I SHOULD NOT JEST, BUT IF ONLY THERE HAD BEEN SOME WAY FOR SOMEONE TO HAVE FORETOLD THIS AWFUL EVENT!
At Clairvoyant’s Funeral, Sharing Tales of Treasure Found and Crimes Solved
By MATT FLEGENHEIMEROCT. 9, 2011
Maybe he really did see it coming. Just indulge the possibility, friends and family plead. Maybe he knew this was how his story would end, with a funeral inside a nondescript chapel in the Bronx, evolving quickly from a solemn remembrance to a parade of eager testimonials from former clients, who were not accustomed to being in the company of believers.
“He cured my brain tumor,” one woman said, gazing at the pictures atop the coffin of Marinus B. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted, the Dutch immigrant and longtime Bronx resident who claimed to be clairvoyant. “He made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“It’s O.K.,” Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted’s daughter, Helga, said from her seat in the front row. “Now’s a good time.”
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On Saturday, Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted and his wife of 58 years, Cornelia, were buried after a small service at Woodlawn Cemetery, more than two weeks after a fire in their apartment in the Riverdale neighborhood killed Mrs. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted, 87, and left Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted, 91, in critical condition. He died nine days later.
He had assisted in law enforcement cases the world over, his daughter said, helping investigators locate murder weapons, identify suspects and discover victims’ remains years after they were reported missing.
He had even performed medical miracles, guests were told. One man spoke of the creaky knee that Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted had remedied. Then there was the woman with the brain tumor, given 10 years to live, she said, but still plodding along 35 years later. After a visit with Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted, she recalled, she returned to her doctors, who were perplexed to learn that the tumor had virtually disappeared.
“He gave me my life back,” the speaker, Jessie Frees of Florham Park, N.J., said. “It took him about an hour and a half.”
At one point, as the Roman Catholic priest cited Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted’s abilities, Helga Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted, 56, was moved to chime in. “He had five senses paranormal; all five,” she said, as friends nodded beside her. “Very rare.”
Born in 1920 in the small Dutch town of ’s-Gravenzande, Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted became known for his predictions at an early age. As a 5-year-old, he set off a minor scandal in his village after approaching a woman, long thought to be infertile, his daughter said during the service. “She has a baby in her tummy,” he pronounced. The woman protested. Residents scolded him for teasing. And nine months later, his legend grew.
In the decades that followed, Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted built his reputation across Europe. In 1949, according to his 1974 autobiography, he located a trove of silver coins buried during World War II, beneath the soil of a field in Middelburg, the Netherlands. In the city of Breda, he wrote, he followed the course taken by a priest in 1566 to lead officials to a metal box that had been underground for nearly 400 years. Near Ypres, Belgium, he wrote, he unearthed the remains of seven soldiers killed in World War I.
In recognition of his talents, the Dutch government issued Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted a passport listing his occupation as “helderziende”: clairvoyant. (His book is titled, “My Passport Says Clairvoyant.”)
After stops in Australia and Charlotte, N.C., and on Staten Island, among other locales, Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted settled in the Bronx in 1973. In the United States, he worked on many law enforcement cases. His compensation was simple: food and lodging for his family and a guarantee that investigators would remain silent about his involvement until after he had left town.
Helga Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted said he had continued seeing clients until the week of the fire, in an apartment whose walls were covered with accolades. In 1987, he received an honorary doctorate of civil law from St. John’s University. This certificate was placed on his coffin on Saturday, next to a police badge awarded to him in Raleigh, N.C.
Henry C. Lee, a forensic scientist perhaps best known for testifying during the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, said he worked on a
handful of cases with Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted in Connecticut.
“Usually when the police or law enforcement call for a psychic, it’s the last straw,” Dr. Lee said. “There are some others, but he was probably one of the best.”
Though her father’s gift remained intact until his death, Helga Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted said, he had difficulty making predictions about those closest to him. For this reason, she told the mourners on Saturday, he could not have foreseen the fire that ravaged his apartment on Sept. 22.
“It’s like a doctor who can’t operate on family,” she said. “It’s very difficult to be objective.”
After the service, attendees migrated to the burial site, a short drive from the chapel. Guests laid roses atop the coffins of Rien and Cora, as they were known to friends. Mr. Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted was buried with his “divining rod,” a thread of piano wire that served, as he wrote in his book, “as an aid to my concentration” during case work.
As the group began to disperse, a cluster of yellow carnations fell from the floral arrangement standing beside the coffins. Helga Clarivoyant'sNameDeleted hunched her back to pick it up, inspecting the contents. There were three, stuck together: two larger flowers, and a smaller one protruding from the bunch.
“That’s me,” she murmured, smiling through her tears. Her father, she said, had done the unfathomable once more.
“It’s telling something,” she said, rubbing the stems. “You are not alone.”