A Psychic Photograph of Estelle's Spirit Guide, Red Cloud.

ESTELLE ROBERTS
in her later years.
(May 1889 - May 1970)

Mrs Estelle Roberts displayed a wide variety of the gifts of the spirit, including mental mediumship, physical materialisation, direct-voice phenomena, and remarkable healing powers.

In the 1950s, she was responsible (with the help of a small handful of other notable mediums) for getting the Spiritualist religion legalised and respected in Great Britain because she visited the Houses of Parliament and gave stunning demonstrations of clairvoyance to the Lords and Ladies of the Realm and to the MPs. So convinced by her abilities were the MPs that they rallied to the Spiritualist Cause.

Famed late Novelist and Health Guru, Dame Barbara Cartland described in her autobiography how her mother, Mary, received astonishing facts through the mediumship of Estelle Roberts, which hardened sceptics would find impossible to rationalise

Dame Barbara's mother, Mary, had received news that one of her sons, Ronald, had been shot and killed in action in the War; and in the same year she endured further agony concerning the fate of her other son, Tony, who was reported missing.

"My mother wrote to every man in the Lincolnshire Regiment who was taken prisoner," writes Dame Barbara Cartland. "Several replied that they had heard that Captain Anthony Cartland was a prisoner."

At Dame Barbara's suggestion, and using the pseudonym of Mrs Hamilton, her mother booked a sitting with Estelle Roberts. Dame Barbara records that:

Estelle suddenly announced, "You have come to consult me about your sons. They are both here beside you."

"Not both," said Dame Barbara's mother, defensively. "One is a prisoner."

Estelle Roberts shook her head. "No," she insisted. "They are together. The youngest one tells me that he was killed the day before his brother. Now they are both talking together; they have so much they want to say to you."

But Dame Barbara's mother refused to listen, certain that Tony was still alive. "What a waste of money!" she commented after the sitting.

But Estelle Roberts had been correct - the next year a letter arrived from the Ministry of Defence stating that Tony had indeed been killed in action on May 29, exactly one day before the death of his elder brother, Ronald."

Because Estelle had made this announcement even before the government had received any news of the missing boy, she could have received this information only from the spirit world.

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The autobiography of Estelle Roberts is called Fifty Years a Medium (Corgi Books: 1975). There was also an earlier version titled: Forty Years a Medium

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Through a lightweight aluminium seance trumpet the young girl's voice 'very slowly, but distinctly' said, 'My name is Bessy Manning. I died with tuberculosis last Easter. I have brought my brother, Tommy, with me; he was killed by a motor car... Tell my mother that I still have my two long plaits. I am twenty-two, and I have got blue eyes. Tell her I want her to come here. Could you bring her? She is not rich - she is poor... She is so unhappy.'

Mr Barbanell said, 'I must know where she lives' - and without hesitation Bessy replied, '14 Canterbury Street, Blackburn.'

Mr Barbanell contacted Mrs Manning and two letters arrived from her.The first expressed her happiness on having received the first telegram, and in the second she aplogized because Mr Barbanell had needed to send another telegram, explaining that she lacked the money to reply by anything other than a letter.

She confirmed that Bessy had died the previous Easter from TB, and later verified that her son, Tommy, had been killed by a car nine years earlier. 'Oh, the glorious happiness to me and mine! I have to thank you for the great joy you have given to me. How can I ever thank you enough?'

Maurice Barbanell considered this spirit communication as 'flawless evidence for the after-life. No theories of telepathy or the subconscious mind can explain it away... Mrs Manning had never met Estelle Roberts, or corresponded with her or any member of her family'.

Subsequently, Mr Barbanell paid for Mrs Manning to travel to Teddington in Middlesex to attend a direct-voice physical seance with Estelle Roberts, and Bessy Manning duly returned and was overjoyed to speak with her mother. She stated that her brother Tommy was again present with her.

Mrs Manning said to her daughter, 'Bessy, this is wonderful. You know how your mother loves you, don't you?'

'It is wonderful. God bless you, Ma,' replied Bessy.

When Mrs Manning asked whether Bessy ever visited home, she said that she did, adding that she had often seen her mother pick up her photograph, speak to it and kiss it, and Mrs Manning confirmed this.

Bessy also reported that on that very morning she had heard her mother talking to her father about mending his boots, stating exactly what had been said - and this was also verified by Mrs Manning. "I am the happiest woman in the world," she said.

Upon returning to Blackburn, Mrs Manning wrote to Mr Barbanell thanking him for his kindness and verifying further evidence from her daughter:

'Just before the end, she said, "If it is possible at all, I will come back."

'I knew she would keep her promise. I heard my own daughter speak to me in the same old loving way, and with the self-same peculiarities of speech.

'She spoke of incidents that I know for a positive fact no other person could know'.