COME ON EILEEN: Morgan remembers the supernormal life of Eileen J. Garrett

* By Morgan Knudsen *

Entityseeker Paranormal Research & Teachings

The paranormal is a magical

place, and any good author and reader knows that magical places are filled with magical characters. Now I don’t mean magical in the ‘princess and the dragon’ sense, but parapsychology has a way of demonstrating to us that magic exists in many forms and presents a task to science which, at times, feels impossible, and yet it always manages to scamper along and catch up. Perhaps that is one of the best things about parapsychology: it teaches us that magic, monsters, and fantastic characters really do exist in the brilliance of what we call reality.

Often, the simplest of characters are born from humble beginnings sprinkled with a bit of mystery and, as we journey with them, they become the greatest of heroes. The story of one such incredible and influential character (perhaps one of the most important in the book of scientific study and our journey into real magic), is that of Eileen Garrett: A young girl who would grow up to be one of the most revered mediums in the world and embark on a life adventure full of spiritualism, war, romance and ending in founding one of the world’s leading centers in parapsychological study.

This is the remarkable story of Eileen Garrett.

Eileen wasn’t born into a famous family, nor was she a notable child in any way. In fact, she was so unremarkable there was even debate about her date of birth. Census records seem to show that she was born in County Meath, Ireland, on 14th March 1892, although most published accounts give the date as 7th March 1893. When she was 7 months old, her mother tragically passed away and she was sent to live with her aunt Martha and her uncle William on their family farm, and they decided to call her instead by her middle name, Jeannie.

Eileen spent most of her time alone, playing with the farm animals and connecting with nature. She had very few friends and it wasn’t long before she was considered a loner and the ‘weird kid’, and that she should just be left by herself to play with her “imaginary friends”.

Martha had no use for Eileen’s imaginary friends or invisible playmates either. Any experience Eileen had was dismissed as a fantasy and the imagination of a silly little girl. The night that began to change everything for Eileen didn’t arise until she was a little older. It was the first time she experienced the apparition of Martha’s sister, Leone, and she noted that she was holding something. She looked outside and saw the woman struggling with a baby in her arms whom she didn’t recognize. Immediately Eileen rushed to Leone’s side to help her into the house. ‘I am going away now and must take the baby with me.’ Eileen fetched Martha but when they looked for Leone she had disappeared. Confused, Martha turned on Eileen, accusing her of lying and that she was being a naughty little girl. Eileen pleaded with her aunt that the apparition was indeed real and that she was telling the truth, but Martha would hear none of it. Eileen ran to her room, falling into her bed and bursting into tears. She cried herself to sleep and when she awoke the next morning, she felt sick all over, angry with grief and depression and her body heavy with the weariness of a long night of tears.

She avoided her aunt for the rest of the afternoon but that night at supper, Martha had news. She instructed Eileen that she was to leave the home and not return, for which Eileen was grateful. However, she was quickly sent to her room with no dinner at all and later Martha informed her that the decision came on the heels of the news of Leone’s death. She had died in childbirth the night Eileen had seen her and Martha believed Eileen was solely responsible. Eileen was to be sent to a boarding school in Dublin, far from home where she would learn how to act and behave as a ‘normal’ girl.

Eileen had three imaginary companions, whom she later identified from photographs as deceased children from the neighbourhood. By the time Eileen began school, she would say she felt no different than anyone else, but her peers felt differently and she became increasingly aware that her perception of the world was vastly different than those of the other children.

Once studying in Dublin, Eileen kept to herself and her schoolwork, not divulging to anyone what she was experiencing in the supernatural. The boarding school was harsh and unforgiving, and yet another place she didn’t fit in. However, it didn’t stop the experiences from occurring.

The next spirit to pay her a visit was her uncle William and his appearance was welcome. He had wonderful news to deliver: He told her that he understood her troubled relationship with Martha but nevertheless encouraged her to submit to her wishes whenever possible. William also said that in two years she would be free, as she would be going to London for study. Just as promised, within two years she was in South England, having been sent there due to a previous lung condition.

At age 15, Eileen’s fortunes seemed to begin to take a turn for the better with her first real love, an architect named Clive Barry who initially thought she was much older than she was. He took her on a whirlwind of romance, showing her the city and taking her to places she had never been before. She fell head over heels and slowly but surely, began to trust him with her strange experiences and abilities. Clive welcomed them and, on that note, proposed to her. She accepted and it seemed like her fairy tale was finally beginning to show signs of a happy ending. However, once they were married, something about Clive shifted and changed. He confronted her about her mediumship and told her she was to stop it immediately. He demanded she father his children, be a ‘proper hostess’ to the friends he wanted to have over, and to keep her mouth shut about any feelings she may have had about it.

However, childbearing would prove almost impossible for her and after the death of three of her babies, it was advised that Eileen find some activities to occupy herself outside of the home so she didn’t fall into depression. She jumped into the role of helping others and creativity, working briefly for social services and then branching out into the world of comedy and theatre. She loved the new energy it was bringing her, however when Clive noticed her emotional shift from depression to joy, he immediately forbade it and locked her back in the family home. Relegated once again into isolation, Eileen had no choice but to turn inwards. She became able to perceive the world through her fingertips and ‘knowing’ came to her more easily through the nape of her neck, her feet and her knees rather than through her eyes and ears. Clive began to notice that Eileen would have moments where she seemed to lose awareness and then begin talking about places and people no one else recognized.

Concerned for her mental health, he sent her to a psychiatrist, but the consultation only convinced Eileen that she needed to come to terms with her experiences on her own. Finally, after months of continued effort, Eileen became pregnant and had a healthy baby girl at age 23, only to find out Clive had already gone elsewhere for a new wife. Their marriage collapsed and

Eileen fell in love soon after with another man. She predicted his passing due to a landmine explosion during the First World

War and was confirmed correct. It wasn’t until she fell into the arms of James Garrett, an old family friend who had ended up with a leg injury at a local hospital. As they visited, Eileen and James fell in love and in 1918, she married him. For the next nine years, however, her abilities and the world of the paranormal began to consume her. Jim had no interest in it whatsoever and no matter how Eileen tried to ignore her instinct and calling, she simply could not.

Determined to follow her dreams and a greater understanding of what she knew to be true in her heart, Eileen found Edward Carpenter in 1919. In the two years she knew Carpenter, Garrett later wrote, she underwent the ‘most profound spiritual experience’ of her life, ‘a sense of release, of being set free, of being reborn’. Finally, she was on the path her inner guidance was calling her towards, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, this was where she was meant to be. She wasn’t crazy or having hallucinations, and she wasn’t strange and outcast, she was a medium and she had found her purpose. She had no idea this was only the beginning of her true adventure into what Carpenter called “Cosmic consciousness”, but she was ready for whatever was to come.

In 1926, Eileen met a man who claimed he was a clairvoyant and like Carpenter, he would prove to be another vital contact. He told her he believed she had ‘latent powers’ that encompassed a range of unique psychic abilities,including clairvoyance and clairaudience, distant healing, and psychometry. After accurately holding a watch he passed her and, using the process of psychometry, gaining accurate impressions from the watch, Eileen was introduced to the College of Psychic Studies where she proved to have an influence on table tipping experiments. She also began to freely enter trances where she channeled a man named Uvani from the Orient. He would relay messages from deceased people to the sitting group.

Her love of the world she had glimpsed was so great and so powerful, her marriage ended after nine years, and she kept the last name of Garrett.

As she moved about the world of spiritualism, Eileen wasn’t entirely convinced her answers lay there. She began to branch outside of that circle and lean towards the scientific studies of Harry Price at the National Laboratory for Psychical Research. Throughout the 1930’s, she volunteered her services wherever she could, seeking her own answers and helping any scientist who happened to be studying the psychic realm and survival after death. Eileen threw herself into the world of parapsychology and the further down the rabbit hole she went, the more passionate she became. But trouble was brewing.

While in Germany, World War One was coming to an end… but World War Two was fast on its heels. A growing darkness was descending over Europe in the form of swastikas and the red and black flag of the Nazi party. A sickness was beginning to spread and knowing she was no longer safe to be speaking about psychic abilities in a growing communist regime, Eileen fled to France. Following her calling to help others, she immediately found a soup kitchen at an orphanage and began to point her efforts towards helping the children in trouble, but soon the darkness spread. Germans flooded into France, the Nazis began to move their stronghold across the continent, destroying and pillaging cities and minds. Fearing for her life, Eileen got a flight to Portugal and barely escaped by the end of 1940.

In America, the war was an ever-popular subject, and the press was in full swing gathering whatever stories they could. Harrowing tales of air raids and hero soldiers flooded the newspapers. So, when Eileen had contact with the spirit of a downed R-101 airship which had crashed in France, the world’s eyes turned to her. In Lisbon in 1940, Eileen was urged to go to America to continue lecturing and she did so, taking to the lecture circuit with the support of the American Society for Psychical Research. However, she wasn’t talking about mediumship or the science of psychometry – she was delivering psychic news reports of the goings on in Europe as the Nazi terror reigned strong. Now residing in New York and with the assistance of her long-time friend Frances Payne Bolton, she established the Creative Age Press, and from there created the pinnacle of her endeavors: The Parapsychology Foundation, to support academic parapsychology. Soon her daughEileen never forgot her roots in nature, often returning to the French gardens to read once the war had come to an end. The call and connection that nature offered was forever intertwined with her knowledge of spirit and parapsychology – to her, they were inseparable. In September of 1970, while at the European residence of the Parapsychology Foundation and after holding the 19th international conference, Eileen was reading quietly in her garden when she suffered a heart attack. She was rushed to the hospital only to pass away in Nice at age 78. On that day, her questions were answered, and she became the very thing she loved so deeply: part of the nonphysical energy that she so loved and which called her home.

To donate to the Parapsychology Foundation’s Eileen J. Garrett library and preserve this incredible and irreplaceable resource, please visit www.parapsychology.org

Morgan X