Chiffon Underwater
The Materializing Mediumship of Bertie Lilly Candler
By William Dudley Pelley, from Bright Horizons, August 1954.
Bertie Lilly Candler, whom I consider the greatest materializing medium I have encountered in over a quarter-century of Psychical Research, is by name a celebrity in every household where Soulcraft publications or books are read. You will recall my first meeting with her as I described it in Why I Believe the Dead Are Alive. My friend and colleague, the late George B. Fisher, was responsible for my memorable acquaintance with the lady. He halted his car in front of my then residence in Indiana, the year I moved northward from Asheville, and came in to tell me a strange story.
“I was visiting John Milton, the blind psychic, in Toronto,” Fisher recounted, “when he got a communication affecting to come from my mother. Mother has been on the Higher Side since 1923. She wanted me to go at once to Miami, Florida, walk up to a house at an address John would furnish, ring the bell, and say to whoever came to the door, ‘I’m here to make contact with my mother.’ John supplied me with no clue as to who might be living at the Miami house, but coming as it did from him, I felt the request was not without significance. Anyhow, I motored down…
“The address when I reached it looked to be a combination residence and church. A handsome middle-aged man answered the bell and I relayed John’s instructions. He seemed neither surprised nor puzzled. Taking me into a church-like room, he introduced me to his wife—a portly and personable blonde. The name of this couple was Kimmey but the lady professionally goes by her maiden name of Bertie Lilly Candler. She was a materializing medium, I learned, and within the next half-hour I saw it proved.
“At a sitting which was immediately arranged for me, my elderly and very distinctive mother, came toward me in a recreation of bodily figure clad in a dress that I recalled having had made especially for her in a New York shop the year before her death. Mother had been an exceptionally heavy woman, weighing over two hundred pounds. The dress had a special design of beadwork upon its blouse. As I’ve been in the manufacture of dress-patterns earlier in my life I remembered beadwork like that, particularly. The figure certainly was mother’s, the dress was mother’s, the facial expression was mother’s, the voice was mother’s. Moreover, she remained in such recreated form talking with me for nearly a half-hour about family affairs of my brothers and sisters in Toronto, of which she knew everything, and gave me advice in respect to one of them. You have simply got to meet this Miami lady, Chief, and give me your opinion of her uncanny gifts.”
A month or so later, at George’s residence in Darien, Connecticut, I did so.
I cannot remember accurately just how many séances I have since had with Bertie Lilly Candler, but she was the first medium to bring me face to face with the reembodiment of my own daughter Harriet. Harriet has come to me since through other mediums—precisely the same girl, with the same voice and personality—but it has been from Bertie Lilly that she seems to have drawn the greatest odic force to perform the many feats of materialization that she has.
In 1941, Bertie Lilly and Edward, her husband, were the house guests of Adelaide and myself when we were living in Indianapolis, and a professional acquaintance began ripening into a warm and close friendship with the couple. In Why I Believe the Dead Are Alive I recounted some of the extraordinary things that occurred at that Indianapolis sitting. But as the years have passed, my admiration has only risen the higher for this lady with the out-of-this-world powers. In Valor for July 24th, I related generally what happened at our latest séance at the Soulcraft plant, surpassing everything gone before.
The role which Bertie Lilly Candler is now playing, supplying Mary Baker Eddy with the ectoplasmic vehicle to communicate her higher-life views back to her earthly flock, may yet play no small part in American religious history. That she, Bertie Lilly, receives a warm and zealous reception whenever she moves among Soulcrafters requires no emphasis, but the number of those eager to witness her gifts is now becoming so great that to accommodate them by itinerant travels to and fro about the nation is impracticable. So Headquarters is trying to work out an arrangement whereby given numbers may have opportunity to witness her talents in periodic sessions at Noblesville. Likewise it is considering the publication of her remarkable biography…
The Miami Sunday News, back in March of 1951, contained a page write-up of Bertie Lilly over the by-line of one Joseph Faus. Faus had gone out to the celebrated lady’s Church of the Beckoning Light on the west side of the city, interviewed her, and returned to compose the testimonial of her character which Bright Horizons quotes in the pages following.
I can only interpolate, before Mr. Faus’s story begins, that Soulcraft subscribes sincerely to the high compliments he pays this lady, and that her contributions in demonstrating the many Soulcraft expositions of the After-Life have been most valuable. She is in her prime at present, but before her extraordinary career closes she may equal if not surpass the exploits of the most remarkable medium of all time, Daniel Dunglas Home—whose gifts back in the Eighties caused him to command exhibits before many crowned heads of Europe. Said Mr. Faus—
This is the story as she told it to me, in her gentle but earnest voice, with the worn Bible before her on the desk, and the eyes of the Christ gazing gravely from the picture on the wall, and the matter-of-fact sounds of the city far away.
It began, the story did, with the trembling fright that came over her when she was six years old and lived in Atlanta.
It wasn’t the ghosts that frightened her. They emerged from the mist, and smiled politely at her, and melted back into the mist.
Nor was it the light, the eerie, halo-ish light that appeared and disappeared, like a will-o’-the wisp, as if beckoning “Come to me, come to me.”
What frightened her and vexed her was to think that she was different from other girls, and could see spirits and predict happenings. Why couldn’t she be normal?
She didn’t tell her parents about the ghosts or the light. They might think she was “making up things.” But she told Howard. He was her pal and buddy and brother, too.
Howard looked at her, his eyes aglow. “You are a very special person, Bertie Lilly! It may mean something very wonderful is to happen!”
They kept their secret, awaiting the wonder; and one night years later at a high school party, a curious sensation stealing over her, she gayly cried “I’ll make the table dance to ‘Dixie!’”
The boys and girls laughed as she fixed a mesmeric gaze on the big, bare table. Then they stopped laughing and breathed kind of strained and gaspy, for the table began to rock a little and then to dance—faster and faster, louder and louder, to the rhythm of “Dixie.”
Causing chairs and tables to cut queer capers, as she frequently did at companions’ urgings, was a frivolous and not a wonderful act, so Howard gently chided; but the news of it got out, and the parents of the students looked at her amusedly or crossly as though she had hypnotized their children into believing impossible things; but two or three looked at her uneasily as though she were a witch.
It annoyed her, so she drew a cloak of reticence and detachment around her; but still she could see anon the mystic light flickering in the purple distance. What for? Was the wonderful event about to happen?
One night at 8 o’clock an angel friend came through the bedroom wall. “On this day and at this hour, three weeks from now,” she informed, “your brother Howard will die.”
It wasn’t true! It wouldn’t be true!
The days dragged by and on the appointed day and hour Howard, sick only two days, died.
“’And if I go, I will come again, that where I am ye may be also.’” The familiar Bible verse sang inexplicably in her mind, and she waited, tense and excited, and Howard came back in three weeks!
“Christ arose from the grave, and so can everyone!” His youthful face was very happy. “Spirits can be seen, even as the Apostles saw the spirits of Moses and Elias with Christ on the mountain. Bertie Lilly, I understand everything now! You have a work to do! Tell the people about the eternal life that God promises to all who believe and obey. Tell them that by prayer and faith we develop ourselves and rise to higher and higher planes, and finally, if we will to the ultimate of perfection!”
The word “spiritualism” had never occurred to her; now she studied the subject. She read that many members of the Catholic, Protestant and Hebrew faiths had had similar experiences as hers, and so she was not a strange and abnormal person after all.
Well, if God had given her a special gift as an amanuensis of those leaving the grave, she must use that gift. So Bertie Lilly Candler traveled over the nation and Canada, serving as a medium and psychic agent for thousands of people.
In 1925 she came to Miami. The mysterious light beckoned more persistently, and Howard, a frequent visitor, remained forlorn. Penitent at her delay, she studied in a theological school and was ordained a minister. In 1927 she organized Beckoning Light Spiritualist church.
Meetings were held for five years in Masonic Temple. Rev. Bertie Lilly Candler based all services on the belief in the power of man, working as a partner of God. She taught the inspiring story of His son, who was the Way, the Truth and the Light. She stressed the harmony and “perfect vibrations” of virtuous living.
Sinners walked into the Light. The faith of the weak was renewed, the health of the sick was restored. The bereft received messages of consolation and cheer from loved ones in the spirit world, delivered in one of seven languages by the psychic medium who, when not in trance, could speak only one language.
Sometimes , though, the Forces of Dark were triumphant. There was the time a man, a widower, rushed hysterically in for help, saying his four-year-old son was kidnapped. His reasons for this conclusion were logical; but suddenly before the pastor’s eyes the room was shrouded in gloom, and when it lifted she saw a woman holding a child, dripping with water, in her arms.
“Your boy is with his mother,” she told the father. “He was accidentally drowned. His body is on Star Island at the yacht basin.” And there, an hour later, it was found.
Through her, the pastor said, the spirit of Claude G. Swanson, a former secretary of the navy, predicted in detail the war with Germany. (Time Magazine featured the story.) Through her, Lorenzo Winslow, interior decorator at the White House, was told in August, 1950 by the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt that an unsuccessful attempt would be made to assassinate President Truman. The attempt was made November 1st.
In 1932 the church was transferred to a chapel in the home of the pastor, 1921 SW 16th St. In 1942 it was established in its present building at 1621 SW 6th St. Religious lectures are given Sunday and Wednesday nights, communication services at 7:45 p.m. Sunday, and study classes Monday and Tuesday nights.
Today the Beckoning Light Spiritualist church has about 200 members, many of them prominent Miamians, nearly all former communicants of orthodox churches. Mrs. Stella Garrett is assistant pastor; Edward Kimmey, president of the organization; Mrs. Emma Pryor, secretary; Miss Grace Wilson, pianist. The church is a member of the International Assembly of Spiritualists, and of the Federation of Churches.
“It is difficult,” Rev. Candler said, “to explain to a stranger the functions of our church. Some statements may sound fantastic, as were statements about television and radar 50 years ago. Time truly marches on—perhaps a little too fast for some.
“All around us are loved ones, creatures of the Light, who can advise and help us because they are on a higher plane of development than we are. People of certain spiritual sensitivity and telepathic receptivity can contact these spirits. One person in 13 has mediumistic potentialities, but only one in 1300 has the gift of psychic healing. My brother Howard, through the years has been my guide and inspiration. All who talk with the so-called dead have protective angels.
“I say protective, because around us, too, are the Forces of Dark. These evil spirits are struggling to conquer the Forces of Light. We are living in the days described in Revelations, the last book in the Bible. The Forces of Dark have captured many countries and many minds, and a titanic struggle is going on between them and the righteous of the visible and invisible worlds. But we will soon triumph, and God’s Light—the Light of love, truth, justice, peace, brotherhood—shall shine forever more.
“It is written in the Book, and it is so.”