Ghosts Of The R101: From The Skies To The Seance Room And Eileen Garrett's Channelling

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Welcome to Haunted History Chronicles, where we explore the enigmatic, the airy, and the extraordinary stories from our past.

I'm your host, Michelle, and today we unravel the fascinating life of one of the most intriguing figures in spiritualism, Eileen Garrett.

2:25

Renowned for her profound connection with the spirit world, Garrett's life is a tale of mystery, mediumship, and moments that defy explanation.

In this episode, we delve into her life and her connection to one of the most tragic and mysterious airship disasters in history.

2:45

The R1 O1 airship met a fiery end in France, claiming the lives of all aboard.

Just days later, Eileen Garrett, a well known trance medium, held a seance that would shock and perplex both the public and the scientific community.

3:05

Was it truly the spirit of Flight Lieutenant H Carmichael Irwin who returned from beyond the grave to recount the harrowing details of the crash?

Or was it a manifestation of something deeper within the human psyche?

These questions have haunted researchers and sceptics alike for decades.

3:27

Today I'm joined by Sarah Blake from Hushed Up History.

Together, we'll explore Garrett's life, her reported abilities, and the chilling seance that brought forth the wealth of technical knowledge about the R1 O1 disaster, knowledge that seemed impossible for her to possess.

3:48

Prepare yourself for a journey into the unknown as we investigate the life of Eileen Garrett and the spectral echoes of the R1 O1 airship disaster right here on Haunted History Chronicles.

Hi Sarah, thank you so much for joining me again for another chitchat.

4:09

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you for having me.

And obviously, the last time we spoke, we were speaking about Thomas Bradford, which I think represents almost one side of looking at mediumship and the spiritualist world in this very much not just desire, but this real urgency to try and understand and communicate with the dead and to know more.

4:32

And I think today we're going to.

Be able to.

Look at this from a different angle, from the perspective a particular medium and her connection with a, with a case.

That's rather interesting, which I think is going to make for an interesting discussion again around this same topic of communicating with the dead medium, mediums in general, and obviously the spiritualist community.

4:55

Yeah, absolutely.

This, this woman, you know, it's, it's funny how it overlaps with the Thomas Bradford case, but it's so different and in some ways a lot bigger than the Thomas Bradford case.

It involves a huge tragedy that happened and you know it, it's a much bigger, but still kind of in the same umbrella as Thomas Bradford.

5:19

It's it's really interesting.

And obviously this is a piece you wrote.

You wrote about earning and included that was submitted for the the last issue of the Feminine Macabre.

Do you want to just say a little bit about that for anybody who's not familiar with the feminine macabre and you know what Amanda has been trying to do and obviously the issue itself?

5:43

Yeah, So the Feminine Macabre is a wonderful, wonderful book series that's been put together by Amanda Warmer.

It is a collection of essays and works specifically written by women and non binary in the paranormal world.

5:59

It's an incredible collection.

There are 6 volumes at this point and the the scope of works in these volumes is incredible.

You've got the paranormal, you've got folklore, you've got history, you've got tarot, you have witchcraft, you have people giving their accounts of visiting haunted places.

6:22

It's just there is such a wide variety of subject matter from so many different viewpoints.

It is, it is so engaging.

It is all so well written, it is so well put together.

It's just, it's a fantastic collection.

And I think it's incredible that you featured in each of those different each of those different books so far because you're writing really, truly is so deserving to be in there.

6:49

But likewise, each piece that you've submitted has been so completely and totally utterly different.

All over the place.

But I think that speaks to what you do with hushed up history, that you're not focusing in focusing in on one element.

You really do look at history as a broad whole, in terms of elements that aren't discussed enough.

7:10

Again, elements of witchcraft, mysticism, intrigue, interesting characters, spiritualism, I mean, you do cover and go into so many different areas under that broad umbrella.

And, and again, I think that's the appealing part of it.

You're, you're putting that spotlight on maybe an individual, a case or something that maybe hasn't been spoken of to the extent that maybe it should have before.

7:37

And, and I think it's brilliant that you bring that to your platform and to your audience.

Thank you that, that is something I, I'm so happy to hear that because that is something that I try very, very hard to accomplish is having this wide range of topics.

7:56

I, I try to pick things from all over the world, all different time frames, whether it has to do with a specific person or a specific event or a specific holiday that may not have, you know, been celebrated in a, in a very long time.

8:12

But I, I really, really try to make it a varied thing, right down to me trying to plan out what stories go up when I tried to make it so that, you know, well, OK, well, this story took place in France.

8:27

So I have these other stories that took place in France, but we're going to hold off on them for a little bit.

We're going to put something next to them that I haven't written about in a while, or a totally different subject matter, just to keep it different, to keep it varied, to keep it interesting and hopefully keep people engaged with everything that gets posted.

8:47

And, and I hope that people find this, this discussion interesting because like you mentioned just a moment ago, this particular medium is, is rather fascinating.

And her involvement in this case, this tragedy is really rather intriguing.

9:02

And, and again, there are aspects to it that I don't necessarily think are particularly well known about when it comes to her and the case it's, it's not something that you, you necessarily see being written about readily and easily.

So just to kind of start this, this discussion about Eileen Garrett, who is the medium at the heart of this?

9:23

Do you want to just tell us a little bit about Eileen Garrett and her early life and and maybe how she discovered her abilities as a medium?

Sure.

So Eileen Garrett was born in Ireland in 1893 and she unfortunately experienced a lot of tragedy very, very early in her life.

9:43

When she was very, very young.

Both her parents took their own life, their lives.

And she was living with an aunt who from the varied, you know, kind of vague accounts that we have, was not a very happy circumstance.

10:00

She was, she was around a lot of anger.

She was around a lot of bitterness when she was very, very young.

And it was when she was very young that she she describes it as her learning to separate into a world of her own or disconnect from the unhappy world around her.

10:16

And as she did this more and more and more, she started to develop these abilities.

She noticed that she was receiving messages she was understanding information that she had no connection to or any context, but that would turn out to be true or valid to people around her.

10:33

She began to She described later on that she would see energy fields around people like almost an egg shape, like an aura around people, and she didn't formally really start to pursue it when she was young.

10:50

It would have been very.

Difficult to do that at that point.

But there were.

Questions.

She began to question why she was receiving these messages.

Is this something legitimate or is there something medically wrong?

That has to be, you know.

Looked at is is it me?

During her first marriage was when the questions really began to get more serious.

11:10

Why am I hearing these?

What am I hearing?

But she really dived into researching it.

And when she really started to dig into what this was that she was experiencing, that's when it kind of came to the conclusion that you're a meeting.

You have these abilities to understand things and have this information from people that have passed on, among other abilities that she has.

11:34

And when she kind of came to that moment of realization after, you know, really looking into it and trying to ascertain what was happening with her, when she realized that it was, there was something else going on, that there was medium, you know, these mediumistic tendencies that she felt she was having.

11:52

Who was she starting to then kind of surround herself by or who was she influenced by as she kind of started that journey into her mediumship?

Well, it was in the 1920s that she really started to kind of pursue this in a serious way.

12:11

My impression that I I get from her and her later pursuits of this was that once she had an answer as to what this may have been, she dived into it.

And it was in the 1920s that she started to really study this with a man named James Hewitt McKenzie, who was the founder of the British College of Psychic Science.

12:31

And this is where she first learned.

She in her mediumship, she really dived into transmediumship where she would kind of channel information from a repeated entity that if you could say, quote UN quote, works with her during her mediumship.

12:47

And this is where she first came into contact with her first control, so to speak, who she named Ivani.

She did try to dive into the spiritualist movement, but she didn't like it.

She found that the spiritualist movement was not as science minded as she was.

13:09

She was very, very strict about wanting to find the scientific cause, the scientific process that went into her being able to get these messages and this information.

So spiritualism, she tried it, she didn't like it.

13:24

She found that they jumped to conclusions too quickly or they weren't very concerned with proof, and that was very, very much against everything that she stood for.

So even though she she kind of dabbled in spiritualism a little bit, but she also got out of it fairly quickly for this much more scientific pursuit.

13:45

She continued to do her transmediumship, but she became less and less involved with that specific spiritualist.

Movement.

So obviously we, we're thinking about her involvement with one particular case, which is the R1 O1 airship disaster in order to kind of try and look at and examine her involvement in that.

14:07

Do you want to just provide a an overview of what happened with the airship to explain the disaster itself so we can then, you know, really fully understand her role later with regards to what happened?

Sure.

So the the R1 O1 airship disaster is this is is going to be very broad strokes about about this disaster.

14:27

This is a very complicated disaster that happened.

But in a nutshell on the R1 O one was a airship that was constructed in 1929 as part of a British government program.

They wanted to try to develop airships as a way to make carrying mail quicker a possibility, but also just for people to be able to travel to places that were inaccessible or extremely difficult to get to by other means.

14:56

So they wanted to build this airship program and this, the R1 O one, was kind of their their big crown jewel of achievement.

This was going to be the thing that would open up this new chapter in history.

There was a lot of problems with this airship, though.

From all outward appearances, this was a marvel.

15:15

This was something that was going to change everything for a lot of people in a lot of different industries.

But there were issues.

There were tests that were conducted where there were things that probably should have been looked at or results that were not optimal to have this airship carrying people over these long distances.

15:34

The kind of testing and the results is extensive.

They can be found online.

But despite all of this, despite all of these kind of warning signs and red flags of, you know, maybe this isn't ready yet, maybe we should take a step back here.

It was it was certified on October 2nd, 1930.

15:53

Its first flight was October 4th, 1930.

And because this was the inaugural flight, this was a big deal.

So everybody of importance was on this flight when it took off, you know, outlook was, was high, everything was positive, everything was great.

16:12

Like I said, this was going to change everything.

But before long they they ran into a lot of weather conditions like huge, huge torrential downpour, heavy, heavy wind gusts.

These are all things that in testing should have been a clear sign that this ship is not ready.

16:33

But here it was.

It was in the air.

People were already in it.

It it was too late.

So the ship kept moving on, moving on, rain, wind, and it started to dip.

It started to dive, losing altitude.

It would try to come back up, lose more altitude.

16:51

And only a couple hours into its inaugural flight, it crashed into the ground just outside of the town of Hope.

I'm pronouncing this correctly, Bouvet in France, 2:00 AM.

It burst into flame.

And there were 48 people that died as a result of this airship crash.

17:11

And after this crash, you know, all of these extremely high hopes that were held for this new industry, this new chapter, it, it was dashed to the ground.

And of course, what you then have in the wake of that is the what happened?

How did this go so badly wrong?

Because all eyes were on it.

17:27

Everybody was looking at it like you said, when it's the the first of its kind and and the weight of expectation from from so many different perspectives is is all on it.

Then when it goes so disastrously wrong, it I think even it heightens that even more that need to know exactly what happened.

17:46

Yeah, I mean, this, this was something that people were so excited about.

This was something that that had so much opportunity and people were so hopeful about it.

And everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

And I'm, I mean, unfortunately we hear this a lot with these big disasters.

18:04

You know, there were red flags.

Maybe this should have been looked at what went wrong and it just everything that could have went wrong did and unfortunately a couple hours was the entire lifespan of the R1 O1.

And I think we have to put it into context of, you know, the period at that particular time.

18:20

You know, we've just had World War One, we've had the flu epidemic.

And so, you know, it's this kind of pivotal moment just after this, isn't it?

You know, the proceed the following years preceding those events.

And so again, there's this real sense of hope, needing to have something to uplift.

18:39

And so again, everybody's eyes are on it.

And the loss of life is just catastrophic.

I mean, a really terribly tragic disaster that resulted in lots of, you know, lots of of sadly people who lost their lives.

And again, was just very much something in the press, in the public domain being discussed, being examined by so many different fronts.

19:03

And I and I suppose then thinking about the next step of that, you know, we have this huge disaster that obviously everybody is concerned about, everybody knows of, everybody's heard of.

How is it that Eileen Garrett became involved in the events that surrounded the disaster?

19:24

So.

Eileen Garrett, as I as I said, she continued with her mediumship.

She wasn't so much involved in the spiritualist movement, but she was still working as a trans medium.

And there was a Australian journalist named Ian Koster and he was looking to conduct a seance in England and he reached out to Harry Price.

19:48

We, we all know Harry Price.

I know we've discussed Harry Price multiple times.

And he reached out to Harry Price to hold this seance.

But the reason he wanted the seance actually had nothing to do with the tragedy of the R1 O1.

Ian Coster wanted to hold the seance to talk to Arthur Conan Doyle.

20:07

He had recently died.

He was someone who was very, very involved and spoke and outspoken in the spiritualist community.

And I guess the the train of thought was of.

Of course, we would have a seance to talk to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

That's it's perfect.

It goes right in line with everything that he believed, everything he stood for.

20:26

This is a perfect way to reach out to him.

So Harry Price reached out to Garrett.

He was familiar with her being a trans medium.

And only a couple days later, remember the R1 O1 crashed on October 4th.

This seance took place on October 7th and there was no information given to Garrett.

20:46

She was just given a place to arrive in.

She was unfamiliar with the purpose of the seance.

She was not familiar with anybody who was going to be in attendance.

It was arranged over the phone and it was just be here at this time.

21:03

She showed up and the goal was to talk to Arthur Conan Doyle, but that is not what happened.

She.

Settled in, began her session of transmediumship, began channeling this entity Giovanni that she had spoken through and messages came through.

21:19

But it became very, very clear very, very quickly it was not Conan Doyle.

And the conclusion after this very, very long series of messages that came through was that the person that was actually speaking through Garrett at that time was Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael Irwin of the.

21:38

R1.

O1.

So just to kind of continue with that thread, you know, do you want to just elaborate on the details of the seance and, and what messages he then conveyed once it's been determined that, you know, this was who she was channelling?

What were the details of of some of the things that he conveyed to her whilst in her trance state?

21:59

So the the.

Opening of this entire session, as she was trying to, you know, going into this trance state and getting these messages, the first thing that came out was never mind about me, but do for heaven's sake give this to them.

The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for the engine capacity.

22:20

And from there, there is a very long series of information that was given from this same voice and the details that we're given here.

It talks about the engines being too heavy.

It talks about the elevators being jammed.

22:36

It talks about oil pipes plugged and how the material that the that the airship was made out of was not suitable for the type of weather that it could have been encountering.

It talked about very, very detailed information about greater lift, the what was used that had a greater lifting ability than helium, what may have caused the explosion, altitudes that it was flying at that the weight that was being carried by the ship was too heavy and it went beyond just mechanical.

23:10

That type of knowledge for the airship.

There were references to like airship plans that were not available to the public, but were available and would have been familiar to Irwin with his role in this airship.

23:26

There were also references to flying over small towns that would have made no sense at the time because no, but the only way that they, you could verify that this town was even remotely connected to this airship and this flight was that they, they learned that the maps that were on the airship were railroad maps.

23:49

And the only mention of these little, this little town that came through in these messages, they showed up on the railroad maps that were on the airship.

So it was very, very specific information, both just as far as information that would have only been known or seen from people on the ship that night.

24:08

And this very, very intricate mechanical engineering information that would have only been known to people that were very, very closely associated with the construction, with the process going up to getting this airship off the ground.

And unfortunately, who would have been on the ship in its final moments?

24:27

This is information that Garrett would have had zero way of knowing and would have had no opportunity to prepare for, so to speak, given that she had no idea why she was going into the Seance in the first place.

And I think This is why this case is so particularly interesting because, you know, for the skeptics who heard of this encounter and this particular seance, you know, it would be easy to say, well, it's in the public domain.

24:54

Things are being discussed in the public domain, information is out there.

This has all just simply come from things that are already publicly in everybody's collective understanding.

But this went beyond that.

This really did go into detail that would require very precise, specific information that first of all wasn't known, but also did seem to come from the knowledge of someone with an aviation background, like you said, mentioning things like the blueprints, understanding of those, which Eileen Garrett being a woman for a start, but not having that kind of background.

25:34

It, it does baffle the the brain to think how is it that she could possibly have had that kind of information when it wasn't in the public domain and it also wasn't part of her, her world and her sphere to to know that to begin with it.

It really does kind of, I think very much move away from that skeptic broad stroke answer of, well, she must have just been able to get all of this from what was out in the public in the wake of the disaster.

26:02

It just doesn't hold up.

That doesn't answer everything in terms of what she was able to share.

Right.

And there, there's one exchange that I, I really kind of enjoyed with this and with the SEANCE where there was one point where Harry Price commented, there was a comment made about crude oil that was being used in the airship.

26:21

And there was a point where Harry Price made the remark that crude oil is not inflammable.

And Garrett Yovani, Irwin, whoever you, you want to attribute this to, snapped right back and said, no, this is inflammable.

And it turns out that when it was, a much closer look was put at the.

26:40

Role.

Of this oil and how it was used in the airship in that scenario and how it was being used Garrett Ivani Irwin was correct and Harry Price was not.

So when I say that the the information that was being passed on was extremely intricate was extremely, you know a niche set of information it's it went far beyond someone just saying, hey, I was on the airship.

27:06

This was very, very detailed, intricate knowledge of the mechanics of it, terminology that like you said, Garrett would not have known, especially going into the SEANCE with no information previous.

And are there kind of other examples from what she was able to share at that point in terms of information about the disaster?

27:30

Are there things that we we now know are verified in terms of things that she conveyed, that we can say actually that was something that happened, that was part of the reason why this disaster happened.

Yes, so, so there was a lot of information out in the media.

27:46

There was a lot of investigation about what happened in the R 101, but one of the most striking examples, I think of this type of verification.

So while this seance was going on, it was being documented.

I mean, the thing was called by by a reporter, by a journalist.

28:03

So it was being documented.

Harry.

Price also took extensive notes about what was going on.

And as time kind of went on and as this was being investigated, as this was still very, very fresh in people's mind, there was a a man who came forward named Will Carlton.

28:20

Will Carlton was a supply officer for R1 O1.

He was very, very knowledgeable about every step of this ship.

He knew what went into it.

He knew it in and out and he was very close with the people who were on that ship who unfortunately lost their lives.

28:37

He approached Harry Price and he wanted to take a look at the notes from Garrett Seance.

Harry Price obliged, gave him the notes And this is another account that you you can read online where Will Carlton went through and added his own notes to the transcription line by line.

28:58

He verifies or or makes comments on the things that were said by Garrett and the vast majority of his notation is this is very probable, this is likely, this is known, and he goes through very, very detailed and confirms all of this information that came from the Garrett science.

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32:16

Let us venture forth, for the journey into the unknown has only just begun.

And you kind of mentioned that obviously as part of this seance, it was being witnessed as people who were present, Harry Price, for example, the journalist who was also present.

32:38

And the fact that it was being documented, the fact that it was caught by a journalist, I think is, is, is just genius because it does mean that you have live reporting and, and of that account, which is great.

But in terms of their response, the witnesses who were there that day.

32:53

What were their?

Reactions to Garrett's communications at the time.

I haven't been able to find any specific accounts from the other attendees, but I I can only imagine like this.

This was only a couple days.

After this tragedy took place.

33:10

So it's it's interesting to me what their reaction would have been.

Was it intriguing?

Did they believe it?

Did they think this was just some very disrespectful act of theater, especially since they were there to talk to Arthur Conan Doyle?

33:26

They got something that they were not intending and it was something that could have been seen as very controversial.

So it is very intriguing to me as to, you know, did they go and talk to the press?

Did they keep this to themselves?

It's unfortunately something that I I I'm not sure.

33:43

It's like so many things though, within this kind of period where we have these individuals, they have, we have these really interesting cases like like Thomas Bradford again, but there are still black holes.

There are still parts about it that you just don't have full exposure of, that you don't fully get the full picture of.

34:00

And again, I think there's multiple reasons for that gender time frame, maybe just they're not part of the clique and don't get the same kind of attention.

There's just so many reasons.

It it for me, it does mean that I think you know, some of these cases, some of these individuals really do need further investigation to really try and get to the heart of what happened in that particular moment.

34:23

Rather than this broad stroke understanding of this time frame and the examination, the analysis that was taking place in terms of fraudulent medium ships and and mediums in general and what they were doing in the spiritualist community.

34:38

It does often get lumped all together in the in the fraudulent claims, which I think is is a shame because like I said, they they all they are all so unique and deserve some real attention to understand what was going on.

And especially here, given that post, this seance and the documentation, we have someone else stepping in who understands the material and seems to add this weight of authority to kind of look at the techno technical aspects of the failure of the ship and add their own weight alongside what was coming through.

35:18

You know, the fact there is there is this kind of verification as part of their understanding.

There's so many things that we can't just say it was all fraudulent.

It it couldn't have possibly happened like this.

It was all in the public domain.

That's that doesn't seem to hold up with what other people believed at the time and what they were reporting.

35:39

And likewise doesn't seem to report to kind of hold up with what was being reported in the press.

And I suppose the, the question to ask you and to, for us to think about, I think is given that what was the, the reaction from the, from the general public, You know, what was the reaction from the scientific community, the spiritualist community, these different sectors, who once they heard of this, what was their response?

36:05

What did they believe was going on?

I, I think the response to Eileen Garrett was somewhat frantic.

Like I said this, this seance occurred only days after this enormous tragedy.

This was something that was still so raw and so painful for the country, for everyone involved.

36:24

And now you have this woman saying, Oh well, I talked to him and here, and not only did I talk to him, but I talked to Lieutenant Erwin and he's telling me everything that went.

Wrong.

This had the ability to make a lot of people look very, very bad.

36:41

And that's part of the reason why one of the people or one of the groups who really was interested in speaking to Garrett were intelligence agencies.

They wanted to know, how did you get this information?

Why do you have this information?

Unfortunately, when it came down to any formal investigations, even though her information was so spot on, even though it was so disturbingly accurate, there wasn't anything that could actually be officially put on paper or used because it was just an account from this person speaking.

37:18

There was no formal documentation.

So she was spoken to, but it became just another account of her giving her messages from Irwin.

It did open a lot of doors for her though.

37:34

As I said, Garrett was working as a transmedium.

But this, this case with the R1, O1 disaster put a huge spotlight on her.

All of a sudden there was a lot of these scientific agencies, all of these, and I'm sure spiritualism too, even though it was something that she kind of turned her back on a little bit.

37:53

Now, there was a lot of intrigue as to here is this account that we can't figure out how she knows this.

Let's look at her, let's look at this ability.

Let's study this person.

And it's something that she would have jumped on.

38:09

We, we spoke briefly before how she was very, very much of the scientific mindset when it came to her abilities.

She was very, very outspoken about how she did not believe in life after death.

She did not believe so much in the spiritualism and mediumship.

38:26

She believed that the reason she was able to get these messages was through a manipulation of a magnetic field and that her her the channeler that she used, Giovanni.

She believed that was just a layer of her subconscious.

So this gave both both sides of the coin, this will multiple sides of the coin.

38:47

This gave the public, this gave these scientific agencies, this gave the spiritual Lous movement a very unique person to look at and study and study is what Eileen Garrett wanted.

She was very science science minded.

39:04

So after this R.

One O 1 disaster.

Happened and after these accounts came out of all the information that she had, now she had people reaching out to her saying they wanted to study her abilities and that is what brought her to the United States to be formally studied.

39:19

I was going to say that I she's one that very much was in demand.

And yeah, was brought over to the US for precisely that reason, and within the UK as well.

But there were people very much interested in testing, testing their theories and testing these very, you know, these various ideas to really try and understand what she was doing, if she was doing anything, if it was fraudulent, you know, this real desire just to try and understand what was going on.

39:50

Because I think she was rather unique.

I think the fact that her perspective was not from a place of believing, like you mentioned, that there was life after death.

She she does seem to offer something very different, which again, I suppose.

40:07

Given that uniqueness of her position also shows up well, what else could be going on?

Is there something else?

Does it?

You know, it kind of opens up the discourse around what is happening if someone is experiencing mediumistic tendencies.

And I'm, I'm sure these, these scientific study groups, these universities, these, these people that wanted to study her, this was a very, I would imagine to them, this was a very unique opportunity because if they approached people from the spiritualism movement, unfortunately, we know from a lot of accounts, Garrett included, that they were on very different, very, very different wavelengths with a lot of things.

40:47

Here was a woman who was like, no, I know this is rooted in science.

So this was somebody who was going to work with them in a way that was probably very unique in something that they wanted to study.

Somebody who was very much in their same mindset and was like, yes, experiment, do rigorous testing on me, let's get to the bottom of this in the same way that they were looking to get the answers.

41:13

So just kind of coming back to the disaster itself, do we know of Eileen's particular response to that site that that seance in terms of how did she feel about the information that she received?

What did she want to do with it, if anything?

41:29

I have not been able to find any direct account from Garrett about her reaction to the results that she found in the SEANCE.

I'm sure that when she came out of this trance state, that she was just as shocked as everybody else around her that this had come out so soon after this tragedy, that it was somebody related so closely to it and the amount of information that was so detailed.

41:59

But obviously it was something that she felt verified what she was doing.

I I don't feel that if she had come out of this without I, I don't feel that she would have come out of this with anything more than a stronger desire to figure out what she could do.

42:18

And I think.

That's part of the reason that she probably jumped very enthusiastically to these institutions, these universities that wanted to study how she worked.

So I don't have any personal accounts or quotes of her reaction to this.

42:35

But I can imagine that after she had come to and had seen what she had said and had, had made this realization that she had come out with some very, very specific information that was going to be very difficult to credit to anything other than some sort of out of worldly ability.

42:52

I, I'm, I'd like to think she was excited about it and that it just fuelled her intrigue and her thirst for knowledge more and her willingness to take part in these things.

And I, I was just going to say, I, I kind of think the same thing because I think her motivation and the fact that we do see her being then catapulted, particularly after the involvement with this case and this particular seance, the fact that we see her being catapulted into the public domain and to, you know, people's understanding on a totally different platform all around the world, people internationally wanting to investigate, to interrogate, to look to her mediumship.

43:39

I think the fact that she does throw herself into that, yes, it speaks to her analytical, scientific mind, I think, but I think it also speaks to her, her really trying to understand her own mediumship.

I think tied with this case, I think probably that deepened that desire to understand that would need to understand what exactly she was doing if if this was the result, you know, something like this that is coming through to her in a trance state of such significance.

44:11

I, I think it adds weight to that real enthusiasm to want to know more, to understand exactly what happened to her in that moment, in this, in this, in this particular case with this particular disaster, what was going on, what she was experiencing.

44:27

And I think that, again, I think that speaks to her, as I say, her science brain, her analytical brain.

But like you said, that enthusiasm to just continue to want to discover more about it, to understand what was happening.

I think it speaks to both.

Yeah, And this is something that she she went on to have other pursuits, but this is something that never left her brain.

44:52

In the early 60s, she still had this on her mind.

She still wanted to know, was this real?

Was this valid?

Was the information that I got really truly significant and match what happened?

So, you know, 30 years later, she approached a friend of hers name, name a man named Archie Jarman.

45:12

He was a businessman.

He was an author.

And she asked him if he would be able to compile a report on the R1 O1 crash specifically for the purpose of testing the validity of what she said against the facts of this case.

45:27

Now this.

Is 30 years later, so there's a.

Lot more information that would have come to light to be tested against and Jarmon.

It's interesting that she talked to Jarmon, but it also makes sense in, in a way, Jarmon was very, very outspoken against psychic phenomena, but at the same time, he was a close friend of Garrett's and she trusted him.

45:50

She knew that if there was something off, he would tell her.

So we still have this pursuit decades later of wanting to know if what she said was valid.

And Jarmon, I believe it took about six months and he came up with this very intense, very dense 80,000 Word document that exhaustively combed over the entire tragedy of the R101.

46:21

Unfortunately, this report was never published.

It never came to light, but it also never painted Garrett in a negative light.

It was very, very clear about, yes, this information was correct.

And Jarmon, even though he was such a very outspoken out, very outspokenly against these types of things, he himself said that there was validity to this and there was something else happening here, that this was a legitimate transfer of information from a source unknown.

46:55

Through Garrett, I find it interesting that that document was never published.

Again, it poses a question, why?

I believe that the time the reason that it wasn't published was because it was still detailing people connected to the crash, family members, that type of thing.

47:18

But to the best of my knowledge, it still has never been has never formally been published.

And I think often in in those types of scenarios, it kind of comes back to something you you referenced earlier, which is this was not just a disaster because of the the incident itself, but a public disaster that would have garnered criticism of institutions, organizations, people for allowing this to happen.

47:47

And, you know, you have to, you have to ask the question, does that mean that some information wasn't forthcoming that wasn't shared because of that concern, especially whilst family members were still alive, you know, relatives of those involved in the crash with that still being fresh for them, certainly, and them still being able to do something about it, you know, did they not want that in the public domain because of of that connection with, you know, involvement?

48:20

So decisions and actions that were questionable, quite frankly.

Yeah, it was definitely AI mean.

It was extremely delicate when she gave this seance, you know, just a couple days after, but it remained a very, very delicate topic because there was so much potential fault.

48:40

And because this was something that as more and more information began to trickle out, you know when you start to make that realization of this could have been avoided it it makes it a very difficult thing to to wrangle in and discuss in such a way.

48:58

So in what ways would you say this particular seance impacted the perception of mediumship in terms of serious investigations?

Did it change the way people viewed the potential role of mediums, maybe in uncovering truths at the time?

49:16

Eileen Garrett When I first read this story, I was very surprised that this was not more well known, that this was not spoken about because of how extremely accurate and extremely detailed this reading this seance was and with all the circumstances rounded it is it in my opinion, it is definitely one of the most, it is one of the strongest examples of receiving information from another side and it turning out to be valid and to be accurate.

49:55

I think it definitely opened up doors for some people.

I, I do believe it, it opened a lot of doors in terms of the scientific pursuit of an answer, find out what happened.

So I do think it definitely put a spotlight on that type of study of mediumship and psychic ability.

50:16

But unfortunately it it does seem to have kind of faded into the background, which is stunning to me considering what an incredible case this was and how strongly it was connected to this disaster.

50:32

And it's, it's interesting when you read examinations of her and, and what people believe was going on as, as I kind of mentioned earlier, there was a, you know, a large portion of people who just thought that, well, this is because she was just able to pick up on this information that was out there in the public domain.

50:51

You know, other people saying that, well, this is clearly someone who is suffering from some kind of dissociative state.

And this, like you mentioned, this is just something coming from her own consciousness.

And again, if it's out there in the public domain, therefore it's already things that she's aware of.

51:09

But now is this, here's this moment where she's tapping into that something she might have only seen as a headline and she's tapping into that in this in this particular state.

Again, given how notable this case is, how unique this case is compared to other, the events of this type, it is a really strong example, I think, as you said, of communication coming through from somewhere.

51:36

In terms of what happened somewhere.

We've kind of put it in those air quotes.

The fact that it hasn't had more scrutiny fascinates me.

It really intrigues me, the fact that it hasn't happened.

And again, it throws up lots of questions as to why, but I think it makes it an enduring fascination.

51:52

Therefore, the fact that there hasn't been such rigor around it to truly understand what was happening or to, to verify or debunk finally, you know, set, you know, put the story to rest if you like, as to her involvement and how accurate she really was, you know, put it up to scientific rigor and scrutiny with everything we now know that's never happened, which I think is the missing piece to the whole picture, which again, is a shame.

52:19

Yeah, absolutely.

I feel like there was so much opportunity with this case that really should have been and still should be pursued in terms of looking at it as a legitimate case study of mediumship.

52:41

And likewise, I think, you know, other there are other mediums, other notable mediums and events that we know of that again, I think deserve the same kind of scrutiny with fresh eyes, with a, you know, an understanding from where we are now.

52:56

Maybe looking back, that didn't happen at the time because I think there's still things that we can learn from them.

And this is precisely why, you know, having these types of conversations is so important because for many, they may never even have even heard of Eileen Garrett.

They meant may never have heard of the R1 O1 disaster and this particular communication, this particular seance.

53:19

But it's a fascinating one.

And it's it's one that you can go and look up and you can find more.

Out about Yeah, it is.

I highly encourage people to go online and find both the transcripts and the notes from the seance itself, and then also the notes that were added in by Will Carlson and where he verifies yet this this was likely.

53:43

This is true as far as we know.

And I mean, like I said, he it's not a very like broad sweeping generalization by him.

He really dug in.

He was very closely tied to this tragedy.

So he went in line by line and added his input to it.

54:01

And of course, maybe a good starting place is, is finding the article, the essay that you wrote that's in the Feminine Macabre 6, which obviously you know, it sits alongside some other really good writers.

That whole breath that we talked about at the beginning.

There's such an array of different topics, but you give such a concise overview and understanding of the key players, what happened, the timeline that I think just helps give that foundation, that base so that if you then want to go look at the sources themselves and and scrutinize them, I think it kind of is that sounding, that sounding board for that, that platform for that, that I think again, would be would be fantastic if people, if people had in mind to do that to to follow up with it would be great.

54:46

So.

This is a.

Very, very.

Large topic.

It's just a very, this was something that ties in this national tragedy with this, you know, mediumship and scientific study and a lot of different players.

So I, I tried really hard to kind of put it together in a way that it was clear to understand, to understand all of these roles because this was something that much unlike Thomas Bradford, this didn't disappear quickly.

55:15

You know, Eileen Garrett did multiple sessions where she channeled people.

I, I know we mostly spoke about Lieutenant Irwin, but this happened to multiple times where she also spoke to different people involved in the R1 O1.

And it got to such a fine detail so that she was also speaking about secret Diaries that no one knew about that would come out later.

55:39

So again, it's a very, very broad topic, but I tried really, really hard to get all of these pieces that were so all over the place and, and talked about so many different aspects of this and put it into a kind of concise volume that looked at all of the different aspects of it, but still made it easy to understand and to really read and get the full scope of what was going on.

56:07

Yeah, because it was years, it was years in the making this this event in terms of of how it played out for for Eileen and again, the different players who were looking at it alongside who had that interest.

So it is it is a fascinating one.

56:22

It's 1:00.

I definitely recommend people trying to explore a little bit further.

And thank you so much for coming along today to give some of that insight and have that conversation around Eileen Garrett and the R1 O1 disaster with us.

For for us to be able to explore that with you, I think is just fascinating.

56:39

It's been a great, it's been a great chat, as always.

Thank you so much for having me on to discuss this.

Like I said, this is this is something when I first started to kind of write about it for the Feminine macabre, I, I knew a little bit, I knew about the R101.

56:57

I knew there was something that had happened there where there was some sort of mediumship reading involved, but when I really started to dig into it, it was like, this is a much bigger thing and this is fascinating.

So to have the opportunity to come on and talk about it, I just, I appreciate this so much.

57:16

And every time we talk, I appreciate it so much.

I love our conversations on these things.

And as always, I'll make sure that links to Hushed Up History are in the podcast description notes.

They're already on the website linked to the episodes for that you yourself have been on before.

57:34

But I'll also make sure the the link to the feminine macabre book series are on the the, you know, the podcast description notes again, so that just to make it easier for everybody.

So yeah, I, I encourage people to take a look find you find hushed up history.

You will not regret regret it.

57:50

I am I don't know how many years now I've been following and I I never get bored reading anything you write.

I literally jump on it when you when you put something out there like yes, right, this is.

What I oh, I appreciate that.

So much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'll say goodbye to everybody listening.

58:07

Bye everybody.