Month: February 2014

  • Bernard's Book Chapter 8

    CHAPTER 8: SPIRIT MESSAGES

    This chapter will be about my research into the spiritual side of life. It was my mother who piqued my interest in spiritual things, as I have already told you. I had been to Lakewood with her a couple of times. After my 15th birthday, when I had my driver’s license, Mother said, “Let’s you and I go to Etna.” That day at Etna, Mother was given a picture of a woman, drawn by a medium. It was colored with crayons on wax paper. She thought it was the likeness of her mother.

    In January 1943, I was drafted into the Army and ended up in the 90th Division 357 Battalion I Company. I had a feeling, maybe it was from Spirit, that I should try to get into the Air Force. I took a test at least twice and finally passed. I believed my prayers were answered. Nine-thousand Air Force men and I were soon on our way to the South Pacific. We sailed on the Monticello, an Italian luxury liner, that was caught in an American port when war was declared. They closed in the deck, put two rows of bunks six high all around the deck. They even had bunks in the swimming pool twelve high. After 22 days at sea, we ended up in New Guinea. Two years later, when I returned home I met a fellow from F Company. He told me that I was extremely lucky that I transferred out, because all the soldiers in I Company were killed. I believe it was Spirit’s help that saved me.

    In March of 1950, Professor Maurice Jones, who I had been working for part time while a student and full time in the summer, called me into his office and told me about this man in Gardiner, Maine who was looking for a Farm Manager to run his dairy farm. I called Mr. Gardiner set up an interview and met with this wonderful man. Mr. Gardiner hired me and gave me the farm checkbook. I moved my family into the farmhouse and Olive kept the checkbook. I slept on the couch at the fraternity and finished school. I went to my new home on weekends and signed the checks.

    It was August of 1956 when my friend Parker Samborn, who was the manager of the Augusta State Hospital Farm, at the time, said to me, “Let’s go down to the Spiritualist Church tonight. My father says it's true about Spiritualism.” So, we went with our wives and sat in the back row of the church. I never let on that I had been to a Spiritualism service before. The medium that night was Madelyn Wing, from South Gardiner. When it came time for the messages, the medium came to me and said she saw the American flag flying over my head (meaning I’d been in the service) and that I was going down the turnpike. I was going to tell people what to do and how to do it. Also I was going to keep records on everything. We laughed all the way home.

    In about two weeks, I received a letter from the University of Massachusetts with an application form, asking me if I was interested in applying for the Farm Superintendent position. Later I had an interview with a committee of three. Olive came with me. They asked me if I minded if she attended the meeting too. At the end of the interview they asked me when I could start working. I told them not for a couple of months as I had several things to do for Mr. Gardiner. I was told that Mr. Gardner sent them a letter giving them the devil for stealing his man. I think that letter helped me get the job. It was early December 1956 that I started working at UMass.

    That message from Madelyn Wing got me to thinking about spiritualism and prayer. I thought I would try something, I don’t remember who, but someone told me if you say your prayers out loud you would get better results. I hadn’t been on the new job long when I decided to try out my idea. I went to check on things at the barns at 9 o’clock one night. Out behind the barns I said my prayer, “If there is a circle with a trance medium in this vicinity I want to join.” In about 10 days I got a letter from a lady in Springfield named Ruth Agerup. She gave me her address and telephone number and said, “Spirit says that you want to join our group.”

    At that first meeting there were nine of us sitting around the kitchen table. Ruth was telling us where to sit. Alyce Andrews, the trance medium, was seated at the end of the table. I wanted to sit next to her so bad, and what do you know, Ruth seated me there. I wanted to watch every move Alyce made. It took about 10 minutes for her to go in trance. The experience was amazing. Soon I became friends with Alyce and she was considered part of my family. I drove her to nearly all the Spiritual Churches in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where she shared her spiritual gift for many years.

    I had the privilege of attending numerous trance sessions with Alyce. Sometimes we were given past life readings. Spirit told us that Alyce and I had many past lives together. One life we were on Bali Island. Alyce was a man and I was a woman. We had a 10 year old son. One day we were out on the water in our boat, when a typhoon came and tipped the boat over. The 10 year old boy was washed ashore and clung to a tree. Alyce and I both drowned. Our son was raised up by someone else. We also had a life together in Colonial Virginia. Alyce said she saw us in a big house with a large stairway. Another time I was a woman and we were seen on the street at the time of Jesus.

    Some of the spiritual messages received through Alyce Andrews’ trance work have been included in previous postings on this blog.

    I want to say a few words about a member of my farm crew, Ed Tobacco. Ed was Polish. His father changed the family name to Tobacco, because although it started with a T, his Polish surname was very difficult to say. Ed smoked and died from lung cancer. I happened to have a meeting with Alyce right after he died. Ed came through Alyce. He asked me if I would tell his wife that he wasn’t dead. I told him that I would. The next day I went to his home in Hatfield. Mrs. Tobacco was just finishing her breakfast. I told her that Ed asked me to tell her that he wasn’t dead. She said “Oh, I know he isn’t dead. He materialized this morning right in front of that bathroom door.”

    I have to tell about the time that my Grandmother Kate came through Alyce. It was the younger Kate, the one I knew, that I lived with, and whose classroom I went to in the 7th and 8th grades. I spoke to the spirit of my grandmother reminding her of the time I went to see her in the nursing home. I spoke about how I held up that old reel-to-reel tape recorder for her to hear the message that I had received from the wonderful medium named Mrs. Gladys Custance. The message was from several old time neighbors that Kate knew better than I. That day in the nursing home she listened and said, “Isn’t that wonderful, but I still don’t believe. This time, however, my grandmother's spirit said to me, “I know Bernard, but now I know it’s true.”

    Another medium, one of the greatest, was Mr. Theodore C-Russell from Buffalo, New York. There he lived with his friend, Henry Mullens, who at one time was a heat expert in a steel plant. I never knew the details, but Mr. Russell saved Henry’s life. Mr. Russell was in vaudeville when he was 5 years old and was still acting on stage in Toronto, Canada at an elderly age. I met Mr. Russell in the late 50’s and we became real friends. He would either write me and tell me when he was coming or call me when he got here. I sat with him in his kitchen many nights.

    After my father died, Mr. Russell gave me a message with 22 family names. The name “Ralph” came through. “Not your father," Mr. Russell told me, “He hasn’t been there long enough.” (Of course it was Uncle Ralph Yeaton.) One night we were talking about things at work and my department head came up. Mr. Russell said, “Don’t be concerned about him. He’s leaving for another job.” Mr. Russell turned out to be right, as I learned a short time later. I received many messages from Mr. Russell, but one that I always remembered was one at a public meeting. He came to me and said, “Why do I feel so old? Does the name, Melvina, mean anything to you?” Melvina was my great-grandmother who died when she was nearly 101.

    Another wonderful medium I knew was Miss Alice Hughes from Albany, New York. In her younger years she was a teacher at Morris Pratt Institute; a school for mediums, healers, and teachers. Miss Hughes told us a family story when she was a young girl. She was the oldest of several children and her mother had passed into spirit. One day her father was taking the family to church. They were going down the road in a wagon and when she looked behind, she saw an apparition of her mother running, trying to catch up. The apparition was disappearing as the horse trotted along. She told us that from that experience, no one could ever tell her that she would never see her mother again.

    Miss Hughes lived to be 103. On her 100th birthday, I gave her a set of paints and brushes. Sometime later she presented me with a large beautiful painting of a white stallion coming out of a dark background, something she had painted. A car load of us Spiritualists went to Albany to see her just before she passed. She was in the Sisters Hospital lying in a child-like crib, in the fetal position. Just before leaving, I leaned over and thanked her for all she had taught us. She whispered to me that she hoped she would soon go somewhere soon, so she could help people again.

    Here are a few other messages I have received from Spirit...

    The spirit of Uncle George Gray came to me in a message and asked me to organize the family get-together at the Wood Place in 1977.

    My father, Ralph, came to me five years after his passing. It happened at a service at Onset at the Wigwam. The medium said, “There is a man standing beside you. He says he dug up a dead horse. He also says, “You and your mother were right, but I couldn’t believe it.”

    My wife, Olive, came to me in a message saying that she was helping the souls of stillborn births and miscarriages. She also said that my mother, Lora, was very busy helping souls who passed from abortions.

    About five months after Olive went to spirit I began having a tickling sensation on the back of my neck, behind my left ear. I thought it was the tab on my shirts and was about to cut them off. Olive had been gone about six months when I received a message from another great medium, Joyce Orcutt from Willimantic, Connecticut. At the end of the message the medium said to me, “Do you have a question?” I said, “Yes, my wife has been gone six months and I would like to hear from her.” Mrs. Orcutt said, “She is standing right behind you. Can’t you feel her on your neck?” I replied, ”I thought that was the tab on my shirt.” I later discovered in a book by Dr. Michael Newton, “Destiny of Souls” (page 15) where a man from the spirit world describes how he communicates with his earth bound wife, “I can feel the point where there is the least amount of blockage. I find it on the left side of her head behind her left ear.”

    Spirit told us that they were not doing table tipping anymore, because they now have enough believers and don’t want their mediums to waste their energy on such things. In the past, they thought they had to do it to convince people, but now there are many here who believe.