Julie Kreiensieck, 87, will never forget the day she learned her father was a spiritualist. It was around 1939, when the Boise resident learned spiritualists believe they serve as an intermediary between the living and the dead.
Kreiensieck stopped by the StoryCorps booth in Boise to tell her daughter Donna about that day her life changed.
“When I was about 12 I think it was, I was probably making fun of spiritualists or that sort of subject," said Julie Kreiensieck. “My dad and mother and I were in the living room on North 15th [Street]. Mother was lying on the couch, daddy was sitting in his chair, and I was sitting across the room from them, only I wasn’t sitting I was standing because daddy said ‘sit down,' very firmly he said this. He had a stool in front of his chair and of course I sat and kept my mouth shut. My mother said, ‘Vern, don’t’ and he said ‘it’s about time she knows.' I just sat there being half scared."
“He put his hands out in front of him over the stool and he held them out there and he lifted them up and the stool lifted up and he set it back down and that’s all there was to it," remembers Kreiensick. "I’ve had a very open mind ever since.”
Julie Kreiensieck says she’s always been a little jealous that she didn’t have her father’s particular talent.
StoryCorps is a national initiative to record and collect stories of everyday people. Excerpts were selected and produced by Boise State Public Radio.
You can this story on Oct. 3 and 6 during a special hour-long show about storytelling. It will feature the people you've heard in this year's Idaho StoryCorps pieces and how oral histories have changed over the centuries.
The special airs Oct. 3 at 7:00 p.m. MDT and Oct. 6 at 2:00 p.m. MDT on KBSX 91.5.
Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio
