In the recent scientific paper "Lost in Another Language: A Case Report," we read a remarkable account of a 17-year-old Dutch boy who woke up from an operation speaking and understanding only English, a language he had used only in school. The syndrome persisted for about 24 hours, and then faded away, with the boy returning to his language habits of understanding Dutch and using Dutch. It seems this was an example of a rare syndrome called foreign language syndrome in which similar events happen. As remarkable as such a case is, it seems that even more remarkable language anomaly cases have been recorded: those in which a person seemed to use a language he had never learned.
In Volume 2 of the 1855 work Spiritualism by Judge John W. Edmonds (who served as Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court), we have a remarkable account of a psychic who is not named. Edmonds says he will give "a brief account of one medium whose whole progress I have witnessed with intense interest."
First we are told the woman developed powers of clairvoyance. We hear a reference to the sea disaster in which more than 300 people on the SS Arctic died in 1854:
"Since then this faculty of knowing things at a distance has greatly improved. She saw the wreck of the Arctic when it was occurring. She saw and detailed with great accuracy, as subsequent accounts showed, the recent collision on the Canada Railroad, and that a few moments after it happened, and while the dead and wounded were being lifted out of the ruins. She has seen and described the state of things at Sebastopol and its vicinity, and she has frequently described scenes and conversations going on at the moment, at the distance of several hundred miles from her ; and all this, not when she was in a trance, but in a state of mental consciousness to all around her."
The account gets even stranger when we are told that the woman could speak in languages she never learned:
"She next became developed to speak different languages. She knows no language but her own, and a little smattering of boarding-school French. Yet she has spoken in nine or ten different tongues, sometimes for an hour at a time, with the ease and fluency of a native. It is not unfrequent that foreigners converse with their spirit-friends through her in their own language. A recent instance occurred where a Greek gentleman had several interviews, and for several hours at a time carried on the conversation on his part in Greek, and received his answers sometimes in that language and sometimes in English ; yet until then she had never heard a word of modern Greek spoken. About the same time her musical powers became developed. She has repeatedly sang in foreign languages, such as Italian, In- dian, German, and Polish."
On the same page we get this remarkable claim:
"Her next advance was to see spirits and spiritual scenes, and now scarcely a day passes that she does not describe the spirits who are present, entire strangers to her, yet very readily recognized and identified by their inquiring friends. This has of late been witnessed by very many persons, and many an, unbeliever in spiritual intercourse has been overwhelmed with the evidence of identity which thus by sight and by communion has been presented."
On this page of a book by another author, we read that this woman was a daughter of Judge Edmonds, Laura Edmonds:
"Miss Laura Edmonds, a daughter of the Judge, also pursued her researches in the same direction, and became developed as an excellent medium for trance speaking, the discerning of spirits, the gift of tongues, including several dead and living languages utterly unknown to herself, the ability to travel clairvoyantly to distant places, and communicate with absent friends by the mental telegraph."
A much later case of someone seeming to speak in a language he never learned occurs here. It involves statements of a "drop-in communicator" speaking though the lips of the medium Indridi Indridason. In a seance with Indridason held in Reykjavik, Iceland on November 24, 1905, this seemingly paranormal "drop-in communicator" identified himself as Mr. Jensen, and stated that a fire had started in a factory in Copenhagen, Denmark (more than 1300 miles away) on that evening (November 24, 1905) about midnight, and that the fire was quickly brought under control. It was soon found out that exactly such a thing had happened. A newspaper reported that in Copenhagen on November 24, 1905, a factory fire had started about midnight, and was soon brought under control. There were no telephones in Reykjavik until the next year, and no telegraphs until 1918, so there is no way in which electrical communication could have made such a thing known to Indridasson or anyone else at the seance. Not many days later the same "drop in communicator" more specifically identified himself as Emil Jensen.
No one present knew whether such an Emil Jensen had ever lived. But it was found out many years later through the investigation of Erlendur Haraldsson that an Emil Jensen had lived and died in Copenhagen, Denmark, very near to the place where the Copenhagen fire had occurred. The "Emil Jensen" in the seances identified himself as a manufacturer who was a bachelor, and the actual Emil Jensen was such a person.
Very remarkably, this "drop-in communicator" at the seance (speaking through the lips of the medium Indridi Indridason) had spoken in Danish, a language which Indridason did not even know. On page 222 of the document we are told that the Icelandic medium Indridason had minimal education and "learned how to write and read but no Danish." We read this on page 221:
"At many sittings Jensen was seen by sitters appearing in a 'luminous, beautiful light-pillar', usually very briefly but several times during the same séance and at various locations in the hall. This 'pillar of light' would first appear in the darkness, and after that Jensen would appear in it. The 'pillar of light' was larger than Jensen and emitted light in such a way that Jensen and Indridi could sometimes be seen side by side at the same time (Gissurarson & Haraldsson, 1989, pp.82–85). Both of Indridi’s hands were at the same time being held by a witness to exclude the possibility of fraud."
Swarnlata Mishra was born in Shahpur, in northern India in 1948. When she was three, her father took on a trip to another city, and Swarnlata made odd statements rather suggesting a previous life in the city. Then two years later she (according to this account) "began performing dances, first for her mother and then for others, while also singing in a foreign language she had never had the opportunity to learn."
Iris Farczády was a young Hungarian medium who in trances might seem to be taken over by the spirit of some deceased person, as sometimes seems to occur during seances. We read the following:
"In 1933 she was taken over by a spirit who identified herself as a 41-year-old Spanish charwoman named Lucía Altarez de Salvio. Lucía did not leave Iris, as earlier communicators had done. She spoke Spanish, understood no Hungarian, and only gradually learned German, the language spoken by Iris’s family. She said that she had died three months before in Madrid, leaving a husband and numerous children. After the transformation, Iris found a new talent in cooking and enjoyed singing Spanish songs and flamenco dancing....Iris was nearly eighty at the time of the last interviews, but still identified herself as Lucía."
The case is also described here, where it explicitly states that Iris had never learned Spanish, but spoke it well. We are told "Lucía’s mastery of Spanish in the Madrilene dialect was precise." The case resembles the astonishing case of Mary Lurancy Vennum described here. But in that case Mary Lurancy Vennum for only three months claimed to be someone else (Mary Roff, who had died a year after Mary Lurancy Vennum was born). In the case of Iris Farczády, we have someone who apparently claimed to be a different person (Lucía Altarez de Salvio) for more than sixty years.
You can read about this fascinating case here.
The article on xeonglossy at www.encyclopedia.com states the following:
"According to the book Modern American Spiritualism, by Emma Hardinge Britten (1870), in addition to Laura Edmonds, the gift was demonstrated at an early period by Jenny Keyes, who sang in trance in Italian and Spanish, and by a Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Gilbert Sweet, a Miss Inman, a Mrs. Tucker, Susan Hoyt, A. D. Ruggles, and several others whose names she was not permitted to make public. They frequently spoke in Spanish, Danish, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, Malay, Chinese, and Indian....In The Two Worlds (March 31, 1933), F. H. Wood wrote of the medium Rosemary and 'Lady Nona,' her ancient Egyptian control: 'The fact is now established beyond disproof that over 140 Egyptian word-phrases which were in common use when the great Temple of Luxor in Egypt was built, have been spoken fluently through an English girl who normally knows nothing about the ancient tongue.' "
The long book Man and His Relations by Samuel Byron Brittan MD is a little-known gem of psychology and parapsychology. In a chapter that includes some fascinating accounts of people performing extremely complex tasks while sleepwalking, on page 373 we have some fascinating accounts of people who could speak in languages they had never learned (references to "magnetic sleep" referred to hypnotized subjects):
"Fernel reports the facts respecting a boy who could speak Greek and Latin when in the magnetic sleep. Lorry also mentions the case of a girl of ten years that would make long speeches when her mother placed one hand on her head. When the hand was removed the flow of words and ideas was immediately interrupted. Professor Agardh, of Lund, Sweden, furnishes another interesting example. He met with a magnetic sleeper in the person of a boy who could speak Latin with greater fluency than his native tongue. He could also converse in French. On one occasion, when a person educated in the English language had expressed doubts of his ability to speak languages he had never learned, the boy immediately commenced a conversation in English, and the skeptic was obliged to acknowledge that he spoke the language as freely and correctly as an educated Englishman. At the same time the teacher affirmed that his pupil had never learned — by the ordinary process of scholastic training — a word that he had uttered."
In another equally long and equally fascinating book on paranormal phenomena ("Psychical and Supernormal Phenomena, Their Observation and Experimentation" by Dr. Paul Joire), we read of a paranormal "twofer": a levitation combined with a speaking in a language unknown to the speaker. In the middle of several pages (pages 451-454) documenting levitations of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino we read this quote from a Dr. Ochorowicz:
"Another most surprising and very rare fact (also obtained at the Congress at Milan) was the complete levitation of the very person of the medium, who, held throughout by the hands and feet, was raised from the ground and carried in a cataleptic condition along with her chair on to the table. 'I will raise my medium in the air,' Eusapia said in very correct French (a language she does not know in her normal condition), and she was actually raised. Such was at least my impression during several seconds. By passing my hand under her boots I am able to testify that there was a space of from four to five inches between them and the table. On another occasion the medium was suddenly raised from the floor. She was standing, and Mme. Ochorowicz had time to pass her hand between Eusapia's feet and the floor."
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.)
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