Antigonish girl believed responsible for fraud nine years ago.
Philadelphia, March 17. – Dr. Thaddeus L. Bolton, professor of psychology at Temple University, today made public an episode coincident in many respects to the occurrences at Antigonish, said to have been inspired by a ghost “discarnate” in Mary Ellen McDonald when he investigated near Missoula, Mont., nine years ago, and proved a fraud.
The Missoula episode, Dr Bolton said, was a parallel, even to names and temperamental characteristics of the principal actor. At the time Dr Bolton had the chair of psychology at the University of Montana at Missoula, and the case was brought to his attention by the present governor, Joseph M. Dixon, then a United States senator.
The supposedly supernatural manifestations had occurred in the household of a Canadian family by the name of MacDonald, who had been living in a mountain gulch near Missoula, according to Dr. Bolton. MacDonald, he said, was a man of about 35 then. Phenomena at MacDonald’s house had concerned spirits knocking, ghostly visions and other peculiar things. Dr Bolton said he visited the home and found the family consisted of MacDonald, his wife and a 9-year-old girl, Mary Ellen. He described a seance at the house where the ghostly rappings were duly heard, but investigation developed, Dr Bolton declared, that the rappings had been produced by Mary Ellen while in a somnambulistic state induced by self-hypnotism.
Mary Ellen, then 9 years old, was an adopted daughter of the MacDonalds, according to Dr Bolton, referring to the similarity between the family in Antigonish, he recalled that Mary Ellen should now be about 18 years old. “That would be the age of Mary Ellen at Antigonish,” he said, adding: “Not much can be told from a photograph, but there is in the face of Mary Ellen of Antigonish the same cast of expression that I observed in the child at Missoula.”
Dr Bolton recalled a visit to the MacDonald home near Missoula at which a “ghost”, apparently well known to the family, carried on conversation with Mrs MacDonald, who asked questions and was answered by knocks, according to an accepted code. “After the seance,” Dr Bolton said, “I asked to see Mary Ellen and she was brought out of bed in that dazed, half-dream state that is so common to somnambulists. This confirmed the decision I had made earlier that the phenomena were produced by Mary Ellen while in a somnambulistic state produced by self-hypnotism. I left the house shortly afterwards and have not seen the family since. A few months later the MacDonald house in the mountains was burned down.”
Sacramento Daily Union, 18th March 1922.