The Spirit of the Eleven Plus

I chatted to a mother over the weekend who was clearly `into’ the spirit world.

Her clothes were a bit of a give away. She wore a long skirt with groups of butterflies, A long skirt in itself dos not make a medium – but the presence of a shawl cast over the shoulders and held by some ancient Celtic clasp seemed to complete the attire.

She also employed that other well known spiritualist technique which was to stare into space. I have known for a long time that my conversation is bleak and unworldly but since we were chatting socially and not professionally, I thought it was a little odd. She seemed to be a little preoccupied. In reflection I think that she was possibly communicating with someone. On the other hand I may just have been boring her to death.

I know that in some environments tables can be made to move – along with pencils and pens. I have read too that mediums sometimes choose to communicate with animals mainly, I suppose, because a dog or a cat can’t talk back.

So here we have the ideal mother of a child taking an Eleven Plus examination. There may be, however, some unexpected outcomes.

Suppose the examination answer paper, with fifteen minutes left to go, floats out one window only to appear seconds later in a window some fifteen feet away. (You would need to train your child not to give a start when he or she recognised that some answers had been changed and the remainder of the questions were now complete.) This would give your child a head start.

Suppose too that you were the truth seer and it was your child, who could manipulate a pencil to pick the correct answer, you too would be might proud, I’m sure!

The third help that may be offered to your child would be for the table and chair to lift slowly from the floor and float out the window. This would allow you to give that little bit of extra help to your child.

These were the thoughts that floated through my mind as I watched the mother move away in a dignified and loving manner.

In any event we will never know just how big an influence can be generated by a mother who calls on spirits for extra help. It can’t be illegal – can it? After all in an examination a table can move can’t it? Some wind could cause a paper to float out the window. An answer paper could drop to the floor and be picked up by another child. There could be perfectly normal reasons for what appears to be visits from the spirit world. But we do need to wonder – don’t we?