Lady Wonder (February 9, 1924 – March 19, 1957) was a

mare A mare is an adult female horse or other equine. In most cases, a mare is a female horse over the age of three, and a filly is a female horse three and younger. In Thoroughbred horse racing, a mare is defined as a female horse more than f ...

some claimed to have

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

abilities and be able to perform intellectually demanding tasks such as arithmetic and spelling. Lady's owner, Claudia E. Fonda, trained her to operate a device that she used to spell out answers to the more than 150,000 visitors. Nickell, Joe. (2002)
"Psychic Pets and Pet Psychics"
Csicop.org. Retrieved 2014-10-11. Lady was said to have predicted the outcome of boxing fights and political elections, and was consulted by the police in criminal investigations. The parapsychologist researcher

J. B. Rhine Joseph Banks Rhine (September 29, 1895 – February 20, 1980), usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the ''Journ ...

investigated Lady's alleged abilities and concluded that there was evidence for

extrasensory perception Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Univers ...

between human and horse. The magicians and skeptical investigators

Milbourne Christopher Milbourne Christopher (23 March 1914 – 17 June 1984) was a prominent American illusionist, magic historian, and author. President of the Society of American Magicians, an honorary vice-president to The Magic Circle, and one of the founding mem ...

and John Scarne showed that Lady's prediction abilities resulted from Mrs. Fonda employing

mentalism Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognit ...

tricks and signaling the answers to Lady.

Life and activity

Lady was born on February 9, 1924. Clarence and Claudia Fonda adopted the weeks-old filly and called her Lady. Due to her early age, Lady was bottle-fed by her owner, Mrs. Fonda, who also trained Lady using lettered and numbered children's wood blocks in an attempt to teach her the alphabet and numbers so they could communicate. Eventually, Lady outgrew the children's blocks and Mr. Fonda built her a large typewriter, that Lady could use by hitting her nose on padded keys which lifted tin cards containing letters and numbers. This home-made device was used to allegedly communicate with more than 150,000 visitors coming for all around the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. During its long life, several predictions have been attributed to Lady such as predicting the victory of

Gene Tunney James Joseph Tunney (May 25, 1897 – November 7, 1978) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1915 to 1928. He held the world heavyweight title from 1926 to 1928, and the American light heavyweight title twice between 1922 and 192 ...

over

Jack Dempsey William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983), nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926 ...

in a 1927 boxing match, predicting earthquakes and shifts in the stock exchange. According to Mrs. Fonda, Lady predicted all the US presidential elections, except the victory of Truman over Dewey in the

1948 United States presidential election The 1948 United States presidential election was the 41st quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. In one of the greatest election upsets in American history, incumbent President Harry S. Truman, the Democ ...

. However, there are several reports of Lady's prediction being wrong and usually open to human interpretation. Lady died on March 19, 1957 at the age of 33 from

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which m ...

. Lady was buried in the Pet Memorial Park in

Henrico County Henrico County , officially the County of Henrico, is located in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 334,389 making it the fifth-most populous county in Virginia. Henrico County is inc ...

Collaboration with police

Lady's celebrity grew across the United States when she was credited to have helped to solve the case of a missing 4-year-old boy, Danny Matson, in

Quincy, Massachusetts Quincy ( ) is a coastal U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston's immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 101,636, making ...

. When prompted about Matson's location, Lady spelled "Pittsfield Water Wheel". The police investigation concluded that there was no water wheel in

Pittsfield, Massachusetts Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all ...

. The police chief William Ferrazzi tried to interpret Lady's message and wonder if she might mean "Field and Wilde Water Pit", a quarry close to Matson's house which had already been searched. Further searches found the child's body at the quarry. In December 1952, two children went missing in

Naperville, Illinois Naperville ( ) is a city in DuPage and Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is in the Chicago metro area, west of the city. Naperville was founded in 1831 by Joseph Naper. The city was established by the banks of the DuPage river, ...

. The boy's mother resorted to Lady which suggested that the children would be found at the

DuPage River The DuPage River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed May 13, 2011 tributary of the Des Plaines River in the U.S. state of Illinois. Course The river begins as two ...

, a river close to the boy's house from where both children went missing. Several weeks later the bodies of both children were found over the frozen river. Skeptics point out that in both cases these locations had been or were being searched already, and Lady's intervention served only to reinforce the beliefs of the inquirers.

Investigations

During the winter of 1927–1928,

one of the initial proponents of

, tested the psychic abilities of Lady Wonder, concluding that there was no evidence of either conscious or unconscious signaling by the researchers or Mrs. Fonda and that his results could be explained only using the "

telepathic Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic ...

explanation". In a follow-up study, in December 1928, Rhine noticed Lady's telepathic abilities had been lost and that her answers depended heavily on Mrs. Fonda signaling the mare. In 1956, the magician

was skeptical about the alleged abilities of Lady and decided to visit the Fondas, presenting himself as John Banks, and when asked Lady for his name she spelled "Banks". Christopher suspected Mrs. Fonda's involvement in Lady's answers, and he decided to test if Fonda was employing a technique called pencil reading, where mentalists track the writing movement to "predict" what is written. To test this hypothesis, Christopher tricked Mrs. Fonda by pretending to write the number 9, touching the paper only in the downstroke, thus writing the number 1. When he asked Lady which number was written in the paper she readily spelled "9". Christopher's tests concluded that Fonda was involved in Lady's apparent intelligence and that she achieved this by providing subtle cues when Lady's head was in the correct letter. John Scarne, a New Jersey magician, also investigated Lady's abilities and arrived at the same conclusion, Lady's behavior has highly dependent on cues given by Mrs. Fonda when holding a whip. Scarne also concluded that when Mrs. Fonda was not aware of the answer, Lady usually answered incorrectly.

Gallery

File:Lady Wonder sign.png , Sign for Lady Wonder File:Lady Wonder horse.png , Photograph of Lady Wonder

References

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External links