The author states that these spiritualistic messages are from Judge David P. Hatch, of Los Angeles.

Release date is 2025-09-29

Peter Becker, Laura Natal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive).

"War letters from the living dead man" by David Patterson Hatch is a collection of spiritualist letters written in the early 20th century. It presents purported communications from a deceased American judge, “X,” channeled through Elsa Barker, who reports from the afterlife on the unseen forces shaping the Great War. Blending battlefield vignettes with esoteric teaching, it explores karma, elemental beings, the struggle of love versus hate, and a call to universal brotherhood under the guidance of a Teacher and an angelic “Beautiful Being.” The opening of the work sets the stage through Barker’s introduction, detailing her automatic writing method, her cautious skepticism, and incidents she takes as evidence, then moves into the first letters in which “X” returns from a starry sojourn to confront demonic forces driving the war and assures that the powers of good will ultimately prevail. Early letters depict astral battles, monstrous elementals, the Archduke’s troubled after-death state, a sharp critique of Prussianized Germany coupled with a plea to love one’s enemies, and Belgium’s suffering framed through karmic “spectres of the Congo.” Further chapters offer scenes of unseen guardians protecting a Belgian home, consolation for the bereaved via a reincarnation-as-day metaphor, an angelic discourse on love and hate, and teachings on Humanity as one body, the inner “foeman,” and the danger of over-climaxing any rhythm. The narrative includes reading soldiers’ thoughts in Brussels, a prophecy of a coming Sixth Race centered in America, praise of France’s civility and restraint (with Abraham Lincoln watching over the U.S.), and closes this opening stretch with a glimpse of Masters debating how to soften the war’s end and a warning about will-driven “magic” that forces outcomes against the larger law. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1915