Leslie Flint

And the third problem was nobody was monitoring the medium's vocal tracks.

So decades before Skoll, a direct voice medium named Leslie Flint was tested with some pretty aggressive controls.

Investigators used infrared viewers and microphones and in some tests had him hold water in his mouth to show that the voices weren't coming from him.

Even then, skeptics argued about it.

Others heard personalities associated with the medium spirit team.

One of the most famous 20th century direct voice mediums was Leslie Flint.

His work became particularly associated with voices reportedly speaking independently of his own mouth.

Whether approached as spiritualist history, psychical research, controversy or mystery, direct voice occupies an important place in the development of physical mediumship.

And then the independent voice is where...

Well, there's actually, it can happen where the spirit voice is just created with the ectoplasm and it would sit near the neck, as in the case with Leslie Flint, right? And he wasn't even in trance.

He could communicate to the spirits or laugh at what they said, but it would just be floating near his neckline, connected by a cord of ectoplasm.

And then sometimes there could be a full materialization and an independent voice speaker.

Well, right from the very time that Sandra and I'd started this, um, in my case, you know, sort of 48 years ago now, um, we had known, uh, that we'd had some interest, um, from Winston Churchill.

Uh, we'd spoken to him several times at, uh, Leslie Flint's.

Uh, and also, um, the medium we sat with, uh, in Romford in the early days, um, he was a deep trance medium, but he had developed independent voice.

Uh, and, uh, [coughs] he had Winston speak there on, on many occasions.

Um, in the past, you know, John Campbell, Sloan, uh-

...

Leslie Flint, all that.

They're actually highly, highly controlled, uh, situations.

You...