More than 100 years ago, Pearl Curran, a “uneducated” St. Louis housewife, channeled a 17th C Englishwoman, named Patience Worth, through a ouija board. With Curran transcribing, Patience Worth, the Spirit, dictated six novels, numerous short stories, poem and quips, over a period of about 14 years (1913-1927).
THE SORRY TALE
Worth’s most famous, critically-acclaimed novel was ‘The Sorry Tale’; only one of the numerous works she kept churning out, day after day; night after night. As more of her writings were published and her popularity grew, debunkers accused Curran of fraud; psychologists claimed she had a personality disorder. But no one could actually explain how Pearl could know so much about England, English customs and English people in the 1600s.
Of course, being a woman, and a housewife with no college degree, left Pearl vulnerable to misogyny and contempt. But it appears, nothing could stop her from continuing to contact Patience Worth, until her death from pneumonia in 1927. She was 54.
Today, 37 volumes of her typed transcripts and writings are housed at Washington University in St. Louis. This grouping includes Patience Worth novels and also four thousand poems.
The blurb on the back of the book about Pearl Curran, ‘Singer In The Shadows,’ describes the Curran/Worth writings as “One of the most bizarre psychic mysteries on record…a psychological whodunit that has completely befuddled experts.”
As a longtime “educated” writer, I know how difficult it is to write one novel – let alone, even attempt to do so. And, especially difficult if it’s about a time period and a place I know nothing about. Perhaps an apt comparison to Patience Worth’s writing genius and speed would be AI – capable of warp speed and extrapolation.
But Pearl Curran/Patience Worth was not a machine. And AI has no mind, no subconscious nor desire to write a Middle Ages novel (at least, I don’t think so).
YOU BE THE JUDGE
You be the judge if Patience Wth was a true manifestation of mediumship or reincarnation, or of some early 20th Century parlor game that got out of hand.
Was Patience Worth, a true Spirit, come to life on the Ouija board, as the genesis for Pearl Curran’s own writing? A fraud? Or, as some psychologists claim, a subconscious creative extension of Curran’s own mind?
We are talking Parapsychology here, so you know what I think.
#Psychic Reading #4 The wind whistles – or is that sirens? More of both coming now. They mingle together, like long lost couples, but in the end, they share destruction, and finally, only dust.
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