Origins

Department 18
 

The origins of Department 18 can be traced back to a meeting in 1922 between Fletcher Pressman, the munitions millionaire, and Genevieve Madison, an American medium, well-known in the United States for her work in the field of psychic research, and equally for a series of exposes of fake mediums and clairvoyants.

            Pressman had been trying to contact his son who was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele,  in 1917. No records exist to show if he was successful in his quest, but the two struck up an immediate friendship after Madison convinced Pressman that he was an easy target for the many charlatans capitalizing on the  grief of the thousands left bereaved by the Great War.

            Pressman was impressed by her desire to prove the existence of true paranormal phenomena and offered to part-finance her research. Within two years Pressman’s interest in the paranormal rivaled that of Madison and he joined with her to start investigating such events in earnest.

            They opened offices in The Strand and within five years had a small team of genuine mediums and clairvoyants working for them. They kept extensive records of the paranormal events they and their team investigated, and before long were recognized throughout the world as experts in the field.

            During the Second World War their services were called upon by the War Office. Hitler was rumored to be dabbling in the occult and especially black magic, and so Pressman and Madison and their team were given the role of advisers to the SIS, the Special Intelligence Service.

            Pressman died from a heart attack in 1944. It was a blow from which Genevieve Madison never recovered and, immediately after the war, she went back home to America, where she died eighteen months later.

            Rather than disband the team the Government initiated a special department, to carry on the investigations into paranormal phenomena.

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copyright M Impey 2008