Voices of the person in spirit presented on this Web site were recorded using tape recorders during sessions in which various people were present with the medium. The medium is Leslie Flint, called a “direct-voice medium” because the voices heard were directly from the deceased into air vibrations (audible voice), not through the medium’s voice. The voices came through an ectoplasmic voice box that formed on the medium’s shoulder.
The Leslie Flint Recordings
Leslie Flint, a medium during the twentieth century, was involved in thousands of experiences in which people spoke to deceased loved ones, and the deceased responded in normal conversations. Their voices did not come through the medium’s mouth or from anyone else present. The people whose loved ones came through all expressed with certainty that the voices were their loved ones and that they had had conversations with the real, living person, although they had been dead, at times, for decades.
Evidence for Their Validity
- The medium was tested hundreds of times using all manner of controls and never once was found to have produced the voices or had any collaborator produce the voices.
Leslie Flint described himself as the most tested medium in all of history. In one instance, “He held a certain amount of pink water in his mouth. Then his mouth was sealed by an adhesive strip. After the séance, he returned the entire amount of water–quite a difficult achievement!” (http://www.tanika.com/04-Mediums/flint.htm).
The creativity of his testers was remarkable: “He was bound to a chair, his mouth sealed with tape. At other experiments he wore a throat microphone to detect possible vibrations in his vocal organs. He was observed through an infra-red viewer.”
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/deathnoe.html)
At no time did sounds come from his mouth. In no tests by qualified, skeptical scientists, was anything found to be fake or deceptive.
Quote from the Psychic News, February 14, 1948:
Reports in detail one experiment where he conducted a séance with elastoplast pressed over his lips, bandages over the elastoplast and his hands and legs tied to a chair. The observers concluded that in spite of the above restrictions the voices were soon speaking with their usual clarity, even shouting. Some twelve persons in the room all heard more than enough to convince the most obdurate skeptic that the sealing of Mr. Flint’s lips in no way prevented the unseen speakers from saying anything they wished. At the conclusion of the experiment they found the plaster and the cords intact and undisturbed.
(http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/experiments/direct-voice/flint.htm)
Rev. Drayton Thomas of the British Society for Psychical Research evaluated Leslie Flint. This is his account:
I placed over his [Leslie Flint’s] tightly closed lips a strip of Elastoplast. It was five and a half inches long and two and a half inches wide and very strongly adhesive. This I pressed firmly over and into the crevices of the closed lips. A scarf was then tied tightly over this and the medium’s hands tied firmly to the arms of his chair; another cord was so tied that he would be unable to bend down his head.
(http://www.tanika.com/04-Mediums/flint.htm)
His evaluation was that Leslie Flint had absolutely no part in producing the voices.
- The voices came regardless of the setting.
No speakers or collaborators were involved when the voices came. The sittings were held in hotel rooms, houses of strangers, foreign countries, theaters, halls, and a great variety of other places, sometimes set up on the spot so no one could have arranged for electronic devices of any kind to be installed. He traveled with various companions or alone, so no one was with him to create the voices.
One expert who investigated Leslie Flint and thoroughly vouched for his authenticity was Dr. William R. Bennett, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in New York City. This is what he wrote about his experience in an impromptu setting arrangement with Flint:
My experience with Mr. Flint is firsthand; I have heard the independent voices. Furthermore, modern investigation techniques not available in earlier tests corroborate previous conclusions by indicating that the voices are not his. But to be thorough, one should consider the possibility of live accomplices… This suggestion became untenable for me during his visit to New York in September 1970, when, in an impromptu séance in my apartment, the same voices not only appeared but took part in conversations with the guests (from Voices in the Dark, by Leslie Flint, 1971: 220).
- The sessions occurred before thousands of people with no hint of fraud in any of the sessions.
Each group of people would assemble in the sitting room of Leslie’s London flat in anticipation. Deceased of all descriptions would come and talk to them, not only their relatives. It was as if there was a microphone in the spirit world and the spirit would stand in line waiting their turn to speak. Voices would come from all corners of the room and often several would converse at once, giving detailed descriptions of their life on Earth and other pieces of personal information.
(http://www.thepsychicbarber.co.uk/bookextract.html)
- The voices were of a great variety of nationalities and ages, and both genders.
The medium could not have created the voices, nor could an accomplice, because they varied so in quality between men, women, young people, speakers with accents, British speakers, Southern American speakers, and a great variety of others. Also, the witnesses attested that the voices came from all parts of the room, not from any individual. They usually came from the direction of the medium, but the medium was often gagged as a test, and at least once, a throat microphone was placed tightly on his throat to detect any voice.
None of the hundreds of tests by witnesses sitting next to the medium or in front of the medium showed any voice coming from the medium. And in any event, it would have been impossible for anyone to create the great variety of clearly different voices.
- The voices had all the intonations and mannerisms the people had when alive.
It was a remarkable feat for the people no longer using bodies to create a voice box and attempt to mimic what they sounded like while still in a body on Earth decades or centuries before. The ectoplasmic voice box has not a molecule of the long-dead throat disintegrating in a grave somewhere. And yet consistently, those who knew the deceased said the qualities of the voices matched the people who had died.
Some speakers chose to alter the quality of the voice (as did Rudolph Valentino who is reported to have had a squeaky voice in life but has a masculine voice when speaking in a séance). We don’t know why a few chose to change their voices, but we do know that they often remark about how extremely difficult it is to come back a century after death, recall the voice others heard, and duplicate the voice using an ectoplasmic voice box created on the spot.
In a demonstration before 75 people in New York City, a man known on Earth as Carl Schneider spoke. At first, no one responded, but a member of the audience finally spoke up and stated that he knew a Carl Schnieder and that the voice was unmistakably his. It had all the intonations, qualities, and mannerisms he recognized as Carl Schnieder’s. However, as far as he knew, Schneider was still among the living. The next day, the person attempted to call Schneider, only to find that he had committed suicide a year earlier.
(http://www.leslieflint.com/reviews.html)
The seances had thousands of such voices, recognizable by those who knew them on Earth.
Dr Aubrey Rose, OBE, CBE, one of the most brilliant lawyers in England, attended many sittings with Leslie Flint and claims that through Flint he received “the most detailed evidence of survival of the individual beyond this life.” In his autobiography, The Rainbow Never Ends (2005), Rose states that his investigation into the afterlife began when he heard a tape recording of a voice re recognized as that of deceased Judge, Lord Birkett, speaking through Leslie Flint. Rose became a close friend of Leslie Flint and went on to become a spiritual healer himself.
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The speakers talked openly and honestly, with conviction, emotion, and personality that could not be staged.
Anyone who listens to the recordings cannot believe them to be staged frauds. Human beings can judge when someone is speaking from the heart, with personal conviction. The speakers on recordings of the seances are speaking with the energy and fervor that can only come from real people. No one could consider that they have been scripted and rehearsed, that some person or group of people had such genius that they could create the personalities, portray them in voice, and keep the affair a secret over decades, repeating the impossible feat in thousands of events before large and small gatherings of different people.
If actors had agreed to engage in fraud and create these remarkable characters, we would have to wonder how they managed to project their voices so clearly and audibly into the area around the medium when skeptics had the medium bound and gagged and were anxiously watching for fraud. Then, what happened to these hundreds of talented actors since the recordings were made? How is it possible that they’ve all kept silent about their subterfuge all these years, en masse? It would require an incredible conspiracy to even manage such a feat, but to keep it all secret with hundreds of participants who received no money for their efforts would be simply impossible.
The recordings could not have been created by fraud.
- Responsible, uninvolved observers found the messages to be authentic.
Many evaluated Flint thoroughly, using all manner of control. Professor William R Bennett, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Colombia University in New York City, tested Leslie Flint at length. After completing his exhaustive investigation, he thoroughly vouched for Flint’s authenticity:
My experience with Mr. Flint is first hand; I have heard the independent voices. Furthermore, modern investigation techniques not available in earlier tests corroborate previous conclusions by indicating that the voices are not his. But to be thorough, one should consider the possibility of live accomplices. This suggestion became untenable for me during his visit to New York in September 1970, when, in an impromptu séance in my apartment, the same voices not only appeared but took part in conversations with the guests.
(Voices in the Dark, page 220)
Another witness, Dr Aubrey Rose, OBE, CBE, one of the most brilliant lawyers in England, attended many sittings with Leslie Flint and claims that through Flint he received “the most detailed evidence of survival of the individual beyond this life.” In his recent autobiography, The Rainbow Never Ends (2005), Rose states that his investigation into the afterlife began when he heard a tape recording of a voice he recognized as that of the deceased Judge, Lord Birkett, speaking through Leslie Flint. As a result, Rose became a close friend of Leslie Flint and went on to become a spiritual healer himself.
- People who attended the sessions and received messages all stated emphatically that it was their deceased loved ones they had conversations with.
This is the report of a deceased young man who spoke with his parents:
He had initially appeared at a seance attended by Lord Dowding, giving his name as Peter William Handford Kite, and asking that his parents be contacted at an address he gave. The parents accepted an invitation to attend a second seance and for nearly forty minutes, Peter came through and in his own voice told them the following which his parents confirmed to be true:
- of a joke about buying an Alsatian he made before he died
- that his mother had put a photograph of himself and photographs of his grave in Norway in her bag that morning
- that he liked the cherry tree in the memorial garden they had planted for him
- that his bedroom had not been changed in the six years since he died
- that he had not liked the wallpaper in his bedroom
- that his father was still driving his car although it was a too small for him.
The young man’s parents affirmed emphatically that they had a conversation with their son. (http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/experiments/direct-voice/flint.htm)
- The variety of personalities, personal stories, and insights is remarkable.
The thousands of sessions, including hundreds taped for evaluation that are available today, contain a vast array of personalities, detailed personal stories, and insights about life and the afterlife that would require a genius greater than Shakespeare for the drama, Agatha Christie for the stories, Jesus or Buddha for the teachings, and Sigmund Freud for psychological insights. This remarkable savant would have had to repeat the feat of creating characters on the fly, impromptu, with no revision of conversation, concept, or thought. It would be simply impossible for any person or group of persons to create all of the personalities now on record in tape recordings available to anyone interested in listening to them.
Several foreign and dead languages are among the conversations people heard during the sessions.
- The descriptions of the afterlife are perfectly consistent.
If a mythological world called “afterlife” were being created while the speaker was concentrating on the person’s story, accent, gender, portrayal of life in the afterlife, and all of the other components of the sessions, we would expect inconsistencies and changes over the decades during which the sessions were held, purely by accident. Instead, the accounts are entirely consistent, demonstrating that the speakers were all describing the same foreign land.
Not only that, but the descriptions are consistent with the insights of mediums recorded now in many books, such as The Supreme Adventure, Analyses of Psychic Communications, by Robert Crookall, (1961, James. Clarke & Co., Ltd.). Crookall’s book is based on accounts from a variety of mediums.
All of these reports, derived from a great variety of sources over centuries of time, are perfectly consistent in their descriptions of the same country in which the communicators live, called the afterlife.
- The medium and those who recorded his sessions gained nothing of value and wished only to help humankind grow spiritually.
In a court of law, we would look for some motive for actions intended to defraud. We would need to find a reason dozens of people would take extraordinary pains to hold thousands of contrived seances and create the over 120 recordings now in the Leslie Flint archives. The activities would have required the involvement of a great number of people if they were orchestrated and created as fraud. That would have required some reward, usually money, for the large number of people present at the seances. No money has been involved in the recordings in the Leslie Flint archives. No motive for them other than to provide them for humanity as records of people in the afterlife speaking has ever been present.
These are descriptions of Flint’s activities and those of the people who attended and recorded his sessions:
Leslie Flint’s mediumship lacked all traces of false romanticism, fantasy, daydreaming, or the exploitation of human grief and fear. The purpose of his séances was to search for truth and to spread the message about life eternal. (http://www.tanika.com/04-Mediums/flint.htm)
Those present at most of the sessions were George Woods and Betty Green, who gained nothing from their volunteer efforts. They gave the tape recordings they made to the world, for free, to help humankind grow spiritually:
. . . so began for George Woods, Betty Green and their reel to reel tape recorder a 15 year series of regular sittings with the independent direct voice medium Leslie Flint that culminated in over five hundred recorded first hand accounts from those passed on to the next stage of existence beyond the grave referred to by most as “death.”
As a reward for her efforts Betty Green presents these recordings to the world to enlighten mankind. They wrote, “These tapes of ours have no restrictions placed on them–they are for the world. Those lovely souls from the Spirit world have not come through just for our benefit, but to give a message to the world, and they are relying on us to pass that message on through the medium of the tapes, and they are determined that people should receive them.”
(http://www.freewebs.com/afterlife/flint/flintrecordings.htm)
Conclusion
Flint was tested repeatedly by all manner of researchers. There was never once a hint of fraud. The researchers in fact were so thorough that they eliminated all opportunities for Flint to produce voices. We have nearly 2,000 of these recordings today that give us wonderful insights into life and the afterlife. They are a treasure that is helping humankind realize that we will come to the end of this life, but we will never die.
