Amazing Lady Wonder and her predictions (8 photos)

All kinds of animal predictors are not such a rare phenomenon. Paul the octopus, Fred the ferret and others amused and delighted the people with their predictions.





But there was one unusual character in history, whose abilities lovers of mysterious phenomena continue to puzzle over to this day.



In 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune printed the erroneous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman." Everyone interviewed, newspapermen and even Democrats expected it to be true before the final count of votes. However, in a small stable in Richmond, Virginia, one horse disagreed.

The prediction of Truman's victory made by a mare named Lady Wonder was just one of many accurate prophecies made by this supposedly clairvoyant animal. Her talents were used daily, from noon to three, for more than thirty years. During this time, Lady Wonder answered questions from more than 150,000 people.





Born on February 9, 1924, the black colt with white legs and three white stockings was the granddaughter of a thoroughbred racehorse. Mrs. Claudia Fonda took up raising the little horse, and she noticed special qualities in the pupil. Fonda bottle-fed Lady and spent a lot of effort developing her pet's intelligence.

The owner was the horse's only company. And Fonda took it upon herself to teach her the alphabet. Within a few months, Lady could easily identify each letter. As her training continued, it became very obvious that this was no ordinary horse. Even the children who played with the Lady in the pasture noticed that she was not like everyone else: they hid the thimble from her, but the horse always found it.



With the mistress

The commands seemed to be carried out even before they were spoken. Has Lady developed a sixth sense?

Whatever power Lady had, Fonda allowed her to demonstrate it by using letter cards to answer any questions. Word of Lady's abilities spread, and by 1927, the mind-reading mare had become famous in Richmond and throughout the country. The lady became so popular that the city council decided to call her not a fortune teller, but an educated horse, allowing Fonda to save $1,000 in annual fees and continue the tourism business.

According to a journalist who witnessed a séance in the late 1920s, as the Lady moved the blocks, she appeared to fall asleep, with her eyelids drooping, as if falling into a state of trance. After reading, she became tense and nervous. During this performance, Lady showed simple tricks, such as knowledge of arithmetic and spelling, that other educated horses had demonstrated before her. But she turned out to be more extraordinary, performing actions that went beyond common knowledge.

She read the date on a coin taken from the viewer's pocket as soon as he saw it. Another visitor moved the clock to 6:10, pressed the dial to the Lady's body and asked what time it showed. “6-1-0,” Lady replied. “If there was any trick to the animal’s supernatural behavior, the mantle of Houdini fell on competent shoulders,” the journalist wrote.



As a growing child, the young Lady outgrew the letter blocks and other symbols, so Fonda built a special typewriter with keys the size of a horse's face. Each time the keys were pressed, a letter appeared, facing the audience. Before each reading, Fonda rearranged the letters, adding another layer of complexity.

The Lady's influence on politics appears to have extended far beyond predicting election results. But politicians weren't the only civil servants heeding Lady's advice. In 1951, police in Quincy, Massachusetts, could not find a single lead in the search for a missing boy. The lady suggested the Pittsfield Water Wheel. This was interpreted as Pit Field Wild Water Quarry, where the boy's body was soon found. A similar incident occurred in Napierville, Illinois, when a Lady predicted that two missing boys would be found in a river near their home. Despite the fact that the river had been previously searched, the bodies were found in it several months later.



It turned out that Lady Wonder gets along well with her four-legged brothers. She was once rumored to have selected twenty-eight of the twenty-eight horses to win the Baltimore race at Pimlico Race Course.

Another story tells of how she found a lost dog that was thought to be dead. Her master, New York psychologist Thomas L. Garrett, has debunked many cases of mind reading and fortune telling throughout the country during his career. Lady was an exception. When she reported that his dog Mickey was alive in Florida, he discovered that a Long Island kennel that had claimed the dog was dead and had faked the beagle's grave had sold the dog for a profit through its Florida branch. Garrett called Lady "a genuine phenomenon."



An article about a horse was published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. It stated that Lady Wonder seemed to be susceptible to telepathy and possessed certain psychic powers. But at the same time, the mare did not have independent thinking, since she could only give the correct answer if someone else in the room knew it.

Milborne Christopher, a non-believer in magic, one of the leading American illusionists of the time, also investigated the Lady's psychic abilities. During a visit in 1956, calling himself John Banks, he asked the Lady her name. Not noticing the deception, the Lady typed "B-E-N-K-S". Christopher tried another test using a pencil and a piece of paper to see if Fonda could use a trick called "pencil reading," in which a magician follows the movement of a pencil to read what is written. He made a move to write 9, but actually wrote 1. Once again, Lady failed by pointing to "9". Christopher concluded that very subtle signals from the coach are responsible for this phenomenon.



The mind-reading mare also predicted her death at the age of thirty. She came close to the prediction, dying on March 19, 1957 at the age of thirty-three. Lady Wonder is buried in a pet cemetery in Richmond, in a residential area, along with two thousand other animals. After the death of her beloved horse, Mrs. Fonda disappeared. Her house and Lady's stable were demolished to make way for the highway. Perhaps Fonda was warned about the construction and her disappearance became necessary.