Stefan Ossowiecki
Encyclopedia
Gustav Geley
Dr. Gustav Geley was a French psychical researcher and director of the Institute Metapsychique International from 1919 to 1924.-Career:Geley was born in 1868 at Montceau-les-Mines, France. He studied medicine at the Salpêtrière Hospital with the great French anatomist Jean-Martin Charcot, who also...
and Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Charles Richet, who called Ossowiecki "the most positive of psychics."
Life
Ossowiecki was born in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in 1877 into an affluent family of former Polish aristocrats. His Moscow-born father, owner of a large chemicals factory and assistant to Dmitri Mendeleev
Dmitri Mendeleev
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev , was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements...
, clung to his Polish heritage and taught his son to speak Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
and to think of himself as a Pole. Stefan Ossowiecki was said to have manifested psychic talents in his youth, much to his family's confusion. When young Stefan told his mother he could see bands of color around people, she took him to an eye doctor, who prescribed drops to cure the condition. The medicine "irritated my eyes but did not diminish my ability," Ossowiecki later recounted.
As a young man, Ossowiecki was enrolled at the prestigious Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University is a major Russian technical university situated in Saint Petersburg. Previously it was known as the Peter the Great Polytechnical Institute and Kalinin Polytechnical Institute .-Imperial Russia:...
, where he was trained in his father's profession of chemical engineering. It was during this period that Ossowiecki allegedly demonstrated an ability to perform psychokinesis
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
.
After earning his degree, Ossowiecki returned to Moscow, where he lived the life of a sybarite and joined the circle of Czar Nicholas II and the Russian court.
In 1915, his father died and Ossowiecki inherited the family chemicals business, making him temporarily a wealthy man. Only three years later, he lost it all as the Bolshevik Revolution swept the country. As a wealthy capitalist and friend of the czar, Ossowiecki was targeted by the new regime. His property was seized, and he was imprisoned. The isolation of a prison cell forced Ossowiecki to "think through many things ... It was then that I began to fully value this gift given me by the Creator, and I understood that by utilization of it I could help others." He was sentenced to be executed but after half a year he was released, due to support of a friend from his youth, now a Bolshevik party official.
He was released in 1919 and fled Russia, penniless at age 42. Ossowiecki entered business as a chemical engineer in Warsaw. He arranged for his consulting work to complement his work helping people in need.
In the 1920s, many experiments were performed in which Ossowiecki allegedly demonstrated clairvoyance
Clairvoyance
The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
(the ability to see objects in sealed containers) and astral projection
Astral projection
Astral projection is an interpretation of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it...
(the ability to travel outside the body). Nobel laureate Charles Richet would write in his book Our Sixth Sense, "If any doubt concerning the sixth sense remains ... this doubt will be dissipated by the sum total of the experiments made by Geley, by myself, and by others, with Stefan Ossowiecki."
In 1939, Ossowiecki married a second time and completed a screenplay for Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
about his life, The Eyes Which See Everything. In May 1939 he made a prediction that there would be no war that year and that Poland would retain good relations with Italy—predictions that did not pan out: on September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
began.
Ossowiecki partly predicted his own death. He told friends that when he died, his body would not be found. He was probably killed by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
during the Warsaw Uprising
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
, on August 5, 1944, at the building of the former Polish Chief Inspectorate of the Armed Forces on Aleje Ujazdowskie (Ujazdów Avenue
Ujazdów Avenue
Ujazdów Avenue is a major thoroughfare parallel to the Vistula River in the Śródmieście district of Warsaw, Poland.Origins of the avenue go to 1724-1731, when King August II ordered construction of the Calvary Road . By 1766 it was already a part of the Royal Route as Belweder Avenue leading to...
). His body was never found; his cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...
is at Powązki Cemetery
Powazki Cemetery
Powązki Cemetery , also known as the Stare Powązki is a historic cemetery located in the Wola district, western part of Warsaw, Poland. It is the most famous cemetery in the city, and one of the oldest...
.