“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As of now we think it unlikely that we’ll buy either of the houses. We haven’t asked Seth what to do, and do not plan to. There are more “coincidences” involved than those Seth described tonight, none of them consciously known to Jane and me before the Sayre adventure: Mr. Markle is in a nursing home but a few miles from where we live in Elmira, and my mother spent her last days in a similar home less than 15 miles away; one of Mr. Markle’s children lives in Elmira, and is connected with a store Jane and I have visited; Mr. Johnson, of the real estate couple that conducted us about in Sayre, did sign painting and truck lettering as a younger man, as I did; he and I had several mutual acquaintances in Sayre, among them an older artist of some reputation — and now deceased — that we had known in our high school days; and so forth.

2. The “real estate people” who showed Jane and me through the Markle place last Thursday, April 25, are a husband-and-wife team who operate a small real estate and insurance agency in Sayre. We liked the Johnsons (although that isn’t their real name) at once. Going through Mr. Markle’s house was quite an experience — certainly I hadn’t expected to find myself doing so now, some 43 years after the last time I’d been in it. Jane wasn’t attracted to it as much as I was, of course, so that knowledge helped keep my own enthusiasm in check. From my grade-school days I thought I remembered the house’s large living room especially; for the Markles had raised two children who were contemporary with my next youngest brother and me; sometimes the four of us met at the house, then went to school together.

The house the Butts family had occupied at that time is situated just around the corner, a block away — almost visible from the front porch of the Markle place. (Later I found several old photographs of it in one of our family albums, and was reminded that in those days the streets had no curbs.) Even today I can recall most of the families, and their children, who’d lived in the immediate area. Those few blocks largely made up my childhood world.