~Speaking of Seth~

So i was watching a video of someone at the Seth house in Elmira , talking about restoring and such.I was wondering who owned it then. I guess i just wondered how come Jane Roberts and hubby never purchased the house themselves and restored it? I mean they must have been millionaires from the Seth books and their other books , right? I googled around but didn't see much about their financial situation , so i couldn't tell. Was Jane and hubby still living there when she passed?

Hi Raz,

The W. Water Street house (now called "The Seth House") was a mansion in 1888, and was later turned into apartments by a subsequent owner. In 1960 Jane and Rob rented a small second floor apartment in the house and later when they had some money, rented a second apartment across the hall. It wasn't until 1963 that Jane had her first contact with Seth via the ouija board.

While Jane and Rob did pretty well with book sales, they were never millionaires. Jane and Rob worked various part time jobs until book sales picked up. Publishers will give a nice monetary advance when they take on publishing a book, but they get a share out of the royalties from book sales. In the beginning, I think they also take out money to pay for printing etc costs so often a writer doesn't get much income until those debts are cleared.

The Water St house was probably not up for sale when Jane and Rob decided they needed more room, and a home of their own. They may not even have thought to purchase it--it was huge and to convert it back to a house would have taken a tremendous amount of time, work and money.

In 1975 they bought a roomy house in Sayre, Pennsylvania, which is close to Elmira and where Rob grew up. It was known as the Pinnacle house (the street it was on), or as they called it, the Hill House. Apparently they also owned a small house in Elmira, I don't know the details of that one yet, but they used that one to store the Seth materials (Rob kept everything... manuscripts, transcripts, journals, books, paintings etc). Jane held some classes in the Hill House until her health was so bad she couldn't go on. She went into the hospital 4/20/83 and died there 9/5/84.

Rob remained in the Pinnacle house and Laurel Davies and he married in 1999. They bought a different house in Sayre with enough room to store Rob's 4,000+ paintings and the Seth materials. Rob died 5/26/2008. Laurel still lives in that house.

Kate and Oshara of "The Seth House" rented a couple of apartments in the Water St house a few years ago. They wanted to purchase and restore the house and have lots of plans to turn it into something wonderful. The house has been neglected for years and they have their work cut out for them. They finally received enough donations to purchase the house a few months ago.

You can see more about the Water Street house here https://www.thesethhouse.org/the-house/. I actually made the website for them, but they've since taken over maintenance and so made a lot of changes. There's a lot of information on the website about their plans and what repairs they've made.

Thanks for this explanation , it clears things up. I think Oshara is the one in the video i watched.