Seances with Matylda in Poland 1930s

Alexander Imich in middle age



Alexander Imich (1903-2014) described witnessing seances with diverse manifestations of unexplained phenomena in Poland during the 1930s.  The medium is known as 'Matylda S.'  Imich is the editor of Incredible Tales of the Paranormal: Documented Accounts of Poltergeist, Levitations, Phantoms, and Other Phenomena (1995).  The book includes articles about the mediums known as Mirabelli and Franek Kluski by Guy Lyon Playfair and Dr. Roman Bugaj, respectively.  Imich contributed the chapter "Matylda."  Some biographical information about Imich is presented in the book:

Dr. Alexander Imich is a chemical consultant, a contributing editor to Psychological Abstracts, to Parapsychology Abstracts International, and in the past to Chemical Abstracts.  His articles were published in British, French, German, Italian, Indian, and USA periodicals.  Imich describes adventurous personal experiences with a little-known but powerful Polish medium, Matylda S.  This music teacher's late psychic career started after the death of the well-known Polish medium Jan Guzik.

Impressive experiments with Guzik were reported in Clairvoyance and Materialisation (1927) by Dr. Gustave Geley. 

Matylda was the widow of a medical doctor.  Imich wrote: "She had two sons to raise.  A graduate of a piano class of the conservatory, she loved music and turned to giving music lessons."  Imich never observed any indication of Matylda entering a trance state during seances.

Imich mentioned that documents connected with Matylda were lost during World War II and only the original paper he published in the German Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie (1932) was saved.  A college professor who was president of a Polish parapsychological society had informed Imich about 'Matylda S.'  Imich wrote to her, asking for permission to participate in a seance.  She invited him to come to Wloclawek from his home in the Polish town of Czestochowa.  The first two seances Imich witnessed would be recalled as being among "the strongest experiences of my adolescence."

The year was 1932 "shortly after Christmas."  Imich traveled by train and went directly from the train station to the indicated address, where the other participants were gathered.  He described Matylda as "a middle-aged woman, whose corpulence might have surprised those who would expect an intermediary between this world and the other to be more ethereal.  Only one feature lived up to the most exciting phantasy: the medium's eyes which were large, green and resembled the eyes of a nocturnal bird."

The seance participants were "mostly young people" and he decided, "In such a gay group there was no possibility of applying necessary controls."  However, a more significant realization would follow.  Imich recalled: "I did not know yet that there are phenomena which simply cannot be faked, and which make control, in its usual meaning, superfluous."

The phenomena began nearly at once after Matylda turned off the lights —

They were so explicit and so violent, at first I had no doubt they were faked.  I even admired the confidence—nay, the effrontery—of the person responsible for their production.  They were exceptionally numerous, one could say crowded, and appeared simultaneously at different locations.

Very soon, however, I understood that they were authentic.  Some were altogether inimitable.

Imich commented that "a feeling of eeriness pervaded my whole being."  The seance was being held in a small room of a ground floor apartment with thirteen participants.  The shutters were closed and the door was shut to the next room.  The sitters were gathered around a very large table three meters long and they formed a chain by linking their small fingers.  Imich was seated on the right side of the medium.

The seance participants "heard sounds and felt vibrations of the table caused by strong blows coming from underneath."  An extension board under the table was knocking against it.  Lights momentarily appeared — one of a bluish color appeared behind one person and a half minute later a light with a greenish tinge monetarily appeared in a corner of the room.  "From that moment on, such a great number of phenomena began to happen that I was quite unable to memorize them and still less able to remember the order in which they appeared."  He listed the occurrences with categorical headings.

Telekinesis included chairs moving from under participants with great force and noise that sent the chairs "flying" to the walls as "people frequently fell on the floor" — six chairs in one or two seconds.  A piece of chalk earlier placed on the table by the medium was heard by the sitters to "scribble with violence on the table" (the letter "O" was written and "three small crosses").  Then Imich's own chair was "strongly pushed."  The movement and transportation of objects left objects to be found on the table: a wooden riding horse for children, a chair, a shaving blade, keys and a pocket knife from Matylda's pocket, and a loaf of bread from the cupboard.

A cushion from the sofa was so strongly pressed against me that I was forced to defend myself with both hands.  A sweater fell on my head, a cracker on my chest, then—on the request of the medium—another cracker; then a doll was put to my lips.  In the red glow of my flashlight I saw a chair extracted from under one of the participants.  The heavy table around which we were sitting rose first on two legs, then violently on all four, then softly descended to the floor.  The height of the levitation did not exceed three inches.

The list of observed phenomena in the category Touches compiled by Imich begins with the recollection that soon after the beginning of the seance a participant exclaimed that something or somebody was pushing him.  "Matylda asked the spirits to show their strength."  Fifteen minutes later, Imich described feeling fingers lightly scratch his head.

Then something pulled my hair, touching my eyelids quite strongly at the same time.  During one of the heavy knocks against the table the end of my thumb was struck with great power; it continued hurting for a long while.  I heard some noises of the medium being touched or struck and of her struggle with the invisible powers wanting to strip her of different articles of clothing.  Time and time again one or another of the participants cried for help, beset by the invisible powers, so that it was frequently necessary to turn on the light.  Illuminated by my flashlight, during a fraction of a second, I saw the tousled hair of the girl sitting next to me who was defending herself against something.  Another girl had been dragged upon the table and was lying face down with her hands stretched out.  Another one had been lifted from her chair and was found sitting on the table.

The category Acoustic phenomena includes the descriptions of scratching upon the table, a rhythmical drumming on the table and "blows against the table so strong, it seemed surprising the massive table could withstand them."  He explained, "Those sounds were sometimes heard in such rapid sequence that it took only a second to make a complete round of the table — a terrifying cannonade."  Sounds heard from around the room were "boots stomping, then a fist knocking against the door. and unknown objects scratching and rapping the walls."

Invisible lips whistled in the air above us, and there were sounds of blowing with the accompanying air currents.  In addition to the croaking of a frog, were many other sounds difficult to describe or identify.

Considering Optical phenomena, among the approximately twelve times white, bluish or greenish lights "went on in different locations," three instances the lights appeared below the table near to Imich.  At one point when Matylda asked that the light should present itself, Imich saw an elliptically shaped light appear momentarily at the other end of the table at a height parallel with the head of one of the sitters; then the light "went off with a metallic sound."

The Apports (materialized objects) identified by Imich are a pine branch with a thick candle (the candle was from the fir Christmas tree in another room) and—also brought from nearby rooms—artificial flowers, one galosh, a strainer, a doll, a whip and a sheet of paper with greetings signed "Guzik."  When Imich requested Matylda to get out of her chair, she stood behind his chair and then "a deluge of events fell upon us so that the participants started screaming for light."  An apport of "freshly cut alpine flowers" appeared and—with the participants having heard coughing toward the end of the seance—there was noticed on the table "a half ounce of clear fluid."

There was also an incident with a radio loudspeaker.  Imich explained: "At that time loudspeakers were still a separate part of the receiving set; thus, a loudspeaker, in the form of an elegantly carved trumpet, stood on the wardrobe, while the receiver was inside of it."  During the seance, the wardrobe door was closed and could not be opened because of the position of a chair of one of the participants.  "Somebody asked for spoken words to come from the loudspeaker . . . After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, the loudspeaker started with music." Then:

I asked for another station and the tune actually changed.  This happened at once and without the whistles  that in the early radio receivers accompanied tuning in to a station.  I made one more request, asking for German speech; I had in mind a man's voice.  While German language did come out of the speaker, it was, however, feminine.  The characteristic noises of a distant radio transmitter accompanied this reception.

Alexander Imich's second seance with Matylda took place in the ground floor apartment of 'Lieutenant L.'  The lieutenant was present along with the medium, Imich and seven other participants.

The seance was being held in the middle room of three adjacent rooms, without doors in the doorways.  Entrances to the two rooms were from the street and from the courtyard.  Those two entrances and the shutters had been locked before the seance started. 

 
This time Imich sat at the end of the table opposite Matylda.
 

When the light was turned off, raps against the table were heard at once.  A vase with flowers was put into my lap; a crystal paperweight was thrown on the table with a grumble and a picture from the wall suddenly appeared on the table.  When the girl sitting next to me cried for help, I stretched out my hand to encounter a warm and soft hand which vanished instantaneously.  Then the "ghosts" began to annoy the young lieutenant who was attending a seance for the first time in his life.  As a gallant officer, he had taken a bold attitude towards ghosts in whose existence he did not believe.  Soon after the seance began, he seemed to become more and more excited.  First we heard the keys in his pocket jingling, then the chain on which his sabre was suspended.  Then he declared he was feeling the approach of a heavy mass and started to scream so loudly that we had to interrupt the seance and turn the light on.  This did not quiet the warrior.  His eyes were staring; he appeared to be in a trance.  He fought with whoever tried to approach him, and when I attempted to calm him, he attacked me with raised fists.  When he finally recovered consciousness, he left the seance, declaring he would never take part in any experiments with ghosts.  I was told later that he did not feel well and stayed in bed for several days.
 
A direct voice was a new phenomenon.  From the neighboring room a basso voice sounded near the floor.  Approaching the doorway leading to our room, it introduced itself as the spirit of the well-known Polish medium, the deceased Jan Guzik.  He spoke of my visit and bade me a friendly welcome.  The voice was particularly low and pronounced words with difficulty.  Suddenly, a bright light appeared on the chest of one of the participants, and I thought he was being dragged into the next room.  Guzik's voice fell silent, and we heard from the next room a loud noise as if the door had been slammed violently.  All that happened in just a few seconds.  The light was turned on.  From the next room our participant returned and declared that, in order to uncover a fake, he had suddenly lit his flashlight and run into the next room.  There was nobody there; he found the entrance door locked, the key in the lock inside the apartment.  In an agitated mood we returned to the seance.  We heard the squeak of the door as if opening very slowly, and suddenly we heard a crash as loud as a pistol shot, followed by the noise of broken glass, as if a large glass vessel had been thrown on the floor.  Terrified by this assault, we again interrupted the seance.  There was no trace of glass in the next room, and the door leading outside was locked, key in the lock.

The tension mounted still higher, but we decided to continue the seance.  In all three rooms undefined noises were heard simultaneously.  Again the squeak of the opening door and, in the next room, the sound of steps or two or more persons.  Then, some groaning and the sound of heavy breathing approached from the next room.  The narrow strip of light penetrating the crack in the shutter disappeared for a moment, as if obscured by a moving body.  The groans and heavy breathing now were near our table.  Matylda exclaimed that something heavy was lying on her.  In the darkness, through the change of acoustics, the presence of an additional body in the room could be sensed.  The tension became unbearable and cries for light sounded.  Imagine our terror when, in the full light of the chandelier, we saw on the floor a long body in a military trenchcoat.  What powers did we rouse?  What were we going to do now?  Light, that until now had been saving us from the dread of the unknown, suddenly lost its power.  As apprentices of the supernatural, we were now forced to face a great mystery.  I quickly glanced at all present with the last faint hope that the body on the floor was one of them.  My hope was futile; everybody was in his or her place.  In the meantime, somebody recognized the prostrated form as the owner of the apartment.  He had left town a few days ago.  We lifted him up and seated him on a chair.  He was unconscious but slowly recovering, looking with surprised eyes at the people assembled around him.  He told us he had just returned from his trip, had gone directly from the railroad station to a cafe to say hello to his friends, had then gone out into the street in the direction of his home—and he remembered no more.  He had no idea how he had entered the apartment.  I checked the entrance door again; it was locked from the inside.
 
After a lengthy interruption, we once more returned to the seance.  Of the many phenomena that followed, I will mention the apport of a letter.  It was accompanied by a noise—as if a roll of paper many feet long was being unrolled.  When the light was turned on, we found a small sheet of paper folded in four: "Matylda, your power is great" was written upon it.  I snatched the paper as a precious item for future archives.  Guzik's voice sounded again and made a false prediction [expectation?] that Gandhi would die in a prison.  I asked Guzik to materialize, but he declared that he was tired from yesterday's seance.  Some of those present said they could see a foggy person in a turban.  I, personally, did not see it.
 
At a certain moment, the voice began to predict an erotic episode to the medium; I learned later that, in the past, this had happened many times.  Matylda interrupted the voice, asking him to stop such prophecies.  When this did not help, she reiterated her request more forcefully, trying to dumbfound the basso voice and telling him in not-complimentary epithets what she thought of such enunciations.  The voice, however,  was not to be persuaded or silenced; it was growing louder and faster every moment.  The medium began to scream, and so did the voice.  The whole incident  resembled an ordinary quarrel between two mortals, yet extraordinary since it was taking place between a living person and an assumed spirit of a deceased being.  It would be doubly interesting for Freud—not only for its erotic content, but because of this unique assignation of roles.  Again light had to be turned on, and that's how the weird quarrel ended.

Considering the message left for Matylda, the question of what constitutes 'power' on Earth is a complex one.  I shared in a previous article an understanding of my own regarding earthly 'power' — If any exercise of power, influence or authority has a negative result then the perceived 'power' is a misconception.

Imich provided details about how Matylda became a medium.  She had attended a seance with the medium Jan Guzik a short time before his passing.  Imich wrote:

The wonders she saw, the existence of which she did not suspect, delighted her.  "I liked it most when a beautiful little light moving under the ceiling drifted down, lifted a bunch of keys from the dresser and put them very, very softly in my hand.  I was so delighted with the pranks played by the spirits that I simply began to like them and could not forget them."

One evening when she was playing cards with a woman friend, the doorbell was intermittently heard at her home  with nobody found to be outside each time.  Matylda suddenly deduced: "It was Jan (Guzik's first name) calling on me.  His spirit has come to me and will appear during seances."
 

Matylda professed her awareness that some of the people who had witnessed her seances didn't believe in 'spirits.'  She told Imich what had occurred after one of her grown-up sons declared, "I will believe in spirits when they bring me 1000 zlotys." 

"And, just imagine!  At the next seance we heard noise as if scores of bank notes were being counted by the fingers of an expert cashier.  We turned the light on.  On the table, before my son, lies a bank note—but one from the German occupation during World War I and without any value today.  It's strange, but that's how it is.  No great help can be expected from the spirits.  They help with small things.  They will bring an egg, a dinner role, an apple or few tomatoes.  They will gladly bring flowers, but money or other more valuable things—nothing doing.  They know how difficult my life is, apparently they are not allowed to help too much.  In the land of spirits there also must exist laws that cannot be broken." 

 

Imich left Wloclawek after experiencing the two seances and informed a psychical research society in London that Matylda was willing to participate in experiments.  He reported that Harry Price replied immediately with a formal invitation and a check for 300 pounds sterling to cover the expenses for Imich to accompany Matylda to London. 

He met her in Warsaw and recalled about the beginning of their railway journey: ". . . Matylda prayed frequently and addressed short invocations to Mr. Jan, her leading spirit."  They continued via boat from Ostend to Dover.  When the customs officer learned about the purpose of their visit he told them that Rudi Schneider had been in the United Kingdom just before them.  Imich commented, "He appeared to know something about parapsychology.  We were pleasantly surprised."  Matylda was quoted as having hopefully said, "Here they really love spirits."  It seems that Imich had no awareness of Price's unconvincing repudiation of Scottish medium Helen Duncan's seances in 1931. 

During three weeks in London, Matylda conducted seventeen uneventful sittings.

She complained that the spirits had let her down mercilessly, that she had exposed herself to the greatest shame of her life.  She explained that this was an exceptional opportunity to do what the spirits had always wanted—to let them be known by the entire world.  The actual opportunity might be the only one forever.  She implored, encouraged and threatened the spirits.  All in vain; the spirits had a deaf ear.

Imich learned about the resumption of anomalous manifestations during Matylda's seances after she returned home.   He soon went to Wloclawek accompanied by two of his friends.  The again tumultuous events he then witnessed included levitation, apports of candy, whistles/"whistling fragments of a tune," "words or broken sentences, sighs, groans; smacks were heard . . . meowing of cats, croaking of frogs . . . sounds of panting or blowing, accompanied by cool breezes on our faces or hands"; touches, raps, jerks. 
 

When Imich arranged for Matylda to conduct a series of twenty seances at his parents' house in Czestochowa, the perhaps still unexpected result was silence as had been experienced in London.  She could only theorize that the spirits needed time to learn her new location.

Imich reported that after he moved to Warsaw, he  convinced Matylda to visit her sister there for a longer stay.  After waiting many weeks, Imich arranged a trial seance in the apartment where she was staying.  A series of eventful and "wild" seances ensued with all the previously observed different aspects of phenomena: apports, touches, transports of objects, light phenomena, diverse sounds including raps and scraping, and "powerful blows in the table or floor."   

When the medium declared "Spirits, Dr. Imich loves you very much!" the basso voice replied, "And we love him too."

Unable to support herself in Warsaw, Matylda returned to Wloclawek and Imich could only occasionally visit her.

I was at the beginning of my professional career.  I had to establish my position, gain experience in my industrial specialty, and start saving money for an extended series of future experiments.

Then came World War II.

It destroyed millions of human lives.  Do I have to mention that it also ruined my project?  When the disastrous times were over, I could not find Matylda anymore.

In 2014 Alexander Imich was the topic of media news reports worldwide when he became the world's oldest validated living male.  When he passed in June 2014 at the age of 111, an AP article described him as "The world's oldest man, a retired chemist and parapsychologist" and a New York Times article described him as "a Polish-born psychic researcher."  The latter article mentioned Matylda and encapsulated what had happened to Imich during World War II —

With the outbreak of World War II, he and his wife fled to Soviet-occupied Bialystok, Poland, where they were sent to a Soviet labor camp.  Once freed, they moved to Samarkand, in what is now Uzbekistan, and then back to Poland, where they found many family members had died in the Holocaust.  In 1951 they immigrated to Waterbury, Conn.

Video footage of the elderly Imich may be seen on You Tube.

Some of the media coverage reveals the social conditioning of contemporary people who may not have personally read any original case studies of unexplained phenomena.  One 2014 article about Imich is even entitled "The World's Oldest Man is an Occult-Obsessed Weirdo." 

A close examination of the various manifestations detailed by Imich includes occurrences that offer parallels with what may be read in some well-known paranormal case studies, including the 'Bell Witch' Tennessee 'talking poltergeist' case.  Manifestations of Direct Voice (disembodied) communication has been documented in other cases of mediums who found this phenomena consistently happening in their presence.  The Leslie Flint case (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) offers evidence in the form of Direct Voice audio recordings that afford researchers a precise understanding of moods and temperaments expressed with the transcendental communication.

Incredible Tales of the Paranormal is available from Bramble Books.