From the Introduction to Nothing so strange

The story of Arthur Ford related here reveals the amazing spiritual and psychic gifts of a man whose outward life was not otherwise particularly remarkable. It is a genuine collaboration, as a medium cannot actually write his own full story for he does not know what goes on in his own trance, nor can he enter into spontaneous discussion with his unseen colleagues. Margueritte Harmon Bro, Mr. Ford's collaborator, is not only a skilled questioner and a meticuluous recorder but she is able to present in simple unornamented prose those episodes of Arthur Ford's life which best portray the development of his powers and which highlight his contention that everyone is psychic, at least latently.

From Nothing so Strange - Arthur Ford

I was BORN in Titusville, Florida, population three hundred. AII the town knew that my mother, Henrietta Brown Ford, had come home to have a second baby, bringing her two-year-old daughter, Annie, with her. My parents lived down at Fort Pierce, but my father was captain of a steamboat -a sturdy side-wheeler - which ran some two hundred miles of the Indian River's course from Daytona to Palm Beach, and it seemed better for my mother to go to her old home where her mother could help in her care. Families, in terms of three generations, were closer knit in those days.

  I was born in jail.  My grandfather Brown was deputy sheriff and in those days it was customary for the sheriff to live in the commodious county building which also housed the jail. It was a pleasant place with a huge lawn spread under live oak trees. But that January 8 was a cold gray day, I'm told, and my mother made a fine hot ragout for the family before she called the doctor.

Because she felt that so small an amount of the kindly ministrations of Archdeacon Cresson could do me no harm, while surely when I reached the age of spiritual accountability, which the Baptists arbitrarily set at twelve, I would forego confirmation for true salvation and immersion. Which I did. But in the interim delightful old Mr. Cresson, who roved up and down the Indian River in a sailboat keeping the scattered Episcopalians in line, was one of my heroes. I remember my father largely because of his love for books. He introduced me to Dickens, Scott, Thackeray and was no doubt responsible for my own addiction to books

From Nothing so Strange - Arthur Ford

 The month after the Armistice,  I was given the choice of going to Russia or returning to school. I went back to Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky. In my day the faculty included a handful of real scholars. I still remember the intellectual excitement they afforded a Florida Cracker.

 Back in the familiar round of classes my psychic miseries died down, but my anxiety nagged on, and in that fall of 1919 I elected a course in psychology. It was taught by Professor Elmer Snoddy, a big man of fine intelligence and ample academic background with a liberal theological point of view at a time when liberalism was fighting for a toehold. Our textbook was written by William McDougall of Harvard, then probably America's outstanding psychologist. One day in the course of a lecture on abnormal psychology Professor Snoddy made reference to the mind's extraordinary ability to acquire knowledge, at times, in ways outside the usual sensory channels.
He documented a variety of psychic experience vouched for by as authentic an observer as William James. So I was not alone! But Snoddy presented his material objectively without comment as to what he thought about the subject. After class I pondered the matter. If I told him that I also found knowledge entering through the backdoor of my mind, so to speak, he might conclude that I was a queer one. At the same time, I wanted to talk with him too much to pass by this opening. I made an appointment and broached my problem.

 Professor Snoddy was an eager listener and before I Ieft his office he told me about the British and American Societies for Psychical Research. Serious men were seriously interested in the kind of non-sensory perception that had troubled me! I left Snoddy with William James' Varieties of Religious Experience in my hand. Also with an urgent invitation to come to his house and talk further.

  We had many wonderful evenings. I know now how fortunate I was to have fallen into the hands of a man of his stature. He thought clearly, he was well-schooled, and he had great integrity. He wanted to know all about my background, and not just an outline of facts but the experiences that coloured my thinking. This was certainly my first self-conscious attempt to see myself.

 From Nothing so Strange - Arthur Ford

  Francis Fast was an active member of the ASPR and through him I met several persons who were trying to develop their psychic faculties. This was a new idea to me, that there were exercises which could be done consistently for the specific purpose of increasing awareness. We formed a class in spiritual unfoldment, not too accurate a term, for it was our psychic abilities which were being unfolded rather than our spiritual powers. It was here with this group that I learned to relax the body, a much rarer art than the average person supposes. I also learned the beginning of a method of concentration. Work in this class prepared me for the next necessary step. I found a teacher

The East has it that when a student is ready the teacher appears, and this is undoubtedly a general fact of spiritual life. I needed help and it came in the form of an introduction to Paramhansa Yogananda, a distinguished Indian philosopher.

From Nothing so Strange - Arthur Ford

 The years 1924 to 1927 were the years of our mutual training, Fletcher's and mine. I did an increasing amount of platform work, but always in a tentative fashion. I still did not think of myself as a professional clairvoyant. I wrote articles for various publications under pseudonyms and did some other newspaper and magazine work. On Sundays I frequently spoke in Spiritualist churches, and sometimes in orthodox churches, for my interest in the ministry was ingrained. I gave private sittings and while I always assured my patrons that I could not guarantee Fletcher's appearance, still he nearly always appeared and delivered reliable information, so that I began to make a charge for the sittings.

NOTHING SO STRANGE will speak to many conditions of men and women - the gifted who wonder at the source of their own inspiration and know an unaccountable quickening of their gifts under certain conditions; ordinary persons who at times sense untapped resources; the hurried and worried who seek a peace they cannot name; the ill of body or mind who have all but given up hope of help through recognized channels; the distraught who wish to learn concentration; the lonely who scarcely dare believe in the love of God.