Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1896 — A REVERSED MEMORY. [ARTICLE]

A REVERSED MEMORY.

A Man Who Remembers Nothing of ths Past, but Much of the Future. Franklin Hart, 26 years old, whose father lives in Trinity county, ChL, came to Portland, Or., on a visit last June well supplied with funds, which he spent freely. He suddenly disappeared on the morning of July 4, and all efforts of the police to trace him failed. The suicide and foul play theories ran out A large reward was offered i,a a stimulus for the detectives. On July 23 the fact was established that young Hart, on the afternoon of July 4, bought a tourist ticket to Chicago. Chicago was ransacked without locating him. Finally a letter was received from Hart, Sr., in California, saying that when he returned home he found a telegram saying that his son was in a Chicago hospital. Ho lost no time in reaching Chicago, finding Franklin In the County Hospital, convalescent. His son arrived in Chicago July 12, stopping at the Palmer House. On the second night he attempted suicide by asphyxiation with gas. He was sent to the hospital, and though his life was saved his mind was left in a peculiar state. “While Franklin’s physical condition is so good that he will be able to leave the hospital in a day or two,” writes Mr. Hart, “his mental state startles me. His mental vision is supernaturally prospective Instead of being retrospective, and the physicians here tell me that there Is no parallel case on record in any part of the civilized globe. They claim that the phenomena demonstrated in my son’s mentality is one of the many hidden forces in human nature. “In ordinary conversation Franklin is as lucid as ever, yet it is a matter difficult for him to recall past events without hard study. For Instance, when I referred to his Portland visit and his departure from there, it took him two days to recall even the more important facts and features of those events, as they had altogether passed from his memory since the almost tragic affair at the Palmer House.” The other peculiar phase of his case is that he seems to see into the future. For instance, the day prior to Mr. Hart’s arrival in Chicago, Franklin almost verbatim repeated to the doctor attending him the conversation he had with his father forty-eight hours later. In other words, it is said that young Hart has power to read all manner of events, even of the most trifling import, forty-eight hours in advance, with the same clearness that the healthy mind conjures up the past. Another remarkable condition of Franklin’s mind, writes Mr. Hart, Is that after the consummation of an event which he has foretold he is utterly unable to remember It. “Last Friday,” continued the writer, “Franklin told me that on that day he had received a lettr from his mothr. I knw it was a hallucination, but I asked him what it contained; so he repeated to me what he imagined had been written so him. The day following he, indeed, got a letter from his mother without the slightest variation from his prophetic revelation. Every hour in the day my son startles me and the doctors by some evidence of his wonderful mental vision.”