In 1913, a St. Louis housewife named Pearl Curran sat down at a Ouija board and claimed to make contact with a spirit called Patience Worth—a seventeenth-century Englishwoman who spoke in archaic language and spun tales with uncanny speed. What began as a parlor amusement soon erupted into a literary mystery: novels, poems, and dialogues flowed effortlessly through Pearl, though she had no known training in such artistry. Was this the voice of a forgotten soul, the hidden genius of an unlikely medium, or just a big hoax, either for profit, or simply to cure boredom?

SOURCES

Litvag, Irving (1972) Singer in the Shadows: The Strange Story of Patience Worth. Macmillan, NY, USA.

Yost, Casper S. (1916) Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery. Henry Holt & Co. NY, USA.

Prince, Walter Franklin (1927) The Case of Patience Worth. Boston Society for Psychic Research, Boston, USA.

St. Louis GLobe Democrat (1915) The Mystery of Patience Worth. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Sun 7 Feb 1915, p41. USA.

St. Louis GLobe Democrat (1915) The Mystery of Patience Worth. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Sun 14 Feb 1915, p41. USA.

St. Louis GLobe Democrat (1915) The Mystery of Patience Worth. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Sun 21 Feb 1915, p41. USA.

St. Louis GLobe Democrat (1915) The Mystery of Patience Worth. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Sun 28 Feb 1915, p41. USA.

The New York Times (1916) Patience Worth A Psychic Mystery. The New York Times, Sun 27 Feb 1916, p69. NY, USA.

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