To celebrate the event in true Spiritualist style, we’ve chosen some special items from the PN archives, all showing how Spiritualist mediums and healers have helped the Royal Family over the years. It’s been a hard choice, because there are literally hundreds of examples, and those are only the ones we know about!

1st February 1969 issue

The Queen is interested in psychics – says newspaper

THE Queen is taking an interest in ghosts, claimed “Sun” columnist Henry Fielding last week. But if his report is correct 
her interest is not as superficial as he indicates.

“Among the shower of reading which drops through the Palace letterbox,” he wrote, “there now comes the ‘Quarterly Review’ of the Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies.” (Its full title has the prefix “Churches.”)

Fielding said the magazine includes analytical reports of hauntings. “As the owner of several old castles the Queen may be specially interested,” he wrote.

A few days later he returned to the subject after reading last week’s Psychic News. He told readers he could “now report that the Queen’s brother-in-law Lord Snowdon is also interested in the spirit world.”

Fielding quoted from our last week’s account of his filming a séance in the home of famous London medium Ena Twigg.

“I am told Lord Snowdon was impressed,” said the columnist.

...and her friend has healing

THE Queen’s close friend, Lady Zia Wernher, has attended a “faith healer” for noises in the head and increased pulse beat, said Monday’s “Daily Mail.”

“I am not cured,” she told columnist Charles Greville, “but am much better. The beat is not so bad.”

The unnamed healer, non-professional, gives treatments in his spare time. He makes no charge and “never claims success in more than 75 per cent ” of cases treated, said Greville.

In 1955 she dreamed that her horse, Meld, would win both the 1,000 guineas and the Oaks. Her dream came true five months later.

22nd December 1956 issue

Court officially recognises healer:

Edwards invited to Princess’ funeral

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN BRITISH HISTORY,
COURT CIRCLES HAVE OFFICIALLY
RECOGNISED A SPIRIT HEALER.

Harry Edwards, who for six years secretly and successfully treated Princess Marie Louise, oldest member of the royal family when she passed on at the age of 84, was invited by the Lord Chamberlain to be present at her funeral service at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, last week.

The invitation, which specified that a seat had been reserved for him, was an indication that his personal services to the Princess as a healer had been recognised, otherwise he would not have been invited.

Edwards’ healing commitments made it impossible for him to attend the funeral. He knew it would be the Princess’s wish for him to devote his time to healing the sick rather than attending her funeral.

By arrangement with the Lord Chamberlain’s office the healer’s secretary represented him at the funeral.

18th June 2005 issue

Buckingham Palace has never denied
that medium gave sitting to the royal family

 
Continuing an occasional series highlighting some of Spiritualism’s greatest ever mediums, in the first of a two-part feature, Kay Hunter tells the psychic story surrounding Lilian Bailey, OBE.

Our royal family is cautious when it comes to the matter of admitting their interest in Spiritualism or the paranormal.

Perhaps this is in part due to the fact that the monarch is head of the Church of England.

While the title of Astronomer Royal is acceptable, there is no such thing as Medium Royal. But if such a post existed, it would surely have been awarded to that great medium Lilian Bailey

In 1953, at her home in Wembley, Middx, a stranger telephoned Lilian to say that he wished to hold a sitting at a Kensington address. Could she be present at a certain time and date?

It was a condition of the appointment that the medium should not be told who the participants would be.

Arriving at the address, Lilian was blind-folded and taken to another house, where she was led to a chair and went into trance. She gave evidence through her guide, William Wootton, a former captain in the Grenadier Guards, who had been killed during the first world war.

When Lilian emerged from trance, her blindfold was removed – and she was amazed to see that the other people in the room were the Queen Mother, the Queen, Prince Philip, the Duchess of Kent and her daughter Princess Alexandra.

It was just over a year since the Queen Mother had been widowed by the passing of King George VI. Earlier, in 1942, the Duchess of Kent’s husband died in a plane crash.

The story of this famous medium-meets-monarch sitting has been recorded several times. It was told in John Dale’s out-of-print book about Prince Charles, The Prince and the Paranormal, and repeated in 1984 in Ann Morrow’s biography of the Queen Mother.

This was obviously with the blessing of Clarence House, as the author received help both from Sir Martin Gilliatt, the Queen Mother’s private secretary, and the Queen Mother herself.

No objection was raised to its inclusion in the book. The account of the sitting between medium and monarch has never been denied to this day.

After several private sittings with Lilian, the Queen Mother gave her a special gift. Taking a gold brooch from her dress, she pinned it on Mrs Bailey’s shoulder, saying: “We own very little jewellery ourselves. It belongs to the nation, but I would like you to have this.”...

From 1957

QUEEN’S RELATIVE HAD SPIRIT
HEALING FROM HARRY EDWARDS

IT CAN NOW BE REVEALED THAT THE EARL OF ATHLONE, AGED 82, GREAT-UNCLE OF THE QUEEN, WHO PASSED ON LAST WEEK, ONCE RECEIVED SPIRIT HEALING FROM HARRY EDWARDS.

“Three years ago,” says the famous healer, “he had a severe nervous attack which brought his condition so low that his doctors gave no hope for his recovery. I was asked to help him by members of his family. His recovery was very quick.”

Seven days after the absent healing began, the Earl of Athlone was up and about and resuming his normal life.

“This restoration was freely credited to spiritual healing by Princess Marie Louise and other members of his family,” Edwards adds.

The Princess, granddaughter of Queen Victoria and great-aunt of our Queen, frequently asked Edwards for spirit healing for herself, members of her family and intimate friends.

Without disclosing their identity, Edwards stated some time ago that he was treating members of the royal family.

HOW MANY MORE ROYAL PATIENTS?

EDWARDS was “much too discreet ” to say how many other royal patients he had on his books. This comment was made by Bromley Abbott in the “Sunday Dispatch” this week.

The journalist told how, three years ago, when the Earl of Athlone was very ill, “the word went round that he was dying. Certainly it was thought very unlikely that this great-uncle of the Queen’s would ever leave his bed again. Then, suddenly, he got better. No explanation was ever given.”

The newspaper added that members of the Earl’s family believed his recovery was due to spiritual healing.

7 April 2007 issue

Prince Charles has called those who
see apparitions “very special people.”

He made this comment after meeting eight-year-old Georgia Richards during a trip to Hampton Court Palace.

Georgia attends Long Lane Primary School in Tilehurst, Berks. She and her friends visited Hampton Court as part of their studies into the Tudors.

A year four pupil, she told the prince she felt the ghost of Catherine Howard, one of Henry VIII’s beheaded wives, brush past her in the palace’s Haunted 
Gallery.

“I swear I felt it,” she said, Prince Charles told her: “Well, some people believe they can feel it. They are very special people.”

Georgia’s mother Debbie said: “I think I’m more thrilled about it than she is. She was far more concerned about the ghost.”