Staged Healings
The 1947 Vancouver Sun investigation into William Branham's Canadian healing campaign challenged the revival's miracle claims at the very moment those meetings were helping ignite the Latter Rain and Voice of Healing movements, as reporters followed the one publicly presented "healing" and learned that Helen Gledhill had already been declared healed by Branham in Calgary, had relapsed, and was placed on a stretcher in Vancouver even though her mother admitted she was not truly a stretcher case; the report exposed how Branham's campaigns could use repeated healing claims, staged presentation, demon-expulsion language, and emotional spectacle to manufacture the appearance of miraculous power despite lacking verifiable evidence.
In 1947, the Vancouver Sun caught the William Branham campaigns staging healings during Branham's famed Canada tour that sparked the Latter Rain Revival and Voice of Healing Revival. Investigative journalists followed one of the people "healed" in the meetings to interview the family and learned that the girl pronounced "healed" in the prayer line had already been "healed" in previous meetings. Reporters also learned that her mother was placed on a stretcher for the stage effect, but "was not really a stretcher case".[1] For that particular series of meetings, the staged healing was the "only miracle".
Then the young girl got up from her stretcher and walked from the room. I followed her and her mother, and found out this is the second time she has been "cured" by Branham. Several weeks ago, her mother told me, she went to Calgary where Mr. Branham "drove out the evil spirit" and showed signs of improving, but "the spirit" came back. Wednesday night she went again to be cured. Her mother, Mrs. Ethel Gledhill, 4097 Victoria Drive, said her daughter Helen is suffering pernicious anemia following a bout with pneumonia, and was really not a stretcher case, but is confined to her home, unable to work.
MacFarlane, Charles. 1947, Nov 6. Girl 'Cured' Second Time By Healer, Only 'Miracle' Here. Vancouver Sun.
