Owen, George Vale (1869-1931)

British clergyman and convert of Spiritualism. Owen was born on June 26, 1869, in Birmingham, England. He was educated at the Midland Institute and Queen's College in Birmingham and ordained in the Church of England. After curacies at Seaforth, Fairfield and Liverpool, he became vicar of Orford, New Warrington. Here he created a new church and worked for twenty years.

After some psychic experiences Owen developed automatic writing, and received, from high spirits, an account of life after death and further philosophical teachings. After Lord North-cliffe published the scripts in his newspaper, the Weekly Dispatch, Owen was forced out of ministry by the Church authorities. He resigned his vicarage and went on a lecture tour in America and in England, eventually settling in a pastorate of a Spiritualist congregation in London. Through 1920, he authored a number of books about his new faith, his most notable being the five-volume Life Beyond the Veil.

He died March 8, 1931. Messages purported to emanate from the surviving ego of Owen were supposedly published in A Voice from Heaven by Frederick H. Haines. The clairvoyant Haines claimed the book contained messages he had "received automatically" from the deceased Owen.

Sources:

Owen, George Vale. Facts and the Future Life. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1922.

——. How Spirits Communicate. N.p., n.d.

——. Jesus the Christ. N.p., 1929.

——. The Life Beyond the Veil. 5 vols. London: Greater World Association, 1926.

——. What Happens After Death. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924.

Owen, George Vale, and H. A. Dallas. The Nurseries of Heaven. (1920).