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Rescue Circles Part 12. Grim Reapers, Obsessive Spirits and Possession.
I think the idea of the Grim Reaper or Angel of Death coming to take us, as depicted in novels and stage plays, and in films and television programs such as ‘Touched by an Angel,’ ‘Dead Like Me’ and ‘Death Takes a Holiday’ aka ‘Meet Joe Black’ is a confused interpretation of what can be seen clairvoyantly at a person’s deathbed or place of dying. It looks as if the attending spirit or spirits are dragging the life out of the person’s body, whereas in fact they have come to lead the person’s spirit into the light, AFTER the person has died. They are usually loved ones coming to wake the person up and show them their new life. This process is further confused with the dark low level spirits and earthbounds who sometimes come and obsess and possess a living person, especially if their lifestyle and thoughts open them up to invite the entry of such negative energy. Before looking at cases of both these types of unwanted spirit activity, we will look at a few more cases of spirit rescue from Mrs. Hill, and her guide and father, Colonel Gascoigne, who in real life had served with Kitchener, Gordon and Wolseley in the Sudan and in the relief of Khartoum in the 1880s and then with Cecil Rhodes in the early days of Rhodesia. Now that country is in dire straits under Mugabe's regime, with its original name of Zimbabwe.
Now there are two reasons I am bringing to light all these cases from 70 years ago or more, - sometimes from two or three hundred years ago. Firstly, I don’t have the resources to travel and attend different churches, circles, seminars and conventions and report on them all. I'm glad, though, that we have some researchers like Professors Gary Schartz and Archie Roy, and writers like Roy Stemman, and many mediums themselves, who are doing that for us, and thank them all for their hard work and excellent first-hand reports. Secondly, I am sure I could visit mediums and churches nearby and all of you mediums on this ssite, and give just as interesting an account of mediums’ work, and it would be quite up-to-date. But many sitters would not want their stories made public,and anyway, enough examples have already been seen on television shows featuring Colin Fry, James van Praagh, John Edward, Sylvia Browne, Derek Acorah and many others. So I merely present some interesting and reliable accounts from a few years ago and my thoughts about them, to compare with work taking place today.
In the following cases, it can be seen how the ‘Grim Reaper’ idea can creep into the picture! The story of Scrooge in Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" is also an excellent fictionalised version of a ghost leading a person through a life review, and the possible future, with Marley's ghost returning to haunt Scrooge, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future showing him the picture of his life and influence, for better or worse.
Here is the next case from Lord Dowding:-
I’m not a soldier, only a munition maker. I was ‘done in’ in the last London raid. I was underground and the floor gave way, and all the machinery on top came down onto us; it was an awful show, I screamed when I saw it coming. The fire broke out before anyone could stop it, and I saw it coming towards me – fire and tangled parts of machinery and molten metal; there wasn’t a chance of escaping for any of us. The pain didn’t last very long, but much longer than our bodies. I kept on feeling it whenever I looked at my body, and I couldn’t leave it somehow until Jane came. Jane is a girl who worked near me; she came and took my arm and led me away. [Just a rescuer, coming to help AFTER he had died, not the Grim Reaper! RR]
BILL Jane, your’re beautiful and I love you.
JANE - I’ve loved you always, but you had to be dead before you got some sense.
BILL - Dead, dead, wot the hell d’you mean? No, I’m not dead.
JANE Now, you’re not to worry. I’m here, aren’t I Bill? And I aren’t dead neither, so be a good boy and stop worrying.
I did, and I followed her in a sort of sleepy way, I felt heavier and heavier until I slept good and proper, and when I woke up I wasn’t feeling nearly so strange and Jane was sitting on the grass
nearby playing with two kiddies. I called to her and she brought them over to me.
JANE - Look, Bill. These are our kids.
BILL - Our kids? Not on your honor, I ain’t got no kids by nobody.
JANE (laughing) - That’s all over now, Bill, and I mean we’ve got to look after them… They was ours in some place long, long ago, least that’s wot they told me; you see, Bill, we’ve lived through death, perhaps we’ve lived before we were born like, I don’t know, but it don’t seem as though we’d ever not been, if you can follow me. You and me, Bill, have got to scratch along together like, as we did on earth. But this is
lovely, and we don’t work any more.
Another visitor to the séance is an Irish soldier who found he was doing rescue work himself, shortly after his death:
I see what I’m to do. It’s kind of easy once you’ve given me the chance, but oh, dear me, there are barriers and all kinds of difficulties [getting through].
I didn’t want to force my way home with so much feeling, this way and that, but when I’d ‘bought it’ I found there was nothing much to do (I never liked foreign parts) old Ireland for me every time!. Though
I didn’t want to go home because of the domestic troubles, the call of HOME was too strong and I found I was There, and all the family grieving for me as though I’d been a hero, beloved of them all! Sure, I could have held my sides for laughing, and me, large as life, and still there, but all invisible; it seemed queer too, and just the opportunity to pay off old
scores against them who’d hurt me in the young days. I’d come close to them at dusk and shout thoughts into their brains. First, I tried just shouting, but they couldn’t hear, so that was no good. Then I learned to
think the thoughts into their brains, the same as I’m doing with you. I made them remember me, and fear me, and think that I was haunting them, and would continue to do so unless they were kind to those I loved. That
worked very will and I was enjoying it until I came across the Colonel, my old battalion commander, and he ses to me:
COLONEL - Why do you do this, Murphy? Don’t you see you’ve wasting your time? You mustn’t use the power of hate to protect love any more than we use poison gas to protect our cities. You must use Love for
Love, but only Love, and you’ll succeed.
MURPHY - What? Go love, spinning for the priest? No, sure I can’t feel love for him, and the likes of him.
COLONEL - Well, have it your own way, but you’ll
only hurt yourself if you do anything else; he is in
the earth body, and you can’t hurt him near as much as
he can hurt you with hate thoughts in your ether body.
It’s like pitting a man in a bathing dress against
one in full flying kit; anyway, Murphy, there’s more
work that’s worth while to be done, and your work,
too.
So I went with him for a time until I was
called home by thoughts so insistent that I had to go.
It was wee Mary, our youngest, only two years old;
and she got sick with the pneumonia, and the wife
prayed and prayed, but it didn’t do any good. I sat
by her side, the wee one, she was so bad, I could feel
her little hand all hot and feverish; and then
suddenly she looked up and saw me, and climbed out of
her cot into my arms, just like she used to do, and I
held her for ever so long in great happiness; and then
I thought maybe I’d best put her into her cot again,
and as I went to do it I saw she was in bed
lying so quiet and still, and a child just like her
was in my arms; and as I turned, uncertain what to do,
a beautiful lady came and said to me ‘Take her with
you, no need to stay in the house now, take her into
the sunshine, she is yours now and for always, and she
will be your special care.’ [again, seemingly the
Grim Reaper, but in fact, her own father, accompanying
her AFTER she had died! RR]
So I took her out and we sat on the
hillside, and played with flowers and pebbles, and
when I’d left her asleep out there I went back into
the house, I found only grief and mourning… and then I
knew that wee Mary had come to join me… and I
understood that death wasn’t real, but Life
everlasting was TRUE, TRUE, TRUE……..”
Now, Hugh Dowding has a lot more to say about
rescue work and possession, so here is what he relates
in a chapter of “The Dark Star” :
Cognate with this subject [of rescue work] is the question of the relief of sufferers from obsession by alien entities, or possession.
In the time of our Lord the fact that human beings could be possessed by unclean spirits was universally accepted, and the Gospels contain many accounts of the casting out of these spirits by Jesus
and His disciples.
Nowadays our spiritual pastors and masters are mostly engaged in explaining away the manifestations of the power of the Founder of the religion which they profess, so they explain that Jesus did not really
understand what He was doing, and that the people whom He cured were only epileptics; or, if there be some who are unwilling to denigrate their Master, they will maintain that the age of miracles is past, and with it
have passed those conditions which made this particular kind of miracle necessary; In other words, human beings are no longer possessed by alien
entities.
I am not quite sure how long our learned theologians allow that the age of miracles persisted after the Ascension of Jesus – I presume they allow some latitude for the miracles of Paul – but I suppose that at some date in the first or second century the
age of miracles came to an end, and the cosmic laws
which govern the evolution of humanity were abruptly
altered.
What nonsense! The accounts in the Gospels of
the casting out of unclean spirits are precisely borne
out by happenings today, some of which I am about to
describe.
Souls of all degrees of development pass into the
Astral world at physical death. Those who have
depended for their enjoyment of Earth life entirely
upon the gratification of their physical senses are
acutely unhappy in the Astral, because the physical
desires remain, while they have no means of gratifying
them.
Some of these souls (instructed by more
experienced sinners) find that they can occupy the
body of a living person, and thus experience at second
hand the longed-for sensations of physical life.
These excite their victims to excesses of drink or
rage or sensuality, and wallow in the gross
satisfaction of their appetites. Not infrequently
they drive their victims to suicide or to murder, and
leave them to face the consequences of a deed of which
they were innocent in intention. This is perhaps the
worst form of obsession; but there is a very wide
range of variety in the attendant circumstances. Some
spirits obsess from loneliness, and some obsess their
own children in the belief that they are helping and
protecting them. Some obsessions are entirely
innocent and accidental – an inexperienced wandering
spirit gets caught up in the aura of a living human
being quite by mistake, and sometimes without ever
knowing that it has passed through the gateway of
death.
Unfortunately the possibility of spirit obsession
is not generally recognized by the medical profession.
The two or more personalities in a single sufferer
are observed, and a disease of the mind is at once
diagnosed. I feel quite certain that many of the
occupants of our mental homes [many now wandering the
streets] have nothing wrong with their minds at all;
they have an ‘unclean spirit’ and if that could be
disposed of, they could walk out sane into the world.”
Hugh Dowding mentions the work of Carl Wickland
a few decades earlier, and then goes on to give
accounts of circles in London doing similar work,
using a Wimshurst machine for the generation of
frictional electricity to give a mild shock to the
‘possessed’ person to zap the spirit out of him or her
and into the medium, where it can be reasoned with.
The first case which I wish to describe I have
chosen because it went exactly according to plan. The
patient was a grey-headed widow, quietly but smartly
dressed, and having had some connection with the
theatrical profession.
She had been sitting by herself for the
development of automatic writing, and was regularly
receiving messages which she was satisfied came from
her husband and personal friends. Suddenly an alien
entity began to control her hand – a dominant
character who refused to allow any but himself to
communicate. He had nothing useful or constructive to
say, but would allow no other to write.
This was naturally distressing to the patient,
especially as the stranger began to intrude upon her
privacy at times when she was not attempting to write.
When she had described her symptoms the
electrical treatment began. She was asked to hold one
of the terminals, and the operator passed the other
terminal repeatedly across her head from front to
rear, so that little trains of sparks jumped across to
her scalp. Then the treatment was continued down the
spine and across the shoulders.
After five or ten minutes of this the spirit was
dislodged and passed into the body of the medium,
where he was able to converse freely with the members
of the circle and with the patient whom he had just
left.
It turned out that he was an American whom the
patient and her husband had met in the Eastern States
about 25 years ago. His story was that his parents
were English and that he had never renounced British
nationality; that he had come across the Atlantic with
an American contingent in 1944, transferred to a
British unit, and been killed in France by a German
sniper.
PATIENT (indignantly) - Why did you pick on ME?
SPIRIT - Well, I saw you like an open door with a
light all round it; so I went in. I didn’t do you any
harm.
It was explained to him that he had indeed done
harm to the lady; and, in answer to further
questioning, he stated that for some time after his
death, he had hung around with a bunch of his friends,
killed about the same time; but that one by one these
friends had ‘gone on’ with a person who was always on
hand to give them help when required and whom he
called the Missionary. [NOT a Grim Reaper! Richard R]
He said that his mother and a brother were on the
other side, but that they had ‘gone on’ and were
living together, so that he was now alone. Asked why
he didn’t ‘go on’ too, he said that he didn’t want to
leave the earth and its contacts.
After a little more discussion he agreed to ‘go
on’ with the Missionary and join his mother and
brother, who had been brought to look on from a short
distance away.
He was asked to promise not to go back into the
lady in any circumstances, and he said, ‘What? Into
that fire? Not likely!’
{Further rescue cases to follow, and cases of exorcism
in Protestant and Catholic churches. Richard R
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