Patience Worth, a Literary Spirit

'Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name.' Thus began the first of many messages received by Pearl Curran and her friend Emily Grant Hutchings on July 8th 1913. The two young women, living in St Louis, had been using a ouija board to contact the spirit world for about a year with varying degrees of success, but the messages from Patience Worth were to become renowned for their clarity and extraordinary literary content.

It became clear over time that Pearl Curran was the medium through whom Patience wished to make her presence known, and the ouija board was quickly abandoned as Mrs Curran became more and more adept at hearing the spirit in her head. Through Mrs Curran, Patience Worth was to produce a large body of work, including poetry and novels, which were mostly dictated to a stenographer, and later published to great acclaim.

The spirit revealed herself to be a woman in her 30s with dark red hair and brown eyes. She indicated that she was of English origin, and gave her dates as 1649-94. Her home was 'Across the Sea' in 'Dorsetshire' and her parents were named John and Anne. She travelled to America on a three masted schooner, but there met her death at the hands of native Indians.

Although the works of Patience Worth were extensively published in the early 20th century, they are now mostly out of print. Titles include 'The Sorry Tale', 'Hope Trueblood', 'The Pot Upon the Wheel' and many short stories and poems, some of which have found homes on the internet, and may still be read and enjoyed on such websites as www.patienceworth.org.

Almost one hundred years on, Patience Worth still remains an enigma. Was Pearl Curran simply imagining the conversations? Was she a re-incarnation of Patience, and thus accessing past-life memories?The historical details recounted through Pearl Curran have all been found to be accurate, despite the fact that it is unlikely that she would have been able to research the 17th century language and idioms so richly employed, nor to have had knowledge of rural life in England at that period. We will probably never know the truth for sure.

Geneaologists have attempted to trace Patience Worth in order to prove or disprove her existence, but although several candidates have emerged, none, at present fits all the facts in their entirety.

The story of Patience Worth is told in some detail in a book by Irving Litvag entitled 'The Singer in the Shadows'.