BOY WONDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 142, 17 June 1936, Page 9

BOY WONDER.

REMARKABLE SIGHT. MEDICAL MEN MYSTIFIED. PSYCHIC POWERS ALSO. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LOS ANGELES, May 16. Pat Marquis, a thoroughly normal 12-year-old boy, has what doctors | term super-normal sight. Moreover, while heavily blindfolded, he seems to have remarkable psychic powers. For this reason 1.50 doctors met at the Hollywood Hospital, where the youngster gave them an extraordinary demonstration. Dr. Cecil Reynolds, F.R.C.S., presented the boy to the assembled physicians, and Dr. William Daniel presided. Three eye specialists—Dr. A. G. Hovde, Dr. Henry S. Nes'ourn, and Dr. Lloyd Burrows — superintended the blindfolding. Dark goggles encased in adhesive tape were placed over his eyes and three laiyers of adhesive tape were added, clear down to the, dov's lips. On top of this was a thick bandage. The boy went into a mild form of trance. He then duplicated gestures made by the various doctors, who would put up three, two or all five fingers, fold their arms, hold their hands over their heads and make other postures. Asked questions, he either replied verbally or wrote answers. Dr. Armen Fareed, a. Persian physician, received his reply written in Persian, although the boy has no knowledge of that language. The doctors put the boy to every test imaginable. With an ouija board, which was twisted around and placed in odd positions, he unfailingly indicated every letter and number upon it correctly. Thus blindfolded, he deciphered the most minute lettering on a small gold watch fob belonging to Robin Watson, Canadian author. He c-ould accurately describe anything suggested. He fetched a given book from a remote shelf and op«ned it at a page indicated.

WTiile in the trance the boy is supposed to be an ancient Persian, Napeji, and in this guise he gives certain predictions which have proved uncannily accurate. Pat is the so# of Mrs. Vivian Marquis and a pupil at the John Burroughs Junior High School in Los Angeles. At present the doctors prefer to designate his unusual powers as "super-normal sight and cognition," while reserving judgment on his psychic ability. Dr. Reynolds said the boy, when in a trance, told him that consciousness is seated in the mid-brain, between the colliculi, and that he usually employs the left optic thalamus in his demonstrations of sightless vision. Xapeji, the doctor said, also told him that lie was a Persian to the Himalayas in the year 1080. "How he could know anatomy and modern medical terms is beyond me," said Dr. Reynolds. "Certainly the boy knows nothing of them."