Patience Worth

According to accounts recorded in early 20th-century sources, contact began in the St. Louis area during social use of a Ouija board by Pearl Lenore Curran and friends in 1912–1913. Initial messages dated June 22, 1913, and more forceful communications noted by July 8, 1913, purported to identify a personality: 'Patience Worth my name.' Curran and associates presented Patience as a woman who had lived circa 1649–1694 'across the sea' (interpreted by some associates as rural Dorsetshire) and who had voyaged to America; Curran later reported Patience indicated she was killed by Native Americans. The persona went on to supply sustained literary texts which were publicized (including a 1916 book with a foreword by Casper Yost). Skeptical and psychological commentators cited in the same sources characterize Patience as a creation of Curran rather than an independent discarnate agent.

Descriptions of Patience Worth's appearance come from Pearl Curran's visions and communications. Curran described her as 'probably about thirty years' with 'dark red, mahogany' hair 'in big, glossy, soft waves' sometimes disarranged by a cap; 'brown, and large and deep' eyes; and a 'mouth firm and set, as though repressing strong feelings.' Curran visualized Patience sitting on a horse holding a bundle wrapped in sail-cloth and wearing a coarse brown-gray cloak with a peaked cowl and coarse square-toed shoes with gray woolen stockings. Settings perceived during transmissions included green rolling country (reported by associates as Dorsetshire) and a shipboard voyage to America with landing on a jagged coast.

On Curran's account, Patience Worth communicated continuously through her as a speaking, writing intelligence that produced lengthy novels, poetry, and prose. The communications began via a Ouija board and over time Curran reported anticipating spelled messages as the pointer's action changed; transmissions were accompanied by pictorial and panoramic imagery experienced by Curran: 'When the poems come, there also appear before my eyes images of each successive symbol... When the stories come, the scenes become panoramic.' The sources note that these works were published and attracted both popular attention and skeptical/psychological analysis; psychologists and skeptics cited in the same sources assert that the Patience material was a fictitious creation of Curran.