1998 NAS Winter Seminar at Castle Donnington
By Lew Sutton

We didn't know quite what to expect as we approached The Priest House at Castle Donington for the first ever Ark seminar at this venue. The name made us feel perhaps a little apprehensive! Would there be memorabilia everywhere reminiscent of an era of religious intolerance? However, our concerns were completely needless. The hotel turned out to be excellent and in a beautiful setting on the banks of the River Trent. Our only real concern turned out to be whether the swollen fast flowing turbulent river would overflow its banks during the night! As for religious memorabilia, the only obvious associations with the past were the handsome cathedral style doors and windows throughout the hotel.

Stewart Alexander and Colin Fry provided the physical mediumship for the two seances and both also gave excellent talks relating to physical mediumship. We are especially indebted to Colin who attended the seminar in spite of being in constant pain. He was due for major surgery just over a week after the seminar.
The seminar commenced after dinner on the Friday evening with the "Welcome and Introductions" followed by Colin Fry talking on "The Mechanics of Trance". His first main point was that the quality of what is given is far more important than the perceived depth of trance. There is a general expectation that deep trance is necessary before worthwhile communication is achieved. Colin showed that this perception is wrong.
His second main point was that "a lot of bilge has to be pumped before the water runs pure". In other words, it takes time for the trance medium to become a pure channel and not to be put off in the trance development circle by the initial irrelevant data that can come forth. Colin also stressed the vital importance of trust, dedication and commitment that is required by the sitters and the medium to develop trance mediumship.

Saturday kicked off with Stewart Alexander's talk on "The Tragedy of the Crandons". Stewart told us about the Crandons, who lived in Boston, USA at the latter part of the last century and for several decades of this century. For many years their house was the centre of seance room investigations throughout the whole of America. In spite of high social standing in the community, Dr Crandon, who lectured at Harvard University, risked all to support his wife's mediumship. Mina, who worked under the name of Margery, tirelessly gave countless wonderful demonstrations to investigators whose demands could never seem to be satisfied.
The Crandons were much maligned by the Press and some investigators, especially conjurer Houdini who was determined to discredit them by fair means or foul - in this case definitely foul. Even to this day many investigators appear to believe the likes of Houdini rather than the painstaking research of sincere investigators who witnessed the phenomena.

Next on the agenda came a talk by Alf Winchester on "The Goligher Circle". This family circle situated in Belfast about 1915 to 1920 was the subject of three books by respected investigator W.J. Crawford. Crawford received the most remarkable cooperation from the circle and spirit control imaginable. He could freely wander around the room whilst ectoplasm was about and carry out experiments with the complete cooperation of the spirit control. The spirit control would even make suggestions on how to improve the measurements on the ectoplasm and how it worked. How remarkable!
Alf also showed us slides of many clear photographs of ectoplasm reproduced from Crawford's books. Many showed the mechanism by which force was exerted by ectoplasm to move items such as tables in the seance room.

After lunch Mary Armour spoke on "The Great Scots Seers". Scotland has a reputation for producing fine mediums. Mary started with Glaswegian David Duguid who in the latter part of the nineteenth century produced practically every type of phenomena known in modern Spiritualism including levitation! He was thoroughly investigated by the skeptical Frank Podmore (a founder member of the SPR). Another of the many Scottish mediums Mary covered in her talk was Mona van der Watt who could produce spirit voices around her body in broad daylight. It was Mona who introduced George Cranley to Spiritualism.
It was inevitable that Mary included in her talk Helen Duncan, perhaps the most famous of twentieth century mediums. Mary brought us up to date with her latest research, greatly helped by Helen's niece Flossie who was attending her first residential NAS seminar. Mary also showed slides that no doubt will feature in her forthcoming book on Helen Duncan.

Come Saturday evening, half of the seminar delegates filed into the seance room for Stewart Alexander's seance whilst the remaining delegates seated themselves in the adjoining lecture room to listen to the proceedings in stereo by loudspeakers. Those not selected for the first seance had their turn with the second seance the following day.
Within a few minutes of starting and before Stewart entered deep trance, a voice could be heard by the side of Stewart. It was Stewart who first drew our attention to what appeared to be independent direct voice (without the trumpet). As the whispers became stronger we could discern that John [name] (a NAS member who passed on last year) wanted to speak with his wife. The message ended with him blowing a kiss to his wife. By this time Stewart was in trance and regular communicator Freda Johnson commenced communicating adding further information together with another John connected to the John [name], both known to several present.

Further evidence was given via Freda plus questions answered concerning members' home circles. The most interesting of these questions concerned when a circle has to be abandoned whether the development gained by the medium is lost when having to start again with new sitters. The answer was no, the development gained would remain and be held until starting again. However, energies would have to be harmonised again with the new sitters.
The child control, Christopher next communicated and kept the atmosphere light with his humorous banter and teasing. He told my wife Heather to expect the trumpet to approach her but instead it landed on my knee and proceeded to tap my hand - much to his amusement! (It is always stressed how important it is to keep the atmosphere from becoming too heavy in order to achieve good phenomena). Soon the trumpets flew through the air making rapid movements above our heads and at other times moving gently amongst sitters, even those in the second row. Sometimes they danced in the air together and sometimes moved quite independently with a trumpet at one end of the room and the other several metres away.

Many felt the trumpets touching their arms, heads, knees and one lady let out an excited exclamation as one touched her stomach! Similar experiences were felt when psychic rods were next used to operate drum sticks picked up from the small table in the centre of the sitters. Again I felt what I took this time to be a drum stick gently touch my knee.
The next experiment involved materialising a hand in red light. This was organised by regular communicator Walter Stinson, brother of Margery Crandon (featured in Stewart's talk earlier that day). My wife, Heather, was chosen to participate in this experiment and was moved to a spare seat opposite the medium with a small low table between them. A low intensity red light within the box structure of the table illuminated the translucent table top. Heather placed her hand palm down on the table top as requested and a hand slowly materialised and moved towards Heather's hand, witnessed by those seated nearby. The very warm hand patted and grasped her hand firmly before withdrawing and disappearing. Heather was naturally enthralled!
Several loved ones communicated next with very evidential information given. The father of a Connie who was present requested that he hold her hand. As he was communicating via the body of the medium, it was arranged that Connie sat next to the medium and held his hand whilst conversing.
Before White Feather closed the proceedings with a prayer, Walter returned briefly to remind us that the atmosphere sitters create greatly influences what our friends in the Spirit World can achieve in the seance room.

Colin's seance on the Sunday morning started with the usual singing. It was not long before the powerful voice of Frances joined in, almost drowning out our singing. A few words by Frances and it was Magnus's turn. He just popped in briefly to tell us another member of the Diamond Group would be communicating with us for the first time (Magnus is the main spokesperson for the Diamond Group in the Spirit World).
Charlie, who portrays himself as a child, next communicated and quickly went around the room touching several of the sitters including myself. Some he also kissed or held their hand. Flossie, Helen Duncan's niece was amongst those thrilled to speak to Charlie and to feel her hand held by him.
The new communicator from the Diamond group came through next and turned out to be Al-Farouk from ancient Persia. His voice started as a whisper but quickly built up so that most of us could hear him. he said that he was the Master Carpet Maker to the second son of Paladin (?) the Second. So far I have not found out who Paladin the Second was. He lived in the part of Persia that is now Iran. Al-Farouk gave us a beautiful parable based on the way a carpet is constructed, however it is too long to relate here. No doubt we shall be hearing more from Al-Farouk.

Next came Alan Turing (1912-1954), the mathematician and logician who designed the forerunner to the modern computer. It was Alan's work that enabled the famous German code-breaking computer to be built at Bletchley Park during the 2nd World War. Alan came through still with a stutter as indeed he had whilst here on the earth plane. When asked if he still had an interest in computers, he said that they call them "enablers" in the Spirit World. He said that "We are working trying to create a way of transmitting macro-enablers into the mind processes of potential mediums". He wants to "move things forward.... so that the morphic body, the physical body can produce ectoplasm as a normal function not as it is now, an abnormal function". When asked if this was for everyone he replied that the gift (of mediumship) would still have to be there. Alan was also asked about artificial intelligence and communicating via TV or computer screens etc (as in EVP - electronic voice phenomena).

It was Dolly's turn next - the slightly outrageous female impersonator. This time he behaved himself amazingly well! Dolly orchestrated the personal contacts bringing back loved ones to some of those present. He helped them communicate when they found it difficult. The most outstanding of these were the materialisation (partly materialised I believe) of Archie Macfarlane, brother of famous medium Helen Duncan and also of Mary Armour's mother, who passed to spirit last year on the anniversary of Helen Duncan's birthday. As these two visitors from the spirit inter-relate it is necessary to fill in the following details. Mary Armour, who was with her husband Jo, has been researching Helen Duncan's life and brought Flossie, Helen's niece, to the seminar as well. Flossie also had known Mary's mother as they had met at Mary's home.

Mary Armour's mother communicated first and conversed with Mary, Jo and Flossie. She also touched Mary's hand and Jo's knee. As Mary was sitting directly on my left I could hear the materialised form approaching and clearly hear the excellent survival evidence given. Next to come through was Archie Macfarlane who affectionately greeted his daughter Flossie. As Flossie was sitting directly on my right I could hear shuffling sounds as he approached to hold and kiss her hand. He spoke to his daughter for about eight minutes and gave extremely good personal evidence of his identity to Flossie. She was absolutely thrilled. Included in this information was the listing of towns in Australia where some of their relations are living, unbeknown to Flossie. It was such a touching reunion that I don't think there was a dry eye in the room.
Archie also spoke touchingly to Mary Armour - no doubt due to the work she is doing to set the public record straight concerning his sister (Mary received direct thanks last year from Helen Duncan via the trance mediumship of Scottish medium Gordon Smith). The seance was then brought to a close but not before Dolly returned and reminisced about his days in the entertainment profession which included meeting Danny la Rue when Danny was only sixteen and freshly arrived from Ireland!

So our first visit to The Priest House turned out to be a most successful weekend in a very attractive and comfortable setting. A seminar with a good dose of upliftment, laughter and learning including two seances where the meeting of the two worlds must have closely touched all who attended. There was also a much better harmonising of energies in the seances as well - compared to the last seminar at Cardiff which must have been the only seminar where any significant problems were apparent. No doubt if the price is right for the NAS at this luxury hotel, a return visit will probably be on the cards.

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