Etta Wriedt, Who Had Invisible Hands of Dead People Touch Visitors

Etta Wriedt was born in Detroit in 1859 and became a professional medium who charged only one dollar per séance. She did not sit in a cabinet or go into a trance. Etta had two spirit guides. One was Dr. John Sharp, who was born in Glasgow in the 18th century before moving to the US, where he became an apothecary farmer in Evansville, Indiana. The other guide, known as John King or “Sir Henry Morgan,” contacted Etta during her five trips to Great Britain. He had lived in Britain 250 years earlier.

During Etta’s visits, John King produced numerous physical manifestations. Flowers were taken from vases and handed to sitters, invisible fingers touched the sitters, and luminous discs as bright as the moon moved around the circle. Sitters were also sprinkled with drops of water and wafted with cool air. Heavy objects moved around them. Etta clairvoyantly read names shown to her, and when she called out a name that was recognized by a sitter, the spirit would confirm it through a trumpet.

Etta never went into a trance, allowing her to converse naturally throughout her séances. She would provide names, describe spirit visitors, and indicate whom they had come to communicate with. Occasionally, a spirit voice would interrupt, and both would speak simultaneously. Voices were heard in full light as well as in darkness, sometimes two or three, and rarely four, speaking at once about matters unknown to Etta. On one occasion, one voice sang while another spoke. Although Etta only spoke English, the voices communicated in various languages, including Dutch, French, Spanish, Norwegian, and Arabic.

Sir William Barrett remarked on her mediumship, “I attended Mrs. Wriedt’s séances somewhat skeptically, but concluded she was a genuine and remarkable medium. The voices and messages were beyond the range of trickery or collusion.”

Admiral W. Usborne Moore meticulously documented Etta Wriedt’s extraordinary mediumship. He stated, “This American woman possesses a mysterious gift, allowing those in the same room to learn of the continued existence of those whose physical bodies have perished. This strange power is not acquired by any virtue of her own; she was born with it.”

In this interview, Roberta Grimes interviews N. Riley Heagerty, who has been researching physical mediums for over 35 years. His books include The French Revelation about independent voice medium Emily French and Portraits from Beyond, about the Bangs sisters, who precipitated spirit portraits before large audiences and did independent writing. He wrote The Direct Voice about medium Elizabeth Blake, and Spectral Evidence, which is a marvelous compilation about what happened during the time when Spiritualism was prominent. His eighth book was The Phenomena of Spirit Materialization–The Transcendent Wonder of the Ages–The Most Glorious and Staggering Eye-Witnessed Accounts Ever Recorded of Spirits Returning from the Afterlife.

To learn more, visit the Seek Reality homepage at webtalkradio.com or contact Roberta at SeekReality.com.