W T Stead - Stead is Here & Other Stories

MR. W. T. STEAD.
HAS HE RETURNED?
LONDON, May 15. Taken from the Advertiser, Adelaide South Australia Thursday May 16 1912
Several spiritualistic mediums in Paris profess to have secured communications from Mr W. T. Stead, the celebrated journalist, who was one of the passengers drowned by the wreck of the Titanic. Mr Stead was known to be a believer in the possibility of Securing communications from the spirit world.
TALKS TO AUSTRALIA.
Mr Charles Bright, editor of "The Harbinger of Light," an Australian spiritualist paper, writes thus in the latest number of that publication:

"Stead Is Here."

"It is not possible to write these notes without first mentioning the great defender and exponent of spiritualism (Mr W. T. Stead), whose tragic leaving of the earth life has thrilled us all. For those of us who realise to the full the transitoriness of life on this planet, viewing it merely as the seedtime of human existence, and a school for the development of character, there is no room for terror, and even regret is shorn of half its bitterness at lives apparently cut short. For there is no actual break in life, which goes on beyond the change called death with renewed vigour and with opportunities that can scarcely be gauged in this struggling existence.

There has occurred in connection with Mr Stead's transition one of those remarkable and unsought-for experiences which come unexpectedly in the early morning when my spiritual and bodily powers are being replenished for the work that is set before me to do. Much of it would appear like fairy tale to the uninitiated as well as many similar experiences; whose corroboration has come afterwards in my daily life. Suffice it to say that I was conscious of a great upliftment and the words, 'Stead is here,' came clearly to my spiritual ears. Then rapidly, some writing which I was enjoined by him to give somewhere or somewhere in this issue of the paper. He had read my article that was not to be disturbed, but in 'Personals' or elsewhere to let the world know something of the joy of the new-found world.
“‘Just tell them,' he said, 'that I am full of delight at my new surroundings: full of delight that this world is even more full of joy and ecstasy than I had essayed to tell people in earth life; so full of joy that I want to wipe the tears from eyes that weep through this terrible disaster; so full of joy that I want to take doubt from every downcast soul. So full of delight that I can help my beloved even more than when on earth. My affairs will go on all right. For myself it was a swift passage, a short, despairing time-chaos, confusion, only to find myself lifted out of it by loving spirits all round me. Everything so real and so tangible that I felt as if on some enchanted island having escaped from a ship wrecked on its Shores. So close is this spiritual realm to the earth that we can understand how those with open vision get glimpses of beautiful scenery and angelic beings. The people still on earth are in a fog rushing after what is of no value, and only those can be happy who get attuned to spiritual things. I can write through you so easily.'"

BUREAU OF SPIRITUALISM.

MR. W. T. STEAD'S LATEST.
TALKS WITH THE DEAD.
LONDON, Oct. 28. from The Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 30 October 1909
Mr W. T. Stead has opened a bureau for the spook "Julia," to enable people to communicate with the departed.
Mr Stead reports that remarkable conversations have been held with the dead, including Mr W. E. Gladstone, Mr W. H. Smith, and Lord Beaconsfield, on the pre sent political situation.
In one of these conversations Lord Beaconsfield was very cryptic; but he added: "Publish if you like, but people will think you are a fool."
Mr Stead has written many articles on his faith in the reality of communication with the dead. His proposal to establish a bureau followed upon an article in the "Fortnightly Review," In which he declared his faith. He said in the course of that article:
"For the past 15 years I have been convinced by the pressure of a continually accumulating mass of first-hand evidence of the truth of the persistence of personality after death, and the possibility of intercourse with the departed. But I always said, 'I will wait until someone in my own family has passed beyond the grave before I finally declare my conviction on this subject."
"Twelve months ago till a month of December I saw my eldest son, whom I had trained In the fond hope that he would be my successor, die at the early age of 33. The tie between us was of the closest. No one could deceive me by fabricated spurious messages from my beloved son.
"Twelve months have now passed, in almost every week of which I have been cheered and comforted by messages from my boy, who is nearer and dearer to me than ever before. Tho preceding 12 months I had been much abroad. I heard less frequently from him in that year than I have heard from him since he passed out of our sight. I have not taken his communications by my own hand. I knew him so well that what I wrote might have been tho unconscious echoes of converse in the past. He has communicated with me through the hands of two slight acquaintances, and they have been one and all as clearly stamped with the impress of his own character and mode of thought as any of the letters he wrote to me during his sojourn on earth.
"After this I can doubt no more. For me the problem is solved, the truth is established, and I am glad to have this opportunity of testifying publicly to the entire world that, so far as I am concerned, doubt on this subject Is henceforth impossible. "Julia" is the spirit personality who, he believes, communicates messages to him.