In Touch with the Dead (letter 6 august 1920)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

In Touch with the Dead is a letter written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in the Daily Mail on 6 august 1920.

See also: In Touch with the Dead (30 july 1920) and In Touch with the Dead (12 august 1920).


In Touch with the Dead

Daily Mail (6 august 1920, p. 4)

From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

To the Editor of The Daily Mail.

Sir, — In his letter in Tuesday's Daily Mail Mr. G. E. Neaum quotes my words correctly, and he may take them in their perfectly literal significance.

[The words referred to are, "We have spoken to them (people who have died) direct, as we did when they were in this world."]

Thus, to take a single example, drawn from séance in Wales under the mediumship of Mr. Evan Powell; a voice in the darkened room gave forth the family name of my deceased brother, which was known to few outside ourselves, and which had not appeared in his obituary in The Times. The voice then, quite audibly so that all those sitting near me could hear, discussed the health of his widow, a Danish lady in Copenhagen, and on my asking whether psychic treatment would avail her gave me a name which I had never heard, but which, with the help of my neighbours, I committed to memory. On writing to a Danish friend I found that there was such a person in Copenhagen, and that he was just the one who could give the lady psychic advice.

The other ten cases to which I alluded as being within my own experience were all of a similar nature to this, though not all with the same medium.

It is a pity, as Mr. Neaum will no doubt think, that such manifestations, however convincing, should occur in the dark. Light is as prejudicial to all phenomena dealing with materialisation as it is to the development of a photographic plate.

On one occasion, however, in the presence of Mrs. Wriedt, I was able to get the voices in broad daylight in my own study. Of the two hundred people who corroborated my recent statements at the luncheon many have no doubt had a similar experience.

Arthur Conan Doyle.