A young couple with an infant child occupied a typical New England house located on a thriving farm. The house was in a good state of preservation and the residents were healthy and normal in every respect. Their sleeping room, however, became widely noted among their acquaintances. It was fairly infested with “spirit raps.”
The exhibit was usually about as follows: Soon after retiring and while perhaps getting into the drowsy stage that borders upon dreamland, a series of raps would suddenly start on the ceiling and pass diagonally across the room. After moving from the farthest corner the raps would gradually seem to come down the wall at the head of the bed, at which point raps would be heard on the wooden headboard and upon the pillows. This occurred on numerous occasions and became quite a nuisance.
One evening the young couple went to bed unusually fatigued from a hard day’s exertions. Just as they settled down to sleep, the raps started in louder than usual. Exasperated by these unwelcome noises, the husband suddenly expressed his mind. He told his wife that he wished those certain kind of spirits would go back to Hades where they came from and let him sleep.
It was not surprising that he should have lost patience, but it was surprising that the raps did then and there cease, never again to be heard.
Another old-time story of the mysterious was told by a young woman whose Puritanic regard for strict veracity was almost a joke to her friends.
The Supernatural Illumination
With her young child in the cradle, she was sitting in the early evening in a room which looked out upon an open space of ground including the driveway. Save for the child, she was absolutely alone in the house. It was a very thick, starless night, threatening rain. At her back as she sat in the darkness, resting from her labors and thinking that she must get a light and do some sewing, there was a window almost entirely hidden by vines which were allowed to shade that part of the room, there being other windows to furnish light.
Suddenly there flashed on the wall before her a bright reflection of the vine-covered window, the frame standing out clear and distinct as though there were no vines at all. She looked at this reflection with great astonishment a moment, sprang to her feet, opened the door and started out on the porch which commanded a complete view of the entire front of the house and the open field beyond. There was not a sound nor a sign of anybody abroad. It is asked in the Scriptures if a woman can forget her sucking child, but in this instance she could, for she ran down the road like a wild thing to a nearby house, where she secured the companionship and moral support of a kindly old woman, and returned for the protection of her sleeping infant.
To the present generation these tales of the supernatural would be generally regarded as rubbish. Those who lived in years of maturity a half century ago would hardly be inclined to so classify them. On the contrary, they would regard them as unsolved mysteries existing at the time, often amusing and seldom terrifying. Let those of that era be the judges.