Lucky Thirteen on the Western Front (1)
Joe Cassells, a soldier in the First World War, tells of a strange coincidence concerning the number thirteen on the Western Front. Cassells would come to believe that thirteen was his lucky number.
World War I
During the First World War (also called World War I, or WWI), an unusually high number of supernatural occurrences were reported, both from the Front and the Homefront. These included famous cases, such as the Angels of Mons, but also many private experiences of premonitions, ghosts and spiritualist communication with the dead. Important organisations were the Society for Psychical Research and the Ghost Club.
A Lucky Coin and the Battle of Mons
Did a Frenchman’s Lucky Coin Save a British Soldier at the Battle of Mons? More than one soldier during the First World War put superstitious faith in a lucky coin, here is one man’s story from the Battle of Mons and the Retreat after. As a former regular soldier, Scotsman Joe Cassells was a first-class […]
The Virgin Mary at the Battle of Augustovo
A Vision of the Virgin Mary on the Eastern Front, 1914 On the eve of the Battle of Augustovo, the Russian Army was allegedly witness to a religious vision of the Virgin Mary, Baby Jesus and a huge shining cross, inspiring them to victory against the Germans. Ralph Shirley, the editor of the Occult Review, […]
Was World War I A Battle Between Good and Evil?
Sir Oliver Lodge’s London Speech on the Great War and Evil In November 1914, the eminent scientist and member of the Society for Psychical Research, Sir Oliver Lodge, gave a talk about ‘Science and Religion’ at the Browning Hall in Walworth, London. The hall was crowded with more than a thousand people. The Mayor of […]
The Man Who Invented the Angels of Mons
Arthur Machen Claims Short Story ‘The Bowmen’ Inspired the Angels Legend The writer Arthur Machen claimed to have invented the greatest supernatural mystery of the First World War: the Angels of Mons. The problem was, nobody believed him. When World War I broke out, Welshman Arthur Machen was living in London and earning a living […]
Oxford Professor Blames Great War Prophecies on Neurosis
The Philosopher F.C.S. Schiller on Predictions of the First World War It was psychologically to be expected that the terrific strain of the most terrible of wars should produce widespread emotional disturbance in the populations subjected to it, and that this, again, should lead to an apparent recrudescence of many primitive beliefs and practices. So […]
The Ghost Club and the First World War
Wartime Revelations of a Ghost Hunters’ Dining Club The Ghost Club was a private, but not quite secret, dining club that met in London to discuss ghosts, naturally. Sir William Crookes, one of the leading lights of the Society for Psychical Research, was President of the Ghost Club throughout the duration of the war. According […]
The Woman Who Solved the Angels of Mons
Controversy surrounding the Angels of Mons legend prompted the Society for Psychical Research to launch an investigation. Assistant Research Officer Helen Woollgar de Gaudrion Verrall (later Salter) was given the task of collecting and weighing the evidence in the case of the alleged angels at the Battle of Mons: had it been a supernatural intervention to save the British Expeditionary Force, or had it been something else?
The Society for Psychical Research at the Outbreak of War
Investigating the Paranormal During the First World War All of these strange signs and portents did not go unnoticed. The popular press reported some of them, the Spiritualist press almost all of them. Nor did they go uninvestigated. At the outbreak of the First World War there already existed an organisation for the investigation of […]
Conan Doyle’s Premonitions of War
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Prophecies and Premonitions of the First World War A month before Britain declared war on Germany, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published an astonishingly accurate description of how the war would develop in a new and previously unimagined way. Author Envisages Unrestricted Submarine Warfare ‘Singularly prophetic.’ The short story ‘Danger! Being the […]