Part 14

The girl said she had been accustomed to see her visitant, at times, during three preceding years, and that she saw more devils than any one there ever saw men in the world. Her notions in reference to the proper application of words were obviously just as loose as the prevalent ones in community then, which deemed any spirit visitant whatsoever a devil, or the devil. An observer of such beings as she saw would to-day call them spirits. When she perceived and called out to some personage invisible to her companions, saying, "What cheer, old man?" she plainly indicated that the being thus hailed was apparently neither more nor less than an old man, and he, judged by her address to him, was by no means austere or repulsive; and yet he doubtless was one of those whom she, or whom the reporter of her utterances, was accustomed to call devils. There is no indication that she ever saw one specially huge, malformed, malignant personality, or that she ever intended to indicate perception of such a one.

The purposes and moods of Mr. Willard's interlocutor seem to have been playful and kindly, rather than morose and satanic. Temporarily reincarnated spirits are often prone to smile at the long-faced and cringing thoughts which their advent evokes in persons not accustomed to interviews with them. "You are a great rogue--a great rogue," and "you had better love me," can hardly be deemed ill-timed or inappropriate expressions from a lively boy, whatever his hue, who, on being mistaken for the devil, would naturally banter the sedate clergyman whose creed forced him to regard such a visitant as the Prince of Evil. He said truly, and in better spirit than the minister's, it would be better for you to love than to "hate" me.

Common fairness asks all men to regard any speaker's account of himself as true, until some reason appears for distrusting him. No word or deed ascribed to this pretty black boy, who said he was not Satan, renders the accuracy of his statement doubtful. Distrust of him, if it spring up, will probably be the offspring of prejudices, combined with ignorance of spirit methods of opening ways to reach man's cognizance, and win him to seek communings with his preceding kindred who possess more experience and consequent greater wisdom than pertains to any dwellers in mortal forms. Our incrustations of ignorance and prejudice withstand every gentle appliance, and yield only to sledge-hammer blows.

Sensations, conditions, and various powers attendant on Elizabeth Knap were emphatically extraordinary. Detailed journalistic account of them having come down from a sagacious, cautious, truthful, and cultured man--from one of the eminently trustworthy men of his generation--demands credence. He says the strength of her body was "beyond the force of dissimulation;" that "six persons could hardly hold her;" and that "the actings were contrary to those of convulsions."

Another point is, that through the eleven weeks of such rough exploits, "she did not waste in body or strength." Cotton Mather speaks of some who were so preserved through similarly tortured states, that, "at the end of one month's wretchedness, they were as able still to undergo another." Similar preservation of flesh and strength, amid fastings and most excessive activity, are frequent experiences to-day with the highly mediumistic, especially in the earlier stages of their dominations by invisibles.

Speech came from her without motion of her vocal organs. That much may pertain to simple ventriloquence; but Mr. Willard says also that "we observed, when the voice spoke, her throat was swelled formidably, at least as big as one's fist." Ventriloquence has not usually such an adjunct as that. Moreover, the minister was convinced that the utterings were prompted by other will than hers.

This girl's experience abounds in evidences that her spirit faculties of perception were so freed from hamperings by the outer body, that she could consciously see, hear, and converse with spirits, and that her physical system was subject to control by them for speech in varied forms and modes, and for strange and violent action by her limbs.

In parts of the narrative which we have not copied, it appears that accusation came from her lips that Mr. Willard himself and some other godly ones in his parish were her tormentors. This was saying to Samuel in most startling manner, as one of old did to David, "Thou art the man;" for at that day faith was common that the devil had not power to accuse a godly person, could not indeed accuse any others than guilty ones of being contributors to outworkings of witchcraft. If the announcement was true, Mr. Willard and other good ones, according to the faith of some at that day, were covenanters with the devil. It was a fearful moment when such accusation of the good clergyman fell upon his ears from the lips of his tortured pupil. His resort, and that of another accused one, was to prayer; and we can readily fancy that petitions heavenward then rose up from the lowest depths of true and earnest souls, and went forth, in the girl's presence, with such psychologizing power as loosened the hold of any spirit possessing her form, and allowed her to regain full possession and control of all her normal powers.

This subject of spirit control retained consciousness during her entrancements, or during the times when her body was subject to a will not her own, as many mediums do at this day. Consequently she would possess more or less knowledge of whatever was said or done by her organs and limbs, whoever controlled them. Being young, she could scarcely be competent to make, and keep in remembrance, the broad severance of her individual responsibility for what was done by others and what by herself, through use of her own physical faculties. It was natural--almost necessary--that she should become self-condemnatory for having had done through her what gave distress and anguish to her friends, even though she had lent no voluntary aid to the deeds, nor had power to prevent their being enacted.

We presume her statement was true that Mr. Willard and the others then accused were, though unconsciously, made to be contributors of aid to the controllers of his pupil; true that she felt the workings of emanations from them. Twenty years afterward an "afflicted" one in Salem Village began to cry out upon this same man as being one of her afflicters. And why? Because, probably, of constitutional properties in him which spirits could avail themselves of as helps for entrancing or controlling mediumistic persons. The laws which governed detection of tormentors of the bewitched will come under more extended consideration in subsequent parts of our work. Results indicate that Samuel Willard's system possessed either material or psychic properties, or both, which exposed him to accusation of bewitching some sensitives, whose perceptive powers could trace back to their source any mesmerizing forces that entered into and acted efficiently upon their own systems.

In his usual temper and judgment witchward, Hutchinson pronounced the sufferings of Elizabeth Knap "fraud, imposture, and ventriloquism"! Shade of Samuel Willard! How look you now, and how shall we mortals look upon the man, who, ninety years after your day, casting a glance backward into the darkened chambers of the long past, perceived yourself to have been a credulous dolt and simpleton, unable, by eleven weeks' close study and vigilant watch, to determine that the source of marvelous phenomena manifested in your own domicile, before your own attentive eyes, was exclusively mundane? From looking at the occurrences, as they lay dormant and half buried under the dust which ninety full years had been throwing over them, Hutchinson saw at a glance that they were nothing but frauds, impostures, and ventriloquism. You, Rev. Sir, at first doubted their supermundane source, but study of and deliberate reflection upon them for weeks satisfied you that your doubts were untenable; you obviously was devoid of such credulity as enabled Hutchinson to very promptly obtain conviction that your Elizabeth was but an actor of fraud and imposture. Alas for your sagacity, Samuel Willard!

Upham makes no account of either Ann Cole or Elizabeth Knap, though these were decidedly the best American prototypes of the magic-taught girls in Salem Village, whose schemings and exploits he dwells upon at great length. He claims that the witchcraft generators and enactors there studied, schemed, and practiced in concert at "a circle," and thus learned how, and by what means, to originate and perform it. All known circumstances conspire to indicate that neither Ann Cole nor Elizabeth Knap had either visible teachers or co-operators in their marvelous operations. Therefore, had the historian adduced those two cases--these good exemplars of the performers at Salem--perhaps he would have been asked who trained the isolated performers twenty and thirty years before a necromantic seminary had been founded, at which the arts of magic, necromancy, and Spiritualism could be taught and learned. Was there anywhere a prior institution of that kind? If not, then we ask, was any circle kindred to that at Salem an essential--a sine qua non--to acquiring competency for skillful practice of witchcraft? or of acts called witchcraft of old? May not natural endowments sometimes be ample qualification for admitting the evolvement through one's form of very great marvels? If not, the sporadic performances at Hartford and Groton are troublesome to account for.

The advent of one spirit to Elizabeth Knap, and his use of her organs of speech in carrying on a dialogue with the Rev. Samuel Willard, is distinctly stated by that trustworthy chronicler. Also, according to him, the girl saw vast hosts of similar beings--yes, more in number than any one present had ever seen men in their lives. Here, surely, is very strong testimony to the general fact that spirit action took sensible effect upon and among human beings away back in 1671-2, in the quiet inland town of Groton.

What is fit treatment of such facts and testimony from such a source? Should they be left unadduced and unalluded to, as they were by one elaborate historian? Should they be called outgrowths from "fraud and imposture," as they were by another? Or should writers upon the subject, in manly way, both let the facts come forth and speak for themselves, and leave the sagacity and veracity of their exemplary chronicler above suspicion, till by facts, and fair deductions from them, they render it probable that Samuel Willard was the slave of such delusion as disqualified him for reasoning with common accuracy upon what his external senses perceived day after day and week after week? Shrinking, by an historian of New England's witchcraft, from distinct notice of Willard's deliberate and carefully drawn conclusions from facts transpiring in his presence, is not only a keeping back of important information, but possibly is an implication either that Willard himself was an unreliable witness, or a witness on the other side of the question, whose testimony would be troublesome. Generous blood boils with rebuke when boasted enlightenment either ignores or traduces the most competent and trustworthy transmitters of marvelous facts, where so doing facilitates command of room for setting up modern fancies in niches where ancient facts have rightful foothold.

On the good authority of Samuel Willard we find that Elizabeth Knap saw hosts of spirits, was roughly handled and spoken through by some of them, and by one who said he was not Satan, but a pretty black boy. This was a case of spirit manifestation.

THE MORSE FAMILY.

Late in the year 1679, in the part of old Newbury, Mass., which is now Newburyport, very many startling pranks occurred, of a kind which to-day are called physical manifestations. These clustered mostly in and around the dwelling-place of William Morse, an aged man, who with his wife, then sixty-five years old, and their little grandson, John Stiles, constituted the whole family.

Perusal of the records of this case has rendered it probable to us that Mrs. Morse, the little boy John, and a young mariner, Caleb Powell, who was frequently in at Morse's house, were all distinctly mediumistic, and that their systems either supplied, or were used for holding, instrumental elements and forces which spirits used in imparting seeming vitality, will, self-guiding and motive powers to andirons, pots, kettles, trays, bedsteads, and many other implements and articles.

Beauty and attractiveness seldom drape the foundations of even very elegant and useful structures. Laborers digging trenches for foundations, and others placing stones therein, are frequently rough beings, in homely garbs, from whom the refined and sensitive often turn away as soon as politeness and civility permit. Yet, though rough, coarse, and unsightly materials go into foundations, and equally rough workmen lay them, the nature and quality of materials there used, and of work there performed, deserve inspection by any one whose duty, interest, or pleasure induces him to estimate with approximate accuracy the value and prospective utility of the structure which shall rest thereon.

Palpable, audible, visible pranks, seeming to be the willed actions of lifeless wood and iron, possibly occurred in the seventeenth, because they are common in the nineteenth century. Such pranks are foundations of arguments which prove a life after death. A table, a chair, or an andiron, manifesting all the usual signs of indwelling vitality, consciousness, intelligence, self-willed action, and of possessing animal senses and capacities, testifies to its being operated upon by some unseen intelligence more convincingly than can the lips of the wisest and truest man the world contains testify to any fact whatsoever which seems supernatural. Vitalized wood or iron speaks "as never man spake;" yes, as man, unless specially aided from outside of the visible world, can never speak; it addresses men's external senses directly; it confides its teachings to the most trusted and most trustworthy conveyances of facts and truths to the mind within. The oft ridiculed, slurred, contemned antics of household furniture are signs put forth to human view by occult operators, whose stand-point, of vision and powers of comprehension enable them to use some natural laws and forces for affecting man and his interests, which human scientists have never clearly cognized, which schoolmen do not embrace in their philosophies, and therefore the cultured world generally has failed to put forth rational and satisfactory explanations of many marvels which the ocean of mystery is often buoying up on to its surface, where they become perceptible by human senses.

Modern mind has very extensively measured the credibility of witnesses to witchcraft facts much as the good woman did that of her "sailor boy." On his return home from a voyage around the Hope, he soon began to describe what he had seen, and gave an account of flying fish. "Stop, stop, my son," said the mother; "don't talk like that; people can't believe that, because fishes haven't got no wings, and can't fly." "Well, mother," replied Jack, "I'll pass by the fish, and tell what happened in the Red Sea. When we weighed anchor there, we drew up on its flukes some spokes and felloes of Pharaoh's chariot wheels." "That, now," rejoined the mother, "will do to tell; we can believe that, because that is in the Bible."

In similar manner many people are prone to measure the credibility of witnesses by the reconcilability of the things testified to, with the general previous knowledge, observations, and experiences of the world. Such a course is usually very well. But the rule it involves is not applicable in all cases. Veritable flying fish exist, notwithstanding the mother conceived them to be nothing but the fictions of her wild boy's lively fancy. The facts of witchcraft may have been veritable; many witnesses who testified to them may have been both truthful and accurate describers, notwithstanding the incredulity of some historians whose philosophies are too narrow to enwrap many facts which exist.

The strange manifestations at Morse's house, we have said before, were nearly all such as to-day are denominated physical ones; that is, such as are manifested either upon, or through use of, matter that is uncontrolled by any mortal's mind. Few if any intelligible utterances or communications imputed to invisible intelligences contributed to the consternation which was then excited in Newbury. This case differs very widely from either of those previously noticed both as to the objects directly acted upon mysteriously, and as to the human organs employed. It invites to extended and careful attention. We must transfer to our pages numerous, and some long, extracts from the old records; else we shall fail to manifest with desirable clearness and authority the multiplicity and character of those marvelous works, and their probable sources and authors.

Mr. Morse himself, for aught that appears, escaped all suspicion of complicity with, or connivance at, the strange doings. He seemingly came forth from the furnace with no sulphurous smell about him. Caleb Powell, a young seaman, mate of some vessel, but then on shore, was the first person to be legally accused in this case. He was arraigned at the instance, and on the testimony, of Mr. Morse himself. Some peculiar characteristics and habits ascribed to Powell were such as would naturally cause him to be watched, if strange doings appeared where he was present. In "Annals of Witchcraft, Woodward's Historical Series," No. VIII. p. 142, it is stated that Powell "pretended to a knowledge in the occult sciences, and that by means of this knowledge he could detect the witchcraft then going on at Mr. Morse's.... The dancing of pots and kettles, the bowing of chairs, &c., was resumed with more vigor than ever when Powell came there 'to detect the witchcraft.'"

Upham, vol. i. p. 440, says Powell "determined to see what it all meant, and to put a stop to it, if he could, went to the house, and soon became satisfied that a roguish grandchild was the cause of all the trouble.... It is not unlikely, that, in foreign ports, he had witnessed exhibitions of necromancy and mesmerism, which, in various forms and under different names, have always been practiced. Possibly he may have boasted to be a medium himself, a scholar and adept in the mystic art, able to read and divine 'the workings of spirits.' At any rate, when it became known that, at a glance, he attributed to the boy the cause of the mischief, and that it ceased on his taking him away from the house, the opinion became settled that he was a wizard.... His astronomy, astrology, and Spiritualism brought him in peril of his life."

It is no unusual thing for even wise men to write much more wisely than they know. If Powell correctly "at a glance ... found the boy to be the cause of the mischief," it becomes probably a fact, and not simply a boast, that he was "a medium himself," that he was "a wizard," or knowing one, and that his "Spiritualism," more accurately his mediumistic capabilities, "brought him in peril of his life." One authority says the play "was resumed with more vigor than ever" when he came into the house. For some reason he was very soon arraigned and tried for witchcraft, but not convicted.

We have little doubt that his optics saw the boy performing tricks, and therefore can believe that he accused John in good faith; just as the clairvoyant soon to be noticed accused the medium Read. Powell probably saw the boy perpetrating the mischief. But with what eyes? The outer or the inner--his material or his spiritual ones? And which boy did he see? The external or the internal one--the boy material or the boy spiritual? In evidence both that our explanations of Powell's doings will be neither sheer novelty nor mere fancy, and for the purpose of disseminating knowledge of highly important facts, the following extracts are taken from an instructive and interesting pamphlet upon "Mediums and Mediumship," by Thomas R. Hazard: Wm. White & Co., Boston, 1873.

"I once saw Read" (a well-known medium for physical manifestations) "affected by the abrupt introduction of light at one of his circles in Boston, at which he was, as usual, securely tied by a committee chosen by the audience, and fastened securely to his chair. The manifestations were after the common order, and went on harmoniously until an Indian war-song and dance were inaugurated. The exhibition was very exciting, and both the song and the dance became so uproarious and violent that, although we were in a three-story back room, I was apprehensive that not only the temporary platform might give way, but that the attention of the police might be attracted to the spot by the noise. Near by me sat Miss F., an excellent clairvoyant medium, who was earnestly describing to some of her friends the scene that was being enacted on the platform. She stated that two powerful Indians stood by Read, and that it was he who performed the wonderful dance.... Thus one of the best 'dark-circle mediums in the United States' was not only proved to be an 'impostor,' but taken in the very act of his trickery.... From all that was occurring before us, it was too evident that Read was an impostor; for 'Miss F. clairvoyantly saw him perform tricks which he palmed off on the public as spiritual.'... But now, ... mark the sequel, and observe how easy it is for those who suffer their zeal to outrun their knowledge to be mistaken; and how true it is that as spiritual things can only be discerned by the spiritual eye, and material things only by the material eye, so the spiritual eye can (under ordinary circumstances) discern only spiritual things, as the material eye can discern only material things.