Coombe-Tennant, Winifred Margaret
Serocold (Mrs. Willett) (18741956)
Winifred Coombe-Tennant was better known by the pseudonym
Mrs. Willett, under which her scripts produced by auEncyclopedia
of Occultism & Parapsychology 5th Ed. Coombe-Tennant, Winifred Margaret Serocold
335
tomatic writing were published. She was born November 1,
1874, and married Charles Coombe-Tennant in 1895. In addition
to her mediumship, she was chairman of the arts and crafts
section of the National Eisteddfod (a Welsh cultural conference
held annually), a justice of the peace, and a delegate to the Assembly
of the League of Nations (1922). She was also an associate
of the Society for Psychical Research, London.
After the death of her daughter in 1908, Coombe-Tennant
corresponded with Margaret Verrall, also known for her automatic
writing, and later produced scripts herself. She first went
into trance in 1910.
She took part in a cross-correspondence communications
study by the Society for Psychical Research in which a group of
automatists (Verrall, Helen Salter, Mrs. Holland [Alice Kipling
Fleming] and Mrs. Willett) produced interlocking
scripts that indicated the possibility of a disembodied intelligence.
Coombe-Tennants mediumship is discussed in an article by
G. W. Balfour in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.
After her death in 1956 she supposedly communicated
to Geraldine Cummins the scripts later published in the book
Swan on a Black Sea (1965).
Sources:
Balfour, G. W. A Study of the Psychological Aspects of Mrs.
Willetts Mediumship. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research 43 (1935): 43.
