“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

An experimental séance was the next on the list of experiments for my book. We had only the foggiest idea of what a séance was, never having attended one. We did think that more than two people should be involved, though, so we decided to ask Bill Macdonell to join us, since he was the only one who knew of our experiments. Bill dropped by on the evening of January 2, 1964, and on the spur of the moment I suggested that the three of us give it a try.

“After the break, Seth told us to shut the door leading to the bath. The living room side of the door holds a full-length mirror, and Seth told us to look into it. Since the mirror is tall and narrow, we had to crowd in close on three sides of the little table, in order to see our reflections. Jane sat in the middle. Her lips were very close to my ear as she talked. I could hear and feel each breath, each swallow she took. Her voice dropped considerably in volume and I really had the sensation that she was indeed speaking for someone else (rather than for a subconscious personality, for example, who just called itself Seth).

“ ‘Now the three of you see your reflections clearly in the mirror, just as you should. Watch, for I’ll change Jane’s image and replace it with another,’ Seth said. And Jane’s image did begin to change. Her head dropped lower. At the same time, the shape of the skull changed, the hair grew shorter and fit about it much more closely. The shoulders of the mirror image hunched over, and grew more narrow. And then the head in the mirror tilted, and looked down, while Jane herself sat with her head erect, staring straight ahead into the mirror.

I think Rob and I were angry at being brought up short, forced to face issues we weren’t ready to face. Everything was happening so fast. It hadn’t been a month yet since we began with the Ouija board. Our ideas of what was possible were being turned topsy-turvy. We decided to hold one other session to see what Seth had to say about the affair, and again we considered dropping the experiments, book or no book. Yet we could hardly blame Seth, since the séance was our idea to begin with. I had to write up the séance results for one of my early chapters, and I hardly knew how to go about it.