Stefan Ossowiecki was born on August 22 or 26, 1877, in Moscow, and died on August 5, 1944, in Warsaw. He was a Polish engineer who was known as one of Europe's most famous psychics. Two important people who believed in his abilities were Gustav Geley, a French scientist who studied psychic phenomena, and Charles Richet, a scientist who won a Nobel Prize for his work in physiology. Richet called Ossowiecki "the most positive of psychics."

Life

Stefan Ossowiecki was born in Moscow in 1877 to a wealthy family of former Polish aristocrats. His father, who was born in Moscow and worked as a chemical factory owner and assistant to Dmitri Mendeleyev, strongly valued his Polish heritage. He taught his son to speak Polish and to identify as a Pole.

As a young boy, Stefan showed signs of unusual abilities, which confused his family. He told his mother he could see colorful bands around people. She took him to an eye doctor, who gave him medicine to treat the condition. Ossowiecki later said the medicine caused discomfort but did not stop his unusual vision.

As a young man, Ossowiecki attended Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University, where he studied chemical engineering, the same profession as his father. During this time, it was claimed he demonstrated the ability to move objects with his mind, a phenomenon known as psychokinesis.

After completing his degree, Ossowiecki returned to Moscow, where he lived a luxurious lifestyle and became part of the circle around Czar Nicholas II and the Russian court.

In 1915, his father passed away, and Ossowiecki inherited the family’s chemical business, making him temporarily wealthy. However, three years later, the Bolshevik Revolution led to the loss of his business and property. As a wealthy capitalist and friend of the czar, Ossowiecki was targeted by the new government. His property was taken, and he was imprisoned. During his time in prison, he reflected deeply and said he began to fully appreciate his unique ability to help others. He was sentenced to death but was released after six months due to the support of a former friend who had become a Bolshevik official.

In 1919, Ossowiecki was freed and left Russia, leaving with no money at the age of 42. He later worked as a chemical engineer in Warsaw and also used his skills to assist people in need.

Ossowiecki never had children. In 1939, he married for the second time and wrote a screenplay for Paramount Pictures about his life, titled The Eyes Which See Everything.

Ossowiecki told friends that his body would not be found after his death. He was likely killed by the Gestapo during the Warsaw Uprising on August 5, 1944, near the former Polish Chief Inspectorate of the Armed Forces on Aleje Ujazdowskie (Ujazdów Avenue). His body was never discovered, and a cenotaph (a monument for someone whose remains are missing) was built in his honor at Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery.

Career

In the 1920s, many experiments were conducted in which Stefan Ossowiecki supposedly showed clairvoyance (the ability to see objects inside sealed containers) and astral projection (the ability to leave the body). Nobel Prize winner Charles Richet wrote in his book Our Sixth Sense: "If any doubt remains about the sixth sense, this doubt will be removed by the combined results of experiments done by Geley, myself, and others with Stefan Ossowiecki."

Between 1927 and 1928, after the German military started using the Enigma cipher machine in 1926, the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau in Warsaw tried to break the machine. They worked with top mathematicians and used parapsychology, but even Stefan Ossowiecki could not help.

Critical reception

Between 1937 and 1941, the scientist Stanislaw Poniatowski tested Ossowiecki's psychic abilities by giving him ancient Paleolithic stone tools. When Ossowiecki tried to describe who made the tools, his descriptions were similar to those of Neanderthals, even though the tools were created by modern humans.

In May 1939, Ossowiecki predicted that there would be no war that year and that Poland would have good relations with Italy. These predictions did not happen as expected. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began.

In 1933, the parapsychologist Rosalind Heywood described an experiment in which Ossowiecki correctly guessed the contents of a sealed envelope. However, the scientist C. E. M. Hansel said the experiment’s conditions were similar to a simple magic trick. The psychologist E. F. O'Doherty wrote that the experiments testing Ossowiecki’s clairvoyance were not scientific.