Leah invited our guests to each take a seat around the table in the center of the parlor. Calvin Brown already had a hand on the back of a chair, which he pulled out for Leah with a shy little smile. She seated herself and arranged her voluminous skirts in a decorative manner with a murmur of thanks. When she dropped her handkerchief, Calvin, always attentive to her needs, quickly knelt and retrieved it for her.
Kate took a chair to the left of Leah, and I sat myself on her right. The remaining chairs were taken by the Grangers and the Posts, with Reverend Clark directly across from Leah. Calvin, Mother, and a sullen-faced Lizzie withdrew to a sofa in the corner of the room. When Leah gave a nod, Calvin put out the gaslights, leaving three candles burning on side tables in the room. Afterward, we sat in silence, with our hands upon the table.
Everyone seemed quite comfortable with the silence, except for the Reverend Clark, who was looking around the faces in the circle with some puzzlement. Just when it seemed that he was about to start asking questions, we all heard a shower of quick, light raps, knocking upon the floor and the table itself. I tried not to show my surprise, because these noises were not the joint-cracking sounds to which I was accustomed.
No one at the table had moved his or her hands, although Reverend Clark leaned back from his seat and tried to peer around the table on both sides.
Leah called out in her bright voice, “Welcome! We have gathered here tonight to commune with the brotherhood of spirits, and if it is the wish of our voiceless guests to telegraph their messages to those present in body, please give us a sign.”
Again we heard a shower of gentle raps. Mrs. Granger looked eagerly at Leah, who nodded to her with an indulgent smile. “Harriet!” Mrs. Granger gasped breathlessly. “Is that you?”
We heard two raps, for yes.
This was another shock to me. Never before had Kate and I impersonated the deceased loved one of a person present. We were careful to send messages from a nameless group of spirits, refusing to allow the members of the circle to directly address their relatives. It would be too easy to make mistakes, we had reasoned, and incorrectly answer their questions. Also, we had qualms about the morality of such an imposture. For us, there was a great deal of difference between sending a message from Harriet and pretending to be Harriet.
“Are you at peace, my darling?” Mrs. Granger went on.
Two raps.
“Are you lonely?”
One rap, for no.
The Reverend Clark was looking anxiously back and forth between the wife of his friend and the three of us sisters. Leah looked comfortable and confident and happy for her friend Adelaide Granger. Kate was excited but not perturbed in any way, and I am sure that I looked extraordinarily innocent that night.
After a few more questions and comments by Mrs. Granger and another pitter-patter of knocks, which apparently signified Harriet’s presence, Mr. Granger sighed and addressed his daughter’s spirit. “Harriet, dearest, we have brought Lemuel Clark with us tonight, and he would like to ask you some questions. Would you be agreeable to taking his test and thus proving to his doubting nature that you are really with us?”
Agreeably, Harriet rapped twice.
“I have a suggestion,” Leah intervened. “Why don’t you write four answers to a question of your choice, only one of which will be correct, and then after asking your question, you can point to the answers in turn. Our spirit will rap when you point to the correct one.”
Reverend Clark nodded thoughtfully and accepted the paper and nib pen that Calvin rose to offer him. He wrote four words upon the paper: Rover, Pinkie, Bear, Dusty, and then set the pen aside. “Harriet,” he said hesitantly, as though feeling foolish addressing the empty air, “can you tell me the name of the little dog my wife and I once owned, that you so enjoyed playing with when you were a child?”
He pointed to the name Rover and, after a moment’s silence, moved his finger down to the name Pinkie. Immediately, we heard two raps. Mr. and Mrs. Granger sat back in their seats with smiles on their faces, the Posts exchanged a nod, and the Reverend Clark looked up with an utterly astonished expression.
We heard five distinct knocks at that time, and Leah said, “She is calling for the alphabet board.” Leah reached down and lifted up a slate that had rested by her chair. When she placed it on the table, I saw that the alphabet and the numerals zero to nine were written upon the slate in chalk. With a start, I realized that this was to replace David’s method of reciting the alphabet. Leah pointed to the letters on the board in order, and Amy Post, taking up the paper and pen abandoned by the Reverend in his surprise, recorded each letter that received a knock.
Soon Harriet had spelled out the following message: Do not persist in your unbelief. I have come not to disturb you but to ease the grief of those who mourn me and promise that all will be as it should be in the land of eternal summer.
Kate turned to Leah now and, using her girlishly innocent voice, said, “I wish the spirits would do something, just to let the Reverend see how strange they act sometimes!”
“Let’s invite them,” replied Leah. “Would you like to see the table move, Reverend? Let everyone move their chairs back from the table.” Under Leah’s direction, we did this and then placed our feet upon the chair rungs and our hands in the air over our heads, so that all could clearly see them. No sooner had we done so than the table, with no hands upon it, lurched several inches across the bare floor toward us girls.
I could not contain my gasp, and Mother cried out, “Land sakes!” Reverend Clark, although his shaggy eyebrows waggled in astonishment, stood immediately up, grasped the edge of the table, and pulled it back to its original position. He was just sitting down when the table slid roughly away from him again. Kate clapped her hands in childish delight, and the spirit circle broke up at that point.
The Reverend Clark took each of our hands in turn as he left that evening, stating that we had certainly given him much to ponder and that his entire understanding of the universe had been altered. He cupped one hand under Kate’s chin and said, “I see that I was mistaken in my belief that chicanery was taking place in this house. This child has no more understanding of duplicity than a canary bird, but for all her artless innocence has created a miracle.”
Much later, when we were safely alone, Kate poked fun at the Reverend by placing her fingers along her eyebrows and waving them humorously. “If I heard correctly,” she said, “that man called me a birdbrain.”
“That is only what you deserve for acting like one,” I retorted. “Now, if you don’t tell me how all those events were accomplished tonight, I shall tear the dress from your body to look for myself!”
I had figured out that Kate was making the new rapping noise by detecting the slight rustling of her skirts each time they occurred. With a rueful grin, she lifted up the hem of her dress and showed me the places where lead balls had been sewn into it. “It was Calvin’s idea,” she admitted. “He is more devilishly minded than we could have guessed.”
“However did you know the dog’s name?” I asked.
Kate smiled. “Look, I will teach you to do it yourself easily. When the Reverend began to write down the answers, I watched him closely. He paused a moment before writing the first name, but he moved the pen directly to the second name without thought. He paused another moment before writing the third name and even longer before writing the fourth, because he had to invent them, you see. I find that most people place the correct answer in the second position, because they don’t want to write it down first, but they can’t think of two more false answers without stalling for time.”
“And to think the Reverend compared you to a canary, you wicked thing!” I exclaimed. “How did you make the table move?”
“Leah did that. Calvin tied a length of thread to the table leg and extended it out to the chair in which Leah would sit. He looped it over her foot when he knelt down
to fetch her hankie.”
I fell upon the bed that we shared, utterly taken in amazement. “I had no idea that you were running a carnival show here in Rochester while I scrubbed my hands raw on Betsy’s laundry!”
It took no time at all to sew lead balls into the hem of my “spirit dress,” and I practiced tapping them on the floor without making an obvious disturbance with my skirt. As for the trick with the thread, I tried that out as soon as possible, which turned out to be the next day at noon, while Mother was out of the house. Having set up my prank earlier, I waited until I saw Calvin rise out of his chair to reach across the table for the water pitcher. When I saw that he had the handle and was easing back to his seat, I gave a jerk with my foot and was greatly satisfied to see his chair twitch out from underneath him. He sat down heavily upon nothing and clattered to the floor with the pitcher upside down in his lap.
Kate shrieked in laughter, and Calvin good-naturedly joined her, raising the pitcher mockingly, as if to throw it at me. Leah hurled her napkin to the table, exclaiming, “This is totally unacceptable, girls!” But then she broke into uncontrollable peals of laughter and had to hide her face in her hands.
The only person who did not laugh was Lizzie.
***
Our niece was becoming a problem. She heartily disapproved of all our spirit tricks, and only the force of Leah’s will prevented her from revealing our secrets to Mother. Somehow we knew that this would be a disaster and an ignominious end to all our ghostly activities.
Lizzie felt that our pretense was immoral and bound to condemn us to fiery perdition. She was aghast at how we had fooled all the people of Hydesville and ashamed that we were well on our way to doing the same in Rochester. Alone among us, she did not see the miraculous change in the health of Leah’s friends, the Grangers, and would not admit that our spirit communications were often a balm to the injured souls of the grieving.
She made her feelings plain in her demeanor and actions. Leah spoke to her daughter privately, and they had a terrible row. While Lizzie sulked in tears downstairs, Leah climbed the stairs to our room and explained to us what she planned to do. Kate and I were having a great deal of fun in our trickery, and because we had not yet realized Leah’s comprehensive plan for us, we were amazed that she had chosen to join in our pranks.
On the next evening, as it happened, we were having the Grangers and Reverend Clark back for another spirit circle. The Grangers could not bear to go more than a few days without contact from their beloved Harriet, and the Reverend professed he would like to return to ask the spirits a few questions of theology. Unfortunately, it appeared that the evening was going to be a disappointment. Our meeting began to resemble a Quaker church service in the length and breadth of its silence.
“What can be the matter?” cried Mrs. Granger after a time, growing distressed by the absence of her daughter’s spirit.
“I think I know,” Leah said fiercely, and she turned in her chair to face her daughter, seated as usual at the back of the room. “You are the cause of this silence. You have been a very wicked girl, grieving the spirits so with your actions!”
“No, Mother!” Lizzie gasped, while at the same time two loud raps were heard, the accustomed sign for yes.
“Spirits!” called Leah, raising her head. “Has my daughter, Lizzie Fish, wronged you?”
Two raps.
Lizzie burst into tears. “I can’t help it! I just said what I thought!”
“You must repent if you wish to remain a member of this household,” Leah replied sternly.
“See here!” exclaimed Reverend Clark in some dismay, while the Grangers clasped hands for comfort. “What can this poor girl have done to deserve such rough treatment at the hands of her own mother?”
“You do not understand, Reverend,” Leah said. “My daughter has been hostile to our gentle spirits, and they are greatly offended by her ill will. She stood in this parlor yesterday and told me that she wished they would go away forever and cease tormenting my sisters.”
“Oh, Lizzie,” my mother murmured, and Mrs. Granger wrung her hands and vehemently exclaimed how much she relied on Harriet’s messages to simply continue in her daily living.
Lizzie was sniveling by now and wiping tears from her cheeks but still as stubborn as her mother in her own way. “I can’t repent. I don’t see the wrong in what I said to you, Mother. I was sincere, and I cannot repent for it.”
Five loud raps called for the alphabet board, and Leah placed it in the center of the table and began to point to each letter in turn. Our guests were much too distraught to write down the message, so we spelled each letter out loud as it was rapped, and the meaning was plain: Lizzie must go.
Our niece fell to her knees and, sobbing, begged her mother to have mercy. Kate sent me a plaintive look, and I cringed, feeling just as guilty. Leah turned her back on her daughter and faced her three guests: “The spirits have spoken their will. It shall be done as they say.”
***
Two days later, a pale and tearful Lizzie mounted a hired carriage while the driver hoisted up a trunk full of her belongings. Leah had already wired a curt telegram to her former husband, Bowman Fish, announcing the imminent arrival of his daughter. Lizzie would be visiting with her father, whom she had not seen in years, for an indefinite period.
Leah stood in the street outside our house with arms folded and watched her leave.
“This is harsh, even for Leah,” commented Kate, watching from an upstairs window.
“Don’t you be fooled,” I replied. “Leah loves her daughter. If we get caught in this foolishness, Lizzie will be safe out west. After the performance the other night, no one will ever accuse Lizzie of being a party to our lies.”
Chapter Thirteen
Maggie
That summer, it seemed the fashionable thing to do in Rochester, New York, was to make an evening visit to the parlor of Mrs. Leah Fish on Prospect Street to hear the spirit rappers.
Visitors began arriving around teatime, often bringing gifts of jams and bread, sugary confections, or sometimes hair ribbons for me and Kate. Callers who came often, seeing the meager household run by Leah, gifted us with more practical items such as candles or lamp oil. New acquaintances were quickly charmed by the friendly and forthright manner for which Leah and Mother were known, and no one left without remarking on “those pretty girls!”
As darkness fell, we would commence our spirit circles, sometimes holding two in an evening. Spirits rapped, tables moved, the curtains rustled, and bells rang. Participants gasped in astonishment, awed by the physical manifestations and the uncanny ability of the unseen rappers to identify correct answers written on paper. After each long evening, Kate and I would fall to our beds in exhaustion, having played out as much mischief as any two girls could desire.
Still, this swell of visitors flush with gifts did not provide enough to sustain our household. Because Leah had nearly given up her piano lessons, Mother began to fret over how her daughter would maintain her residence in this expensive part of town.
About a month after our arrival, while hosting a spirit circle comprising our closest and most frequent visitors, the Grangers and the Posts, we suffered a long, awkward period of silence from the spirits. It was always uncomfortable when the spirits were not forthcoming, but Leah occasionally required this, and Kate and I were accustomed to obeying her commands. On this evening, after many plaintive but fruitless entreaties to the spirits, Leah finally gave a great sigh and clasped the hands of the people on either side of her.
“Good friends,” she began with great reluctance, “I fear the fault is mine. Worries of a secular nature have confounded my concentration, breaking our connection with those spiritual entities who no longer suffer from such troubles.”
When pressed by our concerned friends to elaborate, Leah tearfully explained that her income from piano lessons had vanish
ed, as few pupils were still willing to come to her house. “I don’t know how I will support the girls and my mother,” she confessed. “I don’t know what will become of them if I have to give up my place in this house.”
Of course, we could have returned to my father’s house in Hydesville and received ample support from his blacksmith work and the income from David’s farm. This somehow escaped mention.
With downcast eyes and a hesitant voice, Leah then said, “A dear friend of mine has suggested that I require an entrance fee to our spirit circles, and while I scorned this idea from the start, I cannot endure the weight of our debt much longer. I hoped that you, my dear friends, would advise me on this matter.”
Mr. Post was quick to respond. “I think it is a capital idea, Mrs. Fish. No one would begrudge you recompense for your time and devotion to this spiritual endeavor. Even the spirits themselves, although they no longer have such physical needs, could not deny you the wherewithal to provide for your family.”
“I am in agreement,” Mr. Granger added. “It has long been in my mind that you should receive recompense—as Isaac here has put it—for inviting us into your home night after night and exhausting yourself mentally on our behalf.”
Leah shook her head as if fighting this unpleasant notion. “But what will people think if I, a woman without a husband, begin to accept money as an entrance fee to my home?”
Amy Post slapped her hand lightly upon the table. “A man can establish a respectable practice of business and charge a professional fee for his service. A woman should not be denied the same right.”
Thus my sister, “reluctantly,” of course, began the practice of charging a dollar a head for participation in our spirit circles. It happened with scarcely a ripple in the pattern of our lives. To be sure, Kate and I were largely unaware of the exchange of money, for it happened with careful discretion, and because a portion of it went to the purchase of fashionable dresses for the two of us, we were hardly likely to complain. After all, as Leah pointed out to our mother, people wishing to send a telegraph to living relatives must pay a fee. Why not expect that a spiritual telegraph would likewise require a surcharge?
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