Articles

Seancing with Ted

On Saturday 19 July 1986 Ted Hughes and I set off in the evening to attend a seance at the the house of his healer, Ted Cornish. A trance-medium was to perform. 'Are we going to see something that will change our lives?', Ted said, typically trying to rev up the occasion.

There were prolonged drinks before the witching hour of 8.00 pm when the 'main event' moved freely among what was to be his audience/coven [doubtless, we thought, picking up details that would emerge later to general astonishment]. A woman, who turned out to be his assistant, did the same.

At 8.00 we were ushered into a darkened room with chairs in rows facing a wall of window curtain, creating the sense of a stage. Wavering piano music was playing on Ted Cornish's ancient hissing tape recorder. Everything had an air of Women's Institute, small-time village hall. The chairs were covered in flowered material. There were seventeen of us, mostly women.

The medium was introduced by his verbally dyslexic Australian moll with a horrible eeyore laugh.

He was the forty-something-year-old, puffy-eyed satanic type. He spoke wearisomely for half an hour in unctious tones about his guide Mr Wong, who had taught him humility (none of which he seemed to have) and promptness [why promptness?]. There was half an hour of dreary repetition of this, enlivened only but his strange habit of swinging to the left and by purile jokes in a mock Milligan 'Ecclesesque' voice.

Mr Wong, adopting a stooped stance, broke in and delivered a stream of platitudes in an English-in-a-Chinese-restaurant voice. Other voices emerged - Dr Roberts speaking in a foreigner's idea of a upper class English accent, a French doctor (franglais), a Scottish doctor ('och aye the noo'). These were followed by a Devonian -- the crowd started shifting in their seats -- he was now too near home and the force of his ridiculousness began to penetrate. He moved on rather rapidly to a footballer but he got the first name wrong and had to be corrected. An earthbound soul was next (enjoyed this). Then a shrill foul-mouthed six year old girl named Masie came through. She had a vile sense of humour and attacked with barracking and bombastic questions, particularly a ten-year old boy with chronic ailments -- 'Do you love me etc?'

The audience, rather pathetically, greeted these characters as real and said 'good evening' to each.

Then the real trance began, only to be interrupted by Ted Cornish switching on a bright light - for which he was admonsihed. He was asked to play some low-level music. He fumbled around noisily trying to turn off the tape on which he was recording the evening's proceedings and substituting the required music. It came out too loud -- he was admonished.

Suddenly, Mr Wong was back. Then Maisie was in a fire screaming and screeching. Switching to the audience she started making up nicknames for some of the women in the audience. The whole thing fell away towards the end.

'Did disbelief suspend itself for a moment?', Ted asked afterwards. I was afraid not. We decided that it was all a shocking confidence trick by an incompetent con-man who looked like a criminal. It was perhaps even more shocking as a study in the gullibility of most of those present - sadly by and large middle aged women.

At one point Ted Cornish argued that one of the 'doctors' was obviously a major surgeon but based his opinion on facts that the medium had not himself produced.

When I imitated Maisie in Ted's kitchen their cat Tamsin took off at high speed.