Empty Chair Test

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1022, 12 July 1930, Page 9

Empty Chair Test

BIG SPIRITUALISTIC RALLY Calling Up Conan Doyle MEDIUM ALONE MAY SEE HIM APPEAR AT a spiritualistic seance in England tomorrow, serious endeavours will be made to induce the spirit of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to occupy a vacant chair on the platform. A noted clairvoyante will seek contact with the spirit world, and Lady Doyle will occupy her familiar place beside her husband’s chair.

Unitec P.A.—By Telegraph —Copyright Reed. 10.50 a.m. LONDON, Friday.

Only the clairvoyante will know whether Doyle’s spirit really is in the chair, but the meeting is regarded as the biggest attempt at clairvoyance ever made, outrivalling the last Armistice service at Queen’s Hall, when Mrs. Roberts described and named 20 spirits which were present.

Six thousand Spiritualists will attend a memorial service to the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Sunday. An empty chair will be placed on the platform for Sir Arthur, while Lady Doyle will sit on the left of the chair, a position she always occupied at her husband’s meetings. At her special request, Mrs. Estelle Roberts, a clairvoyante, will also be present.

The “Daily Express” announced last week that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Doyle had between them a secret code word which it was agreed to use in any communication when one or the other had passed over. The code word will guarantee the genuineness of any message. Sir Arthur's, son said this will safeguard against trickery, because there are practical jokers on the other side, just | as there are here. “There are other tests known by Mother which cannot be impersonated,** he added.

Though it is regarded as problematical whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will yet be able to demonstrate sufficiently for a medium to describe him, Lady Doyle states she looks upon this at the last public demonstration she will attend with her liu^Jjand.