Over the years I have read hundreds of accounts of spirit communication through mediums. People sometimes ask me to name the most interesting case I have come across. I tell them it is the story told by Dr. Neville Whymant, a British professor of linguistics, in his 1931 book, Psychic Adventures in New York.

Whymant, who is said to have known 30 languages, was visiting New York City in 1926 and was invited to attend a séance at the home of Judge and Mrs. William Cannon on Park Ave. Whymant had never before attended a séance and was quite skeptical, even though he knew William Cannon to be a highly-respected lawyer and judge.

It was explained to Whymant that the medium, George Valiantine, was a direct-voice medium and that his vocal cords did not produce the voices or sounds he would hear during the séance. Rather, an aluminum trumpet, which was placed in the center of the circle of chairs, would be used by the spirits in amplifying their otherwise weak or whispered voices. The medium, Whymant was told, simply provided the ectoplasm from which the spirits molded vocal cords and larynxes. Whymant had heard such mediums are expert ventriloquists and was on guard for that possibility.