Aspects of Life In Paris.
[…] I shall not attempt to describe the inhabitants of this zone: any one who has ever gone to Five Points can form a pretty accurate idea of its squalor, and if they add to this idea Eugene Sue’s descriptions of the dens in which he locates the opening scenes of his “Mysteries of Paris,” they will know all about it. But I went there to inteview an elderly woman, for whom the spirits have just manifested themselves in such a manner as to startle even the denizens of the Place Maubert, for whom the only sort of spirit which had hitherto possessed any interest is alcohol.
Three or four days ago somebody said that queer occurrences had taken place in a house of the Rue de l’Arbalete, where a murder was committed in 1879 in mysterious circumstances. The details of the crime were most atrocious, but the criminal was never discovered, unless that individual were identical with a type-setter whose body remained unclaimed at the Morgue, and was finally buried in the fosse commune.
The theatre of the assassination and also fo the manifestations is a small building, two stories high, of which a retired grocer’s widow is the sole tenant, who, about midnight on the 18th inst., was awakened by 115 raps on her bedstead. Although nearly frightened to death Mme L.’s first idea was that, as she owed precisely 115f. to the man by whom her husband’s coffin had been made, what she heard could be nothing more nor less than a supernatural warning of her creditor’s demise. But the knocks on her bedstead were only the beginning of the manifestation, for from her dining-room downstairs came such an infernal racket that she dressee hurriedly, rushed to the basement, and there witnessed, she swears, an extraordinary spectacle.
All the furniture was in movement, “the chairs and table jumped about like toads, and a plaster cast standing on the dresser rubbed its hands together as though in jubilation.” Naturally she swooned away, and when she came to her senses, after daybreak, found everything in a normal condition. Rather ashamed to tell of her fears, or perhaps not quite sure that she had not merely dreamed, the widow said nothing about it until a second spiritual performance on the succeeding night convinced her that it was something more than a nightmare, that it must be a case of “spooks,” and so informed the neighbours, of whom a couple of the most courageous volunteered to sit up with her and ascertain the amount of credence to be given to her story.
The witnesses saw – or, rather say that they saw – the same sights, and, as everything touching upon the marvellous possesses infinite charms for the vulgar, a hundred people called at the house before noon to hear all about it. Before night the concourse of curious was doubled, and next morning a squad of sergents de ville was necessary to maintain free circulation in the street of the Crossbow, where, except among the liquor vendors, an absolute panic reigns.
As you may suppose, I did not go there with any expectation of an interview with the supernatural visitants, but I wanted to judge from personal observation what effect might have a hallucination on the minds of a class which profess to entertain utter disbelief in God or devil, which eagerly profit by the indemnity allowed by the “Association of Free Thought” to all persons consenting to have members of their family buried “civilly,” that is to say, without the aid of any ecclesiastic of any creed at the deathbed and at the cemetery.
A somewhat similar affair made a great commotion in the Rue Truffault, one of the worst streets of the Batignolles district, last year. Then the spirit broke a considerable amount of crockery and ran a general muck through several adjoining houses, to the intense satisfaction of Baron du Potet’s disciples, who thronged there in shoals, and gave lectures at a music hall of the Rue Cardinet, citing the Trauffault performances in support of their theories. An investigation by the Police, however, resulted in the discovery of an immense hoax by some festive young painters of the Avenue de Villiers colony, and half a dozen practical jokers appreciated the necessity of a sudden change of air so as to avoid appearance before the Commissary, and it is probable that the “Affaire de la Rue de l’Arbalete” may turn out to be also only a silly mystification.
But, in the meantime, it is intensely amusing to watch the adepts of Spiritualism as they exchange mysterious signs in the air, and hear them gravely discuss whether the spirits are “benevolent” spirits, or “malevolent” spirits, if it be Joe Gibson, the jockey, or John King, the buccaneer, or an Indian warrior, all three hypotheses having their supporters. A Spiritualist organ, too, has taken up the matter, and, if you have any real curiosity on the question, you may read in the Voice of Truth conclusive arguments in favour of the doctrine of “Secondaries,” also a scathing rebuke to a scoffer, by whom was suggested a “tertiary” explanation, than which, you must know, “nothing to account for Spiritualistic phenomena is more absurd.”
[…]
The New York Times, 17th June, 1882.