Mediums Rare

by Richard Matheson

  He had no recollection whatever of being taken there.

  His voice had never returned.

  In the ensuing year, Edgar, unable to speak above a painful whisper, had been forced to give up being a salesman and became, instead, a photographer’s apprentice.

  In an attempt to regain his voice, he had been working with a local hypnotist named Al Layne. But every time he’d reached a certain level of hypnosis, something had held him back.

  Until the afternoon of March 31, 1901.

  Edgar was in the parlor of his home, lying on a horsehair sofa, eyes shut. Sitting in a chair beside the sofa was Al Layne.

  Across the room, Edgar’s wife Gertrude was sitting with his parents, all observing worriedly.

  After yet another attempt to get him to speak normally proved fruitless, Al Layne told them that he was going to try something different.

  “Edgar,” he said, “instead of trying to speak, look inside your throat and see if you can find out what the problem is.

  “Take your time. Look carefully inside your throat and, when you’re ready, tell us what you see. And tell us in a normal tone of voice.”

  Edgar Cayce remained motionless on the sofa, eyes closed. His wife and parents stared at him in concern.

  Several minutes passed in silence.

  Then Edgar began to speak to himself. They all leaned forward in their chairs, straining to hear, but could make no sense of what he was mumbling.

  Finally, he cleared his throat.

  “Yes,” he said, “we have the body.”

  They all stared at him in mute astonishment as he continued, his tone so clear that it was difficult to believe that, moments earlier, it had been no better than a barely audible, rasping sound.

  “In the normal state,” said Edgar Cayce, twenty-three, “this body is unable to speak due to a partial paralysis of the inferior muscles of the vocal cords produced by nerve strain. This is a psychological condition producing a physical effect.

  “This may be removed by increasing the circulation to the affected parts by suggestion while in this unconscious condition.”

  Al Layne’s mouth hung open. It did not occur to him for close to a minute that he needed to respond to the young man.

  Abruptly, then, he said, “The circulation to the affected parts will now increase and the condition will be removed.”

  Edgar reached up to unbutton his shirt. Al Layne started, then leaned forward quickly to open the shirt, baring the young man’s chest.

  He caught his breath.

  The upper part of Edgar’s chest was turning pink, the color slowly spreading upward to his neck.

  “My God.” Squire Cayce was on his feet now, staring at his son with an awestruck expression.

  Now his wife stood up beside him, then Gertrude Cayce. With the hypnotist, they watched incredulously as the pinkness on Edgar’s chest turned to a roselike color, then increased to a vivid, burning red, Gertrude and his mother wincing at the sight.

  For twenty minutes, Edgar Cayce’s wife and parents stood in silence, gaping at Edgar’s neck and chest.

  They twitched in surprise as the young man cleared his throat.

  “It’s all right now,” he said, his voice still normal. “The condition is removed. Make the suggestion that the circulation return to normal and that, after that, the body awaken.”

  Layne swallowed dryly and did as he was told and they saw the fierce redness fade through rose and pink, back to normal flesh tone.

  Edgar Cayce opened his eyes and sat up. Removing a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, he coughed into it and the four people saw a small amount of blood soak into the white cotton.

  Then he looked at Al Layne. “Hello,” he said.

  A smile of overwhelming joy pulled back his lips. “I can talk!” he cried. “I’m all right!”

  His wife and mother, weeping, ran to embrace and kiss him. Squire Cayce, speechless with emotion, moved to his son’s side and grasped his hand.

  Al Layne could only stare.

  In all his years of working with hypnosis, he had never seen the like.

  AFTERWARD

  So began the healing life of Edgar Cayce, the most incredible psychic of our century.

  For more than forty years, this simple Kentucky man, with no medical training whatsoever, or much education of any kind, diagnosed the nature of every patient’s ailment—many of them hundreds of miles distant—and recommended treatment.

  Edgar Cayce healed literally thousands of men, women and children—of appendicitis—arthritis—tuberculosis—intestinal fever—hypertension—hay fever—polio-diabetes—and hundreds of other illnesses and injuries.

  In all, Cayce gave 14,256 psychic readings yielding 145,135 transcript pages over a period of 43 years.

  Not once did he contradict himself.

  In addition to his physical readings, Cayce also gave psychic readings in which he discussed the history of Man on Earth.

  Through these readings, he was able to predict accurately a number of archaeological discoveries decades before they were made, regarding not only known civilizations but lost civilizations as well, the existence of which had not been uncovered when the predictions were made.

  Describing this pre-historic world, he spoke about the extreme northern portions—the polar regions—as existing in the southern portions—the tropical regions; the Nile emptying into the Atlantic; the Sahara fertile and inhabited; the Mississippi Basin under miles of ocean, the only visible area of what is now the United States being portions of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

  The Atlantic Ocean, he claimed, was mostly the continent of Atlantis.

  The Pacific Ocean, he claimed, was mostly the continent of Lemuria.

  Regarding Cayce’s amazing record of healings—especially those at great distances—it has been questioned as to whom he was referring when he used the word “we” while diagnosing and prescribing cures for illnesses.

  Was it the so-called “editorial we”?

  Or did “we,” in fact, refer to the so-called “spirit doctors” who were ostensibly conferring with him?

  This interpretation seems the most acceptable.

  The alternative is that he utilized some incredibly complicated telepathic and/or clairvoyant hook-up to the brains of hundreds of living doctors and the—often remote—locations of hundreds of exotic balms and medications.

  THE NEW APPROACH

  Psychical research—now formally given the name of Parapsychology is, today, part of the curriculum at major colleges and universities.

  Harvard. Yale. Columbia. Duke. Cambridge. Oxford.

  While not given the extensive respect it received at the turn of the century, psychical research has, nonetheless, achieved a plateau of genuine acceptance by part of the scientific world.

  Part of this acceptance is due to the laborious work of one man at Duke University: J. B. Rhine

  For the first time in the history of psychical research, telepathy was studied by serious investigators as the primary aspect of psychic ability.

  This was a calculated extension of earlier tests which discovered that patients, in mesmeric trances, often responded to unspoken thoughts.

  Tests were given by Janet and Gurney establishing the correct ident ification of pain by telepathy.

  Often, when the hypnotist pinched himself (or herself) the subject “felt” the pain.

  Experiments were conducted by Professor and Mrs. Henry Sidgwic in which two-digit numbers selected at random and “visualized” by the hypnotist, were transferred telepathically to entranced subjects in adjoining rooms.

  A vital aspect of these experiments was the adoption of mathematical evaluation of the test results.

  The introduction of statistical methods for evaluation became standardized, using playing cards as “targets.”

  Important test results were obtained with the use of a board divided into 48 squares.

  Three series of telepathy tests were conducted, using the color
and suit of playing cards exclusively.

  A success ratio of more than eight million to one was achieved by these tests.

  Tests were introduced to examine clairvoyance as a phenomenon differing from that of telepathy.

  Special testing cards known as Zener cards were developed by Rhine.

  Five simple shapes were utilized, one on each card, five cards with each symbol for a pack total of twenty-five.

  Every known aspect of psychic ability was examined with the use of these cards.

  In 1934, Rhine’s monograph entitled Extra-Sensory Perception first coined the term ESP and replaced the term “Psychical Research” with “Parapsychology.”

  In 1933, and ’34, Rhine initiated tests to study the phenomenon of precognition (the prediction of future events) and psychokinesis (the power of mind over matter).

  While none of this could, in any way, match the drama and/or flamboyance of the great nineteenth century mediums, it did endow the field with a definite aura of academic respectability.

  The difference between the era of mediumship and the establishment of parapsychological testing was a simple but profound one.

  In the nineteenth century, special mediums were examined and tested.

  In the twentieth century, with few exceptions, only so-called “ordinary” people were examined and tested.

  It is now generally believed that everyone has some psychic ability.

  The testing procedure inaugurated by J. B. Rhine and his wife indicated that one in five persons demonstrated these abilities.

  Rhine was quoted as saying, “The most experienced investigators have come more and more to accept the view that, while individuals differ greatly in their potentialities, most people—probably all—possess some of these parapsychical abilities in some degree.”

  It is interesting to note that Dr. Rhine and his wife initially established all of their scientific procedures to investigate their major interest.

  Survival after death.

  CONCLUSION

  Parapsychology today would interpret the incidents dramatized in this book in a far different way then they were interpreted when they first occurred.

  The King Croesus incident, for example, appears to be an ancient precursor of what parapsychologists, today, call distance vision—or remote viewing—a form of “traveling” clairvoyance.

  In this case, the clairvoyant ability of the sixth oracle allowed him to view and describe what the King of Lydia was doing at some distance, namely cooking a tortoise and a lamb in a brass cauldron.

  Sister’s Teresa’s spontaneous rising into the air, on the other hand, would indicate a form of what today’s psi investigators would likely refer to as levitation.

  This is an area of study not well advanced in parapsychology in that it appears to indicate an ability to negate the law of gravity, a feat even today’s more lenient parapsychologists would not be inclined to advocate in any way.

  Swedenborg’s ability to “see” his house on fire three hundred miles distant would, of course, again be suggestive of distance vision.

  His ability to locate the hidden drawer in the desk of the deceased Dutch ambassador would probably be interpreted, by contemporary parapsychological thought, as an example of telepathy in that the ambassador’s wife knew, if only sub-consciously, (via telepathy from her husband when he was alive) about the drawer’s existence.

  That the incident might illustrate, to any degree, the existence of communication from consciousness existing beyond the grave (life after death) not many of today’s psi investigators would even consider much less entertain any concession of likelihood.

  At any rate, all of these events are little more than anecdotal.

  It is only with the advent of Mesmer’s work that any degree of “scientific” application to psychic events is noted.

  His consulting rooms might, in a general—admittedly crude—manner be considered as the first parapsychological testing laboratory.

  The inducement, via “Mesmerism,” of various psychic manifestations such as telepathy, clairvoyance and self-diagnosis could certainly be considered an initial step in psychical research.

  Especially in light of the fact that it led directly to the acceptance of the phenomena which we still refer to as hypnosis, a major tool in the study of man’s “inner” mind.

  With the Fox sisters (a prime example of telekinesis?), the background of modern parapsychology becomes definite in outline.

  By laying the ground work for the establishment of the Spiritualism movement, the main stepping stone to modern parapsychology was set in place.

  As indicated, historians date the birth of Spiritualism at 1848, the year the Fox sisters first began to experience the odd events in Hydesville, New York.

  The incident with D.D. Home is an example of one of the greatest—if not the greatest—physical mediums in the history of Spiritualism in action.

  Although very few of the phenomena displayed by the Scotch medium are, as yet, grist for the mill of today’s parapsychologists, they represent—if literally true—an incredible display of inexplicable (to date) occurrences.

  The apparent elongation of his body.

  His ability to handle hot coals without injury.

  His reported levitation through the window opening of Lord Adare’s sitting room.

  Admittedly more colorful than scientifically verifiable, these phenomena were certainly of great dramatic impact.

  The incident at the White House in which young Nettie Colburn gave so-called psychic advice to President Lincoln doubtless would be interpreted by today’s parapsychologists as a prime example of telepathy in that Lincoln was only told what he had been giving much thought to and wanted very much to hear in his anxiety to make a decision regarding both a necessary visit to the Union troops and the formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

  That the voice with which Nettie Colburn spoke was apparently that of Daniel Webster could be interpreted as signifying that Lincoln needed some truly strong presence to voice his own inner convictions and Daniel Webster was a perfect choice for that presence.

  The sitting with Eusapia Palladino, while more prosaic than that of D.D. Home, is indicative of a new, closer examination of physical mediums in that period, an attempt to apply more stringent testing methods to the study of psychic phenomena; a new step forward in the gradual progression toward modern parapsychological procedures.

  The remaining dramatizations—Mrs. Piper—Mrs. Leonard, Margery (with Houdini) and Edgar Cayce complete the step-by-step progression from the pre-history period of parapsychology to its present day existence.

  Despite the impressive advances made by parapsychologists all over the world, there still remains one unavoidable element of doubt in the scientific community.

  How can psi contribute anything relevant to the mainstream of science since the tools of science cannot be utilized to study phenomena which are so elusive and unpredictable?

  This criticism, of course, is not completely valid any longer.

  Advances in instrumentation and experiment design have made the studies of parapsychology far more practical than it was in the earlier data-collection stage of research.

  Nonetheless, science, particularly in the western world, retains the materialistic view that anything human which cannot be touched, tasted, seen, smelled or heard does not exist.

  Even the development of advanced detection systems—which amplify the five senses—has not totally altered this point of view.

  The complete acceptance of psychic phenomena can only take place if science makes a concentrated effort to extend the rules of materialism to a point where they encompass the inner experience of mankind as well.

  This can be accomplished by various means.

  For instance, lie detectors and electroencephalographs assign specific numbers to mental states.

  The ultimate aim of such an approach would be to determine enough quantities with regard to the physical activities
of the brain to allow a specification of the internal human experience.

  In brief, science’s intransigent assumption of a one-to-one relationship between the brain and consciousness must be relaxed.

  The actuality of psi phenomena can only be realized when science begins to question its conviction that all psychic function are tied to neural substance.

  Jung himself claimed that the brain had nothing whatever to do with the psyche.

  It is a matter of recorded fact that psi signals run counter to the principle of the decline of energy with the square of distance from its source.

  Psi signals are not impeded—as customary energy signals are—by metal shielding—nor by hundreds of feet of water which are impenetrable to ordinary electromagnetic impulses.

  No neural structure in the brain—or elsewhere in the human organism—has ever been discovered that could provide the large amount of energy required for long-distance transmission of psi symbols.

  Despite the continuing disparity of thought between science and parapsychology, progress (albeit halting) is being made.

  Pieces of the continuing psychic puzzle are constantly being collected from all directions—and at an increasing rate.

  The physical and the behavioral sciences are coming together.

  Physics is blending with philosophy.

  Biology with religion.

  Medicine and engineering with literature and education.

  In brief, a massive “cross-fertilization” is taking place all the time.

  While it does, parapsychologists continue with a mass of laborious, repetitive testing, always intent on proving what they believe to be the truth of psychic phenomena.

  No longer, in fact, do they regard their function as one of proving the occurrence of psi events.