“Spirit Rappings” an old humbug.
Errors and delusions, as well as fashions, like comets, have an eccentric orbit; but their periodical return may be calculated with considerable certainty. Among the records of the past it would not be difficult to find the counterpart of the isms so rife in our own day. A correspondent, glancing over a number of the New York Packet of 1789, copied the following paragraph, as illustrating the fact that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Table dancing and “spirit rapping” are old tricks. Dupes date as far back as Satan in Eden, and the duped can trace their genealogy to Adam: –
“Extract of a letter from a gentleman at Fishkill, to his friend in this city, dated March 3, 1789: –
‘Sir, – Were I to relate the many extraordinary, though not less true accounts I have heard concerning that unfortunate girl, at New Hackensack, your belief ought perhaps be staggered, and patience tired. I shall therefore only inform you of what I have been an eye-witness to.
Last Sunday afternoon my wife and myself went to Dr. Thorn’s, and after sitting for some times we heard a knocking under the feet of a young woman that lives in the family. I asked the doctor what occasioned that noise; he could not tell, but replied that he, together with several others, had examined the house, but were unable to discover the cause.
I then took the candle and went with the girl into the cellar. There the knocking also continued; but, as we were ascending the stairs to return, I heard a prodigious rapping on each side, which alarmed me very much. I stood still some time, looking around with amazement, when I beheld some lumber which lay at the head of the stairs shake considerably.
About eight or ten days after we visited the girl again. The knocking still continued, but was much louder. Our curiosity induced us to pay the third visit, when the phenomena were still more alarming. I then saw the chairs move; a large dining-table was thrown up against me, and a small stand, on which stood a candle, was tossed up, and thrown in my wife’s lap; after which we left the house, much surprised at what we had seen.’
– New York Journal of Commerce.
Liverpool Albion, 19th July 1852.