“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Just before she went into trance, Jane said to me: “I’ve got something fascinating for you …”)

(10:58. “I feel funny,” Jane said. Her trance had been very deep, her delivery rather fast for the most part. She inhaled repeatedly now, as though taking in extra air. “I was really out — he could have kept me under for four hours …” She explained that just before the session began she’d received glimmerings of the material to come, but hadn’t had time to tell me about it. Certainly neither of us bad expected Seth to go into the affair involving the two houses in Sayre.

(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.

(Pause at 11:28. This was the end of book dictation. As we had requested that he do just before the session, Seth directed his final delivery to some other material for Jane and me. He finished at exactly midnight.

1. Jane and I took our drive three weeks ago, on April 7. The town of Sayre is only 18 miles from Elmira, N.Y., where we live now, and it sits in the beautiful Pennsylvania hills between two smaller communities — Athens to the south, and Waverly to the north in New York State. Locally the three are known as “The Valley.” We visit Sayre occasionally. Although it’s close by as far as miles go, for me important aspects of it are far away in terms of years.

It’s an old, predominantly lower-middle-class railroad town that used to derive much of its importance from being a junction point for several major lines; yet it’s also the site of a well-known hospital and clinic that has continued to grow. Sayre’s population was probably less than 6,500 when my two brothers and I were growing up there, and it isn’t much more today. My family lived in the neighborhood Seth describes from 1922 (when I was 3 years old) to 1931 (when I was 12), then moved to the opposite end of town. I remember quite well that I was most reluctant to move; the young boy didn’t want to leave his friends and the surroundings he loved. My parents’ motives for moving were meaningless to me at the time. They bought the “new” house, however, and it remained in the family until 1972 — a year after my father’s death, a year before my mother was to die.

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.

5. I’d say that Seth’s statement here, “It was her second choice,” calls for careful interpretation. Its possible implications escaped me during the session; otherwise I could have asked for some clarification then. Since I neglected to do so, I ended up rewriting this note a year later.