![Gladys Osborne Leonard invented The Book Test Gladys Osborne Leonard invented The Book Test](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EtBBBXir3T4tn0PSMEsLLnmS_uGUSgfDSQDeOn0kb4MKXQEQILxPP0sXaTQj1MQWVg0iFQmjwYp2cnsKGivyiOtU0ZpEWJuuqsVUg_GORcuC5KIzrqcwFXE-VtnLB1iMt_Y6cfJFhq4H/s200/gladys-osborne-leonard-english-spirit-medium.jpg) |
Gladys Osborne Leonard |
Invented by famed English medium, Gladys Osborne Leonard (and her spirit guide, Feda), The Book Test was popular around the time of The Great War (WWI). A dead "communicator" would send a message to the living by way of a medium, who would direct the listener to a book in a location to which the medium had never been. The dead spirit's message would be found in the text on a page number specified by the medium. Like many fads of the American Spiritualist Movement at the turn of the 20
th-Century, the practice was inauthentic and short-lived.
A 1921 analysis of The Book Test found no merit to the practice, though a handful of cases proved inexplicable. Of 532 tests, 17% were successful, 18% were partially successful, but 38% were total failures. It was dismissed as providing any proof of life after death.
Russian medium Nina Kulagina presented a unique twist on The Book Test phenomenon, by naming the first letter of each paragraph on given pages of randomly-chosen books.
©
The Weirding, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment