This informative article was posted on the White Crow website on 27 January 27, 2025, by the prolific, talented author Mike Tymn.
When Hamlin Garland, a renowned American author and reputable psychical researcher (lower left photo) searched for a medium to help him locate and uncover some buried artifacts in California, he was referred to Sophia Williams, a direct-voice medium who had recently moved to Los Angeles from Chicago (upper right photo). In checking out Williams, Garland communicated with a dentist and a psychologist in Chicago, both of whom had treated or examined Williams. The dentist, Dr. Leon Poundstone, informed Garland that while he was holding a celluloid matrix in Williams’s mouth for a three-minute duration, his deceased wife’s voice came in very distinctly and spoke with him. The psychologist, Professor Arturo Fallico, wrote that he had examined, observed, and tested Williams’s psychic powers and had concluded that some principle was operating in her “which is not included in the orthodox categories of natural facts.” He added that he was especially impressed by her “psychic visions in which temporal and spatial limitations are or seem to be no barrier whatsoever.”
The story of the The Mystery of the Buried Crosses was told by Garland in his 1939 book of that name. It has been republished by White Crow Books, and it was summarized in my blog of August 27, 2013. However, there are still many readers unfamiliar with the story, so I’ve attempted to summarize it again, with the focus on Sophia Williams rather than on the search for the buried crosses. I consider the story one of the two or three most intriguing stories in the annals of psychical research.
Garland (1860-1940), was the author of 52 books and a Pulitzer Prize winner who was intimately involved with major literary, social, and artistic movements in American culture. A 1936 book, Forty Years of Psychic Research, relates mind-boggling phenomena long before he was told of the buried crosses. The University of Southern California now houses the Hamlin Garland collection in its Doheny Memorial Library and The Hamlin Garland Society exists today to disseminate information on Garland’s literary works. His early home in West Salem, Wisconsin is a national historic landmark and museum.
Garland met Williams, an amateur medium, during July 1937, after he had come upon evidence that another medium, Violet Parent, had been directed to various buried crosses and artifacts by spirits of the dead. There were indications that there were more buried artifacts to be found and Garland thought Williams might help him in that pursuit. She had been recommended to Garland by Dr. Nora Rager of Chicago.
Williams was a somewhat unusual direct-voice medium in that she required neither darkness nor the trance state. Moreover, she required no prayers, no hymns, no rituals of any kind, and the voices came in daylight. They could be heard coming from somewhere around her, but they were only whispers. To amplify them, Garland would place the larger end of a megaphone against her chest while he would listen for voices at the smaller end and relay them to a stenographer. Garland first thought that Williams might be a master ventriloquist, but quickly ruled out that possibility, requiring her to hold a large lollipop in her mouth, the stick of which was held between her teeth, all the while closely observing her lips and throat as the voices came through. Williams told Garland that she was as mystified by the voices as he was and that she had no physical sensation of producing them.
Hearing from an old friend
In his very first test of Williams, Garland was greeted by one of his oldest friends, Henry B. Fuller, who had helped him research cases of mediumship when Fuller was alive. Always on the lookout for fraud, Garland wondered if Williams had read of Fuller in his book, Forty Years. A few minutes later, another voice was heard. The spirit identified himself as Lorado, his wife’s brother, who had died the prior year.
Garland noted that Fuller called him by his last name, while Lorado addressed him by his first name, exactly as they had done when they were alive. He further noted that the voices, which were high in vibration, sometimes seemed to be coming from the megaphone and at other times from the air above the medium’s head. Moreover, Fuller referred to an old mutual friend as “Ake,” the name given to Carl Akeley, another very evidential point. Garland further noted that Augustus Thomas called him by his first name and Edward Wheeler by his last name, just as they had when alive in the flesh.
The most convincing evidence came when a voice addressed the stenographer, Gaylord Beaman. “Gay, this is Harry,” the voice was heard. When asked for a last name, “Friedlander” was given. The astonished Beaman explained to Garland that Harry Friedlander was a friend who had died in a plane crash in San Francisco Bay. “Harry” then gave some details concerning the crash. Garland was certain that Williams knew nothing of Beaman and could not have researched this information beforehand. Garland then asked Fuller if he could contact Violet Parent, the deceased medium with whom the buried crosses mystery began in 1914. Fuller replied that he would try, but it would have to be at another sitting.
Two days later, the second sitting took place. Garland first heard a voice say, “This is Turck, Dr. Turck.” Turck went on to tell Garland that he (Turck) was an “old fool” for having called Garland’s psychical research so much “humbuggery” when he was alive. Here again, Garland concluded that the medium could have known nothing about Turck’s attitude, which had been expressed to him at a luncheon.
Beaman then heard from his old friend Harry Carr, who made reference to his travels in the Orient for the Times, and asked Beaman if he could get his manuscript to a mutual friend named Chandler. It was all meaningful to Beaman. Garland’s old friend, Burton Babcock, also communicated, Garland describing Babcock’s speech as “hesitating and incoherent,” which was characteristic of him when he was alive.
Other spirits totally unrelated to Garland’s search continued to speak at times. One identified herself as Leila McKee, an old Wisconsin neighbor. Another Wisconsin acquaintance, Wendell McIldowney, also came through. While Garland had by this time concluded that Williams was not a charlatan, he knew he had to be ready for claims by skeptics that Williams had done some research before meeting him. It would have been virtually impossible, he concluded, for any researcher to turn up either of those names from his past.
Ruling out telepathy
Still, Garland, a very skeptical researcher who leaned toward a telepathic explanation of mediumistic activity rather than a spiritistic one, wondered if Williams was somehow unknowingly tapping into his subconscious. But Garland reasoned that digging up a name from one’s subconscious doesn’t explain how that name takes on a personality and dialogues with the conscious self, especially on matters that neither he nor Beaman had given any recent thought to.
Garland was relentless in testing Williams. After the first few sittings with her, he devised a transmitting box with 60 feet of wire connecting with another box containing a receiver and amplifier. The purpose was to isolate the medium from his questions to the spirit communicators. With the medium two rooms away and behind two closed doors in Garland’s home, she could neither hear Garland’s questions nor see what he was pointing to or looking at, and since the spirits answered him with detailed information, Garland concluded that this was further evidence that Williams was not providing the answers.
Irish novelist Donn Byrne communicated at one such sitting as famed author Stewart Edward White and his wife sat in with Garland. At first, they could not understand his whispers, but Byrne eventually succeeded in making himself known. Garland and Byrne exchanged compliments on their writing endeavors, after which White, apparently as a test, asked him to speak a sentence in Gaelic, which Byrne did before resuming in English “with a delightful Irish brogue which was assumed for our pleasure.” Garland noted that Williams, two rooms away behind closed doors, could not have heard White’s request and was fairly certain she knew no Gaelic or could have produced Byrne’s humorous Irish accent.
The mechanism significantly amplified the voices, which had been just whispers through the megaphone. After he completed it, Garland was greeted by Edward MacDowell, an old friend and noted composer who had been dead for more than 30 years. Garland recorded that MacDowell “spoke to me as clearly, as informally, as if we had been parted only thirty days.”
When Garland’s Uncle David communicated, Garland asked him if he could play “Maggie” for him. Garland first heard a whistling tune that turned to a violin playing “When you and I were young, Maggie.” Garland’s wife was present and also heard it. Garland was certain that Williams could not have smuggled a violin into his house.
In one sitting, Garland’s daughter Constance sat in and heard from Candace Howard, an old childhood playmate, who talked happily and fluently about their old Catskill home. She also gave an intimate account of dying while giving birth.
All that was enough to convince Garland that Williams was a genuine medium. He then set out with her to find more buried artifacts. At the direction of “invisibles” who spoke through the medium’s megaphone, Garland and Williams traveled hundreds of miles through southern and central California and Mexico, discovering 16 artifacts, similar in substance and design to those collected by Violet Parent, in 10 widely separated locations throughout California. Some were in deep gullies, others high on cactus-covered hills far from the highway. One was hidden in a ledge of sandstone behind a wall of cactus plants which Garland had to chop away before finding it.
Eight of the crosses are now on display at the West Salem Museum, although it is not entirely clear whether they were found by Garland or came from the original batch found by Mrs. Parent and her husband.
Can mediumship be any more evidential?
Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.
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Next blog post: February 10
