The Strange Death of Ludwig Dahl; Or, If the Dead Speak to You, Don't Listen

Ludwig Dahl

The history of spiritualism is littered with cautionary tales of overenthusiastic dabblers who sought enlightenment via the world of ghosts, but instead found themselves delving into dangerous psychic waters that brought them to disaster.

In the example we will be examining today, spirits may even have led to one man's murder.

In the early part of the 20th century, Judge Ludwig Dahl worked as a magistrate in the Norwegian town of Fredrikstad. He also served as mayor of Bergen. In his private life, Dahl followed more unusual interests than law and politics. From around 1915, he and his family became deeply involved in psychic and occult matters. After Dahl's two sons Ludwig and Ragnar died in separate accidents within a few years of each other, this hobby became what could be called an obsession. His daughter, Mrs. Ingeborg Køber, believed she had talents as a medium. She spent many hours in a self-induced trance, where she allegedly "channeled" the spirits of her deceased brothers. (Among the guests at these seances was Arthur Conan Doyle, who called Ingeborg "the most remarkable medium I ever came across.")

Ingeborg Kober

Dahl kept transcripts of these spirit communications, which he never doubted were completely genuine. The belief that he continued to have contact with his sons was the only thing that enabled Dahl to cope with his loss. "The passing of the two boys," he once wrote, "made our lives richer, fuller, than ever before." In short, the spirit world was becoming more important to him than the world of the living.

In 1927, the famed "ghost hunter" Harry Price visited Norway, where he made the acquaintance of the Dahl family. He attended one of their seances, where Ingeborg went into a trance and--so all the Dahls believed--communicated messages from Ludwig Jr. and Ragnar. Price was privately unimpressed. Although he liked the Dahls, and had no doubt that the family sincerely believed they were "talking" to their dead loved ones, he noted that there was no unimpeachable proof that this was truly happening. As evidence of life after death, he considered the experience something of a bust. However, he remained friends with the family and succeeded in finding a publisher for Dahl's transcripts of his spiritualistic researches. They were issued in 1931 with the title "We are Here: Psychic Experiences." The book received international attention, leading many to refer to him as the "father of Scandinavian spiritualism."

In 1933, Dahl's "psychic experiences" suddenly took an ominous turn. A family friend, Astrid Stolt-Nielsen, also fancied herself to be a trance medium. During one of her seances, she gave Dahl a grim message from his son Ragnar: the spirit announced that in August 1934, Dahl would have a fatal accident. The judge's specific reaction to this news was not recorded, suggesting that--as befitting someone who was convinced there is eternal life after death--he took the warning in stride.

On August 8, 1934, Dahl and Ingeborg paid a visit to Hankø Island, a seaside resort a few miles from their town. It happened to be the place where Ludwig Dahl Jr. had drowned fifteen years earlier. While Ingeborg sunbathed on the beach, the judge went out for a swim. He was an excellent swimmer, in very good health for his 69 years, and the water was no more than three feet deep.

This swim proved to be the last thing he ever did on this earth. While he was in the bay, something terrible happened. According to Ingeborg, he suddenly began to sink from the surface. By the time she was able to reach Dahl and pull him from the water, he had drowned.

A tragic and--if you believe in the ghost of Ragnar Dahl--unsurprising accident. Sad, certainly, but entirely normal.

The site of Dahl's death

Well, perhaps not. The inquest into the judge's demise revealed a number of interesting details. After his death, it was discovered that he had serious financial problems. There was a very large insurance policy on his life--which happened to expire one day after his death. There was also testimony from Christian Apenes, Dahl's deputy-mayor. In December 1933, he had attended one of Ingeborg's seances. Apenes said that during this trance session, Ragnar Dahl had, through Ingeborg, delivered the news that his father would die within a year. He would meet his end by drowning in shallow water. The spirit added that as proof of this claim, it would give this same information to another medium. (That is to say, Astrid Stolt-Nielsen.) "Ragnar" instructed that the prediction of Ludwig's untimely end should be written down and placed in a sealed envelope. Apenes dramatically produced this envelope, where it was opened in front of witnesses.

The peculiar circumstances surrounding the judge's death became the focus for an intense public debate over spiritualism. Was this, as psychic researchers insisted, proof of the afterlife? Or did Dahl kill himself under the "hypnotic influence" of the death prophecy? Or were the skeptics right in their suspicion that all this talk of spirit communications was merely a cover for something far darker?

Law enforcement began to cast a very critical eye on the only witness to Ludwig's death...his daughter Ingeborg. The autopsy on Dahl revealed that before he died of drowning, his neck had received a fracture between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. It was also noted that after pulling her father from the water, Ingeborg did not immediately summon medical help. Instead, she and Mrs. Stolt-Nielsen (whom she had supposedly accidentally run into) phoned her mother. It took Mrs. Dahl several hours to arrive at the scene. She was accompanied by Christian Apenes. Doctors were not called until it was too late for them to do anything but certify "death by drowning." Police officers were not notified until later--so much later, that lurid gossip spread that the judge had really been murdered by his family, in order for them to collect that much-needed insurance money. Apenes also benefited from Dahl's death--after the judge drowned, Apenes took over as mayor. The most popular theory was that Apenes had invented the "death by accident" prophecy, and then hypnotized Ingeborg into drowning her father on the beach.

The many questions surrounding Ludwig Dahl's death wound up being aired in Oslo's Central Criminal Court. Ingeborg herself instigated bringing the case to court, as she was anxious to disprove the allegations that her father had killed himself. Instead, she found herself facing a charge of being part of a murder plot involving her mother, Astrid Stolt-Nielsen and Christian Apenes.

Ingeborg's trial (which gained international fame as "The Witch Trial of Oslo,") dragged out for no less than three years. It became a battle of science versus spiritualism. The prosecution presented psychologists who opined learnedly on what they saw as Ingeborg's mental aberrations. The defense countered by quoting from the works of psychic researchers. Ingeborg spoke excitedly of eternal life and the Great Beyond. Her accusers talked of life insurance.

During the trial, it was revealed that Mrs. Dahl, who served as her town's treasurer, had embezzled public funds. The cash apparently went to pay the steep premiums for her husband's insurance policy. Several days after this exposure, she killed herself. She left a note admitting the theft, but vehemently proclaiming her daughter's innocence of murder.

What it all boiled down to was this: Did the judge kill himself so his family would get his insurance money? Was he driven to suicide after hearing a prophecy of his death from the other world? Did his family conspire to murder him? Or was his death mere mischance after all, with the alleged "message" from Ragnar being merely a creepy coincidence?

The jury, faced with this array of unproven, unprovable theories, chose to deliver an acquittal. Ludwig Dahl's death was finally officially ruled to be accidental.

Despite the jury's verdict, many Norwegians still consider Dahl's death to be an unsolved mystery. At least one criminologist even had his suspicions about the death of the judge's sons, wondering if "under the cloak of Spiritualism an extremely cunning criminal was carrying out a series of murders."

We will never know if he could have been right.

The Ghost of Cock Lane: Partly Truth and Partly Fiction?

"Illustrated Police News," 1883

It is ironic that one of Britain’s most well-known spook stories, “The Cock Lane Ghost,” is famous not because it was proved to be a genuine haunting, but because it was officially labeled as a cruel hoax.

The “official” version of any story, is, of course, not necessarily the correct one…

The saga had its roots in the marriage of a young moneylender, William Kent, to a lady named Elizabeth Lynes. So far as we know, the marriage was a happy one, but it ended sadly with Elizabeth’s death in childbirth. The Lynes ladies, in fact, so suited Kent that after he became a widower, he entered into a liaison with his wife’s sister, Frances. As canon law forbade their marriage, in 1759 the two simply moved to Greenwich, where they were strangers, and settled down there under the pretense of being husband and wife. They found lodgings in the home of Richard Parsons, the parish clerk.

For a while, at least, relations between the Kents and the Parsons were quite cordial. Parsons also became a client of Kent, borrowing twelve guineas from him that he was to repay at the rate of one guinea a month. This seemingly innocuous transaction went on to figure highly in the upcoming trouble. Frances (commonly known as “Fanny,”) became so fond of Parsons’ eleven year old daughter Elizabeth that, one night when Kent was away, she had the girl come sleep with her for companionship.

This is where things began to get weird. Throughout the night, the pair found their sleep disturbed by loud and peculiar noises in their room, which Fanny described as a combination of rapping and scratching. The next day, Parsons suggested the noises came from a neighboring shoemaker industrious enough to work the night through. However, when a few days later Fanny heard the same noises—even louder than before—on a Sunday night, when even the most hard-working cobblers must rest, everyone realized something unusual was afoot. A visiting neighbor reported seeing a strange white figure drifting through the Parsons home. (This same neighbor, James Franzen, reportedly later heard the ghostly knockings in his own bedchamber.)

From then on, the noises were heard off and on at various volumes, always in the same room where the girl Elizabeth slept. The strange phenomenon became the subject of some talk in the neighborhood, but other than that no action was taken.  Fanny feared the sounds were caused by the spirit of her sister Elizabeth, angered at Fanny's irregular relationship with Elizabeth's husband.

Shortly after the manifestations started, Kent and Parsons quarreled, and the moneylender and his lady moved to other lodgings.  Some weeks later, in February 1760, the pregnant Fanny came down with what was diagnosed as smallpox, and died.

After the Kents moved out, the Parsons family heard no more of the strange noises, and they undoubtedly shrugged it off as “just one of those things.” At the time of the two families had parted company, Parsons still owed Kent three guineas. As he neglected to pay the outstanding amount, Kent took him to court. Shortly after he collected this debt, in January 1762, the strange noises started up again, even more loudly and vehemently than before. Again, the sounds centered in young Elizabeth Parsons’ bedroom.

It was now that the family decided they must have a ghost on their hands. By means of various reciprocal taps and scratches, they held communication of sorts with their strange visitor, and through this means, elicited the message that their “ghost” was none other than Fanny Lynes, wanting the world to know that William Kent had poisoned her with arsenic.

The news that “Scratching Fanny,” as she came to be called, was trying to get justice from beyond the grave eventually spread throughout the neighborhood, then to all of London, then Britain as a whole, and finally to the continent. Fanny became a posthumous superstar.

People began to recall that before her death, Fanny had made a will leaving everything she owned to Kent. They remembered with even more interest than when Fanny’s sister Ann had arrived for the funeral, she was much perturbed to find that she had been unable to take one last look at her sister, as the coffin lid was already screwed down shut. She had been even more upset about Fanny’s will, suggesting that it had been something Kent engineered in order to rob Fanny’s surviving siblings, “who had all lived in perfect harmony until this unhappy affair happened.” Legal problems involving Fanny’s estate even compelled one of her brothers, John, to take Kent to court.

Many people began to be very interested in Mr. William Kent.

“Scratching Fanny” was taken so seriously that one evening, a squadron of twenty or so clergymen got together to “interview” her. Amid a sound that resembled the rustling of wings—a new addition to the program—she told her clerical audience that the fatal poison had been administered to her in “purl” three hours before her death, and that her former maid, Eleanor “Carrots” Carlisle, could tell them more about her murder. (When questioned, “Carrots” stated that she had no reason to suspect Fanny’s death had been unnatural, and that her former mistress and Kent appeared “very loving, and lived very happy together.”)

It was not long before Horace Walpole was describing Fanny as “the reigning fashion.” Although he thought her a rather paltry sort of ghost, he felt obligated to call on the Parsons, “for it is as much the mode to visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburg, who is just arrived.”

I wonder what the Prince would have made of the comparison.

For some time, very many people had quite a good bit of fun with this novelty act, but eventually the more cynical members of society took the upper hand. They pointed out that Fanny’s “fortune” amounted to only about a hundred pounds—not, they reasoned, worth poisoning her over. The doctor who attended her last illness declared unequivocally that she had died of smallpox. And when it was learned that “Scratching Fanny” made her accusations against Kent right after he had successfully sued his former landlord, it began to look very like it was not a ghost, but Parsons himself, who sought revenge.

Suddenly, public opinion became as eager to discredit the “haunting” as it had been to champion it. The Lord Mayor directed that little Elizabeth Parsons, the central figure of the story, be removed from her parents and subjected to a close examination. (Among the committee appointed to examine the story was Dr. Samuel Johnson.) The results were inconclusive, but by this point, London’s intelligentsia was eager to seize upon anything they could to crush what they saw as the ridiculous superstition of spiritualism. In short, people were now as blindly, rigidly skeptical as they had earlier been blindly, rigidly credulous. For several nights, Elizabeth’s bed was swung up like a hammock over the floor, and her hands and feet were tied all night. No noises were heard during those nights, which led many to assume the girl was nothing but a common trickster. Her questioners badgered the child to confess that she herself was responsible for all the “ghostly” manifestations, and when she persisted in maintaining her innocence, she was told that if she did not make the ghost heard within half an hour, she and her parents would be sent to Newgate.

The terrified girl pleaded to be allowed to go to her bed to see if that would bring on the noises. That night was again a silent one. On being told that she would only get one more night before being imprisoned, the inevitable happened. The poor desperate child hid a board in her bed, and, when she thought no one was looking, began to scratch and knock upon it. She was found out, of course, and, even though those observers who had heard “Scratching Fanny’s” previous manifestations agreed that the sounds in no way resembled Elizabeth’s pitiful imitations, this was still seen as irrefutable proof that the whole “ghost story” was a giant fraud.

The “ghost,” the sophisticates said, was nothing but a naughty child and a piece of wood. Because, after all, what intelligent person believes in ghosts. Another victory for the forces of reason!

The now-vindicated William Kent had the satisfaction of seeing charges of conspiracy brought against the Parsons family, as well as several other people who had championed “Scratching Fanny.” After a trial of twelve hours, they were all found guilty. Richard Parsons, who continually maintained his innocence, was sentenced to three periods in the pillory, as well as two years imprisonment. (While he was in the stocks, a sympathetic crowd passed the hat and collected “a handsome subscription” for his benefit.) Mrs. Parsons got one year. Others involved in the so-called conspiracy got sentences varying from six months of hard labor to fines of various amounts.

And thus the Cock Lane Ghost was put to rest. Most modern accounts of the episode take it for granted that it was indeed nothing but a ridiculous fraud engineered by a vindictive family. In the sense that there is no other reason to suspect Fanny Lynes was murdered, the ghost was not legitimate. However, it does appear that there was something genuinely weird going on in the Parsons home. For one thing, it was acknowledged that Elizabeth’s efforts to mimic “Scratching Fanny” sounded nothing like the sounds heard before. Then there is the fact that on an earlier night, Elizabeth’s bed had been thoroughly searched before she was put to bed. However, when she was lying in the bed, it began shaking violently, from no discernible cause. And, it was never satisfactorily explained how a ghost was seen and heard by an independent party before Fanny died, or how the noises were first heard from the living Fanny Lynes herself.

Also, could the Parsons family really have been so murderously vengeful over the loss of three guineas that they did not even rightfully own that they would take the stupid gamble of completely inventing a ghost aimed, one presumes, at sending an innocent man to the gallows for murder?

Whatever the truth might have been about the “Cock Lane Ghost,” it may well have been a bit more complicated than we think.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Whenever you run into a story featuring 19th century spiritualists, you know the good times are about to roll. This account of a real "Dead Man Walking" appeared in the "Elkart [Indiana] Times," December 9,1858. It is a reprint from the "New York Evening Post."

The spiritualists of this city, or a portion of them, at least, are gravely discussing the question whether the spirit of a man whose dead body was dissected by medical students in Hartford, Connecticut, is picking himself up piecemeal, and bringing his bones, one by one, to this city, to be put together again. The weekly spiritual conference, have seen fit to make this a subject of inquiry, and the "Spiritual Telegraph," from time to time, informs its readers of the progress of the affair.

The story is related substantially as follows:

When Dr. Redman, the partner of Dr. Orton, in Twelfth street, New York, was a medical student, a body was to be dissected upon a certain occasion, and the students agreed to draw lots to determine which one should have the bones. Dr. Redman was already a medium, and before the dissection took place the spirit communicated with him, and expressed the wish that the bones might fall into Redman's possession. The doctor replied that since possession was to be determined by lot, he might not get them.

"Draw first," replied the spirit, "and I will make you draw the prize."

Acting upon this hint, the lucky Redman drew first and took the bones. He conveyed them to Hartford, where he subsequently left a part of them, removing the rest to his office in the city.

Having related to his partner the singular history of the skeleton, Dr. Orton requested him to bring the remainder of it to the office; whereupon the ghost who once owned and occupied the dilapidated and abused tenement, set up a loud knocking, and claimed the right, which no reasonable man could deny him, of having a word to say about the disposition of his bones. He expressed a willingness that they should be taken to New York; it made no especial difference to him whether the ossified portion of his frame was in one place or another; still it was natural he should feel some pride in the matter, and expressed the determination of bringing the bones from Hartford to this city himself.

This extraordinary determination, which, we believe, has no parallel in ghostology, ancient or modern, it is alleged, is being carried out. The very next day after it was announced, a bone dropped on the sidewalk, in front of the two doctors, near their house, and since that time, bone after bone has been removed, sometimes dropping from the ceiling and sometimes upon the walk. On the 26th day of May the ghost done an unusual good day's work. As the doctors were crossing Broadway near Thirteenth street 3 o'clock, P.M., a bone dropped at their feet, and at 6 o'clock the same afternoon another encountered them in Fourteenth street; both being portions of the spinal column.

The ghost whose body has been cut up and moved, does not however, claim the exclusive credit of the removal. With the fairness which, we trust, will ever characterize his transactions, he acknowledges with gratitude the assistance of other ghosts, who have kindly consented to help do the job; but what compensation he gives for their services, is not stated.

The ghost commenced picking himself up sometime in the spring. Whether he is yet done is not stated; but the "Telegraph" of this week brings additional testimony, in the shape of an anonymous statement, (regarded as conclusive by many spiritualists) the substance of which is contained in the following paragraph:

"On the 2d of last June Dr. Redman held a seance at a house where I was visiting.--When the circle was over I accompanied him down stairs; on the way down, my spectacle case, which had been missing during a part of the evening, was thrown over my shoulder. He picked it up, and was holding it with both his hands, conversing with me about its disappearance. While thus engaged, standing facing each other, with a full blaze of gaslight shining on us, the front door closed, and no other means of egress or ingress being near, something came dropping down, as if from the ceiling, and fell between us. On being taken up, Dr. Redman recognised it as a bone belonging to the vertebrae of the neck of this much talked-of spirit."

When the Spiritual Conference and the "Telegraph" arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, we will inform our readers.

The "Spiritual Age," for June 12, 1858, reported that Dr. Orton informed them that the bones of his spirit pal, whose name was Cornelius Winne, "continue to disappear from Hartford, and to arrive mysteriously in New York." The final bits of Winne were finally delivered on December 15, but the good doctors claimed to remain in spiritual communication with the peripatetic departed.

The story inspired a less-than-reverent contemporary ballad, "Migratory Bones":

We all have heard of Dr. Redman,
The man in New York who deals with dead men,
Who sits at a table
And straightway is able
To talk with the spirits of those who have fled, man!
And gentles and ladies
Located in Hades,
Through his miraculous mediation,
Declare how they feel,
And such things reveal
As suits their genius for impartation.
'Tis not with any irreverent spirit
I give the tale, or flout it, or jeer it;
For many good folk
Not subject to joke
Declare for the fact that they both see and hear it.
It comes from New York, though,
And it might be hard work, though
To bring belief to any point near it.
Now this Dr. Redman,
Who deals with the dead men,
Once cut up a fellow whose spirit had fled, man,
Who (the fellow) perchance
Had indulged in that dance
Performed at the end of a hempen thread, man;
And the cut-up one,
(A son of a gun !)
Like Banquo, though he was dead, wasn't done,
Insisted in very positive tones
That he'd be ground to calcined manure,
Or any other evil endure,
Before he'd give up his right to his bones!
And then, through knocks, the resolute dead man
Gave his bones a bequest to Redman.
In Hartford, Conn.,
This matter was done,
And Redman the bones highly thought on,
When, changed to New York
Was the scene of his work,
In conjunction with Dr. Orton.
Now mark the wonder that here appears:
After a season of months and years,
Comes up again the dead man,
Who, in a very practical way,
Says he'll bring his bones some day,
And give them again to Redman.
When, sure enough
(Though some that are rough
Might call the narrative "devilish tough "),
One charming day
In the month of May,
As Orton and Redman walked the street
Through the severing air,
From they knew not where,
Came a positive bone, all bleached and bare,
That dropped at the doctor's wondering feet!
Then the sprightly dead man
Knocked out to Redman
The plan that lay in his ghostly head, man:
He'd carry the freight,
Unheeding its weight;
They needn't question how, or about it;
But they might be sure
The bones he'd procure,
And not make any great bones about it.
From that he made it a special point
Each day for their larder to furnish a joint!
From overhead, and from all around,
Upon the floor, and upon the ground,
Pell-mell,
Down fell
Bones,and thigh bones,
Jaw bones, and thigh bones,
Until the doctors, beneath their power,
Ducked like ducks in a thunder-shower!
Armfuls of bones,
Bagfuls of bones,
Cartloads of bones,
No end to the multitudinous bones,
Until, forsooth, this thought gained head, man,
That this invisible friend, the dead man,
Had chartered a band
From the shadowy land,
Who had turned to work with a busy hand,
And boned all their bones for Dr. Redman!
Now, how to account for all the mystery
Of this same weird and fantastical history?
That is the question
For people's digestion,
And calls aloud for instant untwistery!
Of this we are certain,
By this lift of the curtain,
That still they're alive for work or enjoyment,
Though I must confess
That I scarcely can guess
Why they don't choose some useful employment.

The Case of the "Spirit Baby"

Throughout recorded history, there have been "spiritualists" who do seem to possess some sort of genuine wild talents. Others are well-meaning, but deluded types. Many are nothing but cynical crooks. And, unfortunately, you occasionally find one who was downright evil. One particularly poignant case of spiritual betrayal played out in American newspapers in the early 20th century.

A young couple named William and Ada Robbins lived on a rented farm near Dysart, Iowa with their three-year-old son Harold. They were a prosperous and happy couple, but Mrs. Robbins longed for a daughter to make their family complete. On October 1, 1919, her dearest wish was granted when she gave birth to a girl, whom she named Vivian Constance. Tragically, the baby lived for just five hours.

Ada was devastated, and seemed utterly unable to deal with her loss. She became so morbidly obsessed with mourning the child she had known so very briefly, that her husband and friends feared for her sanity, and even her life. Always a deeply religious woman, Mrs. Robbins became fixated on the Biblical story of Elisha, who raised the Shunammite's son from the dead. In her fixation on death, she seemed ready to give up on the world of the living.

Then one day, James Wheeler, a hired hand on the Robbins farm, told William that his wife Sylvia was a talented spiritualist. Perhaps she could help Ada deal with her tragedy.

By this point, Mr. Robbins was so concerned about his wife's mental health that he was ready to try anything. He agreed that Mrs. Wheeler should be summoned. What harm could it do? he told himself.

When the "medium" arrived at the farm, she immediately told Mrs. Robbins that she was in constant communication with the dead baby's spirit. Ada was transfixed by the news, and desperately peppered Mrs. Wheeler with questions. "What did the baby look like? How was she being treated? Did she miss her mother?" The "medium" responded with vague, but highly soothing answers, and assured the young woman that she, too, could be taught to make contact with her lost daughter.

From that day on, Ada Robbins put herself completely under Mrs. Wheeler's control. She gave the medium her complete trust and obedience. Mrs. Wheeler took the Robbinses to Chicago, where they heard the prominent spiritualist Sir Oliver Lodge lecture on life after death. This experience turned Ada into an utter, unwavering believer in the spirit world--particularly the spirit world as shown by Mrs. Wheeler. William Robbins was a bit more skeptical, but he was so relieved by his wife's newfound hope and energy that he kept his doubts to himself.

Ada continued to read and re-read the story of Elisha. Eventually, she worked up the courage to mention it to Mrs. Wheeler. Was there any reason, she asked longingly, why such a miracle could not happen to her? Could her baby be brought back from the grave?

Mrs. Wheeler smiled and replied that it was quite possible indeed. She reminded Ada that Christ had empowered the disciples to heal the sick and raise the dead. With enough faith, Mrs. Wheeler assured her, there was no reason anyone might gain the same powers. "The trouble with people nowadays," she sighed, "is that they have no faith." When Ada hesitatingly pointed out that her child had been dead and buried for months, Mrs. Wheeler scolded her. This just showed that Ada did not "believe" sufficiently.

Mrs. Wheeler set out to train her to "believe." Under the medium's tutelage, Mrs. Robbins devoted herself to a life of fasting and prayer that would have done the most rigorous ascetic proud, all in the name of strengthening her "faith." She was encouraged by Mrs. Wheeler's assurances that her baby's guardian angels were pleased by her efforts.

As they neared the first anniversary of little Vivian's death, Mrs. Wheeler began hinting that the "guardian spirits" thought Ada was nearly ready to have her wishes granted. Finally, one day, after coming out of a "trance," she told the ecstatic young woman that the spirits promised to bring her baby back from the grave. However, she could not yet say when and how this revival would take place.

Mrs. Wheeler then announced that she must go to Chicago. Communications were better there, she explained. After her arrival in the Windy City, she wrote Ada letters saying that she was spending all her time in a trance, preparing for the great moment when baby Vivian would rematerialize. "My spirit has been suspended for six days and I believe I am fit for this supreme materialization. My body is turning green and the spirits tell me that this greatest of miracles will soon come to pass."

When she returned to Iowa, it was with the news that June 14 was the day chosen for this resurrection. An adult spirit would accompany the child on her journey back to earth. On the morning of the great day, Ada, as Mrs. Wheeler instructed, filled their cottage with fresh flowers to welcome their ethereal visitors. The medium also directed everyone in the house to wear white robes and to leave the door of the kitchen ajar. She added that they were absolutely forbidden to tell anyone else of what was to take place.

William Robbins was becoming increasingly uneasy of what his family had gotten into, but by this point he had no idea how to get back out. He flatly refused to wear his white robe, and refused to wait up that night for the expected miracle. He went off to bed around 9 p.m., probably muttering some very unspiritual words under his breath.

Ada sat up alone in the quiet darkness. The anticipation so unnerved her that she finally became frightened and went up to bed herself. But she could not sleep. Around ten, she began to hear strange noises.

Someone was in the house!

The trembling young woman saw a shadowy human figure enter the bedroom. It was carrying something in its arms--a baby! The figure placed the child in her arms, whispering, "This is a gift to thee from the Father." The strange being then slid to the doorway, and quietly disappeared.

As Mrs. Wheeler had told her to do, Ada sat quietly holding the baby for fifteen minutes after the figure had left. Then she excitedly awakened her husband.

William Robbins was flabbergasted by what he saw. He examined the baby carefully. She certainly looked exactly like the dead Vivian...He didn't know what to believe.

Ada, of course, knew exactly what had happened. It was a miracle! Thanks to Mrs. Wheeler, God had answered her prayer and brought her child back to life!

Word quickly spread about the arrival of the "spirit baby." Unsurprisingly, it earned the Robbins family a good deal of attention. People came from miles away to see the child. Newspaper reporters besieged the farm. They became an instant tourist attraction.

When Mrs. Wheeler returned from Chicago a few days later, she announced her severe displeasure with all the fuss, and demanded that the public be banned from the household. "There are spiritual powers who are angry at the child's return to life," she solemnly told Mrs. Robbins. "They will lose no opportunity to snatch it back, and if enough human beings touch it the baby will dissolve again into ether." However, this prohibition did not stop Mrs. Wheeler from taking advantage of the publicity. She and her husband set up a big tent outside the Robbins farm, where they conducted revival meetings. The most prominent feature of these spiritual gatherings was the frequent passing of the contribution plate.

Mrs. Wheeler's domination over Ada became even more complete--and more demanding--than before. The "medium" moved her entire family, as well as two friends, into the Robbins home--getting free room and board, of course. She then had another message from the "spirits." The Robbins family, she announced, must immediately move to California. If these orders were not followed, she said ominously, the baby would dissolve back into the spirit realm, for good. The Wheelers, of course, would accompany them. Mrs. Wheeler planned to utilize the publicity surrounding the "spirit baby" to start a "spiritualist community" in the Golden State.

By this point, William Robbins had had about enough of the Wheelers and their troublesome entourage of spirits, but he gave in when his wife pleaded with him not to risk losing their child a second time. He sold their farm equipment, bought two automobiles, and the strange crew headed West. The Robbinses paid all the expenses.

By the time they arrived in Redondo Beach, California, Mr. Robbins had learned certain things which he felt more than justified his suspicions of the Wheelers. For one thing, a Chicago "medium" his wife had consulted, and who had encouraged Ada's hopes of resurrecting her baby, was a close friend of Mrs. Wheeler's. There were rumors that a female infant disappeared from a Chicago orphanage right before the arrival of the "spirit baby." And a train had arrived in Dysart from Chicago right before little Vivian II's "resurrection."

William Robbins may not have been Sherlock Holmes, but he was quite capable of adding two and two together.

Ada Robbins, however, stubbornly, desperately clung to her trust in the medium. However, even her faith began to waver when she saw Mrs. Wheeler go into a shop and purchase a bunch of cheap necklaces. "I am expected to materialize sixteen gifts at a seance this evening," the medium explained. "The strain is too great, and so I am going to use these." After this, Mrs. Robbins saw her mentor habitually "materialize" numerous other items that she knew had come from the corner drug store, rather than the spirit world. At long last, Ada came to the depressing realization that her "miracle" was nothing more than an incredibly audacious fraud. The Robbinses booted the Wheeler menage out of their lives, and headed back to Iowa, in a mood proverbially known as "sadder but wiser." In March 1922 the couple successfully sued the Wheelers for the car they had bought for the medium's family, as well as other expenses. However, Mrs. Robbins was too frightened to enforce the court's judgment. She feared that if she angered Mrs. Wheeler too much, the medium might "dematerialze" the baby.

Sometimes, our most unreasonable beliefs are the hardest to overcome.

There are many things one would like to see done to anyone who takes deliberate advantage of a mother's grief--public horsewhipping at the very least--but Sylvia Wheeler appears to have gotten away with her hoax scot-free. Which just goes to show what a rare commodity justice is in this world.

The newspapers of time reported that William and Ada hoped to learn for certain the true identity of their "spirit baby," although by this point they had become so attached to the child that they did not want to give her up. (It is unknown to me why the police did not solve the mystery by simply hauling the Wheelers into the nearest station and grilling them like a cheese sandwich.)

I cannot find any evidence they ever did discover the girl's true parentage. Perhaps they really did not want to know. The last reports I can find of the family came from May 1924, when various newspapers revealed that Ada had saved "her 4-year-old daughter, Vivian," from death or serious injury. Apparently the child had climbed up a 50-foot ladder on a windmill. She was within only a few feet of the blades when Mrs. Robbins saw her and frantically rescued the child.

Compounding the sadness of this peculiar story is the fact that Ada Robbins died in March 1926, aged less than thirty. I do not know what became of Mr. Robbins and their children after that, but hopefully they were able to rebuild their lives from the havoc wrought by the Wheelers.

The Ghostly Excavations of Frederick Bligh Bond

In 1907, the Church of England hired architect Frederick Bligh Bond to oversee the excavations taking place at Glastonbury Abbey. Bond would never have gotten the job if the Church had known he was not only intensely interested in spiritualism, but determined to make a novel experiment: He intended to try using the spirit world as uncredited assistants. He had already conceived a theory that Glastonbury was built according to the principles of sacred geometry, and he intended to prove it. He hoped, as well, to find evidence of the long tradition linking Joseph of Arimathea to the Abbey’s location.

Bond believed in what he called "the permanence and indestructibility of Mind, Memory, and Personality or Character, together with the independence of Mind and its direct action upon Matter." In other words, he pictured a "cosmic reservoir" of all human memories and emotions. "Man as an intellectual personality with a subliminal psychic stratum involved deeply in his being, is thus necessarily linked with all other intelligent personalities through the 'continuum' of the subconscious Mind and it is only through this medium that he can obtain genuine recognition of any personality other than his own."

He and a friend of his named John Bartlett, who had shown some mediumistic abilities, held séances every night. Their goal was to use “automatic writing” to contact the past residents of the Abbey to get tips on where to dig.

They soon received the message, “All knowledge is eternal and is available to mental sympathy…I was not in sympathy with monks--I cannot find a monk yet.” Soon enough, however, one found them: “Gulielmus Monachus”—William the Monk.

Other monastic spirits soon made themselves not only willing, but rather sadly eager to share their memories of the Abbey, a site they had loved and still did not want to leave. As one “helper,” Johannes, wrote: “Why cling I to that which is not? It is I, and it is not I, butt parte of me which dwelleth in the past and is bound to that whych my carnal self loved and called ‘home’ these many years. Yet I, Johannes, amm of many partes, and ye better parte doeth other things…only that part which remembereth clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet.” This shifting group of spirits, who communicated in a hodgepodge of old and modern English and Latin, called themselves “The Watchers,” or “the Company of Avalon.” Some of the locations for buildings the “Watchers” provided were extraordinarily accurate, but the fact that Glastonbury had had different buildings built on the same locations throughout its history sometimes created a certain amount of confusion.

The excavation of the Abbey was proving to be a brilliant success. Whether it was through Bond’s immense knowledge of church architecture or the aid of the spirit fraternity—or some combination of both--his work was giving the world a hitherto unknown insight into the architecture of the site during its long history. Bond’s séances also—to his satisfaction, at least—corroborated his theories of how Glastonbury was built. He obtained automatic writing calling the Abbey “a message in ye stones. In ye foundations and ye distances be a mystery…” (The spirit of one monk, “Patraic,” also confirmed to the architect that Joseph of Arimathea had built a church at the site, which he depicted as a circle of round huts.) Bond was happy, the Anglican hierarchy was happy, presumably William and Johannes and the rest were, in their spectral way, happy too. Then, Bond made a fatal mistake: He became too honest. In 1919, he published a book, “The Gate of Remembrance,” giving full credit for his archaeological discoveries to his troop of ghostly guides.

"William the Monk's" "spirit-tracing" of part of the Abbey.

Bond believed his experiment with what is now known as “psychic archaeology” had proved the existence of the spiritual world. His employers believed he had only proved he was a madman. In 1922, they unceremoniously gave him the boot, little caring that his methods—whatever they might have been—had worked greatly to their advantage.

One of Bond's "reconstructions" of the Abbey.

Bond, undeterred, continued his psychic researches. Until his death in 1945, he developed many pioneering theories about the relationship between spiritual forces and the geometry and location of ancient buildings—concepts we are still struggling to understand today.