Spookiest Years, Part 2: The Year 1850

In part 1 of this "Spookiest Years" series, which you can read here,  I first discussed how it is very important to search for the earliest documents describing any extraordinary or seemingly supernatural or seemingly paranormal events. Turning my attention to the famous mysterious raps first reported in Hydesville, New York and nearby Rochester, New York, I was able to find what is the very earliest document written on this topic. That document (which you can read here) had the great virtue of having witness statements written within a few weeks of the start of the phenomenon. I described and quoted from the document in my previous post, and gave some reasons why it turns out to be remarkably strong evidence that something utterly inexplicable to science was occurring in Hydesville, NY beginning about March 31, 1848. 

The immediate aftermath of the Hydesville affair occurred rather slowly and gradually but was very dramatic, with reports of the paranormal spreading from Hydesville, NY to nearby Rochester, NY, and to other places in New York and Massachusetts and Connecticut such as Bridgeport. After a less-than-comprehensive search, I could find only one 1849 account of the paranormal published in 1849 (excluding the Celestial Telegraph book mentioned below which may come from either 1849 or 1850),  although some accounts published in 1850 refer to spooky events of  1849.  In the "Strange Manifestations" section on page 155 of the periodical here (the February 3, 1849 edition of the Univercoelum and Spiritual Philosopher) we have this reference to mysterious sounds:

"We have recently heard through various and individual mediums of the most respectable character, of some strange manifestations now occurring in Rochester, this State. The manifestations are said to have commenced in the village of Hydesville, Wayne county, in April last.They are said to consist of certain noise...the agency by which they are caused being entirely invisible!...The noises, we are informed, purport to be from departed spirits in answers to questions that are propounded to them. When a question is asked, they give a rap for an affirmative, while for a negative there is no sound heard. They also, as it said, have a way of communicating by way of the alphabet. When the interrogator, saying over the letters consecutively, comes to the letter which begins the word or substance, a rap will be heard, and in the same way succeeding letters will be indicated, until sometimes long sentences will be spelt out...As to the actual fact of these manifestations, we think there cannot be a shadow of doubt, if the numerous concurrent and direct testimonies which we have had from respectable persons on this subject, are deserving of any weight." 

I found numerous 1850 accounts of mediums and mysterious raps and mysterious movements of objects, many of which rather seem to be kind of events slowly growing from the seeds of the Hydesville phenomenon. One such document on this topic that I have been able to find is the 1850 book Explanation and History of the Mysterious Communion With Spirits Comprehending the Rise and Progress of the Mysterious Noises in Western New York, Generally Received as Spiritual Communications by Eliab W. Capron and Henry D. Barron, which you can read here. Chapter II of the book gives an account of the Hydesville rappings matching that of the 1848 E. E. Lewis booklet quoted in my previous post (the booklet you can read here), and includes a long quote matching the quote from Duesler in that booklet.  

Chapter V of the book starts to tell us what seems to be the  earliest available detailed account of the mysterious rapping phenomena and similar phenomena spreading to Rochester NY, not far from Hydesville, NY where the rapping phenomena was first widely reported.  We read that some of the Fox family moved to Rochester, and we read this: "Not long after it began to be heard by this family in Rochester, it began to be heard in other houses in the same city, and among others, in the house of a Methodist clergyman. Rev. A. H. Jarvis, where the same sounds have continued from that time to this, as they have in other places and houses." Soon thereafter we read this, referring to the town of Auburn, NY, 62 miles from Rochester:

"Hardly a week passes without our receiving authentic information of some new place where these occurrences have commenced. We are informed of at least six families in Auburn who hear more or less of the same sounds."

It seems that people soon devised a system by which the alphabet was recited, and when mysterious raps were heard after a particular letter was recited, that letter was written down.  Soon people were reporting intelligent communications coming from the raps. A minister reported that a man received word by such mysterious means that his child had died. The claim was soon confirmed.  Soon a public meeting was held at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester. According to a New York Weekly Tribune account of December 8, 1849,  quoted by Barron and Capron, many witnesses reported hearing mysterious raps at such a meeting, the source of which could not be determined. The newspaper quote mentions the formation of various committees to investigate the matter, without any resolution of how the sound originated, and with the sounds being reported coming from a variety of places such as walls and floors. We have this impressive-sounding quote as part of the quoted newspaper account:

"On Friday evening, after the lecture, three of the Committee, viz : Hon. A. P. Hascall, D. C. McCallum, and William Fisher, repaired to the house of a citizen and pursued their investigations still farther. There were nearly a score of persons present. The members of the Committee wrote many questions on paper, which no person present knew the purport of, and they were answered correctly. At times they would ask mentally and would receive the answers with equal correctness and they were fully satisfied that there was something present manifesting intelligence beyond the persons visible."

I tried to find the original newspaper quote cited to make sure the quotation was accurate. It seems that there was a daily publication called the New York Daily Tribune, and a weekly publication called the New York Weekly Tribune, published only on Saturday. There seemed to be no account of this event in the New York Daily Tribune of December 8, 1849, but I was unable to find a copy of the Saturday-edition New York Weekly Tribune for December 8, 1849.  But we can assume the above quote is accurate, as it also appears in an 1852 book, which on pages 12 to 15 makes an even fuller quote from the story on this event in the New York Weekly Tribune for December 8, 1849, one noting numerous witnesses doing thorough examinations, and finding nothing to explain the phenomenon of the raps. 

At the conclusion of Chapter VI we have this impressive-sounding summary:

"When we take into consideration the facts that this matter has now been spreading for two years — that every means have been tried in private circles, and committees appointed by public meetings — that all have failed to discover any thing like collusion — we may safely assert that in regard to the sounds merely — the following facts are established beyond dispute, viz: That the sounds are heard in various places and at various times — that those sounds are not made by, or under the control of any person or persons, although manifested in the presence of particular persons ; and that they evince a remarkable degree of intelligence. These facts, among those who have carefully investigated are no longer disputed."

On page 53 one of the co-authors gives an account from his personal journal. The account gives details that seem to exclude any explanation involving a person making sounds by cracking of the joints, or anyone using machinery to make sounds. We read this statement from the journal of E. W. Capron:

"On the 23d of November, 1848, 1 went to the city of Rochester on business. I had previously made up my mind to investigate this so called mystery, if I should have an opportunity. In doing so, I had no doubt but what I possessed shrewdness enough to detect the trick, as I strongly suspected it to be, or discover the noise if it should be unknown to the inmates ot the house.

A friend of mine, John Kedzie, of Rochester, who I had long known as a skeptic in regard to any such wonders, invited me to go with him to hear it. I accepted the invitation with a feeling that was far from serious apprehension of communicating with anything beyond my power to discover.

Before I heard the sound, we seated ourselves around a table. As soon as we got quiet, I heard a slight but distinct rapping on the floor, apparently on the under side. Although I concluded that such a sound might be made by machinery, I could see no possible motive in the family taking  so such pains to deceive people, as they received nothing but annoyance and trouble in return for their pains. I proceeded to ask some questions and they were answered very freely and correctly. I asked if it would rap my age ? It was done correctly. I then took my memorandum book from my pocket and wrote my questions so that no person could know the nature of the questions. I would write ; ' rap four times ; rap one ; rap seven ;' and to each and every question I got a correct answer. I then laid aside my book and proceeded to ask similar test questions mentally, and as before, received correct answers."

So this is the second case in the very early literature in which someone reports getting replies from the mysterious raps that could not possibly have come from some nearby faker, either because the answers given are those known only by the person asking, or because the question itself was never orally stated so that some nearby faker could have faked an answer.  On page 69 we have evidence of a phenomenon beyond mere rapping.  We read this:

"Wednesday Evening, June 20th. Present six persons and none of the family of Mr. Fox in town. The rapping was heard very freely by all. The table moved on the floor with no person touching it — moved to the distance of a foot or more and back, in various directions. At our request the table (which was a very light one) was held down to the floor so that it required the whole strength of a man to move it  from its position. We also held one side, and requested, if there was power to do it, that it would be drawn away from us; this was done and our strength was not sufficient to hold it ...The table was then raised from the floor on one side, and there stood, although we used considerable strength to push it down. While the table stood in that position, by placing our hands upon it we would feel a quick, tremulous motion like the action of a galvanic battery. The witnesses present at this time were Miss Mary M. Bennett, H. D, Barron, Mrs. Mary Miller. Miss Amanda Hoskins, Mrs. Sarah A. Tamlin, and L. W. Capron.''

Fantastic as this account sounds, very similar results were recorded by very many observers in the years ahead.  Notice how impossible it is to explain such a result as some kind of joint cracking of one of the Fox sisters. For one thing, we read that none of the Fox family was even in town. We also read of effects much beyond mere rapping: effects such as tables mysteriously moving and rising up in the air. 

On page 70 we learn of another impressive effect:

"Sunday Evening, October 7th. This evening we were directed to go into the hall and take the guitar. We went, and while there the guitar was played by unseen hands, and played so exquisitely too that it seemed more  like far distant music to one just aroused from midnight slumber, than the music of an instrument a few feet from us. Several tunes were thus played, while not a person in the room knew how to play a tune on that or any other instrument. Witnesses present this evening at the house of Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Burton Straight, of Troy, Bradford county, Penn., Mrs. G. B. Bennett R. M C. Capron, E. W. Capron, and H. D. Barron, of Auburn."

Here is a tale that many would say is too wondrous-sounding to be believed: an account of a guitar playing by itself in the middle of the nineteenth century.  But why dismiss the account, when something very similar was reported by one of the leading scientists of that century? Sir William Crookes was the co-discoverer of the element thallium, and the inventor of the Crookes tube that was the technological ancestor of every computer, tablet device and smartphone. On page 2 of his 1871 work Experimental Investigations on Psychic Force, Sir William Crookes states this about the medium Daniel Dunglas Home:

"Among the remarkable phenomena which occur under Mr. Home's influence, the most striking, as well as the most easily tested with scientific accuracy, are — (1) the alteration in the weight of bodies, and (2) the playing of tunes upon musical instruments (generally an accordion, for convenience of portability) without direct human intervention, under conditions rendering contact or connection with the keys impossible. Not until I had witnessed these facts some half-dozen times, and scrutinized them with all the critical acumen I possess, did I become convinced of their objective reality."

Crookes then describes an experiment done at Crookes' home, using an accordion Crookes bought himself. There were four other witnesses, including William Huggins and Edward William Cox, both fellows of the Royal Society, the leading scientific organization in England. The accordion was placed in a cage, and Home merely touched one end of it, the end on the opposite side of the keyboard. The accordion was heard to play by itself. On page 5 Crookes says this:

"But the sequel was still more striking, for Mr. Home then removed his hand altogether from the accordion, taking it quite out of the cage, and placed it on the hand of the person next to him. The instrument then continued to play, no person touching it and no hand being near it."

Crookes notes on page 6 observing an apparent levitation:

"I and two of the others present saw the accordion distinctly floating about in the cage with no visible means of support. This was repeated a second time, after a short interval."

What could have caused Crookes in 1871 to have made such a test, a test of whether an accordion could play by itself? It was the fact that very many witnesses had reported similar effects in the previous 20 years.  The report I quoted above from E. W.  Capron may be the first report ever made of such a wonder, the only difference being that he reported a guitar playing by itself.  On page 351 of his 1855 book, Capron has a letter by N. P. Tallmadge describing another case of a guitar playing by itself:

"The guitar was touched softly and gently, and gave forth sweet and delicious sounds, like the accompaniment to a beautiful and exquisite piece of music. It then played a sort of symphony in much louder and bolder tones. And, as it played, these harmonious sounds, becoming soft, and sweet, and low, began to recede, and grew fainter and fainter, till they died away on the ear in the distance. Then they returned, and grew louder and louder and nearer, till they were heard again in full and gushing volume as when they commenced."

Later Capron gives this startling account:

" Saturday Evening, October 20th. This evening we had asked for some different demonstrations, and our request was complied with. We heard the sounds on the wall, bureau, table, floor, and other places, as loud as the striking with a hammer. The table was moved about the room, and turned over and turned back. Two men in the company undertook to hold a chair down, while, at their request a spirit moved it, and notwithstanding they exerted all their strength, the chair could not be held still by them. As we sat by the table, the cloth was removed to a different part of the room. The combs of several ladies were taken from their heads and put into the heads of others, and afterwards the combs returned to their owners, and placed in the hair as before."

The previous several paragraphs have been a "corroborating accounts" digression. Let us return back to year 1850, to examine some more literary documents from that time. 1850 was the publication year of a major work on the paranormal, Catherine Crowe's The Night Side of Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost Seers, which you can read here. But Crowe apparently failed to make any mention of the rap phenomena involving the Fox sisters, possibly because of its recency, and because mediums were not yet reporting something coming under any category of ghost seeing.

In 1850 there appeared a periodical called the Spirit Messenger. It started out mainly as a vehicle for the teachings of Andrew Jackson Davis, an astonishing anomaly in American literature who was called the Poughkeepsie Seer. At a very early age the untutored Davis seemed to produce literary output of astonishing insight. He also would seem to go into trances, have visions and display clairvoyance. Telling his tale would require a separate post.  As early as early as September 7, 1850 the Spirit Messenger began to report striking observations of the paranormal. We read on page 35 of a professor who had an extremely strange compulsion one day to move his bed. That very night he found that a large beam had fallen just on the spot where the bed previously was. On the same page we read of a young naval lieutenant who became convinced that his brother very far away had died on August 12 at 6:00. Later this was confirmed to be true. 

In the next edition of the Spirit Messenger, dating from September 14, 1850, we read this on page 44:

"In accordance with intentions previously expressed, our renders shall now have the result of our inquiries, into the nature and character of the manifestations we witnessed at the house of J. R Mettler, in Bridgeport, Conn. The sounds and demonstrations generally, together with the mode of communication adopted, are intrinsically the same as those which attend the ladies of the Fox family, at Rochester. In this case, the medium of communication is a young man, of light complexion and nervous temperament, who has been somewhat distinguished as a clairvoyant. His name is Henry Gordon. From him we learn, that in the incipient stages of the phenomena manifested in his presence, his attention was often attracted by sounds, resembling those produced by the dropping of water from some point of elevation, to the floor of the room he occupied. The sounds, which he could trace to no visible agency, gradually increased in frequency, variety and loudness, and were occasionally attended by startling phenomena, such as the sudden and unaccountable moving of chairs, tables, and other articles of furniture."

We read of messages being spelled out, apparently by some system in which the alphabet is recited, and raps or other sounds occur after particular letters are spoken. Page 54 of the September 21, 1850 edition describes a seance involving the Fox sisters in Rochester. Page 59 of the September 28, 1850 edition has a correspondent report of a seance with glorious paranormal music and mysterious mists seeming to form into human heads. On page 14S of the December 14, 1850 edition we have an account that claims a clairvoyant went into a trance and then spoke just as you would expect the brother of a nearby person to speak, while claiming to be controlled by that brother. Page 157 of the December 21, 1850 edition has a similar account. 

In 1850 there was published an anonymous book entitled "Philosophy of modern miracles, or, the relations of spiritual causes to physical effects : with especial reference to the mysterious developments at Bridgeport."  You can read the book at www.archive.org, which lists S. B. Brittan as the author. S. B. Brittan was the author of the 1865 opus Man and His Relations, which I review here, calling it a little-known classic of parapsychology.  S. B. Brittan also wrote an 1853 book (under his own name) sounding like the 1850 "Philosophy of modern miracles." The 1850 "Philosophy of modern miracles" book has this very dramatic opening:

"That many strange and startling phenomena — displays of a mysterious power and intelligence — have of late occurred, in various parts of the United States, is a fact too well authenticated to admit of rational controversy. At Rochester, Auburn and New York, Stratford and Bridgeport, Ct. — and other places which need not be mentioned in this connection — a succession of explosive sounds are frequently or constantly occurring, which appear to proceed from some intelligence that is more than mortal. These invisible agents exhibit at times a power to put ponderable objects in motion ; they are intimately acquainted with the minutest circumstances of individual experience, and have an unfailing memory of all the Past. They penetrate and disclose the secrets of the human soul ; the most opaque substances are transparent before them, and they have a power to unlock the Future and read from the page of Destiny."

 What I find striking about this book is the author's repeated claims that the paranormal events described are so well-authenticated and documented that there is no need to review the evidence for them. This suggests the documents I quote here are only a small fraction of the documents around this time (1850) that made similar attestations to inexplicable events. Most of the book consists of speculations about the mysterious paranormal events that seemed to be "the talk of the town" around 1850.  On page 41 we have this statement:

"It is well known that during the past year the residence of Rev. Dr. Phelps, in Stratford, has been the theater of some unusual exhibitions, in which an invisible power has revealed its presence, by putting numerous ponderable objects in motion — often displaying great apparent violence. These strange phenomena occur at all hours of the day as well as at night. The facts are abundantly sustained by the most reliable testimony, Mr. Phelps is a divine, of the Presbyterian order, and eminent alike for his strict orthodoxy and exemplary piety ; besides, many intelligent gentlemen have visited the family mansion, and been witnesses of these marvelous exhibitions. Among others the Editor of the Derby Journal, and Rev. Mr. Brown, the distinguished pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Bridgeport, may be referred to as having made these phenomena the subject of a careful investigation."

The account is repeated by another author (Eliab Capron) at greater length in Chapter VII of the book here, and also repeated by an 1856 book quoting Phelps as saying this:

"'The phenomena consisted in the moving of articles of furniture in a manner that could not be accounted for. Knives, forks, spoons, nails, blocks of wood, &c., were thrown in different directions about the house. They were seen to move from places and in directions which made it certain that no visible power existed by which the motion could be produced. For days and weeks together, I watched these strange movements, with all the care, and caution, and close attention, which I could bestow. I witnessed them hundreds and hundreds of times, and I know that in hundreds of instances they took place when there was no visible power by which the motion could have been produced. Scores of persons, of the first standing in the community, whose education, general intelligence, candor, veracity and sound judgment, none will question, were requested to witness the phenomena, and, if possible, help us to a solution of the mystery. But as yet no solution has been obtained....With the most thorough investigation which I have been able to bestow upon it, aided by gentlemen of the best talents, intelligence and sound judgment, in this and in many neighboring towns, the cause of these strange phenomena remains yet undiscovered." 

On page 45 the author gives this testimony regarding Andrew Jackson, who died in 1845:

"A few moments elapsed and the sounds were heard — gradually becoming louder and more frequent — and soon there came — from the dim invisible — the announcement that Gen. Andrew Jackson was present, and would converse with the writer. The General here declared that he had produced the sensation experienced in the morning, which I had erroneously attributed to a material cause. Desiring some further evidence that the old Hero was really present, he proceeded to state that I voted for him on occasion of his last election to the Presidency, and, moreover, that I had never voted for any other President, before or since. The General was then requested to designate the place where we last met, prior to his separation from the body, whereupon he replied, ' at the Brooklyn Navy Yard ' — all of which statements are strictly true. At my request the table was moved in a powerful manner, and in various directions — the motion being accompanied by a noise that might have been heard in the adjoining apartment."

A person trying to trace the exact sequence of spooky events arising  around 1850 and in the next few years should consult the 1855 work here by E. W. Capron, who gives a very detailed history of such events in the first three hundred pages of his book.  We read of the spread of spooky phenomena between 1849 and 1854 from Rochester, New York to Auburn, New York and to other places such as New York City, Providence, Boston, Troy, Cincinnati, Buffalo,  and Waterford, New York.  The book details the extreme malice directed by the press towards those participating in the events, which apparently went as far as breaking into a house, smashing a window and threats of murder.   

1850 saw the publication of the remarkable work The Celestial Telegraph by  Louis Alphonse Cahagnet (that at least is the date listed on one of the available editions, with another available edition failing to list a publication date). Cahagenet experimented with hypnotism, often called in his day "magnetism" or "animal magnetism" or "somnambulism." Like many preceding him, he seemed to find some subjects with clairvoyance that could be demonstrated when the subjects were hypnotized.   After discussing experiences with several entranced visionaries, on pages 51-52 Cahagnet introduces us to Adele Magnot, telling us that he would hypnotize her, and that she would not remember what occurred when she was hypnotized.  He introduces her as follows (using the word "magnetic sleep" for a hypnotic trance):

"We are now come to our best and most powerful ecstatic ; the one whose light has opened our eyes ; the one who refuses no spiritual experiment. Theology, metaphysics, psychology, she answers all in a sense tinctured with neither pride nor error. Should the materialist not obtain from her the proofs he desires, he can not accuse her of entangling the question, or of bad faith. For several years past, in her magnetic sleep, she lives with the beings of the other world ; give her but the Christian and surname of the deceased persons, no matter at what period we desire her to perceive or consult, and she sees and converses with them at will. Hitherto, she has never failed in one experiment, and we shall be astonished at her clairvoyance, and the exact details she gives of persons who have departed this life."

Cahagenet provides us with 17 cases in which Adele was asked to describe a deceased person she knew nothing about, and seemed to describe the person with great accuracy, judging by the statements of people who knew the person asked about. To see links to the pages listing these cases, you can read my long and very interesting post "Visions of the Entranced 'Spirit Seers' " here. 

In the later months of 1850 The Spiritual Messenger started to document the spread of what it called spiritual manifestations.  The edition of December 21, 1850 records a seance in Auburn NY in March of 1850 in which a request is made to provide the last words of a dying person, and a correct answer coming from raps. 

 

Additional installments of this "Spookiest Years" series will appear at various intermittent intervals on this blog. I will continue to open "hidden boxes" containing the "Forbidden History" of the nineteenth century's spooky occurrences, important-seeming narratives that have been senselessly excluded from the pages of textbooks of history, psychology, biology and physics.