Elizabeth Fuller's 'Psychic Development'

Elizabeth Fuller's second book continued to record surprising occurrences in relation to her "psychic development" that had commenced with the incidents related in her 1978 case study My Search for the Ghost of Flight 401.  After having become a researcher for author John G. Fuller and eventually his wife, Elizabeth chronicled in Poor Elizabeth's Almanac (1980) "a series of events that would leave us both in a state between mild puzzlement and profound shock."

 

In London helping her husband conduct research for his next book, Elizabeth described a successful experiment in psychometry (receiving psychic data while holding an object) for a writer friend of John's, Guy Lyon Playfair, who was investigating events that would be chronicled in This House Is Haunted: An Investigation of The Enfield Poltergeist (1980).  Playfair recounted in the book a visit to the Enfield Council house by Elizabeth and John.  Upon meeting the couple at their hotel, Playfair gave Elizabeth his notebook and she immediately was able to correctly tell him the name on a road sign near the house, the name Rose (one of the children involved in the case) and a correct description of the experiencers' home.  Elizabeth recalled having begun hearing "addresses and names of people I couldn't have known in a million years."  Poor Elizabeth's Almanac also offers details of two "remote viewing" tests with results that were disclosed to her as achieving eighty percent accuracy on each occasion. 

Then, while at the University of London Library researching Arthur Conan Doyle letters, Elizabeth was writing out a record of selected passages among the letters.  She described what happened after an hour of this task.

 

I was tired.  I had difficulty keeping awake.  It was hot and stuffy inside, despite the drizzling rain and chilly temperature outside.  My mind had wandered to other things.  Suddenly my hand began to pick up speed.  I was still looking at the Doyle letter, but the words in my notebook had nothing to do with what was said in the letter.

 

It happened so quickly that I didn't have time to question what was going on.  It felt like someone had his hand over mine and was guiding the pen, but no one was around.  This strange writing took probably several minutes, although time seemed to have been suspended.

 

The following is the message of the 'automatic handwriting':

 

Possibly the answer to his question lies in his past research.  Why doesn't he postulate some theories for himself?  Is it not just as credible for a journalist to be eminent in his own right?  Many people would agree with John Fuller, rather than argue with him.  People don't want to hear the theories of experts they don't know or don't care to know.  Would Einstein have had such a following if he were always quoting Galileo?  He said it was so because  he found it to be so.  You must establish your credibility by using your name.

Devise the book in such a way which enables you to make sound judgment about reasonably unsound phenomena.  Therefore the reader will follow along on your behalf.  The very worst you do is lose a few readers.  But they're worth losing.  The best you could do is explain the phenomena cogently, truthfully, and above all with respect for me, as you know that I have written on such subjects concerning life and death.

To lack faith is to lack life.  If Edison could purchase the planetary system, we'd be paying astronomical fees for such cosmic delights.

Cosmically, it could exist

Scientifically, it doesn't exist

Psychically, it does exist

Mathematically, it will never exist

Elizabeth reported that she received "the strong mental impression" while writing that "the person directing my hand was named 'Franklin'" although she didn't know anyone by that name.

John and I carefully studied the scrawl.  Parts of it actually pertained to what had been a concern of his.

 

After a meditation session when she decided the results as expressed were "pseudo-scientific garble," the Fullers completed the research and returned home to Connecticut.  The Airmen Who Would Not Die was published more than a year later on February 14, 1979 and on the same day the couple started the airplane trip preceding their expedition to the Himalayas for "a 25-day expedition-research trip toward Mount Everest." 

In a tent at Junbesi after traversing a rocky trail, Elizabeth found her hand again "began scrawling.  It was involuntary.  My conscious mind was not directing it.  After just one sentence, the writing stopped.  I tried to decipher it in the candlelight."  It read:

For as far as you shall look, that is as near as you shall come.

After four more sentences each offering a succinct philosophical phrase, John went to sleep yet Elizabeth found this startling activity continuing.

While John slept, I suddenly began receiving one proverb after another, at an incredible speed.  Each one was different from the others.  They were each succinct and seemed to make a point.  Although it was such a strange phenomenon, I really wasn't scared.  I didn't have time to think about what was happening.  My hand seemed to pick up speed with each proverb.  It was so intriguing, I didn't try to interfere with the process.  I just let it continue.

The next day, the couple appraised that the whole batch of sayings or 'proverbs' was "distinctly reminiscent of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac."  In all there would be a total of 121 proverbs.  The majority of these were by automatic writing while there were some that she described as having 'popped' into her mind.  When she consciously attempted to create proverbs, she found herself unable to do so.  Elizabeth commented: "Fuller and I agreed on one thing — these proverbs were not coming from the conscious me."  

 

John recalled that Benjamin Franklin was the author of Poor Richard's Almanac.  Elizabeth described her response: 

 

Even if I did attribute the proverbs to Franklin, that would certainly not solve the puzzle.  There was no question about it, however.  The whole batch of proverbs were distinctly reminiscent of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac.

 

Contemplating her predicament, she realized that she seemed to have become "a channel for Benjamin Franklin."

 

There was something very strange going on.  Whether it was my unconscious—whether it was really coming from Ben Franklin—or whether it had something to do with the mystique of the Himalayas, I didn't know.

Then:

The next incident seemed totally out of the realm of believability.  But it happened.

The event occurred one night when their tent had been pitched 100 yards from a  monastery overlooking the Khumbu region.  Elizabeth related that she "experienced a phenomenon so different, so unusual, that to describe it accurately might require a whole new vocabulary."  The event happened as she was conversing with John inside their tent.  He asked her if she felt like trying to see if she could receive any more proverbs.  Elizabeth used her usual meditation techniques of closing her eyes, making her mind a blank and taking in several deep breaths for several minutes while exhaling slowly and rhythmically.

 

Physically, I was still bundled in my blue sleeping bag next to John.  Mentally, I was aboard an eighteenth-century sailing vessel, bound for the Delaware Bay.


All I said was that something was happening and it was very weird.  Then I began to repeat the visual imagery on my mental screen . . . he began to write down everything I was spilling out.

 

 

"I feel as I'm inside one of the ship's cabins.  It's all dark and dank," I said.  "The only furniture I could see is one of those slanted-top desks, an old sea chest, and a single bunk.  It's really a small cabin.  Now the cabin is beginning to get light.  Sort of the way a Polaroid print becomes clear," I said.

 

 

I continued: "I see a person sitting on the sea chest.  He's writing at that slanted desk.  His back is turned from me.  I can't make too much out.  The man has longish white-gray hair.  He's wearing dark clothes," I said.

 

 

"Wait a minute," I continued.  "This person knows that I'm here.  He's putting a long quill back into an inkwell.  The inkwell is on the right of the desk.  Now he's pushing the old chest away.  And turning toward me.  I don't believe it  — it's someone who looks just like Benjamin Franklin," I said.  "Except he doesn't have on those glasses that you see in his pictures.  His face is soft and friendly."

It looked absolutely real, not like a dream.

"He's showing me around the room," I continued.  "Now he just said that the reason why he doesn't have his glasses on is that they broke during a spell of rough sea.  He's walking over to the side of the cabin and picking up a piece of thick glass.  It's as if it were from a broken window or something."

Although the figure wasn't talking aloud, somehow I understood what he was communicating to me.  It was like telepathy, I guess.

"Now he's taking that piece of glass and holding it over the candle flame.  He's bending and shaping it.  He's saying something about glass refraction.  I don't really understand what he's trying to tell me.  But he seems to be indicating that he's making a new pair of glasses," I said.

"He's still bending and shaping the glass," I said.  "But he's also telling me that the reason he sailed over to France was to sign a treaty at Versailles.  The ship was sent from France especially for him.  He seems pleased with that," I added.

"He just put the glass down and walked over to the old sea chest.  He's opening it.  There are what look like documents, lots of loose papers stuffed in it.  He just told me that he is in the process of writing a humorous piece of his sailing ventures," I said.

"Now he's telling me how the ship sprung a leak in Delaware Bay.  They had to stuff oranges and apples in to plug up the leak."

Then, as quickly as the mental image came, that is how quickly it ended.  It didn't gradually fade.  It just abruptly ended.  

 

As shown in some previous blog articles, psychics who have written autobiographies have shared their own experiences of psychic visionary interludes.  (incl. 1, 2, 3)  Throughout the annals of transcendental communication and mediumship, the vast range of manifesting entities comprises nearly every manner of human being conceivable depending upon whomever would be most likely to give the appropriate lesson for the expanded consciousness of the audience present for the occasion; from names of historical renown to those comparatively of undocumented relative obscurity.  One seance room materialization account by Gustave Geley in his "record of experiments" casebook Clairvoyance and Materialisation (1927) offers a description of a hominid creature they called "the Pithecanthropus" — "having the stature of a man, with a simian face but a high, straight forehead, face and body hairy, with long arms and very strong hands.  Seems emotional, takes the hands of the sitters and licks them like a dog." 

As previously mentioned in an article about 'contactee' Truman Bethurum and other blog posts are some of the paranormal case studies where an individual experienced unprecedented creativity or 'automatic writing' involving poetry or proverbs, including Pearl Lenore Curran, whose psychic experiences began with Ouija Board communication; Chico Xavier, a famous Brazilian author of books via automatic writing; and Lynn Russell, who was a regular participant in Direct Voice Communication seances.  A blog article about 'automatic writing' mediumship is "The 'Automatic Mirror Writing' of Mrs. Georgia".  There are also incidents of proverbs being received in diverse paranormal case chronologies, such as the Jane Roberts/'Seth' case.  Among the early events chronicled in her autobiographical books is automatic writing, followed by a Ouija Board experiment that brought the proverb "Consciousness is like a flower with many petals." 

 
When Elizabeth and John Fuller were back in Connecticut, they began researching Benjamin's Franklin's words in Poor Richard's Almanac and Bartlett's Book of Quotations.  Professional library researchers were enlisted to search the more obscure books and sources to learn what duplications could be found. "After several weeks, they could find none."

John G. Fuller observed in an Afterword for the book:

. . . Elizabeth saw a clear mental image of Franklin which supplied her with a long checklist of historical details that neither of us had any way of knowing.  These later checked out to be historically accurate, to our complete surprise and, for that matter, consternation.  For how can you deal with a situation like this?

 

John noticed that one of the proverbs mentioned "the theory of evolution" and another mentioned "ball-point pens."  He commented: "Neither the theory of evolution nor ball-point pens were around in Franklin's time."  Considering this, he observed that what was being indicated is knowledge about current affairs in the living world.
 

Here as follows are 20 of the proverbs that manifested through psychic phenomena experienced by Elizabeth Fuller.

 

The theory of evolution is only partially evolved.


The loser never knows when he has won.
The winner never knows when he has lost.


Do not pray for what you desire;
pray to lose the desire.


Wishing for happiness is the surest
way to find misery.

He would always have written a book but for the misfortune of having no ink; it is good that ball-point pens were not invented.

If you want to know about failures,
ask a rich man, not a poor one.


Give from within, and you'll never
be without.


Live as if it's your last day, and
on your last day you will have lived.


Food keeps you alive;
Love keeps you living.


In each person is a nugget of God
waiting to be mined.


No one religion has a corner on God;
He owns the whole block.


Pay mind to what you are;

never mind what you aren't.


If scientists put physics to
music, they might strike a
new chord.


Step down an inch to help a
friend, and raise yourself a foot.


He who answers to no one,
listens to everyone.


Think of death not as a final curtain,
but as an opening night.


The best way to develop your sixth

sense is to relax your other five.


Nobody else could ever fill his shoes 

— nor should·anyone else try.


He who has never been sad

has never known happiness.


He is the hero who has won no battles.

*

 

Elizabeth Fuller observed in conclusion:

So I'm sitting here with one hundred twenty-one proverbs, numerous scrawled pages of automatic handwriting, a very real image of Franklin still imprinted on my mind, a journalist husband who is constantly quoting Mark Twain's statement: "Interesting if true — and interesting anyway."  And I have no real explanation for how or why all this happened to me.  However, I am convinced that this kind of phenomenon is not as strange as it may sound.

 
Chronologically, the next case study book with a metaphysical subject published by the Fullers is The Ghost of 29 Megacycles (1981) by John G. Fuller.  Here are links to two 2018 blog articles about the book —
 

"A Visitor from the Ascended Realm in Rural Pennsylvania 1977"

"Spiricom Breakthrough Video Recording Now Available on You Tube"