Spiritualism, Superstition and the Supernatural During the First World War
The second year of the First World War saw the first Zeppelin raids, the sinking of the Lusitania, the start of the Gallipoli Campaign and the Battle of Loos on the Western Front, with the Russians in retreat on the Eastern Front. The legend of the Angels of Mons becomes even more popular, with the Society for Psychical Research launching an investigation, and as casualties mount, more people seek answers from Spiritualism.
War Poet’s Lucky Escapes, Superstitions and a Ghost Sighting At the Front in 1915, Lieutenant Robert Graves, 3rd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, was counting his lucky escapes. On 28 May in the chaotic trenches among the brick stacks at Cuinchy in the sector between Ypres and the Somme, he had met a rifle-grenade at close […]
Did the Spirit of a Dead Soldier Save His Friends in the Ypres Salient? December 1915, in a frontline trench somewhere in the Ypres salient, Belgium, Second Lieutenant William M. Speight of the 3rd Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own), sat in his dug-out. The First and Second Battles of Ypres had already […]
The Thirteenth Casualty, A Story of Luck During the First World War The number thirteen had followed Joe Cassells through the First World War. First at Dixmude, then at La Bassée and when ‘crossing the bar,’ now the number would crop up a final and fateful time. From what I can tell, Cassells was still […]
War Poet Rupert Brooke died during the First World War. The mystic Aelfrida Tillyard claimed to have paranormal experiences in which she was visited by his ghost or spirit in dreams and received communications allegedly from Brook via automatic writing.
Private Cleaver Swears on Oath to Having Seen the Angels at Mons The only named witness to the Angels of Mons to come forward during the First World War was Robert Cleaver, a private in the 1st Battalion, the Cheshire Regiment. Not only did he claim to have seen the Angels, he swore an affidavit […]