Barkel, Kathleen

Barkel, Kathleen

(religion, spiritualism, and occult)

Kathleen Barkel was a British trance and apport medium. Her spirit guide was White Hawk, who claimed to have been chief of the Sioux approximately 800 years ago. Kathleen started to display psychic gifts as a child but serious mediumship did not develop until 1922. For some years she worked at the British College of Psychic Science, giving séances and doing healings with her husband.

Maurice Barbanell claimed that White Hawk treated apport séances as a party with himself giving out gifts. Barbanell described the guide as “breezy and genial, with a characteristic laugh.” Barbarnell also wrote: “The only physical indication that Mrs. Barkel had that an apport séance would shortly take place was the curious fact that for days beforehand her figure began to swell. At the end of the séance her body resumed its normal size. I do not know the explanation. My theory is that in some way or other her body was used to store the ectoplasm required to rematerialise the objects after they had been brought through the atmosphere, doubtless in their atomic form.”

Nandor Fodor stated that the usual apports were beautifully cut precious and semiprecious stones. The guide placed the medium’s hand over that of the sitter and the apport “formed,” or materialized, between the two hands.

Sources:

Barbanell, Maurice: This Is Spiritualism. Oxshott: The Spiritual Truth Press, 1959Fodor, Nandor: Encyclopedia of Psychic Science. London: Arthurs Press, 1933