News at Eleven (Back Page): Poet Edgar Lee Masters was among the astonished guests.

"There is no doubt. . .she is producing remarkable literature," the author of Spoon River Anthology told a reporter, though "how she does it I cannot say." Nor could he say how Patience looked, though she was thought to be young and pretty, with wavy red hair and large brown eyes. No one, however, actually saw her. She wasn't real. She was an ambitious, hard-working spirit.

Speaking through a Ouija board operated by Pearl Lenore Curran, a St. Louis housewife of limited education, Patience Worth was nothing short of a national phenomenon in the early years of the 20th century.

from The Smithsonian: Patience Worth: Author From the Great Beyond

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