Tiny Guardian Angel

One day, Florence Marryat was having a séance in her own house, together with a lady friend, Miss Clark. Suddenly, a female spirit came to the table. 

“Who are you?” Florence asked. “And for whom do you come?”

“I am Tiny,” the spirit answered. “A friend of Major M. I need your help.”

When Florence inquired about the specific relation of the spirit to Major M., Tiny said she was the mother of his child.

“What do you want me to do for you then?” Florence asked.

“Tell Major M. he must go down to Portsmouth and look after my daughter,” Tiny said. “He has not seen her for years. The old man is a drunkard and now his woman is dead, our daughter is falling into evil courses. Her father is the only one who can save her!”

“What is your real name?”

“There is no need to tell you that. He always called me Tiny. He will understand.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Emily is nineteen. I want her to get married. Tell Major M. to promise her a wedding trousseau. Maybe this will induce her to marry.”

After this, Tiny divulged a great deal more on the subject, in an account of what Florence called “one of those cruel acts of seduction”. It was the same old story of a young girl who had been led into trouble “to gratify a man’s selfish lust”. The story astonished both Miss Clark and Florence, since they had never heard of this “Tiny”.

Cover of There Is No Death

It was too delicate a matter for Florence to discuss with Major M., who was a married man and an intimate friend of hers. But the spirit came back so many times and implored her so earnestly to save poor young Emily, that at last Florence ventured to speak about it with the Major. He was “taken aback”, but he confessed that “Tiny” had told the truth. Their child was left to his care, and he had given the little girl over to the charge of some common people at Portsmouth.

Major M. had not enquired after his daughter for some years; neither had he heard of the death of the mother. He told Florence that his former mistress had found a good husband at last and that he thought she had a real fine family of her own now. He started some inquiries however, concerning Emily, and he discovered that the statement of the spirit was quite true. Being left with no better protection than that of a drunken old man, Emily had gone astray. She ended up at the police court for stabbing a soldier in a public-house.

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“The strangest part of the story,” Florence Marryat wrote in her account of “spiritual encounters”, There Is No Death, was in the fact “that the woman whose spirit manifested itself to two strangers who knew nothing of her history, was at the time alive…” She was indeed living with her husband and family, as Major M. ascertained.

Florence Marryat had communicated with the spirit of a person who was “still in the flesh”. This had to be “the most incomprehensible assertion of all”, she stated, “that we wear our earthly garb so loosely…” – As was demonstrated, spirits of people still living in this world were able to leave the body and manifest themselves either orally or visibly, both in a “spiritual form” and in their “normal condition”.

“Spirits have visited me,” Florence Marryat said, “and they have given me information of which I had not the slightest previous idea.”

The matter had been explained to her as follows: it was not the spirit of the living person who communicated, but the spirit or “control” that was nearest to him or her. This was all very similar to what the Church called “a guardian angel”, who knows your inmost thoughts and desires better you know them yourself, and who is equally capable of speaking in your name…

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There Is No Death, by Florence Marryat – A Biography.

There Is No Death is being fully published now on the GhostWritings Blog.

At My First Séance, I Saw the Faces of Death

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