The day I met Sir Oliver Lodge

Raymond Smith

There may be a few people still living who met the famous Victorian scientist Sir Oliver Lodge, who died in August 1940. I have also had the pleasure of speaking with him … but it happened 59 years after his death. Famous for his work with electricity and wireless telegraphy (radio), and also a staunch believer in mediumship and spirit communication, Sir Oliver was in good voice as we chatted in West London ten years ago.

My long and fascinating discussion with the famous physicist was made possible by Raymond Smith, a British trance medium living in Cadiz, Spain, who had apparently become the scientist’s chosen vehicle for communication from the next world. Ray, who had been suffering from oesophageal cancer, has now joined Sir Oliver in the spirit world. The latest issue of Psychic News (1 August, 2009) reports that he passed on 13 July.

A schoolteacher for 25 years before entering the business world, he also helped form the Gibraltar Psychic Research Society. Ray and his wife June did much to promote Spiritualism on the southern Mediterranean coast, arranging for well-known mediums to visit and demonstrate their powers.

But it was his own mediumship that particularly interested me. So, when the Smiths visited England a decade ago to promote his “spiritually transcribed” books Nobody Wishes to Listen and Yet and For Those Who Are Willing to Listen … Read On (both published by Con-Psy Publications, which is run by Ray Taylor, editor of Psychic World), I happily accepted the chance of meeting Ray and June as well as Sir Oliver.

Sir Oliver Lodge

The arrival of Sir Oliver in the lives of Ray and June was unexpected, he told me. He got up one morning to make his wife a cup of tea “and take it back to her in bed, intending to have a cuddle. The next thing I knew was June telling me she had been having a nice chat with Sir Oliver.”

It is 101 years since Sir Oliver went public with his belief that we survive death and can communicate with the living from that next world – supporting the claim with evidence he had accumulated, much of it personal, which he published in several books, including Survival of Man and Why I Believe in Personal Immortality and, most famous of all, Raymond or Life After Death about the communications he received from his dead son, who was killed in World War I.

Sir Oliver was president of the Society for Psychical Research from 1901 to 1903 and again in 1932, so it has always intrigued me that none of its present-day members felt it important to investigate Ray Smith’s mediumship and to make the most of the opportunity – now lost – to establish whether it really was the famous physicist who was speaking through him. The postmortem Sir Oliver, incidentally, explained that he was speaking through Ray as the spokesperson for a “group of minds” in that dimension.

Ray was sympathetic to those who voiced scepticism about his mediumship and had often questioned it himself. He understood the need to examine alternative explanations and refused to be dogmatic about his mediumship and the way it operated.

For my part, I also realised that there were no questions I could ask that would establish whether it really was Sir Oliver, simply because the only way I could check his answers would be to research material that would have been equally available to Ray Smith.

The entity calling itself Sir Oliver – whether him or an aspect of Ray Smith’s subconscious – recognised this too. Before we began our discussion he observed:

Was it really Sir Oliver Lodge who spoke through Ray Smith?

“With regard to evidence, before we enter into discourse, I realise that if I were to tell you that the name of my dear wife was Mary Marshall, that my mother’s name was Grace Heath, and that my children’s names were Alex, Raymond, etc., I could go on and on about Uncle Jerry, as I have done before… and my peacock, this would serve no purpose at all, other than to demonstrate that this fellow [the medium] had indeed a remarkable memory not only about my life, but all of my friends assembled here.”

Instead, I decided to ask him about his views on reincarnation – a thorny issue, with conflicting opinions from different mediums and spirit guides. He soon confirmed with a long and convoluted answer that reincarnation does occur but “one drinks the cup of forgetfulness” before physical birth. The memory of a previous existence remains but is deeply buried.

So I put it to him that, after death, that forgetfulness may have disappeared and perhaps he now knew what previous lives he had lived. Here’s what Sir Oliver replied:

“I was known as a scientist. In fact, in The Spectator, in 1930, you will see I was voted one of the best brains – how ridiculous – in Britain. Not at all. I’m still answering your question. If I were to relate some of those lives I have been able to look back upon, they bear no comparison with the life you know …

“What I’m saying is: I may well have (I did not say I did) murdered and pillaged in the previous life to the one you are aware. Therefore, for that reason, I dare not to repeat to people that which I have been able to remember. I can at least know from those previous memories, previous lives, previous experiences, it was necessary for me to come back to lead that life of which you are aware, to put right a lot of wrongs.”

Was it really Sir Oliver Lodge with whom I was speaking? According to the voice addressing me, his thoughts were being transmitted to Ray Smith through the spirit of Franz Mesmer (the famous mesmerist/hypnotist) because the brains of Mesmer and Ray Smith were “somewhat similar in their crystalline pattern”.

After he came out of trance, Ray told me he had sat for several people who had known Sir Oliver “and they all say it’s him”. That opinion was based on content rather than his voice. Apparently, comparisons had been made between actual recordings of Sir Oliver’s voice and those made while Ray was in trance and also while the spirit of Sir Oliver was apparently speaking at seances given by Leslie Flint, the famous direct voice medium. They were all different.

I remain open-minded to the possibility that it was Sir Oliver who spoke to me, but I can offer no proof.

My thoughts go out to June Smith who has not only lost the physical presence of her husband, Ray, but also the regular communications she enjoyed with Sir Oliver Lodge.

You may also find these related articles of interest:

1. New Sherlock Holmes mystery
2. The day the music died
3. Time to name and shame
4. In life and death: proving you still exist
5. Eileen Roberts passes on