the psychic landscape of the hamilton years

To Hannah and to all those others who know in their hearts that the clockwork universe is an illusion.

Walter Falk

www.thehamiltonfiles.info

https://vimeo.com/68008480

Part 3

created by the magic of the mind.

THE LANDSCAPE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SURVIVAL:

PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL The Psychic Landscape of the Hamilton Years

The Psychic Landscape of the Hamilton Years

In ‘The Psychic Landscape of the Near Past’ we looked at anumber of psychic researchers from the late 1800s and the early1920s. In the present documentary on ‘The Psychic Landscape ofthe Hamilton Years’ we return to the late 1800s to consider the workof Dr. William J. Crawford whose work Dr. Hamilton followed closelyduring the first years of his own psychic research in kinesthetics.

William Crawford was an engineer at Queens University in Belfast.He was born in New Zealand and received his doctorate from theUniversity of Glasgow.

He was living in Belfast when around 1914 he began to investigatethe physical phenomena of Kathleen Goligher and the group aroundher, known as the Goligher Circle.

The phenomena surrounding her included communicating raps,trance voice, and table levitations.

During December 1915, Crawford invited Sir William Barrett,professor of physics at Royal College in Dublin, to join him.

At first, they heard knocks, and messages were spelled out as oneof the sitters recited the alphabet. Barrett then reported observinga floating trumpet, which he tried unsuccessfully to catch.

“Then the table began to rise from the floor some eighteen inchesand remained suspended and quite level,” Barrett wrote. “I wasallowed to go up to the table and saw clearly no one was touchingit, a clear space separating the sitters from the table.”

Barrett described Kathleen Goligher and her small family groupas “uncritical, simple, honest, kind-hearted people,” and he wascertain that what he had experienced was not fraudulent.

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Figure 1: William Jackson Crawford

Barrett put pressure on the table to try to force it back to thefloor. He exerted all his strength but was unable to budge it. “ThenI climbed on the table and sat on it, my feet off the floor, when I wasswayed to and fro and finally tipped off”.

Barrett continued the story. “The table of its own accord nowturned upside down, no one touching it, and I tried to lift it off theground, but it could not be stirred; it appeared screwed down to thefloor.”

When Barrett stopped trying to right the table, it righted itself onits own accord. Apparently, the spirits were having a bit of fun withBarrett as he then heard “numerous sounds displaying an amusedintelligence.”

During his experiments with Goligher, Crawford began communi-cating with spirit entities, one of whom said he was a medical manwhen on earth and that his primary function at present was to lookafter the health of the young medium, especially during these ex-periments.

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Figure 2: Sir William Fletcher Barrett

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This spirit informed Crawford that two types of substances wereused in the production of the phenomena. One was taken in largequantities from both the medium and the sitters, then returned tothem at the close of the séance.

The other substance, apparently the ectoplasm, was takenexclusively from the medium in minute quantities and could not bereturned to her as its structure was broken up. It was pointed outthat it came from the interior of the medium’s nerve cells and if toomuch were taken she could suffer serious injury.

Some of the communication took place through Goligher’s voicemechanism while she was in trance, but much of it came throughraps and table tilting.

Crawford came to see the experimentation as a joint venture withthe spirit “operators.” He soon realized that these “operators” didn’tunderstand much about the scientific aspects of the phenomenaand said he was convinced that the operators knew next to nothingof force magnitudes and reactions. In other words, physics wasn’ttheir forte.

On one occasion a clairvoyant joined in the circle and toldCrawford that she could see “a whitish vapory substance, somewhatlike smoke,” forming under the surface of the table and increasingin density as the table was levitated.

She could see it flowing from the medium in sort of a rotarymotion. From other sitters, she could see thin bands joining into themuch larger amount coming from the medium. She also saw variousspirit forms and spirit hands manipulating the “psychic stuff.”

Crawford brought in a scale large enough to hold the mediumwhile she was sitting in her chair. He discovered that when a tablewas being levitated, the weight of the table, usually around 16pounds, was transferred to the medium through the “psychic rods.”

Most of the time, the transfer of weight would be a few ouncesshort of the weight of the table. Further experimentation revealedthat the extra weight was being transferred to the sitters in the

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Figure 3: Kathleen Goligher

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Figure 4: Weight ectoplasm and travel through the body of the medium

room, who apparently furnished small amounts of the “psychicforce.”

By careful weighing Crawford concluded that the sitters suppliedmost of this psychic force that vitalized the ectoplasm. Crawfordfound that the sitters lost between five and ten ounces of weighteach.

The medium lost nearly half of her normal weight, up to aboutfifty-four pounds. The medium shrank perceptibly, her musclesconvulsed, and her pulse rate gradually rose as the phenomenaprogressed.

Crawford noted that he continually worked under the levitatedtable and between the levitated table and the medium andconducted many of his experiments in adequate light, although itbecame obvious to him that light affected the rigidity of the rappingrods, i.e., the rods could not be made stiff if strong light was playingupon them.

During his 87 sittings with the Goligher circle, Crawford made a

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number of other observations, including that the psychic rods couldextend only about five feet from the medium’s body and that it oftentook a half hour for the psychic energy to build up.

He further observed that the psychic energy often caused themedium to make slight involuntary motions with her feet – motionswhich might suggest fraud to a careless observer.

“I have come to the general conclusion from the results of myexperimental work, and from observations of the circle extendingover two and a half years, that all the phenomena produced arecaused by flexible rod-like projections from the body of the medium;that these rods are the prime cause of the phenomena, whetherthey consist of levitations, movements of the table about the floor,rappings, touchings, or other variations,” Crawford wrote.

He further noted that these rods, which consisted of ecto-plasm,found leverage in the medium’s body and acted as cantilevers. Ifthe weight to be lifted was too big, an elbow formation, transferringthe pressure to the floor, was used.

These psychic rods evolved with great rapidity and they couldassume any shape and size. They were invisible but the endswere dense enough to be felt. This psychic substance according toCrawford, could rap, grip an object by suction, and perform delicatemechanical operations.

If Crawford passed his hand in front of the medium’s ankle, hecould intercept the psychic rod and stop the raps. While so doing,he said, he felt something cold and clammy.

The ectoplasm could carry particles of paint. By a colored trackCrawford traced the flow from the ankles up to the hip and to thebase of the spine. Powdered carmine was used for this purpose.

When it was placed on the knickers, the track extended to theshoes and upward to the lower part of the trunk.

This showed that the flow started from her trunk, passed down toher feet, and returned. The fabric of her knickers and stockings wasabraded in places. From this Crawford inferred that some frictional

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resistance was encountered.

He also found that it was not the ectoplasm, but the mediumwhich suffered from sudden exposures to light. By shielding herwith black cloth he obtained many good flashlight photographs.

He became a spiritualist, but he kept that part of his activitiesout of the limelight, because he favored psycho-physical energiesrather than spiritual energies.

He played down the role of spirits in favor of psychic force. Hethought that, although discarnate spirits were involved in creatingthe phenomena, the actual energy that was used came from themediums and their psychic energies and their physical bodies.

Crawford committed suicide on July 30, 1920. Four days before hisdeath he wrote, "I have been struck down mentally. I was perfectlyall right up to a few weeks ago. It is not the psychic work. I enjoyedit too well. I am thankful to say that the work will stand. It is toothoroughly done for any material loopholes to be left.”

In this belief Crawford relied in part upon the opinion of colleaguessuch as Sir William Barrett, who wrote on March 24, 1917, "I cantestify to the genuineness and amazing character of these physicalmanifestations and also to the patient care and skill which havecharacterized Crawford’s long and laborious investigations.”

Dr. Hamilton read of Dr. Crawford’s researches, and he cameto very much the same conclusions as Dr. Crawford. His workis written up in his notes of the seances and can be read atwww.thehamiltonfiles.info

Dr. T. G. Hamilton began his psychic investigations around 1918,beginning with experimentation with ESP. He quickly came to theconclusion that ESP is real.

During the ESP investigation a prophecy came:

It was to the effect that a great revelation of life after death wouldcome to light through his work; that his name would be known forthis work in many countries; and that his wife was blessed among

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Figure 5: Dr. T. Glen Hamilton

women because of the share of this work that would fall on hershoulders.

He and his friend both concluded that the work had been takenover by evil forces, and that it would be better if they both droppedany interest in it. Dr. Hamilton feared for his sanity, and Lillian spentthe next three days plying him with sedatives, while he rested inbed.

This hiatus lasted for about two years, when an apparentlychance occurrence, brought on by a Sunday evening tabletipping experiment, started Hamilton on a fifteen year series ofexperiments that covered all the psychic phenomena.

First he corroborated Crawford’s work with kinesthetics, then hecorroborated Geley’s work with wax fingertips. There was also thetable tipping, and soon his medium, Mrs. Poole, was using handslaps, then automatic writing, and finally channeling, as her psychicgifts developed.

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Soon Mrs. Poole brought a great deal of information purportingto come from Robert Louis Stevenson and Dr. David Livingstone,information that could be checked in biographies and other sources,but which Mrs. Poole had no knowledge of from her own everydayreading.

The checking work was largely done by Lillian Hamilton, whospent a great deal of time in the William Avenue public library andback home poring through any sources of information that she couldfind.

The amount of historical information given by Robert LouisStevenson and Dr. Livingstone is unique in the annals of psychicresearch.

Finally, Dr. Hamilton corroborated the work of Crookes and otherswhen his mediums began producing ectoplasm, which had beenmolded into faces recognizable as people who had passed on, andwhich could be photographed.

Dr. Hamilton did not work as long in the psychic field as Schrenck-Notzing, but his experiments included a greater range of psychicphenomena than any other individual researcher in the history ofpsychic research.

Dr. Hamilton was unique in working with several mediums at atime. At times there were three or four mediums in trance at thesame time in the Hamilton séance room.

Dr. Hamilton’s work was also unique in that a group of purportedformer scientists were working together through a medium on theirside of the veil and connecting with a group of mediums on thematerial side.

During the last seven years of his work Dr. Hamilton was inconstant communication with someone on the other side who calledhimself ‘Walter’, and who, he claimed, was working under thedirection of the scientists on his side.

Most of the work was initiated on the other side, with Dr. Hamiltonand the mediums on the material side doing their best to follow

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Figure 6: Dr. David Livingstone

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Figure 7: Lillian Hamilton

instructions so that the work could be successful.

Dr. Hamilton, who did not class himself as a medium, nor aspiritualist, was ably assisted by his somewhat mediumistic wife,Lillian. They were the two who kept the group together through theyears.

The attention given to Dr. Hamilton is well deserved, but he hadhelpers who are often not given sufficient recognition. Lillian wasabsolutely essential to the progress of the work.

It was Lillian who drew Dr. Hamilton’s attention to the kinestheticwork again and again, because she kept at the work with Mrs.Poole until Dr. Hamilton became so intrigued with the power of thekinesthetic energy that he decided to take up the study.

It was Lillian who spent countless hours researching the biogra-phies of Robert Louis Stevenson and David Livingstone and compar-ing the received communications with the records in books writtenabout them and by them, and noting the agreement or lack of it

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Figure 8: Walter Stinson

between the communications and the records. The agreement wasphenomenal.

She continued this work until 1955, twenty years after Dr.Hamilton’s death. She, together with James Hamilton, completedthe Hamilton book ‘Intention and Survival’ in 1942 and saw itthrough to its publication.

Lillian and James have already been mentioned, and it remains toacknowledge Margaret Hamilton’s work also.

She was involved with the Hamilton researches, as sitter andas note-taker, in the late twenties and mid thirties, until she gotmarried and moved to Ontario, serving as confidante to Lillianthrough the thirties, forties, and fifties, typing manuscripts for theHamilton book, and continuing the work of organizing the notes,writing her own book ‘Is Survival a Fact’, eventually seeing that theentire body of work found a permanent home at the University ofManitoba in the archives of the Special Collections.

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Figure 9: Margaret Hamilton in the chair

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Margaret spent about fifty-five years at the work in one way oranother, which is much longer than anyone else in the entire historyof the work. She gave talks, wrote articles, and tirelessly promotedthe life work of her beloved father, defending his character and theauthenticity of his work at every opportunity.

No one ever served a beloved parent or a nobler cause withgreater fidelity or carried a more brightly flaming torch as a beaconfor all the world to see.

Several people who have distinguished themselves in fieldsdistinct from the psychic were very helpful to Dr. Hamilton in thework. One of these was Dr. Bruce Chown, known internationally asthe man who did the work with the Rh factor in blood.

Another was Mr. Isaac Pitblado, a nationally known lawyer.

Dr. Chown helped with the mediumship and the photography, andMr. Pitblado provided legal documentation in the form of affidavitsof the events of the seances. Except for the mediums they werea group of people educated well above the level of the generalpopulation.

Dr. Hamilton’s experiments corroborated what some otherpsychic researchers had already found, that the ‘pictures’, orteleplasmic structures that resembled faces molded in ectoplasm,were generally mirror images of the people they purported torepresent. Why they should be mirror images was a puzzle thatwas never solved.

When Mrs. Poole made forays into the psychic realm, she oftenremarked that she had seen entities in the psychic realms thatcould easily be related to characters from fiction. An example isa man with a wooden leg who clearly resembled Long John Silverfrom Treasure Island.

Dr. Hamilton knew that this one-legged man was a fictionalcharacter, possibly one that Mrs. Poole had not met in herown reading. And yet she saw such fictional individuals as realindividuals.

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Figure 10: Dr. Bruce Chown. University of Manitoba College of Medicine Archives

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Figure 11: Mr. Pitblado

Dr. Hamilton thought that they might be puppets created for Mrs.Poole’s amusement and edification by Robert Louis Stevenson, thecreator of Treasure Island and Long John Silver.

Even after he left the earth plane, Dr. Hamilton was interested infollowing up his ideas about these mysterious constructions as hispostmortem communications show.

Dr. Hamilton communicated by automatic writing through thearm and hand of Mrs. Mary Marshall. “When I first came here Iwas so interested in what I saw that I did not question much as tothe manner of seeing”, he wrote “but since being with the teacher,and helping in these writings, I have begun to notice a differencebetween the objects that at a superficial glance seem to have muchthe same substance.

I can see a difference between those things which have existedon the earth unquestionably, such as the forms of men and women,and those things, which, while visible and seemingly palpable, may

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Figure 12: Long John Silver

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Figure 13: Mary Marshall

be, and probably are, thought creations.”

“This thought came to me while looking on at the changing lightI told you of, of the heavenly country”, he continued “as had beensuggested and it has been forced upon me with greater power whilemaking new explorations, that, I may be able to distinguish at aglance between these classes of seeming objects.”

“For example, if I met the famous characters in Treasure Island,I would have reason to believe that I had seen a thought form ofsufficient vitality to stand as a quasi-entity in this world of tenuousmatter. So far, I have not encountered any such characters.”

T. G.’s reference to characters from Stevenson’s Treasure Islandis strikingly evidential: for it was through his prolonged andpainstaking study of the Poole trance visions, in which she sawJohn Silver and other characters from that book as apparently living

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beings, that Dr. Hamilton came to hold the opinion that suggestionby the communicator probably accounted for the greater bulk ofvisions, symbolical settings and so on, that crowd the pages ofpsychical and occult literature.

He believed that this imagination of the living dead, backed bystrong will, produced many of the puzzling phenomena in this areaof mental activity.

As had been suggested by the poet Blake and later Walt Whitman,imagination may indeed actually be a powerful creative force, andprobably evidenced more directly in the new state than here onearth.

This reference to the creations of imagination will also come uplater on when we discuss the holographic universe in the modernphysics part of these documentaries.

There is an interesting comment made by Dr. Hamilton, madeafter his transition, when he was communicating with his wife Lillian,through Mary Marshall’s arm. He told Lillian that he hoped thatthis would not shock her too much, but that he had been talkingto one of his teachers, and that his teacher had pointed out thatthere were people who had walked the earth before, some of themseveral times. This was a clear reference to reincarnation.

At the bottom of the sheet on which this comment occurs, LillianHamilton has written that both she and TGH found the idea ofreincarnation repugnant, and that there was no satisfactory proofthat such was possible.

This is very interesting inasmuch as skeptics and others haveoften pointed out that if there is any contact with the spirit world,that the entities that inhabit it do not seem to be able to learn orchange.

That they are in a state of suspended animation. This writtencomment by Dr. Hamilton clearly shows that a person can changehis mind even after his transition.

Sometimes questions were asked of Dr. Hamilton regarding the

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Figure 14: Ectoplasm

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creation of shadows on the images of the faces in the teleplasm.Dr. Hamilton responded that the teleplasm was sometimes highlyactinic. This is a photochemical effect. He may have thought thatthe flash used in the exposure could trigger the ectoplasm to giveoff light on its own.

This could account for shadows appearing to come from directionsthat were not possible from the positioning of the magnesiumflashlight when the pictured were taken. Dr. Hamilton also indicatedthat occasionally light appeared to come from nowhere in thephysical, seeming to have its origin from somewhere in the spiritualrealms.

Sometimes the faces were flat and sometimes they appearedthree dimensional, and this bothered the skeptics. They seemedto believe that the images of the faces were simply picturesfraudulently inserted into cotton batting to confuse the naïve.

This sort of phenomenon had occurred in the work of otherresearchers, and there has been no reason given for its occurrence.

On November 9, 1929. Dr. Hamilton was speaking at the RoyalAlexandra Hotel under the caption: “The Scientific Approach ofPsychic Research.”

He said: “Psychic phenomena come under the ordinary laws ofresearch and the subject lends itself to a definite practical line ofprocedure and tabulation of attending developments in the sameway as a study of botany or any other science.”

“The skeptical and sometimes jeering attitude of the publictoward this branch of study has been a great handicap”, heemphasized.

“Nevertheless, research carried out on a strict scientific basishas reached the stage where it might be definitely asserted thata guiding and directing intelligence is behind the demonstrations ofphenomena.”

Such phenomena existed no matter what skeptics said. Furnituremoved under conditions which were not explainable in ordinary

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Figure 15: Royal Alexandra Hotel

ways, ectoplasm could not be explained away when it registered itsown form in plasticene or melted wax, and could be photographed.

These were manifestations which could not be disputed. “Justthe fact that such phenomena exist, which do not come under theordinary terms of knowledge, and that they follow certain laws oftheir own, ought to act as an incentive to mankind to explore them,rather than to scoff”, he said.

At this point Dr. Hamilton felt that he was justified in drawingsome general conclusions. These conclusions were:

that the materializing substance was largely the product ofElizabeth and Mary Marshall’s organisms; that these supernormalproducts occurred more readily when the mediums showed loss ofnormal consciousness; that the substance had cohesion, stabilityand density, and could assume different aspects; that the presenceof the face forms appeared to have been brought by the action ofunknown psycho-biological laws operating upon them, and withinthe substance after it had manifested objectively; that a face formmight appear in either two or three dimensions; that the teleplasmicface appeared to be a representation of, or better, to be as reflection

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of, the face of a personality living at the time in a super-sensiblestate of existence; that back of each phenomenon supernormalintelligences appeared to be at work, independent of the medium’swill or desires; that there appeared to be a group, analogous tothe group in the physical plane, that sat with each other on theother side of the veil for the purpose of using one or another oftheir number as a medium, to communicate with the physical groupthrough one or another of the mediums in the physical group.

When Dr. Hamilton’s photographs were published there was nofurther doubt as to the reality of the physical phenomena obtainedin the Hamilton circle; and it became hard to deny that the originof the photographs, their planning and production in the materialknown as teleplasm, could be ascribed to anything but the strongand continued efforts of living, conscious entities.

They claimed to have lived on earth and passed from that stateinto a finer state. From this finer state they were insisting that theystill lived.

And what was especially unique about Dr. Hamilton’s psychicwork, was that almost all of the ectoplasmic phenomena werepredicted in advance. Often very precise predictions were made,and several months later when the phenomena appeared, all thepredictions about the positioning, size, and other characteristics ofthe phenomena were as predicted.

The various materializations, coming after predictions of theirappearance, and following so precisely what had been predictedabout them, allowed no other explanation than that they weredesigned and created by intelligences other than the sitters on theEarth side.

That the predictions were made by several different mediumsduring the sittings and which sometimes appeared when themediums who predicted the phenomena were not present duringthe sittings when the phenomena appeared, made fraud highlyunlikely, and this was duly noted in the seance records.

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Figure 16: The Two Circles

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There was intention behind the phenomena. This intention did notoriginate on the earth plane, in the material realm.

The best explanation, Hamilton believed, was that they were whatthey claimed to be: people who had lived and died, and were nowworking to convince the people still on the material plane of thetruth of continued full consciousness after so-called death.

When a book was written about Dr. Hamilton’s work by Lillianand James, the title given to it was ‘Intention and survival.’ Thiswas a very suitable title as it very well described the essence of Dr.Hamilton’s work.

Dr. Hamilton’s work is chronicled in much greater detail inhis notes, a complete set of which can be found on the websitewww.thehamiltonfiles.info

The final researcher and communicator we will consider is SirArthur Conan Doyle.

Born in 1859, Doyle was a Scottish physician, best known as thecreator of the fictional Sherlock Holmes character. He also wrotescience fiction, plays, romances, poetry, and nonfictional historicalnovels.

His father was an Englishman of Irish descent, and his mother wasIrish. Doyle’s mother had a passion for books, and was a wonderfulstoryteller. They were both Roman Catholic. His father was erraticin behavior and became an alcoholic.

In 1867 the family was reunited but always there was disharmony.They lived in a squalid tenement.

There were numerous well-to-do relatives, and Doyle’s educationwas paid for by the wealthy members of his family.

Beginning at nine years of age, around 1868, he attended aRoman Catholic preparatory school at Hodder Place, Stonyhurst forseven years.

He loathed the bigotry surrounding his studies and rebelled at thecorporal punishment which was often harshly administered.

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Figure 17: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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During these years he lost his faith in the Catholic church. But theJesuit training influenced his thoughts deeply.

He was a very faithful letter writer to his mother, and wrote to heruntil she died.

He developed an ability at storytelling, and was often foundsurrounded by young people hanging on his words as he told theamazing stories that he made up.

He went to Stonyhurst College until 1875.

Later he used his fellow students and teachers from StonyhurstCollege as models for his characters in his books. There were twoboys there named Moriarty.

He graduated at the age of 17, and one of his first tasks when hegot home after graduation was to sign the commitment papers forhis father, who was seriously demented by this time.

In 1876 he entered Edinburgh University, where he studiedmedicine.

At Edinburgh University he met a number of future famousauthors. Among them were James Barrie, and Robert LouisStevenson.

One of his teachers, Dr. Joseph Bell, especially impressed Doyle.The doctor was a master at observation, logical deduction, anddiagnosis. These qualities were later to be found in the fictionalcharacter of Sherlock Holmes.

While studying he began writing short stories. At first he was notvery successful.

In 1880 he was aboard the Hope of Peterhead, a GreenlandWhaler. He was 20 years old and in his third year of medical school.

The crew first stopped at Greenland to hunt for seals, and Doylewas appalled at the brutality of the exercise. The whale hunthowever fascinated him, and he enjoyed the camaraderie aboardship. He felt that he had grown up during his trip on the Hope.

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Figure 18: Dr. Joseph Bell

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Figure 19: Conan Doyle Diary opened to March 18-20, 1880, with his drawing folded out

After this trip on the whaling ship, Doyle became quite a ladiesman. At one point he boasted about being in love with five womenat once.

A year later he obtained his bachelor of medicine and master ofsurgery. He drew a humorous cartoon of himself with the caption“Licensed to kill”.

In 1881 he left the University of Edinburgh. He got on board aboat to West Africa as ship surgeon.

Next year he joined with a former classmate George TurnavineBudd. Apparently Budd was an unscrupulous character. They didn’tget along too well and they soon separated, with Doyle leaving toset up an independent practice.

He set up a medical practice at Bush Meadows, SouthSea. He wasnot very successful at first. While waiting for patients Doyle againbegan writing stories, and again he was not very successful, thistime in getting published.

In 1885, Doyle married Louisa, or Louise Hawkins.

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Figure 20: Louise Hawkins

She was the sister of one of his patients. He described her in hismemoirs as being “gentle and amiable”.

In November of 1886 he published his first significant story, “AStudy in Scarlet”, which had again presented a challenge when itcame to getting it published. For this story he got 25 pounds and forthis sum he gave away all rights to the story.

That story featured the first appearance of Watson and SherlockHolmes. Sherlock Holmes was partially modeled after his teacher inmedical school named Joseph Bell.

Robert Louis Stevenson, at that time living in faraway Samoa, wasable to recognize Bell from the story. He complimented Doyle on avery interesting character Sherlock Holmes. He asked “Can this bemy old friend Joe Bell?”

It may be noted here that both Robert Louis Stevenson and ArthurConan Doyle made their appearances much later in the Hamiltonséances.

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Figure 21: Robert Louis Stevenson

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In 1892 Doyle studied ophthalmology in Vienna. He did not dowell with a foreign language, and it turned out a bit of a fiasco.

After visiting Paris and Switzerland Doyle hurried back to London.He set up practice as an ophthalmologist, but, as he wrote in hisautobiography, not a single patient crossed his doorstep. This gavehim time for writing.

He had a lot of time to think with no patients coming to botherhim, and he made one of the best decisions of his life, which was towrite a series of stories featuring the same characters.

But he always thought of his historical novels as more importantthan the Holmes stories, and felt it a burden to be writing aboutHolmes.

He wrote to his mother “I’m thinking of slaying Holmes andwinding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from betterthings. I have had such an overdose of Sherlock Holmes that I feeltowards him as I do toward pate de foie gras, of which I once ate toomuch. So that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.”

But Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty apparently plungedto their death down the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in the story“The Final Problem”.

In his diary he wrote simply “Killed Holmes.”

At this there was a public outcry. Twenty thousand subscriberscanceled their subscriptions to Strand magazine and went aroundwearing mourning bands. Doyle had not realized that SherlockHolmes had already become immortal.

In 1893 Doyle’s father died, and after his father died his motherkept a boarding house.

Doyle was working very hard and he did not notice that hiswife Louisa was in failing health. When she was diagnosed withtuberculosis he took over her care personally. She had been givena few months to live, but with Doyle’s assistance she lived muchlonger.

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Figure 22: Sherlock Holmes and Watson

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Figure 23: Jean Leckie

In 1897 Doyle met Jean Leckie and fell in love.

He was driving fast cars, playing golf, looking after Louisa, quietlycourting Jean, floating in the sky in hot air balloons, flying inearly and rather frightening airplanes, spending time on muscledevelopment, and this kept Doyle active but not really contented.

He maintained a platonic relationship with Jean while his wifeLouise was still alive. He was a man of honor and remained celibatethe final years of Louisa’s life.

After a prolonged stay in the Devonshire Moors which includeda visit to the famous Dartmoor prison he began writing a bookbased on some local folklore about an inhospitable manor and anescaped convict and a sepulchral hound; and he realized that thestory lacked a hero, so he brought back Sherlock Holmes. He wroteit as a previously untold adventure, so as not to resurrect SherlockHolmes.

In August 1901 the story was published under the name “The

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Hound of the Baskervilles, to the delight of his fans. A year laterKing Edward VII raised Doyle to the peerage. It is thought that theKing was such a fan of Sherlock Holmes that he had put the author’sname on his honors list to encourage him to write more SherlockHolmes stories.

Doyle decided to bring Sherlock Holmes back in 1901.

He explained that only Moriarty had fallen at Reichenbach, butsince Doyle had other enemies he had arranged also to be perceivedas dead. Holmes ultimately was featured in a total of fifty-six shortstories and four Doyle novels. Since that time he has appeared inmany other stories and novels by other authors.

In 1903 the Strand magazine started serializing the return ofSherlock Holmes.

In 1906 Doyle made his second unsuccessful attempt at politics.He lost again, but made a pretty good showing nevertheless. Louisedied that same year.

On September 18, 1907, Doyle got married to Jean Leckie, verypublicly, after nine years of courtship. Doyle had three children withJean Leckie

Doyle was a fervent advocate for justice, and he personallyinvestigated two closed cases of people who had been accused, andwere as a result exonerated of the crimes of which they had beenaccused.

Following the death of his wife Louisa, and the death of his sonKingsley of pneumonia two years after being wounded in 1916during the battle of the Somme, and the deaths of his brother Innis,his two brothers in law, and his two nephews shortly after the war,Doyle sank into depression.

He was seeking solace, and he became involved in spiritualismaround 1919, about the same time that Dr. Hamilton began hisresearches.

He became more and more fascinated by life beyond the veil. He

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Figure 24: The Cottingley Fairies

had long been interested in spiritualism, but when he joined theSociety for psychical research it was clear where his heart lay.

His wife Jean came to share his beliefs. She even developed thetalent of automatic writing.

The press mocked him. The clergy disapproved of him. But asalways before, nothing deterred him.

Doyle favored Christian spiritualism. He tried to get the Spiritual-ist National Union to accept an eighth principle of spiritualism, thatof following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth.

Doyle supported the existence of "little people" and spentmore than a million dollars on this cause. The so-called"fairy photographs" caused an international sensation when Doylepublished a favorable account of them in 1920.

Doyle wrote his book “The Coming of the Fairies” in 1921, showingthat he was convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingly fairies

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photographs.

The photographs, taken by two schoolgirls, showed fairiesdancing in the air. The hoax was not uncovered until the early1980s, when the English photographic scientist Geoffrey Crawleytested the Cottingley fairies photographs and revealed the secretbehind the two poetic pictures: the artistically gifted cousins hadcopied fairy illustrations from a book.

Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle were at the Hamilton home in Winnipegon July 4, 1923, to attend a seance and to witness the brillianttelekinetic phenomena which manifested with the medium Mrs.Elizabeth Poole.

He wrote the following:

"On our first night in Winnipeg we attended a circle for psychicalresearch which has been conducted for two years by a group ofscientific men who have obtained remarkable results.”

Of the table activity he wrote: “It was violently agitated and thisprocess was described as "charging it". It was then pushed into asmall cabinet with an opening in front.

Out of the cabinet the table came clattering again and againentirely on its own with no sitter touching it. I stood by the slit inthe curtain in subdued red light, and I watched the table within.

One moment it was quiescent. A moment later it was like arestless dog in a kennel, springing, tossing, beating up against thesupports and finally bounding out with a velocity which caused meto get quickly out of the way.”

In 1925, he opened the Psychic Bookshop in London.

Doyle wrote “The History of Spiritualism” in 1926. He praisedthe spirit materializations of Eusapia Palladino and Mina “Margery”Crandon.

Margery Crandon was well known to Dr. Hamilton as the wife of hisfriend from Harvard medical school days, Dr. Leroy R. G. Crandon.

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Figure 25: Elizabeth Poole

It is interesting to note that this very passionate believer inspiritualism is very often quoted by the top physicists, especiallystring theorists. They particularly like to quote:

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matterhow improbable, must be the truth.”

In the autumn of 1929, having been diagnosed with anginapectoralis, before he went off on his last psychic tour of Holland,Denmark, Sweden and Norway, he was in such pain that he had tobe carried ashore when he arrived home. He was bedridden fromthat day on.

In his last book “The Edge of the Unknown” Doyle recorded hisown psychic experiences. This book was written in 1930.

On a cold spring day of 1930 he rose from his bed and, unseen,went into his garden. When he was found he was lying on theground, one hand clutching his heart and the other holding a singlewhite snowdrop.

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Figure 26: Dr. Crandon and Mina ”Margery”

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Figure 27: Snowdrops

Doyle died of a heart attack on Monday July 7, 1930. He was 71.

He was surrounded by his family. His last words before departingon his last and most glorious adventure of all was addressed to hiswife and he whispered to her “You are wonderful”.

Jean died June 7, 1940

We have now come to the end of our consideration of scientistsand writers of the past who were instrumental in studying andpromulgating the reality of the survival of consciousness beyondphysical death.

In the next documentary “The Psychic Landscape of the Present”we will look at current studies of this phenomenon.

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Figure 28: Henry Sidgwick and Eusapia Palladino

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the psychic landscape of the hamilton years

Education