People of the past were far more likely to believe in the paranormal and parapsychology. While studies conducted today show that under certain circumstances, people can do amazing things with the mind, there are also people who choose to believe it is a bunch of poo.
Whatever your personal belief — clairvoyance or mental illness — here is a case of a young woman who would go into a trance and do things that were out of her normal character.
Amazing Trance Feats of a Country Girl
By William A. Feather
Wellsville, Mo., Aug. 1. — I came several hundred miles to talk to an unassuming little country girl and find out whether the marvelous stories told of her are true. For if they are, she is probably the most wonderful girl in America. This is what I found:
Bessie Stewart sees in the dark as well as in the light.
She dances as gracefully as Genee, though she has never practiced dancing.
She delivers lectures and recites poems that she has merely heard or read.
She composes excellent music, though she has only the rudiments of a musical education.
She sings songs that she has never learned.
She tells her friends the secret records of their lives.
She describes events taking place hundreds of miles away.
Miss Bessie is the 20-year-old daughter of Charles Stewart, a farmer living five miles southwest of this village. These strange things are done while she is in a state of trance which physicians are unable to explain. During the past year she has often fallen into this state, remaining in it from two days to a week. She seems transformed into another person — in fact, she acts of several persons.
“She thinks herself a man at times,” said her father. “She takes long steps, deepens her voice, affects mannish airs, smokes and swears. She will fill my pipe with tobacco, strike a match and puff away with entire unconcern.
“Her last serious attack came at the time of the Titanic disaster. She was depressed by the horror. I was astounded one evening to hear her singing an improvised dirge and playing a perfect accompaniment on the organ.
“She declared one evening she was going to a ball. She dressed herself in a party gown, came into the parlor, took off her opera cloak, held out her arms to an imaginary partner and waltzed about with absolute grace.
“One night she recited Bob Taylor’s lecture, ‘Castles in Air,’without missing a single word. When she recovered from her trance she knew scarcely a single line of it.
“A neighbor died one night. She told us about it before the news was brought to the house.
“Time and again she has read the newspapers and magazines outdoors in the evening, often aloud, when I could not see my hand six inches in front of my face. We have watched her reading by lamplight and have turned off the light, but she has continued to turn the pages of her book at regular intervals.”
Bessie is a tall, slender girl, with brown hair, a high white forehead and a touch of pink in her cheeks. She looks strong and healthy. Her trances do not seem to have affected her general health. She feels no bad effects from smoking.
She became ill through overwork at Kirksville, Mo., normal school, where she attended classes 1909-10. She then left home to teach in Waco, Tex.
On her return she began to reveal these strange powers.
Dr. T.H. Hughes, nerve specialist of St. Louis, Mo., says her brain is normal, but that her nervous system is disordered. He attributes the trouble to mental overwork. The case was recently discussed at a Missouri physicians institute at Kansas City. Dr. T.H. Winans of Mexico, Mo., who had attended her, read a paper on her case.
“Only clairvoyance, an unexplainable phenomenon, can make her acts possible,” Dr. Winans told me.
“By clairvoyance is meant ability to see things not discernible by the senses.”
Normally she is a quiet, sensitive girl, who talks little, does not know how to dance, can play the organ only slightly and sings fairly well.
Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). August 01, 1912.
