Ep 180: Lady Wonder Part 2

 
 

“One striking feature of the horse’s behavior has not been mentioned, namely, her sleepy appearance when working well. Her head drooped, eyes nearly closed, nostrils relaxed, and she seemed quite inattentive. She moved no more than necessary to touch the required block.”

– Rhine & Rhine, “An Investigation of a ‘mind-reading’ Horse.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Volume 23

 

It seems Lady Wonder was much more than a "One-trick Pony." But even if you consider her one trick to be an abnormal aptitude for intuitiveness and the ability to express it, that's quite a trick for an animal. Her impressive skills were at least intriguing enough to garner a scientific study of her phenomenon by a couple of leading researchers of the day. Joseph Banks Rhine or "J.B." as he was known, and his wife Louisa E. Rhine were the founders of the branch of psychology known as parapsychology, with J.B. credited with coining the term Extrasensory Perception, or E.S.P. In a week, they conducted around 500 experiments on Lady Wonder's powers. While there was no conclusive proof that the horse had an individual and infallible psychic perception, the data collected was enough to astound the Rhines since no human trickery was detected. In the following years, J.B. Rhine would come to doubt his initial conclusions, although he never expounded on his later thinking. Still, he wondered if there wasn't instead a form of telepathy between Lady and her handler Claudia Fonda, which would be nearly as remarkable. Skeptics have claimed that this mere parlor trick was performed by having Lady move over each letter on her "typewriter," at which point Claudia would somehow signal Lady to tap the correct key. However, this would necessitate Lady having to step several feet in either direction to cover every possible letter and number, and the Rhines observed that when she was most effective, the horse was near motionless while in an almost trance-like state. It would also not explain how Claudia then could have answers to questions she would not logically know. If J.B. Rhine's rethinking of his conclusions was correct, it might be just as extraordinary if there was psychical cooperation between Lady and Claudia, one that perhaps Claudia was not even aware of herself. Whether you believe psychic ability with any living creature is real or not, at the very least, the story of Lady Wonder illustrates the profound and special bond humans have with the animals they love.

 
 

Reference Links:

 
 

Location:

Stop 10, Petersburg turnpike, where Clarence and Claudia Fonda kept “Lady Wonder,” and which is now a Richmond, VA city subdivision.

 

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CREDITS:

Episode 180: Lady Wonder Part 2.  Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2020 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Notable Figures, Unexplainable PhenomenaForrest BurgessLady Wonder, horse, psychic, predictions, prophesy, Richmond, Virginia, Times Dispatch, Times-Dispatch, newspaper, missing, fortune, premonition, prognostication, mentalsism, mentalist, Rhine, E.S.P., Extrasensory Perception, Parapsychology, psychology, Zener, Arthur Conon Doyle, Houdini, 20202 Comments