THE WORLD'S STRANGEST TRUE ENCOUNTERS: NEW "BEST OF FATE MAGAZINE" BOOK RELEASED

“FATE is about UFOs, the paranormal, all that stuff. I find it fascinating!” says Stephen King.

AMAZON TOP TEN PARANORMAL AND SUPERNATURAL BESTSELLING SERIES! 

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This book contains 25 true reports of real-life encounters with the paranormal and the supernatural; accounts which are, indeed, stranger than fiction. Drawn from the files of FATE—the magazine Stephen King says gave him many of his “best ideas”, and the world’s leading publication of the strange and unknown—the testimonials in this series come from a wide variety of people, places and decades.

To read this book is to enter the world of ESP, prophetic dreams, magic, ghosts, poltergeists, miraculous healings, the occult, and the supernormal. You may begin reading this classic collection as a skeptic, but we are sure you will be more of a believer by the time you finish.

Here are just a few of the fascinating, thought-provoking reports and personal accounts you will find in this fantastic-but-true book, personally selected by the editors of FATE Magazine:

• Eye-witness to a Miracle Healing
• We Heard Voices from the Dead
• The Exorcist Fought Five Demons for One Woman’s Soul
• The Navy Blimp Returned to Earth—Minus its Crew
• The Witches’ Salve
• The Little Man Who Was Sometimes There
• ESP Demonstrated in Cross-Country Test
• Ghost Soldier in Their Attic
• Two Watches Stopped at the Moment of Death
• The Poltergeist That Could Write

The World’s Strangest True Encounters is an extraordinary collection of extraordinary tales by those who have encountered the inexplicable, and of first-hand investigations by FATE’s writers into reports of the extraordinary and unexplained.

Wikipedia calls FATE “the longest-running magazine devoted to the paranormal. …it has published expert opinions and personal experiences relating to UFOs, psychic abilities, ghosts and hauntings, cryptozoology, alternative medicine, divination methods, belief in the survival of personality after death, Fortean phenomena, predictive dreams, mental telepathy, archaeology, warnings of death, and other paranormal topics.” FATE is true journalistic pioneer. Launched in 1948, it covered controversial topics like electronic voice phenomena, cattle mutilations, life on Mars, telepathic communication with animals, and UFOs at a time when discussing such things was almost taboo. Recently, FATE celebrated the 67th anniversary of its founding and the publication of its 727thissue, a rare feat of longevity achieved by only a select few U.S. periodicals.

FATE hopes you enjoy the books in FATE's Library of the Paranormal and the Unknown.

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READ FREE ONE FAMILY'S PERSONAL STORY OF A GHOSTLY ENCOUNTER IN THEIR OWN WORRDS

From The World's Strangest True Encounters

Vol. 4 in FATE Magazine's Library of the Paranormal 
and the Unknown

Own for just $2.99 !

THE GHOST SOLDIER IN OUR ATTIC

By Etna Elliott

My husband and I, with our three children, left Portland, Ore., in the hot summer of 1928, to join my parents in the high mountains of California, five miles from Georgetown, where they had purchased a gold mine and were working it together with my uncle Charlie. There were no buildings at the mine and they rented an old farm which was badly in need of repairs. It had been unlived in for several years and my folks spent some time making it livable, so that it was real comfortable by the time we reached there with our family.

During the day, while the men were busy at the mine, Mother and I went to work in the attic, which we reached by a very narrow, steep stairway. We piled old trunks, boxes, a very tiny old-fashioned organ, an old music-box and other discarded articles of the departed family, all in one end of the attic.

As we were working, I suddenly felt as if someone had walked up behind me, but turning I saw nothing but the cobwebs which hung from the peak-roofed ceiling. I told Mother that I had the odd feeling of being watched, but she only looked at me queerly, then talked of other things.

Later on I ran downstairs to get something for Mother. As I came back up the steps someone brushed by me, almost knocking me back down the stairway. Still, I could not see a thing, although I had felt the contact distinctly.

We worked up in the attic for several days before we had it ready for use. During all that time, I felt an unseen presence near me. After what had happened on the stairway, I wouldn’t let my Mother out of my sight and followed at her heels the whole time. We had put two beds side by side in the narrow room, leaving only a two-foot space between them. Then we hung thin lace curtains in the doorway to hide all the things piled in the other end of the attic. And still, air from the two windows at each end could circulate through the area where we were to sleep.

My husband did not like the idea of going up into that hot attic to sleep, so he put his bed under an old apple‑tree near the front porch. Therefore, our small daughter and I slept in one bed and our two boys in the other. That first night I was terribly nervous, so Mother turned the kerosene lamp down low and said, “Just leave it burn if you will feel better.” But even with the light burning I still could feel that unseen presence and I don’t think I slept over five minutes that whole night. I was terribly tired the next day; still I could hardly bring myself to go to bed that next night.

Finally the children could not be kept up any longer and I slowly climbed those steep stairs, with cold chills running up into my hair. I got the children into bed and climbed in beside my little daughter. I forced myself to close my eyes and finally fell asleep, only to be awakened much later by an icy wind blowing over my body.

With my eyes wide open, in the dim light of the kerosene lamp, I saw him!

Standing just outside the lace curtains was a young soldier in uniform. He was tall and straight and looking intently at me as if he were about to speak. The curtains blew out toward me and he started moving in my direction. I screamed and then was unable to move until my parents came dashing up the stairs. I sobbed out what I had seen and I thought there was a look of horror on their faces. My mother slept up in the attic with us the rest of the night, but she wouldn’t talk much about it the next day.

The following night I forced my feet up the stairs. I did not want the children to know how frightened I was. Mother stayed up there with us until the children were asleep and I had become quite calm. I tried to make myself believe that I had imagined the whole thing, and when morning came and there had been no frightening experiences during the night I almost believed this.

A week passed. I was feeling quite safe as we went to bed, and almost at once I fell into a sound sleep, only to be awakened about two o’clock in the morning.

I felt as if someone had shaken me. I sat right up in bed, wide awake and trembling. My body was as cold as ice.

There, sitting on the edge of the other bed, right against my small son, was the same young soldier. He was looking into my face, smiling, and he had his elbow on his knee. He held a hat in his hand, which he was swinging back and forth. I recognized the hat as a soldier’s hat of World War I. It had a wide brim with a heavy, bright cord around the crown. It, or a hat like it, had been hanging in the hall when my parents moved into the house and I had been wearing it as a sun hat since coming to the mines.

Now this ghostly soldier had the same hat in his hand as he smiled at me, his face not over a foot from my own. He leaned toward me, closer and closer!

I have never remembered making a sound but I must have for my parents were soon there. This time I could see the soldier long after they were in the room.

I was weak and trembling for several days after that and my dad put up a cot at the other end of the attic, just outside the lace curtains, and slept there himself every night. So things settled down and I was beginning to think and hope I would not see the soldier again.

When I quietly slipped into bed beside my little daughter on this particular night I felt safe with my dad so near. Turning on my side with my face to the wall, I was soon fast asleep. But sometime in the early morning hours I was suddenly wide awake and again as cold as ice. A large, heavy hand was pressing down on my shoulder. I tried to rise but I was held tight by this pressure. Turning my face up, I found myself looking right into the eyes of the soldier. His face was only inches from mine and I still felt his hand as plainly as I have ever felt the hand of my husband. I felt as if I were dying.

I still think I would have died, and that the soldier would have taken me with him, except that at that very instant my small daughter sat up in bed screaming the most unearthly screams I have ever heard. Still it seemed her screams receded farther and farther from me.

To this day, that child, now a grown woman, thinks a soldier was taking me away.

Her screams, of course, brought Dad and Mother, and my mother had her arms around me before that soldier took his hand from my shoulder.

They finally got me downstairs and in my hysterical condition I managed to make them understand that I wanted the children brought down at once. My dad and husband hurried to do this, and my mother held my little daughter until she cried herself to sleep. We all sat in the kitchen the rest of that awful night.

My husband was very doubtful of what I had seen. He said that he wanted to sleep upstairs the next night and see for himself what was going on. I begged him not to, but he was determined. He went off to bed and the next morning said he had slept fine. This continued for almost a week. Then one night about midnight he came bounding down the stairs, blankets and all. We never could get him to say what he had seen or what had happened. He was very pale and said only that he would never sleep up there again, that this so-and-so house should be burned and the ashes buried.

Then in the bright light of day my parents told us what the old lady had said to them when they rented the house. She had looked at them for a long time and then said, “You are welcome to live in the place if you can stand it!”

Pointing to great piles of rocks all over the place, she continued, “See those rocks? Well, I have piled them just to have something to do, to keep me out of the house. For my husband still lives there, although he has been dead many years.” Then she added, “Yes, and the boys come back too, so I have left the house to them most of the time.”

She explained that her husband had died in a drunken stupor in that house; one of her sons had dropped dead on the back porch; her youngest son had died in the kitchen while having a fist fight with his brother; and her oldest son, a soldier in World War I, had come home after being wounded and died in his sleep in his bed in the attic.

“This house is bad!” she had gone on to say. “But if you can stand to live among them, you are welcome.” Now at last my parents believed her. The men went to work at once and built a large cabin at the mine. My husband and I stayed there only long enough to help my parents move out of that house with its ghostly inhabitants before returning gratefully to our home in Portland.

FATE's Library of the Paranormal and the Unknown is an Amazon Top Ten bestselling paranormal series

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Read Free Real-life Encounters with the Men in Black - From Book "The World's Strangest True Stories"

     The Best of FATE is a new series of books, under the editorship of Phylis Galde, selected from the 700+ issues of the most celebrated magazine dedicated to exploring the paranormal, the mysterious, and the unknown. As Stephen King says, "FATE is fascinating." Titles under The Best of FATE imprint include UFOs and Close Encounters, Psychic Detectives and Psychic Crimes, and Angels and Heavenly Visitations. BoF is also reissuing the magazine's classic, bestselling Library of the Paranormal and the Unexplained (2,000,000+ copies sold), beginning with The World's Strangest True Stories. Below is one of the many "fascinating" accounts found in that book.

Among the weirdest and most controversial phenomena associated with UFOs are the "Men in Black," sinister individuals who allegedly possess intimate knowledge of UFO activity and an unnerving interest in UFO researchers and UFO witnesses. Although it is tempting to dismiss such stories as paranoid fantasies, the fact is that Men in Black have been reported all over the world and that most persons who describe encounters with them seem wholly sane and sincere. Ufologist John A. Keel, who has investigated a number of these cases, tells us what he's learned and what he thinks about them.

The Sinister Men in Black

By John A. Keel

Mysterious cameramen seem to have appeared repeatedly throughout the United States during the summer of 1967 and, according to the testimony of widely scattered witnesses, photographed the homes and families of persons who have reported close experiences with unidentified flying objects. As described, all of these photographers bore a striking physical resemblance to each other. They wore the same kind of clothing and arrived in identical vehicles. Until now they have not been mentioned in any newspaper or magazine. Their identity and purposes remain unknown.

To add to the mystery, these peripatetic cameramen managed to single out people who had not reported their UFO experiences to any newspaper or official agency. In some cases they had not even told their neighbors of what they had seen. Despite their total anonymity they somehow were tracked down by the "mystery men" shortly after their sightings.

As a professional reporter and full-time UFO investigator I have traveled many thousands of miles in the past two years and have uncovered many unusual cases which otherwise might have gone unnoticed and unrecorded. During my trips I frequently am approached by people who are afraid of publicity and hesitate to report their outlandish stories to the local authorities or to the Air Force. The misfortunes of former police officer Dale Spaur, one of the men who chased a UFO through two states in April 1966, were well-publicized (he lost his job and suffered marital troubles after his story was revealed) and few persons are willing to risk similar ridicule and anguish. There is self-imposed censorship on the part of many UFO witnesses, which has been the biggest barrier to my investigations. I sometimes spend days, even weeks, winning the confidence of such witnesses before they break down and tell me their complete story. Often they swear me to secrecy and make me promise to keep their identity and — in some cases — their location confidential. But I do have this full information in my files, together with tape recordings, photographs and affidavits. When I uncover anything in the witness' story or background which might make his or her story even slightly suspect I file the whole case in my "Uncertain" file and omit it from my reports.

Basically, I am concerned with the "Big Picture" ... the overall situation. Each new report adds a small piece to the massive puzzle. The incredible scope and continuous activity of unidentified flying objects in many areas seems unbelievable to newcomers to the field and overwhelms even hard-core UFO buffs who have convinced themselves of the validity of the oversimplified extraterrestrial explanation.

The truth may be that "flying saucers" are merely a symptom of the problem, a diversion to distract us from the many strange things occurring at ground level and often encompassing entire communities. The activities of the "mystery photographers" may be only one aspect, which has gone completely unnoticed by UFO buffs dedicated to collecting worthless information about the altitude and speed of foreign objects observed overhead.

In previous newspaper and magazine articles I have examined at length the many stories about the "Men in Black," those mysterious and unlikely characters first introduced in Gray Barker's controversial book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. At first I was willing to dismiss the MIB as the paranoid fantasy of UFO cultists, but in the past year I have spoken with many persons who claimed firsthand experience with these unidentified people (and who, incidentally, never had heard of Barker or his book).

For example, at 9:30 P.M. on the evening of September 30, 1967, I received a long-distance call from an anxious woman, the wife of a prominent politician, in New York state. This woman had called a few days before, after hearing me on a local radio program, to report a series of strange incidents involving a low-flying metal disk around her home in an isolated, wooded area. She had told her husband about it but he had refused to believe her. (Later I became quite involved in this woman's case and am convinced of her truthfulness. Her husband finally did believe her ... but that's another story.) She said that a large black car was parked directly outside her home while she was talking to me. She described the following action as it took place.

Two men got out of the car and proceeded to unlimber some kind of large camera. Both men were the same height, five feet nine inches tall, and both wore identical black suits, black turtleneck sweaters and broad-brimmed black hats. At first she thought they were priests of some kind, but there was something about them which frightened her. Their skin was dark and their features had an Oriental cast which seemed evil to her. When they failed to approach the house but merely busied themselves with their camera, she decided to call me. (Her husband was not home at the time.) As she spoke with me and described the scene, the two men proceeded to take pictures of her house, using some kind of pale red flashgun. (Remember, it was 9:30 P.M. and dark ... an odd time to take pictures.) After a few minutes they closed up their camera, got into their car and drove off.

I had heard this scene described many times before. Three men dressed in this same manner had turned up in West Virginia in the summer of 1967 and had been seen by several reliable witnesses. Two such men had been observed taking photographs of the homes of UFO witnesses in broad daylight on Long Island in June. That same month I responded to a series of strange phone calls urging me to go alone to an isolated spot on a back dirt road nearby. There I found a large black Cadillac containing two dark-skinned men in dark suits apparently waiting for me. They blinked their headlights at me and then slowly drove off. I followed them for several miles, until they went around a bend in the road in a heavily forested area and disappeared. I cruised around for several minutes trying to pick up their trail when suddenly they reappeared behind me and followed me! I stopped and started to get out of my rented car but they drove slowly on past me and again vanished. Apparently the whole episode was staged to convince me that the Men in Black really do exist. Their car bore no license plates. I attempted to take pictures of it but it was night and the photos did not come out.

Numerous witnesses on Long Island reported seeing the MIB and their black cars throughout the summer of 1967. In many of these cases the windows of the cars were described as being totally opaque ... a dark charcoal color which made it impossible for the witnesses to see the occupants. On several occasions these cars allegedly attempted to run down witnesses walking across the street. A large black car containing two men dressed in black also came within inches of colliding with a car driven by Mrs. Mary Hyre, a reporter for the Athens, Ohio, Messenger, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia., in September. Mrs. Hyre has carefully and meticulously investigated and reported upon the many UFO sightings in her area during the past year.

Sixty miles north of Point Pleasant, in Parkersburg, WV, a young family man from Belpre, Ohio, had a brief encounter with two black-garbed, Oriental-looking men on a main street in August. He said that they appeared confused or drunk (a common description) and seemed to have difficulty walking. When I interviewed him and his family in November, I learned that a mysterious car had pulled up in front of their home about two weeks before my visit and that a man in a black suit had apparently taken photos of their house with a large camera. Two of their neighbors also had witnessed this and corroborated their story. The unidentified photographer did not pay any attention to any of the other houses on the street.

In April, another Ohio man reported being pursued by a strange flying object while driving along Route 2 on the West Virginia side of the river. Months later, toward the end of October, he returned home from work to find a prowler in his apartment. The prowler was about five feet nine inches tall, dressed in black and carrying some kind of camera. He set off a flashgun which temporarily blinded the witness and escaped out the open door.

Individually, these stories are worthless. But I now have collected many of them from many different sections of the country, all containing the same remarkable details and all coming from ordinary, honest people who never connected these peculiar incidents with their UFO experiences. I also have made spot checks to determine if these photographers have approached non-UFO witnesses in the same areas. The results were negative.

Are these mysterious Men in Black part of a large, widespread organization engaged in obtaining information and photographs of people who have had close encounters with the UFOs?

In the majority of the cases I have investigated such people's claim they actually were pursued by the objects or were in the immediate vicinity of a brief landing or hovering operation. Since most of these people have remained voluntarily silent, as stated earlier, it is unlikely that any government agency could have known about their experiences. Indeed, my frequent visits to Washington, DC, and my close liaison with numerous agencies in government have convinced me that these "mystery men" can be in no way related to the Air Force or the United States government.

The Air Force has, in fact, issued an order to all commands urging Intelligence officers to be on the watch for these strangers. The MIB are openly violating several federal laws. Usually their cars do not bear any kind of license plates. In two cases in my files, the witnesses did see license plates and copied down the numbers. A police check revealed that the numbers were not in use ... such plates never had been issued! In another case, the witness reported seeing a black plate bearing a large gold "V" on the back of the car. A double "XX" also has been reported.

Why haven't the police ever spotted these cars?

I've checked with the police departments in West Virginia, Ohio, and Long Island where these vehicles have been seen and reported and found that no police officer has ever seen one of them.

The UFO mystery is filled with contradictions, coincidences and seemingly deliberate diversions. While it may appear the MIB are keeping careful tabs on people who have seen something special or who have been singled out by the objects (or by their occupants) for special attention, we should not overlook the possibility that these mystery men may serve no purpose other than to create side issues, to produce fear and confusion among witnesses and investigators.

We also should consider the close resemblance of the descriptions given of these men to the descriptions given of ufonauts by those who claim to have seen some. Witnesses such as John Reeves of Brooksville, Florida. Woodrow Derenberger of Mineral Wells, WV, and many others who have reported seeing the pilots of the "flying saucers" have described them as dark-skinned with Oriental features. In other words, do the people (?) said to be riding around in UFOs share the physical characteristics of the men riding around in black Cadillacs?

Perhaps it is time for us to reconsider the popular speculations about "flying saucers" and reexamine the somewhat baseless conclusion that they are of extraterrestrial origin. A much bigger game may be afoot here. Perhaps we have been deliberately misled into assuming they are not of this planet. There never has been any evidence, either physical or observational, to indicate that they come from elsewhere.

Actually all of the available evidence suggests that the objects are made of earthly materials and piloted by humanoid types not too dissimilar from ourselves. We may, in fact, be dealing with a subversive group who, like the Gypsies, are able to live among us unnoticed and isolated from our general society. The UFOs may be used only to transfer these unknown people from one surface point to another. The machines themselves, if they are machines, could have been manufactured centuries ago and might emanate from hidden bases located in isolated regions scattered around this planet. Certainly the massive number of historical sightings, going back thousands of years, indicates the UFOs always have been a natural part of our environment.

If the Men in Black do not represent our government — and I believe that they do not — then they must come from some other secretive group or organization directly related to the UFOs. And they are successfully infiltrating our cities and villages on a large scale. When an innocent citizen accidentally learns of their presence their representatives zero in on him or her, perhaps to prepare the way to silence the witness at some point in the future. They photograph the person's home and family. In many cases, they also tap the witness's telephone and, inexplicably, even tamper with his mail.

If these many witnesses were to relate their experiences to psychiatrists they probably would put them down as schizoid paranoiacs. It is only in the matching of the corresponding details from many such stories that we are forced to realize that we well may be dealing with something beyond an ordinary mental aberration. The late Captain Edward Ruppelt, one-time head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, admitted that all such stories were automatically shoved into a massive "C.P." ("crackpot") file. Apparently it never occurred to the Air Force to study its "C.P." file for corroborating details.

Recently the heavy-handed F.B.I. moved in on three cases I had been investigating. I know they rejected one of these outright, classifying the witness — a distinguished man in his community — as a "nut."

The sober truth is that the United States government does not have any kind of law enforcement agency equipped with sufficient funds and trained personnel to investigate these matters properly. Air Force Intelligence operates on a very limited scale within the United States and it just hasn't got enough men — or enough authority — to investigate these cases. The C.I.A. has no authority at all within the continental United States ... it is devoted primarily to the collection of information. Further handicapping possible governmental investigation is the sad fact that very few of these witnesses are willing to report their experiences directly to an official agency. In most cases they do not even talk to their local police about it.

Early in the "saucer era" (following 1947), such witnesses were exposed to so much ridicule (with their sincere letters ending up in the Air Force's "crackpot" file) that succeeding witnesses became cautious and secretive.

Adding to the dilemma, the early UFO buffs who claimed to experience telephone interference and mail tampering hurled unfounded accusations at "the government" and an anti-government attitude blossomed in UFO research circles. Gradually this attitude rubbed off on the public at large and was further increased by the Air Force's stubborn and absurd "explanations" of many outstanding UFO sightings. Today the government has been completely cut off from its chief source of UFO information — the American public.

I am sure that for every case I have uncovered there must be hundreds more that have gone unreported to anybody. The Men in Black ... whoever they are, wherever they're from ... have been able to operate with impunity, without interference, secure in the knowledge that their victims never would talk for fear of being labeled "insane," or even if they did talk, that no one would believe them.

All of the witnesses I have interviewed have told me they felt there was something inherently "evil" about these Men in Black — something alien and dangerous. In a number of cases, people apparently have been drugged or hypnotized by the MIB and several have suffered amnesia and memory lapses after alleged face-to-face confrontations.

Perhaps all of this sounds like a bad plot from The Invaders TV series, but it seems to be very real. Experience and many in-depth interviews with bewildered people all over this country have convinced me that this is part of the elusive "secret" behind the "flying saucers." And perhaps only a small part at that. It has been kept from you not by the Air Force or government, but by the entities behind the UFO phenomenon itself

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Read Free "How a Voice from Grave Named Killer" from The Best of FATE Magazine - Psychic Detectives

Did a Voice from the Grave Name Killer? 

By Lesley Sussman

from The Best of FATE Magazine

 PSYCHIC DETECTIVES & PSYCHIC CRIMES

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For Chicago police detectives Joseph Stachula and Lee Epplen the case began routinely enough. Its ending is something both policemen will probably never forget.
 
On the night of February 21, 1977, police found the body of a forty-eight-year-old woman in her fifteenth-floor high-rise apartment on Pine Grove Avenue in the city. The woman had been stabbed several times, and her burned body, wrapped in bed sheets, was lying on the floor.

The victim was identified as Teresita Basa, a former Manila socialite who came to the United States from the Philippine Islands in the 1960s. She received a master's degree in music from Indiana University and eventually worked as a respiratory therapist in Edgewater Hospital on Chicago's far north side.

This was all police investigators Joseph Stachula and Lee Epplen had to go on when they were handed the assignment of finding Teresita Basa's murderer.
In the days that followed the police turned up little. They did learn that Miss Basa had been a warm, outgoing person and that she had many friends. No one knew who might have wanted to kill her. Stachula suspected that the victim had been murdered as the result of a lover's quarrel but dismissed that theory after questioning her boyfriend.

After two months of police work, all investigators had on the case was a complete profile of the dead woman and a handwritten note found in her apartment which read: "Get tickets for A. S."

In the press of other police matters, Stachula and his partner had almost forgotten the case when they received a call from the police department in Evanston, Illinois, the suburb just north of Chicago's city limits.

Evanston police asked Stachula whether he had ever heard of an orderly who worked at Edgewater Hospital by the name of Allan Showery. Stachula said no. Then, with noticeable constraint, the Evanston police suggested that he contact a doctor and his wife who lived in their suburb.

Several days later Stachula and Epplen knocked on the apartment door of Dr. Jose Chua and his wife Remibias, both natives of the Philippines like the victim Teresita Basa.

Stachula recalls that the couple was very uneasy. "I told them we had information that they might know something about the case," Stachula says. "They seemed nervous and made some small talk. Finally, Dr. Chua asked me if I believed in the occult or in exorcism."

The policemen were noncommittal and asked Chua to tell them what he knew. The doctor then began a tale so incredible that to this day both Stachula and Epplen find it difficult to believe.

Chua said strange things first began to happen to his wife five months after Miss Basa was murdered. He said one evening Remibias abruptly got up from a living room chair and, with a strange expression on her face, walked into the bedroom. The doctor, sensing something was wrong, followed his wife into the other room and found her lying on the bed in what he described as a trancelike state. When he asked what the matter was, the doctor said his wife spoke to him in a voice that was not her own.

"She spoke in Tagalog [the national language of the Philippines] but with a strange Spanish accent," Chua said. "She said, 'Ako'y II am Teresita Basa.'"

The doctor told the policemen he remembered feeling frightened. He said he had experienced many strange things during his career as a surgical assistant, but he had never heard anyone speak in a voice that was not his own.

Chua said the voice, which claimed to belong to Miss Basa, told him she was murdered by Allan Showery, a man she had worked with at the hospital. The voice also said Showery was in her apartment because he wanted to steal her jewelry.

For almost half an hour Mrs. Chua continued to speak in the voice of the slain woman, the doctor told the investigators. When the trance ended as suddenly as it began, he said Mrs. Chua remembered nothing about the experience but only felt very thirsty.

The policemen, skeptical of this story, asked Chua if he or his wife had known the dead woman. The doctor answered no – a statement which later proved to be false. He said his wife also had worked in the hospital's respiratory unit but on a different shift.

Still suspicious, thinking the couple might be pulling some sort of hoax, the policemen played their ace. Both Stachula and Epplen knew from the pathological report on Miss Basa that the victim was still a virgin – a fact that had been kept secret in the case.

Stachula asked Chua if the voice told him she had been raped.

"No," replied Chua. "All she said was that she had been murdered."

The police investigators then questioned Mrs. Chua who admitted she had known the slain woman slightly. She also admitted knowing Showery because he too worked as an orderly in the respiratory unit. She had nothing more to add concerning the voice that had possessed her.

The doctor told the police he and his wife had discussed what had happened but had decided not to report it because they feared ridicule. However, the voice from the grave would not leave his wife alone, he said.

A few days later the "spirit" of the dead woman once again took possession of his wife, the doctor said. This time, Chua added, the voice was more persistent in pleading that he tell the police.

Chua said he told the voice that the police would need evidence if they were to make an arrest. It was then, he said, that the voice told him that jewelry taken from Miss Basa's apartment by Showery could still be found in his possession. The voice also identified a pearl cocktail ring which it said Showery had given as a present to his common-law wife.

Despite such evidence, Chua said he and his wife still were reluctant to approach police. The doctor said he briefly mentioned what had happened to his hospital superiors but they too were indecisive about informing authorities.

Chua said it took a third visit from what the couple now believed was the spirit of Miss Basa to convince them they must seek police help. They contacted Evanston police.

Now they were telling their incredible story for the second time.

Stachula still recalls his amazement when Chua finished his tale. He made note of his feelings in a written report to his commanding officer after the detectives arrested Showery and charged him with murder.

"To this day I'm not quite sure whether I believe how the information was obtained," he wrote. "Nonetheless, everything here is completely true."

However baffled the policeman might have felt, at least the case was over. And whatever force prompted Mrs. Chua to speak in a dead woman's voice, the "tip" from the grave had proven to be accurate.

Not only had Stachula and Epplen located some of Miss Basa's stolen jewelry in the orderly's apartment but, just as the voice had indicated, the detectives found Showery's common-law wife wearing a pearl cocktail ring.

Under questioning by the investigators the orderly signed a statement that robbery was his motive for entering the slain woman's apartment that evening. The detectives arrested Showery and charged him with murder.

In August 1977, six months after the murder, Stachula and Epplen marked the strange case closed. The less said about it the better they thought and turned their attention to other police matters.

But the bizarre incidents surrounding the case were not destined to remain buried in a "closed" police report. Chicago's Filipino community is close-knit, and rumors about spirits of the dead having solved Miss Basa's murder continued to circulate.

Shortly after Showery's arrest, a veteran crime reporter formerly with the Manila Chronicle got wind of the story. Gus Bernardo, now working in Chicago as managing editor for the bi-monthly Philippines Herald, persuaded his publisher Eduardo Fernandez to let him track down the story.

Bernardo says he ran into a wall of silence. Chicago police wanted the case to remain buried. His publisher also failed to convince police they should let him see the case report.

"The police didn't want to reveal all the things that Mrs. Chua said about the case," Fernandez says. "They refused to cooperate."

But the Herald's managing editor had an advantage in his many personal contacts in the city's Filipino community. Within days of the orderly's arrest, Bernardo had pieced together the bizarre story.

Especially fortunate for the newspaperman was his discovery that he knew the Chuas who were named in the case. He contacted the couple, and they repeated their story for him.

Bernardo did some more investigating. He interviewed Mrs. Chua's Filipino co-workers and talked to other people who knew the doctor and his wife. By the time he finally wrote the story, Bernardo was – and still is – convinced that he had come across a true case of spirit possession.

"I've covered murders for years," Bernardo says. "I know what's a crime and what's not. I know when people are lying to me. I found everything the Chuas said to be true."

Bernardo also says one of the most startling pieces of evidence did not appear in his article because he learned of it after the story was published.

"I was contacted by some people in the hospital who worked with Mrs. Chua," he says. "These sources told me that there were a couple of times when Mrs. Chua broke out singing in the dead woman's voice. They said they were frightened and reported it to their supervisor."

Bernardo's article appeared on the front page of the Philippines Herald on August 16, 1977 – seven months before an almost identical story appeared on the front page of the city's largest newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. But the only attention the Herald's article received was from a police official who called Bernardo to congratulate him on a good job.

Again, this unusual story of a dead woman's vengeance fell into obscurity.

But all that changed on March 5, 1978, when the Tribune ran a front page account of the Basa murder. The paper's headline posed the question: "DID VOICE FROM THE GRAVE NAME KILLER?"

The Tribune learned of the bizarre case when an attorney for the thirty-one-year-old orderly, Allan Showery, requested all police records on file. Showery was nearing trial. Once again the Chuas testimony was being discussed – this time in public.

But along with the article came the first public expressions of doubt.

Shortly after the newspaper story appeared, an Edgewater Hospital official told the reporter on a local newspaper that not only did Mrs. Chua know the slain woman well but she had worked side by side with her for two years. Police -later stated they were aware of this discrepancy in Dr. Chua's statement. The hospital spokesman said Mrs. Chua also had worked with Showery.

"There's no way they couldn't know each other," stated Brad Cummings, the hospital spokesman. "They do team therapy in that unit. They worked side by side. They were all very close."

Cummings added that, although Mrs. Chua worked alongside Showery for two years, she made it known to several of her associates that she did not like him.

"She was very open about that fact," says Cummings. "She made it clear she didn't like him."

The hospital spokesman said he had his own theory about the case. He believed that Mrs. Chua acted out the voice from the grave as a way to tell police what she already suspected – that Showery had been responsible for Miss Basa's murder.

"I think she might have known something about Showery but also knew she would be taking chances with her own life and her husband's life if she went directly to the police," Cummings says.

He adds that after police arrested the orderly they recovered some of Miss Basa's missing jewelry from women at the hospital to whom Showery gave the items as gifts.

"It could be that Mrs. Chua recognized some of that jewelry," Cummings suggests.

Whatever Mrs. Chua may have thought or suspected, she continued to work in close contact with Showery for several months after Miss Basa's death. But then, on July 16, 1977, something unusual happened.

Mrs. Chua, who is described by the director of her unit as a model employee, walked into the hospital that afternoon and "totally blew up" at her immediate supervisor, Ted Ellis.

Ellis, who coincidentally lived in the same building as Showery, said he remembers that day because of Mrs. Chua's sudden flare-up.

"It was a Saturday and she came in with her husband," he recalls. "I didn't know what she was doing on the premises because she doesn't work on Saturdays."

The supervisor says Mrs. Chua started complaining about her job and then "exploded at me out of the clear blue sky." He says the conversation had nothing to do with Miss Basa's murder.

Witnesses recall that during the argument Dr. Chua walked over to Showery and, in an angry voice, said to him, "I know you. I know a lot about you."

Mrs. Chua was fired that afternoon for "gross insubordination" and told to report back to the hospital for official notification. When she returned the following week Mrs. Connie Kuhn, director of the respiratory unit, told the woman her dismissal was permanent.

Mrs. Kuhn remembers Mrs. Chua telling her, "I'm relieved because I'm scared of the people I work with. I'm especially fearful of Allan Showery."

It was around the time of her dismissal that Mrs. Chua began to speak in Miss Basa's voice – a phenomenon that Bernardo, his publisher and others say was not a ruse to ease a guilty conscience.

"These are intelligent and respected people in the community," states the Herald's managing editor. "If she suspected something they didn't have to wait so long to tell police.

"All they had to do was give the police the information without anyone knowing who gave it to them. Instead, they identified themselves."

Bernardo's publisher admits that it's a "strange" case but also describes the Chuas as being very respectable. "It may all sound like superstition," he says, "but as a child I often heard stories of spirits from the grave."

Other persons also support the supernatural aspects of the Chua's testimony. "In the Philippines there are many people who believe this is common," claims Mrs. Nancy Pabico, now a Chicago resident. 'Where I come from we believe in the spirit of the dead coming back through another person after three days."

One person who is willing to accept the Chuas' testimony is Thomas J. Organ, a top state prosecutor who is known for his no-nonsense approach to the law. Organ has been especially appointed to handle this unusual case. The prosecutor may have a vested interest in believing the Chuas but says his skepticism waned after interviewing Dr. Chua, whom he now describes as a "learned professional and a reputable person." He also frankly admits that in five years as a prosecutor, "I've never run into anything like this."

Police officials, meanwhile, are finding themselves a bit uncomfortable with the publicity surrounding this controversial case. After all, it isn't every day that one of the nation's largest police forces solves a case with supernatural assistance.

Even Stachula and Epplen are "not available" for phone calls that have anything to do with the Basa murder.

Privately, however, police officials admit the voice from the grave may have been concocted by the Chuas but state what is really important is that enough evidence was presented to them so that an arrest could be made.

Police do not believe the couple was involved in the murder.

Commander Joseph DeLeonardi, one of the city's top homicide detectives, best sums up the police department's attitude regarding the entire bizarre episode: "She gave us the evidence we needed. It doesn't matter if she had a psychic dream or not."

For the Chuas, however, life may never be the same. Hounded by reporters from around the world eager for more details about the sensational case, they have had to change apartments, phone numbers and jobs.

Currently the Chuas are living incognito somewhere in Chicago. Even their lawyer will make no statements about what has happened to his clients. But in an earlier interview Mrs. Chua expressed her feelings about what transpired.

"It's been traumatic for me and my husband," she said.

On January 21, 1979, Allan Showery went on trial for the murder of Teresita Basa. After three days of testimony the jury considered the charges, deliberating for thirteen hours before announcing it was hopelessly deadlocked. Judge Frank W. Barbaro declared a mistrial.

A month later Showery appeared before Judge Barbaro and, acting against the advice of his attorneys who wanted him to stand a second trial, admitted his guilt. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for murder and to four years each for two counts of armed robbery and arson.

***
FATE is the longest-running and most widely-respected magazine devoted to the paranormal. During its 66 years as the leading publication in its field, FATE has published expert opinions and personal experiences relating to UFOs, psychic abilities, ghosts and hauntings, cryptozoology, alternative medicine, divination methods, belief in the survival of personality after death, predictive dreams, telepathic communication, and other paranormal topics. Many of these challenge our very concept of reality, suggesting at the very least that this world is a far stranger place than most of us suspect. For this volume of our Best of FATE series, the editors of the magazine open their files to examine true accounts of crimes—often acts of murderous violence—both perpetrated and solved by paranormal means. Here, gathered from the over seven hundred issues of FATE, are some of the most impressive instances of psychic crime-solving and psychic crimes, offering hours of fascinating reading for anyone interested in the strange, the paranormal or the occult.

 

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