Mystical stories of Wolf Messing (6 photos)

It is not known how the fate of the outstanding parapsychologist, telepath, medium and hypnotist Wolf Grigoryevich Messing (1899-1974) would have developed if it were not for the “mystical” story that happened to him in childhood.

Wolf was born in the tiny Jewish town of Gura Kalwaria near Warsaw.

From the words of his parents (all his relatives and friends later died in Majdanek), he knew that in childhood he suffered from sleepwalking, but his father, embittered at life, quickly “cured” him of walking at night: on a full moon, he put a trough with cold water by the bed. Like it or not, you wake up. He also had a phenomenal memory, which made him an exemplary student at the synagogue school.

The main subject – the Talmud – Wolf knew by heart, from cover to cover, and his father read it to the rabbis. The boy was even introduced to the famous writer Sholom Aleichem, but this meeting did not make any impression on the boy. But the performances of the visiting circus simply shocked and sunk into the soul. Wolf, in defiance of his father, firmly decided to become a magician, and not continue his studies in a yeshiva, who trained spiritual servants.

The beatings did not give anything, and the head of the family decided to use a trick. He hired a man who, in the form of a “heavenly messenger”, would have to predict Wolf’s “service to God.” One evening, the boy saw a giant bearded figure in a white robe at the porch of their house. “My son! the stranger exclaimed, “go to the yeshiva and serve the Lord!” The shocked child fainted. Under the influence of “heavenly revelation” and against his will, Wolf entered the yeshiva.

Maybe the world would have someday received an outstanding rabbi Messing, but two years later a hefty bearded man came to their house on business. And Wolf immediately recognized him as a terrible stranger. The case allowed him to reveal the deception of the “messenger of heaven.” At the same moment, having lost faith in the existence of God, Wolf stole “eighteen pennies, which amounted to nine kopecks”, and “went towards the unknown”!

From that moment on, everything turned upside down in Messing’s life. The train was carrying a stowaway to Berlin. He was so afraid of the controller that he first discovered the talent of a telepath. When Wolff, who had huddled under the bench, handed out a pitiful piece of newspaper to the controller with a trembling hand, he managed to convince him that this was a real ticket! Several painful moments passed, and the face of the controller softened: “Why are you sitting under the bench with a ticket? Get out, fool!”

Life in Berlin was very hard. Wolf did not even think to use his amazing abilities: he just worked to exhaustion, but always went hungry. After five months of hard work and constant malnutrition, the boy fainted from exhaustion right in the middle of the pavement. There was no pulse, no breathing. The cold body of the child was taken to the morgue. He was saved from the fate of being buried alive in a common grave by a zealous student, who noticed that the unfortunate heart was still beating.

Wolf regained consciousness only three days later thanks to Professor Abel, a neuropathologist famous in those years. In a weak voice, Wolf asked him:

“Please don’t call the police and don’t send me to an orphanage.

The professor asked in surprise:

— Did I say that?

“I don’t know,” answered Wolf, “but you thought so.

A talented psychiatrist realized that the boy is an “amazing medium.” For a while he watched Wolf. (Unfortunately, his reports on the experiments burned down during the war.) Later, this happened more than once – as if some kind of force persistently and imperiously concealed everything connected with Messing.)

Professor Abel prompted Wolf in which direction to develop his abilities, and he found a job in … a Berlin freak show. At that time, living people were paraded as exhibits. There were Siamese twins, a woman with a long beard, an armless man who deftly shuffled a deck of cards with his feet, and a miracle boy who had to lie in a crystal coffin for three days a week, plunging into a cataleptic state. This miracle boy was Messing. And then he came to life to the surprise of the visitors of the Berlin Panopticon.

In his free time, Wolf learned to “listen” to other people’s thoughts and turn off pain with willpower. Two years later, Messing performed in a variety show as a fakir, who was pierced with needles in his chest and neck (while the blood did not come out of the wounds), and as a “detective”, easily finding various objects hidden by the audience.

The performances of the “wonder boy” were very popular. The impresario profited from it, it was resold, but at the age of 15, Wolf realized that it was necessary not only to earn money, but also to study.

While performing at the Bush circus, he began to visit private teachers, and later worked for a long time at the Vilna University in the Department of Psychology, trying to figure out his own abilities. Now on the streets he tried to “eavesdrop” on the thoughts of passers-by. Checking himself, he approached the thrush and said something like: “Don’t worry, your daughter won’t forget to milk the goat.” And the seller in the store reassured: “The debt will be returned to you soon.” The astonished exclamations of the “test subjects” testified that he really managed to read other people’s thoughts.

In 1915, on his first tour in Vienna, Wolf “passed the exam” to A. Einstein and 3. Freud, clearly fulfilling their mental orders. It was thanks to Freud that Wolf broke up with the circus, deciding: no more cheap tricks, only “psychological experiments” in which he surpassed all competitors.

From 1917 to 1921 Wolf made his first world tour. Everywhere he was waiting for continued success. But upon returning to Warsaw, the famous medium did not escape the draft into the army. Even the services rendered to the “head of the Polish state” J. Pilsudski did not save him from service: the marshal consulted with Wolf more than once on a variety of issues.

Then Messing again went on tour in Europe, South America, Australia and Asia. Traveled to Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Australia. He performed in almost all capitals. In 1927, in India, he met Mahatma Gandhi and was shocked by the art of yogis, although his own achievements were no less impressive. More and more often, he was privately approached for help in finding missing people or treasure. Wolf rarely took the reward.

One day, Count Czartoryski lost his diamond brooch, which was worth a fortune. Messing quickly found the culprit – it was the feeble-minded son of a maid, who, like a magpie, dragged shiny things and hid a stuffed bear in the mouth in the living room. Messing refused the reward of 250 thousand zlotys, instead asking the count to help repeal the law that infringed on the rights of Jews in Poland.

Such stories multiplied the glory of Messing, but there were also incidents. Once a woman showed him a letter from her son who had gone to America, and the seer determined from a piece of paper that he was dead. And during the next visit of Messing, the town met him with cries of “Swindler! Scoundrel! It turned out that the imaginary dead man had recently returned home. Messing only thought for a second. “Did you write the letter yourself?” he asked the guy. “No, I’m not good with reading and writing,” he was embarrassed. I dictated and my friend wrote. Poor fellow, he was soon crushed by a log. The authority of the seer has been restored.

The Second World War began. The Fuhrer himself called Messing “enemy number 1.” Back in 1937, at one of his speeches, he inadvertently answered a question and predicted a defeat for Hitler if he “turned to the east,” and now 200 thousand marks were promised for his head, and portraits hung on every corner. Messing had to repeatedly “take his eyes off” the German patrol, but one day he was nevertheless seized, beaten and locked in the station.

This did not bode well, and then Messing “invited” all the policemen to his cell, left it and pulled the bolt. But there were also guards at the exit of the building, but there was no more strength left … Then Messing jumped out of the second floor (injuring his legs forever) and disappeared. He was taken out of Warsaw on a cart, covered with hay, taken in a roundabout way to the east and helped to cross the Western Bug to the USSR on a dark November night in 1939.

Any fugitive from abroad in the Union would then face long checks, an almost inevitable charge of espionage, and then execution or camps. And Messing was immediately allowed to travel freely around the country and perform with his “experiments”. He himself rather unconvincingly explained that he inspired some rank with the idea of ​​his usefulness for the authorities, one of whose tasks was to spread materialism.

“In the Soviet Union, fighting against superstitions in the minds of people, neither fortune-tellers, nor wizards, nor palmists favored … I had to convince, demonstrate my abilities a thousand times,” Messing later stated his version.

And yet it is more likely that the fate of the seer was so successful in the USSR only because some high-ranking and very competent people knew about him for a long time.

And outwardly, it looked like this: without connections and knowledge of the language, Wolf Grigorievich managed to get a job in a concert brigade touring at that time in Belarus. But during one concert in Kholm, in front of the audience, he was taken right off the stage by two people in civilian clothes and taken to Stalin. Wolf Messing for the “leader of the peoples” was neither a provincial pop hypnotist, nor a medium for “new converts to spiritualism.” After all, Messing was known all over the world; it has been “tested” and tested by people like Einstein, Freud and Gandhi.

Whether by the power of suggestion (Messing himself denied this) or simply by managing to win the sympathy of everyone and everything suspecting the leader, the parapsychologist avoided trouble. Stalin gave him an apartment, allowed him to tour the Union, stopped Beria’s desire to get a telepath for the NKVD (but the Chekists did not remove the “cap” from the seer until the last days of his life).

True, and arranged several serious checks. Once he made me leave the Kremlin without a pass and return, which for Messing was as easy as riding a “hare” on a train. Then he offered to receive 100 thousand rubles from the savings bank without any documents. The “robbery” was also successful, only the cashier who woke up was hospitalized with a heart attack.

Soviet scientists who personally knew Messing spoke about another experiment organized by Stalin. The famous hypnotist had to get to the leader’s dacha in Kuntsevo without permission, let alone a pass. The area was under special protection. The staff consisted of KGB officers. And everyone fired without warning. A couple of days later, when Stalin, busy with documents, was working at his dacha, a short, black-haired man entered the gate.

The guards saluted, and the servants made way. He passed through several posts and stopped at the door of the dining room where Stalin worked. The leader tore his eyes away from the papers and could not hide his confusion: it was Wolf Messing. How did he do it? Messing claimed that he telepathically conveyed to everyone present at the dacha that Beria was entering. At the same time, Messing did not even put on pince-nez, characteristic of the KGB chief!

Whether Volf Grigoryevich provided private services to Stalin has not been established. In the “near-Kremlin” circles, it was whispered that Messing was almost a personal predictor and adviser to Stalin. In fact, they met only a few times. It is unlikely that the “Kremlin mountaineer” would have liked that someone, even in the order of psychological experience, read his thoughts …

But it is known for certain that after one of the closed sessions, even before the start of World War II, the leader forbade “broadcasting about the vision” of Soviet tanks on the streets of Berlin and ordered diplomats to extinguish the conflict with the German embassy. Private sessions are also banned. But the latter was practically impossible to trace, and Messing repeatedly helped with his predictions of the future not only to friends, but also to complete strangers, especially during the war years.

His abilities were checked and countless rechecked – by journalists, and scientists, and ordinary viewers. Many of the episodes of his predictions were recorded and then confirmed by life.

“Don’t ask me how I did it. I’ll be honest and frank: I don’t know myself. In the same way as I do not know the mechanism of telepathy. I can say this: usually, when I am asked a specific question about the fate of this or that person, about whether this or that event will happen or not, I must stubbornly think, asking myself: will it happen or not? And after a while, a conviction arises: yes, it will happen … or: no, it will not happen … “

Tatyana Lungina, who worked at the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Bakuleva, who was friends with Messing for many years, said that he was involved in the correct diagnosis and the outcome of the diseases of several high-ranking patients. So, once a longtime friend of Messing, Colonel-General Zhukovsky, commander of the air force of the Belarusian Military District, became a patient of the institute.

An extensive heart attack was fatal, and a council of doctors faced a dilemma: to operate or not. The director of the institute, Professor Burakovsky, expressed his fear that the operation would only hasten the end. And then Messing called and said that it was necessary to operate immediately: “Everything will end well, it will heal like a dog.” The forecast came true.

When Wolf Grigorievich was later asked if he took risks with General Zhukovsky, he replied: “I didn’t even think about it. It’s just that a chain arose in my mind: “operation – Zhukovsky – life …” and that’s it.

And after such insights, Messing was listed as an ordinary “variety artist”, although he did not consider himself such: “After all, the artist is preparing for a performance. I have no idea what topics will be discussed, what tasks the audience will set for me, and therefore I cannot prepare for their implementation. I just have to tune in to the right psychic wave, rushing at the speed of light.

Messing’s “Psychological experiments” gathered huge audiences throughout the Union. Volf Grigoryevich demonstrated his phenomenal memory by doing complex calculations in his mind: he extracted square and cube roots from seven-digit numbers, listed all the numbers appearing in the experiment; read and memorize entire pages in a matter of seconds.

But most often he performed tasks that the audience gave him mentally. For example, this: remove glasses from the nose of a lady sitting in the sixth place of the thirteenth row, take them to the stage and put them in a glass with the right glass down. Messing successfully completed such tasks without using suggestive remarks or tips from assistants.

This telepathic phenomenon has been repeatedly tested by experts. Messing claimed that he perceives other people’s thoughts in the form of images – he sees the place and actions that he had to perform. He always emphasized that there is nothing supernatural in reading other people’s thoughts.

“Telepathy is just using the laws of nature. At first, I enter a state of relaxation, due to which I feel a surge of energy and increased susceptibility. Then everything is simple. I can accept any thoughts. If I touch a person who sends a thought-order, it is easier for me to concentrate on the transmission and distinguish it from all the other noises that I hear. However, direct contact is not necessary at all.

According to Messing, the clarity of the transmission depends on the ability of the person sending it to concentrate. He argued that it is easiest to read the minds of deaf-mutes, perhaps because they think more figuratively than other people.

Wolf Grigoryevich was especially famous for his demonstration of a cataleptic trance, during which he “turned to stone” and was laid like a board between the backs of two chairs. Even a large weight placed on the chest could not bend the body. The messing telepath “read” the mental tasks of the public and clearly executed them. How often it looked vulgar and stupid, especially to those who knew that this man had a great gift of foreboding.

Taking the hand of the sufferer, he could predict his future, from a photograph – to determine whether the person is alive and where he is now. After the Stalinist ban, Messing demonstrated his gift as a predictor only in a private circle. And only in 1943, in the very middle of the war, did he dare to speak publicly in Novosibirsk with a prediction that the war would end during the first week of May 1945 (according to other sources – May 8 without specifying the year). In May 1945, Stalin sent him a government telegram thanking him for accurately naming the day the war ended.

Messing claimed that the future is explained to him in the form of an image. “The operation of the mechanism of direct knowledge allows me to bypass normal, logical reasoning based on the chain of cause and effect. As a result, the last link that appears in the future opens up before me.

Inspires courage and one of Messing’s predictions regarding paranormal phenomena: “The time will come when a person will embrace them all with his consciousness. There are no incomprehensible things. There are only those that are not obvious to us at the moment.

Messing also participated in seances. Already in the USSR, he declared that he did not believe in the invocation of the spirit – “this is a deception.” But he was forced to say so because he lived in a country of militant atheism and lived quite well. In addition, he could well practice as a psychic healer, but he did it extremely rarely, since he believed that, for example, relieving a headache was not a problem, but treating it was the business of doctors. Nevertheless, more than once Wolf Grigorievich helped patients with all kinds of manias, treated them for alcoholism. But all these diseases belonged to the field of the psyche, and not therapy or surgery.

Messing could control the human psyche without much stress, with the help of hypnosis. He often thought about his abilities, but could not reveal the mechanism of his gift. Sometimes he “saw”, sometimes “heard” or simply “received” a thought, an image, a picture, but the process itself remained a mystery.

The only thing the experts were convinced of was that he had a phenomenal gift that had nothing to do with clever tricks or quackery, but scientists could not give a theoretical justification, since parapsychology was not officially recognized as a science in those years.

They say that Messing was a coward, afraid of lightning, cars and people in uniform, and obeyed his wife in everything. Only sometimes, when it came to matters of principle, he straightened up menacingly and spoke in a different voice, sharp and creaky: “This is not Wolfochka telling you, but Messing!” He spoke on the stage in the same authoritative voice. But foresight is a heavy gift. Wolf Grigorievich knew that no treatment would save his wife from cancer. After her death in 1960, he fell into a depression, and it seemed that even the miraculous gift had left him. Only nine months later he returned to his usual life.

Over the years, Messing began to perform less frequently, fearing that the unbearable burden of other people’s thoughts would destroy his brain. However, the disease crept up on the other side – the vessels on the once crippled legs failed. There was a threat of amputation of the lower extremities. He was strictly forbidden to smoke, but he did not want to rid himself of a bad habit, and why deprive himself of small joys if he knew exactly the date of his departure? Leaving for the hospital, he looked at his photo on the wall and said: “That’s it, Wolf, you won’t come back here anymore.”

In November 1974, Messing’s operation was surprisingly successful, and the doctors breathed a sigh of relief. No one still can understand why a few days later a pulmonary collapse occurred (it was also overcome), and then healthy kidneys failed. At the same time, the pulse was even, and sleep was calm. November 8, 1974 Wolf Messing died.

At autopsy, it turned out that the brain of the famous parapsychologist, for which American scientists offered a million dollars, was “standard”. The authorities also reacted “standardly” to the deceased: in connection with the November holidays, the obituary was printed only on November 14, the funeral procession consisted of half of the police, a talisman ring with a three-carat diamond, jewelry, numerous gifts from around the world disappeared without a trace, savings books with a contribution of more than a million rubles and cash was confiscated in favor of the state … Despite the efforts of famous Soviet citizens, no funds were allocated for the monument. It was installed only in 1990 with donations from foreign friends.

Well, we are forced to state: the nature of the psychic abilities of the famous parapsychologist Messing has not yet been determined.