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vol. title: vol. period: 1874-1876 pages in vol.: 208 |
< Ghosts That are Ghosts (continued from page 1-51) >
tions.
This gentleman has done me the honor to request me to act, in conjunction with a Russian lady of great learning and high social position, now resident in this country, Madame H. P. Blavatsky by name, as his American representative, and recommend through him to the University such persons of the class described as we may think worthy of being asked to attend the coming seances in the Russian capital. With this object in view, I recently visited Boston to witness the beautiful phenomena which were said to occur in the presence of Mrs. Mary Baker Thayer, of 12 Pembroke street; and, for the information of your readers, which is almost the same as to say the public, I shall now give a fair and impartial account of what I saw.
It will be readily conceived that the circumstances of the case made me more than usually cautious in my observations and conclusions. It was necessary to become satisfied pretty thoroughly upon several points, for instance: 1. As to Mrs. Thayer’s antecedents. 2. Her personal character. 3. The strength of her manifestations, and whether uniform or subject to periodicity. 4. The conditions indispensable to their occurrence, and especially whether they could only be produced in a certain house or room, of a peculiar magnetic, electric or other atmosphere, or whether they could be observed indifferently in any house or place whatsoever. 5. And as might be said, primarily, whether they were real phenomena, or only exhibitions of charlatanry.
It would be the height of folly for any one with a reputation at stake to send off to so distant a country, and before such an inexorable tribunal, a medium who might prove dishonest, malicious, or, when the crucial moment should arrive, incapable of doing what was promised of her. I addressed myself to my task, then, with as impartial a spirit as it was possible for any one to feel; knowing nothing of the medium beyond newspaper report, and caring absolutely nothing as to what might be the issue of my experiments. I shall doubtless give your readers the most intelligible and satisfactory idea of the results by taking up my points seriatim, and describing the evidence collected under each head.
First, as to her antecedents: I had not to search far to find acceptable witnesses to substantiate her personal good character. Some ladies and gentlemen, as trustworthy as any in Boston, and occupying as good social positions, certified to having known her for several years — one lady since 1863 — and their testimony as to her sincerity, excellence as a medium, and integrity, was unanimous. The lady in question, who lives on a fashionable square at the South End, had employed her as a dressmaker for ten years before she became a public medium, and having been an eye-witness at every stage of her progress in this direction, unequivocally testified that a more transparently honest woman she never knew.
Mr. William Lloyd Garrison had seen evidences of her rare powers under test conditions, and had full confidence in her good faith. A partner in one of the greatest mercantile houses of New England had shared Mr. Garrison’s opportunities and arrived at the same conclusions. Mr. Charles Houghton, the well-known lawyer, and his wife joined with the others, and gave me the particulars of séances which alone would have convinced a skeptic that he was not dealing with a willful impostor; and so I might proceed to catalogue a score of her well wishers, whose names, if appended to a certificate of bad character, would effectually damn a person in the eyes of all Athenians, and whose testimony in her favor cannot be ignored.
But the strongest evidence that Mrs. Thayer could present to my scrutiny was her own bonny face. It is an open, frank face, marked with the lines of care, wearing a shade of weariness, and indicating more of passivity than force, of amiability than aggressiveness, but inviting confidence. She must have been a beauty once. Her head is of moderate size, oval, well arched in the crown, and the proportion of crown to base symmetrical. Her hair is a dark chestnut, eyes blue, complexion fair, mouth pretty, nose straight, face oval, height five feet six inches, and, with increasing years and a sedentary life, she has grown stout enough to turn the scale at one hundred and sixty pounds. Her voice is soft — not guttural or strident, as are those of many of our modern pythonesses — and her manners are free from embarrassment or affectation. I have been particular as to these details, for these very details go a great way toward helping us to estimate the person we have to deal with.
In all my investigations of spiritual mediums I have been careful to inquire as to the heredity of the physical power; for a discussion with Dr. Charles Elam, in England, five years ago, and the subsequent reading of his work entitled “A Physician’s Problems,” made me very anxious to discover whether these temperamental peculiarities were transmissible from generation to generation, like the physical and moral qualities. In the case of the Eddys and Mrs. Compton, the greatest mediums I ever saw, this appeared to be the fact, and Mrs. Thayer presents no exception to the rule.
She was born in the township of Concord, Maine, of rustic parentage, Dec. 11th, 1836. Her mother was of Scotch descent, and her paternal grandmother, Mrs. Baker, came from England. Her mother was a seeress, a physical medium, and, among other manifestations, had flowers brought to her by the invisible powers. One day in midwinter, when Mary was about ten years old, she and her two brothers, one older and the other younger than herself, were about to start for school, when the mother came out of the house, weeping and holding in her hand a freshly plucked blush rose which she said was brought to her from heaven as a sure warning of the death of one of her children. The farm was in the heart of the Maine woods, the snow lay thick upon the ground, and there was not a flower-pot in the house, nor a greenhouse within many miles, but the children saw nothing ominous in the fragrant flower, only thanking the angels for bringing them something so pretty. Mary recalls how they talked it over among themselves as they trudged through the snow that morning, and laughed at their mother’s fears that either one of such a tough lot as they should die. But the rose spoke truly: the youngest brother of all sickened and died before spring of a malignant fever.
She was always having these forewarnings — was this mother of theirs. Sometimes there would come a heavy knocking at the door, and no one there when they would look; sometimes the tread of invisible feet would be heard overhead; and before John died, as they were together one evening, there came a crash against the side of the house, as though some invisible spadesman had thrown a shovelful of coarse gravel with all his force. The mother did more. She saw the forms of dead relatives stalk through walls, partitions and closed doors, and would talk to them in a way to make a superstitious skeptic’s blood curdle.
And the children soon began to have their own experiences of the same sort. Elfin boys and girls used to come (or seem to come, for they were as real to them as unreal to all others), every day or two, and play with them hours together; and they were up to all sorts of pranks, hiding the playthings so cunningly, sometimes, that they would give them up for lost, and then suddenly bringing them back again; and often after the children were in bed these mischievous creatures would carry off their clothes and put them up in the crotch of some neighboring tree. They had heard the old people talk about witches, and so, for want of a better name for them, they called their spirit playmates “the witches,” and were careful not to offend them, but keep in favor by putting aside bits of their candy and cake, which were duly carried off, and the receipt acknowledged at the next meeting. Once Mary had a knotty example in arithmetic to do for the next day’s recitation, and laid the slate aside in despair of working the problem, but in the morning she found it all done, and won the medal offered as a prize.
So things went on more or less incessantly, and gradually becoming more insignificant in character, until her marriage to Anson H. Thayer of South Braintree, Mass., which occurred in 1856. When her first child was three weeks old, the bed in which she lay was lifted clear of the floor, and the nurse, running in, saw it gently settle down again to its place. She began after a while to have her mother’s experience as to portents, knowing by various mystic signs of impending deaths or other calamities. Before her husband’s decease she saw a bright light shine in her room, and in its centre his face, which, as any of Mrs. Crowe’s readers will admit, is considered to be a genuine forerunner of death.
Left a widow, with two children to support, she had to take to dress-making and it was not so very long after this that the Boston lady above referred to (whom I am permitted to say is Mrs. Dora Brigham, daughter of the famous missionary, “Father” Taylor) encountered her. In 1865 Mrs. Thayer was forewarned that in course of time she would have to pass through a dangerous sickness, during which “something very wonderful in the way of mediumship” would come to her. The prophecy came true in 1872, when she was taken down with gastric fever, and lay at the point of death. In her ravings she turned prophetess, announcing the great Boston fire, and timing in advance every visit of her physician to the very minute. Upon her recovery she went to live in the capacity of housekeeper with one Madame Barker, an old lady who kept a dancing-school in the chateau-like mansion on Washington street, known as the Deacon House. (The Bostonians pronounce it Dee-Kohn.) This is a great, rambling structure, occupying a whole square of ground, which was built some thirty years ago by an impecunious son-in-law of the late Peter Parker, who liberally invested that gentleman’s money in a residence fit for a Norman Seigneur. The fine house did not bring good luck, for Deacon died, his wife lost her reason, and the place was shut up for at least ten years, becoming meanwhile, it seems, the roosting-place of a troop of ghosts, who made its empty rooms ring with noises calculated to send the belated by-passer in panic to the other side of the street. It got such an ill name that when the family were ready to rent it no tenant could be found, until the valiant Mrs. Barker installed herself, and in due course received Mrs. Thayer as housekeeper, as before stated.
Bad as things were before, they now became ten times worse. The spirits would open locked and bolted doors and slam them, carry articles along corridors and from one locked room to another, and the dead Deacon and other uncanny prowlers would once in a while show themselves. But the plucky women stood it like veterans, and soon Mrs. Thayer’s new mediumship showed itself. Mrs. Brigham and other friends would drop in, and they would improvise “circles” about a table and get all sorts of startling physical manifestations, such as the floating of the table in the air, the lifting of Mrs. Thayer, chair and all, upon the table; the bringing of coats and hats from the hall tree into the room, and I have actually been told by two eye-witnesses that the medium herself was whisked away in a moment, and immediately was heard knocking outside the locked door and calling for admittance. This is tough, but wait until I have finished!
Mr. Garrison was a visitor at this period, and from his lips, as well as from those of Mrs. Brigham, and the merchant previously alluded to (who, I am sorry to say, has not the courage to tell what he has seen, and let those who don’t like it please themselves), I received the particulars which follow as to a
which occurred in the month of October, 1872, in this Boston Otranto.
One evening, by preconcert, a supper was spread in the dining-room for twelve persons. The bill of fare was chosen by the spirits themselves, and there was as brave an array of linen, glass, silver, and china as though the ghostly banqueters had not passed out of the sphere of finger-bowls and damask napkins. There was a chicken fricassee, with rice, bread, an assortment of cakes, grapes and other fruit, candy and a bottle of wine. A memorandum was taken by Mrs. Brigham of the number of each article, and after a last glance at the table the mortals retired. Mr. B. T. Stephenson locked the door and handed the key to Mr. Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and the spectres were left to themselves.
The company numbered eighteen ladies and gentlemen, and by desire of the spirits they retired to another room, fifty feet from the dining-room, locking two doors behind them, and assembled about another table after the fashion of the orthodox circle. The gas was extinguished, and they sat in silence and darkness for some two minutes, when suddenly some solid object was heard to drop upon the table, and then a rattling noise, as if pebbles or other small, hard substances were being scattered about. A light was called by the raps, and then the astonished sitters discovered before them the veritable bottle of wine they had left in the dining-room, with part of the wine gone and the cork undrawn. The bottle was identified by a private mark placed upon the label, and upon the cork remained the dust which they had not brushed off. Scattered about were pieces of broken candy and sugar plums, one leg of the chicken, and portions of the cake and fruit, while in the bosom of a lady’s dress had been deftly thrust a wine glass. Returning to the dining-room, they found by actual count that when they added the articles brought to them to those remaining in the dishes and upon the plates the tally was exact. But some of the wine — perhaps a third of the bottle — had disappeared, and in every glass was a heel-tap that seemed to indicate that the jolly elves, or bacchantes rather, had pledged their mutual healths in social fashion.
They then placed the bottle again upon the table and seated themselves about the board, pushing their chairs about a foot or two back from the same, and joining hands after putting out the gas. By the glimmer of the fire in the stove they saw spectre hands, detached from any body, flitting hither and thither over the surface of the table, taking things out of the dishes and putting them upon the plates, and occasionally tossing candy, cake, or fruit into some lady’s lap. Then they pulled the slippers off one lady’s feet and the boots off another’s, and flung them against the door; and finally wound up the banquet, as many another of mortal kind has concluded, by dragging the cloth off the table and tumbling the crockery in a mess on the floor.
But these manifestations, although twice repeated, were less to be accredited to Mrs. Thayer’s mediumship than the surcharged atmosphere of this haunted house. Her mediumship is far more attractive than this; the spirits bring her flowers, fruits, and birds, of all sorts and kinds. Its beginning was apparently unpremediated, and occurred in this wise: One evening Mrs. Baker, Mrs. Thayer, and a visiting gentleman sat around a table reading an ac-<... continues on page 1-53 >