The Witch of Lime Street

by David Jaher

  What frustated Bird was that the medium wanted publicity but feared judgment. She and her elusive husband, Dr. Tomson, kept themselves in the news by exploiting the public interest in the Scientific American challenge. There were features in Midwest papers that said she was off to conquer the committee in New York; one story even announced that she had already won the psychic honors. Bird suspected that the Tomsons were the source for these rumors. The medium told him that she couldn’t afford the trip to New York even though the Chicago Tribune, which supported the Scientific American investigation, offered to finance it. Months went by and still Mrs. Tomson wavered. Finally, around the time of Halloween, she came to New York and pronounced herself ready to be tested.

  The Tomsons promptly invited the committee to a Sunday-evening séance at Raymond Hitchcock’s estate in Great Neck. Given such short notice, only Bird and Dr. Prince could make it. They arrived to find the sitting attended by about thirty individuals, mostly theatrical people. Despite that, Dr. Tomson wanted the demonstration to be an official Scientific American test; he was upset that the full commission was absent. Bird explained that he and Prince were there as guests, not judges. This wasn’t a sitting that would satisfy the rigors of their program, he protested. A respected surgeon searched Mrs. Tomson prior to the exhibition, but Bird remarked that he only inspected her vagina and not her rectum or esophagus—orifices that could conceal the gossamer material from which fake ghosts are fashioned.

  Not long after the usual hymns and hand clasping, Mrs. Tomson manifested spirits in glowing robes that were recognized by some in the circle who were led to the cabinet. Hitchcock identified a white-bearded face as either his uncle or grandfather, Bird noted incredulously. Then “a woman was reduced to a condition of emotional crisis by her very positive recognition of her mother’s face and voice.” The sitter was kissed and embraced by the astral form of her dead mother. Yet when Bird and Prince had their respective turns to approach the cabinet—their hands clasped by Dr. Tomson to prevent them from touching the ectoplasm—and the curtains were dramatically parted, they thought their ghost looked suspiciously like the medium who was supposed to be sleeping inside it. One face that Bird saw hovering in front of the cabinet was so unformed that it might have been anyone a sitter imagined. Could it be that the medium provided the etheric clay, Bird wondered, with which the observer mentally molded a loved one?

  Three days later Dr. Tomson showed up at the Scientific American offices to inspect the premises in which his wife was to perform that evening. He found the arrangements unsatisfactory, complaining that there was no place for the medium to disrobe and be examined. Bird took him to a room sequestered for that purpose, which had running water. Upon further discussion, it was clear that the library itself was the source of Dr. Tomson’s unease. A law library apparently lacked the psychic atmosphere. When Bird responded that it would be impossible to find another location at the last minute, “the doctor very kindly offered to take the load off my shoulders; Mme So-and So, a friend of his, he was sure would offer a room in her apartment.”

  Resisting the urge to laugh in the occultist’s face, Bird insisted that the séance take place on Scientific American ground and according to its regulations. In reply, Dr. Tomson grumbled that both the journal’s conditions and its choice of judges were not to the liking of Mrs. Tomson’s spirit operators. “I finally reminded him,” Bird wrote, “that we weren’t submitting ourselves to his test, he was submitting to ours; that if he didn’t like our rules, he needn’t play the game at all.” Dr. Tomson took umbrage at Bird’s hard line. He issued an ultimatum: the sitting was to be where he determined, or not at all. Consequently, a few hours before her test séance, Bird called up the committeemen to inform them that Mrs. Tomson’s test sittings were canceled.

  The next day the doctor reappeared at the Woolworth to see if Bird had changed his mind. As a compromise, the editor said that he would allow Mrs. Tomson to be tested at Orson Munn’s apartment in the Waldorf. The offer did not satisfy Dr. Tomson, however. Not only did he still want to choose the location, there would only be one demonstration, he stated, after which a verdict would be expected from the commission. Exasperated, Bird accused the Tomsons of wanting to avoid the apparatus concealed behind books and in the walls and floors of the library.

  Dr. Tomson did not deny it. His wife, he said, was pretty tired of dubious scientific trials and uncouth physical examinations. Then why, Bird asked, had she entered the Scientific American contest? The doctor said they hadn’t. Then what was he doing in Bird’s office? He didn’t seem to know exactly. Moments later the angry spiritist walked out, accusing Munn & Co. of running a scheme, financed by the Catholic Church, to defame genuine mediums. The editor rose and followed him out into the hall. The Tomsons had never intended to face the committee! Bird shouted. He later reported that “aside from these minor items, we agreed perfectly upon all points.”

  Soon Bird was thankful that the Tomsons had backed out and not tainted the psychic tests with their vaudeville apparitions. Two days after the confrontation he had with her husband, Mrs. Tomson was invited to give a séance at the Church of Spiritual Illumination. There she walked into a more severe trap than anything the Scientific American would have laid for her. The congregation were Brooklyn Spiritualists who suspected humbug. When one in their flock was led up to Mrs. Tomson’s cabinet, his arms securely clasped by the doctor, he proceeded to take a bite out of a ghost and came away with a mouth of white gauze rather than ectoplasm. A scuffle broke out between parishioners and the medium’s party. Mrs. Tomson fled in her bathrobe; she and the doctor departed the church without making a collection. The next day they beat it back to Chicago.

  Spiritualists themselves could be more hostile than magicians to fraud mediums. Sir Arthur would write Bird that he was grateful to the committee for exposing “a wrong one” when they rejected the Rev. Josie Stewart. The National Spiritualist Agency had years earlier banned both Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Tomson. The irony was not lost on Secretary Bird that the Scientific American was investigating mediums even the Spiritualists did not believe in. It hadn’t yet been necessary to even summon the full commission for a test. He was heartened, though, by a brilliant new light on the horizon.

  * * *

  * A theatrical, charismatic medium of the Gilded Age, Anna Eva Fay purchased a shipping company, a gold mine, and a marble quarry in California on what she earned contacting the departed.

  Ain’t We Got Fun

  But in her web she still delights,

  To weave the mirror’s magic sights,

  For often through the silent nights,

  A funeral with plumes and lights

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  Just before Malcolm Bird visited Beacon Hill, most of the Western world observed the holiday that marked five years since the Great War ended. Armistice Day fell that year on a Sunday, a day the Crandons usually held séances. And in honor of the veterans, Walter whistled “Taps” for the ABC Club, and the “Last Post” for Aleck Cross, the Englishman.

  In New York, Orson Munn took part in less macabre activities. Having recently divorced his wife, the publisher was free to cavort openly with his girl, Caroline. The couple watched the Civil War veterans amble up Fifth Avenue, and the flying parade of airplanes over Broadway. Later they attended the Victory Ball at the Waldorf, which was draped with a thousand US flags and the colors of the ten Allied nations. The Follies performed a historic tableaux there, after which guests danced in the grand ballroom. The silver-haired Munn and his agile companion pulled off an inspired foxtrot to “Ain’t We Got Fun.”

  In London, Sir Arthur witnessed thousands of the bereaved gather at the Cenotaph—the scene of the mass spirit return that he had made famous. This time no ghosts were photographed as all bowed their heads for the traditional two minutes of silence. But at home, the Doyles had just received unnerving messages from a spirit that communicated through Jean’s automatic writing. This personality, called Ph
eneas—a leader of men who had died thousands of years ago near Arabia—spoke of another catastrophe. The War, as Sir Arthur observed, “has not had any very marked effect.” Because little had changed and materialism was rampant, Pheneas warned of something “Worse than Atlantis.”

  The prophecy wasn’t surprising to Doyle, who saw a dark undercurrent to jazz culture. Americans were caricatured as reveling since the Peace, while the English fretted over their crushing war debt to the House of Morgan. During his American tour, though, he had noticed that the US papers were “full of alleged change of climate, encroachments of ice, and general signs of a glacial epoch.” Disciples of Doom were on every soapbox. Popular books like Whither Mankind called the calamity unavoidable. Yet Sir Arthur believed that the worst scenarios could be averted if Spiritualism took hold in the way the movement’s pioneers and first prophets had envisioned.* They had said long ago that humanity would be converted by a widely convincing display of spirit communication.

  * * *

  * Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie Seer, had visions that appeared to foretell the coming of the Fox Sisters’ phenomena when in 1847 he predicted a powerful demonstration of mediumship that would usher in a new era of “spiritual communion.”

  The Helson Report

  Sit in a theatre, to see

  A play of hopes and fears,

  While the orchestra breathes fitfully

  The music of the spheres

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  Examining séance reports while seated by a window in the dining Pullman, Malcolm Bird noted flashes in the night that resembled spirit lights, making his trip to Boston feel momentarily like astral travel. But even in as amorphous a place as the séance, Bird appreciated the precision in these records. He had heard a good deal about the Beacon Hill medium via Doyle, who was in close correspondence with Dr. Crandon. En route he read two first-person reports on her activities: one from Harry Helson, a Harvard psychologist who was helping William McDougall investigate her; the other the séance minutes from Dr. Crandon. The observations of the two men were relatively similar; it was their conclusions that were worlds apart.

  As if to prove that time does not exist in his dimension, Walter had been routinely stopping the clocks at 10 Lime Street. It flustered Aleck Cross when Mina’s dead brother made mechanical devices—clocks, Victrolas, electric lamps—go haywire. And it perplexed the Harvard psychologists when such feats were exhibited on command. Often Walter would ask a sitter when they wanted time to freeze. Later on, the grandfather clock in the parlor, and other timepieces, were discovered to have stopped at the appointed minute. Dr. McDougall could not divine the method for the clock effect, or for anything else that Mina manifested. With proper control, though, he was still invested in the belief that he could stop her phenomena, which would go far to explaining them.

  On the night of November 3, the Harvard investigators arrived at Lime Street for dinner and a séance. There was an especially tense air at the gathering and a lack of the usual pre-séance conviviality. After the main course was served, knocks were heard, according to Helson, from the upstairs rooms that no one occupied. Helson and Mina went to investigate and found nothing amiss, but the sounds had so disturbed Aleck Cross that he left the house without finishing his dinner.

  A short time later the investigators proceeded with their plan to seal the residence. They asked the servants to leave and then bolted all three entrances. The doors leading to the cellar were sealed with wax impressed with Dr. McDougall’s thumbprint. All closets, trunks, and bureaus were inspected. The professors looked under every bed and beneath the sofa pillows; what they hoped to find there was not clear to a bemused Mrs. Crandon. After checking the clocks for trick devices, McDougall locked and pocketed the key to the grandfather clock that Walter particularly liked to enchant. There had never been control like this at Lime Street. Mina later remarked that it was as if they suspected her of something far worse than leading séances.

  Finally all were ready for what promised to be a showdown between Walter and Dr. McDougall. The sitters gathered in the dim red light around the table, the investigators controlling Mina, and immediately the disturbances began. Five loud raps were heard, as if taunting the men who thought they could put an end to the mediumship. The table jumped toward a few in the circle, stopping inches from McDougall’s chest. Shifting to the psychic, it became animated like a pet dog. Tilting on two legs, it froze in that position for half a minute. By the system of raps on the floor, it issued greetings and answered questions from the sitters.

  At 9:30 all heard the signature notes of Walter’s arrival, a remote whistle that carried the first two bars of “Souvenir.” Raps and scratches were heard and strange laughter. After the noises faded, the medium retired to her cabinet, one of her hands controlled by McDougall, the other by A. A. Roback. Helson reported that throughout the evening Mrs. Crandon was restrained in this manner. Fronting her booth was a thin black drape through which the investigators could see her silhouetted in the scarlet light. They observed no suspicious movements or other signs of deception. For their benefit, a further method of control was suggested by Dr. Crandon. The sitters and psychic filled their mouths with water: demonstrating in this way that none of them produced the voice of Walter. Roback attempted to say something but could only gurgle. After their inability to speak while the ghost did was established, one by one the circle expelled their water. All except the medium; Walter bragged that he would talk until his sister was blue in the face. Then she laughed, to Roy’s irritation, and spewed out her water.

  Soon the mood changed dramatically. The church clock in the neighborhood struck ten while Water echoed it with ten strokes of his “celestial clock.” Next he produced “Taps” on an invisible chimelike instrument. A dinner gong was placed on the floor of Mrs. Crandon’s cabinet. With her securely held, it rang. Minutes later Walter addressed Dr. McDougall. What time did he want the parlor clocks stopped? the ghost asked. McDougall said that around ten thirty would be to his liking. Walter then asked him if he trusted Roback. Of course, McDougall answered. Accordingly, the voice directed Mina and Roback to go downstairs and check to see that the clocks were still running. When they returned, the medium was put back in her cabinet—which suddenly became charged with energy. The booth shook and tottered toward McDougall. But Walter pushed it only so far. Just as quickly all was quiet. Four raps on the floor followed, his signal for good night. The lights were turned up and Mrs. Crandon emerged from her cabinet, fully alert and smiling.

  Downstairs, the researchers discovered that all the doors were still locked, the wax intact, and the two clocks in the parlor frozen at 10:30. Helson was dumbfounded. Yet it was he, at the next séance one week later, who grasped at a thread in an attempt to discredit Mrs. Crandon.

  Bearding the Lion

  There she weaves by night and day,

  A magic web with colours gay,

  She has heard a whisper say,

  A curse is on her if she stay

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  The sky was low and ashen and Harvard Yard deceptively serene as Mina walked toward the building with the brick columns for her November 15 appointment with Dr. McDougall. His was the office in Emerson Hall that William James once occupied, and she supposed that McDougall wanted her to feel chastened by summoning her there. The news was not good. Her husband had been given the choice of relaying the finding of the Harvard investigation to her directly or sending her over to Emerson Hall, so that McDougall might carry out the “delicate office.” When he chose the latter option, Mina had not seemed especially concerned. Whatever the psychologist’s finding, she felt they had nothing shameful to answer for, whether in this world or the next life.

  Her present impression was that at least her interview would be cordial. While never one for small talk, Dr. McDougall greeted her amiably enough. However, with a commiserating look in his eyes, he said that he was suspicious of her psychic work. He clearly wanted an admissi
on from her of some sort. When she challenged his allegations, he got rather patronizing. The chairman of the Harvard Psychology Department had been a major in the British Army during the War; his duty as a psychologist had been to distinguish the neurasthenic cases from the shirkers. He was concerned now for her well-being; the pressure they had all put on her to manifest spirits was driving her to cheat, he implied.

  She hadn’t faked anything, she protested. How could she, when during the sittings she was unconscious—dead to the world, if he would pardon the expression. Grimmer now, disappointed at her lack of remorse, McDougall insisted she was not dishonest; it was only that an innocent joke had gotten out of hand. Resolutely, the psychic denied this. He’d been beside her during the séances; he’d held her hands and her feet, she reminded him. How in heaven’s name was it even possible to cheat?

  After more exchanges along these lines, McDougall switched from a paternal approach to that of a prosecutor. He said that he would have to expose her to Roy if she didn’t come clean. Mina answered that whatever Dr. McDougall did, she and her husband would continue to hold séances and converse with Walter. Smiling in bewilderment, she said that her brother’s spirit was as real as any psychologist that haunted Lime Street. At that moment McDougall reached into his desk and brought out the evidence that he claimed proved otherwise.