- 78 - ‘Esquire! I humbly inform you that your esteemed petition has been successful and I express my thousandfold gratitude to you and to Mr. Lieutenant Rittmann on behalf of myself and my children. The board of trustees of the Styrian Widow’s War Fund allocated me 50 Kronen. May I ask you for the address of Mr. Lt. Rittmann so that I can send him the thanks that I owe him. Most sincerely. Widow Hedwig Hass.’” Dr. Bernhard Cyriax, already mentioned on page 3, reports about the same kind of case with the following words (3, P. 24): “Meetings are held in Boston, at the locality of the ‘Banner of Light’ (a spiritistic journal) three times a week in order to give any spirit that entertains the wish to communicate with those they left behind, the opportunity to vocally communicate their wishes through a ‘personified medium’. These are stenographically written down and then published in the ‘Banner’. It was on a Friday afternoon in 1984, when the spirit of an Irishwoman who died of consumption, manifested herself through the medium (it was Mrs. Conant at the time) and communicated that she felt so terribly unhappy, because both of the children she left behind, eight respectively ten years old, were suffering terribly. She indicated that she had died in a miserable flat in a dead-end street in Albany, in the State of New York and that the authorities had given one of her children into care with a family in Albany and the other with a farmer near town. The one child was forced to beg in the street and was almost starving to death whilst the other was tyrannically treated and cruelly beaten at the slightest trifle. This woman supplied accurate dates and habitations and with heartrending lamentations entreated the chairman to write to a certain Dr. Andrews in Albany, he had treated her during her last few weeks and he seemed to be very philanthropic, in order to ask him to look after her children. According to this wish, a letter was written that Saturday and sent to Dr. Andrews whose address the spirit had supplied, it contained all the details. The Irishwoman appeared again at the meeting on Tuesday afternoon, she was very happy and she informed them that she now felt happy and content, because the doctor had fulfilled her wish and rescued her children from the hands of their tormentors. She didn’t know how to express her gratitude for the willing help she had received and she asked the grace of heaven to bless the mediators. A letter from Dr. Andrews arrived on Thursday wherein he told them that he found the whole thing very strange (he was not a Spiritist at that time), but that he immediately began a search with the help of the police, because the facts had been correctly specified. He had also found the children and all the details from the deceased mother had been correct. He had now taken care of the children, but he asked for an explanation about how the editor of the ‘Banner’ got hold of all the details that eventually proved to be true. The doctor received all the details and he was encouraged to look into Spiritualism, to examine the facts and to study the philosophy therein. These facts had naturally been published in the ‘Banner of Light’; Dr. Andrews accurately described all the processes involved in the ‘Albany Argus’ and concluded his dissertation by saying that he could no longer doubt the fact that the spirits of the dead could really announce their presence and proclaim their wishes. He was from then on a convinced spiritist. And Dr. Andrews was right. Those that are not convinced of the reality of one’s personal survival after death and inter-communication between both levels of existence after receiving such facts, will never ever become spiritualists. One may consider the fact that a trip between Boston and Albany took 14 to 15 hours in those days and that therefore a letter posted in Boston on the Saturday, could only be in the hands of the doctor on Sunday. It took quite an effort to find the flat of the people who had taken the child in according to the doctor’s information and as they had not been at
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