Dinner lady claimed dead composers played music through her hands. Experts couldn't prove her wrong

Rosemary Brown's road to stardom began when she was just seven years old. She claimed to have seen an uninvited man in her home in Stockwell, South London. He had long hair and was wearing a cassock. He promised to help her become famous. 10 years later, she recognized the man as Franz Liszt after seeing a photo of him. Fast forward 40 years, and widowed Brown had two children and was working as a dinner lady. She had only taken a few piano classes, but whenever she sat at a piano, she claimed that renowned dead composers used her hands to play music, reported The Guardian on December 5, 2019.

Songs and messages from beyond the grave

Brown revealed that Liszt would often instruct her, as she wrote down the notes. Other composers she reportedly claimed to communicate with include Schubert, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Brahms, and Grieg, who would often dictate notes and new music through her. Skeptics asked how the British woman communicated with dead composers who did not even speak the language. 

She revealed in a BBC documentary, "Beethoven has obviously taken the trouble to learn English since he passed over." Not only did she transcribe music, but she also shared messages from beyond. Brown revealed what Schubert told her regarding his Unfinished Symphony: "He told me he had decided to leave it as it was. He left it as a mystery, and in a way, it was more romantic as unfinished." She even completed Beethoven's unfinished 10th and 11th symphonies with his help.

Painters, poets, and scientists communicated with Brown, too

Just as Liszt promised, Brown became a famous pianist. As per BBC Archive, she appeared on several TV shows, including Oscar Peterson and Johnny Carson's Show. American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein dined with her at the Savoy, played a few of her transcriptions, and loved them. English conductor Colin Davis asked her to ask Hector Berlioz about his five-act opera, Les Troyens.

Brown also claimed to have communicated with the spirits of Einstein, Shaw, Bertrand-Russell, and Jung. Even though she became famous for her skills as a pianist, she also made psychic paintings instructed by the spirits of Van Gogh, Samuel Palmer, JMW Turner, and William Blake.

Can the dead speak?

There had always been discussions and theories over whether spirits can communicate with humans. A Pew Research Center survey from 2023 revealed that 53% of American adults claimed to have felt a dead family member visit them in a dream or in another form. 15% revealed that a dead family member had communicated with them over the last year. A 2025 Gallup survey also revealed that 39% believed ghosts or spirits of the dead can come back in specific places or situations, and 27% revealed they can hear or communicate mentally with the dead. 

Did Brown play a trick on everyone?

Many were skeptical whether Brown actually communicated with the legends she mentioned or if it was just a ploy. Among Brown's supporters was composer Ian Parrott, who said that she was not clever enough to fake the transcriptions: "In my view, the limitations of her training left her unfettered by too much formal apparatus, and so better placed to receive music from others." Musicologist Dennis Matthews argued that she may have downplayed her skill, created music similar to theirs, and claimed it was from the dead.

LCMF’s artistic director, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, concluded, "The fact that we don’t know whether she did this consciously or not makes the work all the more intriguing and beguiling. Just at the level of improvisation — if that’s what we think it is — it's amazingly fluent and shows a level of skill mixed with mischief that is pretty inspiring and astonishing."

More on Scoop Upworthy

Deaf Helen Keller found a way to 'listen' to Beethoven in 1924 and then wrote to the orchestra

Man explains how Tampa Bay has been long protected from hurricanes by ancient spirits

A mystical town of mediums and spiritualism has been attracting visitors for 100 years