Research for my third Tana Standish novel (The Khyber Chronicle) has re-introduced me to one of my old books, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder (1970) my copy 1976.
As a writer of fiction, one
doesn’t have to believe everything, particularly where the so-called pseudo-sciences
are concerned. A significant proportion of the population (US, UK, elsewhere)
believe in the existence of some form of supernatural or psychic phenomena,
though it does seem difficult to prove under strict laboratory conditions. The writer’s mission is to suspend disbelief,
and in this case that requires a certain amount of research in the literature on the psychic
subject.
When creating my psychic
spy, Tana Standish, I realised that she couldn’t attempt to utilise too many
abilities, only a few, otherwise she'd be 'superwoman', and these 'talents' could not always be called upon at will.
Emotions and environment play a part in receptiveness, as we know.
In the 1970s I had amassed a
fairly large collection of books on the supernatural; this decade seemed to be the heyday of paranormal phenomena, and it was the ideal period to set my psychic spy series.
One interesting example from the Ostrander-Schroeder book was Wolf Messing, a Jew.
In a Warsaw theatre in 1937 in front of a thousand people he predicted, ‘Hitler will die if he turns toward the East’.
One interesting example from the Ostrander-Schroeder book was Wolf Messing, a Jew.
In a Warsaw theatre in 1937 in front of a thousand people he predicted, ‘Hitler will die if he turns toward the East’.
At least one psychic had been
murdered by the Nazis for ‘knowing too much about their plans’.
Hitler, apparently a believer
of the occult, heard of the prophecy and put a price of 200,000 marks on
Messing’s head.
The German Army invaded
Poland on September 1, 1939 and Messing hid but he was captured and identified.
He was beaten up, losing six teeth, and then taken to a police station. Here,
he used all his powers of mind to compel all the police to go to one room where
he locked them in, and he escaped to the Russian border. His father, brothers
and his entire family were slaughtered in the Warsaw Ghetto.
At Brest Litovsk he was among
many refugees fleeing the Nazis. His telepathy convinced the manager of the
Ministry of Culture to give him a job.
People’s thoughts came to him
as pictures, he explained, visual images of a specific action or place. If he touched the
person, the thoughts were clearer, stronger, but touch wasn’t essential.
Later, Wolf Messing trained
NKVD officers and had a number of encounters with Stalin.
He seemed able to telepathically
project his thoughts into another person’s mind, to control or cloud them… In
one test, he penetrated Stalin’s dacha, got past the many guards and servants
by mentally suggesting to them he was Beria (Lavrenti Beria was the feared head
of the Soviet secret police). He didn’t look like Beria, either!
Messing died in 1974, aged
75.
***
Some aspects of Messing's ability would be employed by Tana. She was a child of five when she escaped the Warsaw Ghetto with her brother. Her psychic powers were slight at this time, but growing, despite the hunger and fear - or perhaps because of those life-threatening stimuli. She would have a psychic link with anyone she'd touched. As an adult and a spy, she would not balk at shaking hands with the devil; all the better to slay him...
Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.
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