1/1, 1938-1953 (?) $1.00 a year, 8 pp. The journal was first advertised in Occult Digest and Psychic Observer in the fall of 1938, and Psychic Observer in 1953 still lists Varner as publisher of “The Messenger.” The early advertisements for the journal describe its contents as “interesting articles on Spiritualistic truth” and characterize it as a magazine for “earnest seekers after the truth.” From the surviving issues of the early 1950s, the journal was not the bulletin of any particular spiritualist church or organization in Detroit, but rather acted as a clearinghouse and directory of the numerous such groups there at the time, with advertisements for the spiritualist paraphernalia, florists and funeral homes and for the leading mediums and healers: “Rev. May Hute Chamberlain, Trumpet and Materialization”; “Edwards Memorial Center, Development Class Tuesday, Bunco Party Every Friday”; “Charles Franklin, Divine Healer”; “Rev. Hazel B. Daamrau, Healing Practitioner,” et al. Varner, who variously listed her middle initial as “C,” “F” and “O,” was a job printer and this journal seems to have been the vehicle for her printing services. To enliven the mix, the journal carried short excerpts on spiritualist subjects by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Arthur Findlay, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Arthur Conan Doyle and others, notes on the doings of the Spiritualist Benevolence Auxiliary and the International Spiritualists’ Federation and the Federation of Spiritual Churches and Associations of U.S.A., Inc. of Washington, D.C. and later Milwaukee, Wisconsin (of which Varner became president in 1949), and offered a $3.00 premium for personal tales of “True Mystic Experiences” (grandmother saw “lights” before death in the family). A notable regular advertisement in the journal was for Chief Mexes, Spiritual Natureologist, with photograph of Chief Mexes in braids: “Most Noted Indian Master Spiritualist Says Spirit-Divine-Hunch Guidance helps you right now. Materially, physically and spiritually.” This worthy, as an eminent researcher has discovered, was Homer U. Bunce, an African-American born in Ohio in 1876. He spent most of his life working as a janitor and later became a medium at Camp Chesterfield before ending up to Detroit, where he died in 1952, but he had had a brief burst of notoriety in 1917-1918 when as “Mexes, Indian Chief” of the Mescalero Apache” he promoted the walk he and his wife, Princess Lone Feather, were making across the United States at the behest, he said, of Chief Thunderwater, to deliver his “war message” to Native Americans to enlist in the U.S. army.

Category: Spiritualism.