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Croiset the Clairvoyant - Jack Harrison Pollack

After staring quietly for a few minutes, Croiset asked, "Do you mind driving to Oldenzaal? A friend of mine lives there who is also a paragnost. He is sometimes more accurate in locating things than I am. This is all the information I can now give you."

While driving his three visitors to Oldenzaal near the German border, Croiset suddenly asked about a savings box containing 37.50 guilders ($10.64). "Does anybody know anything about that?"

But nobody did. Croiset frequently receives illuminating spontaneous impressions while motoring. Can it be that he instinctively attunes himself to the rhythms of motion and this gives a greater freedom of flow to his images?

Half an hour later the searching party was seated in the living room of G. Ter Laak, a Roman Catholic paragnost who was also studied at the Parapsychology Institute. Croiset said to his host, "We must find out exactly where this photograph was taken."

Ter Laak gazed at the picture, placed it on the table, and replied: "I see a macadam road . . ."

Croiset interrupted, saying, "So did I. On that road is a church. If I turn right from that church, I arrive at a signpost."

"No," insisted Ter Laak, "that is not a signpost. What is it? It seems to indicate a direction, but it is not an ordinary signpost."

So engrossed were the two paragnosts with their images that they now felt themselves standing on the same spot somewhere else in Holland instead of in the room of Ter Laak's home in Oldenzaal.

"When you turn into that road, do you also see water flowing?" inquired Croiset.

"Yes," Ter Laak replied. "There is water. There is a dam in the road, and in that dam is a tube through which the water flows to the other side of the road. There are large piles of felling from the cut trees."

"And brown reed panicles and some clusters of weeds," added Croiset.

This was an extraordinary dialogue. It seemed as if the two paragnosts were looking through the same telescope at the same spot.  New observations were added: an isolated tree before the spot where the photograph was taken; a meadow with barbed wire; a piece of marsh. The paragnosts continued to have images that coincided perfectly. Next, they drew a map on which the things they saw were inscribed in pencil. The church was the most striking point in their sketch.

After studying it, the three newspaper staffmen asked, "Where in the Weert area is this church in such a rural surrounding?" Into the minds of the two clairvoyants flashed the nearby smaller village of Altweerterheide, where they thought that they saw that one of the persons concerned with the faked photograph had temporarily worked on two new buildings. These houses were opposite from the church.

"Do you see anything on the other side of the road?" asked Enkelaar.

Looking at the map Croiset replied, "Yes, some houses, Two of them. They seem to be new. I still smell the paint.  When you reach that spot, you will see a shepherd dog.”

At this prediction, surprise covered the journalist's face.

He seemed to be thinking; "How can Croiset predict where a dog, a roaming animal, will be at a certain time in the future? A tree, a house, immovable objects, yes, perhaps.  But not a dog!" Sensing this skepticism, Croiset remarked indignantly, "No, Mr. Enkelaar, I am not making jokes. When you find that spot you will see a shepherd dog." The paragnost made two crosses on the map, saying, "Here is the spot. And here you will see the shepherd dog tomorrow.”

When the three newsmen drove to Weert the following day and then on to Altweerterheide, they were puzzled and still rather doubtful. The church, the macadam road, and new houses were there. Finally, the signpost's shape became clear; it wasn't an official signpost or it would have been noticed from a distance. Croiset had seen a road beyond, this was not understood for some time by the consultants.  At last, one of the photographers discovered that the sign was an arrow indicating where a road was going to be built.

They walked on with greater confidence in Croiset.  They located all the landmarks described by the clairvoyants, including the big pile of fellings in the meadow with the brown reed panicles. Though the red-tiled farms and the thatched roofs were visible, they were too far away to correspond with the places indicated on the map. A photographer walked to one of the farms but returned disappointed.

The other photographer, however, walked on some distance and excitedly shouted, "I found the spot" He was now at the place Croiset had seen: sand with grass and heather tussocks against an earthen wall-exactly the scene of the photograph! Hardly had Enkelaar reached this spot, when a large grey shepherd dog, which had apparently been lying in the field, passed him, snarling and barking, and then went off.