Ashley goes on:

I’m sure you are all anxiously waiting to hear how you did with photo test I posted earlier this week.  Some of you did quite well!

Some comments I would consider hits:

• Young, unhappy woman facing a storm of trouble. (Just read her bio…)
• An older, wealthy man’s daughter or wife. (Billy Lemp was 10 years Lillian’s senior)
• I feel heavy when I look at her photo. I feel sad and weighted down. The color blue….(the Lavender Lady!)
• I get she is a mother. (mother of an only child)
• She’s so young and seems so petite. (She was 4’ 11”!)
• Lives in a port town (saw boats) (St. Louis would definitely be considered a river port city at the time Lillian was alive).
• Feeling she was wealthy and a mother (both are correct)
• I keep getting something about clothes – dressmaking perhaps. (She wore Lavender all the time and had a dressmaker on staff at her home to make her lavender dresses).
• Someone picked up on Roses – very good!

Some comments I would consider near hits:

• I get a smell as close as I can tell is like molasses….or similar…very close though….maybe butterscotchy  (The whole area around Lemp Mansion smells like boiled hops because of its proximity to the Anheuser Busch brewery, so there is a very distinct smell. To me, it smells more like dogfood, though LOL).
• I feel like she was suffering from some mental illness bipolar, depression. She was in a very dark phase and she committed suicide. (She didn’t but many people around her did.)

Some of you picked up on “strong voice, independence” – well, I don’t know about being outspoken but the lady certainly knew how to make a statement – see her bio below:

The woman in the photo is Lillian Handlan Lemp (1877-1960), of local (St. Louis, Missouri) fame for being married to William J. Lemp, Jr. of the Lemp Family Brewery/Lemp Mansion, known by many as one of the most haunted places in America. Here’s some background info:

“Lillian was known as the “Lavender Lady” for her love of the color. She and William Jr. (Billy) married under two interlocking hearts of white roses with “Lemp” spelled out in purple violets.  She was the belle of St. Louis society, daughter of a wealthy manufacturer of railroad supplies. She became known as the “Lavender Lady,” for she not only wore this color exclusively, employing a staff of full-time seamstresses, but even kept seven carriages, one for each day of the week, all leather-upholstered in her signature color. She created a sensation wherever she went.

It was this sensation, her husband told the court, that caused him to want a divorce in 1909. According to Walker, Billy charged his wife with “the excessive wearing of the color lavender to attract public attention.” In addition, he claimed she used profane language and was unfaithful to him. She charged that he brought women to her apartments and had beaten her up and threatened her with a revolver. There were also rumors that Billy had an illegitimate son during the marriage who was born with Downs Syndrome and lived in the attic. During the divorce proceedings, Lillian wore all black. Needless to say, the courtroom was a circus, and the newspapers delighted in salacious stories of millionaires at war. The presiding judge awarded the Lavender Lady a divorce with sole custody of their son and alimony of $6,000 a year. Billy was awarded weekly visitation, in effect tying Lillian to him. She sued for a retrial within weeks and took her suit to the Missouri Supreme Court, which awarded her a lump sum alimony of $100,000—“the largest such sum ever awarded in Missouri” up to that point.

Lillian never remarried and lived to the age of eighty-three. St. Louis author Elizabeth Benoist said, “The Lavender Lady was pitiful after that [divorce]. She still wore lavender, but she never got over the divorce.” Benoist also said, “She was right pretty, but crazy as a coot.”

As for the rest of the family, Lillian’s brother-in-law, Fredrick Lemp, died of a heart attack in the Lemp Mansion. Her father-in-law, William Lemp Sr., committed suicide in the Lemp Mansion. Her sister-in-law, Elsa Lemp Wright, committed suicide at her own home. Another of Lillian’s brother-in-laws, Charles Lemp, shot his dog before turning the gun on himself, once again at the Lemp Mansion. Her ex-husband, Billy (William Jr.) Lemp committed suicide in the Lemp Mansion as well. Interestingly, although she and William got divorced and he later remarried, Lillian was still buried in the Lemp Family Mausoleum.

I’ve yet to visit Lemp Mansion, so I have no way to confirm if any of the architectural clues some of you were getting were correct – however, my buddy and fellow CE member Patrick just went there, took LOTS of photos and posted them all on his blog (http://bigseance.com/2012/10/10/the-lemp-mansion-in-st-louis/) the very day I wrote this! So, mosey on over and see if the rooms or places you saw match any of his photos! Thanks PK 🙂

One thing I always found interesting when doing exercises of this nature in a group setting (like a class with many other people) is that when we went around the room and read off our list of impressions, I would always have at least one thing on my list from each person’s list in the room – whether or not that thing was a “hit” or a complete “miss.”  Many others in our class would experience a similar phenomena. We were picking up on one another’s thoughts, essentially. There was another exercise that we never got around to trying, but I’d heard that previous groups were stunned at the results. Basically, one volunteer would leave the room. While they were gone, the group would decide something that they wanted that person to do – a place to go in the room, an item to pick up, whatever. The person would come back into the room and everyone would project that thought to them, and the person would do whatever it was they thought they were being instructed to do.  According to my teacher, that exercise has a 100% success rate with her classes. It has never failed.

I think this is a testament to the power of group consciousness and how another person’s thoughts can affect your own, which leads me to my next topic –  Telepathy! I rarely read minds, but when I do, it’s never without expressed permission…

This sort of activity tends to work better with people who are close to you, thanks to the energetic bonds you have built with them over time (some people call these cords). I practice with my husband and it works great.

So sit with your partner in a quiet room and do a brief meditation. When you’re ready, ask your partner to choose a number between 1 and 10 and project that number to you in the form of a visual – for example: The number is 3, and they project an image of three monkeys sitting all in a row.  If it helps, tell them to imagine that image going from their head into yours (it’s just a visualization, setting intentions). Look, listen, feel what is being projected to you – whatever your dominant ability is.   As you get those feelings or impressions, say them out loud (no matter HOW unrelated they may seem) and then make a final “guess.”

If you don’t get it right, don’t feel bad. Try it with a different partner – sometimes certain people just aren’t good “senders” – it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a bad receiver.

When I receive projected information, I tend to get it coming in on the left side (I’m predominantly clairvoyant) but that’s not always the case with everybody. Remember, your experiences are going to be very personal and depend highly on how you receive information and how you interpret it.

So try it out at home and let us know how you did.