There
is probably no spiritual healer who treated a higher number of people
than Harry Edwards. Initially a printer with political ambitions, he
visited a spiritualist meeting and came across a medium who said he was
an excellent instrument for spiritual healing. Subsequently, he made his
first attempts, which were so successful and attracted such a host of
visitors that he fully dedicated his life to healing. Thousands of
healing stories are reported, and even in hopeless cases, healing or
improvements were due to his help, although he did not even meet the
majority of his patients personally. An incredible number of letters
asking for remote help were sent to him from all over the world. In more
than 40 years of his activity, up to two thousand help-seekers per
month visited him at his secluded sanctuary in Shere, South England. He
also became famous by his public healing demonstrations, which, like the
one at Royal Albert Hall in London, were attended by up to five
thousand visitors. His declared task was to propagate and popularize the
knowledge about spiritual healing. For instance, he also recommended
the cooperation between classical medicine and spiritual healing, with
the effect that there is successful cooperation of the two disciplines
in England today. He set spiritual healing into a spiritualist context,
talked about spirit doctors who are a prerequisite for making success
possible and considered healing as a medial act. Shaped by the Christian
culture, he also referred to religious subjects, which brought him
rather an unpleasant contact with the Anglican church and a tendentious
investigation report by the archbishop. Edwards wrote various books about his findings. Only his main work was translated into German. He published the following books:
· The Power of Spiritual Healing
· Spirit Healing
· A guide to the understanding and practise of Spiritual Healing (German title: Geistheilung, Bauer Verlag)
· Thirty Years as a Spiritual Healer
· Life in Spirit
· The
Mediumship of Jack Weber
Billy Parish – a changed sceptic
Parish,
originally a supporter of the opinion that spiritual healing was an
occupation for intellectually restricted women and men who are unable to
think, changed into a successful spiritual healer who treated more than
500000 help-seeking patients either by contact or by absent healing. He
too was told about his abilities as a healer by a medium, when his wife
was suffering from cancer. After he had been able to help his wife,
which was confirmed clearly by physicians, he dedicated his whole life
to healing.
Frederick Joseph Jones – a man of deep devotion
Jones was the first English spiritual healer with a large clientele. He
took up to healing after having visited a spiritual training group,
where he heard a voice asking him to agree to being a healing medium.
Subsequently, he started first attempts in a group of six patients in
Wimbledon. When he had seen he was successful, he dedicated his full
life to healing. One day, a physician sent him 12 patients asking for
diagnosis, an ability granted to him by spiritual assistance, 10 of his
diagnoses were correct. The physician was disconcerted and, when he
examined the two faulty diagnoses, he found out that it was him who made
the fault.
During
his best times, Jones treated up to 28 000 patients a year, most of
them by contact. In 1933, he died at the age of 48 after eleven years of
successful healing. Contemporaries say he died so young because he was
so devoted and humble that he worked without consideration of his own
constitution. Unlike Edwards and Parish, Jones was a trance medium and
spent several hours a day in trance during healing.
Francis Schlatter – shrouded in mystery
One
evening in 1895, when Alderman E.L. Fox, one of the town fathers of
Denver, Colorado, opened the local evening newspaper, he saw a headline
saying "Miraculous healings by the remarkable French-American Francis
Schlatter". He
was thrilled and decided to visit Schlatter and to ask him for help for
his starting deafness and a painful chronic renal disease. The
next day he traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and found the healer
in a small house in the old town. He was so besieged by visitors that
there seemed to be a lack of air for breathing. "From the very first
moment when I saw the healer I felt that I would be healed and my hopes
were confirmed. I stayed there for a week and saw how powerful a healer
this man was", Fox said later.
He
invited Schlatter to come to Denver and sent him a ticket for the
train. Schlatter arrived in Denver in the night of August 23. He started
his healing sessions and treated between 700 and 2000 persons a day.
His method mainly was to take the help-seeking people’s hands into his
and to hold them for a short while. When he did that, the patients felt a
slight electric shock and a tickle, followed by heat in one hand and
cold in the other one. He gave healings for all sorts of illnesses. The
news about his successes were spread all over the country, the
newspapers published lots of articles and help-seekers came in crowds
from everywhere in the US. Schlatter held non-stop healing sessions
during six hours every day.
This
went on till the evening of November 13. He went to bed that night as
usual after having read in the bible for a little while. At six o’clock
next morning, the time when he used to rise, his room was completely
quiet. Fox opened the door of Schlatter’s room. His
bed was empty and on his cushion he found a letter with the following
text: “Mr Fox, my mission is finished and Father takes me away. Good
bye, Francis Schlatter, Nov. 13.“
Schlatter was never seen again.
Bruno Gröning – subject of high esteem, and pursuit
Bruno
Gröning, born in 1906 in Danzig, who emigrated to West Germany as an
expellee from former East German territories after World War 2, worked
as a carpenter, factory worker and docker, telegram messenger and
low-voltage electrician before he came into the focus of public
interest. The climax of his activity was in the fifties. In
1949, the name of Bruno Gröning became famous overnight. Press, radio
and newsreel reported about his healings. Never before, a healer had
attracted so much attention in the German-speaking area.
He became target of pilgrimage for thousands of people seeking healing.
In all classes of population, there were violent discussions and a lot
of dispute about the case of Bruno Gröning. Emotional waves rose very
high. Clerical people, physicians, journalists, the legal and
political world as well as psychologists, everybody was talking about
Bruno Gröning: some considered his miraculous healings a gift of mercy
from a superior power, others said he was a charlatan. But his healings
were fact and confirmed by medical examinations.