Was Michael Jackson Overshadowed by Spirits?

     There has been much in the way of spirit communication to suggest that talented artists in the spirit world attempt to influence, or overshadow, people here on the earth plane, especially people who might have an aptitude for whatever gift the particular spirit had when incarnate.  "The spirit world, rather than the physical world, is the sphere of causes," Dr. James M. Peebles, a California physician, quotes one of many seemingly advanced spirit communicators in an 1887 book.  "Its baptismal influences are continually being poured upon mortals.  All great orators are inspired; all poets are impressed; the greatest artists often paint wiser than they are known. Many of the best mediums on earth do not know they are mediums.  Many claim thoughts and ideas as their own that were simply transmitted to their sensitive brain."

       Psychical researcher Allan Kardec was told much the same thing by communicating spirits - that we are influenced by various spirits, some advanced, some "earthbound," some talented but not particularly advanced or earthbound.  Moreover, a person can be overshadowed by a number of spirits at the same time.   Overshadowing is a matter of degree and the individual can accept or reject the influence based on free will.   Possession or obsession is a very advanced degree of overshadowing.

       While watching an hour-long TV special about the life of Michael Jackson last week,  I couldn't help wonder if he had been overshadowed by both artistic spirits and by some very low-level spirits, perhaps even possessed by some relative to his obvious hang-ups. 

       One of the more interesting stories in this regard is referred to as The Thompson-Gifford case.   During January 1907, Frederic L. Thompson, a New York City goldsmith, consulted Dr. James H. Hyslop, the founder and director of the American Institute for Scientific Research, which was devoted to the study of abnormal psychology and psychical research.  "Mr. Thompson came to me with the fear that his visions and hallucinations were threatening his sanity," Hyslop explained.    

       Thompson informed Hyslop, a former Columbia University professor of logic and ethics, that around the middle of 1905 he was "suddenly and inexplicably seized with an impulse to sketch and paint pictures." Prior to that, he had no real interest or experience in art beyond the engraving required in his occupation. The impulses were accompanied by "hallucinations or visions" of trees and landscapes.  The impulses so affected him that he found it difficult to concentrate on his job.

        One particular image that Thompson could not get out of his mind involved some gnarled oak trees overlooking the ocean.  Hyslop asked Thompson to paint the scene from the images he was getting.  Since Hyslop had been studying mediumistic phenomena, he arranged to have Thompson sit with three different mediums.  The information coming through the mediums revealed that Thompson was being influenced by a deceased artist named Robert Swain Gifford, who had died shortly before Thompson's problems began.  Thompson and Hyslop were able to piece together information that directed them to the island of Nashawena in the Elizabeth Islands, off Massachusetts. There they found the scene Thompson had painted it for Hyslop, the curves and bends in the trees just as Thompson had painted them from the mental images he received.         

       "On any theory we ought to recognize that the identity of Mr. Gifford is clear," Hyslop concluded.  "There are perhaps no single incidents that would force one to accept this view, but their collective force is overwhelming and constitutes a mass of relevant hints inapplicable to any one else."

      While skeptics might claim that Thompson made up the whole story and that he actually visited the scenes beforehand and made the sketches he claimed came from his visions, Hyslop saw no motive for such a charade, nor could fraud explain how Thompson suddenly became an accomplished artist with no prior experience or training.  Most of all, though, Thompson had no control over the sittings with the mediums, which were arranged and observed by Hyslop.   If Thompson had been faking it, how did all the veridical information concerning Gifford come through the mediums?

      "Superficially, at least, all the facts point to the spiritistic hypothesis, whatever perplexities exist in regard to the modus operandi of the agencies effecting the result," Hyslop ended his report.

             Probably the best known case of musical overshadowing is that of Rosemary Brown, a widowed London housewife who, beginning in 1964, was believed to have channeled the spirits of many great composers, including Beethoven, Liszt, Mozart, Chopin, Bach, and Debussy.     Although Brown, who had mediumistic abilities, had taken some piano lessons, she had no real talent and was unacquainted with the technicalities of writing notes.  She was contacted by Liszt and told that a group of composers from the spirit world would be using her to dictate new compositions through her by means of automatic writing.   "You have sufficient training for our purposes," Liszt told her.  "Had you been given a really full musical education it would have been no help to us at all." 

      Liszt explained that a full musical background would have been an impediment to them as she would have had too many theories and ideas of her own that they might not have been able to overcome. 

       Brown proceeded to produce many musical works, all of which were well beyond her previous capabilities and appeared on both British and American TV.    Music critics were divided as to whether her music resembled or approached that of the old masters.  "I've no doubt she's psychic," said composer Richard Rodney Bennett.  "She's told me things about myself she just couldn't have known about.  I was having trouble with a piece of music and she passed along Debussy's recommendation - which worked....A lot of people can improvise but you couldn't fake music like this without years of training.  I couldn't have faked some of the Beethoven myself."   

        Renowned pianist Hephzibah Menuhin was also impressed.  "The music is absolutely in the style of these composers," she said.

     See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)      

     Communicating through direct-voice medium Leslie Flint in 1956, Chopin mentioned having been aware, during his earth life, of some kind of beings giving him inspiration and assistance while he was composing.  In fact, he gave that as his reason for making so much effort to contact those on earth, i.e., he was grateful for having had help and he wanted to extend any help he could to others.

       More amazing, though, is the story of Jesse F. Shepard, a musical medium who performed on the piano in the United States, Australia, Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and other countries, often before royalty.  He also sang, his voice said to fill cathedrals.  However, he performed mostly in the dark and always while in a trance state.  Occasionally, the piano could be seen playing without Shepard's hands on it.   In the normal (non-trance) state, he could neither play nor sing.

        Reporting on a performance that took place on September 3, 1893, Prince Adam Wisniewski stated that the second piece played by Shepard that night was a rhapsody for four hands, played by Liszt and Thalberg.  "Notwithstanding this extra ordinarily complex technique, the harmony was admirable, and such as no one present had ever known paralleled, even by Liszt himself, whom I personally knew, and in whom passion and delicacy were united.  In the circle were musicians who, like me, had heard the greatest pianists in Europe, but we can say that we never heard such truly supernatural execution."

      Of Shepard's voice, Professor M. Bernardin Rahn said that it was very unique.  "There is no imitation of it possible," he added.  "The compass of the voice can have nothing likened to it.  A bass of profound depth, full expression, is first heard. Thereupon it is answered by a soprano, which attains the utmost heights with clear and thrilling notes.  Brilliant shakes follow the most amazing staccato."  

      According to Professor J. Kiddle of New York, Shepard was not only a gifted trance musician, but also gave trance addresses in English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Chaldean, and Arabic, dealing with scientific, philosophical, and social subjects.  He also wrote two volumes of discourses.  Renowned Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck, the 1911 Nobel Prize winner in literature, said that he knew of nothing in literature more admirable or more profound.  

       Some people thought that medium Daniel Dunglas Home was a talented musician, but it was really the spirit or spirits overshadowing him that deserved the credit. Sir William Crookes, the distinguished British chemist and physicist who discovered the element Thallium and was a pioneer in x-ray technology, reported seeing an accordion, its keys untouched by human hands, playing beautiful music in the presence of Home on several occasions.  Home would hold the end of the accordion with his finger tips, allowing the instrument to hang.  Apparently, the "psychic force" required for the spirits to play the instrument was transmitted through Home's body and fingers.   In one of the experiments, Crookes enclosed the accordion in a cage, while Home held the end of it from outside the cage.  "It then commenced to play, at first chords and runs, and afterwards a well-known sweet and plaintive melody, which was executed perfectly in a very beautiful manner," Crookes reported, mentioning that these experiments took place in his own house and that he had purchased the accordion himself, not allowing Home to handle it before the experiment so that there could be no possibility of a trick instrument.

      Alfred Russel Wallace, co-originator with Charles Darwin of the natural selection theory of evolution, was present in Crookes' home at one such experiment.  "The room was well-lighted and I distinctly saw Home's hand holding the instrument, which moved up and down and played a tune without any visible cause,"  Wallace reported, adding that Home took away his hand and the instrument continued to be played by a "detached hand" that clearly did not belong to Home.   

       On another occasion, the accordion floated across the room, clearly free of Home.   "A phantom form came from a corner of the room, took an accordion in its hands, and then glided about the room playing the instrument," Crookes wrote.  "The form was visible to all present for many minutes, Mr. Home also been seen at the time.  Coming rather close to a lady who was sitting apart from the rest of the company, she gave a slight cry, upon which [the phantom] vanished."      

        It may be that child prodigies are a result of such spirit influence. Dr. Charles Richet, the 1913 Nobel Prize winner in medicine, reported on the strange case of Pepito Arriola, when, at age 3 years, 3 months, he performed at the Psychological Congress in Paris during 1900.  Richet stated that the boy played brilliantly on the piano. "He composed military or funeral marches, waltzes, habaneras, minuets, and played some twenty difficult pieces from memory," Richet, a professor of physiology at the medical school of the University of Paris for 38 years, wrote.  "A hundred members of the Congress heard and applauded him."

       It was further reported that little Pepito's hands could not stretch more than five notes, yet he appeared to sound full octaves.  Some onlookers said that his hands seemed to increase in size during the playing, and Rosalie Thompson, a clairvoyant, claimed that she saw the child dissolve into the figure of a man while at the piano. 

      As Pepito's mother was an accomplished musician, one might conclude that the boy's gift was genetic.  However, the mother stated that she did not teach him.  Her first awareness of the boy's talent was when he was just 2 ½.  She heard one of her own difficult pieces being correctly played, entered the room, and found her son at the piano.

      Genetics may be a factor in that the spirits seem to seek out a person who as the innate ability for whatever it is they are trying to impart. Spirit operators explained to medium William Stainton Moses that because he had no real musical appreciation, they could not produce proper music through him.  Communicating spirits told  Allan Kardec that such spirits are inclined to influence those with whom they have a certain "affection."

      "As a matter of fact, all of the most brilliant geniuses of any age have been [so inspired]," the communicating spirit quoted by Dr. Peebles said.  "They could not have originated the ideas which are conveyed by the works of men like Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dante, Plato, Aristotle, and others, unless the writers or speakers had been inspired by men from the spirit world."

       When asked whether the human "sensitive" should take credit, the spirit replied:  "He takes all the credit of their utterance in your world, but as it is only temporarily, we do not mind it. When he comes into the spirit world he finds his mistake out, and is obliged to admit that he is not such a genius as he thought he was.  Then he has to take his proper place in the world of thought, and perhaps may be dissatisfied...Alas! how are the mighty fallen.  When the spirit world reveals to them how little they really were, and how useless have been their attempts at self glorification, they begin to be wiser and sadder men."