Margo & Walter Williams' Worlds of Ghost
Margo and Walter Williams claimed documented evidence to prove the existence of personality survival. Invited to share their findings at two PSI conferences the couple attracted world media attention. And a book deal...
Ear to Hidden Worlds?
In the spring of 1976, an apparently ordinary house on the Isle of Wight became the centre of an extraordinary mystery.
For almost two years Margo Williams had experienced a partial loss of taste and smell. Then, following the gradual return of those senses, she reported something even stranger. A voice began speaking to her.
It didn't arrive as a dramatic apparition, or fleeting shadow. it recited a poem, dictated a narrative in short episodes lasting little more than thirty seconds at a time. Twice each day the voice returned. Margo listened and wrote.
Over a period of three months, more than four hundred lines of testimony accumulated. The speaker identified herself as a woman named Jane who had lived in Devon during the 19th century.
She described an unhappy life, the deaths of four infant children, and events surrounding a concealed homicide. The account contained names, locations, dates and personal details unknown to Margo herself.
A Name is Spoken
Her husband Walter Williams, a retired chemical engineer, approached the matter with scepticism. Rather than accepting the story at face value, he attempted to verify the information it contained.
One clue referred to a physician named Mackenzie. Initial searches produced nothing. However, enquiries to the Wellcome medical archives revealed several doctors of that name practising in Britain during the period concerned, including one in the location described by the communicator.
For Walter, this was only the beginning.
What followed was a succession of alleged communicators, each claiming to be a deceased individual and each providing fragments of personal history.
Some described forgotten occupations, obscure historical events or little-known local details. Others offered names, dates and places that Walter attempted to trace through archives, libraries, official records and correspondence with institutions across Britain.
Between 1976 and 1977, Margo Williams produced nearly six hundred scripts attributed to thirty-one separate personalities.
The material attracted the attention of journalists, psychical researchers and academics. Invitations followed to present their findings at the London Parascience Conferences, where the Williamses shared examples of the evidence they had assembled.
Whether interpreted as evidence for survival after death, an unusual psychological process, or a phenomenon that remains unexplained, the Williams archive stands as one of the most ambitious attempts by an ordinary British family to investigate voices that appeared to come from beyond the boundaries of conventional experience.
The documents, transcripts and case studies preserved here tell the story of that investigation.
The Talking Dead
The voice identifying itself as Jane did not prove to be an isolated occurrence.
According to Margo Williams, once the initial communication ceased, other voices began to arrive. They spoke briefly, usually for less than a minute at a time, and often returned over a period of days or weeks to complete their accounts. Margo described the process not as trance mediumship but as a form of rapid dictation. She heard words, phrases and names which she wrote down as quickly as possible.
"It is like taking dictation," she explained. "I hear a voice and I write down what I hear."
From April 1976 until September 1977, Margo produced almost six hundred scripts attributed to thirty-one different communicators. Most claimed to have lived during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although some described events from much earlier periods and others appeared connected to more recent history.
The personalities who emerged formed an unexpected cross-section of society. Among them were labourers, teachers, surgeons, clergy, naturalists, military officers, housewives and public figures. Some communicated only a handful of times. Others returned repeatedly to tell longer and more detailed stories.
For Walter Williams, the important question was not who these personalities claimed to be, but whether the information they provided could be independently verified.
Investigating the Voices
Unlike many accounts of mediumship, the Williams archive generated a substantial quantity of names, dates, occupations and locations that could potentially be checked against historical records.
Walter Williams approached the communications as an investigator. A trained chemist and former industrial researcher, he spent countless hours writing to archives, museums, libraries, universities and local historians throughout Britain.
Many enquiries reached dead ends. Some clues appeared impossible to verify. Yet a surprising number led to documentary records which appeared to correspond with details contained in the scripts.
Over time Walter assembled folders of correspondence, newspaper references, parish records, institutional replies and archive notes relating to the communicators.
The resulting collection formed the basis of the case studies later presented at national conferences and discussed in newspapers, journals and radio broadcasts.
Several examples are summarised below.
Selected Case Studies
The following cases were among those highlighted by Walter and Margo Williams during presentations of their research.
Robert Young
A communicator identifying himself as Robert Young described his work as surgeon aboard HMS Ardent during the Battle of Camperdown in 1797. He named both the vessel and its captain, Burgess.
Walter Williams sought confirmation from naval archives. Correspondence from Greenwich confirmed the participation of HMS Ardent in the battle and identified both Captain Burgess and the ship's surgeon as Robert Young.
Edward Rose
Over seven scripts, a communicator named Edward Rose described his death in an explosion at Swaithe Colliery in Yorkshire. He referred to the deaths of two young brothers among the victims.
The National Coal Board later confirmed the existence of the long-closed pit and supplied details of the 1875 disaster, including records relating to the Allen brothers mentioned in the communications.
Margaret Gatty
A series of scripts referred to a woman with a strong interest in marine plants and natural history. Research eventually identified the communicator as Margaret Gatty, author of History of British Seaweeds and wife of the vicar of Ecclesfield.
Mrs Proctor
One communicator claimed to have been associated with the early years of Cheltenham Ladies' College. Enquiries to the school's archivist led to confirmation of Mrs Proctor's role and revealed details not easily found in standard historical accounts.
For the Williamses, such cases suggested that the communicators occasionally supplied information unknown to Margo herself and difficult to obtain through ordinary means.
Academic Interest and Public Attention
As the number of documented cases increased, news of the Williamses' investigations began to spread beyond the Isle of Wight.
Local newspapers were among the first to report on the unusual communications and the efforts being made to verify them. National attention soon followed.
Margo and Walter Williams discussed their experiences on radio programmes, including the BBC's World at One, while articles appeared in newspapers and specialist publications concerned with psychical research and unexplained phenomena.
The growing archive of scripts attracted interest because it appeared to offer something more than anecdotal accounts. Many of the communicators supplied names, occupations, locations and historical details that could be examined against surviving records.
Whether those correspondences were interpreted as evidence of survival after death or as examples of an unusual psychological process, researchers agreed that the material deserved investigation.
In September 1977 the Williamses were invited to present their findings at the Parascience Conference in London. Their paper, titled A Case of Automatism – Evidence for Survival, outlined fourteen communications and the methods used to investigate them.
The following year they returned to present Automatism, Survival and Reincarnation, describing new cases and developments arising from their continuing work.
Among those who took a particular interest was Dr John Beloff, Director of the Society for Psychical Research and one of Britain's best-known academic researchers of paranormal claims.
After examining aspects of the case and visiting the Williamses' home, Beloff expressed admiration for the quality of the material and the care with which investigations were being conducted.
Witness to the Williamses
Equally revealing are the reactions of those who attended the conferences. Writer Patricia Villiers Stuart recalled an atmosphere in which scientists, academics and interested observers discussed the Williamses' evidence with seriousness rather than ridicule.
She described Margo and Walter as a warm and unassuming couple whose presentation contrasted with the more theoretical discussions taking place elsewhere at the event.
"What they had to tell us was taken quite seriously by the assembled scientists," she wrote. "No one questioned the validity of their account of what was happening to them."
Her observations provide a valuable contemporary glimpse of how the Williamses' work was received during the late 1970s.
While opinions differed regarding interpretation, the archive had clearly moved beyond a private curiosity and become a subject of wider public and academic interest.
For a brief period, a retired chemist and a clairaudient from the Isle of Wight found themselves contributing to one of the most intriguing debates in psychical research: whether human consciousness might survive bodily death.
Beyond the Williams Home
By 1978 the focus of the Williamses' investigations had begun to expand.
The earliest communications had arrived in the quiet surroundings of their own Isle of Wight home. Increasingly, however, reports from historic buildings, private houses and members of the public suggested that similar phenomena might be encountered elsewhere.
The Williamses began visiting locations associated with reputed hauntings and unexplained experiences.
Not to collect ghost stories but to determine whether communicators encountered in those places could provide information capable of independent verification.
Among the locations investigated were historic houses on the Isle of Wight, including Appuldurcombe House, Gatcombe House and properties in the Knighton area.
In several instances communicators appeared to identify themselves by name and supplied historical details which Walter Williams attempted to trace through archives, parish records and local history sources.
One of the most notable cases concerned a communicator identified as Mary Targett at Appuldurcombe House. Another involved Margaret Pakenham, who became the oldest historically identified communicator within the archive.
At a house in Knighton, a communicator claiming to be Admiral Hugh Pigot reportedly dictated a Latin phrase which Margo wrote fluently despite possessing no knowledge of the language.
The investigations also introduced an unexpected development. Visitors to the Williamses occasionally sought help in locating lost possessions or resolving unexplained disturbances.
In one reported case, a communicator directed the Williamses to the location of an object believed lost, which was subsequently recovered near an ancient monument.
Alongside ghost investigations came another recurring theme: reincarnation. Several communicators spoke not only of their former lives but also of experiences they claimed occurred between incarnations. Some described preparing for rebirth, while others appeared to remember more than one earthly existence.
Among the most unusual examples was Frank Forster, who identified himself as a 19th-century engineer involved in London's sewer construction projects while also recalling a later life connected with the Coconut Grove nightclub disaster in Boston in 1942.
Another communicator, Leonard Raisbeck of Stockton-on-Tees, claimed that he was preparing to be reborn in Jamaica. A third appeared to connect memories from an early nineteenth-century life with those of the American air ace Frank Luke.
Such accounts moved the Williamses' work beyond the original question of survival after death. If the communicators were genuine, they seemed to suggest not only continuation of consciousness but a continuing journey extending beyond a single lifetime.
Whether interpreted as evidence of reincarnation, symbolic narratives emerging from the unconscious mind, or another process not yet understood, these later investigations broadened the scope of the archive considerably.
What had begun as a single unexplained voice in an Isle of Wight home was evolving into a wider exploration of haunting, memory, identity and the possibility that human experience extends beyond the limits of one life.
The Williams archive remains an unfinished investigation. Some cases appear strongly evidenced, others remain unresolved, and many invite further research.
Together they form an unusual historical record of two people attempting to test a remarkable claim: that voices claiming to belong to the dead could provide information capable of surviving critical examination.
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Nick Hammond