SPIRIT MESSAGES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5371, 7 January 1929, Page 4

SPIRIT MESSAGES.

CORONER’S CONDEMNATION.

PEOPLE SHOULD BE PROSECUTED.

‘Strong, comments about spiritualists were made by the deputy-coroner, Mr E. Bolton, at the resumed' inquest a,t Birtjey on Thomas William Kennair, aged IS, of Biritley, whose body was found on thq railway (says the London Daily Mail). At a previous hearing jit was stated that the lad had been attending spiritualist meetings at which a medium had prophesied that a youth of 17 was. going to meet with a terrible accident. To-night Mrs Eliza <Miles, a widow, said she had discuss,ed the meetings with Kennair, who said (they sent shivers up bis spine. She advised the youth, to stop going to the meetings. After reading a letter .which, Robert Kennair, a brother, said had been sent to his mother, the coroner said “Someone has apparently been posing as a medium and trying to make out S|he has received a message from the lad to his mother. Fortune-tell-ers are prosecuted, but these; sort of people are not; it is about time they were.”

Summing up, the coroner said he could only assume that the lad’s intelect had not been strong epo||gh. ito withstand the influence of these meetings : He added :—

“They may be all right for people who treat them in the way they should be treated, but for. young people such as this youth my advice is that they should keep away. How anybody in theiir right 'senses can try to forecast what is going to happen under a cloak of religion I don’t know.” A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned.

A representative of a spitttualists’ society, at the conclusion of the inquest, asked if he could say a word in defence of spiritualists. The Coroner: No. There has been e;nough. The Representative : I thank you, sir; I don’t think much of your ju's r tice to our church. The Coroner : I don’t think much of your meetings.

The Representative: That is because you do not understand them.