Patience Worth’

May June pages BOX_SI new design masters 3/29/12 9:01 AM Page 15 [ INVESTIGATIVE FILES J OE NI CK E L L Joe Nickell is CSI’s senior research fellow. His doctorial dissertation (1987) was titled “Literary Investigation.” His website is www.joenickell.com. Ghost Author? The Channeling of ‘Patience Worth’ earl Lenore (Pollard) Curran tience in a typical communication. “Nay, other agency,” an explanation adopted by (1883–1937) (Figure 1), wife of ’tis a piddle, not a stream, ye search. Spiritualists and other mystics, the truth PJohn H. Curran of St. Louis, be - Mayhap thou sendest thy men for bar- can be easily demonstrated (as magician gan in 1913 to receive poems and novels, leycorn. ’Twould then surprise thee Milbourne Christopher has explained): via Ouija board, from a seventeenth- should the asses eat it.” And so on, in when the board is out of sight and the century Puritan English woman named her quaint, facile manner. alphabet scrambled, only gibberish is “Patience Worth.” Patience had suppos- A New York Times reviewer praised spelled out. (Curran rejected such “con- edly been born in England in 1649 and her style: “Notwithstanding the serious ditions” [1920, 399].) immigrated to America, where she was quality and the many pitifulnesses and Fantasy Proneness slain by Indians at the age of forty-five, tragedies . [there is] much humor of although no historical record has ever a quaint, demure kind . [and] the plot Indeed, I find that Pearl Curran ex- been found for her. is contrived with such skill, deftness, hibits several traits consistent with hav- Some 216 years later, “Patience” and ingenuity as many a novelist in the ing a fantasy-prone personality. Such made her debut one July evening while flesh might well envy” (qtd. in Christo- persons are sane and normal but gener- Curran and a friend, who was a writer, pher 1970, 128). ally enjoy a rich fantasy life, which may were playing with a Ouija board. With One Elizabethan scholar, a Profes - include experiencing a previous life- their fingers pressing on the planchette, sor Shelling, was less impressed. As he time. “While they are pretending,” state it began to spell out a strange message: stated: Many moons ago I lived. Again The language employed is not that I come — Patience Worth of any historical age or period; but, my name — where it is not the current English of the part of the United States in The message unleashed a flow of Pa- which Mrs. Curran lives, it is a dis- tience Worth writings that eventually tortion born of superficial acquain- tance with poetry and a species of filled whole volumes: The Sorry Tale, would-be Scottish dialect . the Hope Trueblood, and The Pot Upon the borrowing of some dialect words and Wheel were followed soon by Light from the clear misuse, misunderstanding Beyond and Telka. By 1918, the phan- and even invention of many oth- ers. ... There is an easy facility of tom writer had her own Patience Worth phrase almost wholly in our contem- Magazine, which lasted ten issues porary idiom and showing nowhere (Christopher 1970, 128–30). the qualities of the language of Eliz- abeth’s or any previous age. (qtd. in Historical Fiction Christopher 1970, 129) Curran eventually abandoned the cum- I concur with this assessment. bersome Ouija board, discovering that Moreover, as is now well known, the Patience Worth could guide her fingers productions of the Ouija board are ac- while she typed and could speak tually due to “the involuntary muscular through Curran’s voice while a friend actions of the players”—as the effect was took dictation “at a tremendous speed” described in toy maker Isaac Fuld’s ap- Figure 1. Pearl Curran channeled “Patience Worth” from 1913 (Cavendish 1974). “Go Ye to the lighted plication for a patent on the device. Al- until her death in 1937. (Photo by Joe Nickell from original at hall to search for learning?” asked Pa- though Fuld added, “or through some Missouri Historical Society) Skeptical Inquirer | May/June 2 012 15 May June pages BOX_SI new design masters 3/29/12 9:01 AM Page 16 Wilson and Barber in their classic study (1983, 354), “they become totally ab- sorbed in the character and tend to lose awareness of their true identity.” They may believe they receive special mes- sages from paranormal entities, possess psychic powers, or the like. A short au- tobiographical sketch penned by Cur- ran reveals her to have been an imagi- native child who played the piano at her uncle’s Spiritualist church. Of her supposed communication with Patience Worth, she wrote: “I am not a Spiritu- alist, but am in sympathy with the fur- therance of psychic facts and believe that the pioneers of today are but grop- ing toward fact. I am not a ‘medium’ in the common sense. Am deeply inter- ested in the study of psychic phenom- ena, using myself as a study” (emphasis Figure 2. The “Patience Worth” papers at the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis are a trove of “automatic” writings. added, Curran 1926, 15). “Patience Worth” seems to have been, according to philosopher Charles E. Cory (1927, 432), Curran’s “other self,” a form of alter ego. He characterizes the phenomenon as follows (1927, 433–34): I accept the judgment that Patience Worth is a genius of no mean order. And, perhaps, there is in the genius of this writer a concrete illustration of what freedom a mind may achieve when released from the inhibitions that clog and check the normal con- sciousness. She is a dissociated self, and this dissociation has taken place in such a way as to free her from the burdens and concerns of life, from all the claims that split the will and bind the fancy. And perhaps in this fact, and all that it implies, lies the condition of her genius. The division of the self has resulted in a division of labor. To Mrs. Curran falls the care of the needs of the body, and the in- terests of the social life. Their reac- tions and distractions are hers. ... But turn to this dissociated mind and the conditions have changed. The work of adjusting the organism to the environment being left to the other self, the inhibitions which per- ception places upon the imagination are removed. This sets free and un - fettered the mind of Patience Worth. In the realm of the idea she lives, and there she sustains herself without ef- fort. She acknowledges no tie or bond that might take her out of her Figure 3. A few surviving telltale documents like this reveal that Pearl Curran did not merely take spirit dictation but engaged dream. She is a dreamer that never in the revision process—like ordinary writers. (Photo by Joe Nickell at Missouri Historical Society) awakens. And the conditions of this 16 Volume 36 Issue 3 | Skeptical Inquirer May June pages BOX_SI new design masters 3/29/12 9:01 AM Page 17 Conclusions spell are, in a way, the conditions of ous boxed documents and twenty-nine her genius. With her our moments of bound volumes of typescripts (Figure 2). The weight of the evidence—the lack abstraction, moments that life affords Even though it is known that “Patience” us the luxury of thought and imagi- of historical record for “Patience nation, are prolonged indefinitely. could compose on demand (Prince Worth,” the fantasy proneness of Cur - They are, in fact, a fixed condition. In [1927] 1964, 56, 281–300), I found evi- ran (consistent with producing an other words, she lives only in a world dence that some of the writings were the imaginary “other self ”), the writings’ of thought. And so far she has shown product of the creative process—show- questionable language, and the evi- no desire to displace the other self, ing various revisions—rather than, as al- and alternate with her in the role of dence of the editing and revision action. To do so would result in es- leged, mere dictation from the supposed process—indicates that Patience was spirit of the nonexistent “Patience sential modification of her con- merely a persona of Curran’s. Worth” of the seventeenth century. sciousness, and put her under inhibi- I can relate to that: When I visited tions from which she is now free. For example, I found two versions of the archives I was accompanied by a a 1920 poem, “My Love Is Old.” In the Although Curran refused to be hyp- number of my own personas, including bound typescript, vol. 12, p. 2302, the notized, and it is said she did not go paranormal investigator, historical last line of the poem reads, “Who into a “trance” while writing (Prince document examiner, poet, fiction writer, bending whispers forget, forget.” But [1927] 1964, 428, 431), her dissociated there is an earlier loose manuscript of editor, literary critic, forensic linguist, mode is clearly similar to what today that same page with the typed line handwriting expert, photographer, and would be recognized as “self-hypno- originally reading, “Who bending re- more—all of which played their role in sis”—a state she entered and left easily. sponds forget, forget”—but the word my examination of the manuscripts. The Therefore she probably would have responds has been stricken and the word century-old case can now be closed. It is been an excellent subject had she n whispers penned instead. about time. agreed to undergo hypnosis. Interest - Several poems had fold marks in the Acknowledg ments ingly, Curran eventually discovered she paper, indicating they had been mailed to could write short stories of her own but persons for whom they were written— I am grateful to the many people who as- sisted with my research, including Kath leen emphasized that she could “feel the dif- one “For Grace Parrish,” for in stance.

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