 Hapgood spent ten years working with New England medium Elwood Babbitt (1921-2001), attempting to make contact with notable figures from the past.Babbitt, a retired carpenter and World War II veteran, had studied trance mediumship at Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment.Hapgood audiotaped and transcribed a number of Babbitt's "trance lectures" which purported to come from Jesus, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and the Hindu god Vishnu, using the material to publish his final three books