The Mtstery Chronicles

by Joe Nickell

  Brodie describes the young treasure-seeker as having “an extraordinary capacity for fantasy,” which, she says, “with proper training might even have turned him to novel-writing.” She also says that “[h]is imagination spilled over like a spring freshet. When he stared into his crystal and saw gold in every odd-shaped hill, he was escaping from the drudgery of farm labor into a glorious opulence.” She adds: “Had he been able to continue his schooling, subjecting his plastic fancy and tremendous dramatic talent to discipline and molding, his life might never have taken the exotic turn it did” (Brodie 1993, 27).

  Joseph supposedly followed Moroni’s directions and discovered, on what is now known as the Hill Cumorah, the golden book and other items in a stone box. Or so he alleged. He was now convinced that he had been divinely chosen as the instrument by which the “corrupted” Bible was to be restored. Smith “translated” the text (or, more likely, he imagined it, while borrowing from certain contemporary writings). His bride, Emma, was his first scribe, followed by an early convert named Martin Harris. To effect the translation, Smith sat on one side of the room staring into his peepstone (in the type of reverie practiced by scryers), with Harris on the other side writing at a table and a blanket across a rope separating the two (Taves 1984, 35-40).

  Like Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet,” Smith sometimes temporarily lost his gift of seeing—notably as happened after Harris managed to lose the first 116 pages of the manuscript, leaving the prophet inconsolable for a time. The same waning of power occurred with regard to Smith’s ability to perform healings. Although he cast out a devil from one man and healed a woman of a “rheumatic” arm (Taves 1984, 63-69), on another occasion he tried unsuccessfully to heal the sick and even, in one instance, to revive the dead (Taves 1984, 70).

  The Book of Mormon was published in 1830. Shortly afterward, Joseph Smith and his associate Oliver Cowdery, having been conferred priests by divine revelation to Smith, officially founded the Church of Christ at Fayette, New York. Eight years later the name was changed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Hansen 1995, 365).

  An invitation from Sidney Rigdon, onetime associate of revivalist Andrew Campbell, led Smith and his New York brethren to found a Mormon settlement at Kirtland, Ohio. There, Smith claimed to experience a further series of revelations (published in 1833 under the title Book of Commandments), which expanded his theological principles. The revelations directed the Saints to gather into communities in a patriarchal order and to erect a temple at the center of the community. In 1838, financial problems caused abandonment of Kirtland.

  Smith also founded communities in Missouri, but in 1839 he and his followers were driven ruthlessly from that state by anti-Mormon vigilantes. The Saints then gathered at a settlement called Nauvoo on the Mississippi River. By 1844, it was the most populous city in Illinois and entirely under Mormon control (Hansen 1995, 365).

  It was at Nauvoo that Joseph Smith met his end. He had increasingly acted on pretensions of grandeur that led him to become leader of the Mormon militia, bedecked in the uniform of a lieutenant general, and an announced candidate for the United States presidency. As before, mobs of anti-Mormons plagued Smith and his followers, and when the latter destroyed an anti-Mormon press, Smith was jailed on a charge of riot. On 27 Junel844, a mob stormed the jail, killing Smith and his brother Hyrum (Hansen 1995, 365). Concludes Taves (1984, 213): “It was over. The gangly, ill-clad youth who had regaled his Palmyra neighbors with fanciful tales had come a long, long way before reaching the end of his road. Others would continue what he had started.”

  As this brief sketch illustrates, Joseph Smith, Jr., had numerous traits collectively indicating that his was a fantasy-prone personality. The traits include:

  easily undergoing self-hypnosis (as during his scrying and translating)

  frequently fantasizing as a child

  having imagined sensations that seemed real

  believing he had divinatory powers

  receiving special messages from on high

  believing he had healing powers

  encountering apparitions

  experiencing waking dreams with classical imagery.

  These eight characteristics—possibly among others—confirm Wilson and Barber’s earlier diagnosis and thereby reveal Smith to be typical of religious visionaries who share the characteristics of fantasy-proneness.

  REFERENCES

  Brodie, Fawn M. 1993. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith. 2d ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

  Hansen, Klaus J. 1995. “Joseph Smith.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vols. 13-14. New York: Simon & Schuster.

  Nickell, Joe. 1997. The two: A fantasy-assessment biography. Skeptical Inquirer 21, no. 4 Quly/August): 18-19.

  Persuitte, David. 2000. Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon. 2d ed. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

  Taves, Ernest H. 1984. Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

  Wilson, Sheryl C, and Theodore X. Barber. 1983. The fantasy-prone personality. In Imagery: Current Theory, Research, and Application, edited by Anees A. Sheikh, 340-387. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

  36

  In Search of Fisher’s Ghost

  During an investigative tour Down Under, I was able to examine the persistent legend of “Australia’s most famous ghost” (Davis 1998, 16). I was generously assisted by magic historian Peter Rodgers, with whom 1 shared several other adventures (Nickell 2001).

  One writer has commented, ’it is a mystery why some ghost stories catch the public’s imagination and survive while others, often more shocking and more credible, are forgotten” (Davis 1998, 16-18). Davis cites the story about Frederick Fisher, which has been related in countless newspaper articles, as well as poems, songs, books, plays, an opera, and other venues (Davis 1998) and provided the inspiration for a movie (Fowler 1991). It once attracted the attention of notables like Charles Dickens, who published a version of the story in his magazine Household Words; and entertainer John Pepper, who used it as the subject of one of his “Pepper’s ghost” stage illusions in Sydney circa 1879 (“Illusionist” 1984). Today, Fisher’s ghost remains the subject of an annual festival. All this—even though the ghost reportedly appeared “to just one man on one occasion” long ago (Davis 1998).

  The story began on 17 June 1826, with the disappearance of Frederick Fisher. Fisher was a “ticket-of-leave man”—a paroled convict— who had acquired land at Campbelltown and built a shack thereon. Unfortunately, he also caroused there with itinerants and other ticket-of-leave men, including his neighbor and best friend George Worrell (or Worrall). When Fisher found himself in debt and facing possible arrest, he trustingly signed his property over to Worrell, either to conceal or to protect his assets. When Fisher was released from prison, after a six-month stretch, he returned to his farm only to find that Worrell had been claiming it as his own.

  After Fisher disappeared, Worrell resumed possession of the property, telling anyone who inquired that his friend had returned to England in search of his estranged family. The facts that Worrell wore Fisher’s clothes and offered a crudely forged receipt to prove his ownership of one of Fisher’s horses soon raised suspicions.

  On 23 September, the Colonial Secretary’s Office offered a reward for “the discovery of the body” of Frederick Fisher, or a lesser reward for proof that he had “quitted the Colony” (“Supposed Murder” 1826). Subsequently, a local man named James Farley reportedly had an encounter with the ghost of Fisher. Farley was walking near Fisher’s property one night and saw an apparition of the missing man sitting on a fence, glowing eerily and dripping blood from a gashed head. Moaning, the phantasm “pointed a bony finger in the direction of the creek that flowed behind Fisher’s farm” (Davis 1998) (see Figure 36-1). Thus prompted to search the area, police soon dug up Fisher’s corpse. Worrell was convicted of the murder and reportedly confessed just before his hanging (Fowler 1991, 13).

&n
bsp; Such are the main outlines of the story. Queensland writer Richard Davis observes, in his Ghost Guide to Australia (1998), “From the beginning distortions occurred—almost every aspect of the story was changed and romanticised so that truth became indistinguishable from fiction.” Indeed, the version published by Charles Dickens (“Fisher’s Ghost” 1853) contains numerous altered details—“Penrith” for Campbelltown, “Smith” for Worrell, and so on—that link it to a fictionalized account written by Australian writer John Lang (n.d.).

  FIGURE 36-1. An artist’s impression of the appearance of Fisher’s ghost beckoning to a resident named Farley, in 1826.

  Those promoting the tale cite an alleged deathbed statement by the percipient James Farley (or “John Hurley” in the earliest versions [Cranfield 1963]). Queried about the matter on his deathbed, Farley supposedly raised himself on an elbow and told his friend: “I’m a dying man, Mr. Chisholm. I’ll speak only the truth. I saw that ghost as plainly as I see you now” (Davis 1998; Cusack 1967, 3). Unfortunately, the story is not only unverified, but also has a suspiciously literary quality about it.

  In fairness, it should be acknowledged that debunkers have offered their share of doubtful claims as well. One purported explanation for the ghost was given by a 73-year-old barber. He said he heard it from his grandfather, who in turn allegedly learned it from an ex-convict who had secretly witnessed the murder and burial. Wanting to expose the truth, but afraid of being implicated, he hit on a plan. He fashioned a pair of cloaks—one white, another black—and wore the first at night to simulate ghostliness. When some traveler happened by, he moaned and pointed to the burial site in the swamp. Then, readying the black cloak as he walked toward that spot, he suddenly pulled it over him so that “to the terrified onlooker it seemed that the ghost had suddenly disappeared.” Supposedly this repeated ruse brought the desired result, and the corpse was searched for and discovered—believe it or not! (“Ghost” 1955).

  Another hand-me-down tale was related by a 74-year-old resident. He said that Farley simply “saw a man whom he took to be Fisher (but it was not Fisher) sitting on the rail of the bridge.” When the man “dropped from the rail of the bridge apparently into the weeds” and so seemed to vanish, “Farley thought it must have been a ghost on account of the sudden disappearance” (Lee 1963). Though such an incident could happen, there is no good evidence that it did.

  Not surprisingly, those who are inclined to dismiss ghost stories have suggested that the tale was simply a journalistic invention. One writer stated that “there can be little doubt that it was a hoax first published by a Sydney magazine” (Cranfield 1963). In fact, however, that account—in the Teggs Monthly of 1 March 1836—was preceded by an anonymous poem published years earlier in Hill’s Life in New South Wales. Titled “The Spirit of the Creek,” it bore a prefatory note that it was based on the murder of “poor F*****’’ at Campbell town. It is important to note that this was a creative production. Not only was Hills’ Life a literary paper and the narrative written in verse (thus inviting “poetic license”), but the story was actually fictionalized. For example, Fred Fisher became a rich ex-convict named “Fredro” and the murderer Worrell was represented as “Wurlow” (Fowler 1991, 15).

  To assess the credibility of the Fisher’s ghost story, it is necessary to go back in time, as it were, to the proceedings of the Supreme Criminal Court on 2 February 1827 (Supreme 1827). As others have previously noted (e.g., Cranfield 1963), the trial records make absolutely no mention of a ghost. In addition to this negative evidence, I was struck by the positive evidence in the proceedings that Fisher’s missing body had actually been located in a rational rather than supernatural manner. Constable George Looland testified that, on the previous October 20, blood found on several fence rails at the corner of Fisher’s paddock led him to search the area. He was assisted by two aboriginal trackers who soon reported traces that they thought was “the fat of a white man” (presumably human tissue) floating on the creek. Proceeding with the search, they came to a spot (apparently identified by a disturbance of the marshy area) that they probed with an iron rod. One of the trackers “called out that there was something there,” and a spade was procured to excavate the site. Soon the search party had uncovered the “left hand of a man lying on his side.” The coroner was summoned, and (the next morning) the body of Fisher was exhumed and examined, whereupon “several fractures were found in the head” (Supreme 1827).

  However the story of Fisher’s ghost was actually launched—and it may have originated with the previously mentioned anonymous poem in 1832—the legend has persisted. In the narrative, the phantom behaves as one of those purposeful spirits of yore that sometimes “advised where their bodies might be discovered” (Finucane 1984, 194). Folk-lorists recognize such tales as types of supernatural legends—that is, “supposedly factual accounts of occurrences and experiences which seem to validate superstitions” (Brunvand 1978, 108-9).

  Evidence of folklore in progress is quite evident. Numerous variations in the tale (apart from the fictionalizing process) are suggestive of oral transmission. Consider a specific example. Since at least the 1950s, lighthearted vigils for the ghost have been held, with crowds typically gathering at midnight on June 17th. The chosen site is the bridge across Fisher’s Ghost Creek because, according to one account, “it was on the rail of the bridge . . . that Fisher’s Ghost was always seen” (“Fisher’s Ghost” 1957). However, when Peter Rodgers and I made our pilgrimage to the spot, locals told us (and other sources confirmed) that the existing bridge was not in precisely the same place as the original. More significantly, the earliest accounts of the story have the ghost sitting on the rail of a fence. With that simple transformation of a motif (as folklorists term a narrative element)—from fence rail to bridge rail—the site of the purported apparition also became translocated. Nevertheless, “ghost” sightings have been reported there; one of the most noteworthy occurred in 1955, when “a white cow in the distance in the pitch darkness gave some onlookers a scare” (“Fisher’s Ghost” 1957).

  Clearly, the story of Fisher’s ghost has many of the elements that make a tale worth telling (and retelling): an historical basis, intrigue and murder, a quest for justice, and a spine-tingling resolution. Not surprisingly, the “ghost” seems to have taken on a life of its own.

  REFERENCES

  Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1978. The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton.

  Cranfield, Louis. 1963. Was Australia’s greatest ghost story a hoax? Chronicle(Adelaide, S.A.), 24 October.

  Cusack, Frank, ed. 1967. Australian Ghosts. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.

  Davis, Richard. 1998. The Ghost Guide to Australia. Sydney: Bantam.

  Finucane, R. C. 1984. Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

  Fisher’s ghost. 1853. Household Words 7: 6-9.

  Fisher’s Ghost appears but crowd disappoints. 1957. Campbelltown-Ingleburn News (Campbelltown, N.S.W.), 18 June.

  Fowler, Verlie. 1991. Colonial Days in Campbelltown: The Legend of Fisher’s Ghost. Rev. ed. Campbelltown, N.S.W., Australia: Campbelltown & Airds Historical Society.

  Ghost that trapped a murderer? 1955. Sun-Herald (Sydney, N.S.W.), 3 July.

  Illusionist brought Fisher’s ghost to Pitt St. playhouse. 1984. Daily Mirror, 22 March [clipping in Campbelltown City Library’s vertical file].

  Lang, John. N.d. [1859?]. Botany Bay or True Stories of the Early Days ofAustralia. Excerpted in Australian Ghosts, edited by Frank Cusack, 1-24. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.

  Lee, C. N. 1963. Another ghost version. Campbelltown-IngleburnNews (Camp-belltown, N.S.W.), 12 February.

  Nickell, Joe. 2001. Mysterious Australia. Skeptical Inquirer 25, no. 2 (March/ April): 15-18.

  Supposed murder. 1826. Notice in The Australian, 23 September [cited in The Ghost Guide to Australia, by Richard Davis, 16-18. Sydney: Bantam].

  Supreme Criminal Court. 1827. Proc
eedings published in Gazette (Sydney), 5 February.

  37

  Ghostly Portents in Moscow

  When I knew I would be visiting Russia in 2001, 1 began to wonder what paranormal mysteries there might be to investigate. Not surprisingly, according to some sources Russia is a haunted place, and ghostly phenomena seem similar to those reported elsewhere.

  For example, a photograph of a “Moscow ghost” illustrates the section on Russia in The International Directory of Haunted Places (Hauck 2000, 129-31). However, the anomalous white shape at the bottom of the nighttime tourist photo seems consistent with other photographs in which foreign objects in front of the lens have bounced back the flash to create various ghostly effects: strands of “ectoplasm” (caused by a wandering wrist strap), “orbs” (due to water droplets, dust particles, etc.), or, in the case of the “Moscow ghost,” apparently a careless fingertip!

  Then there are the apparitions. Hauck (2000) states that at the Kremlin (FIGURE 37-1), the specter of Ivan the Terrible “is seen” (using the present tense); another source (“Ghosts” 1997) states that images of the fearsome czar “appeared many times” (employing the past tense). Both sources agree that the most appearances occurred in 1894, before Nicholas IFs wedding to Alexandra, when he was to accede to the throne following the death of his father. Supposedly Ivan’s phantom “brandished his heavy baton as sinister flames danced about his face.”