Who's your favorite suspected psi in history?

[Joseph1608]

The legends recounting the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more bizarre than his strange life. According to Greg King's 1996 book The Man Who Killed Rasputin, a previous attempt on Rasputin's life had been made and had failed: Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in his hometown, Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River, in Siberia. On June 29, 1914, he had either just received a telegram or was just exiting church, when he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor, once a friend of Rasputin's but now absolutely disgusted with his behaviour and disrespectful talk about the royal family. Iliodor had appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin, and together they formed a survivors' support group.
Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!"
After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. It was said of his survival that "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body." His daughter, Maria, pointed out in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain.


The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it invented by the very men who killed him, which is why it becomes difficult to discern exactly what happened. It is, however, generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a far-too-dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and the right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich, apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, to the basement[13], where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men. Conversely, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because, after the attack by Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. In fact, she expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.
Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and lunged at Prince Yusupov. When he grabbed Prince Yusupov he ominously whispered in Yusupov's ear "you bad boy" and attempted to strangle him. As he made his bid to kill Yusupov, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into the icy river Neva, and he finally met his end there — as had both his siblings before him.
Three days later, the body of Rasputin, poisoned, shot four times and badly beaten, was recovered from the Neva River. An autopsy established that the cause of death was drowning, due to the presence of water in his lungs. His arms were found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him. Yet another report, also supporting the idea that he was still alive after submerging through the ice into the Neva River, is that after his body was pulled from the river, water was found in the lungs, showing that he didn't die until he was submerged.[14]
Subsequently, the Empress Alexandra buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, but, after the February Revolution, a group of workers from Saint Petersburg uncovered the remains, carried them into a nearby wood and burnt them. As the body of Rasputin was being burned, he appeared to sit up in the fire. After being poisoned, shot, beaten, drowned, and officially verified as dead, he thoroughly horrified bystanders in his apparent attempts to move and get up. This legend is attributed to improper cremation. Since his body was in inexperienced hands, his tendons were probably not cut before burning. Consequently, when his body was heated, the tendons shrunk, forcing his legs to bend, and his body to bend at the waist, resulting in it appearing to sit up. This final happenstance only poured fuel on the fire of legends and mysteries surrounding Rasputin, which would continue to live on, long after he had truly died.

[mrco.gllrdo]

You would make a great story teller, you know? Unless you copied it from somewhere. Either way, Rasputin has my vote.

[Pat McDonald]

My vote would go to David Morehouse. Although he's not history (yet).

[voiddragon]

Daniel Dunglas Home

Upon arriving in America, his Aunt began to recount Home's extraordinary abilities. Beginning at the age of 4, Home was able to foresee future events. It was recorded that he once saw a friend who had died a few days earlier. His mother, herself a clairvoyant, knew that these types of abilities ran in the family, so the fact that Home was 'special' was not surprising to her.

As Home grew older his abilities became more acute. By the age of 17, his household was experiencing a slew of poltergeist type events - knocking sounds, furniture moving about the house on its own accord, lights mysteriously flashing off and on. Strangely, the family at first had no inkling what was going on but their suspicions grew when it became apparent that Home was always present during the strange events. The final straw came when Home's father noticed Home smirking at the sight of a chair slithering about the house chasing his sister. His parents forced him to depart the home claiming he was demonic.

It was during this time, in 1868, that one of Home's most legendary events occurred. During a séance at the home of Mr. S.C. Hall (at No. 15 Ashley Place), Home demonstrated his abilities before a crowd of people. Home effortlessly floated across the room, passed out an open third story window, and returned the same way he left. Lord Linksay recorded the event:

I was sitting on December 16, 1868, Lord Adare's rooms in Asley Place, London, S.W., with Mr. Home and Lord Adare and cousin of his. During the sitting, Mr. Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a 12 in projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in the air outside our window. The moon was shinning full into the room; my back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the windowsill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room feet foremost and sat down. Lord Adare then went into the next room to look at the window from which he had been carried. It was raised about 18 inches, and he expressed his wonder how Mr. Home had been taken through so narrow an aperture. Home said (still in a trance) " I will show you," and then with his back to the window he leaned back and was shot out of the aperture head first, with the body rigid, and then returned quite quietly. The window is about 70 feet from the ground.

Crooke's Scientific Studies

In 1871, Sir William Crookes, a physicist and chemist, conducted tightly controlled experiments with Home. The iron-clad results were nothing less than stunning. Despite this, Crookes published results, in which the word psychic was coined, were publicly scorned by his peers.

Crookes first tested Home's telekinesis by having Home move a spring balance placed on the other side of the room. During these controlled experiments, Home's feet and hands were bound to the chair he was sitting in. The chair was carefully examined before and after the experiments. If a table were used as a prop, it too was inspected before and after the tests.

Crooke's next test involved a accordion placed in an iron cage. Situated on a table in front of Home, he was able to levitate the accordion and even play a short song on it. Lady Crooke's, one of three witnesses present, insisted that Home's facilities were not his own but rather the results of a second, unseen entity from 'the other side'. Her description of the accordion experiment indicated that she saw,

a cloudy appearance which soon seemed to condense into a distinct human form, clothed in a filmy drapery...It was semitransparent, and I could see the sitters through it all the time. Mr. Home remained near the sliding doors. As the figure approached I felt an intense cold, getting stronger as it got nearer, and as it gave me the accordion I could not help screaming. The figure seemed to sink into the floor to the waist, leaving only the head and shoulder visible, still playing the accordion, which was then about a foot off the floor

[Avkon]

I wonder how many of the people mentioned in the poll would actually fit our definition of "psion" anyway.

[Psionic Scar]

Great story Rasputin gains my vote

[mikelj84606]

Mesmer is good one to wikipidea. his stroy is great too. dark like rasputan though.