Hubert Haddad - Rochester Knockings - A Novel of the Fox Sisters

“I asked: ‘Are you going to continue to sound your responses if I gather the neighbors so that they can benefit from this too?’ The spirit answered in the affirmative. .”

“In that case, would you allow us to interrogate him ourselves?” interrupted Isaac Post, weary of this woman’s homily.

“I would like to ask him questions about my dear son,” Mrs. Jewell cried out.

A good head taller than the circle of farmers, standing firmly in his dusty boots, a solid man with a pockmarked face called mischievously from his corner: “And how can you prove to us that your daughters aren’t both in a closet fooling us with a broomstick!”

Eavesdropping on the landing since the invasion had begun, Kate and Margaret descended the stairs in a dignified manner to counter the mean laughs bursting forth.

Isaac Post intervened with his cavernous voice, exhorting his hosts and the public not to disturb communication by unwanted interference. He discoursed to everyone’s boredom on the encrypted codes of the electric telegraph of Morse and Vail.

“What are you getting at?” Stephen B. Smith interrupted.

“It’s simple. Because we can now transmit and receive messages from considerable distances, between Washington and Baltimore for example, by the means of electrical pulses, it seems like we could do the same thing with the other world. .”

“But because he answers only with yes or no, why would we annoy him with your codes,” grumbled a second Quaker. “A ghost isn’t a little telegraphist. .”

A restless murmur ran through the group. The woodstove had been relit because of the cool nights, its acrid fumes emitting an odor of sulfur to the nostrils of the Dueslers and Mrs. Hyde.

Isaac Post went over to the table and with the knuckles of his fist, clearly explained his system: each letter was assigned a number of knocks, from one to five for the vowels A, E, I, O, U, from six to twenty-six for the consonants B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z. Two quick knocks to agree, three spaced knocks to reply no.

“Spirit, are you there?” he drummed out, letter by letter, without forgetting to translate orally in good English as assistance.

The coded response, one of the loudest, emanating indistinctly from the wooden floor and walls, subdued even the most skeptical.

“What is your surname and first name?” Isaac Post telegraphed with dexterity.

“ 7-11-1-19-14-2-20. . 11-1-25-16-2-20 ,” the entity immediately responded.

Isaac Post continued his investigations without worrying about interjections from the group. A religious silence followed this long sequence of knocks. The man turned finally toward those witnessing like a judge before the jury: “C-h-a-r-l-e-s. . H-a-y-n-e-s. . the Spirit is named Charles Haynes! This is a historic moment that we’re witnessing, fellow citizens. For the first time in the world, on this night in April 1848, we’ve entered in direct contact with the dead, which is to say that the doors of the other world have opened for us with the assistance of our Savior. Do any of you realize for a single moment the consequences of such an event?”

In an eruption of inner light, Mr. Willets suddenly stood tall, saying in a single breath: “I still have many things to say, but none of you would be able to bear it right now. When he comes, he, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you in the whole Truth.”

His spurs tintinnabulating with impatience, the pockmarked stranger in the leather vest ventured to express some doubts about the mental equilibrium of Isaac Post. Laughing aside, he suggested that each person present ask the knocking spirit a question of a more personal nature that only concerned himself as a way to thwart any possibilities of fraud. More simple than the ex-telegraphist’s coding method, he proposed to the questioner to recite the alphabet in its traditional order and as many times as necessary, the entity being ordered to respond with a knock after each letter as a way to give a response. A volunteer to recite, pen in hand, would transcribe as they went along. The devout colossus George Willets accepted with grace this role of secretary.

Everything in place, the widow Mrs. Redfield, holding back a breath, spoke hastily: “What sickness is my son Samuel suffering from?” The knocks started to rain down while Willets uttered the alphabet more and more quickly, all while making his pen spit. Reported finally with a certain reserve at the edge of his lips, the laconic one-word response provoked in the room a hilarious fright and filled the widow with confusion.

“What is the first name of my oldest son,” asked Mrs. Jewell, very pale, in her turn.

“ John ,” Willets transcribed.

“And what happened to him?”

“ Scalped by the Hurons ,” he recited in a dull voice at the conclusion of the drumming knocks and their ritornelle.

Mrs. Jewell let out a piercing cry and fainted in the arms of her husband. The stranger, in compassion, offered his flask. After Mr. Jewell’s disdained response, he took a gulp for himself instead and declared: “We believe we possess the science of a thing. . when it is only possible that the thing is something other than what it is, that’s what good old Aristotle said. I propose therefore that the residents of this house sleep at their neighbors’ tonight and that a search committee take over the quarters to verify the constancy of these phenomena. .”

Impressed by the eloquence of the newcomer, several approved the idea. Having free rein since his wife was living in Rochester, Isaac Post offered himself straight away to be on guard. The colossus George Willet and Mr. Smith also volunteered themselves as starters for this new kind of vigil.

“But not you, whom no one knows from Adam!” the ex-telegraphist announced to reserve sergeant William Pill.

My sister Katie is definitely crazy. Or else she’s possessed like the Salem witches. If it wasn’t for her, none of this would have happened. With these dangerous games, she set in motion a strange machine that makes some kind of goat: scapegoat or demon. None of us is going to escape from it however, I can already tell. As if invisible forces were holding us all captive, animals, children, and adults. I’m only fifteen, but I know how to see what hides behind faces, and beneath the polite words of others. Things took an unimaginable turn once Mother had the idea of stirring up the neighborhood, starting with the widow of High Point. Until that moment, everything was happening just between us. Even if we were very afraid, Kate and I were making a kind of game out of these exchanges with Mister Splitfoot, as she calls him. And that Quaker currently far from his wife’s surveillance — everything he believes he invented to communicate with the rapping spirit, we had been doing since the first signs of understanding. At first, we were unaware that a peddler had had his throat slit with a butcher knife in our bedroom about fifteen years ago, at midnight on a Tuesday, before being buried in the basement on the following night. Did we need to know that? Now Kate keeps waking up with a start in the dark, stammering that she sees the murderer, that he’s raising his bloody knife right in front of our bed. What scares me the most is not the murderer who lived in this house, but the ghost with his horrible pains. Luckily he remains invisible to me. It’s plenty to bear all the pandemonium, all of his impatient rapping from the depths of death, and to suddenly see chairs lifting one foot then another, doors slamming shut for no reason, glasses shattering. Sometimes I’m so afraid this is all going to end badly that an icy sweat runs down between my breasts. To top it all off, there’s some kind of infernal carnival around the house, while the inside swarms with a bunch of neighbors I only recognize from having seen in church. From the window, tonight, Katie and I counted dozens and dozens of lanterns. Most of the people assembled kept their calm, but sometimes there were hostile yells. We watched it all in dismay, my sister and I. And whether by spite or anger, is this crowd going to throw their oil lamps through our windows before they go off? You hear of these kinds of stories in the country. It was less than twenty years ago, not far from here, that an old woman was burned alive with her twelve cats under the pretext of witchcraft. There’s a saying that goes something like: There will always remain more ashes than remorse.