Twenty-five years or more ago my attention was attracted to the entertaining possibilities of a planchette, and, like other young persons, I played with one at intervals for several years. Like others, also, I speculated concerning the source of the remarkable statements sometimes obtained in this way, but the assumption that these statements were dictated by disembodied personalities always seemed to me rather absurd.

At no time has my interest in the matter been sufficient to lead me to read anything describing or discussing psychic phenomena, with the exception of an occasional magazine article. Neither have I read philosophies to any extent. I have been always a busy person, taking life at first hand, without much regard to what students have said about it. Such faith as I have had in anything, human or divine, has been based upon works, and, without convincing demonstration, it has been impossible for me to be sure that individual life continued.

After the beginning of the war, however, when interest in the possible survival of the individual was so suddenly and pathetically increased, and one heard on every hand of attempts to establish communication with those gone before, I resolved to experiment again with planchette; but it was not until our friend V—— expressed a desire to try it with me, sometime in 1917, that I really bought one. For almost a year it lay untouched in its box, and when finally we found opportunity to test it we had no success. It did not move from the spot where we placed it, and I made no attempt to try it alone.

Several weeks later, two friends, Mrs. Wylie and Miss Gaylord, told me that they had been making efforts, through some one near their home, to get into touch with their brother Frederick, with results they thought promising. A day or two later we tried planchette together, with some success. It moved briskly, wrote “Frederick ... mother ... love ... happy ...” and other detached words. It also persisted in making little circles, perhaps two inches in diameter, the pencil tracing the circumference again and again. This was so often repeated that Mrs. Wylie thought it might be a symbol, but could obtain no satisfactory reply to questions about it.

My friends went home without renewing the experiment, and my interest was not greatly stimulated. It seemed quite probable that the words written had reflected the thoughts and desires of Frederick’s sisters, and that the whole episode could be explained by the theory of unconscious response by the muscles of the hand to the prompting of the subconscious mind. I had dismissed the matter, as far as my own participation in it was concerned, when a letter came from Mrs. Gaylord, saying that her daughters had told her I had “mediumistic power,” and suggesting that I might be able to help her.

I knew that the exceeding bitterness of her grief lay, not in the separation from her only son, but in her inability to believe that his identity and development continued, and that the assurance that he had not “gone out, like a snuffed candle,” as she afterward expressed it, would bring her the greatest—indeed, the only possible comfort. Therefore I replied at once that while I had no reason to believe that I possessed “mediumistic power” to the slightest degree, I would make further experiments, at the same time warning her that the attempt would probably prove fruitless.

The following pages contain a partial history of the result. It was soon evident that certain of these revelations were of too great moment to be withheld from public knowledge. In addition, while much of the more intimate personal matter has been omitted, most of those to whom these messages were given have felt impelled to share, in this tragic time, the comfort and assurance of their conviction, and have voluntarily yielded their privacy, hoping thereby to bring to those in sorrow an added faith in the continuance of personality, with all that this implies.

To facilitate reference, and to avoid breaking the sequence of the twelve impersonal communications forming the basis of the whole revelation, this report has been arranged in three parts. First, the genesis and rapid development of the individual message, brief at first, and purely personal, but growing both in volume and in import with each day. Second, the Lessons. Third, additional individual messages, no less personal in their original application than the first, but more impressive in their wider human appeal and significance, illuminating and emphasizing the meaning of the Lessons.

For obvious reasons, the names and initials used have been substituted for those of the persons involved, with three or four exceptions.