Emily S. French was born in Buffalo, New York about 1830 and was a relative of President Grover Cleveland. Over time, she became one of the most well-known independent voice mediums in the United States. As she approached her 80s, she became a frail old woman with a weak heart and was deaf. Despite that, people could hear every remark of the communicators. Her spirit guide, Red Jacket, was especially boisterous, speaking with a loud, masculine voice that would have easily been heard in a large auditorium.
In 1892, Edward C. Randall, a prominent Buffalo lawyer and businessman, accompanied a friend on a visit to see Mrs. French, who was living in Rochester at the time. That first meeting, Randall described the disembodied voices as being only faint whispers. He intended to expose her as a fraud and set up rigorous experiments to test her powers.
After a time, Randall was completely convinced that she was genuine. He spent the next twenty years investigating the direct voice phenomena. Isaac Funk and James H. Hyslop also conducted experiments to prove that the voices brought forth by Mrs. French did not originate in her vocal cords.
Randall became a champion for the cause. During the seances, which were held in complete darkness, the spirit voices would manifest from thin air, and carry on conversations with Randall or whoever else had been invited.
In his book, The Dead Have Never Died (1917), Randall described a direct voice conversation with his mother. About ten o’clock on that morning the Brown Building in Buffalo collapsed while being repaired. Mrs. French had just begun that evening’s seance when his mother greeted them. She said she couldn’t speak to him because she was helping the people who had died in the building accident.
After several minutes of silence, a voice cried out, “My God, the building is falling, the building is falling. This way, this way.” Another voice responded in a foreign tongue. Then a woman’s voice called out, “We will all be killed! Help me, help me.” One of the spirits told him that William P. Straub, George Metz, Michael Schurzke, and Jennie M. Griffin had lost their lives. He verified the names several days later.
According to Randall, “This was the beginning of what we term our mission work, that is, helping to restore consciousness to those who in leaving the old body are not readily able to regain that condition. There was then, aiding in this work, as I have since learned, a group of seven spirit co-workers who had brought to us these unfortunate people whose spirit-bodies had been crushed out in the fall of this building. We were to restore them to a normal mental condition and acting upon the suggestion of the spirit co-workers I quietly talked with them. After a time, I told them what had occurred and brought them to a realization of their situation. Eventually they came to understand that in the fall of that building their spirits had been forced from their physical bodies, and when they came to realize that in the catastrophe they had gone out of earth-life, their sorrow was beyond words.”
Randall continued to work with Mrs. French, creating ” rescue circles, ” where “earthbound spirits” were helped. A stenographer recorded the conversations which are included in his book, The French Revelation. His other works included Randall’s autobiographical Life’s Progression: Research in Metapsychics (1906), The Future of Man: Meta-Psychic (1908), and Frontiers of the Afterlife (1922).
After their long partnership, Emily French died in June of 1912 in Rochester. Edward Randall followed her in 1935.