According to my research Rev. Erwood succeeded Rev. Herrick as Pastor of Plymouth Spiritualist Church here in Rochester, New York.
An early photo of Rev. Erwood as a young man was actually included in Rev. Austin’s work What Converted Me to Spiritualism, along with a brief testimonial authored by Rev. Erwood himself.Rev. Erwood was born in Wisconsin, and was raised Roman Catholic. He describes his spiritual upbringing as being rather closed minded to spiritualist phenomena that he would eventually embrace:
“Born and reared in the Catholic faith, my early environments were not such as to encourage the investigation of psychic phenomena, and in fact all such phenomena were looked upon with great suspicion, and it’s origin was always questioned.”
He mentions that he showed mediumistic gifts at at early age, but they were quickly dismissed by family, as well as himself:
As a child I frequently saw different objects which others could not see and I described them, only to meet with reproof. I can distinctly remember many things of this character that occurred during the earlier years of my life, but all of these manifestations were looked upon as being either of satanic or divine origin, as the case might have been.
Everything that savored Spiritualism, was avoided most studiously, by myself and relatives until after our home had been removed from Chicago to Los Angeles, Cal. There, at the age of about twenty, I met for the first time, real Spiritualist workers.
Erwood goes on to relate the story of attending his first seance, where one of his own spirit guides spoke through a medium informing Erwood that in a year he himself would be working as a Trance Medium, and the guide would be his primary spirit guide:
My first experience in a spiritualistic séance is just as vivid as though it occurred but yesterday. It was not marked by any particularly strong manifestations, in fact I remember thinking, after listening to the broken language of the spirit controlling the medium, that never, as long as I lived would I be guilty of myself as that girl did. I had no sooner allowed this thought to enter my mind than the medium turned to me and in the vernacular of the controlling spirit, said, “Chief, I would like to try and put you out.” The friends explained that he meant he would like to try and control me.
This amused me very much, and I fear I expressed my amusement a little strongly, for it seemed to vex the control, and turning once more to me, he said, rather firmly, “Chief, inside of a year you will be a medium and I shall control you.” He evidently knew whereof he spoke, as his words were literally fulfilled within the appointed time.
This was the beginning of a series of events that soon culminated in a declaration of my belief in Spiritualism and its phenomena.
Something that truly stands out among the sources regarding Rev. Erwood is his firm belief that Spiritualism was a religion of healing and compassion.
In his short work Consolation: A Message of Comfort, Erwood wrote what would essentially today be considered a self help book for grief counseling. He included his own writings on Spiritualism, poems he had written, and selected poems from famous authors that he felt would be uplifting and healing, he also shared his own story of his young daughter passing away, and how Spiritualism helped him to heal from grief and eventually contact her Spirit, gaining assurance that she was at peace and happy.
His other works include, Essentials of Psychic Development, Foregleams of Immortality, The Genesis of Happiness, The Living Thought, Mediumship: Its Use and Abuse, and Spiritualism and the Catholic Church. Most of which are actually available for free online, or in reprinted form (check out amazon).
An article printed January 26 1924 from the Democrat and Chronicle mentions him stating: “William Erwood will preach on ‘The Psychology of Courage’ tomorrow morning at Plymouth Spiritualist Church.
Rev. Erwood was also listed as a Vegetarian, and member of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in a publication by the American Human Society in October 1911.
In the work Beyond Biofeedback published in the 1970’s by Dr. Elmer and Alyce Green, Dr. Green gives several anecdotes about Erwood, who he worked with as a student for his research into the scientific aspects of spiritual phenomena. In this book he gave Erwood the nickname “the Irish Yogi”
Regarding his spiritual gifts, Green wrote in Beyond Biofeedback:
“There was no doubt in my mind that Will J. had unusual powers of physiological self-regulation. More significant to me, though, was his remarkable awareness of others. Over the eight years in which he and I became very well acquainted, I began to suspect that unusual powers of control over normally involuntary physiological processes, such as self-healing, were accompanied by an awareness of normally unconscious psychological processes-awareness not only of oneself but of others, too. Dr. Erwood could go down a row of people in an audience and describe family members and events going back several generations.”
Dr. Green also wrote about Erwood's eventual falling out from the Spiritualist Church. Apparently Erwood felt that the Spiritualist organizations of his time were too focused on producing spiritual phenomena rather than focusing on individual Spiritual development.
“Dr. Will J. Erwood, had been a minister in the Spiritualist Church. That connection was terminated, he told me, after a sharp disagreement in church councils about psychic phenomena. His position was that such phenomena should be given secondary significance, with emphasis put on spiritual development.”
In his later years Rev. Erwood founded his own Church based on the teachings of both Spiritualism and Divine Science, a New Thought movement that began in the 1880s under Malinda Cramer.
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