Faces of the Living Dead: The amazing psychic art of Frank Leah

By Paul Miller

First published in 1943 and is now available in a brand new edition. It offers an amazing and unforgettable account of Frank Leah's work. A talented journalist, artist and draughtsman by profession, Frank Leah possessed an extraordinary gift: he was the greatest psychic artist this world has seen. This book includes numerous examples of the brea

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saturday Night Press Publications
• Release date: Aug 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781908421555

Book preview

FACES OF THE LIVING DEAD

© Psychic Press (1995) Ltd

This book is copyrighted under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holders or publisher, except for the purposes of reviewing or criticism as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1956.

First published in 1943

re-published in collaboration with

Psychic Press (1995) Ltd

by

Saturday Night Press Publications

England

www.snppbooks.com

[e-mail]

ISBN 978-0-9557050-5-2

ISBN 978-1-908421-55-5 (e-book)

Frank Leah

a dedicated servant of Spirit who passed to the Higher Life in 1972

Contents

Introduction

1.Faces of The Living Dead

2.Proof in Nine Seconds

3.Two Husbands Prove Their Survival to One Wife

4.Five Years’ Wait for Recognition

5.Pioneer of Cremation

6.Evidence at Drury Lane Theatre

The Gallery of Photographs

7.Medium Proves His Survival

8.Coventry Patmore Returns

9.Child Who Came Back

10.Two Sons Return to Mother

11.This Truth is Growing

List of Illustrations

Drawings and Photographs

Mr. Burgess in nine seconds

Mrs. Gibbon’s mother

Alfred Hugh Gibbon M.D.

Mrs. Gibbon’s first husband

Mrs. Gregory’s two portraits

Mr. Tunbridge’s two portraits

A suicide’s two portraits

A Persian from Baghdad

Amy Hill

A well-dressed cabinet maker

Rev. G. Gibson Gunn

John Millard

The ‘Stranger’

Dr. William Price

Photograph of Dr. Price

The seven portraits of George Stocker

Mrs. Ramsay

Brig. Gen. Sir H. Godfrey-Morgan

Captain Hamber

Cowley Wright

Brother Peter

Farmer Knowles

Dr. Letari, guide of W.H. Lilley

Fred Edouin

Fred Edouin’s father

Coventry Patmore

Mr. Thain

John Teverson

Rhoda Ring

Shirley Anne Woods

Mrs. Blaylock

J.W.D. Wagstaff

A.P. ‘A young officer’

Mrs. Clarke’s mother

Mrs. Louie Hill’s father

Robert Hollington and John Hollington

Mrs. Arthur Smith

Mr. H. Wharton-Wells

An officer from the South African War

Dr. Margaret Vivian’s father and mother

A naval Lieutenant, hero of St. Nazaire

William Hope, psychic photographer

Archdeacon Richardson of Ontario

Introduction

It is with the greatest pleasure that I write this introduction to the new edition of Faces of the Living Dead, Paul Miller’s detailed account of the work of a unique medium, which has been far too long out of print.

Frank Leah was by any standards the greatest psychic artist this world has seen. A journalist, draughtsman, artist and sculptor by profession, he was art editor and cartoonist to five Dublin journals, later moving to work in London’s Fleet Street. He became a willing and devoted servant of the Spirit World as its inhabitants sought to prove through his outstanding mediumistic and artistic gifts that they had survived beyond the change called death and were very much alive in a new environment just as real, if not more so, than our own.

Leah hated the word ‘dead’ being applied to his Spirit visitors because he insisted that they were vibrantly alive. They were not phantoms who bore resemblance to the conventional idea of ghosts. To him they were as natural and normal as the people he met in the street.

Featured regularly in Psychic News over a period of some forty years, Frank Leah also became known within the pages of mainstream publications. Not only did he provide the ultimate visual evidence of survival, he frequently conveyed startlingly accurate clairvoyant and clairaudient information to his sitters while he drew. Highly evidential to those sitters was the fact that he frequently took on, in painful replication, the last physical experiences of those Spirit people who presented themselves to be portrayed. I have died over a thousand deaths, he once said.

Sometimes the characteristics in a portrait were at first denied by a recipient – until they did some research. The comparison photograph invariably produced after Leah completed a portrait often revealed facial peculiarities which had long been forgotten. Files in the Psychic News archive contain scores of documented cases where, following such research, original photographs were unearthed which bore witness to the accuracy of the Spirit portrait, in some cases long after Leah had completed the drawing.

Read and enjoy the astonishing evidence of one who left his sitters in no doubt that the Spirit people are very much alive, as we all will be when our time comes to leave this earth. Time and again parents have identified their children, husbands and wives their partners of many decades in portraits drawn by Frank Leah. The comparison photos later provided by those who were fortunate to receive Spirit portraits from Leah say it all. There can be no mistaking the extraordinary likenesses inspired by those in Spirit who were determined to bring comfort to those from whom, for a brief time, they were separated by physical death.

From my first sight of a rare copy of Paul Miller’s book it has been my cherished aim to make it available to the public once again. I record my grateful thanks to Ann Harrison of Saturday Night Press, whose efforts in producing this new edition have been immense. Her enthusiasm for seeing this extraordinary testament to the power of Spirit returned to its rightful place in the world’s bookshops has matched my own. My thanks go also to Magnus Smith of Psychic News, whose expertise has ensured the optimum clarity of the old photographs which are key to this book. Finally, I thank the anonymous donor who put his money where his mouth was and made this new edition possible.

Susan Farrow

Editor, Psychic News

Stansted, April 2010

1

Faces of The Living Dead

If only I could see his face. That is the heart-cry of the mourner from the moment the body is laid away until time wears down the sharp edge of grief – or until Spiritualism answers the cry and there appears in reality the voice, the touch, the message, or the face of the living dead. It has happened so often that the time has come to record, in lasting form, some of the many cases of evidence which prove, beyond question, that not only do the ‘dead’ live beyond the grave, but that they have the power, under suitable conditions and with the right kind of medium, to pose for their portraits.

Unfortunately for the armies of mourners throughout the world, there is only one medium trained to draw or paint the ‘dead’. This is his story – Frank Leah, a journalist, artist and medium. He was born with the psychic gift he now employs for the comfort of mourners. Long before he understood its meaning and purpose he was afraid of it. He sees with the eye of the Spirit in a special way, for we all have some degree of perception. In most it is buried beneath the cares of the day and of this world; in others its beholding is ignored or dismissed as day-dreams. To others again, as in Leah’s case, it flowers as an artistic gift which is employed for a great and beneficent work – the stilling of fear, the soothing of the brooding mind, the comforting of the aching heart, and the kindling of the joy of recollection of the face of the well-known and well-beloved.

Now a psychic or spiritual gift has to be trained. It is not something handed to the medium and left untended. The greater the technical skill in the medium, the greater the service that is done, for those who from the Other Side have charge of this work can then impress their points of evidence with greater skill and ease. Behind every evidential drawing, behind every detail impressed on paper, there is a story. Those who, from the Spirit World, guide this medium-artist are so well versed in their work that they neglect nothing that will bring conviction – but when they have reached that point they go no further. That is a fact. Leah has given hundreds of instances of it. Did they so desire, I have no doubt – because of my long acquaintance with the power of those who guide mediums – the Spirit operators could paint pictures that would rival the best in our art galleries. Often they are the great painters and singers, poets and musicians, teachers and reformers, doing again their familiar work from another place. That is all, and they temper their power to their purpose. They show in another form, a form all can understand, that there is no death, that the body perishes and the soul lives on, retaining memories, affections and the power to show facial peculiarities, aye, and even blemishes, for evidential purposes. The warm human personalities are alive always; and as of old they like to comfort those they love and have left behind. They like to know they have succeeded in catching the artist’s eye, and that he has put their likenesses on record.

In the early days of Leah’s work he received sitters, all anonymously, through Spiritualist societies, and