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Wolf Messing –the true story of Russia’s greatest psychic – Tatiana Lungin

From her home in Boston, the writer Nadeshda Filipovna Kramova told me about an interesting meeting with Wolf Messing.

I want to tell you of several episodes that characterized his truly magical gift not only of 'seeing" events occurring far away, but of foreseeing events of the future.

I met Wolf Messing during the war. Based in Perm (then called Mototov) was a group of writers evacuated from Leningrad. We lived in the only seven-story building in town, a hotel nicknamed 'The Seven Story." Once while in the lobby, I saw a short man with a large head and locks of hair sticking out in all directions. Walking up beside me, he stopped, cast me a needle-sharp glance, smiled at something, and headed with quick, mincing steps toward the exit.

'Who is that?" I asked the hotel administrator.

'What, you don't know? That's Wolf Messing. He arrived yesterday," was the reply.

'Ah!' I said, ashamed to expose my ignorance. At the time the name told me nothing.

Soon, Messing held his first performance. I will not dwell on his phenomenal ability to read thoughts, or his power of suggestion. I will relate something that, for the time being, is impossible to explain.

Messing was given a rather simple task: walk up to a certain lady in the third row, take her passport from her purse, bring it on stage, and open it up. After reading the owner's name out loud, he was to return the passport. When Messing got on stage and opened the passport, a photograph fell out.

"What a handsome officer," he said with a smile. “Just a young boy."

Suddenly his face distorted, his eyes widened, and he clutched at his heart.

'Curtain! Drop the curtain!" he shouted. The hall froze.

His assistant walked out on the proscenium and announced that Messing was feeling poorly, but within about ten or fifteen minutes the session continued. The last part of the performance dragged, and Messing stopped frequently to wipe his face with a cloth. The next day we managed to find out from his assistant what had happened. Messing had 'seen’ the youth being killed at the very minute he was admiring the photograph.

The mother of the youth did not stay at the hotel, but we saw her every day in the cafeteria where our food ration cards were registered.

We looked with horror at her face, but it was just as calm as always; her son wrote to her often and she showed us his short, affectionate letters.

ln time we calmed down, figuring that Messing had made a mistake.

After all, people do make mistakes.

Three weeks passed, and we forgot about this episode. But twenty-four days later, the woman did not come to the dining hall. The next day we learned that she had received a notification of her son's death, and the day and the hour of death indicated was the same day and hour Messing had "seen."