Tuesday 15th January

Come 8pm, Brian settled himself into the cabinet and I fastened the plastic self locking cable ties around his wrists and ankles, securing him firmly to the chair. The waist belt was secured and with him tucked up safely we drew the curtains.

Christine gave the opening prayer and got the tape recorder and music fired up (both working ‘almost’ straight away!).

The mood was high with a lot of laughter and banter up to that point but once Brian’s ‘going off’ music started we all settled down quietly to give him the maximum opportunity to relax into the trance state as deeply as possible.

Within the first minute we heard the familiar sounds of the cable ties being snapped –a kind of short creaking noise followed by a dull pop. A recent change we noticed has been that where before the ties were always ‘pulled through’ effectively turning the fastening assembly inside out, they are now being simply snapped in the middle.
Also the ankle ties tend to go first, followed by the wrist ties a few moments later.

A few minutes later the chair was banging and shaking within the cabinet, the bells (secured to the back legs and the cross-strut) were being loudly shaken.
Chris asked for the bells to be removed and passed to one of the circle members. The bells were taken off and gently ejected from the cabinet. Although they didn’t get to the requested individual, I did notice later that they had come out of the cabinet at an acute angle and not thrown out in a straight line as they have been in the past.

As usual there was much coughing and spluttering and the projection of these sounds is definitely becoming much stronger.

Half way through the evening, Paul (sitting next to the cabinet) felt something brushing against his legs and body, which turned out to be the cabinet curtains being pulled aside. We heard the sound of a cushion being dropped on the floor and later when Brian’s spirit team started to come through to talk to us, we realised that their voices seemed to be coming from the floor in front of us.

The first of two visitors for the evening was a very clear and distinct voice of an individual who gave his name as Cheung-Ly (obviously he didn’t spell this out for us so this is only my best guess at how it might be spelt)
He claimed to have been in spirit form for approx 500 years, and when he was in a physical form, he lived in the south of what is now China and said that in his time he was a philosopher rather than a prophet.

He didn’t seem to have any great awareness of the Chinese Naval fleets and the great explorations of the 1400’s, -which would be consistent with the Ming Dynasties historical closure of their borders (or alternatively consistent with the academic communities rejection of the claims of Zheng-He Naval accomplishments) –but not totally conclusive.
Perhaps this is something he will be able to shed some light on in the future?

Once he had left, the Chief came forward to chat and gave us all some encouragement and support as well as clarifying a few points for us as well.
One for instance that had been niggling me for as while, was why is it that the sitters within the circle should not eat for at least 4 hours before the séance?
I could appreciate the need for the medium to not go into deep trance on a full stomach, especially if there is any likely hood of physical phenomena being produced.

So I asked the Chief for a clarification and was pleased to hear that it did not actually make a great deal of difference whether the witness’s were hungry or not. But it was their attitude and mood that contributes or subtracts from a successful evening.
-An interesting insight to one of the ‘myths’ about sitting in Circle’s for the development of physical phenomena.

Both the Chief and Cheung-Ly were remarkably clear and communicative. Both their personalities showing through distinctly and we got many clear and insightful answers to the barrage of questions thrown at them.

When the lights finally came back on again, we found Brian lying on the floor with his head on a cushion and his feet raised and resting on the chair. Unfortunately though when rearranging him, the spooks had forgotten to move his hands and after lying on them for over half and hour, it took several minutes for circulation to be restored again.

Thanks to Everyone on Brian’s Team (Granddad, The Chief, Cheung-Ly, Joseph and the ‘Medicine Woman’) and of course especially to Brian for consistently turning up each week to go through it all again.

Jon