It’s Christmas 1892, and controversial newspaper editor W.T. Stead has just published a short story titled ‘From the Old World to the New’. The story involves a massive ocean-going liner called the Majestic and a tragedy at sea. As the Majestic sails through dense fog crossing the Atlantic, a psychic passenger has a dream about a ship hitting an iceberg and sinking:

“…last night, as I was lying asleep in my berth, I was awakened by a sudden cry, as of men in mortal peril, and I roused myself to listen, and there before my eyes… I saw a sailing ship among the icebergs. She had been stoved in by the ice, and was fast sinking. The crew were crying piteously for help: it was their voices that roused me. Some of them had climbed upon the ice; others were on the sinking ship, which was drifting away as she sank. Even as I looked she settled rapidly by the bow, and went down with a plunge. The waters bubbled and foamed. I could see the heads of a few swimmers in the eddy. One after another they sank, and I saw them no more… Then, in a moment, the whole scene vanished, and I was alone in my berth, with the wailing cry of the drowning sailors still ringing in my ears…” [i]

Another psychic passenger has the gift of automatic writing and is in telepathic contact with a friend who was stranded on an iceberg after his ship has gone down. These two psychics then have to convince the captain to rescue the survivors of the accident.

A giant ocean-going liner crossing the Atlantic. Fog. An iceberg. A disaster at sea… All this is an eerie foreshadowing of the Titanic’s fate twenty years later. Stead set his story aboard the real White Star liner Majestic. At the time Stead wrote the story, the Majestic’s actual captain was Edward J. Smith — the same man who would later command, and die aboard, the Titanic on 15 April 1912.

The man who wrote this eerily prescient story, W.T. Stead, was a pioneer of tabloid style journalism, even having spent time in prison for purchasing a child in order to demonstrate that this practice was common in London in his famous ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ campaign against child prostitution.  His sensational articles resulted in the age of consent for girls being raised from 13 to 16, the law coming to be known as the Stead Act. In the 1880s, along with many scientists and intellectuals of the time, he became fascinated by Spiritualism and mediums, a fascination seen in his story about the psychics at sea.

Like Arthur Conan Doyle, Stead’s attraction to Spiritualism and its colourful rogues gallery of charismatic mediums was understandable. Both men had lost sons in the Great War.[ii]

However, Stead’s story about the maritime disaster has a macabre twist. W.T. Stead was one of the 1,500 or so souls who perished when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank below the Atlantic in 1912. He was last seen heroically giving his lifebelt to another passenger.

The Blue Island

Of course, given Stead’s interest in Spiritualism, the ghost-botherers just wouldn’t let him rest in peace. Stead supposedly wrote a book from beyond the grave called The Blue Island: Experiences of a New Arrival Beyond the Veil, in which he detailed his adventures in the afterlife to Spiritualist medium Woodman Pardoe. Pardoe supposedly channelled Stead’s account of the afterlife using the technique of automatic writing, and the book was coauthored by Stead’s daughter Estelle who was a keen Spiritualist.[iii]

So what happened to Stead after he died on the Titanic?

On realising he’s dead and that everything he’d read about the afterlife was correct, being a true journalist, he longs for access to a telephone so he can phone in the news headlines. He describes the scene from his vantage point above the Atlantic:

“A matter of a few minutes in time only, and here were hundreds of bodies floating in the water – dead – hundreds of souls carried through the air, alive… Many, realising their death had come, were enraged at their own powerlessness to save their valuables. They fought to save what they had on earth prized so much…”

When all who had perished are present and correct, some kind of astral mass transit system shoots them up into the air at terrific speed as if they’re standing on some kind of platform. Minutes later, they find themselves in a place of light and beauty where they are greeted by the souls of dead friends and relatives. This is the Blue Island, a kind of holiday camp for spirits of people who had died suddenly to help them relax after their traumatic passing.

Stead was greeted by his dead father and an old friend and shown around the Blue Island, populated by souls of people of all races. ‘Life’ there goes on as normal. People eat, sleep and smoke out of habit until they gradually begin to lose the desire to do so. They engage in their hobbies and pastimes, though soon feel pulled towards studying esoteric and spiritual matters.

Stead spent much of his time in a building that was like a spiritual telecommunications hub where souls could contact mediums on the earthly plane and either appear before them as ghosts or send them messages. There he managed to telepath his face on to spirit photo, which I think is probably referring to the one below, taken in Crewe in 1913 or 1914.

Stead visited other higher planes of existence, though only vague accounts are given in the book.

The Real World

When souls are ready, they can leave the Blue Island to what Stead calls the Real World, their permanent residence in the afterlife. The Real World is very much like Earth with the same animals and plants, and the souls there spend their time developing spiritually and discarding any remaining Earth habits while still indulging in their favourite hobbies and pastimes. Here, you can live in a palace if you want, though you must earn this through spiritual development.

Advanced Spiritual Instructors interview everyone individually and in great detail about their life on Earth and every misdeed or unworthy thought they have ever had. Penance for all this is contact with Earth until your debt is considered paid.

Next, Stead tells us, souls progress to a ‘stay or go’ sphere. Here, depending on your spiritual progress you will have the option (or be obliged) to be reincarnated on Earth to learn the lessons you have yet to learn. Judging by the contents of the Blue Island, these lessons consist mostly of rambling spiritualist gobbledygook. The book was marketed as a Christmas gift, and everyone loves a festive ghost story. Speaking of which…

Epilogue

The same year that Stead wrote his prescient short story, he became interested in a notorious Christmas poltergeist episode in Peterborough involving mysterious lights, terrifying noises, spirit messages, witchcraft and a fiery hound from hell… You can read all about it in my latest book Phantoms of Christmas Past: Festive Ghost Hoaxes, Ghost Hunts and Ghost Panics.

[i] W. T. Stead “From the Old World to the New” The Review of Reviews December 1892

[ii] W. Sydney Robinson, Muckraker: The Scandalous Life and Times of W.T. Stead (London: The Rodson Press, 2013)

[iii] Pardoe Woodman and Estelle Stead, The Blue Island (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1922)

For more resources on Stead see https://attackingthedevil.co.uk