Authors: Charles Fort
Wild Talents (20 page)
A field—the dismembered body of a child—a farmhouse nearby. But I can pick up no knowledge of relations with environment. Friendly neighbors—or a neighbor with a grudge—all around is vacancy. A case that was called “unparalleled” was told of, in the New York newspapers, April 30, 1931. Here, too, the surroundings are blankness: in the usual way the story was told, as an unrelated thing. Perhaps, somewhere nearby, brooding over a crystal globe, or some other concentration device, was the origin of a series of misfortunes.
Early in April, 1931, Valentine Minder of Happauge, Long Island, N.Y., was suffering with what was said to be mastoiditis. His eight children were stricken with what was said to be measles, and then, one after another, in a period of eight days, the eight children were taken ill with mastoiditis, and were removed to a hospital. The circumstance, because of which these cases were called “unparalleled,” is that mastoiditis was supposed to be not contagious.
These cases, which, if “unparalleled,” were mysterious, were a culmination of a series of misfortunes. About two years before, Minder’s home had burned down. Then came his illness, a loss of vitality, the loss of his job, and a state of destitution. Toward the end of 1930, Mrs. Minder was stricken with an indefinable illness and became an invalid.
So far as was known, mastoiditis is not contagious. Out of many cases of family maladies, misfortunes, and fatalities, I pick one in which it seems that even more decidedly there is no place for the idea of contagion. Of course there is a place for the idea of coincidence. That is one square peg that fits into round holes and octagonal holes; dodecagonal holes, cracks, slits, gaps—or seems to, so long as whether it does or doesn’t is not enquired into. London
Daily Chronicle,
Nov. 3, 1926—that Mr. A.C. Peckover, the well-known violinist, one of the examiners to the Royal College of Music, had at the home of his sister, in Skipton, awakened one morning to find himself blind. He was taken to the Bradford Eye and Ear Hospital. Here was his father, who, almost simultaneously, had been stricken with blindness.
In the matter of the deaths that followed the opening of Tut-Ankh-Amen’s tomb, it is my notion that, if “curses” there be, they lose their vitality, anyway after several thousand years—
Or that a tomb was violated, and that funerals followed—by the deadly magic of no mummy, but of a living Egyptian—that, somewhere in Egypt, a sense of desecration became an obsession, from which came “rays,” or a more personal and searching vengeance.
I wonder why the “wealthy farmer” appears in so many records of more or less uncanny doings. Perhaps any farmer who becomes wealthy, so becomes by sharp practices, and has enemies, whose malices against him demonstrate. In November, 1890, the household of Stephen Haven, a wealthy farmer, living near Fowlerville, Michigan, was startled by cries, one night. Haven was found at the bottom of a deep well. He had walked in his sleep. Two months later, he was again missing from his bedroom, was searched for, and was found, standing, with the water up to his neck in Silver Lake. Other members of the family were alarmed and alert. They heard slight sounds, one night—Haven was found, fast asleep, trying to set the house afire. Another time—and a thud was heard. The man, asleep, had tried to hang himself. According to the story, as told in the
Brooklyn Eagle,
Nov. 18, 1892, Haven had finally been found dead at night. He had fallen from the upper-story doorway of his barn.
See back to occurrences in Sing Sing Prison, in December, 1930.
New York Herald Tribune,
Jan. 18, 1932—“Warden Lewis E. Lawes fell this evening on the sleet-covered steps of his home, at the prison, and his right arm was broken in three places.”
In matters of witchcraft, my general expression—as I say, to signify that neither as to anything in this book, nor anywhere else, have I beliefs—my general expression upon poltergeist girls is not that they are mediums, controlled by spirits, but that effects in their presence are phenomena of their own powers, or talents, or whatever: but that there are cases in which it seems to me that youngsters were mediums, or factors, not to spirits, but to living human beings, who had become witches, or wizards, by their hates—or that, in some cases, sorcery, unless so involuntarily accompliced, cannot operate. See back to the Dagg case—here there seemed to be a girl’s own phenomena, and also the presence of another being, who was invisible. The story was probably largely a distortion. The story was that there was a feud—that a “voice” accused a neighbor, Mrs. Wallace, of having sent it into the Dagg home. If this woman could invisibly transport herself into somebody else’s home, for purposes of malice and persecution, we’d not expect her to accuse herself—but there is such an element in a hate, as a sense of dissatisfaction with injuring an enemy, unless the victim knows who’s doing it. Also the accusation was soon confused into an acquittal.
I have noted a case of occurrences in a shop, in London, which I tell of, mostly because it has highly the look of authenticity. Not a girl but a boy was present. I’d think that the doings were his own phenomena, were it not for the circumstance of “timing.” By “timing,” in this case, I mean the occurrence of phenomena upon the same days of weeks. The phenomenon of “timing,” or the occurrences of doings, about the same time each day, appears in many accounts of persecutions by invisibles, for which I have found no room, in this book.
London
Weekly Dispatch,
Aug. 18, 1907—disturbances in the stationery shop of Arthur Herbert George, 20 Butte Street, South Kensington, London, according to Mr. George’s sworn statement, before the Commissioner for Oathes at 85 Gloucester-road, South Kensington. George and his assistant, a boy, or a young man, aged seventeen, saw books and piles of stationery slide unaccountably from shelves. Everything that they replaced fell again, so that they could make no progress, trying to restore order. No vibration, no force of any kind, was felt. Two electric lamps in the window toppled over. Then there was livelier action: packages of note paper flew around, striking George and his assistant several times. George shut the door, so that customers should not come in and be injured. The next day boxes of stationery and bottles of ink were flying around, and four persons were struck. To this statement was appended an affidavit by an antique dealer, Sidney Guy Adams, 23 Butte Street, testifying that he had seen heavy packages of note paper flying around, and that he had been struck by one of them. In the
Weekly Dispatch,
September 1, it was said that there had been a repetition of the disturbances, upon the same days of the week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) as the days of former phenomena. The damage to goods amounted to about ten.
Upon May 31, 1905, Englishmen—in a land where reported witchcraft is of common occurrence—were startled. This tabooed subject had been brought up in Parliament. A member of the House of Commons had told of a case of witchcraft, and had asked for an investigation.
See back to “mysterious thefts.” Accept data and implications of almost any of the succeeding groups of stories, and “cat burglars,” and other larcenous practitioners, become thinkable as adepts in skills that are not describable as “physical.”
Dean Forest Mercury,
May 26, 1905—that £50 had been stolen from a drawer in the home of John Markey near Blakeney (Dean Forest). The disappearance of this money was considered unaccountable. Just why, I could not find out, because the influence of taboo smothered much, in this case. The members of this household could not explain how this money could have vanished, and brooding over the mystery made them “superstitious.” They asked a woman, who, according to her reputation, had much knowledge of witchcraft, to investigate. Then came occurrences that made them extremely, hysterically, insanely “superstitious.” It was as if an invisible resented the interference. Soon after the arrival of this woman—Ellen Haywood—something went through this house, smashing windows, crockery, and other breakables.
That is about all that I can pick up from the local newspaper, and from other newspapers published in the neighborhood.
Markey’s daughter broke down with terror. There is only this record: no particulars of her experiences. Without detail, or comment, it is told that Markey’s granddaughter became insane. Both women were removed, one to a hospital, and the other to an asylum. Markey’s wife ran screaming from the house and hid in the forest. A police inspector came from Gloucester, and organized a search for her; but she was not found. For three days, without food or shelter, she hid. Then she returned, telling that she had seen the searchers, but had been in such a state of terror—by whatever was censored out of the records—that she had been afraid to come out of hiding. Markey’s son became violently insane, smashing furniture, and seriously injuring himself, crying out that the whole family was bewitched. He, too, was taken to an asylum.
There was a demand for an inquiry into this case, and it was voiced in the House of Commons. It was voiced against taboo. There is no more to tell.
I have notes upon another case that looks like resentment against an intrusion—if a woman died, but not in an epileptic fit, as alleged. There were accounts in the London newspapers, but I take from a local newspaper, the
Wisbech Advertiser,
Feb. 27, 1923, home of Mr. Scrimshaw, at Gorefield, near Wisbech. Other members of Scrimshaw’s household were his mother, aged eighty-two, and his daughter, Olive, aged sixteen. The phenomena were in the presence of this girl. First, Mrs. Scrimshaw’s lace cap rose from her head. Then a washstand crashed to the floor. Objects, such as books, dishes, a water filter, fell to the floor. There was much smashing of furniture and crockery. Names of neighbors, who witnessed these unconventionalities, are John Fennelow, T. Marrick, W. Maxey, and G.T. Ward. A piano that weighed 400 pounds moved from place to place. Police constable Hudson was a witness of some of the phenomena. As to a suggestion that, for any reason of notoriety, or hoaxing, Scrimshaw could be implicated, it was noted that the damage to furniture amounted to about 140.
A woman—Mrs. J.T. Holmes—who, sometime before, had been accused of witchcraft, went to this house, and practiced various incantations to exorcise the witch, or the evil spirit, or whatever. She died suddenly. It was said that she was subject to fits, and had died in one of her convulsions. Whether his decision related to Taboo, or not, the coroner decided not to hold an inquest.
Upon Dec. 12, 1930—see the
Home News
(Bronx), Dec. 22, 1930—a resident of the Bronx, Elisha Shamray—who had changed his name from Rayevsky—opened a pharmaceutical laboratory in Jackson Street, lower East Side, N.Y. During the night he died. His brother, Dr. Charles Rayevsky, came from Liberty, N.Y., to arrange for the funeral. He died a week later. The next night, the third of these brothers, Michael Shamray, Tremont Ave., Bronx, was on his way to arrange for the second funeral. He was struck by an automobile, and was killed.
In August, 1927, Wayne B. Wheeler was the general counsel of the Anti-saloon League of America. Upon August 13th, an oil stove exploded, in his home, and his wife was killed. Later, his father dropped dead. Upon the 5th of September, Wheeler died.
New York Sun,
Feb. 3, 1932—Mount Vernon, Ohio, February 3—“Fear that the mysterious illness which has killed three young brothers may strike again in the same family gripped surviving members of the household, today.”
Upon the 24th of January, Stanley Paazig, aged nine, died in the home of his parents, on a farm near Mount Vernon. Upon the 31st, Raymond, aged eight, died. Marion, aged six, died, February 2nd.
The State Health Department had been unable to identify the malady. “Chemists spent twenty-four hours making tests of the youngest victim’s blood, without finding a trace of poison.”
22
Belief in God—in Nothing—in Einstein—a matter of fashion—
Or that college professors are mannequins, who doll up in the latest proper things to believe, and guide their young customers modishly.
Fashions often revert, but to be popular they modify. It could be that a re-dressed doctrine of witchcraft will be the proper acceptance. Come unto me, and maybe I’ll make you stylish. It is quite possible to touch up beliefs that are now considered dowdy, and restore them to fashionableness. I conceive of nothing, in religion, science, or philosophy that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.
“Typhoid Mary”—I doubt her germs—or I suspect that she was more malicious than germy. But nobody else—at least so far as go the published accounts—which could not be expected to go very far back in the years 1906-14—thought of ignoring her germs, and of bottling her “rays.” For my own suspicion that this was a case of witchcraft, I shall, for a while, probably be persecuted, by an amused tolerance, but, if back in the year 1906, anybody had given his opinion that “Typhoid Mary” was a witch, he’d have been laughed at outright.
Nobody accused “Typhoid Mary,” except properly. According to the demonology of her era, she was distributing billions of little devils. Her case is framed with the unrecorded. As to her relations with her victims, I have nothing upon which to speculate.
The homes of dying men and women have been bombarded with stones of undetectable origin. Nobody was accused. We have had data of unexplained explosions, and data of seeming effects of “rays,” not physical, upon motors. To me it is thinkable that a distant enemy could, invisibly, make an oil stove explode, and kill a woman, and then—if by means other than any known radioactivity, aeroplanes ever have been picked from the sky—pick from existence other members of her family. The explosion of the oil stove is simply a
bang,
such as cartoonists sometimes draw, with a margin of vacancy.
But there have been cases of persons who were accused of witchcraft.
This statement—like every other statement, issuing from the Supreme Court of the United States of America, from a nursery, from a meeting of the Amer. Assoc. Ad. Sci., or from the gossip of imbeciles—means whatever anybody wants it to mean. One interpretation is that superstitious people have attributed various misfortunes, which were probably due to their own ignorance and incompetence, to the malice of neighbors. At any rate, these cases are sketches of relations with environment, and so far we have been in a garden of evil, in which blossomed deaths and destructions, without visible stems, and without signs of the existence of roots.
New York Evening World,
Sept. 14, 1928—Michael Drouse, a farmer living near Bruce, Wis., who shot and fatally wounded John Wierzba, forty-four, told Sheriff Dobson that he did it because Wierzba had bewitched his cows.
New York Times,
Sept. 8, 1929— action by the Rye (N.Y.) National Bank against Leland Waterbury of Poundridge, for recovery of properties, which the bank alleged had been taken from its client, Howard I. Saires, by “evil-eye” methods. “The case has come to be known as the ‘Westchester witchcraft case.’“
New York Times,
Oct. 9, 1930—charges of sorcery brought against Henry Dorn, of Janesville, Wis. “After a member of the State Board of Medical Examiners listened to the charges of sorcery, he said that he was convinced that they were unfounded.” Dorn’s sister had accused him of “casting spells of sickness” upon members of her household.
So that case was disposed of.
I am not given to fortune-telling. I dislike the idea of fortune-telling, so called, or termed more pretentiously. But I do think that anybody could tell the fortune of any member of any State Board of Medical Examiners, who would say, of any charge of sorcery, that he was convinced that it was well-founded.
There were other charges against Dorn. They remind one of accusations in old-time witchcraft trials—
That Dorn had caused apples to rot on trees, cows to go dry, and hens to cease laying.
Opponents to the idea of witchcraft are much influenced by their inability to conceive how anybody could make apples rot; inability to visualize the process of drying a cow, or entering into the organism of a hen, and stopping her productions. And science does not tell them how this could be done. So.
Also they cannot conceive how something makes apples grow, or why they don’t rot on trees; how the milk of a cow is secreted, or why she shouldn’t be dry; how the egg of a hen develops. And science does not tell them.
It’s every man for himself, and save who can—and damnation is in accepting any messiah’s offers of salvation. We’re told too much, and we’re told too little. We rely. And for two pins—having had experiences by which I am pretty well assured that nobody ever has two pins, when they’re called for—I’d finish this book, as a personal philosophy, or for myself, alone, and then burn it. It’s everybody for himself, or he isn’t anybody.
It’s every thinker for himself. He can be told of nothing but surfaces. Theological fundamentalists say, rootily, they think, that all things have makers—that God made all things. Then what made God? even little boys ask. Space is curved, and behind space, or space-time, there is nothing, says Prof. Einstein. Also may he be construed as saying that it is only relatively to something else that anything can be curved.
Throughout this book there is a permeation that may be interpreted as helplessness and hopelessness—absence of anything in science more than approximately to rely on—solaces and reassurances of religion, but any other religion would do as well—all progresses returning to their points of origin—philosophies only intellectual dress-making—
But, if it’s every man for himself, it is my expression that out of his illusion that he has a self, he may develop one.
In records of witchcraft trials, often appears the statement that the accused person was seen, at the time of doings, in a partly visible, or semi-substantial, state. In June, 1880, at High Easter, Essex, England (London
Times,
June 24, 1880), there were poltergeist disturbances in the home of a family named Brewster. Furniture wandered. A bed rocked. Brewster saw, or thought he saw, a shadowy shape, which he recognized as that of his neighbor, Susan Sharpe. He and his son went to the home of the woman and dragged her to a pond. They threw her into the pond to see whether she would sink or float. But, though once upon a time, this was the scientific thing to do, fashions in science had changed. Brewster and his son were arrested and were bound over to keep the peace—just as should be any woman, who, during rush hours in the subway, should appear in a hoop skirt.
A case that was a blend of ancient accusations and modern explanations was reported in the London
Evening News,
July 14, 1921—that is, “mysterious illnesses” attributed to the doings of an enemy, but an attempt to explain materialistically. Residents of a house in Putney had, in the London South Western Court, accused their neighbor, Frank Gordon Hatton, of “administering poisonous fumes down their chimney.” Saying that the complainants had failed to prove their case, the magistrate dismissed the charge.
If anybody could have a sane idea as to what he means by insanity, he might know what he is thinking about, by bringing in this convenient way of explaining unconventional human conduct. Whatever insanity is supposed to be, it cannot so satisfactorily be applied as the explanation of two persons’ beliefs relatively to one set of circumstances. According to newspaper accounts of a murder in July, 1929, Eugene Burgess, and his wife, Pearl, went insane together, upon the same subject. It was their belief that, when Burgess’s mother died, in the year 1927, she had been “willed to death” by a neighbor, Mrs. Etta Fairchild. It was their belief that this woman had cast illness upon their daughter. They killed Mrs. Fairchild. In an account, in the
New York Sun,
Oct. 16, 1929, Mrs. Burgess is described: “Belying the comparison to the ignorant peasant women, who have stood for trial for similar crimes, for hundreds of years, Mrs. Burgess looks like a prosperous clubwoman.”
These are accounts of accusations of witchcraft, by persons, against other persons, according to their superstitions, or perceptions. Now there will be accounts of cases in which there are suggestions of witchcraft to me, according to my ignorance, or enlightenment.
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 14, 1892—marvelous—though not at all extraordinary—doings in the home of Jerry Meyers, a farmer, living near Hazelwood, Ohio. Meyers had been absent from his home, driving his wife to the railroad station. When he returned, he heard a hysterical story from his niece, Ann Avery, of Middletown, Ohio, who was visiting him. Soon after he and Mrs. Meyers had left the house stones were thrown at her, or fell around her. Objects in the house moved toward her. Mr. Meyers was probably astonished to hear this, but what he wanted was his dinner. The girl went to the barn to gather eggs. On her way back, stones fell around her. Whether Meyers got his dinner, or not, he got a gun. Neighbors had heard of the doings. Stationed around the house were men with shotguns: but stones of unknown origin continued to bombard the house. Ann Avery fled back to her home in Middletown. Phenomena stopped.
In this case of the girl who was driven from her uncle’s home, the circumstance that I pick out as significant is that assailments by stones began soon after Mrs. Meyers left the house. It was said that she had gone to visit friends in the village of Lockland. Of course hospitalities often are queer, but there is a good deal of queerness in the hospitality of somebody who would go visiting somewhere else, while her husband’s niece was visiting in her home.
About the last of November, 1892, in the town of Hamilton, Ontario, a man was on his way to a railroad station. In a cell, in a prison, in Fall River, Massachusetts, sat a woman.
Henry G. Trickey was, in Hamilton, on his way to a railroad station. In the Fall River jail was Lizzie Borden, who was accused of having murdered her parents.
In August, 1892, Trickey, a reporter of the
Boston Globe,
had written what was described as a “scandalous article” about Lizzie Borden. The
Globe
learned that the story was false, and apologized. Trickey was indicted.
He went to Canada. This looks as if he had fled from prosecution.
Lizzie Borden sat in her cell. There may have been something more deadly than an indictment, from which there was no escape for Trickey. While boarding a train at Hamilton, he fell and was killed.
In the town of Eastbourne, Sussex, England, in April, 1922, John Blackman, a well-known labor leader, was committed to prison, under a maintenance order, for arrears due to his wife. The judge who committed him died suddenly. When Blackman was released, he still refused to pay so back he went to prison. The judge who sent him back “died suddenly.” He continued to refuse to pay and twice again, was recommitted to prison, and each time the judge in his case “died suddenly.” See
Lloyd’s Sunday News
(London), Oct. 14, 1923.
Upon Nov. 29, 1931, there was an amateur theatrical performance in the home of Miss Phoebe Bradshaw, 106 Bedford Street, New York City.
Villain
—Clarence Hitchcock, 23 Grove Street, New York.
Wronged husband—
John L. Tilker, 1976 Belmont Avenue, Bronx. Tilker was given a cap pistol. Also he carried a loaded revolver of his own, for which he had a permit. When the time came, Tilker, with his own revolver, fired at Hitchcock, shooting him in the neck. “He was apparently new at play-acting, and in his excitement fired his own revolver, instead of the dummy.”
Hitchcock lay dying in St. Vincent’s Hospital. Soon something occurred to Tilker. He was taken to the Willard Parker Hospital, suffering from what was said to be scarlet fever. Hitchcock died, Jan. 17, 1932. See the
New York Herald Tribune,
Jan. 18, 1932.
New York Evening Journal,
Feb. 6, 1930—“Two bitter women enemies are teetering on the verge of death today, one of them ‘doing satisfactorily,’ while the other is weaker, and in a highly critical condition. Both are sufferers from cancer. They are Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall and her most hated opponent in the famed Hall-Mills trial, Jane Gibson, whose testimony was used in an effort to send Mrs. Hall to the electric chair.”
Upon the 8th of February, Jane Gibson died.
In the fall of 1922, Mrs. Jane Gibson was a sturdy woman-farmer. It was her accusation that, upon the night of the murder of Dr. Edward Hall and Elinor Mills, Sept. 14, 1922, she had seen Mrs. Hall bending over the bodies. So she testified. She returned to her home and soon afterward was stricken. At the retrial in November, 1926, she repeated the accusation though she had to be carried on a cot into the court room. “Most of her days since that time were spent in the hospital.”