Book review: 30 Years among the Dead

Author: Michael Prescott

I just finished reading the well-known book by Dr. Carl A. Wickland, 30 Years among the Dead, originally published in 1924. The book recounts Dr. Wickland's efforts to cure his psychiatric patients by spiritualist methods. His wife Anna was a powerful medium, and Wickland became convinced that some of the incurable patients institutionalized at his facility were suffering from spirit obsession. He tested his theory by subjecting the patients to electroshock therapy, which was intended to drive the obsessing entity out of the patient's "magnetic aura." The entity was then attracted to the entranced Mrs. Wickland. Dr. Wickland would speak with the earthbound spirit in an attempt to convince the spirit to open his or her spiritual eyes and progress to the next stage of development. In many cases the effort proved successful, and the patient, who had previously resisted all cures, improved markedly and could be de-institutionalized.

As one channeled spirit put it:
Earthbound spirits who torment mortals by obsessing them are man-made “devils.” Selfishness has made them what they are. They go out of the physical in ignorance of the real life, full of hatred, because they were crushed in one way or another. They have hatred for all mankind, and the first persons they can attach themselves to they try to harm, and there you have obsession….

Insanity is nothing but obsession by spirits who are sent to the spirit side of life without understanding the truth of God.

Because the book is quite famous in spiritualist circles, I'd previously tried a couple of times to get through it. I found it tough sledding, not because the content is difficult, but because the book is long and repetitious. The transcripts of numerous sessions are included, and they tend to follow the same basic pattern. It took me a certain amount of willpower to finally work my way through the entire volume.

Nevertheless, I can see a certain logic to the book's repetitive structure. It reminds me of a description I once read of another famous work of parapsychological research, Phantasms of the Living, by Myers, Podmore, and Gurney. In describing the book, a writer, whose name I forget, said that by sheer repetition Phantasms "bludgeons the mind" into accepting the reality of apparitions.... continues

Copyright©Michael Prescott

Reproduced courtesy of Michael Prescott

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