The Norfolk and Virginia Beach Study Groups of the Association for Research and Enlightenment have been of great help to me, as have been the staff members of the Association, particularly Miss Gladys Davis, Mr. Cayce’s secretary for twenty-two years. In the end, however, it was Hugh Lynn Cayce who not only led the horse to water, but made him drink; and it was my wife who acted as typist, proofreader, editor, and nurse to my crotchets and doldrums. To them I am deeply grateful. If I have done a good job it is because of them and despite myself. I last saw Edgar Cayce in August, 1944, when he visited me in Florida. He was weary then, tired to the depths of his being. He talked eagerly of the future of the Association; he spoke wistfully of the time when he might retire. He liked the warmth and brightness of Florida; he loved the Australian pines that grow near the water. “Pick out a place for me here,” he said, “and I will come back and stay.” He went home the next day. His last letter to me, written in longhand, on the stationery of the Hotel Patrick Henry in Roanoke, was dated September 11, 1944. It said, in part, “My hands won’t let me use the machine. I doubt whether you can read this but I hope you can make some of it out. I am not doing too well; sort of a stroke I guess. They have come in a kind of series. I hope to get back to work for a while yet, and I want to hold out until the boys get home. I can’t much more than put on and take off my clothes. I can’t tie my shoe laces or knot my tie. But I am hoping to be better soon. There is so much to be done and so many who need help . . .”
Thomas Sugrue
May 11, 1945
Clearwater Beach, Fla.
ONE
Uncle Billy Evans huddled in the rear seat of his cab and watched the afternoon train pull into the Louisville and Nashville Railroad station in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. It was a cold, still afternoon in January, 1912.
A stranger stepped off the Pullman. Uncle Billy left his warm seat and went to meet him.
He was a large, tall man, wrapped in a heavy overcoat, with its collar turned up to protect his ears. He let Uncle Billy take his two suitcases and followed him to the cab.
“I am looking for a man named Edgar Cayce,” he said while the old black man stowed the bags away. “Can you take me to him?” He spoke quickly, with a thick, Germanic accent.
Uncle Billy straightened himself and shivered a little.
“Mr. Edgar’s gone home for the day,” he said. “And it’s a mile and a half out there to the Hill. Miss Gertrude’s mighty sick these days, and Mr. Edgar’s there with her most o’ the time.”
The stranger settled himself in the cab and Uncle Billy tucked a blanket around his legs.
“They don’t have many visitors, on account of Miss Gertrude,” he went on. “Lord, I hope nothin’ happens to that child!”
“She is his daughter?” the stranger asked. Uncle Billy finished with the blanket.
“No, sir. Miss Gertrude is Mr. Edgar’s wife,” he explained. “Now, I can take you to the hotel and first thing tomorrow morning . . .”
“We will go now to the house,” the stranger said. “And tell me, why is it so cold down here in the South?”
“Lord God, sir!” Uncle Billy said. “This ain’t the South! The South’s way down yonder!”
He pointed.
“This here’s Kentucky, and the Lord ain’t got a bit o’ use for it!”
He paused before closing the door.
“You think you’ll be warm enough ridin’ way out there and back again?” he asked.
“I will be comfortable,” the stranger said. “Let us go quickly.” Uncle Billy closed the door and climbed to his box, muttering. The two horses, eager for exercise, started briskly down East Ninth Street, turned left along the park, and headed out East Seventh Street. The town fell behind and the street became Russellville Road. Houses gave way to brown, rolling hills, and bare fields looted of their crops. A single bright spot loomed through the dusk. On a hill higher than the rest and covered with trees, a gray, rambling house stood with its face to the north, the four white columns of its porch glistening in the sidewise glance of the winter sun. Beyond it the road swerved to the right. Just before the cab reached the carriage entrance leading to the house on the hill, it stopped. A little off the road, almost hidden by a giant oak and some maple trees, was a small cottage, brightly painted in green and white. Uncle Billy got down from his box and opened the cab door. “In here, sir,” he said.
The stranger got out, stretched, and looked around him. “He doesn’t live in the big house?” he said, as if disappointed. Uncle Billy pointed to the glistening columns.
“That’s the Hill,” he said. “It’s the old Salter Place, where Miss Gertrude’s folks live. This here”—he pointed to the cottage—“is Miss Lizzie’s little place. Miss Lizzie is Miss Gertrude’s mother. She lives up at the Hill with Miss Kate.”
The stranger smiled a little.
“Do your southern ladies never marry?” he said.
“Oh, they’s all married,” Uncle Billy said, “but they ain’t got no husbands, except Miss Gertrude. They’s dead.”
The stranger changed the subject.
“What does this land produce?” he asked, waving his arm toward Hopkinsville.
“Dark tobacco,” Uncle Billy said.
“Dark?” The stranger looked thoughtful. He stared at Uncle Billy.
“Dark tobacco,” Uncle Billy repeated. “Hopkinsville is famous fo’ being the dark tobacco market of the whole world.”
“It is also famous for another thing that is dark,” the stranger said. Then he added, as if to himself, “Funny place to find it.”
He started for the cottage. Uncle Billy crawled into the cab to wait.
The young man who opened the cottage door was slim and almost as tall as the stranger. Without saying anything the stranger stepped into the hallway. “You are Edgar Cayce?” he asked.
“I am,” the young man answered.
“I am Dr. Hugo Münsterberg, of Harvard,” the stranger said. “I have come here to expose you. There has been entirely too much written about you in the newspapers lately.”
He looked quickly around the hallway and peered into the living room, which opened from the hallway to the right.
“What is your modus operandi?” he said. “Where is your cabinet?”
The young man had not moved. He looked dazed. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
Dr. Münsterberg struck the air impatiently with an arm. “The cabinet, the cabinet,” he said brusquely.
The young man recovered himself suddenly. He smiled and led the way into the living room.
“Come in and sit down,” he said. “I will take your coat. There is a fire in the fireplace. But I have no cabinet. I don’t use any apparatus at all, if that’s what you mean. I could lie down on the floor here and go to sleep, if I wanted to.”
Dr. Münsterberg came into the room but did not sit down or remove his coat. From its inner pocket he took a sheaf of newspaper clippings.
“There’s been too much publicity for this thing not to be a fake,” he said, putting the clippings on a tea table.
Idly the young man leafed through the clippings. Apparently he had seen them before. One was a full-page display from the Sunday magazine section of the New York Times for October 9, 1910. The headline said, ILLITERATE MAN BECOMES A DOCTOR WHEN HYPNOTIZED—STRANGE POWER SHOWN BY EDGAR CAYCE PUZZLES PHYSICIANS. The first paragraph read:
The medical fraternity of the country is taking a lively interest in the strange power said to be possessed by Edgar Cayce of Hopkinsville, Ky., to diagnose difficult diseases while in a semi-conscious state, though he has not the slightest knowledge of medicine when not in this condition.
There was a photograph of the young man, another of his father, a mustached gentleman named Leslie B. Cayce, who was described as the “conductor” of the hypnotic sleeps; and a third picture showing a
young physician named Dr. Wesley H. Ketchum, who had reported the phenomena to the American Society of Clinical Research, of Boston. There was a drawing which showed the young man lying on a table, asleep, while a weird demon of the other world hovered over him.
“All this was done without my knowledge or permission,” the young man explained to Dr. Münsterberg. “I was in Alabama at the time. I didn’t know anything about it.”
Dr. Münsterberg stood with his back to the fireplace, warming himself.
“You say you do not have a cabinet,” he said. “Do you allow yourself to be seen? Are the lights on?”
“Oh, it’s always very light,” the young man said. “I give the readings in the morning and afternoon, two each day. If there isn’t enough light we have to turn on the lamps, so the stenographer can see to take down what I say.”
“And the patient? Where is the patient?”
“Most of them are at home, wherever that is. They just read me the address, and I seem to find the place all right.”
“You do not examine the patients beforehand?”
“Oh, no. I don’t know anything about medicine when I’m awake. I prefer not to know even the name of the person before I go to sleep. The names wouldn’t mean much to me, anyhow. Most of the people are from out of the state somewhere.”
“They tell their symptoms in letters to this . . . Dr. Ketchum?”
“Oh, no. We only want to be sure that they really need help. That’s all.”
Dr. Münsterberg watched the young man’s face while he talked. It was a frank, open countenance. The cheeks were round, the nose straight, the chin receding but not weak, the eyes gray-blue and friendly. His hair was straight and brown. He spoke with a soft drawl. He looked about twenty-five.
“You are how old?” the doctor asked.
“Thirty-four. I’ll be thirty-five in March.”
“You look younger. What is your name? You are Irish?”
“No, it was originally Cuaci. Norman-French, I reckon. Our records don’t go back to the country from which we came originally. Our direct ancestor is Shadrach Cayce. He lived in Powhatan County, Virginia, and his sons fought in the Revolution. They received land grants in Tennessee and Kentucky from the government, and that’s why we’re here.”
He went to a square-topped walnut table in the corner of the room. His stride was quick and sure, his step soft, like a man used to hunting and life in the open.
“This table came from Virginia more than a hundred years ago,” he said.
“You were born on a farm?” Dr. Münsterberg asked.
The young man came back to the tea table and sat down. “Yes, sir. I was born here in Christian County. The Cayces used to own nearly all the land between Hopkinsville and the Tennessee line. That’s about fifteen miles. But my great-grandfather had four sons and my grandfather had seven sons, so by the time all the land was split up there wasn’t a great deal left for my generation. So I’m a photographer.”
“But you do not work at that now, of course.”
“Oh, yes. That’s in the contract I have with my partners. They have to furnish me with a studio and equipment. That’s where I make my living. I can only give two readings a day, you see, and some of them are for people who have no money.”
Dr. Münsterberg laughed a little and shook his head. “Either you are a very simple fellow,” he said, “or you are very clever. I cannot penetrate your ruse.” The young man shook his head mournfully.
“I’m the dumbest man in Christian County,” he said, “when I’m awake.”
“But when you are asleep you know everything. Is that it?”
“That’s what they tell me. I don’t know. The people say I tell them how they feel better than they know how to tell it themselves. They take the medicines and the treatment I prescribe, and they get better. The stenographer takes it down and gives the patient a copy. Dr. Ketchum adds whatever comment is needed. That’s all I know.”
“You have no explanation for this? There is no tradition of psychic power in your family?”
“They say my grandfather was a water witch. He would walk around with a forked hazel twig in his hand and tell the farmers where to dig their wells. They always found water there, so they said.
“He was supposed to be able to do other things, too, such as make a broom dance, but that was probably just talk. There’s nothing funny about my father except that snakes love him, and he hates them.”
“Snakes are fond of your father?”
“They used to follow him home from the fields. They would wrap themselves around his hat brim if he laid his hat down in the field. It got on his nerves so much that he gave up farming. The family has lived in town for about fifteen years now.”
“And you have been doing this business how long?”
“The readings? Oh, just regularly since all the publicity started a year ago. I didn’t pay much attention to it until then. I just did it for friends, and people round about who asked me now and then.”
“What have been your studies? Not medicine, you say?”
“No. I never got further than what would be first year in high school. I was graduated down in the country, where they have nine grades.”
“But since then you have read a lot, naturally.”
“Well, I like to read, and I used to work in a bookstore, but I reckon my taste isn’t very high. You can look through the bookcase there in the hall if you like.”
Dr. Münsterberg went immediately into the hallway.
“We will see what you read. It should be interesting,” he said. He began taking books from the cases, stacking them on the floor. Some he flipped open, running through the pages quickly; these he dropped carelessly, so that some of them fell face open on the floor.
“There seems to be nothing worthwhile here,” he said. “The Harvester, The Common Law, The Rosary, Girl of the Limberlost, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine . . . Let me see what are these large volumes . . . Judge magazine and Red Book magazine.”
“I have them bound each year,” the young man explained. “We like to keep them.”
“The Circular Staircase, The Awakening of Helena Richie . . . who is this E. P. Roe? Ah, you have a complete set of his works!”
“Those are my wife’s. I gave them to her years ago. E. P. Roe is her favorite novelist.”
“Hmmmm. Yes, I see now. Love stories . . . what trash! Here is The Doctor. No, it is a novel. The Jungle, Coniston, The Clansman, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Cardinal’s Snuffbox . . . some poetry here . . . hmmm . . . it is Ella Wheeler Wilcox.”
He straightened himself and turned back to the living room.
“Well, there is nothing here,” he said. “I shall have to look further.”
“Perhaps you would like to see a reading?” the young man said. “The copies are kept at the office, downtown, but I have my wife’s readings here. We had a check reading for her the other day. The doctors all said she would die. She has tuberculosis. But she is getting better by following the readings.”
He was eager now; his face shone.
“I’ll get it!”
He went into a room across the hall, returning almost immediately with two sheets of typewritten manuscript. Each sheet carried his picture at the top, with the legend, “Edgar Cayce, Jr., Psychic Diagnostician.”
“The printer made a mistake,” he said, handing the sheets to the doctor and pointing to the legend. “He got me mixed up with my Uncle Edgar and put me down as junior. I’m not.”
Dr. Münsterberg began to read the sheets. The young man stepped away politely and sat down by the tea table.
“I cannot learn much from this; I am not a medical doctor,” Dr. Münsterberg said. He looked quickly at the young man to see how this was taken.
The young man offered another suggestion.
“There are s
ome people you might go to see, who have had experience with the readings. They could tell you whether they work or not. You could see Mrs. Dietrich, and some of the others . . . Mrs. Dabney, Miss Perry . . . Mrs. Bowles, maybe.”
“Good,” the doctor said. “You will write down their names and addresses?” He continued to read.
The young man went to a desk against the wall and wrote on a pad. Dr. Münsterberg watched him, returning to his perusal of the manuscript sheets when the young man finished and looked up.
“Here are the names and addresses. Uncle Billy can take you to all of them. They are too far apart to walk. Are you planning to stay here tonight? We’re going to have a reading in the morning. Perhaps you’d like to watch it.”
“I intend to stay,” the doctor said, putting the manuscript sheets on the tea table. “I will take a room at the hotel. Tonight I will visit these people and question them.”
“The owner of the hotel, Mr. Noe, is one of my partners. You’ll probably find Dr. Ketchum and my father there, too, later on.”
“Good. I shall endeavor to see them.”
He tucked the sheet with the names and addresses into an inside pocket.
“Well, we meet again, tomorrow, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, there is one more thing. To what power or force do you and your associates attribute this phenomenon?”
“We don’t know, sir, except for what the readings have said themselves.”
“You mean what you have said while asleep.”
“Yes, sir. It’s here, in this New York Times story.”
He picked up the clipping and read from it.
“This is what I said when they asked me to explain the thing: ‘Edgar Cayce’s mind is amenable to suggestion, the same as all other subconscious minds, but in addition thereto it has the power to interpret to the objective mind of others what it acquired from the subconscious state of other individuals of the same kind. The subconscious mind forgets nothing. The conscious mind receives the impression from without and transfers all thought to the subconscious, where it remains even though the conscious be destroyed.’”
There Is a River Page 3