Spirit Forms Materialize At Seance: Report by George Cranley

In this dramatic account, George Cranley describes an Alec Harris materialisation seance where he was invited to touch one of the temporarily solid spirit forms. As George tells, he also talked to one of the materialised figures for ten to fifteen minutes. Moreover, as the seance ended, 'hundreds' of miniature faces appeared, enclosed in ectoplasm: This is George's account:

I met Alec Harris through a friend of my mother. She was a lifelong Spiritualist and on a visit to Cape Town, knowing of my burgeoning interest in Spiritualism, asked if I would like to sit in a materialisation circle.
A regular sitter in Alec Harris' circle she told me that her husband had, on one occasion, materialised in his Royal Marines uniform, walked out of the cabinet, kissed her and called by a pet name that was not known even to their children. Naturally I was very excited at the prospect, particularly as I had read many dramatic accounts of his mediumship in Two Worlds and Psychic News.
One Friday morning I received a telegram which simply said: 'Seance tomorrow night. Can you come?' I wired back that I was on my way, went down to the airport at Cape Town with my whole month's wages, bought a ticket and flew to Johannesburg. I arrived three hours later, stayed in an hotel overnight. Next day, my friend took me along to a modest house where I was introduced to the medium, Alec Harris, and his wife Louie. A small bedroom, part of which had been curtained off to provide a cabinet, was used as the seance room. There were eight of us, four in the front row and four immediately behind. I was invited to sit next to the medium's wife, directly in front of the opening in the curtains.
Louie led the singing, which went on for about twenty minutes. I was beginning to feel a bit restless when, all of a sudden, I heard a voice from behind the curtain. 'That's Alec's guide, Christopher', said Louie. 'He speaks with a lisp'. The curtains parted as if drawn by unseen hands and there stood, what looked to me, a vague white outline next to the medium. There was more singing. The curtains opened again revealing a more fully formed figure, but still not clear enough as far as I was concerned.
'That's Alec's mother', said Louie. 'She comes quite often now that Alec is getting older'. The room was lit by a number of red bulbs. No dimmer switches were used, which made it very easy to distinguish everything quite clearly. Suddenly, after more singing, there appeared from the side, not the front, of the curtains, a Red Indian. He stood in front of my friend. 'Greetings, Black Feather', she said. He was her guide and regularly materialised whenever she was present.
After exchanging a few words he turned towards me and said, 'Will the young man from Cape Town come forward?' Before the seance, Louie told us not to touch the materialisations unless invited to do so, as it could harm the medium. I stood up and walked over to him. He was bare from the waist upwards, with one black feather in a band round the back of his head; the lower half of his body was just draped in ectoplasm. 'Feel my skin', said the figure. He was very tall, well over six feet. I had to stretch up to touch the side of his face. Copper-coloured, the skin had a leathery feel about it. Then he said, 'Feel my chest'. I did as requested and noted the chest was quite solid. 'Hit me on the chest', he said. 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'Yes', he replied. I did. 'Harder!' he said. Using the palm of my hand, I hit him on the chest. He never flinched and again said, 'Harder'. Summoning up all the energy I could muster I hit him on the chest. My hand just bounced off. The figure turned to me with a half-smile on his face and said, 'You may sit down now'. I sat down absolutely staggered, thoughts flashing through my mind. How did he do it? Was there a trapdoor in the floor? Was it Alec Harris on stilts?

As he walked back behind the curtains, simultaneously, the curtains parted in the front and a young woman came out and stood in front of me holding a little baby in her arms. One of the sitters recognised her and explained afterwards that she had died while giving birth. Both mother and baby had passed together. During the course of the seance, which lasted around three hours, about fourteen people materialised.
One I found particularly interesting was a figure which appeared half in shadow and draped in ectoplasm. Only half the face was visible: he didn't speak. I heard crying behind me. One of the ladies asked, 'Is that you Uncle Arthur?' The figure just nodded. After the seance, I was told that Uncle Arthur had died from a particularly nasty type of cancer. Half his face was eaten away so he was unable to speak before he died. Every circle seems to have a child guide whose job it is to lighten the proceedings when things become too emotional. Theirs was no exception. A little Cockney boy named Ginger materialised and said to me, 'Feel my nose'. I bent down to touch his nose which felt as though it had been squashed. 'I was hit by a tomato', he said, 'in a can!' This was followed by peals of laughter which immediately lightened the tension in the room.

Ginger then walked round greeting all the sitters, returned to the cabinet and disappeared. As he walked, I noticed a trail of ectoplasm behind him which flowed under the curtains and back towards the medium. The most fascinating part for me was when a guide dressed in the most beautiful white robes walked out of the cabinet and said, 'The young man from Cape Town, come forward'. I did...and found myself literally looking straight into his eyes. I asked who he was. 'I am one of your guides', came the reply. He told me his name and the area he came from. I asked if I might touch his robes, but he said, 'Please don't, but I will show you something'. He then fully extended his arms so I could see the whole of the spirit drapery.
Neither his face nor neck were covered with any sort of ectoplasm. I stood there thinking, 'How can I touch you?' so I said, 'May I touch your hands?' He said, 'Yes' and held them out. I took them in mine and thought to myself, 'Now I've got hold of you, I'm not going to let go until I've got to the bottom of this'.
I was determined that, whoever he was, he wasn't going to get away from me! We chatted for 10 to 15 minutes about my future spiritual work. Much of what he said seemed impossible at the time, but a lot has been fulfilled. Suddenly he said, 'I have to go now', so I thanked him for coming, but still held onto his hands. Something made me look down at his feet. As I did so I saw the bottom half of his body dissolving away, but his hands were still solid. Then his hands melted away between my fingers yet my hands were still closed.

The last thing I saw was his head slowly sinking to the floor saying, 'I am going now', disappearing under the curtains like a streak of light. At the very end of the seance the curtains parted. Christopher said, 'We have no more power left'. As he spoke, from the medium's solar plexus came two great clouds of ectoplasm to the left and to the right. In the ectoplasm appeared literally hundreds of miniature faces. The guide said these were some of the people who had been present, but unable to get through.
What was very noticeable during the seance was the earthy smell unlike anything I had smelt before or, indeed, since. I wouldn't describe it as pleasant, but I had a headache for about three days afterwards. Louie described it as the 'power' which had been drawn from the sitters.

Alec Harris passed to the Spirit World on February 12th 1974. The full story of Alec Harris and the development of his mediumship is told in They Walked Among Us by Louie Harris.

Postscript:
Some weeks after the seance described above, the friend who had invited me decided to visit Cape Town. I arranged for a small group of friends to join us for a sitting with the guides of Mona van der Watt. Mona's Red Indian guide came to my friend and without any preliminaries described the presence of Black Feather exactly as I had seen him saying, 'I greet my Indian brother'.
Alec Harris first returned to me through Joe Benjamin at an Alliance Hall meeting and has, together with his wife Louie and three of their guides, continued to make his presence known through the brilliant Stoke-on-Trent medium, Gerard Smith.