MEDIUM, 11, SHOCKS UNITARIAN MINISTER
by Michael E. Tymn

As a very liberal Unitarian minister, Dr Horace Westwood did not believe in any kind of afterlife. He was a humanist who believed that the objective of life was to make the world a better place for future generations. He did not stop to ask what future generations might strive for beyond comforts and pleasures once that “better place” was established. “The only immortality of which I was sure was the immortality of influence,” he offered. “Beyond that, I had nothing to offer.”

Born in Yorkshire, England in 1884, Westwood emigrated to Canada in 1904, ministering in both the western and eastern parts of the country. As he explained in his 1949 book, There is a Psychic World, his philosophy relative to survival and the meaning of life began to slowly change in 1918 when he observed messages coming over a Ouija board at a friend’s house. The medium was the friend’s daughter and the messages were purportedly coming from the friend’s son, who had been killed in France during the war. While the messages seemed genuine to Westwood, he reasoned that it was an instance of “sympathetic thought-transference” and wishful thinking. That is, the daughter received the parents’ thoughts and fed them back to them in meaningful messages.

When Westwood asked “J” (the communicating son) if he could offer something more convincing, the indicator spelled out instructions for Westwood, his wife, and the medium (his sister) to place the fingers of one hand lightly on the board, which was a heavy piece of pine planking, about 18 x 24 inches. “At once, as though charged with a powerful electric force, the board began to race over the surface of the table and with such rapidity that we could hardly keep our hands upon it.” Westwood recorded. “This proceeded for fully three minutes. The board then came to the edge of the table, and tipping itself vertically, with our hands lightly touching the surface (though not supporting it in any way), floated gently downwards to within about an inch from the floor. Reversing the process, it then floated upwards, till it came to the edge of the table, and laying itself flat on the surface began to race over the top of the table, as before.”

Westwood wondered if he had been hypnotized, but everyone else, including the medium, appeared as shocked as he was, as they had never seen anything like it before. “For the first time in my life I had witnessed phenomena super-normal in character,” Westwood continued. “A door had been opened in my mind, ventilating my pet prejudices.”

A few days later, Westwood purchased a Ouija board and began experimenting in his own house with his wife and her cousin, who lived with them. Their initial efforts were a failure. When Westwood’s four children and “Anna,” the cousin’s 11-year-old daughter, asked what was going on, Westwood explained that it was kind of a toy. They asked to try it and he consented. Nothing happened with Westwood’s children, but when Anna tried it things did happen. “She had hardly touched it, when the indicator began to move with startling rapidity and with equally startling accuracy, spelling out words and sentences in complete and intelligent sequence,” Westwood wrote. “But the subject matter of the sentence was extraordinary to say the least. Things were revealed which the child could not possibly have known. Circumstances and events were told concerning each adult that were not known to the other two. At times it was embarrassing, at least, to me.”

Westwood turned the board around and blindfolded Anna, but it made no difference. The indicator continued to deliver a wealth of information with swiftness and accuracy. “My immediate reaction was that the natural sensitivity of the child enabled her, by some process beyond my ken, to explore the subconscious levels of the minds of the adults and to bring forgotten and buried memories to light,” Westwood explained.

The following day, Westwood made his own Ouija board with the letters in different places. He brought Anna to the board in his den while blindfolded and placed her hand on the tumbler over the board. “It was literally amazing,” he recorded. “Her hand was not confused in the least. The tumbler found the letters with the same swiftness and accuracy as the day before. And to my great surprise the first message that came through was to the effect that I was a fool for my pains, the arrangements of the letters made not the slightest difference and that ‘they’ would prove that they were invisible entities seeking to communicate on the physical plane.”

Among the messages was one purporting to come from Fred, an old college friend who had died several years earlier. Still, Westwood refused to believe in spirits. “I positively refused to grant them any real existence,” he continued, adding that he was certain it had to be some aspect of the subconscious mind that he did not understand.

Concerned about the effect of all this on Anna, Westwood discussed it with her, her mother, and his wife. As Anna seemed not to be affected in a negative way, he decided to continue with more experiments. Within a week, Anna developed the power of automatic writing. “It made no difference whether we blindfolded her or not, she wrote with the same perfect ease and accuracy. Her pencil never faltered and never was there the slightest hesitation in recording answers to questions that were asked.”

One message came from a child whose parents Westwood knew. For privacy concerns, he referred to her under the pseudonym “Charlotte Summers.” She had been in the adjoining ward of the hospital Dr Westwood was in for surgery during 1913. She “passed over,” at the age of six, before he left the hospital.

Charlotte began by giving her name and their mutual hospital experiences, as well as the circumstances of her death. “As the message continued, she revealed an intimate knowledge of her parents’ family life both during her earthly sojourn and since,” Westwood documented. “She then made clear the purpose of her communication.” She wanted Westwood to contact her mother, who had ceased to grieve, and let her know that she was still alive. “Give her to understand that I’m always near and that I am so happy over baby brother.” Charlotte communicated in Anna’s hand.

Westwood was reluctant to contact the Summers and tell them of the communication, especially since he was still not sure that it was not all some kind of trick of the subconscious combined with mental telepathy. However, he proceeded to call them and received the reaction he had feared. Mr Summers was shocked that Westwood would believe in such “nonsense” and wanted nothing to do with it. However, about a month later, Mr Summers, apparently at the urging of Mrs Summers, called Westwood and requested that Anna be brought to their home. “In response to the many questions asked through Anna of the alleged Charlotte [by the Summers], the replies indicated a wealth of detailed information entirely beyond any possible knowledge [Anna] might have possessed,” Westwood wrote. “The parents were convinced that the communication were evidential and that through Anna they had come into touch with the daughter who had ‘passed over’ some five years before.”

Not long after the automatic writing began, Anna wrote messages from two apparently different sources. One signed her name “Ruth” and the other “Ralph.” They claimed to have been stenographers in Washington, D.C. in the employment of the U.S. Government and said they died together about two years earlier while in their late twenties. They provided some data about their life, but Westwood, still resisting the survival hypothesis, made no attempt to follow up and verify the information. “I was not interested in communing with the departed, and the problem of proving or disproving survival was not in my mind,” Westwood explained as he wrote the book some three decades later.

While messages had come from other “entities” earlier, they now came only from Ruth and Ralph. Anna suddenly became an expert typist while receiving messages from Ruth and Ralph. “Anna had never played with a typewriter,” Westwood wrote. “But under control and blindfolded, she would operate the machine with perfect ease as though she possessed experienced hands. Yet, without control and without the blindfold, she had to pick out the letters, painfully, one by one.”

Westwood would place typed questions in the typewriter, blindfold Anna, who had no prior knowledge of the questions, and then receive swift replies from Ruth and Ralph. He even spoke with Anna about other matters as her fingers typed replies.

The story of Anna and Dr Westwood continues in the next article.

ASPSI