What earthly phenomenon serves as the best evidence for life after death? That question has been put to me more than a few times. My answer is that if someone I knew very closely during life – my mother, for example – materialized in front of me and talked with me about things from the past that nobody else knew about, in the voice I remember, perhaps even mentioning things I had forgotten, I would be about 99.8% convinced. The .2% doubt would be recognition of the possibility that there is some explanation beyond human comprehension, at least beyond my comprehension. As it is, I am, as a vicarious experiencer, 98.8% convinced, as I just can’t believe all the credible people who have reported just such an experience have been duped over and over again.
Consider the experience of John King, a Toronto physician. In a sitting with Joseph Jonson, (below) a Toledo, Ohio medium, King reported 19 separate materializations in one night. He observed spirits coming from the materialization cabinet, greeting loved ones, embracing them, talking with them, etc. His deceased wife, May, was the eleventh to materialize. She embraced him, spoke to him about personal matters, and dematerialized right into the floor in front of him.
In a different sitting, Dr. King’s deceased brother, who had died at age 18 months, materialized as an adult as did King’s daughter who had died at birth 20 years earlier. Although King did not recognize either, he was able to ask them questions and confirm that they were who they said they were. The brother told King that he had been present along with many other relatives when May entered the spirit world. Still another materialized spirit for King was a man who had worked with him some years before and had died about three years earlier. He was an acquaintance, not a good friend, certainly not someone whom King would have expected.
“The majority of the forms I saw in the three séances in November materialized inside the cabinet, and returning towards the cabinet, disappeared as they got to the opening of the curtains, but without entering the cabinet,” King explained. “A few materialized outside of the cabinet, and several were materialized inside the cabinet, while Jonson sat at one end of the semi-circle of people part of the time, and another part of the time he walked along in front of the line of sitters, drawing magnetism from them to build the forms inside the cabinet,…”
To claim fraud on the part of the Jonson is to suggest that he did a thorough investigation of King, finding out about a deceased brother, who lived only 18 months, a deceased daughter who died at birth, a man who worked with him, and also about the personal things that May, his wife talked about, then found someone who closely resembled his wife and the former co-worker to impersonate them, while also bringing in a number of other impersonators for others sitting in the circle. He would also have to create some kind of illusion to make it appear that the “spirits” were vanishing into the floor, while also finding a way for up to 19 impersonators, including some children, to enter the room, emerge from the cabinet, and then look enough like deceased loved ones to fool everyone in the circle. And he would have had to pay the impersonators good money to be sure they didn’t expose him later on.
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