Anonymous

Worse Than a Ghost Story

This anonymous tale was apparently originally published in the Grand Rapids Enquirer around Christmas 1856, but both the Public Library and Museum there lack issues for the entire winter of ’56-57. It was reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer of January 17, 1857, where it was titled “A Tale of Horror and Facts: A New Phase of Spiritualism,” and reprinted again under the more compelling title used here, in the December 25, 1858 issue of the Evansville Daily Journal in Indiana. Part of a tradition of stories where an editor or narrator provides assurances to the reader of the authenticity of the story, with its purported reproduction of notarized statements it goes to an extreme not often seen elsewhere.

A Most Wonderful Narrative.

Strange Development of Spiritualism.

The Dead Rising from the Grave.

We have received the following letter from Dr. John Moreton, a gentleman of veracity and professional understanding. We think its perusal will convince every one of our readers of the entire truth of all that is said about Modern Spiritualism.

Grand Traverse, Michigan,

May 24, 1858.

Editors: I send you the following account of a most extraordinary event or transaction—or what you will—because, in my opinion, it ought not to be suppressed, but, on the contrary, thoroughly investigated. In the midst of the excitement here, such a thing as calm and unbiased examination is altogether out of the question; nor would it be safe to attempt it, in as much as the determination of the people is strongly to “hush up.” As I myself am one of the chief characters concerned in the affair, I dare not attempt, if I possessed the ability, to determine the character of what I am about to relate.

I left Cleveland to establish myself here, as you will remember, some time last June—a young and inexperienced physician. Almost the first patient I was called to see was a Mrs. Hayden—a woman thirty-five years of age, a strong constitution, and a well-balanced mind (apparently), and (apparently) with little or no imagination. She was, however, a “spiritualist,” with the reputation of being a superior “medium.” Her usual physician, Dr. J. N. Williams, was absent—hence her application to me. I found her laboring under a severe attack of typhus fever, which threatened to prove fatal. Having prescribed for her, I left, promising to send Dr. W. as soon as he returned.

This was on Saturday morning. At night Dr. W. took the patient off my hands, and I did not see her again until Friday evening of the ensuing week. I then found her dying, and remained with her until her decease, which took place precisely at midnight. She was, or appeared to be, rational during the whole of my visit, though I was informed that she had been delirious the greater part of the week. There was nothing remarkable about her symptoms; I should say the disease had taken its natural course.

At the time of her decease there were in the room besides myself, her husband, Mrs. Green (her sister), and Mrs. Miles (a neighbor). Her husband, whom I particularly noticed, was very thin and weak, then suffering from a quick consumption, already beyond recovery. He bore the character of a clear minded, very firm, illiterate but courteous man, and a most strenuous unbeliever in spiritualism.

There had been some subdued conversation, such as is natural in such scenes, the patient taking no part in it except to signify, in a faint and gradually diminishing voice, her wants, until about an hour before her death, when a sudden and indescribable change came over her features, voice and whole appearance—a change which her husband noticed by saying, with, as I thought, wholly unwarranted bitterness:

“There goes those cursed spirits again.”

The patient hereupon unclosed her eyes, and fixed a look of unutterable emotion upon her husband—a look so direct, searching and unwavering that I was not a little startled at it. Mr. Hayden met it with something like an unhappy defiance, and finally asked of his wife what she wanted. She immediately replied, in a voice of perfect health, “you know.”

I was literally astonished at the words and the voice in which they were uttered.

I have often read and heard of a return of volume and power of voice just preceding dissolution; but the voice of the patient had none of the natural intonation of such—it was, as I have said, perfectly healthy. In a few moments she continued in the same voice, and with her eyes still fixed upon her husband:

“William, in your secret soul, do you believe?”

“Wife,” was the imploring reply, “that is the devil which has stood between us and Heaven for so many months. We are both at the very verge of the grave, and in God’s name let him be buried first.”

Apparently without hearing or heeding him she repeated her words:

“You dare not disbelieve.”

“I do,” he replied, excited by her manner, “while you are dying—nay, if you were dead, and should speak to me, I dare not believe.”

“Then,” she said, “I will speak to you when I am dead! I will come to you at your latest hour, and with a voice from the grave I will warn you of your time to follow me!”

“But I shall not believe a spirit.”

“I will come in the body, and speak to you; remember!”

She then closed her eyes and straightway sank into her former state.

In a few moments—as soon as we had somewhat recovered from the shock of this most extraordinary scene—her two children were brought into the room to receive her dying blessing. She partially roused herself, and placing a hand on the head of each, she put a faint prayer to the throne of grace, faint in voice, indeed, but a prayer in which all the strength of her great unpolished soul, heart and mind was exerted to its utmost dying limit—such a prayer as a seraph might attempt, but none but a dying wife and mother could accomplish. From that moment her breathing grew rapidly weaker and more difficult; and at 12 o’clock she expired, apparently without a struggle.

I closed her eyes, straightened and composed her limbs, and was about to leave the house, when Mrs. Green requested me to send over two young ladies from my boarding house to watch with the dead. All this occupied some ten minutes.

Suddenly Mrs. Miles screamed, and Mr. Hayden started up from the bedside where he had been sitting.

The supposed corpse was sitting erect in the bed, and struggling to speak. Her eyes were still closed; and, save her open mouth and quivering tongue, there were all the looks of death in her face. With a great heave of the chest, at last the single word came forth:

“Remember!”

Her jaw fell back to its place, and she again lay down as before. I now examined her minutely. That she was dead there could be no further possible shadow of a doubt; and so I left the house.

On the following day Dr. Williams made a careful and minute post mortem examination of the body. I was prevented by business from attending, but I was informed by the doctor that he found the brain but slightly affected—an unusual fact in persons dying of typhus fever—but her lungs were torn and rent extensively, as if by a sudden, single and powerful effort, and suffused partially with coagulated blood. These were all the noticeable features of the case. She was buried on the afternoon of the same day.

* * *

About two weeks after the death of his wife I was called to visit Mr. Hayden. On my way I met Dr. Williams and told him my errand, expressing some surprise at the preference of the family for myself, as I knew him to be a safe and experienced practitioner. He replied that nothing could induce him to enter that house. He had “seen things that—well, I would find out when I got there.”

I was considerably amused by the Doctor’s manner and warmth, and beguiled my way by fancying what had alarmed him, a physician, from his duty.

On my arrival I found no person present with the patient except Mrs. Green, who informed me that the spirits had been playing such pranks that not a soul, Dr. W. included, could be induced to remain. The children had been gone for some time; they were at her house.

I found the patient very low, and with no prospect of surviving the attack. He was, however, quite free from pain, though very weak.

While I was in the house I noticed many manifestations of the presence of the power called spiritualism. Chairs and tables were moved and removed, billets of wood were thrown upon the fire, and doors opened and shut without any apparent agency. I heard struggles and unaccountable noises, too, and felt an unusual sensation, caused, no doubt, by the mysteries which surrounded and mocked me.

Noticing my manner, the patient observed:

“It is nothing. You must get used to it, doctor.”

“I should not be content unless I could explain them, as well as become indifferent to them,” I replied.

This opened the way to a long conversation, during which I probed my patient’s mind to the bottom, but without detecting a shadow of belief. Speaking of his wife, he said:

“You heard Hellen promise to warn me of my time to die?”

“I did—but you do not believe her?”

“No. If it is possible, she will keep her word, in spite of heaven or hell. But it is simply impossible. She promised to come in the body and speak to me. I shall accept no other warning from her, save the literal meaning of her words.”

“And what then?”

“How much of her body is there left, even now, doctor? and she has not come yet. She promised to come from the grave. Can she do it? No; it is all a humbug—a delusion. Poor Hellen! Thank God, doctor, the devilry which so haunted her life, and stood between her soul and mine, cannot reach her now.”

“But if she should come? You may be deceived.”

“I cannot. Others may see her, too, and hear her. I shall believe no spectre, if there are such things. Her body as it is, or will be, let that speak if it can!”

From that day up to the hour of his death I was with him almost constantly, and was daily introduced to some new and startling phenomenon. The neighbors had learned to shun the house, and even the vicinity, as they would the plague; and strange stories traveled from gossip to gossip, acquiring more of the marvelous at every repetition. Nevertheless, my practice increased.

On the morning of March 20th I called earlier than usual. During the visit the manifestations of a supernatural presence were more frequent, wild, and violent than ever before. I was informed that they had been exceedingly violent during the preceding night. Their character, too, had been greatly changed. Beside the moving of all movable articles, the tinkling of glasses, and the rattle of tin-ware, there were frequent and startling sounds, as of whispered conversation, singing, and subdued laughter—all perfect imitations of the human voice, but too low to enable me to detect the words used, if words they were. Still, however, none of these unusual sounds had entered the sick room. They followed the footsteps of Mrs. Green like a demon echo, but paused on the threshold of that room, as if debarred by a superior power from entering there.

I found Mr. Hayden was worse and sinking very fast. He had passed a bad night. Doubtful whether he would survive to see another morning, I left him, promising to call at evening and spend the night with him, resolved, in my secret thoughts, to be “in at the death.” If there was to be a ghostly warning, I meant to hear it, and, if possible, to solve the strange enigma.

* * *

The day had been exceedingly cold and stormy, and the night had already set in, dark and dismal, with a fierce gale and a driving storm of rain and hail, when I again stood beside my patient. The moment I looked at him, I perceived unmistakable indications of the near approach of death upon his features. He was free from pain, his mind perfectly clear; but his life was ebbing away with every feeble breath, like the slow burning out of an exhausted lamp.

Meanwhile the storm rose to a tempest, and the gloom grew black as death in the wild night without. The wind swept in tremendous gusts through the adjoining forests, rattling the icy branches of the trees, and came wailing and shrieking through every crack and cranny of the building.

Within there was yet wilder commotion. All that had been said or sung, written or dreamed of ghostly visitations, was then and there enacted. There was the ringing of bells, moving of furniture, crash of dishes, whispers, howls, crying, laughter, whistling, heavy and light footsteps, and wild music, as if in very mockery of the infernal regions. All these sounds grew wilder with the rising gale, and toward midnight they were almost insufferable.

As for us three—the patient, Mrs. Green and myself—we were all as silent as death itself. Not a word passed our lips after 9 o’clock. As for the state of our minds, God only knows. Mine, in the wide world of thought and event which followed, forgot the past, save what I have recalled and penned, bit by bit, above. I remember only looking for the final catastrophe, which grew rapidly nearer, with a constant endeavor to concentrate all my faculties of mind and senses upon the phenomenon which I, at least, had begun to believe would herald the death of my patient.

As it grew closer upon 12 o’clock, (for upon the striking of that hour had my thoughts fixed themselves for the expected demonstration), my agitation became so great that it was with extreme difficulty I could control myself.

Nearer and nearer grew the fatal moment—for fatal I knew it would be, to the patient at least—and at last the seconds trembled on the brink of midnight; the clock began to strike—one—two—three! I counted the strokes of the hammer, which seemed as though they never would have done—ten—eleven—twelve! I drew my breath again. The last lingering echo of the final stroke had died away, and as yet there was no token of any presence save our own.

All was silent. The wind had lulled for a moment, and not a sound stirred the air within the house. The ghosts had fled.

I arose and approached the bedside. The patient was alive—drawing his breath very slowly—dying. The intervals between his gasps grew longer—then he ceased to breathe altogether—he was dead!

Mrs. Green was sitting in her place, her elbows resting on her knees, her face buried in her hands.

I closed the open mouth and pressed down the eyelids of the dead. Then I touched her on the shoulder.

“It is over,” I whispered.

“Thank God!” was the fervent reply.

* * * *

Then we both started. There was a rustling of the bedclothes! Mr. Hayden was sitting erect, his eyes wide open, his chest heaving in a mighty effort for one more inspiration of the blessed air. Before I could reach the bed he spoke:

“My God! she is coming!”

At the same instant the wind came back with a sudden and appalling gust and a wild shriek as it swept through the crevices of the building. There was a crash of the outer door—then a staggering and uncertain step in the outer room. It approached the sick-room—the latch lifted, the door swung open—and then—my God! what a spectacle!

I wonder, even now, that I dare describe it—think of it— remember it. I wonder I believed it then, or do now—that I did not go mad or drop down dead.

Through the open door there stepped a figure, not of Mrs. Hayden, not of her corpse, not of death, but a thousand times more horrible, a thing of corruption, decay, of worms and rottenness.

The features were nearly all gone, and the skull in places gleamed through, white and terrible. Her breast, abdomen and neck were eaten away, her limbs were putrid, green and inexpressibly loathsome.

And yet to those putrescent jaws there was born a voice—smothered, indeed, and strange, but distinct:

“Come William! they wait for you—I wait!”

I dared not turn my eyes from the intruder; I could not if I dared, though I heard a groan behind me and a fall.

Then it—the thing before me—sank down upon the floor in a heap, dark and loathsome—a heap of putrescence and dismembered fragments.

I remember that I did not faint, that I did not cry out. How long I stood, transfixed, fascinated, I know not; but at last, with an effort and a prayer, I turned to the bed. Mr. Hayden had fallen upon the floor, face downward, stone dead.

I raised and replaced him; I composed his limbs, I closed his eyes, and tied up his chin; crossed his hands upon his breast and tied them there. Then I bore out the body of his sister, insensible, but not dead, into the pure air—out of that horror and stench into the storm and darkness—out of death into life again.

“County of Grand Traverse, Michigan, SS:

“Mrs. Joseph A. Green, being duly sworn, deposes and says, that the letter of Dr. John Morton, hereunto appended, which she has read, is strictly true, so far as it goes, though much of the history of what occurred at her brother’s (the late Mr. Hayden) house is omitted.

“Mrs. Joseph A Green.

“Sworn to and subscribed before me, a Notary Public, in and for the County of Grand Traverse, and State of Michigan, on the 25th day of May, A. D. 1858.

“James Taylor, N.P.”

“County of Grand Traverse, Michigan, SS:

“James Hueson, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he, in company with George Green, Albert J. Baily and Henry K. Smead, on the 1st day of April last, in the afternoon of said day, did go to the house of William H. Hayden, then deceased, and that they found upon the floor of the room in which the body of the said deceased lay, and near the door of said room, the putrid remains of a human corpse—a female, as the deponent verily believes and avers; and that they carried away and buried the body of the said Hayden, deceased, and found the grave of the wife of said Hayden, deceased, in the month of August last, open at the head of said grave, and that said grave was empty, the body of the said wife of said Hayden, deceased, being gone from said grave; and that they returned to the said house wherein said Hayden died; and, after removing the furniture from said house, the deponent did, at the request of Mrs. Green, sister of said Hayden, deceased, and of Mr. Green, brother-in-law of said Hayden, deceased, set fire to said house, and that said house was thereby entirely consumed, with all that remained in said house, and burned to ashes. This I aver of my own knowledge.”

“James Hueson.”

“We aver and solemnly swear that the above affidavit is strictly and solemnly true, of our own knowledge.”

“H. K. Smead,

“George Green,

“A. J. Baily.”

“Sworn and subscribed before me, a Notary Public, in and for the County of Grand Traverse, State of Michigan, on the 25th day of May, A. D. 1858.

“James Taylor,

Notary Public.”