GRETCHEN, I AM

Ich bin Gretchen,"" declared Dolores. Her husband, the Reverend Jay, was duly startled. Neither he nor his wife knew German though the Reverend did practice hypnotism. ""Regressing her,"" he got more details--all in German--of the past life of this sixteen-year-old fraulein killed in a forest by ""scraggly men."" Could it be reincarnation? The Reverend hoped not since that clashed with his Christianity and his ""total disagreement with the occult."" Total disagreement? Two parishes didn't see it that way and the Reverend Jay, convalescent from eight heart attacks, was hounded from pillar to post, or in any case Ohio to Virginia, before he and Dolores-Gretchen found a community willing to accept them on their own spooky terms. With an endorsement by Dr. Ian Stevenson, Division of Parapsychology, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Virginia (they have a lot to answer for), Gretchen's ontological dilemma is finally resolved, even though it remains a clear case of ""responsive xenoglossy."" Reverend Jay promises some day to join her wherever she might be because ""Life, you see, is forever!"" Spiritualist uplift.