By her own admission, thirty-year-old Pearl Curran was extraordinarily ordinary. The St. Louis woman was not well-traveled, neither well-read nor well-educated, and had little imagination and few ambitions. In school, she had been an average student. As an adult, she knew she was average looking. She did, however, find a suitor and married at twenty-four. Because her husband John provided well for her, she was able to do what she enjoyed most: commingle with other ladies, play cards with friends and neighbors, and go to the movies.

Although Pearl Curran was content with being the conventional housewife, her name is associated with concepts considered most unconventional– spiritualism and the occult. This self-described most ordinary woman is entwined with the extraordinary.

Pearl Curran

In July 1912, freelance writer Emily Grant Hutchings came to her friend Pearl’s home for a typical afternoon of cards and gossip. This time, however, she brought with her something unfamiliar to Pearl.

Emily had recently acquired a peculiar planchette dotted with letters and numbers. Instantly hooked, she was anxious for Pearl to partake in an increasingly popular parlor game.

Emily Grant Hutchings

Pearl’s Friend

The ouija board had been invented twenty-two years earlier. Based on a psychophysiological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect, the small lettered and numbered “talking board” was said to be played by the unconscious movements of people placing their fingers on the board.

Pearl thought the game silly at first, but soon, she, too, was intrigued. Like Emily, she enjoyed seeing what the heart-shaped piece of wood spelled out.

After nearly a year of producing only jibberesh, however, the fun was waning, and the ouija board had become boring. All of that changed on July 8, 1913.

An Early Ouija Board

Pearl’s fingers galloped across the ouija board at an accelerated rate that evening. Finally, with Emily saying it appeared her friend was in a trance, Pearl blurted out, in a voice different from normal, “Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name . . .”

“Patience” said she was the daughter of John and Anne Worth and a woman of small physical stature who lived “across the sea” from 1649-94. She never specifically mentioned from where she hailed, but seemed to suggest it was England, perhaps rural Dorsetshire along the English Channel in the southwest. After taking a boat to America, Patience said she was one of the first to reach the shore but was later killed by Indians.

Over the following few months, Pearl said Patience dictated literary works in an archaic style. Many of the words, such as “thee” and “thou” were commonly used in seventeenth century England. When Patience was asked why she spoke in such a way, she tartly responded that people would not believe she was real if she spoke in the modern language style.

“Patience” And Pearl

Miss Worth didn’t have much patience for questions. Anyone was more than welcome to listen, but it was she who would do the speaking. And speak she did.

By 1915, Patience, through Pearl, was supposedly dictating five-hundred to three-thousand words per sitting. Word spread, and friends came to see the works, transcribed by her husband John. The sittings soon gained a cult-like following.

Pearl And Patience Are Popular

In August 1916, friends were surprised when the Currans, who never expressed interest in having children, decided to adopt. The reason for the sudden change of heart was even more surprising; not only had Patience Worth told them to adopt, she told them the specific child to adopt.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m. on October 7, Patience refused to continue a session, claiming something important was transpiring. The following day, the Currans learned the pregnant woman from whom they were to adopt had given birth, they claimed, at the exact time that Patience said to stop the session. Patience also reputedly stated the child would be a girl, and accurately predicted physical characteristics about her and her mother.

John and Pearl Curran named their adopted daughter Patience Worth Curran.

Patience Worth Curran

Pearl and Patience’s words were published in local newspapers. Soon, they were published nationally.

Centered in Palestine during the time of Jesus, The Sorry Tale, the first novel “written” by Patience Worth, was published in 1917 by New York City’s Henry Holt and Company.  Several historians, one of them considered an expert in ancient Christianity, believed the work was one of the best novels written about Jesus.

Patience Worth was credited as the author. The woman said to have been dead for nearly two centuries authored six more novels over the following two decades.

Patience The Author

John Curran died in 1922; Pearl gave birth to daughter Eileen six months later and soon moved to Los Angeles. Two subsequent marriages to family friend Henry Rogers and her teenage sweetheart Robert Wyman were short-lived.

Pearl’s “sessions” with Patience continued over the following fifteen years. On November 25, 1937, Patience gave what she said would be her final communication. It was an ominous one as she predicted Pearl’s end was imminent. Pearl, through Patience, conveyed, “Patience has just shown me the end of the road.”

Even though Pearl had not been in ill health, she developed pneumonia a few days later and died on December 3, at age fifty-four.

Pearl Dies

Over the course of twenty-two years, Patience Worth, through Pearl Curran, is alleged to have dictated over 4,000,000 words in the forms of aphorisms, poems, plays, and novels.

All of the Pearl/Patience publications are said to have started through the Ouija board.

The Ouija Writings

Casper Yost was the longtime editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He was among those invited to attend the Pearl Curran/Patience Worth sessions and soon became the primary prominent person channeling the supposed spirit.

In 1916, Yost’s Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery, was published by the Boston Society for Physical Research. He did not come to any definitive determinations regarding the existence of Patience Worth, simply concluding all naturalistic theories are unable to explain the conveyances made through Pearl Curran.

Casper Yost

Modern-day historians, however, are for the most part, doubtful of the existence of Patience Worth. No evidence has been found that anyone by that name lived, either in the seventeenth century or in any time or place. In addition, linguists say the texts of the books show the language was not consistent with other works from the seventeenth century, the era in which Patience “said” she lived. Most notably, skeptics note that one of the novels centers in the nineteenth-century Victorian Age.

The consensus is that Patience Worth was merely a persona of Pearl Curran. The vast majority of psychologists and skeptics who have studied Pearl Curran’s writings are in agreement that Patience Worth was a fictitious person created by Pearl Curran’s subconscious as her “other self.”

Did Patience Worth Exist?

It is also generally agreed that Pearl Curran was the impetus behind the ouija board’s transformation form a simple parlor game to one connected to the occult.

For Better Or Worse

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39153867/pearl-lenore-curran

Pearl And Patience

Forever Entwined

Pearl Curran’s daughter, Patience Worth Curran, married twice. Her second union was to Max Behr, a man over thirty years her senior. He claimed she had developed of similar psychic capabilities as her mother and that she predicted her life would be short.

Patience Behr died in her sleep in November 1943 at age twenty-seven. The cause of death was determined to be heart failure.

Patience Worth Curran Behr

William Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Reedy’s Mirror literary journal, was initially skeptical that Pearl Curran was the medium of Patience Worth, but he became convinced after witnessing several sessions.

Reedy was a large man. Upon being introduced to “the women” for the first time Pearl, through Patience, uttered “Hello, Mr. Fat and Wide.”

William Reedy

Whether she existed or not, there is perhaps a little Patience Worth in all of us. Patience is a virtue, virtues have value, value has worth.

Could a person believe patience is a virtue worth having because it gives more value to his or her name?  Just a thought . . . for what it’s worth.

Is Patience Worth Worth Examining?

SOURCES:

• The Haunted Museum
• The Mystery of Patience Worth
• Prairie Ghosts
• Unsolved Mysteries