Lore - REMASTERED – Episode 37: Passing Notes

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

This classic haunted house story with a dash of spiritualism was so popular, it became an episode of our television show on Amazon. Today it’s been freshly narrated and produced, and a brand new bonus story has been added to the end. Enjoy! ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Access premium content! ———————— ©2022 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.   To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

We live in a crowded world. As of this episode, the U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of human lives on our pale blue dot of a planet at around $7.9 billion. I'm not sure I need to unpack that for you, that's simply a lot of people. And because of that, there are very few places we can go to truly be alone. Our cities are congested, our highways and parking lots seem to be overflowing. It boggles the mind thinking about just how many people are around us on a daily basis, which is why our homes offer a bit of peace and escape.

At home, we feel as if we're in control. It's a personal space where strangers aren't allowed in without invitation, where we can let down our guard and feel safe. Our dwelling places have been a refuge for us ever since humans gave up the nomadic hunter-gatherer life and settled in one location. Even still, multiple religions throughout history have taught us to believe that while we might think we are alone, there is another world behind the thin veil of reality. Heaven, the other world, the afterlife, we can call it whatever we want, but humans,

for the most part at least, have always believed that it's there, waiting for us. It was in the mid-19th century, though, that some people began to propose new ideas about it. They claimed that rather than being passive, this other world was active and thriving, and if we understood how, we could even interact with it, we could even communicate with it. Some people took hope in this, some fought against it, regardless, this new belief spread. Few people, though, expected the darker side of this new vision. They celebrated the hope that came from discovering a new door and relished their chance to open

it and walk through, but just because we can, doesn't mean we should. Some doors, you see, are closed for a reason. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. In 1848, something odd was going on at the home of John and Margaret Fox, who lived in Hidesville, New York. They were a poor family, but their fortunes changed when their two youngest daughters, Kate and Margaret, started to communicate with an unseen entity in their home through a series of clicks and knocks.

When word got out about what they could do, the girls, 12 and 15 years old at the time, were asked to bring their abilities to the stage in Rochester, New York, and that was the moment that launched their career. Kate and Margaret toured the country, performing group séances in front of sell-out crowds. They inspired a whole slew of imitators, and the girls made a good living at it for close to 40 years. The Fox sisters came on the scene at a time when there was a growing interest in forces outside of our own existence.

While spiritualism itself is said to have blossomed in upstate New York, some people think we can thank France Mesmer for getting it started. Mesmer was a German physician who started out investigating the healing power of magnets, but moved on to believe that inside and outside forces influenced our human experience. He focused on the healing powers of his theory, but never found success in the medical field. Later researchers transitioned his work into a field they called neurohypnosis, or nervous sleep, which eventually simply became known as hypnosis. Today, when we think of mesmerism, or being mesmerized, we think of hypnosis.

But it was the spiritualist movement that found the most hope in this idea. It took their beliefs in something that sounded insane, communicating with the dead and learning from them, and put it into the realm of science. At least, that's what they thought. In 1888, 40 years after their careers began, the Fox sisters confessed to their trickery. Both of them, it seems, could rotate their ankles and bend their toes in a way that produced audible clicks. Each seance they performed had been an act and nothing more.

But the world of spiritualism that they brought to the forefront of popular culture didn't just go away. It had already taken root, despite their confession, and it showed no sign of stopping. There was mixed reception. In some ways, these were teachings in contradiction to the accepted theology of a very large portion of Christianity, and some spoke out about that. In other ways, though, spiritualism seemed to confirm what most churches already taught, that even after death, we maintain our personalities and live on in another manner.

For those who lost loved ones or had a deep curiosity about the afterlife, seances offered a chance to say goodbye, to say hello, or just to learn. Popular figures lined up on both sides of the fence. In the 1920s, magician and performer Harry Houdini was a vocal opponent and actively sought to disprove anyone that claimed to be in communication with the world beyond the veil. John Neville Mescaline, another stage magician and the inventor of the pay toilet, actually sat in on seances and pointed out the trickery as it happened.

But not everyone saw it as a farce. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator and author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, was a vocal supporter of spiritualism. He even belonged to a London organization known as the Ghost Club, rooted in a deep belief in the supernatural and the otherworldly. Other members included Charles Dickens, W.B. Yates, and Charles Babbage, one of the fathers of the programmable computer. There were others, though, who took things too far.

Thomas Bradford was one of those people. In 1920, he placed an ad in a Detroit, Michigan newspaper seeking others who were as curious about the afterlife as he was. He was looking for a partner, someone to converse with, to support each other and to further each other's knowledge of life after death. When Ruth Doran replied, the two struck up a partnership and a friendship. Their goal was to become of one mind, they said, to be attuned to each other in a way that death could not break.

And then, in February of 1921, Bradford and Doran took their research to the next level. Bradford locked his apartment door, turned on his heater, blew out the pilot light, and then patiently waited for the room to fill with gas. He died of asphyxiation shortly after, with a plan to reach out to his partner from beyond the grave and confirm their beliefs. So Ruth waited. She never heard from him again. When his wife passed away, Presbyterian minister, Eliakim Phelps, found himself alone at the

age of 59. His children had all grown up and moved out, and so he looked for a change in his life that would bring him some semblance of happiness. He found that change in a younger woman, and soon the couple were married. His new bride was in her mid-40s and came into the marriage with three other children under the age of 16. Shortly after, though, Mr. and Mrs. Phelps welcomed another son into their lives. And then in November of 1847, the family purchased a home in Stratford, Connecticut.

It was a unique and sprawling mansion built just 22 years prior by a retired sea captain, but had sat unoccupied in the years since his death in 1845. And it was a large house, too. Those who visited there said that the layout had more than a passing resemblance to a ship, something one might expect for a home built for a sailor. The main hallway, for example, was an unbelievable 70-feet long, and there were five bedrooms on the second floor, with two more on the third. They provided all the space a family of six might need, and then some.

They moved into the mansion in February of 1848, and for the first two years, life there was uneventful. But on March 10th of 1850, all of that changed. They'd gone to church that morning, as you might expect from a minister and his family. Upon leaving, Reverend Phelps locked the door, because no one would be home. Even the maid was off for the day. When they returned home later that morning, the front door of the house was standing wide open.

Phelps stepped inside carefully and noticed that more doors had been opened inside the home. Furniture had been toppled, dishes lay broken on the floor, and everyday objects like books and decorations were scattered about. They had clearly been robbed. The nursery was found in chaos as well, with furniture tossed on the bed there. In a panic, Phelps checked the downstairs closet where they kept the valuable family silver and discovered that it was still there untouched.

Even his gold pocket watch was found right where he had left it, which begged the question, if they had been robbed, what valuables had actually been taken? Concerned, Reverend Phelps suggested that the entire family travel upstairs together in order to continue their inspection. They looked inside each room, one by one, looking for signs of the same chaos and vandalism, but every room they checked seemed to be untouched. If someone had broken in, perhaps they had been frightened off before having the chance to come upstairs.

The last room they checked was that of Mr. and Mrs. Phelps. The space was clean and tidy, and the bed was still neatly made, but something odd lay in the center of it. It was Mrs. Phelps' nightgown. It had been laid out in the shape of a person, with arms crossed over its chest like a corpse. Even a pair of stockings had been added to the arrangement, giving it the appearance of feet. And there, on the nearby wall, was a series of indecipherable scribbles, something that

looked and felt evil to the core. As hard as it is to believe, though, the family brushed these events off as a simple prank, some random act of vandalism and nothing more, and even harder to believe when it came time to return to church that day for the afternoon schedule, the entire family willingly did so. Everyone that is, except Mr. Phelps. He stayed behind, relocked the doors and windows, and then took a seat in one of the upstairs rooms with a pistol in hand to wait for the vandals to return.

But when nothing unusual happened for over an hour, Phelps quietly slipped out of the room to inspect the rest of the house. Sometimes he slowly pushed open the door to the dining room, and then froze. Nearly a dozen figures stood in the room. Some stood tall, holding bibles, while others bowed low to the floor. All of them, though, seemed focused on the shape of a small, otherworldly creature above their heads. Phelps stared at it for a moment before realizing that it was a small statue hanging from the

ceiling by a string. It was a lot to take in, I suppose. That might explain why it took Phelps so long to notice the other oddities in the room. The women who were gathered around the figure weren't moving, they weren't even real. Each one, it turns out, was nothing more than clothing taken from a room upstairs. They were life-size ragdolls. Someone, or something, had gathered the clothing, pinned them together into human shapes, and then stuffed each of them with rags.

All without Phelps. Clearing a Thing Dr. Phelps took the blame for the figures. No, he didn't create them. And no, he didn't tell people that he had. He fully admitted that they were unusual, otherworldly even. He didn't know how to explain their appearance, but he believed that he had somehow unintentionally played a part in all of it.

He blamed the events on the week before. On March 4th, a friend had visited the Phelps' home. It had been a typical visit. After dinner with the family, both men retired to the study for drinks and deeper conversation. And being 1850, the spiritualist movement was fresh on this visitor's mind. It's hard to say what they talked about. Maybe the Fox sisters came up. Maybe they told stories of reported hauntings or unusual activity in the newspapers.

What we do know, though, is that the conversation eventually turned to seances. The word seance is French, and it simply means a session or a sitting. In the spiritualist movement, though, a seance was something more than that. It was an attempt to communicate with the spirit world, to reach out through the thin curtain between life and death, and feel in the dark for something tangible, something real. A seance was, and is, an act of hope. For Phelps and his visitor, though, it was a curiosity, and they decided right then

and there to try one. Maybe it was the scotch they'd been sharing, or the late hour. It's hard to say for sure what drives people to do things that are out of their character. But it happens, nonetheless. The two men were said to have conducted their own shorts, amateur seance right there in the study. And according to the admission of Phelps himself, it appeared to have been successful, however underwhelming it might have been.

After calling out for a response from the spirit world, the men reportedly heard a distant knock. Back then they called it rapping, but please don't confuse that with the work of Jay-Z. It's most likely that the men forgot about that evening altogether. But after the March 10th incident with the life-sized dolls, things in the Phelps household only became more unusual. Things were escalating, it seems, and it was happening in the presence of multiple witnesses. Phelps himself was a skeptic, and so to help him document these experiences, he often

brought in equally skeptical colleagues. Later reports detail how the activity in the house grew more and more unnatural. Objects would appear from thin air and move slowly across the room. Some of these objects would even land softly, as if being set down by a guiding hand. Food would appear during meals, sometimes dropping right onto the plate. Even heavy objects, such as the fireplace tools, were said to have moved around the room on their own. At one point Phelps called on another minister, Reverend John Mitchell, to help him investigate

further. The two men locked themselves in the parlor and waited, knowing it would be impossible for someone, one of the children they assumed, to sneak in and toss objects through the air. While inside the room that night, it's reported that the men witnessed dozens of items appear in the air and then fall to the floor. Many of those items turned out to be clothing from upstairs, as if they had been falling through a hole in the ceiling. Mind you, like those used to create life-sized figures that Phelps had seen weeks before.

The stories caught the attention of other members of the Phelps family, too. Once he was paid a visit by his adult son Austin, a theology professor, and Phelps' own brother Abner, one of the most prominent medical doctors in Boston at the time. While there, the two men heard knocking at the front door. When they opened it, no one was there. Of course, they assumed it was a prank. In a house full of children, that was the logical explanation. So they then systematically inspected all of the rooms in the house, looking for the

person responsible for the noise. Doors were checked, children were isolated and watched. In the end, their search came to a frustrating conclusion that evening when both men heard the knocking once more, this time while each was standing on the other side of the door. Now granted, flying skirts and invisible knocking was something that most families might be able to work around. There didn't seem to be anything malicious or dangerous about the activity, so throughout all of this, Phelps acted without urgency.

In many ways, it seems that he was more of a curious observer than a concerned homeowner. But all of that was about to change. The physical attacks began as pinches and slaps, sometime during April of 1850. One reporter who had come to the Phelps' home to discuss their experiences actually witnessed some of those attacks firsthand. According to him, there was nothing suspicious about it at all. No one, from what they could tell, had faked it. It became more life-threatening when Mrs. Phelps awoke in the middle of the night to

find a pillow being pressed over her face and something wrapped around her throat. She survived, but it became clear that day that the spirit, if that's what it really was, was far from benign, and then it turned its sights on their young son, Henry. Henry was just 11 at the time, and although no one is sure why, he became the primary focus for the attacks doled out by the unseen force in the house. Rocks were thrown at him on multiple occasions. He was sometimes seen to be levitated toward the ceiling, and a newspaper reporter once witnessed the child being picked up and thrown across a room, all by an unseen force.

Henry occasionally went missing too, much to the concern of his parents. The first time it happened, he was later found strung up in a tree outside, bound with a rope and unaware of how he got there. Another time, he was finally found inside one of the home's closets, resting on a shelf too high for the boy to have climbed onto himself, and there was a noose around his neck. Henry suffered more than anyone else in the Phelps household that year. He was pushed into a cistern of water, his clothing was torn apart while he was wearing it, and on one occasion, a fire was ignited beneath his bed, threatening to burn him alive.

Thankfully, he managed to escape most of these attacks unharmed, but the threat was very real. As the attacks on Henry continued, Phelps grew more and more frustrated. He began to shout out to whoever was responsible, speaking to empty rooms and demanding the activity to stop. It never did though, and on more than one occasion, mysterious notes would appear, rough handwriting on scraps of paper that passed messages to the homeowner. Even though the notes themselves are now lost, Phelps reported that their contents were beyond disturbing.

As a final attempt to free his home from whatever force was inhabiting it, Phelps gathered witnesses for a second seance. His hope was that he might learn something about the spirit, something that would help him get rid of it, or at least appease it. Phelps had lost hope, and now his rational mind was leaning into unknown territory out of desperation. The seance revealed very little new information, but according to reports from Phelps and other witnesses, the spirit did identify itself.

It claimed to be a he, a deceased clerk who once worked with Mrs. Phelps on a financial matter. The name was investigated, and certain details matched up with the public records, but it was still unclear what the spirit wanted and how they might be able to finally be rid of it. The notes continued to appear as well. Once a paper drifted onto the table during a tea party hosted by Mrs. Phelps, Phelps himself received dozens, many of which referenced common names for the devil from that era,

spells like Beelzebub, Sam Slick, and Sir Sambo all found their way onto these notes. Finally, in September of that year, a note appeared on the desk while Phelps was there working. He glanced at the handwriting and deciphered the message as best he could. It was a question, presumably from the spirit who haunted the house. When are you planning to leave? It asked. It was a clear and powerful message.

Phelps and his family weren't welcomed there anymore. Perhaps it was a threat. Perhaps the attacks would increase or more dramatic events might follow. If a small fire could be lit beneath Henry's bed, it didn't seem like a stretch to imagine the entire house being at risk of burning. Phelps took a moment to process the question and then reached for the paper. Taking his pencil, he wrote his answer below the messy handwriting. October 1st

There was no reply that day, but Phelps stuck with the agreement. On October 1st of 1850, the family returned to Pennsylvania, and he followed shortly after. Weeks later, though, they all returned. I'm not sure why, to be honest. Maybe they wanted to give it another try. It was their home, after all. But the activity continued. There was more knocking, more writing on the wall, and more objects that moved through

the air as if they were dangling from invisible strings. One final note appeared in the house in May of 1851. And after that, the family moved out for good. Most of us know someone with a story to tell about unexplainable things. Events that seem to move without our involvement. Sounds they can't explain. That feeling of being watched when there's no one else in the room or even in the house. It's easy to understand why some people have a desire to search for the truth.

But what if the act of reaching out for answers has real-world consequences? Certainly the events in the Phelps mansion confirm something of that kind. Maybe those events were the result of a family with a very open mind, doing their best to interpret admittedly unusual experiences. Or perhaps they're right. Maybe there really is something beyond the veil, and it reaches through from time to time in order to affect the lives of the living. It's a difficult question to answer.

Even impossible, perhaps. Which is why we keep asking it. Remnants of spiritualism have stuck around, embedded in our popular culture. Classic horror novels like The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson's Hill House both draw heavily on that world, featuring seances, automatic writing, and other worldly activity. Even today with movies like The Exorcist and What Lies Beneath, the notion of reaching out to communicate with the world beyond our own is alive and well.

And maybe there's a good reason why. Another family bought the Phelps mansion after they moved back to Pennsylvania, and over the years the home changed hands often. By the 1940s it had been converted into a facility for the care of the elderly. And when the Casertas, both of whom were registered nurses, moved there in 1947, there were already more stories filling the hallways, doors that wouldn't stay shut, knocking, whispers, and random noises that seemed to have no explanation. But it was their infant son, Gary, who encountered the most trouble.

One night the couple was pulled from sleep by one of the patient buzzers. Carl quickly stepped out of their room and descended to the second floor to see what was wrong. As he did, though, he caught the scent of smoke. He quickly ran from room to room, checking in with each patient, but all of them were asleep. Finally, at a loss, he dashed back up to the third floor and into Gary's room. Inside the scent was stronger, and smoke billowed from the direction of the crib.

Rushing over, he found the blanket at Gary's feet was burning, small flames slowly spreading to the sheets. One other night of sleep was interrupted by the same buzzer system, and this time Gary's parents both exited their room just in time to find the boy crawling toward the top of the staircase. How he got out of his crib and into the hallway was a mystery. In each instance, the alert system saved Gary's life. Needless to say, the Casertas were very thankful for the person or people responsible for telling

them that Gary needed help. It was ironic, really. The buzzer system was designed to allow them to help the patients, but twice it seems, the patients had helped them instead, so they asked each of them one by one, and none of the patients claim responsibility. Now clearly the Casertas didn't know the Phelps, and while there is a chance that locals whispered of the hauntings, they most likely didn't know the full extent of the stories. They certainly didn't know about the contents of those otherworldly notes that would appear

from time to time. Given the chance to read them, though, they would have been surprised by what that final note said a century before them in May of 1851. The evil one has gone, and a better one has come. Evil activity, moving objects, and mysterious noises are the sort of things that any of us would run from, especially in a safe place like our own home. So I hope today's exploration of the Phelps household gave you a glimpse into just how terrifying that sort of ordeal could become.

But it's not just a one-off tale. In fact, right in New England, there's at least one more frightening story of unusual circumstances with no hard proof to explain it all away. Click around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Oil sands operations contribute significant carbon emissions in Canada, so the six largest companies have teamed up to make strides on the path to net zero. Investing in technology and innovation. Already cut emissions in average 22% per barrel.

Working with governments to create and protect jobs. Developing one of the world's largest carbon capture and storage facilities. Our net zero plan is in motion, and we're making progress on multiple pathways. See our plan in action at PathwaysAlliance.ca. As we've learned from the Phelps family, just because someone is young doesn't mean that they're not spared from a spirit's benevolence. Children are just as susceptible to a ghost's ire, if not more so than adults are. Just ask the students of Ms. Perkins class.

23-year-old Lucy A. Perkins was used to her students shenanigans. She taught a class full of boys in a one-room schoolhouse in Newbury, Port Massachusetts back in 1871. The building was drab, with green blinds and soiled doorposts. Even the fence around the property was broken in spots. It was a dreary place to learn. In September of that year, though, Ms. Perkins noticed that her lessons were being interrupted by loud knocking sounds.

Her first thought was to ask the children. After all, with a group of boys crammed together in a single room all day, someone was bound to channel their boredom into, well, entertaining pursuits. But none of them fessed up. Until the rapping grew louder and emanated from all over the classroom, behind the walls, under the floor, and even from the desks in the ceiling. During one particular lesson, a child attempted to spell the word cannot out loud, but was unable to complete the word.

He could only say the first three letters before the knocking sounds got too loud and drowned out everything else. Ms. Perkins had the children sing out loud and unisoned to fight back, but sadly it didn't help. The knocking turned into something more physical. Jackets were plucked off their hooks and dropped to the ground. Items were knocked off desks and shelves as though an invisible cat had been prowling the schoolhouse.

Desks even slid across the floor without anyone touching them. And to everyone's shock, objects started to float in midair. Ms. Perkins also had two bells on her desk, one small and light, and the other larger and heavier. Adding to the cacophony of classroom noise, that smaller bell began to incessantly ring, all by itself. It seemed this lone schoolhouse was now the center of paranormal activity in Newburyport. Inside the fire in the corner wood stove would spontaneously go out.

The stove's lid would sometimes lift up and then come slamming back down over the coals, as if by a phantom hand. Outside when it rained, only the schoolhouse would get wet, but nowhere else. Winds blew across the building and cast debris against its walls while leaving the area around the building untouched. And those gusts of wind would sometimes make their way inside and blow the furniture and other objects around as well. And sometimes when the skies turned gray and storm clouds rolled in, the classroom would

glow with a pale yellow light. And of course Ms. Perkins alerted the school committee to everything. At first they dismissed her, but things soon got too big to ignore and an investigation was conducted. Students were offered a dollar apiece by the committee to confess to perpetuating this elaborate hoax. A dollar was a big deal back then, close to 25 bucks today, but none of the children admitted to their guilt.

Ms. Perkins was also interrogated as well and accused of anxiety. Nobody believed that any of the strange happenings were genuine. They were either a prank gone too far, or the machinations of a teacher's stress-addled mind. Soon word of Ms. Perkins' class began to spread. This was the mid to late 1800s after all, the height of the spiritualism movement in America. Children and adults alike were at least familiar with spiritualism, even if they had not attended

a seance themselves. Local newspapers printed articles. One publisher called Loring Publishing of Boston put out a pamphlet about the haunted schoolhouse. And several celebrities even came to try and debunk the claims. Legal scholar Oliver Wendell Holmes among them. And as for the students, a few of them were actually pulled out of the class by their employees, while conversations swirled around the idea of closing the school forever, or

even demolishing the building. But that never came to pass. Spiritualists eventually started arriving and holding seances within the schoolhouse to try and make contact with the spirits. Everything came to a head after a port surfaced of an actual ghost being spotted within the classroom. Ms. Perkins had been the first to see it, followed by Ms. Perkins and the students together.

Perkins was placed on leave, shortly thereafter. And that pamphlet from Loring Publishing I mentioned earlier gives us a good description of the ghost. The figure was that of a boy of 13, it says. The visage was remarkably pale, the eyes were blue, the mouth sad, and the whole effect was that of extreme melancholy. The general picture was that of a child prepared for burial and prepared, moreover, in a poor and makeshift way.

The ghost continued to appear every so often until 1875, when all the activity just stopped, the knocking, the eerie yellow glow, the wind, and the ghostly young boy. All of them disappeared. Some years later, a former student named Amos Courier stepped forward. He confessed, claiming that he had been behind all of it as part of an elaborate hoax. But when he was asked to prove his involvement, he couldn't. And to be honest, most think it was unlikely that one small boy could have conjured gale force winds inside a classroom or caused the knocking sounds and floating objects.

Of course, that sort of assumption hides one other option. What if Amos Courier did have the power to do all those things? Which might be the most frightening possibility of all. This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with additional help on the epilogue from Generos Nethercot and Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video, a TV show, by the way, that features the Phelps story in

season one. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com.

And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.