The following extract was taken from Leslie Flint's autobiography, Voices in the Dark.

I am a medium, I have a rare gift known as the independent direct voice. I do not speak in trance, I need no trumpets or other paraphernalia. The voices of the dead speak directly to their friends or relatives and are located in a space a little above my head and slightly to one side of me.They are objective voices which my sitters can record on their own tape recorders to play later in the privacy of their own homes. Sometimes those who speak from beyond the grave achieve only a whisper, hoarse and strain, at other times they speak clearly and fluently in voices recognizably their own during life.

I do my work by sitting wide awake in total darkness with other people. I know I have learnt more about life and people and human problems and emotions by sitting in the dark than I could possibly have learnt in any other way, and those who have taught me the most are people who, dead to this world, are living in the next.

The following extract was taken from the Leslie flints website and was written by Alexander Walker of London's Evening Standard Newspaper.

What is Independent Direct Voice?

The process is activated directly by Spirit communicators, and voices can be almost identical to people's voices before making transition to the Spirit World.

Depending on the strength the energy, Spirit may be able to build an ectoplasmic voice box in mid air. Voices are then heard by all present. This is different from Spirit speaking through the larynx of an entranced medium.

Who is Leslie Flint?

In his heyday, which was before the war and some 25 years after it, Leslie Flint was one of Britain's best-known Spiritualists. He possessed the rare distinction of being a direct voice medium. Flint used no trumpets or paraphernalia. Though sitting in total darkness, he did his work wide awake, not in a trance. Those who flocked to him could engage, if conditions were propitious, in fluent colloquial conversation with others, kith and kin, strangers and well known, all of them "passed over", who manifested themselves in space, voice only, around Flint's solid if unseen presence - "a little above my head and to one side of me".

The mood was not at all solemn, still less frightening. Leslie Flint took his inexplicable gifts sensibly and objectively, sometimes lightheartedly. Especially when conversing with his "familiar", a child who had been run down in a street accident in Camden Town back in the 1910s. This perky and impertinent boy would engage his master in Cockney chitchat and occasionally turn his sharp tongue on the guests sitting expectantly a dozen strong around the big Paddington drawing-room in the 1960s or when Flint's health had permitted him to tour in earlier decades, packing the churches, halls and theaters in their hundreds and thousands all over Britain, the continent of Europe and America.

Born in Poverty

In looks, Flint resembled a first-generation union leader: he was short and square, wore double-breasted suits and heavy framed spectacles: Ernie Bevin's brother, maybe. Only his silvery hair and a bass voice with an actor manager's vibrato in it suggested a theatrical dimension. Like many such prodigies, he was born in poverty - a Salvation Army home in Hackney - and legitimized soon afterwards, only to "lose" both parents again when they went their separate ways: his mother to the West Ends bright lights, his father to the trenches of the Western Front , neither seen again. A grandmother reared him in St. Albans on broken biscuits and tuppence worth of jam and let the picture palace take care of his pre-school afternoons, so that from the start he was happier in the dark than in the light of day.

The dead became a normal part of his world early and enduringly. Aged eight, he saw the apparently solid figure of a deceased uncle in his granny's kitchen and around the same time, grew aware that the voices whispering all around him at the cinema in that silent era hadn't paid for their admission. He was by turns a cemetery gardener, and impromptu gravedigger, a semi professional dancer up to trophy hunting standard, a cinema usher and a barmen before he found his medium, so to speak, and founded a Spiritualist circle in Sydney Grove, Hendon with the aim of providing evidence of the continuity of life after physical death by the demonstration of his psychic gift.

From the time, in the mid-1930's, Flint "took off" and was soon filling the biggest halls in London and answering mailbags of letters. He willingly submitted to numerous tests to disprove accusations of ventriloquism or other deceptions.

Measured Quality

In one he held a measured quantity of coloured water in his mouth throughout a voluble seance. In another, a throat microphone registered no vibrations from his larynx while the voices continued in full spate. Later, he allowed anyone who like to do so to tape record his seances.

The "famous" were no strangers to him: Rudolph Valentino often came sounding a bit like Charles Boyer, which was correct since he had been taught English by a French governess; others included Leslie Howard, Ivor Novello, Cosmo Lang [the late Archbishop of Canterbury] and Queen Victoria - an important calling-card for the invitation for Flint to take tea at Kensington Palace with the Queen's daughter Princess Louise.

Unsurprisingly, Flint was a conscientious objector, and served in a non - combatant regiment for part of the Second World War and was assigned to the Bomb Disposal Unit. Later, he worked briefly in the coal-mines, though he much preferred the sedentary darkness of his psychic occupation. Celebrity voices with a show-business emphasis evoked understandable suspicion - compounded by Flint's presidency of the Valentino Memorial Guild and the fact that his last London residence-a gloomy mansion off the Charles Addams drawing board in Westbourne Terrace road that had been the actor George Arliss's one-time home-accomodated a private cinema for a dozen of so guests who this time, were not disturbed by spectral whisperings.

Spirit Voices

Yet the famous where vastly outnumbered by the spirit voices of anonymous, ordinary people speaking messages of hope, comfort or occasional clairvoyance to their friends and relatives. I attended several sittings. They were always held in pitch dark, Flint explaining that he extruded ectoplasm which formed the "etheric voice-box" for the dead to relay their words and any sudden intrusion of light would send it recoiling back to him, "like a kick in the midriff" potentially very dangerous. The company chatted in a desultory way until, very suddenly and dramatically the room grew cold; then on a good day for reception, Mickey came through, introducing the "speakers". Though tolerantly sceptical, I had to concede that those which addressed me, claiming acquaintance with a recently deceased parent, answered test questions about childhood, family and pets with fluency and total accuracy. They did not seem to need to pause for breath.

Extracts taken from Leslie Flint's autobiography

In this compelling autobiography which tells of Leslie's astonishing independent direct voice gift, a gift which has not only brought him fame and acclaim, but occasionally heartache and hardship.

Leslie describes his early difficult years and though originally holding the view that "death was a pretty final event", Leslie subsequently developed his superb mediumship.

He tells of his friendship with Rudolph Valentino - after the silent screen star's death - and the evidential way in which it began.

"Voices in the Dark" also contains quite astounding evidence of survival after death, evidence that simply cannot be explained away. No one who reads this volume will ever or can ever reasonably doubt that the afterlife exists and is a reality for all, be they known or unknown.

This is the Foreword to the new edition of "Voices In The Dark"

Leslie Flint came into this world in 1911 and left it in 1994. While here, he became the finely tuned instrument transmitting countless thousands of messages from the world he now inhabits.

No intellectual, but a plain speaking man, Leslie was born into poverty and raised amid family disarray. Yet, through dogged determination and single mindedness, he became one of the most celebrated independent direct voice mediums of the twentieth century. Through his remarkable gifts, he brought consolation and hope to the bereaved and understanding and inspiration to the many as well as shedding light on many strange corners of history.

Fortunately, today the public is, in parts, more open and receptive to the reality of the spirit world and more understanding of the crucial link between this world and the next in the endless chain of human life.

With the advent of Mickey, his much loved Cockney alter ego in the world beyond, there began decades of service as a voice medium. Leslie gave sittings to those of every rank and degree, every profession, enabling the bereaved to learn of the great truth of human survival beyond physical death. Leslie's mediumship was also a channel for famous men and women whose spirit communications were on an elevated and inspiring plane, often throwing fascinating new light on the accepted annals of history.

Sceptics attended sittings, but left convinced

Others tested Leslie's genuineness in every way. Truly, he could comment, "I am the most tested medium this country has ever produced." People traveled from all over the world to sit with him. Leslie also demonstrated abroad, particularly in the United States, where he was in great demand.

The final chapter in his life came with his retirement to Brighton, where he enjoyed years of peace and happiness before he passed on, at the age of eighty-three.

Leslie acknowledged he "had no education to speak of," yet words of the highest wisdom and most profound knowledge, often in a variety of languages, emerged at sittings. He was an upright, simple man, with little financial ambition or perception, but whose service to mankind was of inestimable worth. I have read many letters written to him from all over the world, expressing not only gratitude and friendship, but also love and affection.

In the sixteen years I knew him, from 1978 until his death, as a friend and professional adviser, I was struck by his simplicity of soul, his sheer innocence of material matters, and his honesty and integrity in his chosen career.

As much of the world sinks into a morass of materialism, commercialism and tribalism, it is now more important than ever that mankind learns to appreciate the spirit world's reality, of survival of the soul, of the vital importance of good deeds and good thoughts to prepare the way ahead, and that, whatever our colour or creed, we are all spiritual beings expressed in physical terms.

Leslie Flint displayed a rare dedication to his calling as a significant avenue linking two worlds. We salute him as one of the outstanding mediums and dedicated servants of this disappearing twentieth century.

By Aubrey Rose, CBE