Ghosts Wrote Best-Sellers, Author Says : Afterworld: Brazil’s most celebrated spirit medium credits more than 500 dead authors and poets for his output. His breadth of styles and subjects is termed astounding.

Chico Xavier is a best-selling author of more than 380 books, but he says they all were ghost-written--by real ghosts.

Xavier, 74, is Brazil’s most celebrated spirit medium. In a field famous for charlatans, many people believe he is the real thing.

In three celebrated cases, Xavier was called as a defense witness in murder trials. The “messages” he claimed to receive from the victims were accepted as evidence to acquit two defendants and reduce the sentence of a third.

His writing amazes and wins over skeptics.

Officially, Xavier is Brazil’s most prolific writer. His hundreds of titles range from poetry and historical novels to scientific and medical treatises.

But he claims the books are really the work of more than 500 dead authors and poets. All he does is write them down, like dictation. Many were written in public sessions.

“When I am writing in trance, I can see, hear and feel the spirit who is moving my arm,” said Xavier, a rail-thin man with dark glasses and a black toupee constantly askew.

The breadth of styles and subjects is astounding for a retired civil servant who left school when he was 13.

Xavier says his first contact with the afterworld came at age 5, when he saw the spirit of his dead mother.

In elementary school, he won an honorable mention from the state government for a historical essay. Xavier told his teacher he had seen a man who stood beside him in class and dictated the essay.

For years, Xavier claimed he “received” messages from recently departed souls wishing to communicate with living relatives. His modest home in Uberaba, about 530 miles northwest of Rio, became a mecca for admirers and miracle-seekers.

Xavier directed the royalties from his books--more than $20 million--to charity, creating orphanages and distributing food to the poor.

In recent years, angina has forced Xavier to give up most of his public writing sessions, but he continues to write in private.