Extracted from the foreword of Spirit Messenger by Professor Archie E Roy, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University.

As a psychical researcher, it has been my good fortune over the years to have known many mediums. Some I have not only watched demonstrating on Spiritualist platforms, but also had sittings with. Others I have worked with in PRISM (Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums), the organization set up to bring mediums and psychical researchers together in order to study and evaluate mediumistic phenomena. Some, I am happy to say, I regard as good friends of mine.

Gordon Smith is one of those friends. But he is special. Gordon Smith is a medium, a person who, in every other way, leads a normal life, working as a hairdresser, yet who demonstrates again and again his ability to receive information he simply could not have obtained through the use of the five senses. This is precise, detailed information, startling relevant to the recipient, conveyed either at a meeting-place or during a private sitting.
Apart from Spiritualists and psychical researchers, the public knows little about mediums. In films, TV and books, people are invariably presented with grossly distorted caricatures of mediums. In Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, Madame Arcati is a figure of fun, although in due course, Charles, the sceptical husband, is shocked to find that she is genuine after all.

The sceptic, especially if they have never studied mediums, easily explains it all away. Any ostensible physical phenomena are due, they say, to sleight of hand, misdirection of attention or the practised use of ingeniously fabricated or carefully concealed apparatus. As for the mental medium, they say they produce their effects by a mixture of swift adjustments of a generalized statement, cold reading and careful attention to the body language and verbal responses given by the eager-to-be-convinced recipient.

I have no doubt that in many places throughout the world there exist fake psychics or people who have genuinely misled themselves into believing that they have psychic ability. Many of the former are tricksters of a particularly nasty kind, greedily leeching money from people who have lost loved ones; people anxious to be convinced that death is not the end and that they can find evidence their loved ones still exist. Such frauds deserve exposure not only because they prey on an extremely vulnerable section of the community but also because of the bad name they give to genuine mediums.

Where I and the sceptic who dismisses all ostensible paranormal abilities part company is that over the years I have become convinced by the sheer weight of evidence that genuine mediums exist. Some I have met and studied; others I regret never having known. I had the privilege, for example, of knowing for many years the Glasgow medium Albert Best. There is no way the accurate information he gave a friend of mine and me could have been obtained in any normal manner.

Among the medium who were before my time were Mrs Piper, Mrs Leonard, Mrs Willett, Geraldine Cummins and Eileen Garrett, to name but a few. Over the decades some of the most intelligent, cautious, initially sceptical psychical researches studies them; people of the calibre of Dr Richard Hodgson, Professor William James, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Charles Richet and Gerald, Second Earl of Balfour. What they found transformed their open-minded scepticism into a firm belief in the ability of at least some people’s minds to operate outside time and space. Some like Hodgson and Lodge went further: they finally became convinced that the best explanation was that we survive the bodily change we call death and, under certain circumstances, can communicate with those left behind.

Most Spiritualists and most mediums believe that a medium – as the name implies – acts as an intermediary between those who have gone on, having left their dead bodies, and those still in this world. They believe that the medium demonstrating from a public platform in a church or hall, or giving a sitting to someone, is conveying information from Spirit to the relevant person to provide evidence that the loved one has survived. In hundreds of Spiritualist churches, mediums demonstrate throughout the UK and in other countries, and have been doing so for over 150 years. There is, of course, a wide spectrum of mediumistic ability, from marvellous to mediocre. It would appear that as with almost any other human activity there are superstars, stars and barely luminous glow-worms! Sometimes, as has been know for more than a century the entire range of brightness can be shown by the same medium at different times.

Not only can mediums have their off days, but they can also be affected by the sitter from hell who sits back stubbornly, arms folded, with a defiant look of utter disbelief on their face, plainly thinking “Go on, astonish me!” Yet sometimes they care astonished when mediums of the calibre of Albert Best or Gordon Smith provide exact names, addresses, event s and descriptions sharply relevant to their life and the lives of those they have known.

I am not a Spiritualist but a psychical researcher who, by the very nature of my scientific training, deals in probabilities. But what makes a medium? Are they born, do they develop or suddenly become mediums at some stage of their lives? Is it like football, where it seems reasonable to suppose that superstars like George Best (a nephew of Albert Best) and Stanley Matthews are born naturally gifted in the quickness of their physical reactions and subsequently, by long training and experience, perfect their abilities, honing the sharpness of their astonishing talent?

Many of the great mediums have shown signs of psychic ability from childhood. Such a child is fortunate to have parents who are mailiar with these matters. More often in our western society, parents react in a confused, dismayed or even angry fashion, telling the child to stop fantasizing and forbidding them to tell such “lies”. Sometimes, however the child’s developing sensitivity is recognized by another medium so that help is given to come to terms with it or to develop the talent further.

The path leading to a career as a medium is by no means an easy one to follow. Often it has no signposts and the developing medium’s life is frequently full of doubts and difficulties. Nevertheless, when one compares the accounts given by mediums, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that among their diverse upbringings and experiences there is a common theme. They are all aware of other facets of reality; they sense beyond the five sense; they are in touch with … what? By continuing to study mediums patiently, carefully and comparatively, we have a chance to find out, a means of exploring the deepest mysteries of human personality and spirituality.

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