Languor County, Kentucky,
April 22, 1938
The Haunting of Shaker Village
If you are out for a midnight stroll in quiet North Homage Shaker Village, take care. You might find yourself sharing the path with a ghost. Recently folks visiting the village have reported spotting the form of a young girl, dressed in a loose gown and long cloak, floating inches above the ground. They say she passes right through the thick walls of Shaker buildings. She appears at windows and spins like a slender cyclone, then reappears seconds later on the grass. No one has seen the face of this restless shade or heard her utter a word.
Why has she come? What does she seek? We think we have found the answer. The following story is drawn from Memories from the Life of a Shaker Brother During the Era of Manifestations, penned during the period between 1834 and 1840, by a Shaker known only as Brother Joshua. Presumably, the brother left the North Homage Shakers in 1840, taking his journal with him. Brother Joshua’s writings were only recently discovered and published by a descendant, who chooses to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
As the story goes, it was on April 16, 1838, one hundred years ago, that a lovely and desperate young woman ended her own life. We believe that the Shakers of North Homage, right here in Languor County, have conspired for a century to keep this tragedy a secret. But now the story can—indeed, must—be told, for the shade of this sad girl has chosen to return to her place of death.
Her name was Sarina Hastings. She had lived with the Shakers from the age of six, and she had just become a Shaker sister. At the time of her death, she was a mere eighteen years of age, slender and fragile, with bright gold hair and clear blue eyes. She set many a man’s heart to racing, whether they were Shaker brothers or men of the world. But Sarina was of a pious nature—or so it was thought.
One day in the autumn of 1837, Sarina met someone who stirred her own heart. The man’s name is lost to history. Perhaps he was a brother, perhaps not. Whoever he was, he urged Sarina to leave the Shakers and follow him. Brother Joshua wrote that this temptation sealed her fate.
A century ago was a time of great activity among the Shakers. They believed that Mother Ann, their dead foundress, was working among them, through “instruments” who received “gifts of the spirit.” Sarina was one such instrument. She could twirl for hours without rest, speak in tongues, and pull beautiful songs from the air. She heard the voices of dead Shakers whispering in her ear as she whirled in a trance.
These voices, wrote Brother Joshua, turned against Sarina. They told her that her worldly love was evil and must be killed. The poor girl whirled and twirled until her mind was incapable of reason, hoping to cure herself of her worldly passion. But to no avail. Sometimes the whispering urged her to kill the man she loved; other times, to kill herself. The more she danced, the greater her confusion, until she heard a voice that said she must purge her body with fresh herbs. The muddled child wandered through the Shaker garden early one morning, eating whatever was beginning to poke above ground. Brother Joshua wrote that she ate the new leaves of the rhubarb plant. Indeed, the poison killed her worldly love, for weak as she was from fasting and dancing, it also killed her body.
Recent reports from an anonymous source in North Homage indicate that the ill-starred Sarina has reappeared to roam the village where she died. She has been seen spinning through the gardens at early dawn, and her form floats about at night, carrying a lantern through abandoned buildings. Perhaps she seeks her lover and will never rest until she has found him. Or perhaps her shade has been trapped forever in a dance of death.