The Eager Dead [Hardcover]

This is a well-researched book and packed with a lot of historical information. There are also a great many references to the key individuals who played leading roles in the development of parapsychological research. Some of the insights into the individuals and their character is interesting.

Overall I would describe it worth reading but not as an introduction to the subject. For those who understand the signficance of Cross Correspondence and know some of the history already it adds detail. For those who don't, I would say it is a slow read in many places and toward the end contains a lot of correspondence which I found dull and difficult to determine the reason for inclusion.

Again I ordered this book gor my nana. She read this in a very short space of time and thought it was one of the best books she has read. Really interesting with lots of people from history such as a British Prime minister being linked the mediumship. Great value and a great read.

Whenever psychical researchers discuss the best evidence on record for the survival of consciousness after physical death, i.e., life after death, the so-called "Cross-Correspondences" are often listed as number one. "...the Cross-Correspondences are considered by many knowledgeable judges to be among the very best - if not the very best - evidence we have for survival of death, and moreover for survival of death with memory and intellectual vigor apparently undimmed," says Professor David Fontana, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

However, the researchers always point out that the Cross-Correspondences cases are so complex that they are beyond the comprehension of anyone who is not a classical scholar and not prepared to spend dozens of hours in studying the messages. "Whatever else they are, they are eminently communications from a man of letters, to be interpreted by scholars, and they are full of obscure classical allusions," wrote Sir Oliver Lodge, the distinguished physicist and electricity pioneer of yesteryear.

If they can be summarized, the Cross-Correspondences were fragments of information that came through different mediums and which in themselves meant nothing. However, when pieced together they formed coherent messages. The objective was for the communicating spirits to demonstrate that the messages were not coming from the conscious or subconscious of a single medium, or by means of telepathy from another human, or from some cosmic memory bank. It was as if the spirit communicators devised a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle with the pieces scattered in various parts of the world.

The purported spirit communicators were for the most part the early pioneers of psychical research, including the three men generally credited with founding the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882 - Frederic W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Henry Sidgwick. All were Cambridge scholars well versed in classical literature, Myers especially. Harvard professor William James said that Myers "will always be remembered in psychology as the pioneer who staked who staked out a vast tract of mental wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon [psychical research]."

As the story goes, these three men and several others continued their work after they crossed over to the Other Side, Myers taking the lead after his death in January 1901, finding gifted mediums in different parts of the world to communicate messages back to members of the society which they helped establish several decades earlier.

In this book, Archie E. Roy, professor emeritus of astronomy and honorary research fellow in the University of Glasgow, closely examines the Cross-Correspondences, including the spirit communicators, the researchers receiving the messages on this side of the veil, the various mediums through whom the messages came, and the messages themselves, putting together a fascinating story of love and intrigue during the Edwardian age.

As one reads this near-600 page book, the characters come alive. Chief among the characters still in this realm of existence at the time are Arthur James Balfour, prime-minister of England from 1902-06, Lord Gerald William Balfour, his brother, Winifred Coombe-Tennant, an affluent English woman (British delegate to the League of Nations) who used the pseudonym "Mrs. Willett" so that no one would know that she was a medium, and Henry Coombe-Tennant, her son, who was completely unaware for most of his life of his mother's mediumship or his own involvement in many of the cross-correspondence messages.

Three love stories unfold, two of them of frustrated love made manifest on the Other Side and the third a somewhat scandalous affair resulting in a love child. One of first two is known as "The Palm Sunday Story." "Many who have studied this case have accepted that it is a remarkable demonstration of undying love and devotion by people on both sides of that inevitable and inescapable appointment we call death," Professor Roy writes.

There are some interesting sidebar stories, such as Henry Coombe-Tennant's escape from a German prison camp during World War II and his trek across Germany and France with two other prisoners. On his return to England, he was on his way to visit his mother with a brother officer when their car broke down. As they were walking up the road, they were offered a ride by a charming young woman, the current Queen of England.

Even if one is not interested in the subject of life after death, the book offers much as a period piece. "There are still many of the older members of the present population who have at least a vague knowledge of that era, though in this philistine age of dumbing-down, even more people, in their lack of an adequate and systematic education in history, might be excused in their ignorance, for confusing Victoria with the first Elizabeth and, if asked, hazard a guess that her first major war was fought against Hitler," Roy offers.

The entire story would make for a great movie, but a movie would no doubt fail to capture the intricacies of the people, their stories, and the messages so thoroughly researched by the author.