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Croiset the Clairvoyant - Jack Harrison Pollack

The Blue Roof in Spain

A sixty-year-old American businessman, Mr. X., living in Madrid suddenly disappeared in March 1961. For ten years he had worked in a branch office in Spain of a leading United States company. He spoke fluent Spanish and loved the country. But now he vanished without the slightest clue leaving his car in his garage and most of his clothes at home.

Police tried vainly to find him at airports and elsewhere but were unsuccessful.

Mrs. X. feared that something tragic had happened to her husband. Desperately, two weeks later, she wrote to her friend, Mrs. A. Land, of Museumplein 7, in Amsterdam:

"Please get in touch with a Dutch clairvoyant about my missing husband. I am enclosing his picture and his toothbrush.”

At first, Mrs. Land contacted an eighty-year-old woman psychic who told her, "Your friend's husband is still alive and will return." But because this information was too vague, Mrs. Land telephoned Professor Tenhaeff who suggested,

"Perhaps I can arrange an appointment with Mr. Croiset, providing you later send to the Parapsychology Institute a detailed report of the experiment, regardless of whether it succeeds or fails."

Mrs. Land agreed and shortly afterwards visited Croiset in Utrecht. She gave him the missing man's photograph and toothbrush. The psychoscopist touched them delicately. Then he blurted out irritably, "I don't want to have anything to do with this man! I don't like him a bit. He isn't dead but very much alive and he will come back. Tell your friend not to worry about him. He really isn't worth it."

His anger off his chest, Croiset added quietly, "Just now, I see this missing man in a country where there are mountains. I see a building with a blue roof. There he is at this moment. The place where he is staying is near the bend of a road or quite close to it. I also see some white coats. I get a picture of a hospital." The paragnost drew a speedy sketch of his images for his visitor.

Immediately after this session, Mrs. Land telephoned Croiset's impressions to Mrs. X. in Madrid and then airmailed his drawing to her, first making a photostat, at Professor Tenhaeff's request, for the Parapsychology Institute files.

After Croiset's specific impressions were published in Spanish newspapers, Mrs. X. received a call in Madrid from a hospital official in Majorca, the resort island off the coast of Spain. "We have a delirium tremens patient who may be your husband," he reported. "Come down at once."

Two days later, Mrs. X. telephoned Mrs. Land in Amsterdam to confirm that she had, indeed, found her missing husband in a Majorca hospital under an assumed name suffering from a violent attack of delirium tremens.

The American businessman was a periodic alcoholic.

Before he was married, he had lived in Majorca and had friends there. After leaving Madrid, he had visited them. In a holiday mood, he had gone on a "bender" and drank so much that he had had to be hospitalized.

The missing American businessman was found directly through Croiset's clue that he was now in a hospital. "Mr. Croiset's description was entirely correct," reported Mrs. Land. "The hospital has a blue roof. And it is located near a turn in the road. It is remarkable that no one else guessed that he might be in a hospital."

To meet Dr. Tenhaeff's exacting scientific standards on each case, Mrs. Land corroborated these facts in a May 25th 1961, letter to the professor and in a later tape-recorded session at the Parapsychology Institute on January 11th , 1962.