“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This evening Jane and I had supper with Marian and Jimmy Spaziani. Jimmy is our landlord. We were back home from their place in Pine City, five miles distant, by 8:40. Jane had a “slight” feeling that someone would attend the session, yet she was not sure the feeling was legitimate. She could not say why she felt that way, being unable to determine at least yet when such feelings are legitimate. As it developed, we had no witnesses.

(The Spazianis know about the Seth material, of course. This evening Jimmy asked if Seth could help him locate the missing cover for the thermostat, which is located in the downstairs hall of the apartment house. Since the furnace has been misbehaving to some degree lately, he is quite anxious to find the cover, which he believes he misplaced some months ago, in order to keep people from tampering with the delicate thermostat mechanism. We promised to ask Seth’s help.

(The Spazianis also related a mutual experience they underwent recently, involving Jimmy’s deceased father. They asked for Seth’s interpretation of this quite vivid happening. Since it is rather involved, I will insert an account of it in the session where Seth takes note of it. This page of the session will also be used for future reference.

(Jimmy’s youngest son, J.J., is six years old. The first time Jane and I saw the two of them, over four years ago, we were struck by the unmistakable similarity between them, not only in physical appearance but in manner. If anything this likeness between father and son has grown with the passing years, until now it is a standard topic of conversation when the Spazianis and the Buttses get together. As Jimmy’s wife Marian said to us this evening at supper: “Well, there must be a few drops of my blood in J.J. somewhere...” Jimmy of course is Italian. Marian is Irish and French.

(Jimmy is obviously proud of this similarity between J.J. and himself. This evening he showed Jane and I a family photograph taken when he was about J.J.’s age, and of course the physical similarity was even then unmistakable. This old family photograph, incidentally, included Jimmy’s father, whom Jane and I had not met, and who is referred to in the following session material.)

(Talking it over at break, we thought that at first we could ask Seth to comment briefly on a very vivid dream I had on Friday evening, October 10, 1964. Then I thought it better to ask for a comment on the vivid experience Marian and Jimmy Spaziani had, concerning Jimmy’s deceased father, recently. We made that the official question. Marian had described the experience to Jane a few days previously, but at supper this evening the Spazianis went over it again for our benefit. And since it is still fresh in mind I will note an account of it below, although Seth does not discuss it in any detail in this session. This account can be used for future reference.

(The experience: Jimmy operates a supper club in Elmira, which Jane and I visit frequently. Some of my paintings hang there. Jimmy usually closes after 1 AM; by NY law he cannot serve drinks after 1 AM. On this particular evening during the first week in October 1964, he had some extra work to do. Shortly after 1 AM he took a waitress to her home in his Jeep. With him he also had some fresh tomatoes, and with these he stopped at his mother’s home while on his way back to the club.

(His mother’s home was dark, of course, and not wanting to disturb her merely to leave the tomatoes, Jimmy left them on the back porch. His father had died a few months ago, and while he stood in the backyard, a place he knew and had loved since childhood, Jimmy thought to himself: “Now, if I could see my father’s apparition, then I could tell Ma, and she’d feel a lot better,” or words to that effect. Jimmy waited beside the dark and quiet house, staring out into the backyard, but he saw and heard nothing unusual. He is well acquainted with the literature on psychic phenomena.

(He estimates that this little episode took place at about 1:20 AM. Getting back into his Jeep, he drove back to the club, a few blocks away. He arrived there at about 1:30. Just as he entered the kitchen the telephone rang. It was his wife Marian, in a state of high agitation. Marian then described to Jimmy a most vivid and startling experience she had just undergone.

(Being tired, she had gone to bed a little after midnight, instead of waiting up for Jimmy as she usually did. She fell asleep immediately. Unaware of the passage of time, she then was awakened out of a sound sleep, not dreaming either, by a thunderously loud voice which shouted to her or at her: “Good night!” Marian told us this was so real to her, so loud and unmistakable, filling the entire room as with thunder, that she sat bolt upright in bed, fully awake and quite frightened. She had not been having a nightmare, or even dreaming. It so upset her that she immediately went to the telephone to call her husband. That is, she took a short while to collect herself, then put in the call. The voice was that of Jimmy’s dead father; Marian said she recognized it unmistakably.

(Jimmy of course related to Marian his thoughts about seeing his father’s apparition. Doing a little figuring concerning the time, he arrived at the conclusion that Marian had had her experience at approximately the same time he had been standing in back of his mother’s house, thinking about his father. Jimmy speculated that perhaps Marian had received a message from his father, in answer to his wish, even though he, Jimmy, had seen or heard nothing.

(This reference to J.J., Jimmy’s youngest son, reminds Jane and me that Jimmy has often mentioned to us that as soon as he began to talk, J.J. started to tell his father about the “playmates” who kept him company through the day. At the time Jimmy was quite intrigued because the only playmates J.J. had were his older brothers and sisters, and these were not the people he was describing. Jimmy states that J.J. related such stories to him up until he was about four years old. J.J. is now six.)