Benjamin Franklin Outwits Death and Keeps Writing Clever Aphorisms

Benjamin Franklin made many great contributions to humanity during his 84 years on the planet. Among them was Poor Richard’s Almanack, in which he wrote many aphorisms, such as:

• There are no pains without gains.
• Love your neighbor, yet don’t pull down your hedge.
• Hear no ill of a friend, nor speak any of an enemy.

When he passed away in 1790, it meant the end of Franklin’s inventions. No more big ideas. No more clever aphorisms. But according to S.G. Horn’s 1896 book, The Next World Interviewed, Franklin wasn’t quite done.

The Next World Interviewed, by Mrs. S.G. Horn, 1896.

The book’s publisher wrote to a medium in Paris asking if she could channel Franklin to “inform the public why so many mediums were detected in fraud.” The Founding Father’s spirit allegedly responded, but only in aphorisms. A few of these maxims from beyond, as published, follow:

• The psychic force of a determined doubter calls up lying spirits.
• Go to a spirit-circle, determined to catch the medium at fraud, and at that very seance the most reliable medium will act like the “devil.”
• Have the faith Christ had, and spirits will materialize in your pulpits and reading-desks. Doubt them, and they will throw bells and tambourines at you, and say the mediums did it.
• Spiritual knowledge, like gems hidden in the bowels of the earth, is only to be reached by patient upturning of the soil.
• Spirits are the souls of humanity. Among them are charlatans, beggars, murderers, thieves, simpletons, mingled with good and pure souls: intelligent, loyal, honest, and sympathetic beings.
• Do not be discouraged when you find your pet medium to be a fraud: there have been false prophets in all ages of the world.
• By shutting your eyes you cannot prevent the sunlight from warming you, neither by denouncing Spiritualism can you prevent spirits from influencing you.
• It has taken a hundred years to develop the electric telegraph. Give us a hundred years to develop our spirit mediums.

S.G. Horn’s conversations with the dead went well beyond Benjamin Franklin. She also allegedly spoke with Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and many other great minds from history.

Benjamin Franklin speaks from beyond his Philadelphia grave in The Next World Interviewed.