RAYMOND LODGE CONVINCES HIS FATHER
by Michael E. Tymn

On September 14, 1915, Second Lieutenant Raymond Lodge, the youngest of six sons of Sir Oliver Lodge, a distinguished British physicist, was killed in action in Flanders. Eleven days later, on September 25, Raymond began communicating with Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge through the mediumship of Gladys Osborne Leonard and Alfred Vout Peters. His initial message was that Frederic Myers, who had become Sir Oliver’s good friend before his death in 1901, was assisting him in adapting to his new environment.

On September 27, Lady Lodge sat with Peters and was told by Moonstone, Peters’ spirit control, that Raymond was referencing a photo of himself with a group of other men – one in which he was holding a walking stick. Lady Lodge had no recollection of such a photo. It was not until two months later, when the mother of one of Raymond’s fellow officers sent a condolence letter and mentioned a group photo, taken 21 days before Raymond’s death, that the message began to make sense. Lady Lodge immediately responded and requested a copy of the photo.

Before the photo arrived, however, Sir Oliver sat with Mrs. Leonard and asked Raymond about it. Raymond replied, through Feda, Leonard’s control, that it was taken outdoors and that he was sitting while others were standing. He further recalled someone leaning on him. Several days later, the photo arrived in the mail. It showed three rows of officers, the back row standing, the second row sitting on a bench, and the front row sitting on the ground, a military walking stick over Raymond’s crossed legs and the arm of the officer behind him resting on his shoulder.

Sir Oliver concluded that this evidence went beyond fraud, coincidence and telepathy and saw it as sort of a cross-correspondence in that messages about the photo came through two different mediums.

But before the photo was received, on September 28, Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge again sat with Mrs. Leonard; however, instead of messages coming through her voice while she was in a trance, as was the usual method with her, the communications came by means of a tilting table. The sitters would place their hands lightly on the table and then recite the alphabet. At the correct letter, the table would tilt. For questions that could be answered with a “yes” or a “no,” three tilts indicated an affirmative response and one tilt a negative. Sir Oliver explained that even though this method was much slower than the trance voice method, it was carried on as an experiment. Moreover, he felt that it might provide messages untainted by Mrs. Leonard’s mind, as he had come to recognize that certain communications were distorted as they had to be filtered through her mind.

After about four minutes, the table began to tilt and Raymond identified himself by his nickname, Pat. As a further test of identity, Sir Oliver asked him to name of one of his five brothers. The table spelled out N-O-R-M-A- before Sir Oliver interrupted and commented that Raymond was confused. He told him to begin again. The name N-O-E-L was then spelled out, which was one of Raymond’s brothers. It was not until Sir Oliver later discussed this with his other sons that it began to make sense. “It appears that ‘Norman’ was a kind of general nickname,” Sir Oliver explained, “and especially that when the boys played hockey together, which they often did in the field here, by way of getting concentrated exercise. Raymond, who was specially active at this game, had a habit of shouting out, ‘Now then, Norman,’ or other words of encouragement, to any of his older brothers whom he wished to stimulate…That is what I am now told, and I can easily realize the manner of it. But I can testify that I was not aware that a name like this was used, nor was Lady Lodge, we two being the only members of the family present at the Leonard table sitting where the name ‘Norman’ was given.” (Apparently as a young baseball player might refer to others as “Babe,” for Babe Ruth.) Here again, Lodge saw this as evidence against telepathy, as well as an indication that Raymond, who had discussed psychical research with his father when he was alive, was attempting to provide veridical information by giving a name unknown to his father.

Sir Oliver also asked Raymond to name an officer in his regiment. The board spelled out M-I-T-C-H-E-L-L. The name meant nothing to Sir Oliver or Lady Lodge, but Sir Oliver later checked with the War Office and discovered that Second Lieutenant E. H. Mitchell had been in Raymond’s unit.

Between tests, Raymond talked about his new environment and activities in the afterlife, all of which Sir Oliver presented in the book. However, scientist that he was, Sir Oliver was constantly testing the medium. As something of a word association test, he asked his other sons to provide him with some names, words, or questions by which Raymond might further prove his identity. At another table sitting with Mrs. Leonard, Sir Oliver asked Raymond the name of the man to whom Raymond had given his dog. The table responded with “Stallard,” which was correct and clearly something Mrs. Leonard would not have known. However, Sir Oliver knew the name and therefore this did not rule out telepathy.

Passing on another question from his other sons, Sir Oliver asked Raymond if he remembered anything about the Argonauts. Three tilts came from the table, indicating that he did remember. Sir Oliver then asked him what he remembered. The word came T-E-L-E-G-R-A-M. Sir Oliver did not understand the connection, and his other sons were a bit puzzled until they remembered that while the brothers were on a motoring trip a few years earlier Raymond went into a post office and sent a telegram home to say they were all right, signing it “Argonauts.”

Alec Lodge, one of Raymond’s older brothers, sat with Mrs. Leonard on December 21, 1915, but, in spite of what his parents had told him, was still skeptical. As a test of his own, Alec asked Raymond about his favorite music. Alec noted that he then heard Feda questioning Raymond, asking him sotto voce (whispering) “An orange lady?” Still confused, Feda then told Alec that “He says something about an orange lady.” Alec felt that this was very evidential as “My Orange Girl” was the last song Raymond bought when “alive.” Raymond also mentioned “Irish Eyes,” another of his favorites.

By the time Sir Oliver sat with Mrs. Leonard on March 3, 1916, he was convinced that she was not a charlatan, but he still felt a need to test her in various ways. Thus, at a sitting with her that day, he asked Raymond if he knew about “Mr. Jackson.” Feda struggled with understanding Raymond’s response, but she communicated: “Fine bird…put him on a pedestal.” This was especially evidential as Sir Oliver was certain that Leonard did not know that Mr. Jackson was the name of Lady Lodge’s pet peacock, nor that he had died a week earlier and was in the process of being stuffed and mounted on a wooden pedestal.

On May 26, 1916, Lionel Lodge and his sister, Norah, drove from the Lodge home, near Birmingham, to London for a sitting. Knowing that his brother and sister were scheduled to meet with Leonard at noon, Alec Lodge asked two other sisters, Honor and Rosalynde, to sit with him in the drawing room and focus on asking Raymond to get the word “Honolulu” through to Lionel and Norah during their sitting with Leonard. Lionel and Norah knew nothing of this request.

When Sir Oliver later read Lionel’s notes of the sitting, he saw that Raymond said something about Norah playing music. Norah replied that she could not. Feda (through Mrs. Leonard’s voice) then whispered to the invisible Raymond (attention directed away from Lionel and Norah), “She can’t do what?” Upon getting a response from Raymond, Feda than said, “He wanted to know whether you could play Hulu – Honolulu. Well, can’t you try to? He is rolling with laughter.”

By the end of April 1916, a preponderance of evidence that Raymond had been communicating with them had been accumulated by the Lodge family. “The number of more or less convincing proofs which we have obtained is by this time very great,” Sir Oliver wrote, adding that some of them appeal more to one person, some to another; but taking them all together every possible ground of suspicion or doubt seemed to the family to be removed.

“I am as convinced of continued existence on the other side of death as I am of existence here,” Sir Oliver continued. “It may be said, you cannot be as sure as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is never limited to direct sensory impressions; he has to deal with a multitude of conceptions and things for which he has no physical organ – the dynamical theory of heat, for instance, and of gases, the theories of electricity, of magnetism, of chemical affinity, of cohesion, aye, and his apprehension of the ether itself, lead him into regions where sight and hearing and touch are impotent as direct witnesses, where they are no longer efficient guides.”

Lodge, Oliver, The Survival of Man, Moffat, Yard and Co., New York, 1909/ Lodge, Sir Oliver, Raymond or Life and Death, George H. Doran Company, New York, NY, 1916/ Lodge, Oliver, Past Years, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1932