Arthur Ford, the man who talked with the dead, [Unknown Binding]

Allen Spraggett (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 301 pages
• Publisher: New American Library; [distributed by W. W. Norton (1973)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006C40JY
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,734,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A VERY REVEALING LOOK AT A CONTROVERSIAL, ONCE-FAMOUS MEDIUM, September 22, 2009

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Arthur Ford, the man who talked with the dead,

Arthur Ford (1897-1971) was a famous medium, a former Disciples of Christ minister, a co-founder of the First Spiritualist Church of New York, and in 1955 helped found the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (an association of religious leaders and other professionals who had an interest in the supernatural). The medium Ruth Montgomery also claimed to be able to "channel" Ford after his death.

Ford co-wrote a rather self-serving autobiography (Nothing So Strange: The Autobiography of Arthur Ford; Spraggett says it involves some "highly selective reporting"); in this volume, however, psychic researchers Allen Spraggett and William Rauscher (see their book, The spiritual frontier / William V. Rauscher with Allen Spraggett) give not only a detailed account of Ford's life, but a portrait with all of Ford's many "warts" left unretouched.

Ford was a long-term alcoholic, for example. (At one point, his "Spirit Guide" Fletcher supposedly abandoned Ford for two years, in disgust with Ford's drinking.) His belief in reincarnation brought about a break with the National Spiritualist Association. Even his friends admitted that "he was not above faking a trance for purposes of his own."

One of Ford's most famous moments came in 1929, when Harry Houdini's wife told the newspapers that Ford, in a seance, had given her the secret message that her husband had given her to prove his survival after death: "Rosabelle, believe." Spraggett reports this incident in detail, as well as competing skeptical theories (e.g., that Houdini's wife may have inadvertently revealed this code during an earlier newspaper interview, and Ford learned of it that way).

Even more revealing was Ford's brief return to prominence in 1966 after the son of the radical Episcopalian bishop James Pike committed suicide, and a heartbroken Pike consulted Ford (who he knew as one of the founders of the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship). During a seance that was broadcast on Canadian national television in 1967, Ford supposedly communicated with Pike's son, and Pike was convinced (see Pike's book, The other side: An account of my experiences with psychic phenomena). However, Spraggett reveals that after Ford's death it was discovered that Ford had a huge collection of newspaper articles---particularly obituaries---and a lot of the "details" he had given in his séances were actually the result of plain, old-fashioned research, and had nothing to do with the spirit world; this was even true of some of the tiny "personal" details that had so convinced Bishop Pike that Ford was for real. Spraggett concludes that "The evidence is disquietingly strong that Ford cheated."

Ford has nowadays virtually disappeared from the current discussion, but for persons interested in the history of Spiritualism and mediums, or for skeptics about both, this fascinating book is very much worth reading.