Observations placeholder
Ford, Arthur - There is a man here who gives his name as Adams
Identifier
029453
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
From Nothing so Strange - Arthur Ford
The wealth of evidence brought through may be considerable. And among the best of the evidential is often some trivia which the sitter has forgotten and brushes aside as inaccurate. I have found that it never pays to refuse any data; just make notes and wait. Later the items under suspicion may prove the most valuable evidence of continuing consciousness.
For instance, one night in the winter of 1955 I attended a dinner party in Rye, New York. There were a dozen guests, among them the guest of honour, Dr. William T. Bidwell, of Greenville, South Carolina. After dinner we sat in the library. I was seated alone on one of the davenports and being full of good food, I was drowsy and fell into a clairvoyant but not unconscious state. I recall that a guest from New Jersey discovered that he and a guest from Connecticut had a common friend and someone made the usual remark about the smallness of the world.
Then I spoke up, "There is a man here who gives his name as Adams and he says how right you are. He says his old home is only a couple of blocks from Dr. Bidwell’s home in Greenville and that he knew the Browns in China." (I am borrowing the name Brown.) Dr. Bidwell said he never heard of this man Adams; Mr. and Mrs. Brown said they never heard of him either. Someone chided me, remarking that even a medium couldn't always be right. But a few minutes later Mr. Brown walked over to the bookcase and took down an issue of Who's Who. There was the name Walter Alexander Adams; the permanent address was Greenville, about two blocks from Dr. Bidwell's home; the man Adams had been first vice-consul both in Nanking and Tsingtao when the Browns lived there in the early twenties. They could not have helped but know him in that small foreign community.