Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 12, 10/13 by Estelle Roberts

“How long ago is it since he passed over?” Barbanell asked.
“Your time is difficult for me,” came Red Cloud’s reply, “but this I can tell you. It was at the time of the showing of his portrait.”

This was a reference which enabled us to place the time of Fawcett’s death almost to within a few days. In the summer of the previous year John Myers had been experimenting as usual with his spirit photography and among the “extras” had been one of Fawcett.

This meant that Fawcett had passed over sometime during the early summer of 1935, a date which, as Barbanell already knew, though I did not, had been independently established for Reeves by two other mediums.

Perhaps one day all the circumstances of Fawcett’s disappearance and his eventual fate will be established from the material evidence to which this world attaches so much importance. Should that day ever come, I am certain the facts will be as related by Red Cloud.

An unusual incident occurred one evening at a direct voice séance. Among those present was Mrs. Hutchinson, whose husband and son had both been doctors before passing to the spirit world. Mrs. Hutchinson was no stranger to psychic phenomena. On several previous occasions she had had a number of conversations with her loved ones,

especially with her son who had met an untimely end on a motorcycle. On this particular evening she arrived carrying a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She brought it into the séance room, placing it on her lap when she joined hands with her neighbours.

During the sitting she again conversed with her son, though neither made any mention of the parcel.
The séance ended and, I was coming out of trance, I became aware that there was something on my head. “What is this?” I demanded, and put up a hand to find out. As I did so the lights were switched on and I was revealed draped in a beautiful Spanish Shawl.

Mrs. Hutchinson quickly looked down at her lap. There was the brown paper folded exactly as before and held in place by the knotted string. She picked the parcel up and it was as hollow as an empty eggshell.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I brought the shawl as a present for you. I was going to give it to you afterwards. It was a present to me from my son. You have brought us both so much happiness, I was sure he would want me to give it to you.”
“It seems he has forestalled your kindness and given it to me himself,” I said.