The Harbinger, a Christmas Party and the Healers

Ambrose and Olga Worrall

 

This article features excerpts from The Gift of Healing: A Personal Story of Spiritual Therapy (1965) by Ambrose and Olga Worrall.  The book was also published with the title The Miracle Healers.  There are incidents chronicled in the book that reveal that Matthew Manning isn't the only spiritual healer who experienced phenomena associated with what is usually referred to as a 'poltergeist,' as mentioned in a previous blog article.

 

She was twenty-one years old.  She had finished her education and was working as a private secretary in a business office in Cleveland.  In addition she carried on an extremely active social life.  Vivacious and pretty, she liked parties and laughter, music and dancing.  At the same time she was active in the Russian Orthodox Church in which she had been brought up, and played her part in the smooth operations of the large house where she lived with her parents and her innumerable brothers and sisters.  For Olga Nathalie Ripich, born November 30, 1906, the combination of work and family life and the rush of social activities provided an exuberant pattern of life in that December of 1927.

 

One night in the second week of that December, after she had retired to her bedroom and turned out the light, laying awake in the darkness, she began to hear knocking on the wall, in the dresser, and then in the cedar chest.  The knocking started rather slowly and quietly.  Gradually it grew louder and faster.  Within a few minutes it had become so loud that it could be heard throughout the house.

The first night these noises were heard, the knocking lasted perhaps five to ten minutes—long enough to rouse the household.  Olga's mother thought it must be Olga herself making the noise, and she came into the bedroom and demanded to know why Olga was making all this racket.  "You're waking everybody up," she stated.

"I'm not making these noises, mother," Olga said.  "I don't know who or what is making them."

The noises continued.

A few seconds later the noises stopped abruptly.  The family went back to sleep.  The next night, however, they started again.

 

It would go on for about ten minutes each night in Olga's room.  The entire family heard it.

Mrs. Ripich finally told her daughter, "We've got to do something to stop this; it is driving us all insane.  We are sleepless in the house.  There is a woman from the old country who knows of these things. I am going to talk with her, Olga."

Olga, with all the impatience and self-assurance of youth, told her mother, "Mother, I don't believe in old ladies from the old country.  It's all a lot of superstition."

"But the noises aren't superstition," her mother pointed out as she made the sign of the cross.

And the noises went on.

 

The woman Olga's mother intended to visit for help was one of those with a wealth of knowledge of old wives' tales.  They know old spells and rituals and conjure up old sayings and beliefs to explain such things as these knockings in the night.  (Although Olga had many psychic experiences in her youth, nothing like these rappings that came in the night, always after all the lights were extinguished, had ever occurred to her before.)

About a week after the noisy intrusions began, Olga's mother went to the woman and told her the story.  The woman at once decided that Olga was bewitched and that the spell had to be broken. 

 

Olga's mother returned and told her what the old woman had said Olga must do.  Olga refused.  She said it was crazy and she wasn't bewitched and she refused to go through these rituals.  That night, however, the knocking grew louder and more disturbing to the entire household.

 

"All right, now I've done it," she told her mother dutifully.  And then added, "And we'll see if anything happens.  Anyway, these noises seem friendly to me, as though they were trying to tell me that something wonderful is going to happen to me."

What occurred was that the noises and banging became worse that night than at any previous time.

 

It was about a week later that my role in this began when a young man who happened to be president of a college club to which Olga belonged invited me to accompany him to a Christmas party that was to be given in a private home.  Members of the club took turns giving parties in their home, he explained.  This Christmas party happened to be given in the home of Olga Ripich.  So I went with this young man to Olga's Christmas party.

That was how we met.  And from the very first moment I found myself caught by Olga's fair-haired beauty.  Something else had happened also that startled me, although I did not speak of it to her at that time.  I had the feeling, almost the certainty, that I had seen her or met her before, that we had known each other on a totally different level of existence.

It was as if we were not strangers.

I have already noted elsewhere that psychic gifts often do not work at all in the merely mundane matters of life.  Apparently romance is in this category. In any case, neither Olga nor I had any extrasensory perception that the other party had interest in psychic matters of any sort.

Certain factors did work for us.  At the party, for example, everyone gave and received a gift, chosen by chance.  Mine was from Olga.  And after I had left the party I discovered I had forgotten the gift on the piano.  This gave Olga the opportunity to write a note, asking me to drop by and pick it up.  Even before I received the letter, however, I had written one of my own—in verse, as it happened; I had discovered that Olga's original invitation was in verse.

All this note-writing, gift-giving and gift-leaving and picking up, served to bring us together.  Within a few days we were going out on our first date.

 

Within two weeks I knew that I was in love with Olga.  I was worried about this other aspect of my life—the psychic aspect—and how I should best explain it to her.  I did begin to drop an occasional word or sentence to indicate some interest in that field; these were hints, testing words.  I was somewhat surprised, in fact, that she seemed to understand so much of what I was trying to tell her. Neither of us, however, made any open commitment, each was afraid of driving away the other.

Within a very few weeks I knew that I wanted to marry Olga and I told her so.  By that time I think we were both sure in our hearts.  Long after we were married, Olga told me, "The night you asked me to marry you—I felt as if I had come home."

The Christmas party at which we met took place on December 27.  I proposed to Olga on February 4.

Once she had accepted, I realized that I had to tell her fully and openly about the psychic side of my life.  In as simple, realistic a way as I could, I told her of the various events that I had experienced.

At that moment, as I related those things, I felt I was putting my future on the line.

To my amazement Olga showed no signs of shock or disbelief but listened intently, warmly, and finally said, "Ambrose, I too have these experiences.  I too see people from the other world.  And I also have been used in healing."

It was a strange turn for both of us.  In dealing with others, both Olga and I could often cross the bridge of time into the past, even into the future.  Yet we had no glimmering of the truth about ourselves.

None of it mattered, of course, the world was ahead of us, the world to conquer; we were young, in love, concerned with ourselves and our future.

I had to explain to her that our company, the Glenn L. Martin Company, was opening a large new plant near Baltimore, and I was assigned to help open the plant and to remain there in Baltimore.  So we would be moving within a few months after we were married.  To Olga this meant uprooting her whole life, tearing herself from her family and her home.

There was so much she did not know about me or the world of England that I had come from, just as I knew so little about her life and her world.

It was long after we were married before Olga told me the story of the knockings of the bedroom wall and in the furniture.

When she did tell me, I said to her, "Olga, that was going on just about the time you and I met, just before Christmas.  Why didn't you speak of it to me after you realized my own interest in these things?"

 

 

"But the knockings stopped, Ambrose," Olga explained with infinite patience.  "They stopped and haven't been heard again.  Not since the night you and I met—the night of that party in my home."