Observations placeholder
Stainton-Moses, William - Spirit Identity - THE WHISTLING SPIRITS OF THE DEAD
Identifier
015620
Type of Spiritual Experience
Environmental influence
Inter composer communication
Hallucination
Background
The man described here was newly dead. I have selected the observation partly because it seems to tie in with other observations that show that it is only the newly dead that appear to linger and communicate. It is also however of interest because of the noise. If you turn to the observations for Sir Arthur Grimble, you will find that without even using a séance, when he visited an old woman in the north of the island he was administering, an old lady with spiritual abilities, he heard exactly the same noises – whistling and ‘bird-song’.
In analysing the rest of the observation, we have to remember that the Reverend Stainton-Moses was a very religious man with a penchant for spreading the Christian message as he perceived it – and he wrote a whole book about this called Spirit teachings – which are not spirit teachings at all, but his own mind inventing the message he wants to get across.
A description of the experience
Spirit Identity – William Stainton Moses
Each spirit selects, apparently, a special rap, knock or form of signal, which never varies and which possesses as much individuality as the human voice. He came with the strangest and most uncomfortable sound, sometimes like a whizzing in the air, sometimes like a harsh grating on the table, each equally suggestive of unrest.
The atmosphere that surrounded the spirit and of which I was painfully conscious when he manifested his presence, was similarly indicative of unhappiness and he earnestly asked for prayer.
He had been a grasping man; gold had been his god; and he had lived on to find himself bound by golden fetters to the earth where his treasure had been. I have no words to describe the sensation of cold discomfort that his grim presence brought, not the air of gruesome and grim misery that was conveyed to us by what was told respecting him. His designation in spirit life was WOE.
The spirit who told us this was asked to put in one word what had brought him to this state. That word was given at once, with an intensity that impressed us all most powerfully; GREED