The Hamilton Files

The T.G.H. Materialisation of May 22, 1939

“I admit the need for a bodily vehicle of some kind for the practical functioning of intelligence. But I do not suppose that the body need be composed of opposite electrical charges that we call matter . . I can imagine another structure just as solid and substantial as matter is, but making no appeal to our present sense organs.’ ‘—Sir Oliver Lodge, in Why I Believe in Personal Immortality.
“We may reasonably interpret the phenomena here established (in Winnipeg) as furnishing evidence of existences other than our own; states of being linked with each other by energy of one sort or another; states in which the inhabitants are adapted to their own particular environment.”
Dr. T. Glen Hamilton, from a letter to Mr. Stanley de Brath in November, 1933, in which he was discussing certain major materialisation phenomena which he had recently photographed.

MY father died of a severe heart attack in April, 1935. Presently, through Dawn and other psychically gifted persons we began to receive a good deal of mental evidence of a highly personal nature, particularly significant to my mother, which we took to indicate that he too had safely passed death’s wrenching experience. And by 1936, even though a number of the original sitters had withdrawn, my mother resumed the seances. From time to time she conducted experiments with Mrs. Marshall continuing as the main medium, and with Dr. Bruce Chown taking my father’s place as head of the group.
In February, 1939, at “Walter’s” request a new series of sittings was undertaken, with Mrs. Marshall as medium (referred to in the notes as Dawn). My mother prepared Dawn for each seance, controlled her left hand for the entire seance and also checked the trance. Mr. W. A. Wither was responsible for controlling Dawn’s right hand. Mrs. Wither became an auxiliary medium (called “Beulah” in the records). Mr. Hugh Reed was in charge of the cameras. As usual “Walter” was in full control of the experiment. On May 21, after some fourteen seances had taken place, “Walter” stated his intention of giving two inaterialised forms and asked Mr. Reed to have the cameras ready for a “picture” soon. Other than that he gave no hint of what he intended to put through.
The next sitting took place on the following night, May 22, 1939. Very soon after it had begun, both Dawn and Beulah passed into very deep trance sleeps, with the latter becoming rigid. Dawn was then heard to mutter indistinctly something which Mr. Reed took to be the signal to take a picture. He at once fired the flash bulb. “Walter” then spoke through Dawn:
“Too bad! Too had! Very sorry! 1 told you Beulah would give the signal!”
[-Ic added that he had not yet given the signal. that the exposure had been made too soon, and that had Mr. Reed waited for the proper signal the face-forms would have been much larger. He still gave no hint as to whose faces we might expect to see. After the seance the usual cup of tea was being enjoyed as the five friends were chatting when my mother noticed that Mrs. Wither had suddenly become very quiet, as if watching something.
In a moment she spoke: “ Lillian, I have ust had a picture of Dr. Hamilton! He was a young man and he had a young lady with him. They were together in a wood and seemed to be examining a wild flower. He was quite fond of this young woman and (laughing) she was not you!”
Mrs. H. (also laughing): “ Oh, that’s all right! What else did you see in this picture?”
Mrs. W.: “Not much. He had on a collar that caine up around his ears, and a bowler hat. The young lady had a round face and was very pretty.”
I)awn suddenly broke in: \our p;cture is from Dr. 1-lamil- ton. I cannot see him, but I can hear him speaking quite clearly. He says: That is right!’ That the name of the girl was Lucile, that he was engaged to her when he was teaching school in the country before he knew Mrs. 1-larnilton, that the engagement was broken, and that you, Mrs. Hamilton, had nothing to do with it. He also tells me that she is not in this world, but has passed on, and that he has seen lier on his side.”
To say that my mother was completely amazed and dumbfounded by all this is to state quite simply the exact truth. At that time she was the oniy person alive who knew that my father had been engaged years before to a young woman of that name while he was teaching in a country school before coming to Winnipeg to study medicine. She was the only living person who knew that he and Lucile had often “hotanised “; that the engagement had been broken; that Lucile had never married; and that she predeceased my father by many years.
The engagement had been spoken of only once by my father to my mother when they were first married. In the twenty-nine years of their marriage it had never again been mentioned by either of them. But now, in May, 1939, four years after his death, and nearly forty years after this incident, had come these details!
My mother was deeply impressed, and indeed elated. When she told me about it later she was most emphatic in stating her con\’icton that my father had deliberately chosen this particular set of circumstances because it had such personal significance for both of them. By putting all the details through two different channels he had been able to give her unassailable proof of his identity.
Remarkable as was this incident, more was to come which would support it with objective testimony. After the sitting Mr. Reed had taken home with him the exposed camera plates. Several days went by before he found time to develop and print them. As soon as he had done so, he telephoned my mother in great excitement to tell her that there was a mass of teleplasm containing two tiny faces, and that one of these was Unmistakably that of the Doctor! When we saw it for ourselves, there was no mistaking it! (See plate 3).
The rectangular teleplasmic mass was recorded from three different angles by three different cameras. A careful study of the enlargement shows it to be about four and a half feet above the floor and about two feet behind the seated mediums. It appears in front of the back part of the cabinet. There is no visible means of support.
As “Walter” had indicated in his remarks to Mr. Reed at the seance (after the exposure had been prematurely made and while the undeveloped plates were still in the cameras) the faces are very tiny. The upper one is to a large extent obscured by portions of what appears to be a crude type of teleplasm. On the other hand the features of the tiny face in the central area of the mass are very clear indeed. There is no doubt whatsoever that it is an excellent likeness of Dr. Hamilton himself!
As for the other face, which appeared to be that of a smiling young woman, and remembering the information given through both mediums after the seance, my mother wondered if this might be a representation of Lucile Cleland, my father’s onetime fiancée. After a long search in our home she finally located a box of very old photographs. Among them she discovered a group picture of some young people, including Lucile and my father as they must have looked about the year 1900. And when we compared that old picture with the teleplasmnic miniature, we had to admit that there was a fair degree of resemblance, although we did not consider it positive enough to make the identity unquestonablc.
Concerning this genuine teleplasmic phenomenon, one additional comment must be made. I wish to draw the reader’s attention to the fine regular open “mesh “ or “screen “ which can be seen ai the upper corner of the mass in the enlargement. (plate 4).

"Walter" “ had often spoken of his "screen.” Regarding the 1928-1934 series of teleplasms, a number of sitters had said that from lime to time they had "seen" " Walter" “ erecting a “screen” of some kind, always before a materialisation came.
At several sittings prior to the T.G.H. materialised face, Mr. Wither. who is also an excellent clairvoyant, stated that he could see “Walter” working with a “screen.” In the teleplasm pictured here we have a photographic record confirming the existence of such a screen, a permanent record of a supernormally produced objective reality. As far as I have been able to determine nothing like this has ever before been recorded.

To sum up: Soon after my father’s death my mother had received many significant pieces of personal information; four years later had come more deeply personal material transmitted almost simultaneously by a type of cross-correspondence through the two channels, Mrs. Wither’s clairvoyance and Mrs. Marshall’s clairaudience. To these subjective facts, which argued for his continued existence, could now be added the proof which was both objective and visible and which had been permanently recorded by photograplp,—the excellent miniature T.G.H. likeness. Taken together these phenomenal events added up, for us, to irrefutable evidence for the actuality of the T.G.H. personality in a post-mortem state. In a way we quite failed to understand, he had been the source of all these happenings.

Nor was he to be content with this type of communication and identification. As other of our unseen associates had done in the first series of automatic scripts. SO too was he to write of his after-death experiences. In 1942, once more through the usc of Mrs. Marshall’s great gift, would come yet another long series of scripts in the form of personal “ letters “ to my mother, in which T.G.H, would describe in his own way the many adventures which came to him as he went forward into the next stage of life. These will be fully quoted in Chapter 10.