George Mackie: I could say briefly my mother emerged from the curtain.

Defense Attorney: You were satisfied it was your mother?

George Mackie: Yes, I was in the second row of chairs. I stood up and leant over to get as near as I could without disturbing the people in front of me. I suppose our faces might have been three to four feet apart, and I have no doubt in my opinion that the features were those of my mother. A man knows his mother. I have the advantage also of knowing my father.

Judge: Well, that’s something. When did your mother die?

George Mackie: In 1927.

Defense Attorney: Was there any other point of identification that you particularly remember?

George Mackie: No, sir. There was nothing unusual about my mother. She had no marks on her face or anything of that sort, but I would say, sir, that she was a comparatively slight woman. She was a woman of seventy-five when she died and might have tipped the scale, when I last saw her in 1915 when I left Australia to come home for the war, at seven or eight stone.

Defense Attorney: Upon that occasion was there anything else of particular interest?

George Mackie: In the conversation she discussed home affairs, intimate little things. She addressed remarks to the others. She was just that type of woman, just the sort of thing I would have expected her to do. She referred to her routine life in the house, how she used to carry out her baking and things like that, just the sort of things that a woman would do.

Defense Attorney: Apart from your mother, was there one particular interesting thing? Can you remember anybody else upon that occasion that you identified?

George Mackie: That I identified?

Defense Attorney: That you saw.

George Mackie: I identified a brother and got close enough again to him to see that he had a moustache and to say, “By gosh, Jack, you have still got your moustache”. He said, “Yes, I have”. I got close enough to see that. We didn’t have very much conversation. He faded from me. I got equally close to him as I did to my mother and there was what I considered to be a rather unusual incident. By this time I felt I was rather buying up the seance at the expense of others, who had paid to go there. I had not paid; my wife had paid for me. Albert, the guide, said, “There is someone here by the name of Helen who wants to materialise”. The name “Helen” was very definite. I knew I had a sister Helen who died years ago, but I did not want to claim it because I thought it was time the other people who had paid should get some show. Nobody else called it and he said “Come along, this is very insistent to come through”, and he said, “Look here, it is the man in Air Force uniform”. I was dressed as I am to-day, so I said, “I do know a Helen, but she died before I was born”. She was the second eldest in my family, and I never knew her. He said, “That does not matter, she is here and she is not a child now”. I was invited to ask her to leave the cabinet, which I did, and she came very close and I am very definite that her features did not represent those of Mrs. Duncan. I said, “If you are my sister Helen we have never met”, and she said, “But I have always been with you and it is a very happy day in our family because we have been looking forward to this day”.

Defense Attorney: What did she look like?

George Mackie: She looked very beautiful.

Judge: Was there an ectoplasm present?

George Mackie: I would not say so. She was dressed in a flimsy sort of robe.

Defense Attorney: Did your mother appear in an ectoplasm or not?

George Mackie: Well, I did not see enough of the features to see her complexion. The robes, I take it, were ectoplasm but I am not an expert on these matters.

Defense Attorney: The features in every case George Mackie: The features in every case were clearly discernible, even to the tan on my brother’s face. It was not a white face. I find it difficult to say these things in this court because I know what ridicule there is for all these things and I know how my brother officers are going to respond to this, but I want to have my say.