Stephan Ossowiecki
1877-1944

          A POLISH engineer, one of the most remarkable and scientifically tested clairvoyants.

He was born in 1877, inherited his psychic gifts from his mother's side, and could read thoughts from early childhood. In the Engineering Institute at Petrograd, where he studied, he astounded his professors by answering questions enclosed in an envelope without opening it. He could see coloured auras of surrounding people, heard raps and could move objects telekinetically. When he practised telekinesis his clairvoyant powers diminished. 

At the age of 35 he lost his telekinetic powers and his gift of reading sealed papers developed remarkably. With human subjects he showed even more penetration. Most of the persons he meets have no secrets from him. He knows their most intimate thoughts, and reads their past, present and future as in an open book. On several occasions, mostly involuntarily, but once by an effort of will, he has externalised. His friends to whom he manifested himself received the impression that he was near in flesh and blood. His powers are nearer to psychometry than clairvoyance. He never reads the sealed letters word by word. He perceives the ideas. Typewritten or printed text does not bring his powers into play. It must be writing by a living person. Nevertheless if the writing is in a strange language which he does not know he cannot disclose the contents but can tell all the circumstances connected with the writer and the writing.

He gave remarkable evidence of clairvoyance to Prof. Charles Richet, Dr. Gustave Geley and many other scientists in reading sealed letters the contents of which, in many cases, were unknown to the experimenters. To Geley he read the contents of a letter as follows;

"I am in a zoological garden; a fight is going on, a large animal, an elephant. Is he not in the water? I see his trunk as he swims. I see blood."

Geley said: "Good, but that is not all."
Ossowiecki: "Wait, is he not wounded in his trunk?"
Geley: "Very good. There was a fight."
Ossowiecki: "Yes, with a crocodile."

The sentence which Geley wrote was "an elephant bathing in the Ganges was attacked by a crocodile who bit off his trunk."

At the time of the International Psychical Research Congress in Warsaw in 1923, Ossowiecki was asked to read the contents of a note sent by the SPR and carefully sealed by Dr. Dingwall in an envelope after having been wrapped in several folds of paper of various colours. The note contained the sketch of a flag, a bottle and, in a corner, the date of Aug. 22, 1923. Ossowiecki reproduced correctly the flag and the bottle, and wrote the date like this: 19-2-23. The seal being broken, Ossowiecki was warmly acclaimed by the Congress. Baron Schrenck-Notzing cried, "Thank you, thank you, in the name of science."

Source (with minor modifications): An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).