Dr. Carl Wickland, Thirty Years Among The Dead:

The purpose of our work has been to obtain reliable and incontestable evidence at first hand regarding "after death" conditions, and detailed reports of hundreds of experiences have been stenographically made in order to record the exact situation of the communicating intelligences.

DURING thirty years of indefatigable research among the "dead" such startling conditions have been revealed that it seems incredible intelligent reasoners along other lines of thought could have so long ignored the simple facts, which can so readily be verified.

There is utter impossibility of fraud in these experiences; foreign languages, totally unknown to Mrs. Wickland, are spoken, expressions never heard by her are used, while the identity of the controlling spirits has again and again been verified and corroborations innumerable have been made.

On one occasion I conversed with twenty-one different spirits, who spoke through my wife, the majority giving me satisfactory evidence of being certain friends and relatives known to me while they were incarnated. In all, they spoke six different languages, while my wife speaks only Swedish and English.

This little girl's Mom wrote to me:

Hey, Wayne...

Walking to the corner store on the north side of Minneapolis, my daughter and I had been talking to one another with me asking her every other sentence "what was that you just said?" or "what are you talking about?"

Walking into the store, Norijah had just gone on to have a conversation with herself, or so I thought. When the owner of the store, who is Arabic, stopped me as we began to walk down the first aisle. "Hey, are you guys Arabic?" he asked.

"No, I'm Black," I said.

"Oh... I asked because your daughter told me in my language that I was gonna be ok."

"Well, I don't know Arabic and neither does she," I replied.

He then engaged in conversation with her again in Arabic and she responded to him.

I asked, "what did you say to her and what did she say to you?"

He said, "I asked her where did she learn to speak like that?" and she told me, 'I don't know, have a good day.' That's what she said!"

Not knowing what else to say, I said "ok, well, I don't know where she learned that from either!"

Before leaving the store, I turned as he called out to me again: "Hey, that child right there is something special! protect her! and remember that!"

Sharmeen

I've met this little girl. Exhibiting other psychic tendencies, she reads people's soul energies, immediately sizing people up, dividing everyone into groups of "friend" or "stranger"! the latter category indicating "not a nice person." She offered solace to a grieving woman on a bus, saying, "God wants you to know everything will be alright"; she reports of conversations of her [invisible] "brothers and sisters" around her; she knew of her grandmother's serious illness; at a spiritualist church, the presiding medium took one look at her and said, "That child has spirits all around her who give her information, you need to listen to her."

Dr. Wickland attempts to help a confused religious spirit who "speaks in tongues"

THE science of religion should teach an intelligent realization of the nature of God and the life hereafter, but humanity is still kept in subjection by fear, superstition, dogmas and creeds, and has not yet attained liberation through a full understanding of what becomes of the dead.

Passing through the change called death, a great majority remain in entire ignorance of their condition, and are bound for a time to the earth plane by their false doctrines. These cling to their orthodox ideas, often influencing those still in the body, and the mental derangements which frequently follow in 'the train of revivals are examples of these obsessions, as are the phenomena known as "The Gift of Tongues," and "Seizure by The Power," which accompany many revivals.

invisible religious fanatics are always present

Religious exhortations readily lead to mental aberrations since invisible religious fanatics are always present who are unconscious of their transition and, having found no higher life, retain their mortal bigotry, and by their presence add to the insane fervor.

These spirits often make themselves audible to excited sensitives, for at such gatherings many are encouraged to listen to [the promptings] of God. During religious excitement the psychic faculty is highly sensitized, giving mischievous spirits, as well as fanatical spirits, the proper opportunity to impress credulous persons with their whisperings.

Such entities, for their own deceptive purposes, may pretend to be angels, the "Holy Ghost," or "The Spirit of God," and the thoughtless victims, elated and unwilling to listen to reason, heed these whisperings, which so frequently lead to obsession and possession, resulting in madness, insanity and other psychoses.

The most difficult to enlighten of the earthbound spirits are the religious fanatics. Dominated in earth life by one narrow, fixed idea, opposed to logical analysis and independent thinking, they are found, after passing out of the physical, in a state of self-hypnosis, ceaselessly repeating their empty "religious" jargon.

Nothing exists for them but their dogmatic creed; they are adamantly set in their self-assurance and it is often many years before they can be brought to a semblance of sanity.

EXPERIENCE, MARCH 28, 1923

Spirit: SARAH McDONALD.

Psychic: MRS. WICKLAND

The spirit who assumed control of the psychic tonight was vigorously singing a religious hymn.

Doctor: Have you been here before?

Spirit: Let's sing some more.

Dr. We are going to talk now.

Sp. I think we'd better sing another song.

Dr. If we did, you might become too enthusiastic.

Sp. We are in church, and you know you have to sing. Sing! Hallelujah! Tell the story!

Dr. We are going to be sensible.

Sp. You have to sing. You have to do that. That belongs to church. Let us pray, in Jesus' name, for evermore!

Dr. That would be very tiresome.

Sp. Let us sing and pray to the Lord. Hallelujah! Jesus Christ!

Dr. Now stop; that is enough. What is your name?

Sp. Let's sing and pray!

Dr. You must be sensible or leave. Tell us who you are and where you came from.

Sp. What church is this anyhow, where you talk in this way?

Dr. Be sensible, otherwise you will have to go. How long have you been dead? You know something happened to you. You have been hovering around the earth, probably for years, and have never gotten anywhere. Be sensible.

Sp. I am sensible; I'm not crazy.

Dr. You are religiously insane.

Sp. We all pray to God and the Holy Ghost. (Loudly.) Hallelujah!

Dr. We do not need that shouting.

Sp. I am doing work in the name of Jesus Christ.

Dr. We have heard such talk before.

Sp. Not from me, you haven't. I am working for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr. This is not the place for such talk as that.

Sp. Are you a sinner?

Dr. Listen to me. Whoever you are, you have lost your body.

Sp. What church is this?

Dr. It is no church.

Sp. I am glad of that, because I thought the church must surely have changed. Let me talk, in Jesus' name!

Dr. You have been brought here by kind spirits so that you can understand your condition. You are a spirit and probably have been for a long time. You will not listen to anyone who tries to enlighten you.

Sp. Go ahead then, and say what you have to say. Then I can talk, too.

Dr. Understand your condition. You are temporarily controlling this body. Some friend brought you here for help. Do you realize that something happened to you?

Sp. No.

Dr. You would if you were honest. You know that you are in a strange condition. You are not honest enough to pay any attention to it. Do you know that you are in Los Angeles, California?

Sp. How did I get there? I suppose I sang and prayed as a missionary. A missionary must have taken me away.

Dr. You were brought here because you are an ignorant spirit. What did your mother call you?

Sp. I don't know just now; I can't think.

Dr. You have lost your physical body. Ignorant spirits often lose the memory of their earth lives. You do not even remember your name.

Sp. My name is Sarah, in Jesus' name!

Dr. Sarah what?

Sp. McDonald, in Jesus' name!

Dr. You know that all that shouting is useless. Do you not realize that you have been "dead" for some time?

Sp. Hallelujah!

Dr. You do not even know that you are dead. You are only using this body for a short time. Do you hear me? Do you know what year it is?

Sp. In Jesus' name, I do not care.

Dr. Religious fanatics never care.

Sp. I am a Christian woman, in Jesus' name. Glory to God! Hallelujah!

Dr. Do you know what Jesus said?

Sp. Yes; He said: "God forgive them, they do not know any better." I will pray for you.

Dr. We do not need your prayers.

Sp. Glory to God!

Dr. Do you know that you are dead?

Sp. That doesn't interest me.

Dr. You are controlling the body of a mortal sensitive.

Sp. Jesus is my friend! Glory!

Dr. We carry on experimental work to learn what becomes of the dead. We always find that the most ignorant, stubborn spirits are the religious fanatics, shouting and singing all the time. Jesus said: "Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Sp. God forgive them, they don't know better! I will pray for you all.

Dr. You need not trouble yourself. You do not understand your condition at all. What you say is nothing but foolish talk. In your heart you know you are a pretender.

Sp. God forgive! Let us pray!

Dr. We do not need your hypocritical prayers.

Sp. I never was in such a place before. I never saw anything like this. (Crying.) I do not know what will become of me!

Dr. Try to understand what I am saying to you. Stop your foolish religious talk. You say "Jesus" and "Lord," and you have no understanding of true religion.

Sp. God help me! God help me! God forgive!

Dr. He does not need to. Listen to what I say.

Sp. (Drawling.) What more do you want?

Dr. Why speak with such affectation? Do you know that you are controlling a body that does not belong to you? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? You know that you are not sincere. Tell us how long you have been dead. You must realize that something has happened to you.

Intelligent spirits have brought you here and allowed you to control my wife's body, and we are trying to help you understand your condition, but that does not seem to interest you.

Sp. I don't care! (Trying to bite.)

The spirit would not listen to any line of reasoning and was forced to leave.

The altered state [of consciousness], as we have seen, may involve automatisms -- such as xenoglossy, where the entranced or controlled person is seen and heard speaking a foreign language with which he is otherwise totally unfamiliar.

I won’t bore you with the many examples that have come out of psychoanalytic literature, ghost chronicles, church histories, spirit circles, even hospital records (where the anesthetized patient comes to, speaking a language they don’t know!).

Once again the reincarnationist co-opts the phenomenon, like Ian Stevenson who collected many instances of xenoglossy and offered them as evidence of past lives (lived as a native speaker of that tongue). Stevenson, of course, totally disregarded the temporary fluency of psychic-mediums, channeling in Greek, Gaelic, Chippewa, Monomonee, Raratonga, Polish, Latin, Serbian, and Dutch -- all in the context of “sittings” and communion with spirits. Stevenson’s oversight is all the more glaring in light of the Catholic Ritual Romanum, which lists xenoglossy among the top four criteria of spirit possession.

I can’t resist a single case in point: It involves a youngster who, though quite normal in every other way, never spoke a single word until age three.

His mother was Canadian and so was the father, though he had been born in Hungary. Anticipating the birth of the child, the father’s mother, who spoke no English, came over from Hungary to help out. Yet seeing her son so “Canadianized,” she became obsessed with the fate of her grandson, actually developing “a morbid fear that . . . the same sort of thing would happen to her grandson, that he would know nothing of his forebears and lose all trace of his true homeland.”

the spirit of a grandmother takes control of a baby

She begged her son to give her enough time to teach the expected child the language and customs of the Old Country; for the sake of peace, he granted her wish. But it never came to pass, for just after the baby was born the old lady died. When the beautiful blue-eyed child turned out to be quite mute, doctors and specialists had no answer. Then, one night, his parents “found him standing up in his cot, staring fixedly at one corner of the room and talking excitedly and without any difficulty, except that the language was . . . Hungarian.”

After that the boy was silent again, and remained so for another year, after which he began to speak English, but with a heavy Hungarian accent (Underwood 1986, 180–81). 

Editor's last word:

We must look to spirit-attachment as the primary cause of xenoglossy, not "past lives."

There is a bona fide psychic ability as speaking in foreign languages and interpreting the same; however, this whole area of "speaking in tongues [languages]" can easily become hijacked by the religiously insane.

This is one of the most harmful frames of mind in which to pass over to the other side. New-arrivals of this mind-set, when they are fit enough to do so, will spend their first days in Summerland in mental hospitals, staffed by experts adept at cult-deprogramming techniques. Former clergy of our world -- such as RCC Father Benson -- often work on these mental-health rescue teams.

Religion - I do not say spirituality, but mere religion - is something that one must outgrow, recover from, in the astral realms, before one can begin the "real life."