CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CALL TO SERVICE

My wife and I continued to hold our sittings every Wednesday and Sunday evening, and as one ended we looked forward to the next. Soon we were to learn of something which was to change the whole course of our lives.

Flora Macdonald was addressing us one evening. “There is work for you to do,” she said. “Aren’t we working now?” I asked.

“Of course you are,” she replied, “but it is a different sort of work that I have in mind.” “Please explain,” I urged.

“Well,” she went on, “I want you both to understand that this God-given gift of the direct voice is intended for the many to enjoy and not for you alone.”

“What do you suggest we do?” was my next question. She said it was the wish of those on the Other Side for us to go to London, where we should devote our lives to the service of others by using this gift to comfort mourners.

“That’s all right, Flora Macdonald,” I said, “but so far as I am concerned I have no wish to give up my business, and no particular desire to leave here for London. We are going along quite nicely, and I do not see any sense in throwing up everything here for an uncertainty in London.” For the next half an hour or so, Flora Macdonald and I argued for and against the project. My principal objection was - and I thought a sound one - commercialising the gift.

Her reply was that the labourer was worthy of his hire. Nobody objected to a clergyman being paid for his work. What was the objection to us being paid for a similar work? In any case, we could always invite to the sittings one or two people who were unable to pay, and in this way be doing two good turns. Still, I demurred. However, I promised to think it over. My wife and I had a long talk about it, but neither was willing to make the suggested drastic change.

Flora Macdonald and I resumed our arguments at the next sitting. I eventually promised to inquire about a suitable house, enlist the help of our friends in North Harrow, and see what could be done.

A bombshell dropped. Owing to a sudden business slump, and an adverse change of circumstances, our future, which, two weeks earlier, looked rosy, now seemed very black. We were temporarily stunned by this blow. Any hopes of getting to London vanished, as we thought, through financial straits. Flora Macdonald, however, assured us that everything would be all right, and we had nothing to fear.

Getting a place in London suitable to our requirements was not easy. Disappointment after disappointment came our way. What appeared to be the last straw was spraining my ankle as I was hurrying from an estate agent’s office on my way to view a house. I was a sorry sight when I arrived home in the early hours of the morning from London. My ankle was twice its normal size and very painful. I limped upstairs, in not the best of moods. I told my wife that, after the previous day’s affairs, I did not want to see London again. As for house hunting, I had finished.

The same evening we held a sitting. I wanted an opportunity of telling Flora Macdonald that I had washed my hands of the London project.

She listened without interruption to my long tale of woe. When I had finished, she said:

“Well, Sergeant Perriman, it doesn’t matter what you say. I tell you now that you will go to London, and much sooner than you expect.”

“All right, we’ll see,” I replied “Yes, we will see,” was her rejoinder.

The following morning I received a letter from a friend in London informing me that he knew of suitable premises, and if I let him know my intentions by return of post he would see the landlord. I did not know what to do. My wife suggested that I consulted Flora Macdonald. If I consulted her, I told my wife, I thought I knew what she would say, and it would not be the advice I wanted. However, we agreed to have a sitting to discuss the position, and to hear what Flora Macdonald had to say. As I anticipated, she told me to write my friend at once to say that I would see the landlord in the course of a few days. The few days would allow my ankle to get stronger, as she did not want to see “poor Sergeant Perriman limping to London.”

I thought there was a suggestion of Scottish irony about my limping, and I am afraid a battle of words followed on the respective qualities of the Scots and English. Flora Macdonald had the last word. I, poor man, gave in, and promised to go to London.

Despite the fact that we had not the means to meet the cost of a removal from Cardiff to London, I wrote to several removal contractors for estimates. In the meantime, I asked Flora Macdonald about the wherewithal to pay. She told me that I need not worry, as everything would turn out all right.

In due course I received the estimates, and found them far in excess of what I had anticipated. As Flora Macdonald had been prime mover in this uncertain state of affairs, I thought it would be as well to discuss these with her.

“Of course they are too much,” she said. “Och, you would not get a Scotswoman paying all that money.”

“Probably not,” I replied, “but unless you can do the removal for us, I don’t see how we can get it done any cheaper.”

“You will get it done much cheaper,” she said, “and in a way you least expect. Just wait and see.”

The following evening, as my wife and I were returning home, I noticed a furniture van and trailer, with a London firm’s name, on a spare piece of ground. There was nobody in charge. As there was a small inn close by, I thought the driver might be having a little refreshment. He was there. I learned that he had a load of furniture which was being delivered not far away in the morning. He said that he would be returning to London empty unless he had instructions from his firm to the contrary.

I told the driver that I was moving to London, but I was not sure whether the house I was taking would be ready, as I was not due for a fortnight. I suggested he came round to see me the following morning when he could give me an estimate. He agreed to do so.

On arriving home we had a sitting. “Well,” said Flora Macdonald, “didn’t I tell you that you would hear of something in an unexpected way, and that you would get your removal done much cheaper?”

“We have not received an estimate from this man yet,” I replied, “so I do not know whether it is going to be cheaper or not.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “When that man comes tomorrow, tell him the inconvenience to which you will be put by a hurried removal, and unless his estimate is a moderate one, you would prefer to wait. Better still, tell the man what you are prepared to pay.”

“What about suggesting a figure?” I asked. “That I will,” she replied, mentioning a figure I thought ridiculous. “There is no doubt about your being a Scot,” I told her. “Why, if I told the man I was only prepared to pay what you suggest, he would either collapse or think I was mad.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Flora went on. “You can take it from me that you will get the job done at the figure I suggest. And now, get on with it.”

“Before you go, Flora, what about the wherewithal?” I asked. “That will come,” she replied, abruptly. “Good night!”

When the man came the next day, I told him what I was prepared to pay for the removal. His face was a study. He said, “We are~ not doing this for the benefit of our health.”

“Of course not,” I replied, “but it is better than going back empty.” I suggested he put a trunk call through to his firm to get their opinion. He agreed, but said, “I am afraid they won’t consider your offer.” Anyway, when he returned from the call box, he told me, much to his surprise, that the firm had accepted my offer without question, and that they were forwarding a contract form right away. He arranged to come with his mate in the evening to pack the china and glass ready for loading the following morning. In the meantime I sent a wire to the landlord asking if it were possible for me to move in immediately. I got a reply that it was all right.

Everything was now in order except the wherewithal. As the men were loading up, the postman delivered a letter containing a cheque which more than covered the cost of moving. Luck was with us during the removal. The van had not gone more than half an hour when we had torrential rain. So heavy was the downpour that miles of land and roads were flooded.

When I met the men in London the following evening, they told me of their experiences. They had just managed to reach Gloucester when they heard the main road by which they had come was flooded, making it impassable for traffic. Still, here was our furniture safe and sound, and we ready for the great adventure.

As I write, we are in the seventh year of this adventure. Since the advent of the voice phenomena, we have held some two thousand five hundred sittings, and have listened to over ten thousand spirit entities discourse. From these figures it will be realised how impossible it is to record in this book everything that has happened. For this reason, I am confining myself to some of the most interesting sittings.

The first where unusual phenomena took place happened about three months after our arrival in London. Resulting from a public talk I had given, we made the acquaintance of a Scottish family visiting London from Southern Rhodesia.

We invited them to a sitting, and learned from Flora Macdonald that the daughter had potential voice mediumship. Flora said she would need developing, and asked us to sit for development with the young woman and her parents. We offered them the use of our séance room on Sunday afternoons. At one of these sittings we had a surprise and a little shock.

The husband sat next to my wife, on her left, his daughter next to him, and then her mother. I was by the piano in case music was required. We had been sitting for a while talking when the husband, in great alarm, called out to me, “Your wife is not here!”

“What do you mean, not here?” I asked. “She’s gone!” he exclaimed. I called to my wife, but got no answer.

“Are you sure she is not in her chair?” I inquired of the husband. “Absolutely,” he replied. “She was here a moment ago, but now her chair is empty.”

I again called my wife, but still there was no answer. I knew she could not get out of the room because the doors were locked and I held the keys. For the third time I called, but there was no response. “I have had enough of this,” I said, “I am going to find out what has happened to her. I am going to switch on the lights.”

As I spoke, Flora Macdonald called out, “Leave the lights alone, Sergeant Perriman. We have got her, and she is quite safe.”

“You have got her?” I queried; “what do you mean?” “We have taken her for a little ride,” she answered. “Calm yourself.” At this moment we heard my wife calling us. Her voice seemed a long way off, coming, as it were, from the housetop. “You do look funny down there,” she said. “Never mind about our looking funny,” I replied. “What I want to know is, where are you?”

“I am up here,” she said. “Up where?” I asked in disgust. Feeling annoyed, I requested Flora Macdonald to explain what had happened.

“If you want to know,” said Flora, “we have levitated your wife. We found the power here this afternoon suitable for this kind of phenomena, and we experimented.”

“Very nice, too,” was my rejoinder. “But supposing something had happened to cause her a severe injury, what then?”

“Unless the conditions had been ideal, and we knew no harm would come to your wife, we should not have attempted to do what we have,” she replied. I asked Flora how high my wife had been levitated, and she told me that she had been taken above the roof.

Next came the descent of my wife. We heard Flora instructing other entities, giving us the impression that my wife was being borne down by them. All the time, Mrs. Perriman was remarking on the funny sensation, “sitting on a cloud,” she aptly expressed it. When nearing her chair, Flora gave instructions to let my wife go. We heard her flop in her chair. As she did so, we breathed a sigh of relief.

After the sitting was over, we questioned my wife on her experience. She told us that she felt as if she was being elongated and covered with cotton wool. She had no sensation of rising, but suddenly found herself looking down from a great height through a long tube. The dark séance room was quite light to her, and that was the reason why she was able to see us.

When she was being lowered, it was like coming down a lift that had no sides to it. She felt that she was without shape, and as light as a feather. When she dropped into her chair, she had the sensation of being remoulded into her natural shape, and this was accompanied by a prickly feeling. For a little while, the sensory nervous system did not function in the normal way.

Asked whether she liked the trip, my wife said that, had she known what the spirit people had intended doing, she would have been afraid to trust herself. We agreed that it would need a great deal of courage to submit to such an ordeal, and doubted whether we would have risked it. As I put it, “There are less alarming ways of losing one’s wife than by levitation.” At a subsequent sitting, my wife was again levitated, but this time she did not mind.

On another occasion, a young man was told by Flora that he possessed unusual physical mediumship. If we all agreed, the spirit people would test his powers at a sitting to be arranged, providing he did not mind. He was quite willing, so were we, and the sitting was held. There were just the three of us. Instructing us to place our hands on our solar plexus, to conserve the power, Flora told us that they were ready.

Our attention was first attracted to a large light which appeared above our heads. After remaining stationary for a while, it began to circle the room. Vases of flowers, which were on our little altar, were brought to us. My large cabinet gramophone, on which I was resting my arms, shot away, causing me to overbalance and come to grief on the floor. I complained and said they might have told me what was happening. “Here you are,” said Flora Mac, “there’s your gramophone.” The next moment it was pushed towards me. We then saw a light near my wife, and heard her say, “I’m going up.” The light was strong enough for us to see her outline. We saw her suspended about five feet from the floor. I asked how she felt. “Fine,” she replied, “but I hope they don’t drop me.”