Observations placeholder

Supernormal faculties in Man- Dr Eugene Osty

Circumstances and conditions.

In May, 1922, I tried a number of experiments with Mme Peyroutet, with the intention of discovering how much and what kind of knowledge in the experimenter of the person to be described is necessary to start the metagnomic faculty into useful action.

M. and Mme Germain D. suggested to me their intimate friend Mme F., of whose strongly characterized past very few persons had any knowledge, and who, for this reason, would certainly authorize publication, provided her name were suppressed, a condition that I here comply with.

On May 12th, pen in hand, I put Mme Peyroutet the single question, "Please give me the outline of the life of the person of whom I am thinking."

I had met Mme F. for a few moments at the house of mutual friends. I knew vaguely that she had recently made an unexpected marriage and that her past life was characterized by events which lf revealed by metagnomy would exclude any possibility of mere coincidence.

The words of the percipient (rearranged, as before).

This is a woman with auburn hair, good-looking, decidedly good looking. I think her frank and sincere, but she knows how to be otherwise on occasion.

She is gay, amiable, sympathetic, rather depressed sometimes, and then exuberant . she is liable to these ups and downs, as if there were two natures in her.

She has a strong will . . although nervous, she can control herself. She is conscious of the North.

She is fond of music, gaiety, but of work too. Her past has been cloudy, there are things in it that are not clear. . . . I think she was illegitimate, there was some secret about her birth . . . some personage is concerned . . could he have been her father? Her father-seems to have been a well-known personage, and important person.

There is a widow . . . her mother was a widow when her daughter was born. She was attended by a very few persons. It was a difficult birth; there was a doctor and a priest.- Her mother had two other children. She was a light woman, had lovers . . . not worth much . . is still- coquettish and does not trouble herself to see her daughter.

The poor child lived away from her mother.

What changes and travels. I see her with a wicked woman. She must have gone abroad when quite young. . There is a woman near her who has been in prison. Oh! Thefts and imprisonment-what surroundings? She has been beaten and roughly treated. No worse people could-be found than those among whom she grew up; they were capable of anything, would have made her a lost woman.

Happily the child had an honest nature. She has wept much. Many changes from one town to another. Her mother came back to her.

They-wrote to each other and met about her marriage. Her mother will make a little revelation before she- dies.

The young woman is married now and very happy. Her husband is good and clever . . . he seems to be a chief over others . . . he wears a uniform and is much at sea-has travelled much and will travel more.

Censorship.

The fore-going was read to M. and Mme Germain D. on the evening of the-12th May. I subjoin a summary of the story they told me.

She was born in Paris, at the house of a midwife, where her mother, more than a year widowed, gave birth to her secretly. Whether the birth necessitated a doctor and a priest is still the mother's secret, as also the identity of the father. The-mother is still living.

On her recovery, the mother resumed her life in good society in a country town, leaving her child with the midwife on annual payments. The child was four years old when the daughter of the midwife took her away to live with her in Turkey. A bad woman and bad surroundings.

Towards her tenth year, the girl passed into the hands of another person, who took her to England. This woman taught her to steal, got all she could out of her and used to beat her when the child resisted.

When in her thirteenth year she returned to France, the mother confided her to a woman comparatively better than the others, who merely got all she could from the mother under threats of revealing her secret.

Having grown into a beautiful girl, she became a nurse during the war; she attracted the notice of a naval officer in hospital, - who married her, and was glad to make her forget the miseries of her past, which was told to him. The mother saw her daughter on the occasion of her marriage.

When I went to Mme Peyroutet I was entirely ignorant of all these facts. M. and Mme G. knew them, but had never been brought into contact with the percipient. It will be readily understood that these secrets were not often spoken of.