Emily Grant Hutchings

Did Mark Twain dictate a book via the ouija board seven years after his death?That was the claim put forth by Missouri writer Emily Grant Hutchings who, along with spiritualist Lola Hays, claimed to have communicated with the spirit of Mark Twain via the ouiji board in the composition of an "after death" manuscript titled JAP HERRON. Hutchings, like Sam Clemens, was a native of Hannibal, Missouri. She was the daughter of Carl H. Schmidt, an official of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railway Company and his wife Margaret, who held the reputation of being one of the first female physicians in the Mississippi Valley. Emily attended the public schools in Hannibal. She later taught Latin, Greek and German, in the Hannibal high school. After leaving Hannibal, she relocated to St. Louis and worked as a feature writer on the St. Louis Republic and contributed to such magazines as Cosmopolitan and Atlantic Monthly. She married Charles Edwin Hutchings in 1897. Twain corresponded with both Emily and her husband Edwin Hutchings in 1902 after visiting St. Louis and advised her on her writing.