Leslie Flint (1911 – 16 April 1994) [1] was a British self-proclaimed medium who is credited as having been one of the last psychics to use direct-voice mediumship. [1] [2] He has been described by spiritualists as the most renowned psychic of the 20th century. [3] Skeptics have pointed out a number of alleged frauds Flint perpetuated during his career. [4]
Flint was born in London in 1911 and reached the peak of his fame from the 1930s to the 1960s. [1] He was famous for claiming to contact the spirits of dead celebrities, and would often record his sessions. [1] He claimed his familiar, Mickey, was the spirit of a child who had been killed in 1910. [1] Flint claimed to have seen his first spirit at the age of seven when his dead uncle appeared to him in his home. [3] He conducted his first séance at the age of 17. [3]
In his early life, he worked as a cinema usher and a cemetery gardener. [5] Flint was a conscientious objector in World War II, serving in the Non-Combatant Corps before being seconded to coal-mining. [1] The first public séance performed by Flint was in 1934, just after he formed an association called the Temple of Light. [3]
Flint was an avid fan of Rudolph Valentino and acquired the only known copy of footage from The Young Rajah . [5] Flint was wealthy and lived in a mansion house at Westbourne Terrace near London Paddington station. The mansion had been formerly occupied by the actor George Arliss. [6]
During pre-production for the 1973 film Don't Look Now , director Nicolas Roeg and actress Julie Christie were invited by Flint to a séance he was holding for some American parapsychologists who were coming to observe him. Roeg and Christie attended and sat in a circle in the pitch dark and joined hands. Flint instructed his guests to "uncross" their legs, which Roeg subsequently incorporated into the film. [7]
When taking part in séances with Flint, participants would report hearing the voices of the dead surrounding them in the room. [8] Flint would perform bound and gagged in an attempt to prove that he was not throwing his voice. [8] [9] He claimed that he was able to conjure ectoplasm from which he could then reconstruct vocal cords. [9] However, Flint always insisted on performing in the dark, so séance-goers were unable to see him during the performances. [3] He would sometimes even perform in a cupboard. [3]
Amongst those who Flint claimed to have contacted were: [2] [10] [11] [12]
The recordings of Flint's séances are now stored at the University of Manitoba. [11] The collection contains around 2,000 audiotapes and 300 books. [2] An extensive library of Leslie Flint recordings is available at The Leslie Flint Trust website, see External links.
The photograph depicting the ectoplasm "voice-box" on the shoulder of Flint looked like it was made from cheesecloth and Mary Roach humorously described it as the "aftermath of a cafeteria food fight". [13]
On 7 May 1948 the psychologist Donald J. West attended a séance at Flint's home. West examined the cabinet before the séance and personally attached a tape to Flint's mouth. After the séance he examined the tape covering Flint's mouth and it was no longer in line with the indelible marking that he had made. West asked Flint for further testing but Flint refused. [14]
Gladys Lorrimore who attended a séance denied that the supposed "spirit voice" from Flint's direct-voice mediumship was her husband as the voice did not sound anything like her husband. Another of Flint's spirit voices was supposed to be from Helena Blavatsky, however the voice had no Russian accent. [12]
Flint was accused of using prerecorded tapes to produce voices, as well as live accomplices providing two-way voice channels. Parapsychologists from the Society for Psychical Research who attended séances with Flint also claimed he was using ventriloquism to produce the voices that they had heard. [14]
Researcher Melvin Harris examined the tapes of Flint's direct-voice mediumship and wrote "I have to conclude that his spirits are awfully mixed up. His Valentino speaks with a stage French accent – shades of Charles Boyer – while his George Bernard Shaw sounds like an irascible English colonel, with no trace of his precise and memorable soft Irish brogue." Harris believed Flint to be a fraud and compared his mediumship to the fraudulent medium William Roy. [4]
In 1970 William Rauscher and Allen Spraggett attended a sitting with Flint in New York and said that Flint's mediumship was a disaster as the spirit voices sounded exactly like Flint. [15]
Flint once gave an interview live for the BBC radio. He was asked by the interviewer to try to get in contact with spirits but failed the test. [16]
Spiritualism is a social religious movement popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to which an individual's awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living. The afterlife, or the "spirit world", is seen by spiritualists not as a static place, but as one in which spirits continue to interact and evolve. These two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans—lead spiritualists to the belief that spirits are capable of advising the living on moral and ethical issues and the nature of God. Some spiritualists follow "spirit guides"—specific spirits relied upon for spiritual direction.
The National Laboratory of Psychical Research was established in 1926 by Harry Price, at 16 Queensberry Place, London. Its aim was "to investigate in a dispassionate manner and by purely scientific means every phase of psychic or alleged psychic phenomena". The honorary president was Lord Sands, K.C., LL.D., acting president was H. G. Bois, and the honorary director was Harry Price. In 1930 the Laboratory moved from Queensberry Square, where it had been a tenant of the London Spiritualist Alliance to 13 Roland Gardens. In 1938, its library was transferred on loan to the University of London.
In Spiritualism, paranormal literature and some religions, materialization is the creation or appearance of matter from unknown sources. The existence of materialization has not been confirmed by laboratory experiments. Numerous cases of fraudulent materialization demonstrations by mediums have been exposed.
Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735 for fraudulent claims. She was famous for producing ectoplasm which was proved to be made from cheesecloth.
Harry Price was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for his well-publicised investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.
The Eddy Brothers were William and Horatio Eddy, two American mediums best known in the 1870s for their alleged psychic powers. Magicians and skeptics dismissed the Eddy brothers "spirit" materializations as blatant frauds.
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. The practice is associated with spiritualism and spiritism. A similar New Age practice is known as channeling.
Arthur Ford was an American psychic, spiritualist medium, clairaudient, and founder of the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship. He gained national attention when he claimed to have contacted the dead son of Bishop James Pike in 1967 on network TV. In 1928 Ford claimed to have contacted the deceased spirits of Houdini's mother and later in 1929 Harry Houdini himself.
In spiritualism, ectoplasm, also known as simply ecto, is a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums. It was coined in 1894 by psychical researcher Charles Richet. Although the term is widespread in popular culture, there is no scientific evidence that ectoplasm exists and many purported examples were exposed as hoaxes fashioned from cheesecloth, gauze or other natural substances.
Albert Freiherr von Schrenck-Notzing was a German physician, psychiatrist and notable psychical researcher, who devoted his time to the study of paranormal events connected with mediumship, hypnotism and telepathy. He investigated Spiritualist mediums such as Willi Schneider, Rudi Schneider, and Valentine Dencausse. He is credited as the first forensic psychologist by Guinness World Records.
Rudi Schneider, son of Josef Schneider and brother of Willi Schneider, was an Austrian Spiritualist and physical medium. His career was covered extensively by the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, and he took part in a number of notable experiments conducted by paranormal researchers/debunkers, including Harry Price, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Eric Dingwall. Some of these researchers declared him to be a fraud while others were unable to find evidence of trickery.
Eileen Jeanette Vancho Lyttle Garrett was an Irish medium and parapsychologist. Garrett's alleged psychic abilities were tested in the 1930s by Joseph Rhine and others. Rhine claimed that she had genuine psychic abilities, but subsequent studies were unable to replicate his results, and Garrett's abilities were later shown to be consistent with chance guessing. Garrett elicited controversy after the R101 crash, when she held a series of séances at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research claiming to be in contact with victims of the disaster. John Booth, and others, investigated her claims, and found them to be valueless, easily explainable, or the result of fraud.
Franek Kluski, real name Teofil Modrzejewski (1873-1943), was a Polish physical medium criticized by trained magicians and skeptics as a fraud. Kluski was best known for his séances in which alleged "spirit" molds of hands materialized. It was later demonstrated by Massimo Polidoro and chemist Luigi Garlaschelli that these molds could have easily been made by fraudulent methods.
Gordon Mons Higginson was a British spiritualist medium.
Etta Wriedt (1862–1942) was an American direct voice medium.
Jack Webber (1907–1940) was a Welsh spiritualist medium.
Richard Hodgson was an Australian-born psychical researcher who investigated spiritualist mediums such as Eusapia Palladino and Leonora Piper. During his later life, Hodgson became a spiritualist medium himself and believed to be in communication with spirits.
Einer Nielsen (1894–1965) was a Danish physical medium and spiritualist.
Kathleen Goligher was an Irish spiritualist medium. Goligher was endorsed by engineer William Jackson Crawford who wrote three books about her. She was exposed as a fraud by physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe in 1921.
Alan Gauld is a British parapsychologist, psychologist and spiritualist writer best known for his research on the history of hypnotism and mediumship.