The Spirits of Covasna Street
Two Mysterious Family Memories
By Ovi Catanescu, with memories and contributions from his brother Adi and his aunt Adina
The Message Nobody Wanted to Receive
I remember an evening in our apartment on Covasna Street, in the Berceni neighborhood of Bucharest, back when our grandparents were living with us and my aunt Adina was visiting.
We were all gathered around the table in our living room. On the table was a sheet of paper with all the letters of the alphabet written on it. Beside it sat a tiny saucer from our coffee set.
My mother was conducting what I can only describe as a spiritualist experiment.
Normally, the participants would each place a finger on the saucer and wait for it to move from one letter to another. But, as my brother Adi remembers, things began differently that evening.
We were all relaxed, perhaps a little too relaxed, and nobody seemed to be taking the experiment particularly seriously.
The saucer was turned upside down, and nobody was touching it.
Almost jokingly, my mother asked:
"Is there a spirit in this room?"
And then something unexpected happened.
The saucer moved.
Nobody was touching it.
We all froze.
Suddenly, the relaxed atmosphere disappeared. What had begun almost as a game had turned into an experience that frightened us all.
My mother placed two fingers on the saucer and continued the experiment. The saucer began moving from one letter to another, spelling out the answer to her first question:
D. A.
YES.
My mother continued:
"Are you a good spirit or an evil spirit?"
The saucer began moving again, indicating three letters:
R. A. U.
EVIL.
At that moment, I began experiencing something far more disturbing than ordinary fear.
It was a strange, deeply unsettling sensation that I couldn't explain. Something about what was happening in that room filled me with an unusual sense of dread.
The only other time I remember experiencing anything similar was when I watched the movie The Exorcist.
Except that this time, I wasn't watching a movie.
I was sitting in our living room, at our family table, watching my own mother with two fingers resting on a little saucer that seemed to move from one letter to another.
Adi and I were already in high school, and we knew our mother very well. Neither of us had any reason to believe she was trying to deceive us, which made the experience even more disturbing.
I no longer remember every question that followed or all the answers we received. But the final exchange remains engraved in my memory.
Toward the end of the evening, my mother asked:
"When am I going to die?"
The saucer began moving from one letter to another, spelling out a single word:
C. U. R. Â. N. D.
SOON.
Then my mother asked one final question:
"What am I going to die from?"
Once again, the saucer began moving across the sheet of paper.
R. A. C.
RAC.
CANCER.
A Word That Reveals the Spirit's Age
Looking back, Adi noticed a particularly important detail that we hadn't paid enough attention to at the time.
When the evil spirit answered our mother's question about the disease she would die from, it used the word "rac," not "cancer."
"Rac" is an old Romanian term once used to describe this terrible disease. At the time of our experiment, the word was no longer commonly used, being familiar mainly to much older generations.
None of us present at that séance would ordinarily have used that term.
The origin of the word "rac" goes back much further than we might have imagined. Its roots lie in ancient Greek medicine, where tumors were compared to the shape of a crab. The term was later translated into Latin as "cancer." In Romanian, "rac" remained a popular name for the disease, particularly among older generations.
For Adi, the history of this word reinforces his belief that the spirit with whom our mother appeared to communicate belonged to another era.
And I believe Adi has a point about the significance of this detail. For us, the use of the word "rac" that evening remains another clue about the identity and age of the spirit with whom our mother seemed to communicate.
That was the end of our experiment.
Not long afterward, my mother became ill. Eventually, she died of lung cancer.
My mother's illness and death deserve a separate story. But I have never forgotten that evening on Covasna Street, the strange sensation I experienced, or those final two answers spelled out by the tiny saucer.
Adina and the Face in the Wedding Ring
Recently, when I spoke with my aunt Adina, she confirmed that she remembered the spiritualist session on Covasna Street.
Then, together with Adi, she helped me reconstruct another extraordinary experience that took place when she was living with us in Bucharest.
Our friendship with the Pătrașcu family had begun during our childhood in Brăila.
Bebe Pătrașcu was one of our neighborhood friends. When we moved to Bucharest, Bebe initially stayed with us in our apartment. About three months later, the rest of his family moved to Bucharest as well.
Bebe's mother, Mrs. Pătrașcu, was the person who told Adina about a rather unusual experiment.
At the time, Adina was thirty years old and living with us in our apartment on Covasna Street.
She had begun worrying that she might never get married and would remain an old maid.
One day, Mrs. Pătrașcu told her about a ritual through which an unmarried woman might be able to see the face of her future husband.
Naturally, Adina became interested.
Mrs. Pătrașcu explained exactly what she needed to do and even gave her a wedding ring for the experiment.
Adina was supposed to prepare a glass of water and place the wedding ring inside it. The glass would then be placed on a plate covered with sand, with two candlesticks holding candles positioned on either side.
One evening, our entire family went out to a party. Only Adina and my brother Adi remained at home.
It was the perfect opportunity for her experiment.
Adina prepared everything exactly as Mrs. Pătrașcu had instructed her.
But before going into her room, she gave Adi a rather unusual warning:
"If you hear me screaming, come to my room immediately!"
I can only imagine what Adi must have thought when he heard that!
Then Adina went into her room and began the experiment.
She looked carefully through the wedding ring submerged in the glass of water.
And there, according to her recollection, she saw the face of a man.
Then something even more surprising happened.
She also saw the faces of two children.
Adina remembers this experience very clearly, even after all these years.
The following year, she met Dan, the man who would become her husband.
She married at thirty-one, and together they had two sons, Răzvan and Bogdan.
Adi also remembered this story. Recently, he told me that what he remembers most vividly is Adina's request that he come immediately if he heard her screaming.
When I spoke with Adina, I wanted to hear the story directly from her and make sure I had understood all the details correctly.
I asked how old she had been when she performed the experiment.
"Thirty," she replied.
Then I asked whether she was absolutely certain that everything had happened exactly as she remembered it.
She assured me that the story was true and that she would never lie to me.
And I believe her.
Epilogue: The Mystery of December 6
The story of our spiritualist experiment on Covasna Street did not end that evening. At least, not for Adi.
Recently, my brother reminded me of a detail I had forgotten: our communication with the spirit had taken place on December 6.
And according to his recollection, from that day forward, every year on December 6, some kind of misfortune seemed to strike our family.
One year, our Christmas tree caught fire. Another year, a radiator pipe burst. Other unfortunate incidents followed, until that particular date began to take on a special significance.
But the most painful coincidence was still to come.
Our mother also died on December 6.
Adi remembers that with her death, the string of misfortunes that seemed to follow us every year on that same date finally came to an end.
But the story of December 6 doesn't end there.
On December 6, 1990, my son Gabriel was born.
When I reminded Adi of this coincidence, he told me that he already knew and that he had always considered Gabriel's birth on that very same date a good sign.
And so, a date that had once been associated with a mysterious experience from our youth, a series of unfortunate events, and the loss of our mother also became a day of joy.
Perhaps all these events were nothing more than coincidences. Perhaps we humans try to find connections between the experiences that have shaped our lives, especially when they involve the people we love.
But for our family, December 6 will never be just another day.
It is the anniversary of an experience we still cannot explain, the day we lost our mother, and the day we celebrate Gabriel's birth.
And somewhere behind all those memories remains the mystery of that little saucer that moved without anyone touching it, one December evening in our home on Covasna Street.
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