Medium Ada
Besinnet
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Miss Ada
Besinnet Medium
There are certain Mediums who, without specializing in any particular way, can
exhibit a wide range of preternatural manifestations. Of all whom the author has
encountered he would give precedence for variety and consistency to Miss Ada
Besinnet, of Toledo, in America, and to Evan Powell, formerly of Merthyr Tydfil,
in Wales. Both are admirable Mediums and kindly, good people who are worthy of
the wonderful gifts which have been entrusted to them. In the case of Miss Besinnet the manifestations include the Direct Voice, two or more often sounding
at the same time. One masculine control, named Dan, has a remarkable male
baritone voice, and anyone who has heard it can certainly never doubt that it is
independent of the lady's organism. A female voice occasionally joins with Dan
to make a most tuneful duet. Remarkable whistling, in which there seems to be no
pause for the intake of breath, is another feature of this mediumship. So also
is the production of very brilliant lights. These appear to be small solid
luminous objects, for the author had on one occasion the curious experience of
having one upon his moustache. Had a large firefly settled there the effect
would have been much the same. The Direct Voices of Miss Besinnet when they take
the form of messages as apart from the work of the Controls are not strong and
are often hardly audible. The most remarkable, however, of all her powers is the
appearance of phantom faces which appear in an illuminated patch in front of the
sitter. They would seem to be mere masks, as there is no appearance of depth to
them. In most cases they represent dim faces, which occasionally bear a
resemblance to that of the Medium when the health of the lady or the power of
the Circle is low. When the conditions are good they are utterly dissimilar.
Upon two occasions the author has seen faces to which he could absolutely swear,
the one being his mother and the other his nephew, Oscar Hornung, a young
officer killed in the war. They were as clear-cut and visible as ever in life.
On the other hand, there have been evenings when no clear recognition could be
obtained, though among the faces were some which could only be described as
angelic in their beauty and purity.*
* Various estimates and experiences of this mediumship will be found in the
author's "Our American Adventure," pp. 124-132; Admiral Moore's "Glimpses of the
Next State," pp. 226, 312; and finally Mr. Hewat McKenzie's report, PSYCHIC
SCIENCE, April, 1922.
On a level with Miss Besinnet is Mr. Evan Powell, with the same variety but not
always the same type of powers. Powell's luminous phenomena are equally good.
His voice production is better. The author has heard the Spirit Voices as loud
as those of ordinary human talk, and recalls one occasion when three of them
were talking simultaneously, one to Lady Cowan, one to Sir James Marchant, and
one to Sir Robert McAlpine. Movements of objects are common in the Powell
seances, and on one occasion a stand weighing 60 lb. was suspended for some time
over the author's head. Evan Powell always insists upon being very securely tied
during his seances, which is done, he claims, for his own protection, since he
cannot be responsible for his own movements when he is in a trance. This throws
an interesting sidelight upon the possible nature of some exposures. There is a
good deal of evidence, not only that the Medium may unconsciously, or under the
influence of suggestion from the audience, put himself into a false position,
but that evil forces which are either mischievous or are actively opposed to the
good work done by Spiritualism, may obsess the entranced body and cause it to do
suspicious things so as to discredit the Medium. Some sensible remarks upon this
subject, founded upon personal experience, have been made by Professor Haraldur
Nielsson, of Iceland, when commenting upon a case where one of the Circle
committed a perfectly senseless fraud, and a Spirit afterwards admitted that it
was done by its agency and instigation.* On the whole, Evan Powell may be said
to have the widest endowment of spiritual gifts of any Medium at present in
England. He preaches the doctrines of Spiritualism both in his own person and
while under control, and he can in himself exhibit nearly the whole range of
phenomena. It is a pity that his business as a coal merchant in Devonshire
prevents his constant presence in London.
With small additions source from PSYCHIC SCIENCE, July, 1925.
In 1922, Conan Doyle, accompanied by his wife
and three young children, made a Spiritualist crusade through the United States,
lecturing and attending seances. Besinnet urged him to visit.
"I do not mind telling you that I am going to Toledo because Miss Ada
Besinnet is there and I hope through her to communicate again with my mother, my
son and some other dear ones," he said. "I have great faith in Miss Besinnet's
psychic powers and a deep respect for her intellect. She is a cultured woman and
a courageous one, who, ever exposed to ridicule and merciless criticism, yet
remains true to her belief, based on personal experience, that it is possible to
communicate with the dead."
Described as sweet and motherly, Besinnet's own mother died when she was 7. She
was raised by a well-to-do Old West End family, the matron of which believed in
and nurtured the girl's psychic powers.
She built a strong following especially among the city's upper crust,
charging $1 at first and eventually $20 to attend invitation-only seances, which
often lasted three or four hours. Among her guests: President William Howard Taft.
If nothing else, an evening with Besinnet was excellent entertainment. Guests
sat around an oak table in her home as the room darkened. Besinnet bound her
hand to that of the person next to her. Lights flickered like fireflies,
phonograph records played, whistling was heard, and there was singing in several
vocal ranges. "Spirits" piped up, including an Indian chief named Black Cloud, a
child, a Spanish dancer, and a soldier.
A trumpet was handed around and put next to the ear, connecting the guest to
a departed loved one. People sometimes saw faces, and when the room's lights
finally came up, there was often a penciled message from the afterlife.
At his two-hour lecture on The Proof of Immorality in Toledo's Coliseum Theater,
Conan Doyle drew a capacity crowd of 3,000. He told the audience about his
session with Besinnet: "I received a written message, in a scribble that might
have been anyone's but that was signed by the name my mother always used in
signing her letters to me. What could that American girl have known of that pet
name?"
Conan Doyle, who wrote many letters to Besinnet and William Roche, a Toledo
News-Bee political writer who married the psychic in 1931, said Besinnet "should
be guarded and looked after very carefully, for she is very valuable."
In 1923, he was back in the United States and met her again.
"We were greatly favoured that evening in
the seance, for we had the whole gamut of the
Medium's powers, the powerful voices, the wonderful musical performances, the
brilliant lights, the fitful materializations, the written messages, the
continuation of the songs when a bandage was over the lady's lips, and finally
the whole table was lifted bodily into the air. It was a very impressive
exhibition."
He paid her expenses to hold a seance in New York City's Biltmore Hotel, whose
owner, John Bowman, was a believer.
On hearing about Besinnet Harry Houdini, magician and escape artist, came to
try and debunk Mediums. Houdini wrote to Besinnet four
times in 1925, throwing down a $10,000 challenge if, which he stipulate after three seances, he
could not figure how she staged the sessions. Conan Doyle advised her to ignore
him and she did. Houdini towards the end of his life became to believe in
Spiritualism.
Sherlock's creator died in 1930 at the age of 71. His family expected him to
quickly contact them from beyond, but, Ravin said, it's not clear that he ever
did.
With small additions source from
http://www.toledoblade.com
American
Physical Medium who produced psychic lights,
direct voices known for singing and whistling,
and materializations. She was married to William
Wallace Roche and lived for many years in
Toledo, Ohio.
After a formal investigation during 1909-10 in
70 test sittings, James H. Hyslop wrote in
Proceedings of the American Society for
Psychical Research (vol. 5, 1911) that the
Medium produced phenomena herself, but while in
a hysterical state of secondary personality and
without the slightest degree of moral
responsibility in her own person for the fraud.
After six months of study, the British College
for Psychic Science in London reached the
opposite conclusion in 1921. According to J.
Hewat McKenzie 's report in Psychic Science
(April 1922), those actions of the Medium which
Hyslop attributed to hysteria could be fully
accounted for as due to the action of
controlling Spirits.
Dr. Hereward Carrington concluded in The Story
of Psychic Science (1930), "My own sittings with
this Medium left me entirely unconvinced of
their genuineness." Nevertheless, he admitted
that he observed very curious lights at a seance
in 1922. On request, the lights hovered for a
few moments over exposed photographic plates,
and the plates, when developed, showed unusual
markings that he failed to obtain by artificial
means.
Besinnet had two principal controls, both
Indians: "Pansy," a little girl, and "Black
Cloud." As a rule Besinnet sat in the dark,
unbound; then during the seance, as a feat of
her stock performance, her hands and feet were
often tied to her chair by invisible hands. The
sitters usually did not join hands, but placed
them on the table. Her materializations were
incomplete. The faces seen had a corpse-like
appearance and often resembled her own face. It
is said that she disappeared several times from
the seance room altogether and was found
transported in a deep coma in another room. In
Glimpses of the Next State (1911), Osborne Moore
described several seances with the Medium. He
found the phenomena supernormal and entirely
convincing. Besinnet died in 1936.
Source with slight additions from answers.com
A section of
GLIMPSES OF THE NEXT STATE
(The education of an agnostic)
by
Vice Admiral W. USBORNE MOORE
A New Psychic in Toledo, Ohio In Toledo, Ohio, there
is a psychic, a young lady at the time of my visit nineteen years of age, in
whose presence remarkable manifestations occur. Her name is Miss Ada
Besinnet, and she is the adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Murray Moore, then
living at 2617 Glenwood Avenue. So far she had only sat in private for her
friends, and was in no sense a professional medium.
Investigators may be roughly divided into two classes : first, those who
believe a psychic to be guilty of conscious or unconscious fraud, until they
prove her to be innocent ; second, those who believe her to be innocent,
until they detect her in fraud. Supposing other things to be equal—
observation, acuteness, and so forth—it is the latter class that will arrive
earlier at the truth ; for their mental attitude greatly assists the
phenomena. When I reflect how ignorant the wisest are, how limited are our
senses ; how, to begin with, we do not know the significance of more than
one eighth of the sun’s rays, I cannot understand the point of view of the
former class. Miss Besinnet is just one of those psychics who will bring the
two classes into fierce conflict. It is to be hoped that through her
mediumship many outstanding problems will be solved.
I had the good fortune to sit with her twice ; the first time by the kind
invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Yaryan in their house, in company with seven of
their relatives and friends ; the second time in her own home, when the only
other sitter was Mrs Murray Moore. On both occasions the atmospheric
conditions were fairly good.
(65) First sitting, January 5,1909—8:10 to 11:50pm. We sat in the dark
round an oblong oak table that weighs from one hundred and fifty to one
hundred and sixty pounds. Directly the light was put out the psychic went
into trance. The phenomena consisted of singing and whistling in
accompaniment to a graphophone ; playing of tambourine, triangle, and bells
in accompaniment to a graphophone; voices through trumpet, touchings of
hands and heads of sitters, violent movements of the table, lashing the
medium, and spirit lights.
I sat on the medium’s right, and my left hand was either lashed to hers
or resting upon it the whole evening. Placed upon the table, before the
séance began, were a long, soft piece of rope, a tambourine, a tube or
trumpet, a bell and triangle. The manifestations lagged at first, and it
took us the best part of an hour to find out that the control ("Dan") was
dissatisfied with the arrangements. Finally, we discovered, through Mrs.
Moore, that he wanted the graphophone brought close up to the table, which
would effectively separate her from the psychic. This was done ; other small
changes among the circle took place, and the real business of the evening
commenced about 9 o’clock.
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Songs were given through the graphophone, and
voices from above joined in the singing ; then whistling of the most
striking character. It appeared to come from a distance of some feet above
the table, and, though I was on the alert, it did not once occur to me that
the sounds issued from the mouth of my neighbor, or near it. Her hand was
motionless, and occasionally her head fell upon the table, and remained
there for many minutes. The whistler never stopped to take breath, but went
on for long periods without a pause, pouring forth the most melodious notes
with a power which, I am of opinion, no mortal can possess. Between times a
tambourine was played, and the bell and triangle accompanied the music.
By-and by I found my left wrist being lashed to the right wrist of the
psychic ; a few minutes elapsed, and we were told by Mrs. Moore (who is
impressed what action to take) that the red lamp behind me might be lit. On
this being done, we found Miss, Ada lashed to the back and sides of her
chair, her left wrist lashed to her waist, a handkerchief bound tightly over
her mouth, and her right wrist bound to my left. On the light being
extinguished, singing and whistling recommenced accompanying the graphophone.
After each song the psychic was impelled to raise my left hand and place it
on the bandage over her mouth ; then on to the hand lashed to her waist,
apparently to prove that she could not have participated in any phase of the
previous manifestation.
About three-quarters of an hour elapsed when I felt that the lashing
round my wrist was being untied ; I estimate that the psychic and I were
freed in about ten minutes. Red light was again allowed for the members of
the circle to inspect, and assure themselves that the rope had been removed.
When the light was extinguished, songs, with their spirit accompaniment,
recommenced, also the tambourine. I seized the latter with my disengaged
right hand, and held on to it with all the strength I could muster ; it was
wrenched away with a sudden twist. I then took my left hand off the
psychic’s right, and tried to hold on to the tambourine with both hands, but
without success. In both cases my antagonist pulled from my left and
upwards. It was then, and is now, my conviction that the fragile girl
sitting next to me at an oblong table could not exert the force of a strong
man from such a direction.
There were also, during the latter part of this séance, some violent
movements of the table sideways and upwards. One end, four feet from the
psychic, twice rose several inches from the floor. The heads and hands of
the sitters at different parts of the table were touched, and voices
whispered through the tube. A firm, masculine hand was placed on my left
hand several times during the evening, pressing it down on the right hand of
the psychic. For some considerable time little lights issued from the body
of Miss Besinnet and, in a lesser degree, from me, dying away between six
inches and a foot from where they originated ; the psychic’s head was also
partially illuminated. At 11:50 the séance was brought to a close by the
general desire of the circle ; if we had waited for the controls to close
it, my impression is they would have gone on for another hour or more. The
young lady came out of trance, naturally, in about five minutes, and
appeared none the worse for the strain to which her organism had been
subjected during the evening.
(66) The second occasion I had the good fortune to sit with Miss Besinnet
was, by invitation, at Mrs. Murray Moore’s house on January 29, 1909, from
8:30 to 2:20pm. The persons in the room were Mrs Moore, Miss Besinnet, and
myself. In the middle of the room there was a round oak table, weighing
quite a hundredweight, and a graphophone in one corner. The usual
formalities were gone through of examining windows and doors and pasting
paper over the latter. On this paper I signed my name, and noticed that
Professor Hyslop’s signature was on a similar strip just above ; he had been
sitting a few days before. The instant I put the lights out the table moved
swiftly towards the graphophone, a distance of five or six feet, and it
opened in the middle (where a leaf would go) one foot. We moved our chairs
along with it. The graphophone was between Mrs. Moore and the psychic. I sat
on Miss Ada’s right with my left hand on her right. This time there was no
delay in the proceedings. The graphophone was started and spirit voices
accompanied the songs as before ; the whistling began almost immediately,
and to one song there was a tambourine accompaniment. As before the
magnificent whistling was repeated several times, and on this evening, at
one time, there were two spirits whistling at the same moment. The
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quality of the spirit-singing was superior to that on the previous
occasion. One song alone was repeated with the spirit accompaniment five
times for my edification.
There were some little clouds about the room, of the consistency of cigar
smoke, but no etherialisations. Tongues of spirit-light issued from the body
of the psychic ; they were about one-third of an inch broad at one end, and
tapered away for a length of about one and a-half inches, to nothing. I was
touched on the head and hand several times.
Writing in fire was attempted, but it was not so successful as usual.
This curious phase is one I had never heard of before. Names are traced in
the air in front of the sitter in letters of bright light; the effect is not
permanent, and the beginning of a letter disappears before the end is
completed. It is a phenomenon which has to be followed with very strict
attention.
After we had been sitting two hours the violent physical phenomena
commenced. The table was twice lifted completely off the floor and swayed
backwards and forwards in the air three or four inches above the carpet.
Finally, Mrs. Moore was brought by a hand three-quarters of the distance
round the table, and stood with her left hand in my right hand while the
table was opened and shut twice, discs were changed in the graphophone, and
the instrument started and stopped by some unknown agency.
Just as the psychic was coming out of trance, Sankey’s refrain, "It is
well with my soul," was being sung for the second or third time that
evening. This brought in an unhappy, sobbing spirit, and the machine had to
be stopped by Mrs. Moore, as she said these mournful spirits affected her
charge injuriously.
I have enjoyed opportunities of discussing with Professor Hyslop the
phenomena that occur while Miss. Besinnet is in trance ; he had sat with
her, and I am glad to say we agreed on two points:
(a) That he and Mrs. Murray Moore are beyond suspicion as to the honesty
of the proceedings ; (b) that this young lady will be the means of solving
some interesting problems and throwing new light on happenings which some
investigators have hitherto considered are due to conscious fraud. Here,
however, we part company. It is no doubt true that the muscles of the
psychic’s throat have been found to act in unison with the mysterious
singing and whistling ; it has also been shown (by a flash-light photograph
that was once taken with Mrs. Moore’s permission) that her disengaged hand
has been detected holding a tambourine in the air ; but the Professor
assumes from this (he has said it on the platform and to me) that, while in
trance, she does the singing and whistling, and that she is the prime cause
of every phenomenon, either with or without the aid of extraneous
intelligence’s. To this I give a positive denial. The sympathetic action of
the muscles of a medium when physical phenomena are in progress is a known
fact. It was affirmed by Italian Scientists not long ago in the case of
Eusapia ; but I assert that Miss. Besinnet, with her own physical organs,
could not execute the singing or whistling without her neighbour knowing it
; could not drag a heavy table five feet ; could not levitate that table, or
open and shut it, without mundane assistance ; could not talk to her
neighbour through a tube without his knowing she was doing it ; could not
cause lights to issue from her neighbour, nor could she wrest a tambourine
out of his hands.
It is no secret that, up to this time, Professor Hyslop has not seen nor
heard any reliable evidence that leads him to believe there is any such
phenomenon as "materialisation." With such an equipment, how can he give an
opinion on physical phenomena?
I consider that what I heard when sitting with Miss Ada was due to
extraneous intelligence’s. That such were present and active I have abundant
evidence for myself. During this interesting sitting of January 29 I
received a message from my guide which referred, with startling
appropriateness, to a subject that has been in my mind for two days. It was
conveyed in a remarkably delicate and tactful manner through the
instrumentality of Mrs. Murray Moore, who is a sensitive ; but I make bold
to say that that lady does not know what is the significance attached to it.
A fortnight later I was sitting with Mrs. Georgia at Rochester, N. Y., when
the same spirit unexpectedly manifested through her automatic mirror script,
and referred in a neat and unmistakable manner to this séance at Toledo in
such a way as to exclude from consideration the overworked theory of
"Mind-reading." The two ladies at Toledo and Mrs. Georgia know nothing of
one another. It is unfortunate that the best evidence for spiritualism is of
so private a character that it cannot be published for fear of wounding the
susceptibilities of living people. When I have
97
said all that it is possible to say I shall not have given my most cogent
reasons for the belief that is in me.
In Miss Ada Besinnet we have a medium of the highest promise. I hope her
friends will not allow her to sit with anyone who has not educated himself
up to the point of conviction on the subject of telekinesis and
materialisation ; for, if they do, I am afraid she will be misunderstood.
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