On the 2d of January 1800, Hannah Blaisdel came to Mr. Butler’s house and informed me that the extraordinary voice which they had heard, had declared itself to be that of my sister, and that I must go to her father’s house.
I told her to her face that I did not believe it.
The next day I received the same message by three other persons, two of which belonged to two other families, and returned the same answer. Nevertheless, to give satisfaction, Capt. Butler, Mr. Wentworth and I went with them to that house. Capt. Butler and I examined the cellar with a candle, and in a few minutes after, Lydia and I went down there. Capt. S——n and some others, went with us, but none of them stood before us. While I held Lydia by the arm, we heard the sound of knocking. Lydia spoke, and a voice answered, the sound of which brought fresh to my mind that of my sister’s voice, in an instant; but I could not understand it at all; though it was within the compass of my embrace, and, had it been a creature which breathed, it would have breathed in my face, and I had no impediment of hearing. But Lydia told me that it said, “We must live in peace and be united.” Then we came up. But Capt. S——n with Lydia and others, went down again. I passed through the room which led to the cellar into another room, and there I was much surprised when I plainly understood by the same kind of voice, still speaking in the cellar, these words, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness;” and other sentences, which I cannot remember. This is testified by several others who were with me.[30]
From this time I cleared Lydia as to the voice, and accused the devil.
August 8, I was there again with about thirty others, and heard much conversation. Her voice was still hoarse and thick, like that of my sister on her death bed,[31] but more hollow. Sometimes it was clear, and always pleasant. A certain person did, in my opinion very unwisely, ask her whether I was a true Christian. The reply was, “She thinks she is, she thinks she is. She is my sister.”
August 13-14, I heard the same voice in the same place, and did then believe it was that of my sister. She talked much with Capt. S——n, and exhorted the people. Mr. Sp——r asked her if I believed that she was my sister. The answer was, “She believes now.” By the direction of the Spirit we went to Capt. M——r’s, but I never saw her.
Sometime after this, Mr. Butler brought to me from the Spectre, the private conversation which I know I had with my sister in her lifetime, at a certain hour, when we were alone together, and which he declares he never knew before; as a token that I was her sister. It is true I had never revealed it to any person, and I do not believe that my sister ever did; but could not some evil spirit hear that conversation, and afterwards personate my sister, and reveal it to Capt. Butler? For what purpose should my sister become visible to us?—There was certainly no dispute nor difficulty in my father’s family or that of Mr. Butler’s, which could be any reason for her coming. SALLY WENTWORTH.
Mrs. Wentworth had now an opportunity to hear the voice of Lydia and the voice of the Spectre in the same time and place, that she might have the best advantage to judge whether or not there was the least agreement between them. And that Lydia had never learned to utter two voices in the same minute, the one her natural voice, the other the dying voice of this woman’s sister, appears from the certainty that through all the time of the Spectre’s last sickness and death, Lydia was two hundred miles distant from her.
When Mrs. Wentworth heard in the east room that sentence of the ghost, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness;” this was the only time in which the ghost uttered these words for that day, as several witnesses (nem. con.) declare. Hence it follows that this was the exact minute when Captain Simson, in the cellar, within eight feet of the voice, and free from deafness, heard only a sound, while they who stood by him understood the words plainly. (Compare this with a sentence in Test. 4, 2d part.)
The reality of the token appears from the undoubted veracity of Mrs. W., her inflexible opposition and the oath of Capt. Butler, the reputed dupe of the whole business.