This Horse Was Said To Be A Psychic, And She Once Helped In The Search For A Missing Boy
In the 1920s, a woman from Richmond, Virginia, named Claudia Fonda, started noticing something strange going on with the horse she had purchased when it was two weeks old.
Her horse, Lady Wonder, then just called Lady, would often come to her when she was merely thinking of looking for her.
Fonda believed that her horse was extraordinary and trained Lady to move numbered and lettered blocks with her nose. By the time she was two, Lady could reportedly spell out words and solve math problems with the blocks.
It was clear that Lady was highly intelligent, but when she correctly predicted the winner of the Dempsey-Tunney boxing match, word began to spread that she was also psychic.
Over 150,000 people sought out Lady Wonder for her advice and predictions. They each paid a dollar to ask the horse three questions.
Apparently, Lady Wonder was able to tell married women their maiden names, guess the gender of unborn children, discover oil wells, forecast the stock market, and call elections, horse races, boxing matches, and ball games.
After Lady Wonder predicted that Gene Tunney would defeat Jack Dempsey in the 1927 world heavyweight championship, researchers from Duke University visited the horse.
They conducted a simple test on her, which involved writing words on a piece of paper, hiding them from view, and asking her to spell them out.
Lady Wonder passed the test with flying colors, even succeeding with longer words like “Carolina” and “Mesopotamia.” The mare’s special mind-reading powers made her famous, but her most well-known feat took place in 1952.
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She was called upon to help with a search for a missing Massachusetts boy. When asked for the boy’s whereabouts, she spelled out “Pittsfield Water Wheel,” a place that did not exist.
But then, authorities realized that she may have meant “Field and Wilde Water Pit,” a nearby abandoned quarry. They searched the quarry, and sure enough, they found the missing boy’s body.
Many people believed in Lady Wonder’s abilities, but there were also just as many skeptics. Not everyone bought the act.
Plus, her answers were often wrong. A psychologist named Thomas L. Garrett thought it was likely that Fonda was giving cues to the animal.
Milbourne Christopher, a magician and revealer of frauds, agreed. In 1956, he visited Lady Wonder’s stable and concluded that she was very well-trained but not a psychic. His tests demonstrated that subtle cues from Fonda helped guide the horse to her answers.
Still, that doesn’t explain how Lady Wonder picked winning racehorses or found missing children. Perhaps she did possess a degree of psychic power.
Lady Wonder died in 1957 at around 32-years-old, and Fonda followed two years later. The magnificent horse is buried at a pet cemetery in Richmond with 2,000 animals.
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