From Gnostic friend Steffen in Germany
I attended a second seance with physical medium
David Thompson
on April 18th in Basel, Switzerland. Compared to his home sittings in Sydney this was a big event with nearly 40 people participating.
The beginning went as always, two randomly chosen sitters checked David's bindings on his arms and legs. Upon being convinced the medium is perfectly tightly bound to the chair, the lights were sent out and music set in. Before this happened I had a strong feeling the humming and singing of 40 people will have a much greater effect on materialisations than that of 10. And, unsurprisingly, I was not mistaken. After approximately 4 songs William, David's spirit guide, took up the drum sticks from the table in the middle of the room and clicked with them in tact to the music. After this nice little performance he welcomed us and, a bit surprising to me, started running around the room stamping with his feet to show us he has fully materialised. Judging from the sound of the stamps I could tell he was wearing quite heavy boots.
William then encouraged the sitters, most of them Swiss and German, to ask him questions about just anything. At that point I remembered a comment by a former sitter who said William's intonation and dialect very much sound like people from 150 years ago might have spoken in the United Kingdom. This fits William's account, according to which he is a 19th century man who died in 1897.
After he had answered a couple of questions I decided to speak up. I only called his name and the next moment he recognized my face and we shook hands quite gently. I should mention here that I attended a seance at David's house in Sydney and so already had the pleasure to get to know William before I came to Basel.
His happy reaction to my repeated attendance made the group laugh, which was good for increasing our vibrations to help David produce more ectoplasm and, of course, more materialisations.
The next person coming through was the grandfather of an older
man. The spirit was obviously unexperienced in working with ectoplasm and only managed to get out a couple of German words and sentences, including his grandson's name. Though, as a German myself, I can attest the spirit was a native speaker.
Quentin Crisp was the next to manifest. After his usual joking we experienced a rare event in the history of contemporary physical mediumship. He actually took a girl by the hands and led her around the room. He even allowed her to feel his chest and his face, which she said was "a bit stubbly".
The dangerous aspect of this act was that if the girl had decided to embrace Quentin's full body and, for example, pull him, he would be forced to dematerialise too quickly and the speed of the retreating ectoplasm could harm David's body severly. This happened to mediums in the past often resulting in their death.
After a singing and harp performance of Louis Armstrong and the appearance of Tim, a young boy, who is responsible for the amazing trumpet phenomena at David's seances, a woman materialised and explained to us she is in charge of all the children in the afterlife (as far as I know you can age on the other side if you wish, but despite newly arrived children seem to need care). The following scene was actually a quite emotional reunion of a grieving mother and her son, who crossed over at 29 (her other son died at 14 months). I sat pretty close to her and could hear the alien sound of flowing ectoplasm. The next second her son spoke close to her face. and again the words were fluent German with a Swiss intonation. For me personally this very moment so far has been the most evidential in my experience with physical mediumship, as I could clearly hear the voice of a young man who said to his mother that he loves her and kissed her face.
Then William returned to conclude the evening with another rare physical phenomenon. After about four songs the lights went back on and, to the astonishment of all, the cabinet was suddenly standing in the middle of the room. During the levitation process I could feel the increased heat on my skin, which was quickly getting lower after the lights were on again. At the beginning William promised us some never seen before events as this was David's last seance in Basel this year, and I'm glad he was true to his word.
SIDE NOTE: I remember Christine, David's partner and mental medium, saying Louis Armstrong slapped her on the knee.