Patience and Pearl – Ouija Board Authors

Podcast Episode 36 “Writing from the Grave”

In the latest episode we discussed Pearl Lenore Curran, born in 1883. A woman who began making contact with a 17th century English spinster via Ouija board in 1913. For the next 24 years of her life, Pearl recorded nearly a million words from Patience Worth. Numerous books were published, poems printed, essays written and plays created, all supposedly from the mind of a long dead spirit.

Scientists, psychics and skeptics alike couldn’t figure out how Pearl Curran was doing it, they just knew that she didn’t have the intelligence to pull it off herself. Or did she?

Dive into these curated photos and files from Pearl Curran and her spirit partner.

Digital Artwork from the Episode

Articles and newspaper photos regarding Pearl, Patience, Pearl’s husband and adopted child.

Transcribed Ouija Conversations

Every word spoken through the planchette by Patience Worth was recorded by either Pearl’s husband, John H. Curran or her mother, Mary.

Click the Ouija Board to read Volume 1 of the Patience Worth Record

Optioned for a Movie

By 1920, Pearl and Patience were doing so well that Pearl was releasing stories under her own name. The writing style was drastically different from Patience Worth’s work. The Saturday Evening Post paid her over three hundred dollars for the story “Rosa Alvaro, Entrante.” The following year, the Goldwyn Film Company, who had bought the rights for $1,500, turned it into a movie called, “What Happened To Rosa?”

Click on the theater advertisement to watch the movie

Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery

In 1916, newspaper reporter and close friend Casper S. Yost was given the job to put this book about Patience Worth together. This upset Pearl’s former friend, Emily Hutchings who felt that she had earned the right to write the book. The two never spoke again.

Click the book cover to read the story

Miscellaneous Photos

Ouija Centric Newspaper Clippings

Listen to Episode 36 – Writing from the Grave

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