When the influenza pandemic hit the U.S. between 1918 and 1920, Americans wanted answers. Their questions weren’t limited to what caused the pandemic or might prevent the next one. They struggled with more eternal concerns, such as what happens to us after we die and whether it’s possible to communicate with dead loved ones.

The flu pandemic wasn’t alone in spurring this search for meaning. World War I, which ended in November 1918, had racked up a worldwide death toll of 20 million soldiers and civilians, according to one estimate. And if that wasn’t sufficiently staggering, the influenza had taken at least 50 million lives. In both cases, most victims were young—between 20 and 40, in the case of the flu—and left behind parents, spouses, sweethearts and children.

Not surprisingly, spiritualism, which promised a window into the afterlife, saw a sudden resurgence in the United States, Great Britain, France and elsewhere. A February 1920 headline in the New York Sun said it all: “Riddle of the Life Hereafter Draws World’s Attention.”

The two most prominent proponents of spiritualism were British: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. Doyle was, of course, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Lodge was a respected physicist known for his work with radio waves.

Both men had a longtime interest in the supernatural, and both had lost sons in the war. Lodge’s son Raymond had been struck down by a shell fragment while fighting in Belgium in 1915. Doyle’s son Kingsley had been wounded in France in 1916 and died of pneumonia in 1918, likely brought on by the influenza pandemic. Doyle also lost his younger brother to the flu in 1919, while his wife’s brother had been killed in Belgium in 1914.

After the war, both men lectured widely in the U.S. and also wrote books describing their psychic experiences.

Lodge’s 1916 book, Raymond, or Life and Death, describes numerous purported contacts with his late son. Lodge and his wife met with a variety of mediums, who practiced such techniques as automatic writing and table tilting to communicate with the dead.

In automatic writing, the spirit supposedly guided the medium’s hand to write out messages. In table tilting, participants typically sat around a séance table while the medium recited the alphabet. When the medium arrived at the letter the spirit had in mind, the table would tilt, turn, levitate or make some other inexplicable move. Still other mediums went into trances and allowed the dead to speak directly through them.

In his messages, Raymond offered a comforting version of the great beyond, complete with flowers, trees, dogs, cats and birds. He repeatedly assured his parents that he was happy. He told them he’d reconnected with his late grandfather plus a brother and sister who died in infancy, and made many new friends. He reported that soldiers who’d lost an arm in battle found it magically restored, although those who were “blown to pieces” took a bit longer to become whole.

In a 1920 visit to New York, Lodge told a reporter that he was still in touch with Raymond, as well as other fallen soldiers. “I have talked to a good many lads killed in the war,” he said. “They have not gone out of existence. They tell me it is pretty much over there as it is on this side.”

Arthur Conan Doyle had a similarly soothing message. He claimed to have heard from his son during a 1919 séance, calling it “the supreme moment of my spiritual experience.”

As Doyle remembered, “A large, strong hand then rested upon my head, it was gently bent forward, and I felt and heard a kiss just above my brow. ‘Tell me, dear, are you happy?’ I cried. There was silence, and I feared he was gone. Then on a sighing note came the words, ‘Yes, I am so happy.’”

On a 1922 lecture tour Doyle told a reporter that, “I have many times spoken with my son,” and that he remained happy. “You see, a so-called dead man goes to a happier plane,” Doyle explained. “There is no crime, no sordidness, and it is many, many times happier.”

Nor, Doyle claimed, was he unique in communicating with his son. In 1918 he said he knew of 13 mothers who were in touch with their dead sons. By the following year, the number had reportedly risen to 24.

While Lodge and Doyle appear to have been sincere in their beliefs, they inadvertently gave a boost to scam artists who saw money to be made from grieving families and the simply curious.

“Since the war,” the New York Sun wrote in 1920, “pretended mediums, long since exposed, have revived their ugly trade and are again in this and every large city fattening on the offerings of the distressed in heart.”

This proved too much for Harry Houdini, the famous escape artist, who had successfully eluded both World War I service and the influenza pandemic. Though a friend of Doyle, Houdini, with his deep knowledge of magic tricks, was a natural skeptic of spiritualism, which he had studied for years.

While Doyle toured the world promoting spiritualism, Houdini spent his time exposing fraudulent mediums and reconstructing how their trickery worked. In 1919 alone he claimed to have attended more than 100 séances, not one of which had made a believer of him.

“After 25 years of ardent research and endeavor,” he wrote in his 1924 book, A Magician Among the Spirits, “I declare that nothing has been revealed to convince me that intercommunication has been established between the Spirits of the departed and those still in the flesh.”

In 1926, Houdini was called to testify before a Congressional committee that was considering a bill to outlaw mediums, clairvoyants and fortune tellers in Washington, D.C. Members of the latter groups packed the audience, and the hearing soon became a shouting match between them and Houdini—and had to be adjourned for a time.

“There are millions of dollars stolen by clairvoyants and mediums every year, and I can prove it,” Houdini told the committee when he was able to speak. “Conan Doyle is the biggest dupe outside of Sir Oliver Lodge.” Houdini also took the opportunity to debunk palmistry and astrology.

For Americans without the money or inclination to consult a professional medium, there was the Ouija board. A sort of do-it-yourself séance kit wherein the departed “guided” users to spell messages, Ouija boards had been around since 1890, according to the Talking Board Historical Society. But they saw a huge surge of interest in the years 1917 to 1922.

While many people considered the Ouija board a harmless toy, others saw something more menacing. Newspapers across the U.S. reported on obsessive users being committed to mental hospitals. (Not showing a great deal of empathy, the Philadelphia Evening Ledger headlined one article “Ouija Board Is Blamed for Increase in ‘Nut Crop.’”) The medical director of the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane warned of potential overcrowding, adding that, “it would be difficult to imagine conditions more favorable for the development of psychosis than those furnished by the Ouija board and other mediums.”

Houdini, too, weighed in, calling the Ouija board “the first step towards insanity.”

Still, many Ouija board users claimed success in reaching dead loved ones. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on a local woman who said she’d used a Ouija board to communicate with her late son, a sailor in the Navy whose ship had gone down. “He told me there was no suffering where he was, and that he was extremely happy and that his father also was happy,” she said. Her son also wanted to correct the historical record, she added; contrary to reports that his ship had been sunk by a torpedo from a U-boat, he told her, it had actually been bombed by a zeppelin.

The heightened interest in spiritualism in the U.S. continued throughout the 1920s and well into the 1930s, but dropped off with the coming of World War II in 1941.

In 1919, a New York Tribune writer tried to summarize what spiritualists claimed the dead had to say about the next world. “They tell us that dying is not a painful process,” he began, adding that it sometimes takes the recently deceased a while to realize that they are no longer among the living.

“Finally,” he concluded, “they all say that in no circumstances would they come back.”

Source: History
https://www.history.com/news/flu-pandemic-wwi-ouija-boards-spiritualism

"Excerpted From "Psychic And UFO Revelations For The Twenty-First Century"

Even as a teenager I was in the business of selling UFO books to finance my research. Long distance phone calls to witnesses were expensive in those days (maybe $10 for a 3 minute conversation from east coast to west). And one had to buy gas and rent hotel rooms while on the road. Michael X books always sold well because of their catchy titles, and they were inexpensive, at $10 or less. Michael would drop ship the orders to my customers. We didn't have a lengthy conversation but we were doing business together.

When Michael folded his tent, he had cartons of unsold books. I took maybe 50 of each of the "best sellers," figuring I would sell them over a period of time. And Gray Barker's Saucerian Press took the rest. Somewhere along the line I had asked him if it was ok for me to reprint the various tomes if need be and he had no objections However,  he in effect warned me to stay away from the book on Nazi UFOs which had been so troubling.

Gray Barker was doing so well with the Michael X material that he wanted to publish more titles by the author, but any offer he made to Michael was refused.  He wanted no more dealings with the space brothers, be they legit friends from "Venus." or potential Nazi  "space Aryans"  whose intentions were "not of the light."

So I took up the helm. I wrote 3 books under the Michael X plume. They were, "Nikola Tesla -- Man or Spaceman." Before inking this little booklet there had only been two other volumes on Tesla, and nothing about his UFO -- outer space -- connection. Now there over 700 Tesla titles being sold on Amazon. Then there was "Gone Forever in the Blink of An Eye," which dealt with the disappearance of one of Michael's close  friend, Dr Halsey whom might have been scooped up by aliens.

Most important of all, and this is the fist time I am confessing to this, I penned "Danger On The Moon," a 32 page discourse which I feel is still very relevant to this day due to the timeliness  of its contents, even though it came out in the late Sixties.   In short, this booklet explained how even though we had landed on the moon,  because of our warlike activities and general chaos, the space people would prevent us from returning to the lunar surface. They would   take whatever measures  necessary to see that we did not  establish our own  bases or colonies there,  which had long been on our space agencies agenda.


I should explain further that the dire prediction, that it would be a long time before we were allowed to take our "rightful  place" in space as part of an "independent  confederation of planets," was being channeled and passed on to me by a variety of independent sources all around the same time. That is, following our Apollo moon landing.   I had started collecting some of this contact orientated material which I initially used in a book published in 1969 (yes, I am an ole timer!). "The Book of Space Brothers," was an effort of Gray Barker's Saucerian Publications, out of Clarksburg, WV. The book is out of print -- I've seen it on ebay going for $100, but save your money as the material has been reissued in various forms in other books I have put together over the years.   

These other worldy predictions  were arriving  in my mailbox pretty regularly, but not one to take channeled messages on such a far fetched matter   at face value -- being somewhat skeptical  believing that they might be derived from our own subconscious) --  I did my best to verify  the reliability of these "dire warnings,"  as they were being presented to me.  My methodology was, I think, pretty straightforward , and was based in part on  a system derived  by the late Wilbert  B. Smith, who headed Canada's government sponsored "Project Magnet."

Described as "a top ranking scientist in the service of the Canadian Government," Smith had  constructed a  modest  radio receiver, housed inside a small  shack near the Ottawa River, in order  to record the arrival of  any potential UFOs into Canadian airspace. Eventually, Smith had limited success in doing so,  but unfortunately "their movements" were recorded on a cloudy day when these "foreign visitors" could not be seen visually.  They did  nonetheless trigger the magnetic detection equipment  housed  inside the headquarters of Project Magnet.

Smith saw an intelligence behind the objects and thought they were under the influence of beings, technologically more advance than earthlings, mostly humanoid, but with a higher degree of spiritual awareness.

Later in his career, the scientist privately operated the Ottawa New Sciences Club and as part of the organizations studies, Smith and the group  was receiving ground breaking predictions from as many as two dozen contactees and UFO channelers from all over the world. Smith took these messages quite seriously. He meticulously compared them for  content so as to see what  similarities could be found among the multitude of  sources, thus helping to prove that these message were  likely originating from a "higher source."  As it turns out,  in most cases, these individuals and groups did not know each other, so there was no reason for their outer world communications  to agree with each other. Yet  in about 70% of the cases THEY DID, thus adding to their overall credibility. 

This brings me to the book that this article is derived from..."Psychic and UFO Revelations for the Twenty-First Century."

It started out as a saddle stitched booklet of 64 pages and ended up as a large format paperback of nearly 200 pages that sold over 50,000 copies, mainly through the tabloids like the Weekly World News and the Globe, and in a dozen or more psychic and UFO publications like Fate which dotted the newsstand at the time, all of which have dissipated over the last decade, till there are no more -- sort of like "Ten Little Indians."   

The title of the book is sort of self explanatory, the contents of which has not been lost for all time. In fact, we have added an appropriate amount of material from the last, 1989, edition as a good deal of this material is still appropriate and many of the predictions have either transpired, are yet to come about -- and, yes, there were a few that hit way off the mark. Even the Space Brothers can fail when it comes to prophecy. We can't all be Nostradamus, I suppose.

So grab your cosmic score card and start taking notes, and let's see what the space folks -- that includes you Ashtar and Semjase --  have to say when it comes to events that might be right ahead.

The space people want me to tell you that they bring peace and harmony. And I'll ditto that.

Source: Psychic And UFO Relations For The Twenty-First Century

---

- WHO IS THAT HIDING IN THE DARK DEPARTMENT -

The Cornish Owlman of Mawnan Smith

- WHAT THE BEEP DO WE KNOW DEPARTMENT -

Beeping Creatures

---

---

- SCARE YOUR WAY TO HEALTH DEPARTMENT -

Indonesians Locked In Haunted House For Breaking Quarantine