"When our daughter Nelly was nearly five years old, she had not learned a single letter of her alphabet. She had certainly received no instruction whatever. One day her elder sister was writing automatically. To please the child, we put a pencil in her hand. Presently we observed that she had written some words, and on looking we saw that the words were, 'I am a mesmeric medium.' "
On the next page A. E. Hempstead states the following about a young Etta who had never been taught any letter of the alphabet, and who was brought to school for the first time:
"The first morning of her attendance a slate and pencil were given her to keep her quiet ; she scribbled awhile, when it was noticed that she had written very distinctly the name Emma. As it was known that the child had never been inside of a school before, and that she knew no single letter of the alphabet, it was a great surprise. The slate belonged to some of the pupils, hence was not preserved by the young ladies. I regretted the loss of such a rare test of spirit control, and urged them, should such a thing ever occur again, to preserve it. The child attended the day following, and instead of slate a leaf from a tablet and lead pencil were given her. After she had amused herself awhile she returned the paper, and it was seen that a number of attempts to write the name Emma had been made. As she handed in the paper she said, 'Nozer,' and another sheet was given, with an improvement; the third was, given, when upon either side was written with bold running hand, 'your aunt Emma,' quite as large and perfect as the above."
A Laura Hempstead testified to the same thing, and a statement from the mother testified that the child had not been taught the alphabet when this occurred.
The author Robert Dale Owen (who was once a US congressman) wrote the long fascinating work Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, a work on the paranormal which you can read here on archive.org. I recently discovered another long fascinating work by Owen, a book that has the rather poor title The Debatable Land Between This World and the Next, with Illustrative Narrations. The book gives us some fascinating accounts of "impossible writing."
On page 434 Owen tells of a beautiful young Violet he knew, a woman who died 40 years previously. On page 445 he discusses how (in the presence of a Mr. Foster and a Miss P.) he saw the name of this departed friend mysteriously written on a piece of paper. He then tells us this about Mr. Foster:
"His arm seemed slightly convulsed, as by a feeble electric shock ; and he said : 'The name is on my arm ;' whereupon he bared his left arm to the elbow, and I read thereon distinctly the name Violet. I did not, however, pronounce it, but left him to spell it out, letter by letter. The letters looked as if they had been traced by a painter's brush, with pink color...Miss P had never heard Violet's name ; nor, as I have already stated, had Mr. Foster."
On page 56 of the very interesting book On the Edge of the Etheric by James Arthur Findlay, we have some descriptions of apparently paranormal speech at a seance of what is called a direct voice medium:
"On the first occasion I experienced these voices
I was decidedly suspicious, and yet as the seance
went on I wondered how it would be possible for any
man, even if he had accomplices, to carry on such an
imposture for over three hours. Thirty separate
voices spoke that night, of different tone and accent,
they gave their names, their correct earth addresses
and spoke to the right people, were recognised, and
referred to intimate family affairs. Never once was
a mistake made and the darkness really increased the
evidence in favour of the genuineness of the whole
proceedings, as, difficult as it would be to remember
everyone’s departed friends and relations and their
family affairs in the light, it would be doubly so in
the dark, because fifteen people were present and the
medium would have to remember exactly where each
one was sitting. The voice on every occasion spoke
in front of the person who recognised the name, the
earth address and the details which were given.
It was all very mystifying, and the fact that
sometimes two or three voices spoke at once did not make it less so."
On page 57 the same author tells of a seemingly paranormal voice speaking at a seance:
"So ran my thoughts that memorable night of
the 20th September 1918, when suddenly a voice
spoke in front of me. I felt scared. A man sitting
next to me said 'Someone wants to speak to you,
friend,' so I said 'Yes, who are you?' 'Your
father, Robert Downie Findlay,' the voice replied,
and then went on to refer to something that only he
and I and one other ever knew on earth, and that
other, like my father, was some years dead. I was
therefore the only living person with any knowledge
of what the voice was referring to. That was extra¬
ordinary enough, but my surprise was heightened
when, after my father had finished, another voice
gave the name of the other person who on earth knew
about the subject, and this voice continued the con¬
versation which my father had begun. No spy
system, however thorough, no impersonation by the
medium or by any accomplices, could be responsible
for this, and moreover I was an entire stranger to
everyone present. I did not give my name when I
entered the room, I knew no one in that room, and no one knew me or anything about me."
On page 64 Findlay gives this impressive summary of experiences with mysterious voices arising in seances:
"Eighty-three separate voices have spoken to me. or
to personal friends I have brought with me ; two
hundred and eighty-two separate communications
have been given to me or to them ; one hundred and
eighty of these I class 'Al,' as it was impossible
for the medium or any other person present to have
known about them ; one hundred I class as ' A2,'
as by means of the newspaper or reference books the medium could have found them out."
In the chapter beginning on page 92 Findlay gives three examples of such "A1" communications, the first one involving Findlay's soldier brother speaking to a mysterious voice claiming to be a dead soldier, one who seemed to know quite a few details known only to Findlay's brother and his fellow soldiers.
In his book The Voices (which can be read here) the writer William Usborne Moore (formerly a Vice-Admiral) discusses his experiences with the medium Etta Wriedt. The excellent scholarly work Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules by Rodger I. Anderson says this on page 186 about Wriedt:
"Wriedt's voices regularly carried on intelligent conversations in Arabic, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Serbian, and Spanish....Wriedt's communicators were often very successful in identifying themselves to the sitters, providing correct names and personal histories, referrring to facts and circumstances that were unknown to the sitter at the time but subsequently verified as correct....Wriedt was investigated scores of times by multiple researchers, all finding in her favor."
Moore's long 400-page book (published in 1913) gives very many accounts corroborating such claims. He describes seances occurring mainly in 1912, in a room without any audio equipment, at a time when all voice transmission technology was bulky and primitive. The loudspeaker was not really invented until four years later, judging from this quote: "When Bell Labs introduced the first electronic vacuum tube amplifier in 1916, the true loudspeaker became possible." (Another source dates 1915 as the date when the first "practical dynamic audio speakers" were invented.)
For example, on page 6 we read this about a mysterious voice speaking at a seance:
"Then, to my own and my Croatian friend's astonishment, a loud voice began to talk to him in the Croatian
language. It was an old friend, a physician by pro-
fession, who died suddenly from heart disease. My
friend Hinkovitch could not identify who that might
have been, but they continued for some time the con-
versation in their native tongue, of which, naturally,
I heard and understood every word. Mrs. Wriedt, for
the first time in her life, heard how the Croatian
language sounds."
On page 51 Moore quotes a friend of his (Colonel E. R. Johnson) describing his experiences hearing mysterious voices at a seance:
"This was the first voice heard at the daylight seance. All the others were identified with certainty. They consisted of seven relatives, some of whom spoke only once, others on three or four occasions. Several times the individual conversations must have lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour, and related to incidents and events which could not have been
known to the medium, and in some cases to anybody
now living except myself. References were made to
objects that have disappeared for twenty or thirty years,
which were accurately described, and, on the other
hand, to conversations and events which took place
between the seances. Besides relatives, I was spoken to by seven personal friends and acquaintances, and three of these asked me to carry messages to living people. In one case an incident was referred to which was entirely unknown to me, but which I afterwards ascertained to be quite correct."
To give another of countless examples in Moore's long book, on page 190 we read this account by Mr. Munro in 1912 hearing a mysterious "spirit voice" at a seance of Etta Wriedt:
"The first spirit to speak was my cousin's late husband, Joe Crowther ; and I must confess that I felt a little disappointed, for in no way could I recognise the voice, or any other particular char-
acteristic. It was not long ere the voice approached, and
held conversation with myself, which, of course, was what
I desired. After the usual preliminaries, I asked this
spirit if he remembered the last conversation he and I
had had together ; to which he answered : ' Yes, per-
fectly.' Q.: 'If you remember that, can you tell me
what it was about ? ' A. : ' Do you mean to say you do
not remember?' Q.: 'I remember perfectly; but it
would convince me much more that this was indeed you,
Joe, if you could detail it to me.' A.: ' Well, do you
remember I was showing you some photographic mining
prints I had. taken, and explained the various strata ? '
(This was exactly what took place.) Q.: 'Yes, that
is quite correct. And now, can you tell me where we
had that conversation, and if anyone else was present
besides ourselves?' A.: ' It took place in this house.'
Q.: ' Yes, but in which room?' A.: 'In the library,
and there was no other person present.' I may say that
nobody, to my knowledge, ever knew of that conversation besides Joe Crowther and myself."
Could this have been mind-reading and some kind of ventriloquism by Mrs. Wriedt? Apparently not, for Mr. Munro states the following on page 191:
"At the same time my friend Joe continued to speak to me quite clearly, without the trumpet. I distinctly heard his voice, the voice of the trumpet, and Mrs. Wriedt's voice (endeavouring to explain some message which the recipient could not quite grasp) ; that is to say, three distinct voices speaking at once."
On pages 239-240 a witness gives this account of mysterious voices at seances of Mrs. Wriedt:
"One evening a lady was present who is a professional
musician, and, as there was some delay, she consented,
after considerable pressing, to sing. Hardly had she
began the 'Jewel Song' from Faust when a strong
tenor voice came from the trumpet and sung the song
with her, making a wonderful duet. She afterwards told
us that it was her husband's voice, and that no one but
herself knew that he used to sing this song with her."
On pages 324-325 we have testimony by an Edith K. Harper who attended very many of Etta Wriedt's seances. She states she heard messages given in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch and Arabic, "with which the medium was quite unacquanted" and "two, three and even four spirit voices speaking simultaneously to different sitters." She also reports the appearance of luminous "etherealized" forms, as Moore does on quite a few times.
At the link here you can read an edition of the Annals of Psychical Science (Volume 8, Number 49). The first article is by Professor Charles Richet, and is entitled "My Experiments with Madame X." Richet discusses experiments in Paris, France with a woman who would write in Greek. The Greek she wrote was sometimes quotations from ancient Greek literature (for example, some of the Greek consisted of quotations from Plato's Apology). Such writing was inexplicable, because this woman did not know any Greek. Richet witnessed the woman produce the Greek writing below.
Example of the Greek written by Mme. X
Richet states this on page 23:
"In the first place, Mme. X. does not know Greek. Certainly it is impossible to prove absolutely that a person does not know a language. It is easy to prove that one knows a foreign language, but it is radically impossible to prove that one is ignorant of it. However, we can establish the following facts: that Greek is a difficult language to learn, and cannot be acquired offhand: that Mme. X. has never, either in her childhood or later, studied Greek books; that she has no Greek books at her home; that neither her husband, nor her sister, nor her children, nor her friends, nor I have ever seen her studying Greek; and consequently, .even a priori, the improbability that she has studied Greek and knows Greek is very great."
Richet was the winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is the author of the classic parapsychology work "Thirty Years of Psychical Research," which you can read online here.
The word xenoglossy is used for such an ability to write and speak in a language you never learned. A much more modern case of xenoglossy is described in a publication of the Parapsychological Association (Volume 9, Issue 1). In the article "A Case of Xenoglossy" on page 18, we read the following:
"We examine the case of a Caucasian 32-year-old female
psychiatric patient (Jacquie) living in San Diego, California, who spontaneously spoke, wrote, and translated complicated
Sanskrit-related languages about spiritual concepts from four different traditions. Eleven hours of video recordings of these phenomena were taken from June 6th – July 31st, 1983. She had no prior knowledge of these ancient languages, concepts, or traditions. Jackie heard 14 Sanskrit messages consisting of from 5 to 8 lines that she immediately wrote down phonetically in English script in various situations, including four while she was in a psychiatric hospital and under watch while heavily medicated. Additional recordings show Jackie in a trance, spontaneously speaking phrases and uttering incomplete messages in Sanskrit-related languages. A review of the patient’s life and an analysis of the complex messages she received provide compelling evidence that she could not have learned this composite of languages secretly nor constructed the text by culling the necessary materials during this pre-internet period. The patient was unable to hold a job because of frequent episodes of severe headache and seizure-like activity thought to be psychogenic in nature; periodic hospitalizations were required to protect her from suicide; and she needed federal assistance for food, money, and medical care. These medical, psychological, economic, and social problems made it further unlikely that she could travel and perform the necessary study of obscure texts to master the topic."
Postscript: On pages 397-400 of the interesting book Death: Its Causes and Phenomena, With Special Reference to Immortality co-authored by Hereward Carrington, we have an account of an inexplicable voice at a seance. A man at the seance asked the voice about an incident that only he and his deceased father knew of. The voice was able to exactly and accurately answer various questions about the incident, describing how the father took his son for the first time to a military college, heard the son called a rat, sat with his son on a log, and saw his son cry.
In the interesting 1907 book The Psychic Riddle by Isaac Funk (pages 86 - 151) we have an interesting account of seances with the medium Emily S. French. Funk (the same Funk of the famous Funk and Wagnall's dictionary) reported that at such seances there would very often occur most mysteriously a booming male voice claiming to be that of a deceased American Indian. Funk said that this could not have been some ventriloquism from the old, frail and female Emily, because her voice was often heard (by Funk and other witnesses) at the same time as this booming male voice. This was before audio speaker technology was advanced enough to allow faking such an effect. Funk tried a test in which Emily was asked to hold two-tablespoons of colored water in her mouth. The booming male voice was still heard. Emily then spit out the colored water, which was found to be the same two tablespoons.
On pages 334-337 of the very interesting book Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World by Robert Dale Owen, there is one of the most interesting stories of "impossible writing" ever told, although it has the drawback of being a second hand story (told to Owen by a captain who heard it from Robert Bruce). While on a small ship Bruce reported a mysterious stranger writing on a slate. Later the stranger could not be found. The slate said to steer the ship to the northeast. Everyone on the ship was asked to write the same words on the slate, and no one's handwriting matched the writing. The captain finally agreed to steer the ship to the northeast. A while later Bruce's ship discovered a distressed ship next to an iceberg, and its passengers were rescued. One of those passengers (who Bruce identified as the mysterious stranger he saw) was asked to write the message on the slate, and his handwriting matched that on the slate. That passenger said he had recently had a dream of visiting another ship.
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