Some of the bewitched persons, as in the case of Elizabeth Knap, of Groton, alarmed the people by their ventriloqual powers, in imitating sounds and languages. And it would be nothing strange if some of our modern witches were in possession of the same talent. No wonder that the editor of one of the Boston papers should have ventured the opinion, that if some of these persons had lived two hundred years ago, they would have been hanged for witchcraft.
It appears to us, that if we believe in all that is alleged of the rapping spirits, and their manifestations, we must be prepared to indorse all that has been published of witches and ghosts, spooks and hobgoblins, in every age of the world, which, at present, we are not at all inclined to do. We do not believe that any of the noises heard, or any of the information given, has proceeded from beings out of the normal state. We are rather inclined to adhere to the sentiment contained in the old couplet:—
"Where men believe in witches, witches are;
But where they don't believe, there are none there."
We once went to stay over night in a house said to be haunted, the house being empty at the time, the family who had occupied it having actually been frightened away by the noises they had heard. But, strange to tell, we did not hear any noises, neither did we expect to. There was a house in Green Street, Boston, formerly occupied by the celebrated Dr. Conway, which, after his decease, was said to be haunted. A young man of our acquaintance never passed that house late at night but every window in it appeared to be illuminated. And finally, he became so alarmed about it, that as soon as he approached the vicinity of the house, he would commence running, and continue to run till it was out of sight. We have frequently known him to cross the ice on Charles River to avoid passing the house. And still, we often passed the same house, at late hours of the night, without seeing any thing unusual. And we know of no reason why, unless it was because we did not believe in such things, which our friend actually did. Faith alone made the difference.
One of the believers in the "spirit rappings" tells us that "if these things are emanations from the spirit world, we are bound to believe them." True, if they are; but this little conjunctive if is a word of very doubtful meaning. We have already shown how Mr. Miller kept the whole world standing thirty years on this same little if; and then it did not end in 1843, as he supposed it would. We must, therefore, be cautious how we depend upon a simple if.
But we are told that, as honest persons, we are bound to believe what we cannot disprove by actual demonstration. But let us examine this for a moment. The Greenlanders have an idea that thunder is caused by two old women flapping seal skins in the moon. Now, who has ever been up in the moon to ascertain whether it is so or not? Again, they say that the Aurora Borealis is owing to the spirits of their fathers frisking at football. Who can say it is not so? And yet we reject such belief on account of its apparent absurdity. Some of the ancients have told us that the earth stands upon the back of a tortoise, or upon that of an elephant; and yet, without investigation, a majority of mankind reject the idea as being perfectly ridiculous. We might here remark, that no less a scholar than the great mathematician Kepler attempted to prove that the earth is a vast animal, and that the tides are occasioned by the heavings of its prodigious lungs.
Many of the performances of jugglers and ventriloquists puzzle us, and yet we do not believe there is any thing supernatural in them. Signor Blitz once called upon the ladies in the hall where he was giving an exhibition to pass him a handkerchief with their name stamped upon it, and he would put it into a pistol and fire it off in their presence, and it should be found in the steeple of a church some quarter of a mile distant, and yet not a window or a door should be open on the occasion. A committee of honest and respectable men were despatched from the hall to the house of the church sexton, the keys procured, with a lantern, when the belfry was ascended, the handkerchief found hanging on the tongue of the bell, and returned to the lady, who instantly recognized it as the identical handkerchief she passed into the hands of the performer. Now, who could prove that the thing alleged was not actually done? and yet who will believe that it was?
We have heard distant sounds of music, and other imitations of men, birds, and animals, that deceived our sense of hearing, knowing that they were produced by the power of ventriloquism. We have seen things moved from place to place by magnetic attraction, and we do not think it at all strange that so light an instrument as a guitar could be thus attracted to different parts of a room by an unseen power, especially in a dark room, and its tones be imitated by a being as yet in the normal state. A guitar will give vibrations of its tones to the concussions of the air, caused by the conversation of persons present; and a stranger to the fact might possibly interpret these vibrations as something quite mysterious, and suppose the instrument, as it stood alone, to be touched by some spirit hand. When people's minds, or their imaginations, get wrought up to a certain pitch, the most trifling things are looked upon as wonderful phenomena. Every thing is new, and strange, and appalling. We hear of the doings of the spirits at Rochester, and other places, and which are called the "ushering in of a new science." "We know of what we speak," says the pamphlet before us, "we know they are facts, strange, new, and to many wonderful!" (See page 43.) And yet the authors introduce several pages from a work by Dr. Adam Clarke to show that, as early as 1716, the Wesley family were troubled by noises made by the "knocking spirits," and that "the present manifestations have no claim to the credit of originality." The cracking of hazel nuts upon Martin Luther's bed posts, and the racket and rumbling upon his chamber stairs, as if many empty barrels and hogs-heads had been tumbling down, claim still greater antiquity, and belong to the same category or chapter of wonderful events.
It is said to be impossible that any mere human being could inform persons, with whom they never had any previous knowledge or acquaintance, of the past, present, and future events of their lives—whether they are married or single, the number of their children living and dead, age, health, business, letters expected, the whereabout of long-absent friends, &c. It is supposed that such information must indeed emanate from the spirit world. Yet precisely such things are and always have been told, more or less, by astrologers and fortune tellers, without any pretensions to being in league with spirits of the other worlds. We have said that fortune tellers do not always tell correctly; but, as poor an opinion as we have of them, we will venture to assert that they are full as correct, if not more so, in the information they give, as the members of the Fox family, or any of their contemporaries, of the alleged spiritual manifestations.