The Blue Island

This volume contains four classic spiritualist works, three by W. T. Stead and one by his daughter, Estelle. William T. Stead (1849-1912) was a well-known British investigative journalist who became interested in Spiritualism in the 1890s. In 1892, through the gift of automatic writing, he began receiving spirit communications from the recently deceased American temperance reformer and newspaperwoman Julia T. Ames, describing conditions in the next world. He published her messages in Borderland, the spiritualist quarterly he founded in 1893, and later in book form under the title After Death, or Letters From Julia. In 1909, following Julia's suggestions from beyond, Stead established Julia's Bureau in London, where inquirers could obtain information about the spirit world from a group of resident mediums. During this time he wrote his personal account, How I Know that the Dead Return. On April 10, 1912, Stead boarded the S.S. Titanic bound from Southampton to New York, to take part in a peace congress at Carnegie Hall. On the morning of April 15 the ship struck an iceberg and Stead, along with hundreds of others, drowned. At that time his daughter, Estelle, an actress and also a spiritualist, was on tour with her own Shakespearean company. Amongst its members was a psychically gifted man named Pardoe Woodman, who foretold the disaster as they sat talking after tea. Through Woodman's clairvoyant powers W. T. Stead was able to communicate the messages contained in The Blue Island, "experiences of a new arrival beyond the veil." Estelle Stead carried on her father's work after his death. In When We Speak with the Dead she explained the possibilities and limitations of communication as viewed from her own experience, which included messages from her father "across the border."