The story of the Ross sisters, as communicated through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins, (below) perhaps the most accomplished automatist of the 20th Century, suggests that family grudges and feuds carry over into the afterlife if not resolved before death. The story also suggests that we can have concerns and regrets relative to how things, such as wills, were left at the time of transition from the physical world.
Beatrice Gibbes, Cummins’s friend and assistant, described the method employed by Cummins. She would sit at a table, cover her eyes with her left hand and concentrate on “stillness.” She would then fall into a light trance or dream state. Her hand would then begin to write. Usually, her “control,” most often a spirit named Astor, said to be a pagan Greek when alive on earth, would make some introductory remarks and announce that another entity was waiting to speak. Because of Cummins’s semi-trance condition and also because of the speed at which the writing would come, Gibbes would sit beside her and remove each sheet of paper as it was filled. Cummins’s hand was quickly lifted by Gibbes to the top of the new page, and the writing would continue without break. The handwriting most often changed to that identified with the communicating spirit when alive.
From 1925 thru 1929, Molly Ross, the youngest of four sisters and Gibbes observed and recorded the story in a book titled They Survive. After the sittings, Gibbes would go over the scripts with Molly and have her comment on evidential points.
Molly had three sisters who had passed over. They were Audrey, who died in 1894 at age 21; Margaret, who died in 1925 at age 57, and Alice, the oldest of the four sisters, who died in 1928 at the age of 62. Molly had had several evidential sittings with GC after Margaret’s death in 1925. When Alice appeared on the brink of death while in a nursing home in York, Molly, who was living in London, was summoned to her sister’s bedside. After Alice died on October 11, 1928, Molly wired GC in Dublin, Ireland, requesting that Astor find her oldest sister, Audrey, and to let her know that Alice had passed over.
Four days later, on October 15, Molly received a letter from GC, postmarked October 12, saying that Margaret had communicated and said that “Alice was not alone when she was slipping out of her body… that Audrey and Mater (their mother) came to her.”
Margaret explained that Audrey presented herself to Alice as Alice remembered her in 1894, not as she was in 1925. She further explained that because Alice and Mater had quarreled before Mater’s death three years earlier, and because Audrey had much more experience on that side, Audrey was the first to appear to Alice while Mater remained in the background. Because Alice was so restless, Audrey put on a dream of old days about her soul. When Alice saw these old memories, her fear left her.
Margaret said that she had not yet approached Alice because she was not yet fit to draw near the newly dead. Besides, Margaret added, she would not have been received kindly by Alice as they constantly quarrelled when they were alive. (This point was particularly evidential to Molly, since it was true and she was certain that GC had no way of knowing of the friction between the two sisters.)
Leave a Reply