Everywhere is the tabooed, or the disregarded. The monks of science dwell in smuggeries that are walled away from event-jungles. Or some of them do. Nowadays a good many of them are going native. There are scientific dervishes who whirl amok, brandishing startling statements; but mostly they whirl not far from their origins, and their excitements are exaggerations of old-fashioned complacencies.
Because of several cases that I have noted, the subject of Fires attracted my attention. One reads hundreds of accounts of fires, and many of them are mysterious, but one's ruling thought is that the unexplained would be renderable in terms of accidents, carelessness, or arson, if one knew all the circumstances. But keep this subject in mind, and, as in every other field of phenomena, one comes upon cases that are irreconcilables.
Glasgow News, May 20, 1878— doings in John Shattock's farmhouse, near Bridgewater. Fires had started up unaccountably. A Superintendent of Police investigated and suspected a servant girl, Ann Kidner, aged 12, because he had seen a hayrick flame, while she was passing it. Loud raps were heard. Things in the house, such as dishes and loaves of bread, moved about. The policeman ignored whatever he could not explain, and arrested the girl, accusing her of tossing lighted matches. But a magistrate freed her, saying that the evidence was insufficient.
There is a story of "devilish manifestations," in the Quebec Daily Mercury, Oct. 6, 1880. For two weeks, in the Hudson Hotel, in the town of Hudson, on the Ottawa River, furniture had been given to disorderly conduct: the beds had been especially excitable. A fire had broken out in a stall in the stable. This fire was quenched, but another fire broke out. A priest was sent for, and he sprinkled the stable with holy water. The stable burned down.
There are several recorded cases of such. fires ending with the burning of buildings; but a similarity that runs through the great majority of the stories is of fires localized in special places, and not extending. They are oftenest in the presence of a girl, aged from 12 to 20; but seldom do they occur at night, when they would be most dangerous. It is a peculiarity. See back to the case of the fires in the house in Bedford. It seems that, if those fires had been ordinary fires, the house would have burned down. The cases are of fires, in unscorched surroundings.
New Zealand Times, Dec. 9, 1886— copying from the San Francisco Bulletin, about October 14— that Willie Brough, 12 years old, who had caused excitement in the town of Turlock, Madison Co., Cal., by setting things afire, "by his glance," had been expelled from the Turlock school, because of his freaks. His parents had cast him off, believing him to be possessed by a devil, but a farmer had taken him in, and had sent him to school. "On the first day, there were five fires in the school: one in the center of the ceiling, one in the teacher's desk, one in her wardrobe, and two on the wall. The boy discovered all, and cried from fright. The trustees met and expelled him, that night." For another account, see the New York Herald, Oct. 16, 1886.
Setting fire to teacher's desk, or to her wardrobe, is understandable, and would have been more understandable to me, when I was 12 years old; but in terms of no known powers of mischievous youngsters, can there be an explanation of setting a ceiling, or walls, afire. It seems to me that no yarn-spinner would have thought of any such particular, or would have made his story look improbable with it, if he had thought of it. I have other accounts in which similar statements occur. This particular of fires on walls is unknown in standardized yarns of uncanny doings. If writers of subsequent accounts probably had never heard of Willie Brough, it is improbable that several of them could invent, or would invent, anything so unlikely. It seems that my reasoning is that, under some circumstances, if something is highly unlikely, it is probable. John Stuart Mill missed that.
Upon the 6th of August, 1887, in a little, two-story frame house, in Victoria Street, Woodstock, New Brunswick, occupied by Reginald C. Hoyt, his wife, four children of his own, and two nieces, fires broke out. See the New York World, Aug. 8, 1887. Within a few hours, there were about forty fires. They were fires in un-scorched surroundings. They did not extend to their surroundings, because they were immediately put out, or because some unknown condition limited them. "The fires can be traced to no human agency, and even the most skeptical are staggered. Now a curtain, high up and out of reach, would burst into flames, then a bed quilt in another room: a basket of clothes on a shed, a child's dress, hanging on a hook."
New York Herald, Jan. 6, 1895— fires in the home of Adam Colwell, 84 Guernsey Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn— that, in 20 hours, preceding noon, January 5th, when Colwell's frame house burned down, there had been many fires. Policemen had been sent to investigate. They had seen furniture burst into flames. Policemen and firemen had reported that the fires were of unknown origin. The Fire Marshal said: "It might be thought that the child Rhoda started two of the fires, but she cannot be considered guilty of the others, as she was being questioned, when some of them began. I do not want to be quoted as a believer in the supernatural, but I have no explanation to offer, as to the cause of the fires, or of the throwing around of the furniture."
Colwell's story was that, upon the afternoon of January 4th, in the presence of his wife and his step-daughter Rhoda, aged 16, a crash was heard. A large, empty, parlor stove had fallen to the floor. Four pictures, fell from walls. Colwell had been out. Upon his return, while hearing an account of what had occurred, he smelled smoke. A bed was afire. He called a policeman, Roundsman Daly, who put out the fire, and then, because of unaccountable circumstances, remained in the house. It was said that the Roundsman saw wallpaper, near the shoulder of Colwell's son Willie start to burn. Detective Sergeant Dunn arrived. There was another fire, and a heavy lamp fell from a hook. The house burned down, and the Colwells, who were in poor circumstances, lost everything but their clothes. They were taken to the police station.
Captain Rhoades, of the Greenpoint Precinct, said: "The people we arrested had nothing to do with the strange fires. The more I look into it, the deeper the mystery. So far I can attribute it to no other cause than a supernatural agency. Why, the fires broke out under the very noses of the men I sent to investigate."
Sergeant Dunn— "There were things that happened before my eyes that I did not believe were possible."
New York Herald, January 7— "Policemen and firemen artfully tricked by a pretty, young girl."
Mr. J. L. Hope, of Flushing, L. I., had called upon Captain Rhoades, telling him that Rhoda had been a housemaid in his home, where, between November 19 and December 19, four mysterious fires had occurred. "Now the Captain was sure of Rhoda's guilt, and he told her so." "She was frightened, and was advised to tell the truth."
And Rhoda told what she was "advised" to tell. She "sobbed" that she had started the fires, because she did not like the neighborhood in which she lived, and wanted to move away: that she had knocked pictures from the walls, while her mother was in another part of the house, and had dropped burning matches into beds, continuing; her trickeries after policemen, detectives, and firemen had arrived.
The Colwells were poor people, and occupied only the top floor of the house that burned down. Colwell, a carpenter, had been out of work two years, and the family was living on the small wages of his son. Insurance was not mentioned.
The police captain's conclusion was that the fires that had seemed "supernatural" to him, were naturally accounted for, because, if when Rhoda was in Flushing, she set things afire, fires in her own home could be so explained. Rather than to start a long investigation into the origin of the fires in Flushing, the police captain gave the girl what was considered sound and wholesome advice. And— though it seems quaint, today— the girl listened to advice. "Pretty, young girls" have tricked more than policemen and firemen. Possibly a dozen male susceptibles could have looked right at this pretty, young girl, and not have seen her strike a match, and flip it into furniture; but no flip of a match could set wallpaper afire. The case is like the case of Emma Piggott. Only to one person's motives could fires be attributed: but by no known means could she have started some of these fires.
Said Dr. Hastings H. Hart, of the Russell Sage Foundation, as reported in the newspapers, May 10, 1931: "Morons for the most part can be the most useful citizens, and a great deal of the valuable work being done in the United States is being done by such mentally deficient persons."
Dr. Hart was given very good newspaper space for this opinion, which turned out to be popular. One can't offend anybody with any statement that is interpreted as applying to everybody else. Inasmuch as my own usefulness has not been very widely recognized, I am a little flattered, myself. To deny, ridicule, or reasonably explain away occurrences that are the data of this book, is what I call useful. A general acceptance that such things are would be unsettling. I am an evil one, quite as was anybody, in the past, who collected data that were contrary to the orthodoxy of his time. Some of the most useful work is being done in the support of Taboo. The break of Taboo in any savage tribe would bring on perhaps fatal disorders. As to the taboos of savages, my impressions are that it is their taboos that are keeping them from being civilized; that, consequently, one fetish is worth a hundred missionaries.
I shall take an account of "mysterious fires" from the St. Louis Globe- Democrat, Dec. 19, 1891. I shall go on to quote from a Canadian newspaper, with the idea of supporting Dr. Hart's observations. Reporters, scientists, policemen, spiritualists— all have investigated phenomena of "poltergeist girls" in ways essentially the same as the way of a Canadian newspaper man— and that has been to pick out whatever agreed with their preconceptions, or with their mental deficiencies, or their social usefulness, and to disregard everything else.
According to the story in the Globe-Democrat, there had been "extraordinary" occurrences in the home of Robert Dawson, a farmer, at Thorah, near Toronto, Canada. In his household were his wife and an adopted daughter, an English girl, Jennie Bramwell, aged 14. Adopted daughters, with housemaids, are attracting my attention, in these cases. The girl had been ill. She had gone into a trance, and had exclaimed: "Look at that!" pointing to a ceiling. The ceiling was afire. Soon the girl startled Mr. and Mrs. Dawson by pointing to another fire. Next day many fires broke out. As soon as one was extinguished, another started up. While Mrs. Dawson and the girl were sitting, facing a wall, the wallpaper blazed. Jennie Bramwell's dress flamed, and Mrs. Dawson's hands were burned, extinguishing the fire. For a week, fires broke out. A kitten flamed. A circumstance that is unlike a particular in the Bedford case, is that furniture carried outside, and set in the yard, did not burn.
An account, in the Toronto Globe, November 9, was by a reporter, who was a person of usefulness. He told of the charred patches of wallpaper, which looked as if a lighted lamp had been held to the places. Conditions were miserable. All furniture had been moved to the yard. The girl had been sent back to the orphan asylum, from which she had been adopted, because the fires had been attributed to her. With her departure, phenomena had stopped. The reporter described her as "a half-witted girl, who had walked about, setting things afire." He was doubtful as to what to think of the reported flaming of a kitten, and asked to see it. He wrote that it was nothing but a kitten, with a few hairs on its back slightly singed. But the chief difficulty was to explain the fire on the ceiling, and the fires on the walls. I'll not experiment, but I assume that I could flip matches all day at a wall, and not set wallpaper afire. The reporter asked Mrs. Dawson whether the girl had any knowledge of chemistry. According to him, the answer was that this little girl, aged 14, who had been brought up in an orphan asylum, was "well-versed in the rudiments of the science." Basing upon this outcome of his investigations, and forgetting that he had called the well-versed, little chemist "half-witted," or being more sophisticated than I seem to think, and seeing no inconsistency between scientific knowledge and imbecility, the useful reporter then needed only several data more to solve the mystery. He enquired in the town, and learned that the well-versed and half-witted little chemist was also "an incorrigible little thief." He went to the drug store, and learned that several times the girl had been sent there on errands. The mystery was solved: the girl had stolen "some chemical," which she had applied to various parts of Dawson's house.
Occurrences of more recent date. Story in the London Daily Mail, Dec. 13, 1921, of a boy, in Budapest, in whose presence furniture moved. The boy was about 13 years of age. Since about his 12th birthday, fires had often broken out, in his presence. Alarmed neighbors, or "superstitious" neighbors, as they were described, in the account, had driven him and his mother from their home. It was said that, when he slept, flames flickered over him, and singed his pillow.
In the New York Times, Aug. 25, 1929, was published a story of excitement upon the West Indian island of Antigua. This is a story that reverses the particulars of some of the other stories. It is an account of a girl whose clothes flamed, leaving her body unscorched. This girl, a Negress, named Lily White, living in the village of Liberta, flamed, while walking in the streets. However, at home, too, the clothes of this girl often burst into flames. She became dependent upon her neighbors for something to wear. When she was in bed, sheets burned around her, seemingly harmlessly to her, according to the story.
Early in March, 1922, an expedition, composed of newspaper reporters and photographers, headed by Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, arrived at a deserted house that was surrounded by snow banks out of which stuck the blackened backs, legs, and arms of burned furniture. The newspapers had told of doings in this house, near Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and had emphasized the circumstance that, "in the dead of winter," Alexander MacDonald and his family had been driven from their home, by "mysterious fires," unaccountable sounds, and the meanderings of crockery. The phenomena had centered around Mary Ellen, MacDonald's adopted daughter. With the idea that the house was haunted, the expedition entered, and made itself at home, everybody quick on the draw for note paper or camera. Mostly, in poltergeist cases, I see nothing to suggest that the girls— boys sometimes— are mediums, or are operated upon by spirits; the phenomena seem to be occult powers of youngsters. In MacDonald's house, the investigators came upon nothing that suggested the presence of spirits. Mary Ellen and her father, or father by adoption, were induced to return to the house, but nothing occurred. Usually, in cases of poltergeist girls, phenomena are not of long duration. Dr. Prince interviewed neighbors, and recorded their testimony that dozens of fires had broken out, in this girl's presence: but more striking than any testimony by witnesses was the sight, outside this house, of the blackened furniture, sticking out of snow banks.
