SILAMYS

Review

As shown in the works and observations left by travelers, historians, ethnographers and anthropologists, stories of spirit possession have been a worldwide phenomenon in most, if not all, cultures and ages, being it the alleged manifestation of deities or demi-gods, or the spirits of the dead. In modern Western civilization, it has come associated either with trance mediumship, when a sensitive person channels messages from dead relatives and even behaves like them, using the same words and mannerisms they used when alive, or with demonic encroachments, when an unexpected evil force takes control of someone else’s bodies, frequently ruining their lives and requiring exorcism. The so-called Watseka Wonder case, though, doesn’t fit the former neither the latter categories.

Physician E. Winchester Stevens wrote the present book after treating teenager Lurancy Vennum, from Watseka, Illinois, during the entire period —until May 1878— of her alleged possession by the spirit of Mary Roff, another Watseka girl who had died 13 years earlier, when Lurancy was just a 1-year-old baby. Despite the flaws of Dr. Stevens’s narrative, which is quite disorganized and not in-depth enough, the account is extremely valuable since it’s the only one we have offering a comprehensive, first-hand view of the phenomenon, apart from the brief recollection provided many years later by Mary Roff’s sister, Minerva, and included in the 1928 edition we are reviewing here.

In July 1877, 14-year-old Lurancy Vennum began having fits, “falling heavily on the floor, lying apparently dead, every muscle becoming suddenly rigid (…) Lying as if dead, she spoke freely, telling the family what persons and spirits she could see, describing them and calling some of them by name (…) She had many of these trances, describing heaven and the spirits, or the angels as she called them”.

More violent episodes followed. In November, 1877 “for two weeks she had the most excruciating pains. In these painful paroxysms, she would double herself back until her head and feet actually touched”. By December, “she became unconscious and passed into a queer trance, and, as at former times, would describe heaven and spirits, often calling them angels”. From this time to February 1st, she would experience these trances, “sometimes as many as twelve times a day, lasting from one to eight hours, occasionally passing into that state of ecstasy, when as Lurancy, she claimed to be in heaven”. At this point, many people believed her insane and thought she should be placed in the lunatic asylum.

On January 31, 1878, Dr. Stevens visited the Vennums for the first time, and met Lurancy. On the following morning, “Mr. Vennum called at the office of Mr. Roff and informed him that the girl claimed to be Mary Roff and wanted to go home”. Ten days later, Lurancy, who “at times seemed almost frantic to go home”, was sent to the Roffs, having the Vennums “reluctantly” consented.

The girl now “seemed perfectly happy and content, knowing every person and everything that Mary knew when in her original body (…) recognizing and calling by name those who were friends and neighbors of the family from 1852 to 1865, when Mary died, calling attention to scores, yes, hundreds of incidents that transpired during her natural life”. Meanwhile, Lurancy stopped recognizing “any of Mr. Vennum’s family or neighbors”.

From this point forward, Dr. Stevens’s account is sprinkled with evidential incidents that Lurancy seems to recall just as they happened to Mary years before Lurancy’s own birth. In one of them, “Mrs. Parker, who lived neighbor to the Roffs in Middleport in 1852, and next door to them in Watseka in 1860, came in with her daughter-in-law, Nellie Parker. Mary [Lurancy] immediately recognized both of the ladies, calling Mrs. Parker ‘Auntie Parker’ and the other ‘Nellie’, as in the acquaintance of eighteen years ago. In conversation with Mrs. Parker, Mary asked: ‘Dou you remember how Nervie [her sister Minerva] and I used to come to your house and sing?’ Mrs. Parker says that it was the first allusion made to that matter, nothing having been said by any one on that subject, and says that Mary and Minerva used to come to their house and sit and sing ‘Mary had a little lamb’, etc. Mrs. Dr. Alter (Minerva) says she remembers it well”.

On another occasion, Mr. Roff asked Mary if she remembered about moving to Texas: “Yes, pa, and I remember crossing Red River and of seeing a great many Indians, and I remember Mrs. Reeder’s girls, who were in our company”. And, of another incident, Dr. Stevens writes: “I heard her relate a story of her going into the country with the men, some twenty odd years ago, after a load of hay, naming incidents that occurred in the road, which two of the gentlemen distinctly remembered”.

She also “often spoke of seeing the children of Dr. Stevens in heaven (…) She said she was with them much, and went to his home with him. She correctly described his home, the rooms and furniture, gave the names and ages of his children, and (…) told of a remarkable experience of Mrs. E. M. Wood, one of the doctor’s married daughters”.

In an interesting and emotional short piece, “Reminiscences of my sister Mary Roff”, written in 1908 and included at the end of the 1928 edition, Minerva Roff —“I am now sixty-four years of age. I could have no purpose to deceive myself, or to mislead others”— gives the reader even more details and evidential episodes of her sister’s temporary return through Lurancy Vennum’s body. As she writes: “During Mary’s visit, she and I spent many happy hours in going over the events of our girlhood, many scenes of which I had forgotten until they were recalled by Mary. I remember that during one of these long talks we were seated by the kitchen window overlooking a stretch of the garden in which my sister had played years before, and which surrounded the house in which she died. Suddenly Mary exclaimed: ‘Oh, Nervie! Do you remember the time when Cousin Allie Roff and I found an old hen with sore eyes under that currant bush —how we bathed her eyes in ointment, and did all we could to cure her?’ I had forgotten this prank, and many others that Mary likewise called to mind for me”.

And Minerva continues: “Upon a certain occasion when Mary was being interviewed by Mrs. Sherman, to whom reference has been made by Dr. Stevens, she was questioned as one would question a traveler from a strange country, and requested to give an account of the personages she had met in the Summerland. Mary gave to Mrs. Sherman the exact names of those who had composed her family, then long since dead, and also the names of many of Mrs. Sherman’s neighbors and acquaintances who had passed out; mentioning in particular the family of Rev. Mr. Rhea, and stating the name of a child in spirit form unknown to Mrs. Sherman. From her intimate knowledge of the Rhea family, Mrs. Sherman insisted that Mary was mistaken in this instance; but Mary stoutly maintained that the child named was resident in the life beyond, and later investigation proved this to be correct”.

Apparently, Lurancy had also clairvoyant or pre-cognitive abilities while possessed by Mary: “One afternoon, she, with much concern and great anxiety, declared that her brother Frank must be carefully watched the coming night, for he would be taken very sick, and would die if not properly cared for. At the time of this announcement he was in his usual health, and engaged with the Roff Bros.’ band of music up town (…) At two o’clock in the morning Frank was attacked with something like a spasm and congestive chill, which almost destroyed his consciousness”.

One relevant feature of this case is the easiness with which different spirits, not only Mary Roff’s, entered and vacated Lurancy’s body, apparently under the control and instructions of Roff herself. One day, in the presence of several people, including Dr. Stevens, “she began to talk as an old lady of olden times might be supposed to do, representing herself as the grand-mother of Charlotte, giving her name, inquiring after all the relatives, old and young, asking by name for those belonging to families the girl could have known nothing about (…) She called for food and ate it, apparently without teeth, smoked after it, as she used to do, because her food always hurt her if she did not. She asked for knitting work. It being furnished, she found fault because the knitter did not know how to knit. Raveling out and taking up again she knit, at the same time telling Charlotte how to knit without looking at it. She (…) continued for a full hour, never for a moment showing any sign of deception, but a veritable, honest, experienced domestic old lady. Numerous other personalities might be related, but this is suffcient”.

These discarnate visitations included Lurancy’s own spirit, who also appeared frequently upon given access by Mary Roff, until May 20, 1878, when she said while “weeping”: “Oh, pa, I am going to heaven tomorrow at eleven o’clock, and Rancy [Lurancy] is coming back cured, and going home all right”. On this episode, Minerva Roff wrote: “When the day came, and the angels told Mary that Lurancy was coming to take full possession of her body, it seemed to make her feel very sad. She went to the residences of Mr. L. C. Marsh and Mr. M. Hoober [the nearest neighbors and Mary’s favourite friends], to say good-by (…) she says: ‘I feel sad at parting with you all, for you have treated me so kindly; you have helped me by your sympathy to cure this body, and Rancy can come and inhabit it'”.

And so it happened: “She talked lovingly, and gave good advice about many things and family matters. The final change now took place at the time predicted, and Lurancy stated she felt something as though she had been asleep, yet she knew she had not. On reaching Mr. Roff’s office, she addressed him as Mr. Roff, and asked if he would take her home, which he did”.

Some weeks later, Mr. Roff wrote to Dr. Stevens: “Dear Doctor: Mr. Vennum is out of town, but I have often talked with him, and I know his opinion, often expressed, that Lurancy and her mother would both have died if we had not taken the girl; he gives all credit to yourself and us for it. He believes it was spirit agency that did the work. Lurancy is in perfect health”.

Overall, Dr. Stevens’s book (plus Minerva Roff’s reminiscences) makes a captivating first-hand account of a highly intriguing chapter of the supernatural in modern times. The readers surely will miss a much more detailed description of the evidential episodes in which Mary Roff’s supposed return manifested through Lurancy Vennum. However, Dr. Stevens was not a psychical researcher and, in all likelihood, his purpose was not to convince materialist minds of the continuation of life beyond bodily death, but to bear witness of a highly strange phenomenon centered in a teenager he treated as a physician, a phenomenon that, as he states, makes “a chapter in the literature of Spiritualism”.

Reviewed by SILAMYS editors

All reviews by SILAMYS editors may be freely reproduced for educational purposes.

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