This is the second part of a newspaper article from On May 8, 1921, that appeared in the Kansas City Star about 16-year-old Gene Dennis. The folks of Atchison, Kansas believe she should read minds and see into the future. I have my doubts. There is part here where they claim that Eugene made a table walk by itself. I am trying to figure that out.

A MIND READER AS A BABY

Eugene has had her mind-reading powers since she was 2 years old, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. F. F. Dennis, say. Mr. Dennis, a pattern maker for the Locomotive Finish Material Company, has not talents in such a direction. Mrs. Dennis gets poems from the air occasionally but has no insight into the past or the future. Eugene—She was given boys name because Mrs. Dennis always had a fondness for it—has startled people all her life with her ability to read their minds and prophesy their future. Eugena—she was given the boy’s name because Mrs. Dennis always had a fondness for it—has startled people all her life with her ability to read their minds and prophesy their future.

No plains have been taken to cultivate the faculty in the girl. She has gone through ward and high school just as the average girl does taking the usual course, making good grades, having the thousands and one interests that belong to the growing girls of the day.

A junior in the Atchison high school now, she is taking English, French, penmanship, higher mathematics and agriculture. She likes mathematics and penmanship, and English  and agriculture aren’t bad. But French isn’t so good.

“Maybe it will come easier later,” She laughs. “Dennis and French don’t mix, anyway.”

“Everything in school ought to be easy for you,” a visitor pointed out. “Can’t you read the answers to the questions you’re asked?”

“That’s like asking me if I can’t read a hand of cards when another person hold it,: she answers, “I can—bur I don’t want to, and refuse to. Spiritualists say that if they use their powers to dishonest purposes it will leave them. I fell the same way about mind.”

SHE “SCARES” THE BOYS

Outside of school hours she is just girl—all girl. Blooming into young womanhood now, and as pretty as a picture, she is interested in everything girls like except boys.  There might be one—but there we go, violating Eugene’s confidence.

They’re scared of her, that’s the trouble.” A girl friend explained, “I had a little party the other night and the bunch wanted Eugene to ‘perform.’ I was afraid of what was going to happen, but Eugene laughed and said she’d amuse them—so what could I do?

“Well, five or six of us sat around a table with our fingers on it and Eugene was in the center. Next to her was an awfully nice boy, new in town, whom I has picked out to take her home.

“The table started walking. It always walks when Eugene’s around. It went around the room and started out the door, and came back and circled some more, and some more, and finally rested in an entirely different place from where  it started. The rest of us had seen  it happen before and weren’t surprised. Eugene’s boy almost had a fit, though.

“ ‘Is that the girl you picked out for me?’ he asked as soon as we were alone.

“ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t she pretty?’

“ ‘Yes, she’s pretty.’ He answered, sort of absent mindedly. ‘But I’ll take them more normal.’ Do you know, that boy was afraid to take Eugene home?”

SENSES THE UNKIND THOUGHTS.

Eugene admits the story for the truth and laughs about it. She tells also how she lost another prospective suitor—All because the persons she sees most in her daily life instinctively takes the characteristic in her mind of different kinds of animals.

“I was telling a boy about it one night,” she said,  “When a boy passed whom everyone likes, one of those goodhearted, do-anything-for-everyone, regular pal kinds.

“ ‘There’s and instance,’  I told the person I was with. ‘He reminds me of a big, faithful shepherd dog’

“ ‘What do I remind you of?’ the boy I was with asked.

“ ‘A bull pup,” I answered.

“He got mad.”

Eugene likes picture shows, but her second self, or whatever name she finally applies to the queer power which is shot through and through her, spoils many a performance for the girl and incidentally, many good times in her life. She senses evil or danger when it is near at hand, and, similarly, senses at once the presence of a person who does not like her.

“I will be sitting in a movie theater and suddenly this feeling will come over me that behind me there is someone whose thoughts are not kind—not towards me, necessarily, but towards someone,” she said, “When I look around I often find the person is one whom I regarded as a very nice in every way.”

Eugene’s fame as a mind reader is spreading over the country, although it is in no sense a business with her and she does her work more to oblige persons who as her for help than because or any desire on her own part to do it.

Atchison believes in her very fully. She will start downtown and be stopped three or four times on the street to give impromptu readings. Night after night she plans some recreation at her home, and a movie with the girls, or a 9 o’clock quart of ice cream with her parents and her 13-year-old brother, Austin, and sees all her plans spoiled because of visitors who call up or drop in for advice.

Come back soon for part 3!

For all the post on Gene Dennis, click here!

London Magician Roberto Forzoni has a biography on Gene on his website

The post Gene Dennis the “Seeress” of Atchison – Part 2 first appeared on Coffee With Jeff.