wrote, going on to mention that he examined the hand and it was just like Betty's.  "I stared into the face, and recognized my wife.  We spoke to each other, though what we said I cannot remember, for I was deeply stirred and so was she and her voice was incoherent with emotion."

 A member of the circle then asked if Dixon-Smith could kiss her and Betty responded in the affirmative.  "I then kissed her on the lips which were warm, soft, and natural," Dixon-Smith continued the story.  "Thereupon she bent her head and commenced to weep, and in a moment she sank. I watched her form right down to the level of the floor at my feet where it dissolved, the last wisp of it being drawn within the cabinet."

 Dixon-Smith mentioned that five other spirits materialized that night and their faces were clearly seen, as the room was brightly illuminated by the red light.  "They smiled, laughed, and chatted to me and the others; all their features, complexions, and expressions being perfectly clear in that ample light," he wrote, adding that he had been a complete stranger to the group before the sitting and that any suggestion of fraud was "preposterous."

Next post:  August 3, an interview with Tom Harrison, soon to turn 90 and now living in Spain