A Ghostly Carnival.
The millions of Spiritualists in the United States, says the Chicago Tribune, find their Mecca just now in a little farmhouse which lies seven miles north of Rutland, Vt. It is the home of William H and Horatio G Eddy, and is haunted with hundreds of ghosts. The Eddys were tormented with spirits from their birth. Their father, a prosaic farmer, first essayed to cast out the devils by beating and starving the victims. When this failed he used his children’s spiritual gifts to make money. They gave exhibitions. He superintended the show and pocketed the proceeds.
The boys and their sisters (now dead) were mobbed, stoned, beaten, burned, and shot. They were twisted into agonising positions and tied there for hours while manifestations went on. When they came home they would gladly have relinquished their inconvenient powers, but they could not. Horatio Eddy, when he was in his seventh year, was one night carried three miles through the air to a neighbouring mountain top and left to go home as he could. Colonel Olcott, who has been investigating the phenomena, gives no authority for the story, which may be founded on a mere case of sleep-walking, but he quotes the testimony of two out of three eye-witnesses to the fact that another brother, now dead, was carried out of a window and over a house.
There are hundreds of instances to be given under the second grand division – the materialisation of spirits. The ghosts of known and unknown persons have appeared in the house and in the neighbourhood, in darkness and in light. People have talked with them and have felt them. They have been distinctly seen. Colonel Olcott weighed the spirit of an Indian girl, Honta, twice. She stood on Fairbanks’ scale and weighed 88 pounds the first time and 65 the next. He turned the full force of a powerful battery upon her without producing any apparent effect.
Manchester Evening News, 3rd December 1874.
(a review of ‘People from the other World’ by Henry S Olcott, 1875)
Ponderable Ghosts.
The mild and very diluted twaddle which forms the staple of the French spiritist doctrine is likely to meet with formidable competition in the recent utterances from the original cradle ofthe new belief. We wish to state with the utmost explicitness with reference to the most curious work which we propose to introduce to our readers, that we entirely decline the function of godfather, whether to bring Mr Olcott to the gallows or to the font. The ordinary means by which it is possible to test the bona fides of an English book are absent in this case. We possess neither the topographical, the personal, nor the iterary acquaintance with theplaces, names, and works cited that are requisite in order to form an opinion of their weight. Even the ordinary amount of reliance that may be placed on the character of a publisher is eliminated in the case of the work in question by a notice that it is not sold at the bookstores, but that an agent will call on intending purchasers.
As to the internal evidence, apart from the main point of the credibility of the statements per se, the education and literary ability of the writer are of a very low order, judged from our standpoint in this country. How far this defect may be personal, or have a wider range, it is not for us to say. The net result of the impression left by mere turn-over perusal of the book is that a man with no intention to deceive but no objection to raise a sensation is struggling with a new set of phenomena that are too much for him. But then this is the very impression that a skilled literary artist would wish to produce if he wrought after the manner of De Foe. We therefore bring forward Mr Olcott to speak for himself, without intending to hint a single word either for or against his credibility. Having said thus much, it will be unnecessary to add those usual safeguards as to each assertion that would otherwise be requisite.
Zephaniah Eddy, a farmer living at Weston, Vt., married one Julia Ann Macombs, a girl of Scotch descent, who was born in the same town. Mrs Eddy inherited from her mother the gift known in Scotland as second sight; and not only had previsions of future events, but was able to see, and to converse with, forms invisible to other persons. Her mother before her possessed the same faculties in some degree; and her great-great-great grandmother was actually sentenced to death as a witch at Salem, in 1692, although she escaped from jail and took refuge in Scotland.
Z. Eddy took up his abode at the present residence of his children, at Chittenden, Rutland, in 1846. On the birth of his first child the abnormal phenomena attending on Julia Ann Eddy became quite uncontrollable. As the family increased, strange sounds filled th ehouse, and the infants were often lifted from their beds and floated about the room by invisible agency. Neighbours, whose names are given, were called in to exorcise the haunting spirits by prayer, but without success. Blows and ill-usage, freely bestowed on mother and children, were equally inefficacious.
When the children grew old enough to go to school, they were soon expelled, in consequence of the raps heard on the desks and benches. After public attention had been called to the Rochester knockings in 1847, Z Eddy attempted to turn the curse on his family to his personal advantage, by hiring three or four of his children to a showman. They were thus taken to nearly all the principle cities of the United States, and “for a brief season” to London, experiencing much ill-usage by the way.
Z Eddy died in 1860, his wife died in 1873. In the December of that year a room was added to the farmhouse at Chittenden for the purpose of accommodating the visitors who thronged to attend the seances given by Horatio and William Eddy, the occupants of the farm. On the 1st of June, 1874, this room was opened. On this occasion the materialised spirits of Mrs Eddy, Mrs Eaton, an old lady from New York State, Mrs Wheeler, late of Utica, Dr Horton, also late of Utica, who brought his two infant children and addressed his widow, who was present, uttered addresses and prayers. Since that time a dark circle for materialisation has been held every evening, Sundays excepted. The date of the publication of this account is January 1875, and the book contains the promise, made by spirits, that from the 19th September in the same year the manifestations, which are described as being made in a low dim light, should take place in full daylight.
Mr Olcott declares that he carefully examined not only the exhibition room, with its low platform, and the little closet behind it, in which William Eddy sat during the performance, but the rooms below, the roof above, and the whole of the apartment. He says that it was impossible for confederates to enter in any surreptitious manner; or for any masks, garments, disguises, or theatrical properties to be introduced unawares. [this goes on at length]
Pall Mall Gazette, 9th November 1875.