The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-06-20
HER HAIR TURN SD WHITE.
The Vision of Which Miss Johansor
Tells in Accounting for 1t.
From the Minneapolis Tribune

4OO lSlOu vi w HUI Ial5S JOubA6On
Tells in Accounting for 1t.
From the Minneapolis Tribune.
A young lady in whose face look of per-
feet happiness always beams, and whose
voice is always wonderfully kind, has been
for some time sort of sight and wonder of
the world among those who have been asSo-
ciated with her in Minneapolis and have
heard the strange story which she tells.
Marvellous it is, and many who have heard
it believe that her experience has some
thing of the supernatural about it. She is
90 years of age and her hair is as white as
snow, silky, and SO long that it falls in a
braid well down toward the ground Her
name is Wendela Johanson, and she has
been in Minneapolis for some months,
living with friends, and, as they say, when
not at work is going about doing good"
Like the prisoner of Chillon, she can truly
say:
my hair is gray, but not with age."
But that whiteness came not from long
years of mental aud bodily anguish, as did
that of the one of whom the poet sang. 1t
turned white in single night while she
slept and saw vision, so she says. She be-
ieves that her snowy hair is the mark of
Christ upon her and the seal of her own re-
demption. Those who know her say that
her daily life is such as one might lead
whose whole soul was wrapped up in the
belief that she stood on the very threshold
Of the pearly gates. She has told her story
to several reliable people wax cannot acco mt
for the strange phenomenon Oh a ny natural
causes. Miss Johans N stops sometimes
with friends at 1919 Polk street northeast,
and while there she told her story to Mrs
Pnoebe Dell Plain, who lives next door at
2,3l7. Mrs. Dell Plain is willing to be
quoted to the effect that the young lady
has hair of nlnaff1ral y.laIt0 q 70
that is always beaming with happi Tess.
Mrs. Frank E. Ray, who lives at 7l0
Twenty fifth avenue northeast, ais vouches
to the truth of the same statement. Others
the vicinity a I'd in other parts of the
city say the same Clergy en- have heard
OF the case AMI are puzzled over it, and
physicians p int to the books and say that
sucn things have hap ,el before.
The story, as Wendela Johanson tells it
herself, is full of interest and passing
strange. She was born i'll Sweden, and
when Is years old she had a dream one
night She thought she was taken by a
guide, who was an old man, homely in
appearance and b .teful to her sight, to the
very brink Of hell All was darkness, more
profound an she had ever known before,
and the were sounds of the damned that
filled her ears and frightened her so that she
was dumb aud ready to fall. 1t was as real
aud shrieks of the lost ones coming up from
the bottomless pit. Some cried aud cursed
themselves and their Maker; others sent
fearful shrieks up from the darkness, and
some walled as in utter woe. The noise was
most terrifying, and as the dreamer thought
she was alb nut to be plunged down with the
rest she shrleked.
81 was standing within just three steps of
the brink" she said, land my guide stood
beside me in the darkness"
But she was not doomed to enter this
dark abode even in her dreams, for soon
there came the form of an old man, bent,
and with flowing white hair a I'd beard. He
stood beside her, and the ugly one who had
led her there fled at his approach. In gentle
to es the white-haired man asked her if she
would not go with him ami look at the
abode of the bles ed, and she went gladly.
In ner dream she stood within the city,
whose walls are set with precious stones,
the new Jerusalem.