I authored this book between 1977 and 1979, working from memories and notes I had taken and kept through the years since I first encountered the entity who maintains that he is Fritz Wunderlich. It is not a work of fiction. Every word describing what happened to me over the eleven year period between 1966 and 1977 is true.

In no way do I claim that any of the information pertaining to his personal life or the manner of his death obtained from him or other persons is correct. I can't say it's false either. I just don't know. I do know what effect it had on me, though, and that's what this book is about: my search for proof of survival of the human spirit after bodily death. The reader is invited to join me on this search, and to draw his/her own conclusions, keeping this in mind: if Fritz Wunderlich survived, we all survive.

In most cases, names have been changed to protect the innocent--and perhaps the guilty. Only those who were personally involved will know the real truth.

One Sunday afternoon in late September, 1966, as we sat in the living room of our Los Angeles home, my husband, Ronnie remarked, "Fritz Wanderstern is dead."

Ronnie was reading the music section of the newspaper. I, immersed in the comics, was unable to place the name. Without any real curiosity, I asked, "Who's Fritz Wanderstern?"

"Oh, just a German tenor," Ronnie replied, his voice registering slight annoyance. Any show of musical ignorance on my part usually rankled him; he expected me to keep pace with his superior knowledge of the art.

"What a shame," I said, thinking it probably was; but Fritz "Whatsit" was unknown to me. Besides, I didn't care all that much for tenors. The few I had known personally had either seemed rather dull, or had displayed an amazing amount of vanity which far exceeded their abilities. The voice register didn't particularly appeal to me either--I much preferred baritones and basses. I returned to the exciting events occurring in Apartment 3-G, and soon forgot tenors in general, Fritz Wanderstern in particular.

Money was never plentiful in those days, but there was always enough to augment our collection of classical records; thus it grew, slowly but endlessly. Friday evening of each week was reserved for a feast or snack (as the purse would allow) of record buying. Our purchases were usually limited to two or three items carefully selected by Ronnie, whose thorough knowledge of recorded music enabled him to choose judiciously. While Ronnie searched through hundreds of records, I waited. For a time I would chat with the sales clerks; then I would simply stand around, trying to curb my impatience to get out to dinner. Rarely, if ever, did I look through the records on display.

That's why, on the Friday following Ronnie's announcement of Fritz Wanderstern's death. I was surprised to find myself browsing through a bin of European imported recordings. Suddenly, as though I had known precisely what I was looking for, I extracted a record from the bin. "Hmm," I thought, "I'd better buy this one. Now that he's dead he won't be doing any more recording." The record in my hand: Fritz Wanderstern, singing famous operatic arias. That in itself should have put me off, as opera, like tenors, didn't interest me to any great degree. My taste in vocal music centered on art songs, baroque cantatas and oratorio. Nevertheless, I HAD to have that record! I could hardly tear my gaze from the photograph on the cover--that of a dark, handsome, dreamy-eyed man in 16th or 17th century costume. He's probably just a model, I mused, it couldn't be the singer himself. I held onto the record as though I feared it would somehow fly out of my hands, and did not release it until we were ready to finalize our purchases. I then gave it up just long enough for the cashier to ring up the sale and bag it with the records Ron had chosen.

As we drove home I berated myself, both silently and aloud, for having made this foolish and uncharacteristic purchase--a dead tenor singing opera. Ugh! I could have bought a decent pair of sandals for the price!

When we arrived home I couldn't wait to hear the result of my folly. I set the record on the turntable, placed the tone arm on the record and--a MIRACLE! Floating out from the speakers came the warmest, sexiest, most glorious voice I had ever heard! As I listened I was entranced, wrapped around by this magnificent voice. Again I gazed at the cover photo, wondering how anyone could look and sound like that and live. Then I remembered--he wasn't living!

I turned the record sleeve over, hoping to find biographical notes. They were there, but in German-I couldn't read them. Looking further, I found the English translation, which told a little about his short career, and even less about his personal life.

Long before the record ended I knew the owner of this exciting voice and fantastic face had caught me in his net. From that moment on I began to haunt every record store in town in search of his recordings. These, as imports from Germany, were few--and hard to locate. Among these turned up, I found one which gave his birth date. Noting that Fritz had been barn with the Sun in Libra, my enthrallment increased. I love Libras!

Ronnie, probably one of the world's most astute record collectors, also plays the violin and viola--well. Early in our marriage he sensed that I had an aptitude for the cello. We acquired an instrument, I found an excellent teacher and started lessons. I had studied for about tour months when Ronnie and I moved from Indiana to Los Angeles. My search for a new teacher proved fruitless; those I tried lacked the patience necessary to my sensitivity--and my reluctance to practice. I finally learned by doing and eventually wound up as permanent cellist of our own chamber music group.

My real joy is, and has always been, singing: I was not born with the physical prerequisites of a great voice. (Actually, I had a range of approximately five notes, including the two that didn't crack.) The desire to express this joy in song, therefore, remained unsatisfied. One day I realized that I could no longer tolerate the frustration brought on by hearing others sing while unable to do so myself. I sought, and found, a teacher willing to take me as a beginning student; resultantly, after several years of study, I developed a singing voice of sorts--at least good enough for performances with choral groups or as a soloist with our own ensemble. Through my interest in singing I met Frances, the daughter of one of Ronnie's record-collecting cronies.

Unlike me, Frances had been endowed with a gorgeous, natural soprano voice, and blessed with a rare tvpe) of physical beauty--soft features, good natural coloring, and long, chestnut-brown hair. A Cancerian, she was sensitive and moody at times, but generallv projected warmth and good humor. She and I could be classed as opposites, each serving to balance the other. One thing we shared in common, besides singing, was a sense of humor. When we couldn't find a reason for laughter we created one! Frances and I had been close friends for about two years when Fritz "arrived".

Approximately a week after I acquired my first "Fritzy record", Ronnie and I were visited by Frances and her mother, Jeanne . I had previously praised Fritz's singing, now they had core to hear my exciting discovery for themselves. I put the record on. After the second aria, Jeanne and Frances both commented ecstatically on the beauty and facilitv of Fritz's singing. I handed the record sleeve bearing Fritz's picture to Frances, expecting her to say something like,"All that voice and handsome, too." Instead, she glanced at the picture, then hastily turned it face down. Noting that she looked upset, I asked, "What's wrong?"

Seeming genuinely puzzled, she replied,"I don't know. He's beautiful, but I just can't bear to look at him."

Frances and I worked in the same office, Processing group health insurance claims. One day, during a coffee break, we began discussing astrology. I had brought along a book which outlined the love-natures of the various sun signs so that we might check out Frances' latest heart-interest, a Taurean she had recently met. After learning all about Taurus, I started reading about Libra--just for fun. One phrase in particular caught my eye. "He loves them and leaves them." Attempting to quell the uneasy feeling this gave me, I made a feeble joke about it, and Frances and I laughed. Actually, we both had been laughing even more than usual that week. Love, more than anything, else. has the magical pm~er to bring laughter bubbling up to the surface for no Apparent reason-and Frances and I both were falling in love; she, with a man more than twice her age, and I--with a slightly deceased tenor.

The coming events were beginning to take shape, gathering momentum as they sped toward us,

I have always had a keen interest in the "supernatural." At age six I voraciously read Grimm's fairy tales and other similar books. By the time I reached seventh grade I idolized Poe. Horror comics then captured my attention, and after that a monthly magazine, Weird Tales. The vast region of the unknown fascinated and intrigued me; it also frightened me , but I rather enjoyed the fear, because I knew such things could not possibly happen in real life--least of all to me.

My early religious training didn't take. I was unable to accept theories about God--I wanted, if not proof, at least substantial evidence. I could neither see nor hear God, therefore I doubted His existence; nevertheless, just to play it safe, I never failed to say my nightly prayers.

While still in my teens I "discovered" astrology. Although I didn't fully understand how it functioned, intuition told me it had a logical foundation. I decided to test it. Learning, from astrology magazines, the basic characteristics of persons born under each of the twelve signs I then tried to fit these traits onto the corresponding signs of my friends and relatives. In most cases the descriptions matched; enough to convince me that astrology was not just a theory--whether one had "faith" in it or not, it worked!

I can't remember when I first bought a Ouija board-it seems as though I've always owned one. I had used it with various people off and on for years, but always just for fun. I seldom took its revelations seriously, although at tines a bit of valid information would come through. Thoroughly ingrained with skepticism, I never really considered the board as anything more than an amusement--a means of sharpening the edge of a dull evening.

In 1953, Edward, One of several platonic male friends, invited me to meet his mother, Marie. I found her to be a thoroughly fascinating person, full of hilarious stor ies about her departed husband, a stingy, drunken plumber, and how she had outwitted him at every turn. Furthermore, she "had the power." She could read past, present and future using ordinary playing cards. Marie read for me many times, with astonishing accuracy. I asked her how she was able to furnish so much information from the small number of cards she used, and she explained that the layout merely pave her a focus for concentration. Following the general indication of the cards, she then tuned in on "another source"-somewhere outside her conscious mind. The information would flow in as she read. I studied her method, but my efforts were confined to learning the basic meaning of each individual card. The mysterious outside source eluded me at that time.

Edward, Marie and I had attended several spectacular seances at a local spiritualist church. The church also offered a course in mediumship, which we decided to try. Each budding medium had a spirit guide appointed, who spoke directly (through another medium) to his pupil. I dropped out after two classes, slightly piqued because Edward got Immanuel Kant for his guide, while I inherited a Mr. Greenwood, who rashly admitted he had not been anyone of importance on earth. Edward and Marie left the class shortly after I did. We then agreed that it might prove interesting to try a seance on our own. Marie wanted to try getting in touch with her husband, who had died not too long before. We invited a few members of the mediumship class, including a man who claimed to be a full-fledged medium. With all the power we had available we were sure to succeed.

We sat in the darkness, hands touching, around Marie's kitchen table. As is customary with some spiritualist groups we began by singing a hymn--it is believed that music stimulates the spirits, making them more prone to communication. Sounding as we did, I feared that any self-respecting spirit would have fled from the scene long before the last note hit the ground; but, no-manifestations began almost immediately. Seeming very faint and far away, a tiny voice was struggling to make itself heard. Marie thought it might be her deceased husband and said tentatively, "Ed, Ed, is that you?" No answer. Then again the faint, garbled sounds.

My patience had very nearly worn through by that time. I remarked drily,"It sounds like someone's stomach growling."

In a somewhat embarrassed voice, the "medium" replied, "It was. It was mine--I didn't have any supper tonight."

That ended the seance, plus my interest in that particular brand of spiritualism. From then on I stuck with astrology, card reading, and an occasional turn at the Ouija board.

From the time I bought my first recording of Fritz, I thought about him frequently. At first I had felt sadness over tile fact that such a talented person had died at the height of his career; then, gradually, I began to imagine how he would be as a lover. Now, less than a month later, I felt all the symptoms of lovesickness--and thought of Fritz constantly. Ronnie either didn't notice my preoccupation, or had decided to ignore it. He remained virtually silent on the matter, except once when he commented rather caustically that I had "the hots" for a dead tenor' Although Fritz seemed "alive" to me, I reassured Ronnie that a dead tenor could hardly give him any competition in the sex department. He made no further comments, and apparently didn't object to my pIaying Fritz's records.

Frances and her mother visited us again. After listening to the most recently purchased Fritz records, the three of us left Ronnie to his high volume and retreated to the dining room to talk. The general mood, light and frivolous, changed when Jeanne asked how Fritz had died. This remained a mystery. The available published material indicated his death had been caused by a fall. A fall? Where? How? I offered the theory that his wife had forced him to paint their house and that he had fallen from the ladder. Why I had wanted to blame her I couldn't imagine; but strangely, I felt a great deal of resentment toward his wife--and I wasn't even sure he had had one!

Kismet, the "magnificat", a sealpoint Siamese we'd had for over ten years, lay in my lap. During the conversation he jumped down to check his food dish. I began to feel a warmth in my abdomen and said, jokingly,"I have a feeling Fritz is here--and I think he's sitting on my lap." This brought whoops of laughter from Jeanne and Frances.

Jeanne said, "I hardly think Fritz would want to follow a cat." Another chorus of laughs.

"I'm sure he wouldn't want to," I replied,"but maybe he can't help himself Why don't we try the Ouija board and see what we can get?"

The others agreed with enthusiasm. I took the board from its resting place in the hall closet, Polished it with a nylon scart to increase the static electricity, and we began. Frances and 1 acted as operators while Jeanne sat by to watch. As soon as we had placed our fingers on the planchette, it began to move.

I asked,"Is anyone here who will speak to us?"

The pointer immediately moved to "YES".

D: would you mind giving us your initials?

B: NO

D: I'll rephrase the question.What are your initials?

B: F. W.

D: What was your occupation when you lived on earth?

F: Singer

Fran: What is your voice register?

F: Tenor

Fran: How tall were you?

F: 4 feet 11 inches

We all laughed.

D: How much did you weigh?

F: 300 pounds

This set us howling. The three of us discussed the combination of height and weight, concluding that he must have looked like a large ball with legs: And, speaking of legs, we suspected he was pulling ours.

D: Would you give us the location of the town where you were born? ( I had read the name of the town on a record sleeve, but did not know its location. For some reason I had the idea it was in eastern Germany, near Poland.)

F: Southwest

D: What is the nearest large city?

F: F-R-E-I

D: (to Frances and Jeanne) I think he's trying to spell Frankfurt. (I became frustrated at this point. "F", obviously, was having spelling problems. We accepted Frankfurt as the answer without letting him continue.)

D: In what direction is your birthplace from Frankfurt?

F: Southwest

D:What other European country is nearest to it in location?

F: France

Nothing of further significance occurred that evening; but the next day, filled with curiosity, I called the local office of the German Consulate to see if I could verify the location of that small town where Fritz first entered the world. The woman who answered informed me in a light German accent that she personally had never heard of a town by that name; but, she would consult the map. After a few minutes she returned to the phone.

"I am surprised"' she exclaimed."There really is such a small town by that name. It is located southwest of Frankfurt, near the French border."

Feeling slightly dazed, I thanked her and replaced the phone. I now had a bit of real evidence that we actually had been in contact with Fritz. I later checked a map of Germany and found that Freiburg was the nearest large city to Fritz's birthplace, Frankfurt was farther away to the northeast. I then realized that Fritz, in his typical Germanic passion for accuracy, had tried to give us F-R-E-1-B-U-R-G; but I, being ignorant of German geography, had rejected it.

Directly after this communication I began to experience depression; a feeling utterly foreign to my nature. I had always spoken my mind, given vent to my temper frequently, and seldom kept any of my emotions inside. I never felt depressed. My outlook on life was predominantly positive, and for that reason 1 couldn't understand negativity and depressive tendencies in others.

When depression hit me, I was totally unprepared and overwhelmed. My analytical faculty failed to furnish me with a reasonable answer. I felt as though I had tuned in on the despair of another person--perhaps Fritz's widow? I knew for a certainty that these feelings did not originate within my own psyche, yet they persisted.

Next came periodic bouts of agitation. I couldn't sit still; I wanted to run--but where? From what? And the feeling of heat in my abdomen, which began on the evening of the first sitting, had returned--and stayed.

I had now become totally obsessed by the desire to obtain information, pictures, records--anything pertaining to Fritz. I questioned all our acquaintances in the music business, but no one knew any more about him than I did. Nothing had been published in this country about the manner in which he died, except that his death was due to a fall.

In order to get a better perspective on what was happening to me, I began to collect books on spiritualism. From these I concluded that Fritz was an earthbound spirit. His premature death, occurring just as he was approaching the zenith of his career, left him unwilling to depart from, the conditions and atmosphere of earth, Why or how he had come to me remained a mystery. Now, it appeared, he had begun to project his feelings through me--an unsettling condition for both of us, to say the very least.

There were times when I didn't feel depressed. Then, I experienced all the thrills and dizzying delights that only love in full bloom can produce.

I would gaze longingly at and talk to Fritz's pictures, all the time feeling encircled by an aura of warmth and surrounded by an electric, tingling atmosphere. I felt his arms around me, felt him showering me with kisses, felt him pressing against me. He was with me constantly, even at the office. We made love mentally all day, so that I could hardly concentrate on my work. I feared that my unusually sunny disposition would be noticed by my co-workers. I imagined them commenting upon it among themselves, wondering why I had suddenly undergone such a drastic change, "If they only knew,' I thought, smiling inwardly,"I'm being courted by a ghost!"

Fritz displayed such ardor, and I such willing and eager response, it's a wonder I could do any work at all; however, the practical, efficient part of me managed to accomplish my usual output with a minimum of errors. Further communication on the board was in order. Frances, fully understanding my condition, agreed to another sitting.

After the preliminary greetings, the planchette began to move. It circled the board, then went from the numbers I through 9, stopping at each one and finally resting on 0.

D: Fritz, what about number 10?

F: NO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 My NINE LOVES OVER NOW

D: Would you like to tell us what they were?

F: I SINGING

2 GINA PIVES

3 HOME

4 VEMMINA ZIMMER

5 MONEY

6 TITZAMNERSNATZER

7 SINGERS HIGH NOTES

5 FOLGINOV

9 WUNDERLICH

We asked him who or what some of the more obscure words represented. He implied Gina Pives was his mother and that she was of Polish descent. Vemmina Zimmer was a girlfriend and Titzamnersnatzer was his dog. He had to be putting us on! How would one ever call a dog with a name like that?

D: What happened to the dog?

F: He was put out to pasture. God damn it!

Fran: What's the matter?

F: That damned baritone.

D: Who?

F: Dieter Frischbrau (Dode's note: Fischer-Dieskau)

D: Don't you like him?

F: YES

Fran: Then why did you curse him?

F: Before he sang "am kreischen" he was never any good. (Frances and I thought this was a role that the famous baritone had sung, but later learned that the German word "kreischen" literally means "scream, shriek or screech." No sound of this kind had ever been evident on Mr. Frischbrau's recordings. It began to dawn on us that Fritz would have his little joke, and might say anything just for laughs.)

This had been a longer session than the first. Having bent over a hot Ouija board for more than two hours, both Frances and I suffered from stiff backs and general exhaustion. We agreed we'd had enough for the evening.

I prepared for the next session by buying a German-English dictionary--just in case we received any more German words. I also decided to check the dictionary for the meaning of some of Fritz's "nine loves". I found that "zimmer" means room. The only other word on Fritz's list that I could find was "wunderlich," defined as strange, odd, miraculous and MOODY. The first three described the current series of events in connection with Fritz, and the fourth--Fritz himself! (Dode's note: his real name was Fritz Wunderlich)