Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Shroeder

Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Shroeder
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Like most others, I make frequent use of English Wikipedia for
quick reliable information. I am grateful for that and have chipped
in my $10 to prevent the organisation from downsizing. Like
many other websurfers, however, I also feel very disappointed
(or unhappy) with some of my wikisearches.
The flaws or inadequacies of Wikipedias small but significant
collection of unreliable articles can usually be traced back to one
or both of the following causes: the counterproductive
inflexibility of Wikipedias definition of and (luddite) blanket ban
on research, and in the case of controversial topics, the
ingenious and exhausting use of Wikipedias arcane laws by
interested parties to suppress or remove unpalatable facts from
the controversial page. (A rarer third cause is the ignorance of
contributors, while an undeclared contributing factor is
Wikipedias casual attitude to printed sources, especially books
and bibliographies.)
The current English Wikipedia page for Wolf Messing is a
depressing example of the first and third causes listed above, as
I shall endeavour to prove.
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*
In the West, since at least 1970, we have been informed about
Messings life and exploits by BOOKS like Sheila Ostrander and
Lynn Shroeders sensational 1970 bestseller dealing with
hitherto secret Soviet research, Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron Curtain and in 1989 an English translation of Tatiana
Lungins 1982 biography, as well as in articles and
Encyclopedias like the Harper Encyclopedia of Mystical and
Paranormal Experience (1991). (See Reference List.) From 1980
on, the controversial omniscient guru, Sathya Sai Baba brought
Wolf Messing (d.1974) to the attention of his many devotees and
to wider New Age circles by making three public reminiscences
about their three alleged meetings. For non-devotees, the
strange reminiscences have zero credibility.
Such works have told us over and over again, often citing the
same sensational sources, that Wolf Messing (1899-1974) was a
phenomenally successful Polish-born Russian stage performer
of mentalism and hypnotism, accredited with quite
extraordinary feats, involving Freud, Einstein, Gandhi, and Hitler,
as well as Stalin and Beria, and other less well known people).
Note:
Wolf Messings very impressive and lucrative stage
performances over several decades are similar to the sort of
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theatrical activities that Derren Brown is currently demonstrating

and explaining to massive TV audiences and full theatres.
Derren professes no supernatural powers, just special skills. In
fairness to Messing, it has to be said that he is also on record as
saying in 1961 in an interview with P. Oreshkin that he was not a
mind-reader but a muscle reader (a play on words in the
original Russian: mysl vs. muskl). However, it must also be borne
in mind that charismatic Messings special success onstage was
founded on a series of well-publicised sensational claims, which
suggest to his fans that he must have supernatural gifts. From
that factor above all, Messing derives his current superstar fame
as one of the most important psychics of all time.
*
Thirty two years after the publication of Ostrander and
Shroeders bestseller, on 9 March 2002, the recently minted
English Wikipedia article on Messing stood as follows:
Wolf Messing (b. 1899) is one of the most talented mind readers
of the world. Born to a Jewish family, Messing fled from Germany
to Russia before World War II. He was sentenced to death by
Hitler after declaring his prophecy about Germanys defeat
during attempted invasion of Russia. After world war, he worked
for long years as a stage artist and he is suggested to be one of
Stalins advisors.
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Wolf messing also led to the three little pigs having to be

temporarily re-housed due to the sudden and sequential loss of
their self-built, ecologically-sound, detached houses.
A mere stub of a stub, plus that irrelevant and cheeky
addendum, which was promptly, and correctly, removed. Ten
years later, on 24 December 2012, the English Wikipedia
Messing article has failed to keep up with available information
on the subject in print and on the Internet. It is still not much
more than a stub (albeit a page long). The current stub includes
two weak sources for its brief claims of some of Messings
expertise, and a bare reference to a (vital) scholarly article in
Dutch, which no Wikipedia contributor appears to have
investigated in the past 8 years.
In 2004, that same Dutch scholar, Alexandra Nagel, completed
an M.A. thesis about Wolf Messing and in 2005. This was
published in a Dutch Journal. Here is the reference, as printed,
at the end of the English Wikipedia article, and elsewhere.
Alexandra Nagel: Een mysterieuze ontmoeting: Sai Baba en
mentalist Wolf Messing / A mysterious meeting: Sai Baba and
mentalist Wolf Messing. In: Tijdschrift voor
Parapsychologie/Journal for Parapsychology 368, Bd. 72 Nr. 4,
Dez. 2005, S. 14-17.
However, Nagel also prepared a 25-page English version of her
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thesis and published it on www.exbaba.com on 10 November

2004. It should still be there. It has also been on the Internet,
more or less ignored, for the past 7 years at this rather secluded
URL.
Those interested in investigating Messing (including wikipedians
and Wikipedia readers) who have not had access to a translation
of Nagels Dutch thesis or to this English version will have
missed a fascinating mine of information and questions for
further investigation presented in this ground-breaking academic
study of Messings life and work.
Basic contents of Nagels thesis:
A detailed description of the life and work of Wolf Messing,
gleaned from very wide reading, beginning with the 1970 chapter
by Ostrander and Shroeder, and the biography by Messings
friend and confidante Tatiana Lungin, and digging even deeper
to examine the important German study by Topsy Kppers and
references to Soviet studies by Varlen Strongin, Ludmila SvinkaZielinski and a few others. (Nagel acknowledges the help of
Russian researcher Serguei Badaev with some of these texts.)
A critical examination of this valuable material leads Nagel to the
conclusion that it reveals myth-making on a large scale (i.e. the
constant repetition of Messings own stories as told by Ostrander
et al). Nagel emphasises the almost total lack of corroborating
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evidence of Messings most famous (alleged) exploits, and she

adds a list of other unresolved loose ends (mainly due to the lack
of translations of Russian material).
Nagels hypothetical conclusion is that not all the famous
Messing episodes are true:
Aspects of Messings life are in need of further research
One may tentatively deduce that Messings narrative must for a
large part be an invented life history. Probably unaware and
unintended, Ostrander & Schroeder have played a role in
spreading probably false stories. They should have cross
referenced their material more thoroughly. For instance, they
could have looked into the 200,000 mark put on Messings head
in 1937 by Hitler, or the protest the German Embassy in the
Soviet Union lodged when Messing in 1940 predicted the end of
the German hegemony, or the psychic bank robbery Stalin
assigned him to perform. Lungin and Kppers (I cannot judge for
Strongin) should have done so as well. The fact of the matter is,
they did not, so one wonders whether this was due to laziness,
accident or was purposive falsification.
This thesis is worthy of further public attention as the following
new information, mainly from Russia, will underline.
*
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Since 2005, the Messing success story (myth?) has featured in

many articles and a few books and, since a sumptuous 16-part
Russian TV series on his life in 2009, he is now worshipped
even more widely, as a cult figure, thanks to a large number of
You Tube videos (mostly without subtitles), many of 45 minute
duration. His fame has reached a peak. He has his own fan club
in Russia. And perhaps on Facebook?
Meanwhile, important new counter-evidence has been presented
by a new and highly reputable source which supports in great
detail Alexandra Nagels hypotheses about a) myth-making (i.e.
that Messing invented many of the major incidents, precisely
those that set him apart from other stage performers) and b) the
authorship of his 1965 autobiography.
The major new source of information is Nikolai Nikolaevich
Kitaev (N. N. Kitaev .. ), a distinguished Russian
jurist and legal researcher, with a specialty in hypnosis. (One of
his written works is titled Hypnosis and Crime.) Kitaev has been
researching Messings life and work for 30 years (along with his
many other projects) and, because of his professional rank and
prestige, and especially because of the liberating effects of the
break-up of the USSR, he has had free access to an impressive
number of National and regional archives in Russia, Belarus and
Poland and some access to German archives. From this huge
trawl, Kitaev has produced an important booklet of about 100
pages, first published in 2006:
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. .

Forensic psychic: Wolf Messing. Truth and Fantasy.
(Links to a download of the 2010 version of the Russian book of
the same name is included in the Reference list at the end of this
article.)
Kitaev sets out evidence to refute the most spectacular episodes
in Messings career, those which have given him his wide fame,
far beyond that accorded to other stage hypnotists and
mentalists. Forensically, he offers biographical evidence to
suggest why the meeting with Freud and Einstein could not have
taken place. The Gandhi meeting claim, always the weakest link
in the chain, is easily dismissed and Kitaev also demonstrates at
length that there is no archival evidence for Messings major
claims of a relationship with Stalin.
Kitaev concentrates on the available biographical evidence
about Messing and demonstrates (as Alexandra Nagel had
suggested) that the only evidence we have of Messings major
claims is in Messings own writings (and those of his close
associate, Lungin). Other commentators (as we have seen
above with Ostrander and Shroeder) have been content merely
to repeat or paraphrase these same words over and over again.
There are no eye-witnesses, no corroborating details supplied by
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other persons.
Another of Kitaevs documented claims is that the somewhat
shadowy 1965 memoirs in Nauka i Religiya (Science and
Religion), published in a journal (with two different titles: About
Myself and I am a Telepath) were not even written by Messing
but by a very prominent Russian journalist and nonfiction writer,
Mikhail Vasilievich Khvastunov (pseudonym, M. Vasiliev). Kitaev
further suggests that it was Khvastunov who beefed up the
Messing story for maximum effect, and sales. A ghost writer, in
fact. (Others, including Nagel, have suggested, that the
Polish-born Messing would have needed help to express himself
vividly in Russian.) And indeed, in the Russian Wikipedia page
for Khvastunov, long since dead, the following appear in a list of
his written works, both presumably posthumous re-editions of the
1965 work or works.
,
., -, 1990.
Wolf Messing, I am a telepath, literary version, M. Vasiliev.
[M.Vasiliev, was Khvastunovs pseudonym.]
. . .
.. ,
, 1991.
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Phenomen D and Other Matters. Wolf Messing. About Myself,

literary version M. Vasiliev.
A substantial half-page reference to N. N. Kitaevs lengthy
investigation is included in the 6-page Russian Wikipedia entry
on Volf Messing. The paragraphs, which refer to Messings
writings and Khvastunovs alleged part in them and to Kitaevs
broader work on Messing, are titled Source of legends and
Participation in exposing crime. Several very useful
bibliographical references are also given.
Well done, Russian Wikipedia!
*
Observation:
Comment on a forum, by paddylandau:
Derren Brown successfully repeated Wolf Messings trick with
paper for money. Of course, as Brown himself makes clear, what
he did was all smoke and mirrors (well, misdirection and
trickery), and nothing whatsoever to do with psi powers,
hypnosis or NLP.
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/hypnosis-hypnotherapyUK/message/12701
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References
Russian Wikipedia: Volf Messing. (This includes a link to
Kitaevs book and many other interesting articles.)
*
Harpers Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience,
ed. Rosemary Ellen Guiley, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p 367-8.
Kitaev, N. N.
(There is an English reference to the Kitaev revelations (July
2009) here.
..
.
Forensic psychic: Wolf Messing. Truth and Fantasy
A copy of the 2010 edition of his book in Russian is available
here:
The 2006 version from can be seen here.
A detailed list of Kitaevs law writings, including Gipnoz i
prestuplenie (Hypnosis and Crime), is available here.
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Lungin Tatiana, Volf Messing. Chelovek. Zagadka, (W.M., The

Man. The Enigma), 1982. (It is available online here.
Lungin, Tatiana, Wolf Messing: The True Story of Russias
Greatest Psychic (edited by D. Scott Rogo and translated from
the Russian by Cynthia Rosenberger and John Glad), New York:
Paragon House, 1989. (Contains material from the 1965
publication and more information from W. M.)
Ostrander, Sheila and Schroeder, Lynn, PSI. Psychic
Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, London, Abacus, 1973
(1970). (See especially Wolf Messing, the Psychic that Joseph
Stalin Tested, pp. 58-73.) (This was soon followed by an equally
successful book by the same authors, which contains the same
chapter and title (pp. 38-52):
Ostrander, Sheila and Schroeder, Lynn, Psychic Discoveries.
The Iron Curtain Lifted, London: Souvenir Press, 1997 (1970)
[Introduced by Uri Geller]
*
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Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Shroeder

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