Episode 188: Voices in the Dark - 50 Years of Mediumship of Mr. Leslie Flint

three minutes fifty nine point four seconds. It was common belief up till then that nobody could beat that record, so nobody ever did. Once Banister beat the record. Then it was achievable by so many and the fastest person currently alive does it in it three minutes and forty three seconds. When we look at the airplane, those two persistent brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to fly December seventeenth, nineteen oh three, another feat that was

previously thought impossible. Much of our economy and our lives are based on air travel. Right where would we be without it? Would you agree right now that our beliefs can dictate what is possible in our life lives. Let's talk about afterlife communication right now. Beliefs are changing about it, and I've seen so many people come through our online medium classes so effectively giving evidence and messages from loved ones.

I often share stories with you of those meditating to connect, doing inspired writing, electronic voice phenomena, receiving signs and telepathic messages from people in the afterlife trying to connect. Like Runner Roger Banister, I think all we need to do is hear that one person can do it, and then we think, hey, if they can do it, I can

do it. That brings me to our subject today. A few weeks ago, I shared a sound clip from a man named Leslie Flint, who was called an independent direct voice medium, so he could bring through voices of deceased loved ones for people to talk to. These voices were independent of Leslie's He was often tested. They would even put diye in his mouth and tape his mouth shut, and these voices would still come out of the darkness and people could have a conversation with their loved one.

Leslie Flint was a man who came from a very tough childhood, but made his life about helping people believe in the afterlife. He never asked for much, he didn't get rich, and now there are thousands of recordings of conversations people held with their loved ones through his mediumship. My question to you is this, do you think by hearing Leslie's story today that it might open up your mind? Like can this happen again? And if this kind of thing is possible, what else is possible in the world

of the afterlife. Many people are still living like the four minute mile cannot be beat. They live like there's no evidence of the afterlife. But if you've been listening to shades of the afterlife for a while and doing your own afterlife investigation. You know, the afterlife is real, that our loved ones are still around and we can communicate with them. And this is what I've dedicated my life to. Leslie Flint's book is titled Voices in the Dark and you can hear hundreds of these recordings I

mentioned at Leslieflint dot com. I think the best way to tell you the story of Leslie Flint is to read to you his obituary. Leslie Walter Flint Medium born London nineteen eleven died Hove, West Sussex, sixteenth of April nineteen ninety four. In his heyday, which was before the war and some twenty five years after it, Leslie Flint was one of Britain's best known spiritualists. He possessed the rarer distinction of being a direct voice medium. Flint used

no trumpets or other paraphernalia. Though sitting in total darkness. He did his work wide awake, not in a trance. Those who flocked to him could engage if conditions were right, in fluent conversation with others, family and friends, strangers and the well known, all of them passed over who manifested themselves in space voice only around Flint's solid, if unseen presence, As he said, a little above my head and slightly to one side. The mood was not at all solemn.

Leslie Flint took his inexplicable gifts sensibly and objectively, sometimes lightheartedly, especially when conversing with his familiar, a child named Mickey, who had been run down in a street accident in

Camden Town back in the nineteen tens. This perky and impertinent boy would engage his master in chit chat and occasionally turn his sharp tongue on a dozen or so guests round the Big Paddington drawing room, or, when Flint's health had permitted him to tour earlier decades, packing the churches, halls and theaters in hundreds and thousands all over Britain, the continent of Europe, and in America, the dead became

a normal part of his world early and enduringly. Aged eight, he saw the apparently solid figure of a deceased uncle in his granny's kitchen, and around the same time grew aware that the voices whispering all around him at the cinema in the Silent Era hadn't paid for their admission.

He was by turns a cemetery gardener, a grave digger, a semi professional dancer, a cinema usher and a barman before he found his medium, so to speak, and founded a spiritualist circle in Sydney Grove Hendon with the aim of providing evidence of the continuity of life after physical death by the demonstration of his psychic gifts. From that time in the mid nineteen thirties, Flint took off and was soon filling the biggest halls in London and answering

mail bags of letters. He willingly submitted to numerous tests to disprove accusations of ventriloquism or other deceptions. In one, he held a measured quantity of colored water in his mouth throughout a seance. In another, a throat microphone registered no vibrations from his larynx while the voices continued to talk. He allowed anyone who liked to to record his seances. The famous were no stranger to him. Rudolph Valentino often came.

Others included Leslie Howard, Cosmo Lang, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, and Queen Victoria. An important calling card for the invitation that came to Flint to take tea at Kensington Palace with the Queen's daughter, Princess Louise. Unsurprisingly, Flint was a conscious objector and served in a non combatant regiment for part of the Second World War, and then worked briefly

in the coal mines. Though he much preferred the sedentary darkness of his psychic occupation, the famous were vastly outnumbered by the spirit voices of the anonymous, ordinary people speaking messages of hope, comfort, or occasional clairvoyance to their friends

and relatives. I attended several sittings. They were always held in pitch dark, Flint explaining that he extruded ectoplasm, which was formed into the etheric voice box for the dead to relay their words, and any sudden intrusion of light would send it recoiling back into him like a kick in the midrifft, potentially very dangerous. Mickey came through introducing

the speakers. Though tolerantly skeptical, I concede that those which addressed me claiming acquaintance with a recently deceased parent, answered test questions about childhood, family and pets with fluency and accuracy. They did not seem to need to pause for breaths. Flint's heavy breathing was audible, and he sometimes talked over the voices. No charge beyond tea and biscuits money was

asked for in these group sessions. Leslie Flint presumably made a satisfactory living out of private sittings and a book, Voices in the Dark, that he co authored with Doreen Montgomery in nineteen seventy one. With advancing age, bronchitis, and other infirmities, his powers became unreliable, the voices faded, and last month their remarkable conductor himself died quietly by the sea. I like to think, however, that we have not heard the last of him. That was written by Alexander Walker

on the ninth of May nineteen ninety four. While we're together today, I want to read to you Leslie Flint's words so we can get a little bit of an idea of who he was and the tough upbringing that he went through. In the next segment, however, you're going to hear the words from Carl Jackson Barnes. He's the curator of the Leslie Flint Trust, that online presence with

thousands of recordings. We'll hear a few recordings in the next segment together, but because the quality of the taping isn't so great again, these are from the nineteen fifties, sixties, forties, that you'll get a taste of those words. And then I think it's more important to hear some of these words from Leslie Flint himself, obviously through me reading them, but to open up that conversation. Like I said in the beginning, if this was possible once, could this be

possible again? In your spare time, go to Leslieflint dot com and you can listen to so many recordings, and you can also read the transcripts as you are listening. I have right by my side a copy of the book Voices in the Dark by Leslie Flint. On the back cover of the book, Leslie writes, I think I can safely say I am the most tested medium this

country has ever produced. I have been boxed up, tied up, sealed up, gagged, bound and held, and yet the voices still came to speak to their loved ones their message of eternal life. It also says, Voices in the Dark contains quite astounding evidence of survival after death, and it simply cannot be explained away. No one who reads this volume will ever reasonably doubt that the afterlife exists and is a reality for all, be they known or unknown.

It is time for our first break, and when we get back, you'll hear from Leslie Flint dot Com curator Carl Jackson Barnes. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast, a m pirinormal podcast network.

an audio clip I'd like to play. I've sent himself talking very briefly at only a few seconds, where he talks about how this communication, this type of mediumship works.

guy putting the voices on? Did he have friends in another room and they had equipment and microphones and all the rest of it. But later on it was actually nineteen ninety eight I found the Leslie Flint Trust website, and this website was full of audio recordings of these spirit voices. Mister Flint passed away himself in nineteen ninety four. I never actually got the chance to see him. I wish I had, because I could have gone. I just didn't have the nerve, to be honest, to go and

see him. I didn't think I'd be taken seriously. But having found this website, I found that there were all kinds of recordings of all kinds of different people recorded live talking about how they arrived in the spirit world or in the afterlife, and how they got on with their time there and what they did. And it was so exciting. I began recommending this Flintress website to everybody, and I bought multiple copies of Neville Randall's book Life After Death, and I gave copies away to friends and

anyone I thought was interested. I couldn't believe my ears. I really thought it was amazing. Now I've also got for you two or three very very short recordings I have Leslie flint seances. There are only a few seconds each. He worked, if you like, as a medium for about sixty years. It was his life, and he had hundreds of people would visit him. They would travel for miles.

They may have been in London. He was in London, but they came from the parts of the world, from the States, from Europe, from Australia, New Zealand all over, and they came to see him in the hope that they could speak to their own loved ones, of.

Now people have said some strange things in that, well, if the voice isn't coming through his vocal organs through his throat, it must be coming through his stomach, which is the most ridiculous thing you could imagine. So the skeptics or those that were completely baffled by this kind of mechanism of mediumship were desperately trying to find an alternative. They were saying he was a ventriloquist. They were saying there were accomplices. But mister Flint, his mediumship wasn't dependent

on the location. He would be invited to public halls and he would demonstrate in front of hundreds of people, or he would be invited to a private home and he'd arrive and there'd be three or four people there, and still the spirit voices would come, so location didn't matter. Leslie Flint had one main regular spirit that would come through. He called himself Mickey. Mickey was a communicator with hidden depths.

He came across as a cockney Londoner or a London cockney a youngster, and Micky actually talked about his life and he said that he was killed about the age of eleven, around about nineteen ten. He used to sell newspapers outside one of the London tube stations and he was killed in a traffic accident. But he became Leslie Flint's initial speaker. He would always be there before other

communicators would come through. So Micky's often heard on Flint recordings saying hello, as everybody, We've got somebody here for you. I'll come back later. But often Micky would speak for half an hour to an hour about various subjects. He would address those presents, but the most interesting thing for me is that whoever was communicating from the spirit world at a Leslie Flint recording or sitting, mister Flint would also interact. He'd be involved. He wasn't in a trance,

he wasn't asleep. He would talk with them. He would listen quietly, because if the communication was a private thing between the person who had booked the sitting and the spirit communicator, mister Flint would keep out of it. But if the opportunity arose, he would laugh at the jokes and he would get involved in the conversation. So there was no trance involved. The reality of it is just too much for some people. I find it amazing and

I still question him years later. But here's a very short clip of Mickey talking to those in the room from about nineteen seventy two.

through later. Now, mister Flint had a lot of other people's loved ones coming through for communications, but he also had a lot of well known people coming through. This very short clip is a voice which is in my estimation, is nothing like mister Flint's voice at all, and it's the voice of somebody who passed away in nineteen forty eight, gentleman called Mahat mcgandhy. Gandhy was killed in nineteen forty eight, but this recording, I think is from about nineteen sixty two.

I remember rightly the man's happiness.

traveled from Sweden. His home in Sweden came over to London to see Flint on a regular basis for about fifty or sixty occasions, to speak to his wife who had died previously. This is a lady called Annie Nanjee. She was European, a husband was Indian, although they lived in Sweden. Now Annie's speaking to her husband.

if we're sad, they're sad. And if we're happy, they're happy. That relationship, that connection never ends. And listening to recordings like this of what I believe are genuine spirit unicts talking in this way, it makes it more real.

And in the words of Annie Nanji, she said, death is not the end. It is the beginning of a greater and more wonderful existence. We'll take our next break now, and when we come back, I'd like to do some reading from the book Voices of the Dark, just to get a taste of the man Leslie Flint was. We'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network.

and then also tell you his story. I'm reminded that so many times people have a terrible start in life, Awful things happen, and then they go on to do some pretty great things. So let's start out with some words from Leslie in chapter one. In spite of a childhood that would give any modern child psychiatrist nightmares, I have reached the age of fifty nine without falling prey to neurosis, psychosis, or even the screaming mimis. I am

a happy man. I have friends who delight me, hobbies to absorb me, and I find satisfaction and fulfillment in my work. I do my work by sitting wide awake in total darkness with other people. I am a medium. I have the rare gift known as independent direct voice. I do not speak in trance. I need no trumpets or other paraphernalia. The voices of the dead speak directly to their friends or relatives, and are located in a space a little above my head and slightly to one

side of me. They are objective voices which my sitters can record on their own tape recorders to play later in the privacy of their homes. Sometimes those who speak from beyond the grave achieve only a whisper, hoarse and strained. At other times, they speak clearly and fluently, and voices recognizably during their own life, and even after thirty five years of my mediumship, I do not fully understand what the conditions which cause the phenomena to vary in this way.

I do know I have learned more about life and people and human problems and emotions by sitting in the dark than I could have possibly learned in any other way. And those who have taught me the most are people who dead to this world are living in the next. It seems to me, after entering my sixtieth year, it is time to set down on paper the story of my strange talent and the life it has led me. And where better to begin than the beginning. My mother

was much too beautiful for her own good. She loved pleasure and admiration, so no one in the dingy street where she lived with her widowed mother was surprised when she left her job in a local factory and disappeared from her usual haunts. Leslie goes on to tell the story of his mother and grandmother in this chapter, but basically, Leslie's mother was unmarried. When she realized she was pregnant, she left her home and gave birth to Leslie in

a Salvation Army home. When she eventually returned home. She married Leslie's father. Unfortunately, that marriage was unsuccessful. His mom enjoyed the bright lights of town and keeping company with others, and his father drank most of his wages and put the rest on horses, which never seemed to win. When the war broke out in nineteen fourteen, Leslie's father was one of the first to enlist, simply to get away from what he called the domestic hell he lived in.

From this time onwards, his mom would go out every evening and deposit young Leslie with the wife of a local cinema manager. This situation, however, came to an end, and when Leslie's mother eloped with one of her many admirers, and Leslie reports that she disappeared from my life. He was then brought up by his wonderful grandmother, who could unfortunately not read or write, and she did her best to wash people's clothes to feed that extra mouth that

she had taken in. In his book, Leslie relates his childhood wondering about God in the afterlife. During this period of his life, Leslie had the first realization of his psychic abilities. He said he saw a soldier who then vanished from his eyes, and later he was shown a photograph of his uncle who had been killed. He told his aunt and grandmother this was the same man he had seen in his vision, but unfortunately they didn't want to know about it, and they didn't want him to

talk like this. Shortly after Leslie reached thirteen, he left school and worked as a gardener in the local cemetery. Leslie also worked as a grave digger, and in that time really started questioning life and death. After seeing so many people being buried, he saw a notice of a church called a Theosophical Society and decided to attend. He says,

most of the discourse passed right over my devoted head. Nonetheless, the speaker mentioned the subject of life after death, but warned the audience to avoid spiritualism and the activity of communicating with the dead. Leslie was fascinated by such an idea. Instead of avoiding the topic, he went out to find these spiritualists. Leslie eventually found a spiritualist church and the medium was a lady named Missus Johnson. The medium told Leslie about his art teacher who had been deceased, who

was like a father figure to him. She accurately described this man, and of course Leslie knew that there's no

possible way she could have known that. Missus Johnson also went into great detail about Leslie's guide and said he was Arabian the Arab and as this story unfolds, one of the main communicators that works through Leslie Flint is an actor named Rudolph Valentino, who unfortunately passed away at the age of thirty one, but he was known for playing an Arab in the movie The Sheikh, and again, Leslie loved the cinema, so he was quite fond of

this man. Leslie continued to explore different churches and people who claimed they could talk to the dead. He found the good and he found the bad. He even nicknamed people body snatchers. There are people still today in medium demonstrations. No matter what the medium says, these people say I understand that when they cannot, hoping that they'd get a reading as opposed to the person it was meant for.

He also found con artists and people that were so gullible they would take any information they got and believe it was their loved one. He continued to explore this because when the mediums were good. They were really good. He often got these messages from the Arab. This person, who supposedly was his guide. One of the mediums invited Leslie to come to her home circle, and he agreed to do it. Now, back in the day, home circles

were big. People would get together, sing songs, sit with a dim light on, and invite in the presence of the spirit world. Sometimes they'd hear voices. Sometimes someone would act as the medium. But in this particular evening, there was a letter waiting for Leslie from a woman in Munich, Germany, another medium who said a gentleman by the name of Rudolph Valentino made himself known in her circle and that this was Leslie's guide. The message was that Leslie must

develop his mediumship. He added that he has been trying to communicate with Leslie through various mediums, but without success. Leslie wondered if Valentino could be the Arab. Leslie continued to attend this home circle every time he had been invited, and often messages would again come through from someone called Valentino, and it was exactly the same message contained from the

letter from Munich. What caused Leslie to really get involved in this training was that he met a widow at the cemetery who was grieving so terribly that he wanted to help. The more Leslie attended these circles, the more he himself became entranced and spirit people began speaking through him, and this time one who spoke through him was Valentino. If you've been involved with researching the afterlife, you know

there can be some crazies out there. Scott Milligan tells the story of sitting with a medium who fell on the floor behaved like a snake, another one making dolphin sounds, having nothing to do with the spirit world. Well, the woman who led Leslie's circle started to do the same thing, moving her body like an octopus. So this was the downfall of Leslie attending that circle. He didn't believe what he saw happening, and he was asked to leave, and when he left he said, I made up my mind

to have nothing more to do with spiritualism. That didn't last long, however, because as he tried to live his life, messages would come through his mind from Rudolph Valentino. So he began looking for another spiritualist church and eventually found another home circle to sit in. During this time, Leslie had given up his job in the cemetery, and then he took a local job in a cinema, and then, unfortunately, he caused the electricity to go out at the cinema,

so he became unemployed. The cinemas were all silent movies back then, by the way. Then he got offered a job as a barman, and in his free time he enjoyed dancing, but the messages from Valentino continued, so after much thought, he returned to his home area in Saint Albans and wanted to develop his mediumship, and this time

he took a job in a tailor's shop. Unfortunately, no progress was being made with his mediumship until he met a lady named Edith Munden, who was a member of a local spiritualist church, who invited him to her home circle. Leslie began attending the circle and many weeks passed with no obvious development in his mediumship. This was until one night when he fell into trance and a number of

spirit communicators spoke through him, including Edith's late husband. Further development occurred for him and he became clairvoyant, which means he could see and describe these Next World visitors. You know what I love is that each town he went to there were spiritualist churches, and that there were people who had these home circles. I would really love, in this day and age for the home circles to come back. Just imagine a group of friends getting together on behalf

of the spirit world. Voices are known to come through, things can appear out of nowhere. Let's go to our break and then we'll find out what happens next to Medium Leslie Flint. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast Network.

we know what he chose. He soon discovered that he made the correct decision, as it was not long before Valentino was making himself known at this circle, the voice being audible to all that were present at this time. Leslie decided he should train himself for public demonstrations. His first public demonstration was at a local spiritualist church and

while he was in trance, it was a success. Edith and Leslie then decided that his ability for independent, direct voice mediumship should be made available for others and a church should be opened where this would be possible. Edith and Leslie saved all the money that they could and began to advertise services at their Watford Spiritualist mission. This church was in fact an unfurnished room with just a

few dozen chairs. To cover his own living costs, Leslie began to give sittings in Edith's house, but was aware that more people needed him than could pay, so he began an open circle one evening a week at the mission. Many of these circles used amazing evidence, one being when a local woman who had been murdered communicated and gave a good amount of evidence about herself and the circumstances

of her death. The circle members scanned the local newspapers and found that the information she had given was correct. A man named Noah Zurdin, one of the founders of the Link Association of Home Circles, attended one of Leslie's circle meetings and described what proper ethics should be of a home circle. When these ethics were followed, the quality of the voice improved quickly. Now at this point a

new phase started in Leslie's mediumship. He found light was difficult to work in, and by nature of being in a completely blackened room, the voices were stronger. At this new location, Leslie's mediumistic work became his full time occupation. Now he was doing demonstrations in some of the largest halls in London. He said, the voices came and addressed friends and relatives in the audience to give their proof of continuing existence, and many thousands were given conviction and

their lives changed for the better. Hundreds of letters were now being sent from all over the world to Leslie about his mediumship. One was doctor Lewis Young, who had been a frequent sitter with his wife. He had tested and exposed many fraudulent mediums in America and was anxious to prove the genuineness of Leslie's mediumship. Leslie remarked the

tests he conducted with me made fraud impossible. One of these was filling Leslie's mouth with colored water for the duration of the seance while the voices manifested themselves and spoke to the sitters. In addition to the independent direct voice phenomena, Leslie's mediumship was able to facilitate materializations who participated in the events of the seance in a dim red light. These materializations were quite firm and solid, and

they could be felt as well as seen. They would move around the circle and sometimes they would speak to the members. Despite this success, it was discovered that the independent, direct voice was more important than the materializations, as they were not always successful. One of the many examples of Leslie's successes was when Shaw Desmond, an Irish novelist, attended

a seance. Shaw was accompanied by a woman. Although Leslie did not know their names, Shaw's son spoke to his father at length, and Valentino spoke with the woman sitter and had clearly known her at one time. It later transpired that she had indeed known him. As the Second World War came into being, Leslie noted that he was having problems with his mediumship. He believes it was because the atmosphere surrounding the earth was so filled with fear.

Leslie continued to give sittings, but eventually the time came when he had to explain his refusal to fight in the war. He explained that he refused to kill, and that he was fully aware of Nazism and the struggle against evil, that he would gladly assist his country, but just that he would not kill. Leslie served in a non combatant role during the war, on his first leave, he returned home to do a sitting arranged by Edith. During this time, an air raid began and many people

were killed nearby. Leslie recalls Mickey at once returned to speak to us. He went on to say that hundreds of spirit people were already at the scene of the disaster to help the victims over the border between this life and the next. After the war finished, regular seances resumed. Chief Marshal Lord Doubting was present. During this. Mickey made himself known and mentioned a young man wishing to speak. He did so and gave his name as Peter Kite.

He was particularly concerned about his mother, as the distress of his death was causing ill health. He then mentioned that he knew mister Turner, one of the sitters, and told mister Turner that he had visited him for dental work. Leslie remarks, none of the other sitters knew mister Turner was a dentist, nor did they know his name. Mister Turner said he remembered Peter Kite coming to him for treatment, but he did not know that he had been killed.

After he joined the Royal Air Force, the airman's parents contacted and invited to a seance. Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who wrote Sherlock Holmes, was the first to communicate from the afterlife, and took the opportunity to explain to the parents what happened to their son, as they had no knowledge of the subject. Another example of Leslie's spectacular mediumship shortly after the war was when Edgar Grant attended a seance and spoke with his wife for some minutes

in a perfectly ordered and natural manner. After this, he recorded that I then felt fingers take my pen and notebook from my hand, and heard the pen moving across the paper. On examining this, he declared the writing obtained at the seance was his wife's normal handwriting when she was alive. As time went on, the pressure of public demonstrations took a poor effect on Leslie's health. In one article, it was recorded how Leslie had collapsed and had to

be carried away from the platform. In July nineteen fifty. Leslie was still able to demonstrate his mediumship, though, and at one large public seance he used a specially designed cabinet. It was seven feet high and four feet square. The cabinet was covered with a tarp and the audience could see all that was happening in the area outside. In this demonstration, many communicators spoke and convinced their loved ones in the audience of their continuing existence. I have a

special treat for you. Next, we'll hear the words from Leslie Flint himself, followed by a spirit person named Ellen Terry, and then finally the words from Rudolph Valentino.

shall be only too happy to rejoice with you. And where we live together in a world, She's so beautiful that the words cannot do be to describe it well. All the things that matter, all the things that are good, remain, all the less saif all the worse the things are forgotten and our erase memory.

alone and you are loved. I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.