In Possession of the Facts

One January day in 1939 seventeen-year old Maria Talarico was walking with her grandmother through her hometown of Catanzaro, in southern Italy. As the two passed a bridge, Maria suddenly stopped, stared at the riverbank, and collapsed. Only after being taken home did she recover consciousness and then astonished her famil by addressing her mother in a gruff male voice.

“You are not my mother,” she said. “My mother lives in the wooden hut, and her name is Catarina Veraldi. I am Pepe.”

Pepe Veraldi had drowned himself nearly three years previously, on February 13, 1936. His body had been found under the bridge where Maria had collapsed. Had his spirit names of the dead man’s friends.

Matters took an even more surprising turn when Veraldi’s mother arrived. Still speaking in Veraldi’s voice, Maria declared: “My friends murdered me; they threw mw into the river. Then, as I lay there they beat me with a piece of iron and tried to make the whole thing look like suicide.”

Maria then fled from the house, ran to the bridge, and threw herself off of it, shouting “Leave me alone! Why are you beating me?”

On the ground below, she lay in precisely the same position as had Veraldi when he had been found. The dead man’s mother approached Maria and commanded that her son leave the girl’s body. Maria opened her eyes, looked about, and stood up. She had returned to normal; Veraldi was gone.

No one knew what to make of the bizarre incident at first. The police report on Veraldi’s death suggested that he might have died in the way the possessed girl had described. But the friends she had named could not, or would not, cast further light on the mystery. Besides, Toto had immigrated to South America; Elio was dead.

Then in 1951, Toto, otherwise known as Luigi Marchete, wrote to Veraldi’s mother from Tucuman, Argentina; he confessed to the murder of her son. In the letter, Marchete told of the attention Veraldi had been giving to Lillina, Marchete’s wife. Marchete had beaten Veraldi with an iron bar, with fatal results. After he and his three friends had tried to make the death look like suicide, Marchete had fled to Argentina. To ease his conscience, he was now leaving the fortune he had made to the victim’s mother.

The letter confirmed Maria’s extraordinary episode twelve years before. The spirit of Pepe Veraldi had, it seems, briefly taken possession of the body of Maria Talarico in order to reveal the true circumstances of his death.