Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 16, 7/7 by Estelle Roberts

Another tremendously welcome visitor once announced himself simply as Jackson. We racked our brains for a Jackson, even back to our schooldays. But the Estelle said, “He says he was the doorkeeper at a famous theatre.” “It’s JACKSON!” WE CRIED IN CHORUS. “Jackson who was the stage-door keeper at Covent Garden when we were girls in the gallery queue.” And he went on to prove his identity by naming people who had been in the queue with us, even in one case giving the nickname.

The musical friend who most frequently comes through Estelle when we are there is the famous Viennese conductor, Clemens Krauss, whom we knew well on this side. He identified himself the very first time we visited Estelle, not by name but by action. Estelle said, “He wants me to show you this gesture.” And she began to make the gestures of an orchestral conductor. She was puzzled herself and muttered,

“Is he painting? No, he can’t be. He’s using both arms.” One of us said, “You are making the right movements, Mrs. Roberts. You just aren’t giving it the right name.” To which she replied with characteristic briskness, “Don’t tell me anything. I’m here to tell you.” And later she got what he was, and provided incontrovertible evidence of his identity.

He remained a constant visitor, and one of the most remarkable pieces of evidence he provided was during the sitting of an American friend of ours, Norman Kelley, the gifted tenor who sang the part of the Magician in Menotti opera, “The Consul,” when the American company first came to London. He was back in England a year or two ago, and we made an appointment for him with Estelle, simply saying he was a friend of ours from the States called Kelley.

She started by saying, “You have something to do with the public, but I haven’t quite got what it is. I will later.” She went on to give him evidential messages which, he says, were amazing. Unknown to Estelle, we had agreed to come and fetch our friends after his sitting and as this was ending we rang the front door bell.

In his own words, “I don’t think Estelle even heard the bell, but at that moment she said to me, ‘Oh, how interesting! The conductor friend [Clemens Krauss] of the “girls” has just come in. And he tells me you are an opera singer, but you never sang under him personally, though he met you once!’ “

This was right to the finest detail. Norman had never sung under Krauss, though we once introduced them to each other backstage at Covent Garden. It has always intrigued and charmed us beyond description that, though we had to stand outside the front door and wait, Krauss could go in and give Estelle the missing piece of information about Norman Kelley.

Two weeks before my 80th birthday I was honoured at a dinner given by Psychic News and Two Worlds and among the six hundred or more guests the young, middle-aged and elderly were equally represented. In his speech, Maurice Barbanell, Editor of both papers said, “I have lost count of the public platforms Estelle and I have shared during her fifty years service.

Estelle is one of those rarities, a versatile medium with all psychic gifts. You mention it, she’s done it. There is no record of better evidence given in Spiritualism than in her direct-voice séances. We live in an age of violence when we are seeing the results of materialism raging all over the world.”

I rejoice in the sure knowledge that my fifty years have been well spent serving that next world and this by establishing beyond any shadow of doubt, to those seeking to know that life continues after death, those who have gone before can return and prove their survival.

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