Proving Mediumship through Academic Research

Proving Mediumship through Academic Research

Historical Documents Validate Spirit

By Deborah Richmond Foulkes, FSAScot

 

As I was researching the “My Truth Trilogy”, specifically the first two books on the medieval Douglas family I found myself receiving information through Meditation as well as Visions during the early waking hours of three to four in the morning. Fortunately I was also recording the information in journals that now span nearly two decades of Spirit Communication.

I was really fastidious about recording things I saw and heard during my daily meditations. I drew images and recorded printed messages as well as words I heard from Spirit. And my ‘notes’ really paid off when I began to write my books on the 13^th and 14^th century Douglas family in the Lowlands of Scotland. These messages became cornerstones to my books, where corrections from those in Spirit to the generally accepted versions of history evolved into ‘new historical truths’. My task was to validate the assertions of Spirit, determine the validity of their messages.

Archdeacon Barbour is credited with the contemporary chronicles of Robert the Brus and his most trustworthy lieutenant James, Lord Douglas. He actually wrote down his famous poem in old Scots about thirty years after these two great heroes of the Scottish Wars for National Independence had passed. Barbour knew many of the stories from personal memory and others he acquired by interviewing the survivors who were only too eager to recount the tales of valor of their heroes for the churchman to record for posterity.

Barbour recounted a battle on the Irvine Water in Aryshire in 1307 in his poem “The Brus”. His facts were well presented but the information I received from James Douglas in Spirit regarding his role in both the planning and execution of the attack on the English soldiers differed from the Barbour description. How did Spirit correct the misinformation? They began with sending me visions of the actual battle scene.

When I arrived in Scotland days later and drove to Hurlford in Aryshire which was a location near the Irvine Water I was led by audible directions from my Guide in Spirit to the true location of the battle. As I crossed the rickety bridge to the other side of the Irvine there before me was the ford on the river, the one I saw in visions, where in 1307 James Douglas led his band of Scots to attack Mowbray and his retinue. In that vision I actually saw Douglas ride his hobini through the ford. I also heard the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves in the water, on the smooth rocks of the ford. And there behind the ford were the drumlins or glacial spoil where Douglas rode his horse to leap up so he could see the progress of the battle. Everything was as I had been shown in visions days before.

So now I had the validation to begin my academic research; proving the location and timing of the battle through original documents. I went to the translated rolls of the pipe and was able to discern that the confusion in the location of the site likely occurred in the combination of two such battles that took place with the same English knight leading a group of on horse and on foot in the pursuit of James Douglas. The documents listed two different dates with separate locations, all in Ayrshire where English knights claimed reimbursement for their personal loss of weapons and horses. Those separate, unique entries provided the reasons behind the discrepancies from the Barbour chronicles and what Spirit had related to me as the ‘facts’ of the battle. I now had my documented proof.

A second example of how the words of Spirit provided one version where the accepted ‘truth’ in the historical compilations exhibited another related to Royal Prison that I eventually verified as being in Yorkshire. In 1290 William Lord Douglas was taken prisoner in Fawdon Northumbria for marrying his wife Eleanora of Lovaine without license of the English king. He was taken to a Royal Prison which had been recorded in Rolls of the Pipe as “de castri de Leeds”. The renowned 19^th century British historians Bain and Stevenson both translated the 13^th century Latin to read: Leeds Castle. I took it as fact. I tried three times to submit my manuscript to the publisher with ‘Leeds Castle’ listed 37 times, pointing to the fortress in Kent as the prison location in 1290. But my Guide William Douglas, the person who was incarcerated in the Royal Prison insisted that the location was incorrect. In fact, he blocked publication of the book until the location was resolved; more on that later.

I return now to the importance of taking good notes from meditation. Early in 2002 I was shown a castle fortress with stone circles or carvings with heart shapes approximately two feet in diameter. I kept drawing the images and never made a connection to any of the dozens of towers and ruins I discovered during the several years of my onsite research in England and Scotland. Spirit then began drawing my attention to the words, ‘de castri de Leeds’. There were two meanings to the description I discovered; one being the translation that Bain and Stevenson used as ‘a castle in Leeds’. The other obscure definition was ‘a half day’s ride from’. So I began by taking a protractor to a map around Leeds Yorkshire. And there it was, ten miles away or a half day’s ride from Leeds Yorkshire: Knaresborough. In 1287 Edward of England had begun his renovation of Royal Castles by adding a Royal Prison and Royal Court to the Knaresborough castle.

When I visited the castle years later in  2005 those early messages from Sprit made sense at last; there before me were the great stone rosettes, carved shapes on the circles’ surface just as I had seen them early in my mediations, long before I published my first book that included the stories of Knaresborough castle. So with the help of Spirit, rejecting my three submissions to the publisher (corrupt CD, missing files, corrupt files) I was able to update the book’s galley with the corrected Knaresborough information. And with Spirit I was able to make an incredible academic discovery, revealing an error that both Bain and Stevenson had made regarding their Medieval Latin translations of an original thirteenth century document: de castri de Leeds meant a castle that was half day’s ride from Leeds, Yorkshire not a smaller Royal Castle in Kent.

Working with Spirit has always been exciting. As an historian I found their insistence and practical insights to guide me toward the truth refreshing. The journey to writing these books, revealing the history from the perspective of Spirit, those who actually lived through the events was nothing short of exhilarating. More on the stories and the research behind the books can be found on my website: www.mytruthliesintheruins.com and www.skybear.com . Working with Spirit is an honor I hold dear.