by Aaron Mahnke
Daniel was blindfolded, and the séance was conducted in a well-lit room. There would be no tricks, no ropes, no pulleys or hidden levers. Burr wanted this event to be transparent and open. He knew that many other celebrity mediums had already been exposed as frauds, and Daniel Home represented his chance to add one more name to that list.
At first Daniel claimed to be in communication with a number of spirits. Despite the blindfold, he managed to write down their messages using a board with words preprinted on it. Unconvinced, though, Burr asked him to focus on one spirit in particular and go deeper. Tell us the story. Tell us what they want. Prove that this is real.
So Daniel told them of the sailor whose spirit was in the room. And as he did, witnesses say that the room filled with the sound of howling wind. It was as if they were on the high seas in stormy weather. As the sounds grew louder, the table itself began to tilt and rock.
Burr looked for signs of trickery. That’s why he was there, after all. But he would later claim that, although he had a clear view of the space beneath and around the table, there was absolutely nothing suspicious to be found. The table was just…moving.
A moment later, the table stopped tilting and simply rose nearly a foot off the floor. And there it hovered, without explanation. Burr threw himself on the table, as did a few others, but the table would not sink back down.
After a few frustrating moments of wrestling with the floating furniture, Burr cried out a demand for irrefutable proof, a sign that could not be explained away with tricks or sleight of hand. In response, he later wrote, Daniel’s body lifted off the chair and rose high into the air—so high, Burr said, that the man’s head and hands touched the ceiling of the room. And that was the moment of transformation for Franklin Burr. He entered the home of Ward Cheney as a skeptic that day but left a true believer. Two days later, he published his experience in the newspaper and told the world his story.
Daniel didn’t fare as well. His bouts with illness increased, and he was eventually diagnosed with consumption, what we would call tuberculosis today. In an effort to find relief of his symptoms, he boarded a ship and moved back to the United Kingdom. It seems to have worked, for within the year he was healthy again and traveling all across Europe as a celebrity medium. Royalty and the wealthy elite called on him to conduct séances in their grand homes. He even performed more of the levitation that Franklin Burr had witnessed that day in Connecticut. And he did all of this for decades.
One last detail: Daniel had another vision in the spring of 1876. In it, his old friend Ward Cheney had passed away. He sat down that afternoon to write a letter to Cheney’s daughter-in-law to express his sadness at her loss.
When the letter arrived weeks later, having been carried across the Atlantic on an ocean liner, Cheney’s daughter-in-law was shocked to see the date that Daniel had written at the top of the page: March 22, the very day Ward Cheney had died.
WHEN EUROPEANS DISCOVERED North America in the late fifteenth century, they quickly spread up the eastern coast, up into what is now modern-day New England and Canada’s Newfoundland. It was probably by accident, but one of the earliest discoveries they made up in those dark, cold Atlantic waters was fish. Lots and lots of fish.
And it makes sense. It’s a unique area up there, where a plateau in the ocean floor is only about two hundred feet down. Farther out, of course, the sea floor drops into the depths you might expect. But on that shelf, where the cold Labrador Current mixes with the warm Gulf Stream, fish would gather by the billions.
One record from 1497 states how there were so many fish in the water that sailors could just lower a basket over the side and pull out dozens of them. With actual fishing nets, it was even easier. And anytime you find a combination of abundance and ease, you’re sure to find humans ready and willing to take advantage of it.
Today, the Grand Banks have been dramatically overfished, leading to a crazy 99 percent drop in the fish population there. But in the mid-1800s, fish were still abundant enough to attract hundreds of fishing vessels at a time. The trouble was, when you packed a hundred or more ships into a small area, storms could do severe damage to them.
In the sixty years between 1830 and 1890, nearly six hundred ships and three thousand lives were lost to storms in that area. And that meant there were always new ships being built back home. The Charles Haskell was one of them. It was a schooner built in Boston in 1869. But even when it was completed, it would take a full year to find someone brave enough to captain it.
It happened during the final inspection. The ship was outfitted for work and ready to go, but it needed to be looked over by an official who would issue an approval. During the inspection, a workman slipped and broke his neck, dying instantly. This was bad. Of course, it’s never good for someone to die so tragically. But on a nineteenth-century fishing vessel, the only thing more plentiful than the fish were superstitions. For a brand-new ship to see death and tragedy before it even left port…well, that was a bad omen.
It wasn’t until 1870 that Captain Curtis agreed to take command of the vessel. That winter, the Charles Haskell pulled out of Gloucester and headed east, aiming for the southern edge of the Grand Banks, known as Georges Bank. There they met up with dozens of other ships all trawling the same waters. And that’s when the storm blew in.
The waves hammered the ships and pushed them into one another. When the only thing keeping you alive was the ship beneath your feet, nothing could be more dangerous than the risk of that ship sinking, whether from the storm or from being rammed by another vessel. Which is exactly what happened. A schooner called the Andrew Johnson collided with Captain Curtis’s ship, and both vessels were damaged.
The Andrew Johnson went down in a matter of minutes, taking all of her crew with her. Captain Curtis’s vessel fared better, but he had to get the ship back to Gloucester for repairs. It was a journey that would take them nearly two days, though, and he had to make the trip with a crew that was even more suspicious of the Haskell than before.
Yes, the ship had started life with a tragic death. And though it had just dodged another tragedy when so many ships around it had been lost, the sailors didn’t find comfort in that. To them, it only deepened the curse. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, Curtis sailed the ship home as fast as possible.
It was during the first night at sea that things started to get odd. At midnight, the two watchmen heard sounds on the outside of the hull that reminded them of sailors climbing out of the water. But of course that couldn’t be the case. The ship was moving at a good clip, and there were no other vessels in sight. Still, the sounds continued.
And then, illuminated by the moonlight, shapes began to scramble over the rails. The shapes of men. They were completely silent and moved in eerie slow motion. The watchmen noticed how dark and hollow their eyes seemed to be. They almost seemed…dead.
It was difficult to believe. It seemed impossible, really. So the watchmen called Captain Curtis to come see with his own eyes. In all, twenty-six figures climbed onto the deck of the Haskell, and then they all sat on the fishing benches along the rails. In utter silence, each of the shapes began to bait invisible fishing lines and then toss them over the side. Once they were done, they stood, climbed the rails once more, and vanished into the water.
Curtis didn’t know what to do, so he told the watchmen to keep their sighting to themselves, and he urged the Haskell on toward Gloucester. It would take them one more overnight to reach port, and he was eager to be done with a journey as cursed as this one.
The second night, though, mere miles from the coast of home, the strange events happened again. At midnight, the phantom shapes emerged once more, climbing over the rails and going through the motions any fisherman would have recognized. To the watchmen, it was clear that these were dead sailors from a lost fishing vessel, doomed to relive their occupation even in death.
Legend says that this second performance lasted hours. But as it was coming to an end, the Charles Ha
skell slipped into Gloucester Harbor—just as the sun was coming up over the horizon. And as it did, the phantom fishermen stood and climbed overboard once more. This time, though, they didn’t slip beneath the cold waves of the sea.
According to the legend, they stood on the surface of the water, and then proceeded to walk in single file away from the ship. They say the ghosts headed in the direction of Salem, or maybe it was Georges Bank they were returning to. Regardless, this silent parade of the dead left its mark on Captain Curtis and his crew.
The Charles Haskell never again left port. No crewman was ever willing to set foot onboard after that. It’s not that they worried about the phantom sailors returning, or that someday those dead sailors might do more than just bait the line and then return to the sea. No, they feared something worse, because each journey on a fishing vessel was a risk, a period of time when death could have its way whenever it wanted to.
They feared the phantoms, sure. But more than that, they feared becoming phantoms themselves.
LIKE A LOT of other homeowners through the ages, Mr. and Mrs. Farrar had a problem with their house. But first let’s back up, shall we?
William Farrar graduated from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire way back in 1801. He was a lawyer, and after marriage, he and his wife settled in the nearby town of Lancaster. Life was good for a very long while. His practice was successful, and he served as a deacon at the local Congregational Church.
In 1818, he and his wife realized they needed some help around the house, so they hired a young woman named Hannah Fish to move in and take care of many of their day-to-day needs. She cleaned, she cooked, she took care of the children. In return for her service, she received a small salary and a bedroom on the first floor of the house. The Farrars, along with their children, all slept upstairs.
The day Hannah moved in, something peculiar happened. She had spent the day getting settled, becoming acquainted with the house, and meeting everyone, and by the time dinner was done, she was exhausted. So she retired to her room.
A short while later, she came running back out, screaming at the top of her lungs. Mrs. Farrar came downstairs and scolded the young woman for being noisy. But Hannah insisted that she’d heard something in her room: a knock. Three knocks, actually.
Mrs. Farrar, though, wasn’t buying it. Clearly Hannah was an immature girl with an overactive imagination. So she escorted her back into the room. Which is when they both heard it.
Knock, knock, knock.
Both of the women screamed this time, and that, of course, caught the attention of Mr. Farrar, who came downstairs and scolded both of them. But before his wife could explain what had happened, all three of them heard it happen again.
Knock, knock, knock.
After a moment of shock and some whimpers from the ladies, Mr. Farrar puffed up his chest and grabbed one of the pokers from the fireplace. Not to worry, he said; he would take care of the problem. And with that he headed down to the basement.
I imagine he expected it to just be an animal that had gotten into his house. I live in New England, and I know how these old homes can have small gaps or holes in their foundations. Little animals love creeping inside and making nests for themselves. That, he assumed, was the source of the knocking.
But it wasn’t. In fact, he found no source for the noise. No evidence of an animal. No explanation at all. The basement was free from rodents or wildlife of any kind. Which, as you can imagine, was pretty frustrating for everyone. So good Deacon Farrar called his minister for help.
When Reverend Joseph Willard arrived, he was led into Hannah’s bedroom by the entire group, and all four of them stood in the quiet room for a long while, just listening. And then it happened again.
Knock, knock, knock.
They searched. They looked. Willard offered advice, but nothing came of it. Without finding a source for the noise, the minister left, and the next day he returned with three other upstanding citizens to help him investigate. Still, they were unable to find the answer to the riddle. Who was doing all the knocking?
They tossed around theories, though. A haunting, perhaps. Or maybe it was an omen, hinting at impending disaster. The only thing everyone could agree on was that the knocking only ever happened when Hannah was in the room. So they did the only logical thing they could think of.
They tied the young woman up. They bound her hands and feet, and then laid her out on her bed and set a watch over her for the next twenty-four hours. If she was the real source of the knocking, they said, then either they would catch her doing it or it would fail to happen while she was tied up. Sound logic, I suppose, even if it was a bit drastic and more than a little cruel.
Much to their surprise, though, the knocking did happen again. And since it happened while Hannah was bound and imprisoned in her own bed, she was technically off the hook. But the ordeal left an impression on her, and as a result, she informed the Farrars that she no longer wanted to work for them. She quit.
According to a firsthand account, passed on to a historian decades later, as Hannah packed up her room the knocking grew louder and more frequent. Then, as she was carrying her belongings down the hallway toward the front door—literally as she was leaving—the knocking transformed into pounding, which seemed to follow her, thumping over and over as she walked away.
Hannah Fish moved on. A couple of years later, she married a man named Israel Nute and gave birth to the first of her six children in 1821. Later, after her husband died in 1835, she moved west, to Michigan, where she died in Saginaw in 1876.
And the house? Well, the Farrars lived there for many more decades. The house was sold in the early 1850s to another family, and everyone expected the stories of the hauntings to end there. But they didn’t. The new family often heard pounding and knocking in various parts of the house. Once they described the sound of a log thumping over and over again down their front hall. No source was ever found.
In 1859, they gave up and sold the house. And it was the new owners, the local Catholic Church, who finally took care of the problem for good.
They tore the house down.
IN 1671, THE Massachusetts Bay Colony had a devil of a problem on their hands—quite literally. That was the year that the village of Groton experienced something…well, odd.
Groton, like a lot of the first settlements in New England, was a Puritan town. It was strict and oppressive if you weren’t a religious white man. Women worked horrible hours, doing everything from cooking to child care to home repairs. They were often illiterate, and they were treated more like a possession than a partner or equal.
In contrast, the local preacher was a man named Samuel Willard. He was young, Harvard-educated, well-off, and free to experience life. As a Puritan, though, he was known for his fiery sermons and a hard-line stance on witchcraft and devil worship. In fact, when Salem erupted in hysteria two decades later, Willard traveled there to help the community through preaching.
In October 1671—the day before Halloween, in fact—the Willards’ household servant, a young woman named Elizabeth Knapp, began to complain about aches and pains. She felt pressure around her neck, as if she were being strangled. She suffered seizures, outbursts of screaming, and fits of deep sadness. And she saw things, too.
She said there were people walking around the room. Except there weren’t. On another occasion she said there was a man floating above her bed. Now, these might sound like strange things to say, but one of the common beliefs of the time was that witches—men and women who practiced the dark arts—could bilocate themselves, literally be in two places at once. So Elizabeth’s real accusation was that someone in Groton was a witch.
On the first Sabbath of her illness, Elizabeth’s symptoms got worse, and all the while Samuel Willard took notes, observed her with an open mind, and asked questions when he was able to. Once she fell on the floor so violently that she nearly rolled into the fireplace. Or maybe the spirit inside her tried to throw her in; it was hard to say at
the time.
She would shout out, too, words that were sometimes unintelligible and broken. Willard said it was almost like the voice of another person projecting out of the young woman’s mouth. And sometimes they could be heard when her mouth was closed. When they could be understood, Willard reported, she would scream the phrase “money, sin, and misery,” over and over again.
On November 2, just three days after these events began, Willard started to get answers out of Elizabeth. She told the minister that she had been meeting with the Devil for more than three years, and that he had asked her to sign a book. It was full of what she called “blood covenants,” and had been signed by dozens—perhaps hundreds—of other people already. And her mission was to destroy men like Samuel Willard.
Her confessions came in bits and pieces over the next few days, but as they did, her seizures and fits increased with them. She spoke of a man in a black robe, and of sealing her pact with the Devil in her own bed. She contorted and sometimes needed to be held down by three, four, or even five grown men. And Willard watched, taking notes and studying the young woman’s condition.
On November 28, roughly a month after things began, Elizabeth had the biggest seizure of all—one that lasted more than forty-eight hours—before collapsing into a catatonic state. For ten days she lay silent and unmoving. No fits. No screams. No dark confessions. And then, on December 8, she awoke.
Willard recorded more of the same for another month, and as far as the records tell us, Elizabeth never improved. But on January 15, 1672, Willard made some observations hinting that things had finally come to an end. It was his conclusion that her condition was no act, no trick or performance designed to fool him. It was real and powerful. He also concluded that the symptoms were nothing short of diabolical, originating from dark forces. Even the voices were rooted in the Devil’s influence.