This is the third 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. In this part, Eugene attempts to convince a skeptic.

NOT A PROFESSIONAL

Letter‚ they poor in to her from all over the country. She has a sheaf whose postmarks run from New York to California, from Florida through Oklahoma, up to Minnesota and into Canada. This fact must be emphasized—Eugene is not commercializing her talent. She makes no charges for her work. She does not seek persons who desire readings. If a person at the end of a reading desires to play Eugene for it, she may accept the money. Again—she may not. But the size of the gift—in fact, the existence of a gift at all—is absolutely a matter of choice with the giver.

Certainly the girl is unusual. A Visitor in Atchison between trains recently remembered what he had heard of Eugene in Kansas City and determined to test her ability.

“Eugene isn’t home now. She’s—down at the grocery after something for lunch,” her mother laughed, “Come out, though, if you have time. She’ll be back soon.”

The Dennis home, a frames house on a corner, sitting back on a row of three terraces, bespoke the presence od a young girl in it. A phonograph in one of the parlor had a popular record on it. A piano was covered with the latest foxtrot music.

“Eugene’s—all of it,” Mrs. Dennis said. “She plays and sings and you know how the young people of today are about jazz.”

There was the sound of a person running hurriedly up the front steps and a girl dashing breathless into the room.

“Her you go, mother,” she said. Then “Oh—!”

Introductions were exchanged and Mrs. Dennis explained the visitor’s mission.

WHAT IT MIND READING?

“Give me something that is yours,” Eugene said, still out of breath, but smiling—her smile never leaves her.

A ring was handed to her.

“I don’t know why you wear this wedding ring,” she said, scarcely looking at it, but holding it in her hand. “You’re not married. You’ve never been married. Two desks face each other on the second floor of a large brick building and yours faces the two of them, along their side.

“ Your immediate superior in your nosiness—” and she described his appearance accurately. “You have taken a business step recently—” and she went on to describe that step in every phase, even to the size of the stationery the visitor used. You were moderately satisfied with the results, not enthusiastic, not disappointed.

“In your circle of men friends there is one considerably younger than the rest. He has a light complexion, light hair, is of a slender build, good looking. You think the world of him; he’s a boy of high principles, bit he won’t settle down the way you want him to. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“The trouble is with you men, yourselves. You’re all older, and in you affection for him and you association with him  you can’t see the he’s no more indecisive than you were five years ago. Give him a chance.”

The visitor was stunned. He had been a skeptic about mind readers all his life. By George, he still was.  Everything Eugene had told him so far was true to the dot, but she must slip somewhere.

“Have you anything belonging to any other person with you?” Eugene suddenly asked.

There visitor remembered a vanity case that had been slipped in is pocket the night before and which he had forgotten about. He handed it to Eugene who took it and held it.

“What does that girl look like?” the visitor demanded.

“What does you sister look like, you mean.” Eugene corrected.

She described the sister perfectly, told her character to a T, recited the major events in the sister’s life, her ambitions for the future, what she had to overcome to reach them.

“Am I right?” she asked again.

“Yes,” the visitor was forced to admit.

“What am I going to do tonight?” he shot at her.

She looked at the opposite wall a minute.

“I see you going north—into Nebraska,” she said slowly. “The person you’re going to see it—.” And there followed a description. “You’ll also see there these two other people.” And there were two more descriptions.

The visitor was triumphant.

“She missed it, I know she would,” she gloated to himself. “There’s not a one thousand to one chance on that bet.”

He thanked Eugene for his visit hurriedly and left the house. Then these things happed in rapid succession:

He missed the inbound train to Kansas City. Moaning a wait in Atchison until 7 o’clock that night, he dispatched a hit-or-miss telegram to Nebraska to let his friends there know how near he was to them, anyway. An ununiformed Western Union messenger picked out him, a very ordinary man, from a crowd on Commercial street an hour later with the answer. Still a half hour later he was on a northbound train.

How did the girl predict circumstances like that? She just said, “You’re going to Nebraska,” to be sure, but thing of the 1,000 to 1 shot that went across to make her prediction come true—the missed train, the chance telegram, the totally accidental way of receiving its answer.

Now add this evidence to the rest—. The “other people” she said he’d meet in Nebraska were described recognizably and the description of the person he was going to see was perfect. And he never seen these other people in his life!

How does she do it?

The visitor, in his anger at her telling him things he didn’t see how she could know, scribbled a question on a piece pf paper, put it in an envelope, sealed it, and put the envelope in his pocket.

“Answer the question,” he said.

The girl thought long and hard.

“I’m not promising I can do this,” she said, “Your question is about someone very high in the professional world, isn’t it?”

“Yes, go on.”

“And you’re concerned in it, too?”

The visitor abruptly stopped the girl on the entire matter and led her into other conversation.

What it fears that she would answer wrongly that made him do it? This is what he had written:

What person with you first name writes plays for the American stage?”

The answer, obviously, is Eugene O’Neill.

Now Eugene O’Neill—granted—is “very high in the professional world.” He has been called the “Greatest dramatist in American today.” So Miss Eugene Dennis got part of the question all right. But the writer wasn’t “concerned in the question, too.” That’s where the visitor gently diverted her from the subject.

Still, how in reason was that girl, any girl, anybody, to sin a test like that? How was Eugene to know that the question didn’t say, “Will it rain tomorrow,” or “What it my first name,” or “Who won the American Association pennant in 1916?” As far as that goes, how was she to know there was a Eugene O’Neill? How many 16-year-old girls do?

Persons can be found in Atchison who do not believe in her.

“She misses lots of questions.” One widely known an says deprecatingly. Nit Eugene and others as equally known men say that Eugene told the scoffer several not so pleasant things when she read his mind before four of five other persons, and he has never got over it.

Eugene does not claim she is infallible in her work. Far be it from the visitor to claim it. He is just reporting what she told him, and what she told him, with the exception of Eugene O’Neill incident, was absolutely true.

She does no studying, goes into no trances, worlds in no darkened rooms.

Eugene might or might not win praise from Sir Oliver Lodge or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a spiritualist. She probably wouldn’t want it. But this fact impresses itself indelibly in the minds of anyone who talks to her give minutes. She’d be a prime candidate for America’s exhibit of a regular, genuine, whole-souled girl.

You can read part 1 by clicking here

You can read part 2 by clicking here.

For all Gene Dennis Articles – Click here!

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

The post Gene Dennis the “Seeress” of Atchison – Part 3 first appeared on Coffee With Jeff.