Almost every day I work in the Edgar Cayce Foundation archives, I am surprised and even excited by something I encounter. This year - the 75th anniversary of the A.R.E. - I want to share a few of these discoveries, beginning with an audiotape I found buried in Hugh Lynn Cayce's correspondence. Labeled "Letter to Hugh Lynn Cayce from P. J. Macquley, M.D., February 15, 1971," it is a recording of an impromptu presentation before an A.R.E. audience.

In October 1929, Dr. Macquley considered becoming medical director of the Cayce hospital to replace the late Dr. Thomas B. House. At the time, Dr. Macquley worked for the U.S. Public Health Service at Ellis Island. Here are excerpts from his story:

"... I saw an advertisement in the [New York] newspaper signed by a man by the name of E. Blumenthal ... He was advertising for a doctor, and I was looking for a place to go ... So he told me about the hospital down here at Virginia Beach and about Mr. Cayce and what they were doing. They were planning to build about 25 or 30 of those hospitals - a whole chain of them across the country. They were tied up with Yale University and Duke University investigating this ESP business. Now ... being a country boy, I knew practically nothing about ESP ... I thought it was a lot of hokum, and you can understand that, I'm sure. But Mr. Blumenthal talked me into coming down here to spend the weekend ... [He] had a seat on the stock exchange. He was one of 10 men who, he told me, were made millionaires by Mr. Cayce's readings...

"... Mr. Cayce ... was a quiet, gentle man and never raised his voice, he had piercing eyes, and he seemed to look right through you. He said to me, 'You don't believe much in the ESP business, do you?' and I said, 'No, Mr. Cayce ... I don't take any stock in it at all ...'

"'Well,' he said, 'Now you were here in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1927 at the U.S. Marine Hospital, and you've got a friend down there - a surgeon by the name of E. M. Townsend. ...'

"And I said, 'Yes, that's right. How do you happen to know about that?'

"'Well,' he said, 'it's part of my business.' Then he said, 'I'll tell you what you do. You call up Dr. Townsend ... and you have him sit down at his desk, and write anything that he wants to on a piece of paper - medical terms, foreign languages, numbers - don't make any difference to me - and as fast as he writes them down on that piece of paper, I'll tell you what they are.'

"And I said, 'Well, if you can do that, you're pretty good.'

"So I called up Dr. Townsend and I said, 'Now, doctor, don't ask me what I'm doing down here ... I'll see you later, and tell you about this thing. But you go into your office, and you write these things down on a piece of paper - anything you can think of - medical terms, Latin, Greek, foreign languages, numbers - anything you want. There's a fellow down here says that, as fast as you write it down, he'll tell me what it is.'

"So he said, 'All right.'

"Mr. Cayce laid down on the couch. His secretary ... got her paper and pencil out, and he started telling her what to write down. She wrote all this stuff down, and he said, 'Well, Dr. Townsend is going to call you back on the phone now.'

"And [Townsend] called back on the phone. Cayce had this stuff on the paper - he hadn't missed a letter or a quotation mark or number or anything. He had it all just letter-perfect. Never missed a thing. "And he said to me, 'Now what do you think about it?'

"And I said, 'Well ... I'm just a little bit more confused than ever.'"

Although the job offer seemed reasonable, Macquley turned the job down - not only because of his "weird" experiences, but also for professional reasons: He said he could not carry out a medical procedure he did not agree with, even if Cayce was sure it was needed. So the hospital hired instead Dr. Lyman Lydic of Dayton, Ohio. (And that's another story.)

Later that month the stock market crashed. Sixteen months later, the hospital closed. However, soon two significant positive events took place: the readings for A Search for God began, and the Association for Research and Enlightenment was founded.