[Occulte Phänomene. Ein psychologisches Rätsel]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl.[1]
If one more proof is required that the human personality is a thing distinct from the real nature of man, and is, as it were, only the house in which his spiritual ego dwells, and in which the occupant can go in and out and be temporarily absent; so that during the absence of the rightful owner, other beings may move into it and take temporary possession of it; so the following case, which occurred at Watseka [Illinois] in the United States of North America, may be appropriate to bring this evidence.
Lurancy Vennum, the daughter of Thomas and Lavinda Vennum, was born on April 16, 1864. In 1871 her family moved to Watseka and settled near a house where a family named Roff lived; but with whom she only briefly became acquainted. Up to 1877 Lurancy enjoyed excellent health; but then she had attacks of dream apparitions, during which she seemed to associate with the spirits of the dead. Two allopathic doctors who treated her could not help her. The matter became the talk of the town, and the local Methodist minister urged that the girl be sent to a nearby insane asylum.
In the philanthropic intention of saving her from this fate, Mr. Roff advised a physician friend, Dr. E. W. Stevens of Janesville, Wisconsin, who had a reputation as a “spiritual healer.”
When the doctor arrived he found the patient sitting in a chair by the stove, elbows on knees, chin on hands, eyes fixed on emptiness, looking like an old hag. She spoke to no one; but as Dr. Stevens came, she snapped angrily at him not to dare go near her; She gave her parents nicknames and refused to let anyone touch her. Finally the doctor managed to get some answers to his questions from her. She claimed to be a woman of sixty-three and airborne from Germany three days ago.
Later the nature of the obsession changed, and now it was said to be a young man named Willie Canning who had run away from home and died. Eventually she fell to the ground in a state of catalepsy. With magnetic strokes the doctor brought her back to consciousness, and now she was Lurancy Vennum as before; she spoke quite reasonably and claimed to have been in heaven. On the doctor’s advice that if a return of the possession were unavoidable, she should make better choices among the spirits, and she gave the names of several long-dead people, including an “angel” named “Mary Roff.” On hearing this, Mr. Roff exclaimed, “This is my daughter. She’s been in heaven for twelve years. Let her come, she will be welcome to us.”
The next morning, Lurancy woke up apparently healthy and happy, but now she wasn’t Lurancy Vennum anymore, she was Mary Roff. Not knowing her own family, she asked to be let go “home” to her parents, the Roffs. All attempts to make her understand that she was already at home and must stay there were in vain; she continued to weep, and could only find consolation in knowing, as she said, that she was again returning to heaven for brief visits. But when Mrs. Roff and her daughter Minerva came to visit, she would throw her arms around them, calling one her mother and the other her sister, and would not part with them. How the Vennums finally decided to let her go “home,” how she lived happily with the Roffs for three and a half months, how she reminded them of many incidents that had happened in the life of the late Mary, and all sorts of things, clothing, etc., which he [she] had owned, all this is described in the book “The Watseka Wonder” (W. Rider and Son lt., London).
As the time approached when Lurancy would regain possession of her body, it was announced. On May 30th, she (Mary) said to her father, crying: “O papa, I am going to heaven tomorrow and Lurancy will come back and go back to her parents. It is painful for me to part from you, for you have been so good to me and have helped me with a sympathy to heal this body again, so that Lurancy can come again and possess it.” — And so it was it. The next day, Lurancy Vennum was herself again, and Mary Roff was not heard from again, having fulfilled her mission of fulfilling Christian charity by her brief visit to this earthly sphere. Methodist minister Rev. Baker still resents his advice to put Lurancy in a lunatic asylum and SPR scholars are ill at ease on the matter because of his theory of separability of consciousness does not fit at all into different states of memory.
————————
The Theosophist (Adyar) contains a number of accounts relating to persons who recalled the details of experiences in their previous incarnation. We choose the following as an example:
A ten-year-old girl lives in the village of Dholpur. Already at the age of six she could tell a lot about her previous life and her relatives at that time. The place where she lived then, called Bhamtipura, was not far from Dholpur. She was taken there and she immediately recognized the house where she had died and all the things and people she had known, and called them by their names. In her previous incarnation she had two sons and a daughter. She recognized them and listed all her relatives by name. She also gave the exact spot where some money and valuables had been hidden in a wall in her previous incarnation. She was reborn in Dholpur five years after she died in Bhamtipura.
Another case is that of a brahmin murdered at Beelpura. He was soon born again in the same village. He remembered everything that had happened in his previous life and sued his killers in court. However, they were acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Similar cases of reminiscences are known to us. Such things do not seem at all uncommon; but they don’t always get a big shout out.
Note:
[1] Occult Phenomena. A Psychological Puzzle [Occulte Phänomene. Ein psychologisches Rätsel. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 4, no. 9-10 (September-October 1911), 290-295] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl, ©2025}