Stefan Ossowiecki

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Stefan Ossowiecki

Stefan Ossowiecki (1877-1944) was a Polish engineer who was during his lifetime promoted as one of Europe's best-known psychics [1]. Pioneering French parapsychologist Gustave Geley and Nobel-prize winning physiologist Charles Robert Richet, who called Ossowiecki "the most positive of psychics," were two notable people who supported his claims.

[edit] Biography

Ossowiecki was born in Moscow in 1877 into an affluent family of former Polish aristocrats. His Moscow-born father, owner a large chemicals factory and assistant of Dmitri Mendeleev, clung to his Polish heritage and taught his son to speak the Polish language and to think of himself as a Pole. Stefan Ossowiecki was said to have manifested psychic talents in his youth, much to his family's confusion. When the young Ossowiecki told his mother he could see bands of color around people, she took him to an eye doctor who prescribed drops to cure the condition. The medicine "irritated my eyes but did not diminish my ability," Ossowiecki later recounted.

As a young man, Ossowiecki was enrolled at the prestigious Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University, where he was trained in his father's profession of chemical engineering. It was during this period that Ossowiecki allegedly demonstrated an ability to perform psychokinesis.

After earning his degree, Ossowiecki returned to Moscow, where he lived the life of a sybarite and joined the circle of Czar Nicholas II and the Russian court.

In 1915, his father died and Ossowiecki inherited the family chemicals business, making him temporarily a wealthy man. Only three years later, he lost it all as the Bolshevik Revolution swept the country. As a wealthy capitalist and friend of the czar, Ossowiecki was targeted by the new regime. His property was seized, and he was imprisoned. The isolation of a prison cell forced Ossowiecki to "think through many things ... It was then that I began to fully value this gift given me by the Creator, and I understood that by utilization of it I could help others." He was sentenced to be executed but after half a year he was released, due to support of a friend from his youth, now a Bolshevik party official.

He was released in 1919 and fled Russia, penniless at age 42. Ossowiecki entered business as a chemical engineer in Warsaw. He arranged for his consulting work to complement his work helping people in need.

In the 1920s, many experiments were performed in which Ossowiecki allegedly demonstrated clairvoyance (the ability to see objects in sealed containers) and astral projection (the ability to travel outside the body). Nobel laureate Richet would write in his book Our Sixth Sense, "If any doubt concerning the sixth sense remains ... this doubt will be dissipated by the sum total of the experiments made by Geley, by myself, and by others, with Stefan Ossowiecki."

The year 1939 was a milestone for Ossowiecki: he married for the second time and Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, precipitating a national as well as personal tragedy. Also in 1939, Ossowiecki completed a screenplay for Paramount Pictures about his life, The Eyes Which See Everything. That year, he has also incorrectly predicted that there would be no major war;[2] soon afterwards, Germans invaded Poland and the World War II began.

Although Ossowiecki might have fled the Nazis, he chose to stay, in part because Wrobel had warned him against traveling by sea, and in part because Ossowiecki felt his fate was tied to that of his countrymen. Furthermore, of course, he had no fear of death.

[edit] References

Stephan A. Schwartz, The Secret Vaults of Time, Grosset & Dunlap, 1978.
A WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND: THE CLAIRVOYANCE OF STEFAN OSSOWIECKI by Mary Rose Barrington, Ian Stevenson, and Zofia Weaver. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2005. Pp. 189, $39.95. ISBN 0-7864-2112-6
Jerzy Kubiatowski, Ossowiecki Stefan (1877-1944) in : Polski Słownik Biograficzny, tom 24, ss.431-433.