Question Time? Let’s just ask my magic trumpet
We are all psychics now. In 2018, debates in parliament and the media seem to have less to do with the rights and wrongs of any particular issue and more to do with predicting what will happen next.
Brexit, Trump, climate change: on BBC Question Time, pundits and politicians place their hands on a strangely shaped table, stare into the middle-distance and let wild predictions stream out of their mouths.
By chance, a few days ago, in an antiquarian bookshop, I came across a bound volume of copies of the weekly newspaper Psychic News, for the years 1938-39.
It is a fascinating document, at the same time historic and other- worldly. Beneath its weekly slogan, ‘LIFE AFTER DEATH PROVED’, come unnerving headlines such as ‘ Crowds Flock to Hear Talks by “Dead” Man’, ‘ Medium Proves that Pet Dogs Survive the Grave’ and — my own favourite — ‘Victim of Smash aids Driver of Bus That Killed Him’.
The small ads read like the opening line of a Barbara Vine novel: ‘Widow (Spiritualist) wants paying guests.’ Mediums advertising their services are blessed with appropriately cranky names like rev. J. Sparke Kirkland, Su Su Sing, G. Viney Forsyth, Gerald du Beaurepaire and Horace Leaf.
Under the weekly heading ‘Psychic appliances’ there are plenty of ouija boards for sale. Thirty years later, when I was a child, these spirit- summoning devices were almost as common as Scrabble boards. Nowadays you rarely hear about them, but in the late Sixties they were available from Whsmith and toy shops, and marketed as family fun by Waddington, the makers of Monopoly.
Back in 1939, every self-respecting medium seemed to have had a ‘magnetic trumpet’, to help them tune into the spirit world. ‘Psychaloid magnetic trumpets make immediate results possible’ reads a recurrent advertisement. ‘a medium writes: “Sat seven years, trumpet never levitated. First night we used your Psychaloid magnetic trumpet, it was levitated across the room in red light”. Plain 5s 6d. Luminous 7s 6d.’
Who knows? In our current climate, the Psychaloid Magnetic Trumpet could be set for a revival, with Question Time pundits brandishing them before launching into predictions about Britain outside the EU, or the future of Nato.
On the other hand, if burying my head for a few days in Psychic News 1938- 39 has taught me anything, it is that predicting the future is a haphazard business, even for those who possess supernatural powers. ‘ “NO WAR IN OUR TIME” — SAYS GUIDE’ is the headline of Psychic News on October 1938, less than a year before the outbreak of World War II. ‘ World’s Greatest Tragedy Has Been averted’ runs the sub-heading.
The erring guide is red Cloud, a Native american, or red Indian as they were still called back then. He was, of course, dead, so he is billed as ‘speaking through his medium, estelle roberts’.
red Cloud was not lacking in confidence. ‘ We can now say that there will be no war in your time’ he said. Furthermore, ‘Czechoslovakia will emerge better than she was in 1918’. as we now know, just five months later, Nazi troops marched into Czechoslovakia.
Yet the spirit world seems to have been unanimous in their belief that there would be no war. On the same page, four other Native american spirit guides all voice agreement. ‘ I foresee a period of peace’ says White eagle, while Moon Trail assures readers of Psychic News, ‘There is no fear of england being involved in war for a number of years, if at all.’
Also speaking from beyond the grave, Silver Birch is every bit as definite. ‘ Have no fear. england will not be involved in war.’
as World War II looms closer, Silver Birch grows increasingly certain that it will never happen. In March 1939, two days after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, his confidence remains unshaken. ‘Still I say, there will be no war’.
On april 29, 1939, ‘ speaking at the first seance after his return from the customary easter festival in the Beyond’, Silver Birch repeats, ‘there will be no war on a large scale. The worst has happened. Fear is needless.’
as it happens, after the outbreak of World War II, these red Indian spirit guides seemed to make themselves scarce, and stopped making their bold pronouncements. Here’s hoping that our current Question Time psychics will one day follow suit.