Florence Stoneham-Smith

A little girl who claimed to have written V. M. Straka's books channeling a nun from the middle ages, Floris of Burgess.

Biography
She was born in 1904. Her parents had taken her to Belgium on holiday, and while they were visiting the ruins of the cloisters, Florence reportedly had a sort of ecstatic seizure and began speaking in a woman's voice. When she was only 10, her parents claimed that she had written the first two novels attributed to V. M. Straka. She received media attention and told reporters that she did so by channeling the spirit of the martyred nun Floris of Burgess. Public response was increasingly skeptical, even derisive.

Upon the publication of the next Straka's works, she would write letters to newspapers around the world claiming to have authored the book with guidance from her. Florence was deeply religious and she never recanted. She wrote a 1956 memoir, I Am Straka, her only book.

She was mortally injured after a fall in her home in 1983 and reiterated her claims to a priest on her deathbed.

This theory has seen a bit of a comeback in recent years among Straka readers connected to certain circles of Catholic mysticism. Her book was reissued in 2008 by a Lancashire-based publisher of religious texts.