Thomas Joseph Sugrue

His early memories of life in the borough's Irish section were captured in a 1940 autobiographical novel, Such Is the Kingdom, which was recast as the fictional "Kelly Hill".

The subjects included diagnosis and treatment of illness, finding hidden items, universal laws, karma, and even past lives.

[2][better source needed] Sugrue made the five-hour trip from Lexington to Virginia Beach with Hugh Lynn, thinking that he would debunk a fraud.

In 1934, he joined the staff of The American Magazine and wrote articles covering Athens, Egypt, Palestine, England, and more as he traveled the world.

[citation needed] After seeking relief for his condition in Florida, Sugrue moved to Virginia Beach in June 1939 and lived at the Cayces' home until October 1941.

With the many questions on esoteric themes he would ask to Arab, Jew and Druze circles he would meet in this process, Watch for the Morning phrases an answer that still has to be put in shared sentences[vague] nowadays.

With his 1952 A Catholic Speaks His Mind, his shortest and last book, he puts Christianity in the perspective of religion seen as a universal, structural part of the human civilization.

He was struck on the base of the spine by a ball in a school game, after which he began to act very strangely, and eventually was put to bed.

[11] Cayce's uncommon personality is also shown in an unusual incident in which he rode a certain mule back to the farmhouse at the end of a work day.

[13] In 1900, Cayce formed a business partnership with his father to sell Woodmen of the World Insurance; however, in March he was struck by severe laryngitis that resulted in a complete loss of speech.

[15] In 1901, a traveling stage hypnotist and entertainer named Hart, who referred to himself as "The Laugh Man", was performing at the Hopkinsville Opera House.

[16] In subsequent sessions, when Cayce wanted to indicate that the connection was made to the "entity" of the person that was requesting the reading, he would generally start off with, "We have the body."

Layne had read of similar hypnotic cures by the Marquis de Puységur, a follower of Franz Mesmer, and was keen to explore the limits of the healing knowledge involved with the trance voice.

[19] He asked Cayce to describe Layne's own ailments and suggest cures, and reportedly found the results both accurate and effective.

Given only the person's name and location, Cayce said he could diagnose the physical and mental conditions of what he termed "the entity," and then provide a remedy.

After soul searching the whole night, Cayce finally accepted the offer under certain conditions, including that he did not take money for the readings.

[21] The growing fame of Cayce along with the popularity he received from newspapers attracted several eager commercially minded men who wanted to seek a fortune by using his clairvoyant abilities.

The remedies that were channeled often involved the use of unusual electrotherapy, ultraviolet light, diet, massage, gemstones, less mental work and more relaxation in sand on the beach.

Morton Blumenthal, a young man who worked in the stock exchange in New York with his trader brother, became very interested in the readings, shared Cayce's outlook, and offered to finance the vision in the right spirit.

To protect against legal prosecution, the rules required any person requesting a reading to become a member of the Association and agree they were participating in an experiment in psychic research.

Early in 1928, Dr Moseley Brown, head of the psychology dept at Washington and Lee University, became convinced of the readings and joined the Association.

Substances used included oils, salts, herbs, iodine, witch hazel, magnesia, bismuth, alcohol, castoria, lactated pepsin, turpentine, charcoal, animated ash, soda, cream of tartar, aconite, laudanum, camphor, and gold solution.

[49] Blumenthal and Brown went ahead with ambitious plans for a university as a supplement to the hospital and a "parallel service for the mind and spirit".

The readings were now about dreams, coincidence (synchronicity), developing intuition, karma, the akashic records, astrology, past-life relationships, soul mates and other esoteric subjects.

June 6, 1931, 61 people attended a meeting to carry on the work and form a new organization called the Association for Research and Enlightenment.

[51] Hugh Lynn proposed that they develop a stock in trade rather than something grandiose, and that they build a library of research into the phenomena and hold study groups, and that Cayce would do two readings a day.

[52] Hugh Lynn narrowed the mailing list to some 300 members who were genuinely enthusiastic, and as a result the first annual congress of the assoc was held in June 1932.

Members raised a building fund for an office, library, and vault, which they erected in 1940-1 as a single unit added on to the Cayce residence.

[58] Cayce gained national prominence in 1943 after the publication of a high-profile article in the magazine Coronet titled "Miracle Man of Virginia Beach".

[41] World War II was taking its toll on American soldiers and he felt he could not refuse the families who requested help for their loved ones who were missing in action.