Renata Plášková

“Our grandmother was also Catholic but there was a deviation in her case. She started meeting spiritists. They took me on their seances every week. We went to Doubrava or Ostrava, I don’t know where exactly we went, I don’t remember that. So they took me with them. I had problems at school because of that. When I came to school and we had religious classes, we had these notebooks into which we wrote when we were at the mass and what was the sermon about. And we did vertical or horizontal lines. And my notebook appeared that there were only horizontal lines. The parish priest always asked me, why I don’t go to the church. If I said that I go spiritual seances with my grandmother, they would perhaps lock us up, because it was not allowed. I always mostly look forward to hospitality. The man, at who’s place those seances were held, always prepared good hospitality for the end. The man from Doubrava always had a bowl full of fried donuts outside in the corridor. Oh, god, how it smelled there! I still smell the wonderful aroma. But first, we had to go through the whole séance, which lasted two hours, sometimes hour and half. We always singed, prayed, the spirits were invoked. Before it ended, I would fidget around, I could not take it. I was disturbing. And I was still thinking about the donuts in the corridor. The one who was invoking the spirits said: ‘Someone is disrupting us here.’ That was effective on me, because everyone else was quiet, only I fidgeted. My grandmother then blinked at me, I already knew I should go behind the door. That was the worst punishment for me, because I stood next to the donuts and I was not allowed to take them, I had to wait till it is over. And when I came to school, I had yet another horizontal line. So when the parish priest asked me in school what does it mean, why don’t I go to the confession and masses, when I go to the religious classes, and that I should be encouraged to do so at home. I stood like a pillar o salt. I protected my family. At the same time I would like to tell him so that he would not think I am untalkative or that I don’t want to tell him because I want to resist him. And I was silent. He then said that a bad spirit reside in me in front of the whole class. The boy called me bad spirit till the rest of the year.”

"We lived through the war very badly because we were in terrible poverty. We had no food and nothing. My mother was always in charge of the four of us. We were all four at home, it was terrible. We lived in a sublet. Our landlady was very bad. We weren't even allowed to take a windfall from the garden. She said: 'I'll know if you take anything.' She wouldn't even let us tend the garden. She wouldn't give us a piece of the garden, not at all. We weren't allowed to go there."