The Possession of Sarah Winchester: Jim Duggins

By Jim Duggins

On October 22, 1844, thousands of men, women and children, dressed in Ascension Robes, gather on a desolate, freezing hillside outside Boston to greet the end of the world. Among the crowd is terrified five-year-old, Sarah Pardee, for whom this is the beginning journey to extraordinary fame and notoriety.

That night, Sarah is rescued by the cult’s founder, William Miller, and by Caty and Maggie Fox, who become her friends as they travel their own path to become America’s most distinguished “spirit rappers” interpreting rapping sounds in haunted houses. As for Sarah, she will go on to become Mrs. William Wirt Winchester, of Winchester rifle fame, one of the richest women in America. She will lose a daughter after only 42 days of life, an event that blights all her remaining days. Guided by an obsession with the spirit world, she will move to the San Jose, California and build one of America’s strangest and most famous structures.

But first she will attend—and completely disrupt—the Charles Street School and then Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (later Mount Holyoke College), she will meet Edwin Booth, America’s most famous Shakespearean actor, brother to John Wilkes Booth, who presides over a spiritualist meeting where Sarah first communicates with her deceased daughter. Thereafter she will be visited by a spirit guide who directs her building of the massive, controversial monument on the west coast.

The Possession of Sarah Winchester tells this compelling story in her own words, revealing child/woman caught in the web of the rise of spiritualism in nineteenth century America. It portrays a brilliant woman’s mind inundated by repression, grief, and guilt over her family’s creation of a weapon that destroyed Native American lives and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467094764

Jim Duggins

Award winning historical novelist, Jim Duggins began as a U.S. Navy Journalist in the Pacific where he studied with James Michener and Bill Lederer. Following military service and college, he taught English and Speech at high school, community college, and university levels. While teaching he wrote and edited academic journals and freelanced with magazines and newspapers. Now, writing fiction full time, he has returned to his love of history. THE POSSESSION OF SARAH WINCHESTER is his third novel. He lives in the desert in Southern California and has a house in Mexico where he collects Mexican Folk Art and is a regular contributor to museums around the United States. He is currently working on his fourth novel.

Book preview

PART ONE

The Child

Sarah Longwood Pardee

ONE

I still remember Reverend William Miller, the man who predicted that the end of the world would come in 1844. Because I was so young, four or five at most, he seemed enormously tall, but I do not know in fact whether he was or not. In his swallowtail morning clothes, he looked very old and sad. No rhyme of minister and sinister occurred to me then.

A queer feeling came over me that day when I discovered that Reverend Miller was stealing glances directly at me. Once that suspicion began, I couldn’t resist the temptation to hide in unseen parts of the garden and to peep slyly out at him. When I did, his eyes invariably found mine. Though I couldn’t define the feeling, when I did look up and our eyes met, the sensation that spread through my body was just like the ones occasioned by Mother’s warnings about talking to strangers. An uneasy, sinking feeling started at the pit of my stomach and spread to tremors in my knees.

Forcing myself to ignore my strange alarm, I ran to join the other children and played even more vigorously than before. The refreshments were delicious and we greedy children ate far too many tarts, drank too many glasses of fruit punch. We had been complimented on the loveliness of our dresses and I had shown off my new French phrases. I had played such furious games of I Spy and Follow the Leader that my small cheeks were flushed and damp, my unreasonable dread forgotten.

The party ended formally with prayer and song. Reverend Miller’s fearsome sermon, devoted to the coming millennium, sent shivers up our spines.

Afterward, mother’s Church Circle rushed to crowd about the Reverend but he protested he must leave to preach at a revival at the outskirts of town. I stood bashfully twisting the linen cloth of the table and because of my lowered eyes didn’t notice Reverend Miller break away until he knelt and took my shoulders in his fiery hands.

His breath washed my face with a sultry wind in a near-whispered, half-guttural rasp, He comes, little one! He comes! Behold the Savior comes! Little one, are you ready to meet your God? You shall not last out the year on this earth!

His fingertips burned through the thin cloth of my frock and I felt my body chill and grow weak. Afraid to risk his direct gaze, my eyes fastened upon my new slippers. The alarm in my cheek throbbed violently.

My downturned eyes lit upon the delicate gold cross about my neck and as I watched, to my horror, the base of the cross began to move of its own power, to bend and turn itself upward like a scorpion’s tail. My mouth twisted to a scream, but no sound came; my head turned, but I saw nothing save my lovely cross transformed into an ugly creature. I shut my eyes so tight my forehead hurt and a high-pitched ringing flooded my ears.

Then, there was neither sound nor sight. Nothing.

I know now I must have swooned.

When I awoke I lay fully clothed across my bed while Nanny fussed about the room making worried, clucking noises about the poor combination of strenuous play, too many tarts, and flavored ices. I was to get into bed, she declared, and stay there till morning. As I undressed I whimpered softly to myself. Slipping out of my cotton chemise, I noticed that my cross and chain were gone and a hideous black cross, a scorched birthmark, had formed on my chest.

Pulling on my nightdress, I crawled into bed, covered my face with the pillow, and cried bitterly about the journey that, even at that age, I understood I was to take.

TWO

The garden party would have been the end of it for most women, but not for my mother. Of course, she didn’t know the effect that William Miller had had upon me, but I can’t believe she didn’t think him strange.

My father, Captain Leonard Pardee, had left the sea in 1827 to make our home in New Haven, Connecticut which seemed ideal. It had a harbor where he could be near the sea without the hustle and bustle of Boston. He built our home on Orange Street, and after working at rather menial jobs, Captain Pardee joined with a friend to open a lumberyard not far from the waterfront. Hard times struck when he lost his first child, but the five of us, one by one, filled the house with sounds that chased away his sadness. He knew no more happiness than when he sat with his feet up on the fender of the stove in his very own kitchen listening to his children play about him.

He prospered exceedingly well in his adopted, on-shore life. By the time I was born, he owned the successful lumberyard and a big summer house in Newport, Rhode Island. Ironically, the business that gave him affluence frequently took him to Boston and to New York, away from the family he so enjoyed.

In Father’s absence, my mother, Constance Burns Pardee, set the pace for our domestic life. She had come from that breed of women who worked as hard as men hacking farms from the wilderness of the New World. I remember Mother’s telling me that her ancestors climbed aboard pilgrim ships, followed the tracks of covered wagons, and lifted logs with men to raise houses and barns. In those days, she said, after sixteen hours in the fields, such women saw to the supper fixin’s, and the servin’ up. Afterwards, they had to redd up" the plates before they could fall on pallets beside their husbands to rest a few hours for another day. Four generations later, their hands and backs had softened, but their descendants inherently understood the independence they had earned.

THREE

William Miller’s Millennial Tabernacle, an octagonal frame building rising three stories out of the marshy lowland southwest of Boston, occupied most of a city block. Lead paned windows girdling the flat roof cast twinkling candlelight into the dusky autumn air. The glimmer of those thousand candles were answered by flickering bonfires atop nearby Mount Bowdoin as both hillocks, one made by man and one by God, prepared for the coming of the Lord.

On each of the eight sides of the building, giant double doors opened onto the cobblestone street. For an hour, white-robed believers had come down those streets in hushed quiet to enter the Tabernacle where they fell to their knees in supplication. Familiar faces were greeted with a nod. Here and there a lip moved in prayer and a mother jounced a disquieted infant, but the solemnity of their purpose inhibited talk. Obscured by the prescribed white robes of ascension, fifteen hundred pairs of knees met the stone floor of the Tabernacle, their owners painfully aware of each minute that slipped away as they knelt in silent communion with Him. Tonight was to be their last on earth.

Deacons of the church moved among the congregation tapping worshippers lightly on the shoulder and, with finger signals, positioned them for the march to Mount Bowdoin. This family group would be best paired with that one; the strong were stationed alongside the infirm. Children designated as Rosebuds of Christ would lead the front ranks. Each Rosebud was given a brass cylinder that held a tiny, lighted candle. Petite copper crosses, welded to the cylinders, glowed in the light of the votives. Across their backs and shoulders, men carried rough-hewn tree-limb crosses as had our Lord, Jesus. Finally, the congregation lined up for the last time before the eight great portals of the Tabernacle.

The opened doors threw a brief flash of light onto a moonless Boston sky, a streak quickly blotted out by the human stream spilling eight abreast from the cavernous house of worship. Somewhere in the ranks, a voice began singing Rock of Ages and the entire throng picked it up, moved to tears by their own harmony.

My sisters and I had been stationed in the Squadron of Rosebuds, admonished to hold hands, and not to get lost. The crowd in billowing white robes so jammed about us that Mary Augusta, Antoinette, and I couldn’t see beyond the mantled figures of the row ahead. Mother and Mrs. Adams watched from behind.

As we trudged along, my new sandals began to work a blister on my heel, and when I stopped to rub at it, Antoinette pulled me forward. I don’t know how long we progressed in this halting, jerking fashion, before I became frightened and clung tighter to her hand so as not to lose my perspiring grip. The blocks wore on, longer and longer. When I tired and slowed, marchers behind pushed me and stepped on the heel of my offending sandal. The pace quickened and Antoinette forcefully towed me along in her wake.

Unable to keep up, I fell, scraped a knee on the cobbled street, and was immediately swallowed by the hurrying mob. While Antoinette yanked me back to my feet to keep me from being trampled, I searched for a sight of mother who had been separated from us. The pulse in my cheek trembled. My forehead flushed. An instant later, a stronger surge from the swarm tugged Antoinette’s hand from mine and she, too, was lost in the line of marchers. Frantic, I hunted for the faces of mother or Mrs. Adams. My knee smarted and I limped, favoring the growing blister on my heel. Desperately trying to maintain step with the marchers, I started to weep.

A sea of robes flowed from the streets abutting the mount. No defined paths led up its side; rather, the Adventists broke ranks, spread out, and flooded over the hillside. I looked from one to the other, wildly searching for mother. My panic grew.

At the moment my choked sobs became an unhappy wail, strong-muscled arms grabbed me from behind and, in one swoop, lifted me to his side so that my legs straddled his waist. Off the ground and safe from trampling feet, I could see above the crowd. I clung to my tiny, candlelit cross with one hand and the stranger’s neck with the other. When I found myself looking directly into the eyes of Reverend Miller, my elation plummeted.

Sarah, Sarah, he rasped. Thou chosen child.

The minister carried me to the summit where a massive fire was kept alive with rude timber crosses thrown into the blaze by arriving Millennialists. The heat of the preacher’s palm burned hotter than the flames through my robe as he prayed.

My body stiffened and, like a package of firecrackers, a hundred popguns exploded in my head. The frightful popping grew louder and louder until I shrieked, What am I? Who is me?

Frightened witless, at that precise moment, my mind riveted on a shimmering, two-inch band of light that I’ve come to know as the third eye of the yoga, the Eye of Shiva, precursor of clairvoyance. I no longer fear that experience preceded by the popping sounds; indeed, I can cause it by repeating my self-devised mantra, What am I? Who is me? But, then, that first time, I was terrified beyond belief. My paralyzed state left me no will to struggle against the strange separation of being. Absorbed by that small ray of light that seemed to be more me than the frozen form of me in the minister’s arms, I felt myself drift away from my physical self.

Rising like a cloud, I hovered a few feet above my material body. That ethereal out-of-body thing contained all my senses. Floating there, a few feet above the tableau taking place, I observed, without being a participant, the fear-stricken body I knew to be my own. I saw Reverend Miller’s arms about my waist, heard the roar of the mob, smelled the burning faggots of the fire, and felt the rough cloth of my robes under the minister’s hand. Senses intact, I knew all those things while hovering three feet above the scene.

To my horror, the burnished copper cross of my candle carrier turned black and, still more terrible, its reflection cast a second midnight cross on my forehead. As seconds passed, the stigmata from that previous year also returned, emblazoned on the tiny chest of the body below me, the body which was mine. I could see myself hideously adorned with three jet black crosses from my exposure to Reverend William Miller, blasphemous talismans that burned at head and heart and hand.

Though able to observe, I was powerless to do anything. In mute recognition that I was the thinking part of its mechanism, my body seemed to implore me to rejoin it, to assist with its escape.

The hilltop teemed with life; ironically, life that had come there to meet death. They collected in knots of two and three, in family groups, and familiar church Circles. Each minute added scores more as the street continued disgorging humanity upon the hill. They came praying, singing, or simply clinging to one another, watching the sky. At the pinnacle of this final event stood the man who created it, the man who held a terrified child. Reverend William Miller.

Hand in hand, two lanky teenage girls stepped out of the shifting, night-shrouded multitude and approached us. One of the girls took the hand of the minister and the other placed hers on the child’s shoulder, my shoulder. They gazed into the child’s fear-drained face as if to draw some special power from her paralyzed state. The electricity that flowed through the circuit of the three would not be known to those older girls until three more years had passed, but it was born that night in the flames of Millennial fire.

The crowd called for the minister to preach and though entranced by the communion of the strange trio about him, he visibly shook himself from the trance. As quickly and silently as it began, the spell was broken. The girls fell back to stare with sleep-walking eyes at the preacher. He looked at the child in his arms in a moment of indecision, then carefully slid her from his waist to the ground.

When my feet touched that cold night ground, the popping sounds began anew and my ethereal self rejoined my body.

Sarah, said Reverend Miller. I would have you meet these young ladies. They are Caty and Maggie Fox. They will watch over you now.

With that, he was gone to preach to his gathered parish.

BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS DAILY GLOBE

October 23, 1844

The End of the World

Most certainly our readers must know that the end of the world did not occur Thursday last as was predicted by Reverend William Miller and his followers. Tens of thousands of Millerites dressed in robes of ascension waited to no avail throughout one of the worst storms ever recorded for the reappearance of the Lord God. Accounts of enormous death, destruction, and madness accompanied the night-long vigil.

In Boston it is estimated that no less than three hundred persons are either dead or injured as a direct consequence of the mass convening on Mount Bowdoin. Forty persons, adults and children, in a state of extreme stress, took their own lives, so severe was their disappointment. Scores of babes and children in hallucinatory states were accepted at nearby Mobile Infant Refugee Hospitals hastily contrived to meet the need created by the human conflagration. Influenza and deadly consumption has claimed hundreds of others. It may not unfairly be attested that the rampant lunacy experienced that night on terra firma was not in any way assuaged by the violence displayed in God’s heavenly skies as lightning and thunder spilled out a veritable arsenal of fireworks. This reporter of the events would humbly suggest to loyal Globe readers that the severity of the storm itself may purport our Lord’s displeasure with the mania of the unruly crowd no matter how reverent their intention.

Correspondence received on the late packet from New York and Philadelphia likewise substantiates that similarly horrid occasions intruded in those cities as their congregations of the cult prepared to meet God’s descending chariot. Also it must sadly be related that those groups suffered similar losses of their numbers in zealous worship. One cannot help but question the wisdom of man garnered over centuries of trial on this planet when one sees that wisdom put to such indisputably poor device.

In Washington, D.C., this nation’s capital, no less than thirty officers of law and order were required to quell the crowd that might better be described as a mob when the chanting service they held led to hysterical marauding of nearby farms and homes.

It seems a necessary, if unfortunate, circumstance that this publisher need perforce to point out to its readership that overzealous spiritualism does all too often express itself in violent disregard of rights of privacy and the sanctity of the home. Surely we must recognize that our Lord Jesus could not have contemptuously recommended, "Suffer the Little Children to come unto me . . ." that they may suffer. Every righteous and God-fearing citizen of this principality can be no less than offended by the licentious excesses of this supposed Christian sect.

The only fervent hope that we at the Daily Globe can maintain is that this last unhappy occasion will be seen to be the end of the end of the world.

My hospitalization after Ascension Day on Mount Bowdoin, was one of mother’s most carefully guarded secrets. I remember nothing of it. It was never mentioned. Imagine my shock when I found the medical reports among my parents’ papers thirty years later.

New World Infant’s Hospital

New Haven, Connecticut

November 25, 1844

Captain Leonard Pardee

The Cambridge Hotel

New York, New York

Dear Captain Pardee:

We have today released your daughter, Sarah, to return home where it is anticipated that she will continue to progress. Although she is still quite weak, her color has returned to normal and with continued rest and nourishment, she should recover completely before too long.

Her disease, as best we can diagnose it, was a combination of childhood ailments, no one contributing greater than the others to her debilitation. Although it is today not a popular opinion, I do not believe in the medical diagnosis provided by Dr. Andrew Jackson Davis of Poughkeepsie nor that of Dr. William Fishbaugh of New Haven in this case. Dr. Davis and Dr. Fishbaugh are not physicians and their opinions are still largely untested.

I hasten to add that our nurses and the total hospital staff of the children’s ward at New World Infant’s Hospital are quite charmed by little Sarah and so it may be fairly surmised that her duration with us, however unpleasant the nature of it to her, was accompanied with almost familial care.

She was brought to us in a most wretched state on November 1, 1844. Feverish and half-conscious as she was, we conducted a thorough physical examination at that time. At her entry the only surprising symptoms we found upon her body lay in the area of the middle of the nape of her neck. There, we observed a painful lump about the size of a large marble. There were absolutely no signs of blisters or blackened marks (in the form of crosses or any other) at any place on her anatomy. She remained in an intermittent half-conscious state for the first week she was here. After regaining consciousness she began to gather all her faculties of mind and body. Albeit restless, Sarah seemed to sleep quietly throughout the first night here. I do not think you need worry further about a recurrence of her symptoms.

You have a wonderful and brave little girl of intelligence and cheer now restored to you. I feel I must counsel you, Captain Pardee, that a child is so very perishable that we may not always scientifically determine the vagaries of physical or mental assault upon them. Our best advice on that account is to be thankful and joyful to God who is the health of us all. Some unknown force in the climate of real or imagined worlds can at the best of times be hurtful to grownups as well as children. Give thanks unto the Lord of all things.

If you have need of answer to further questions, I am, Sir, at your service.

Respy,

Jerome Grosser, MD

Chief Physician

Childhood Discomforts

FOUR

Something greater than mere chance brought my rescue from Reverend Miller in the persons of Maggie and Caty Fox. The Fox sisters were country girls. My family and theirs would not have met but for their presence on Mount Bowdoin.

Surely, gratitude for my safe return prompted Father and Mother to permit our liaison, for theirs was an unfortunate family. Maggie and Caty’s father, John Fox, couldn’t resist the taste for alcohol that had cost him job after job until they settled in what was little more than a deserted cabin in Hydesville, New York. His wife, Ruth, had learned a certain cunning from years of snarling at the wolf just outside her door, and she hated the humiliating Hydesville cabin which she sensed would be their tomb. When she received the letter of appreciation from the well-to-do Pardees, she encouraged the friendship with her daughters that lasted more than five years.

Dear Sarah:

Hello! Caty and me are writing this letter to let you know we hope you are feeling better now. Your mother is very nice.

Do not feel bad about being scared because so were we! It is too bad that Dr. Miller’s plans did not work out. God’s will be done. Leah says the MILLENIUM was a poor idea anyway.

Anyway, we are back in school which is not much fun. Send us a message to let us know about your health.

We are.

Your friends,

Maggie and Caty Fox

In 1846, mother enrolled me in the Charles Street School in Newburyport, Massachusetts. My teacher, Miss Abigail Perkins, a dour, long-faced New England lady with a square lace bib over her bodice, sent home letters which reveal that, at least at the beginning, she liked me. She complimented my sweet expression and aristocratic carriage and said that I was quick to learn. In May of 1847, the first of her school reports commented about my extreme shyness, yet didn’t consider it an incorrigible fault.

Maggie Fox became my friend by correspondence. Although she was five years older than me, her letters were as crude and as misspelled as my own grammar school efforts. In the first year, Miss Perkins must have helped spell and punctuate my notes but as time passed she came to object to my continued relationship with Maggie Fox. Soon she also grew impatient with my bashfulness.

When the newspaper headlines bawled that Maggie Fox communicated with ghosts, it surprised my teacher not at all.

ROCHESTER NEW YORK DEMOCRAT

April 19, 1848

Spirits Invade Hydesville

Since March 31, 1848, strange occurrences have repeatedly upset the citizenry of nearby Hydesville. It seems that the house inhabited by Mr. John D. Fox and his family since December last has become an object of the Spirit world. As incredible as that may seem, this reporter nevertheless went out there to investigate the matter for loyal DEMOCRAT readers. The entire scene has left that same reporter with a boding, creepy feeling.

Hundreds of persons from all over the state have gathered there to experience for themselves the eerie rapping which begins each night just at sundown. Primary communicants in this spirit contact are the two Fox girls, Margaretta and Catherine. Apparently they were not the first to hear the spirit rappers but have been the first to achieve answers to questions put by mortal lips. While this reporter is convinced Mrs. Margaret Fox, mother of the haunted young ladies, is a fine and respectable Christian parent, it is true that her family has a history of strange goings on. Mrs. Fox’s maternal grandmother was reputedly a clairvoyant and a Swedenborgian healer and her sister Elizabeth Higgs was frequently the hostess to strangely interpreted dreams. In this case, it is her older daughter, Margaretta, called Maggie, who seems to be the most powerfully allied to possible demons. Although she and Catherine, familiarly known as Caty, both have the power, Maggie is quite obviously preferred by the spirits.

Popular accounts claim the rapping noises to spring from the soul of a traveling peddler they believed to have been murdered on the premises some years ago.

A committee of neighbors from farms around the Fox place have set about to investigate the affair and gather depositions from any who might know of the mystery. Mr. Robert Plumley, a neighbor and ear witness to the rapping, has signed the following statement about the cause of the nightly rapping sounds. His evidence is substantially the same as of others who have testified:

Plumley’s Testimony

"When she told us what she wanted us to go over there for, I laughed at her and ridiculed the idea that there was anything mysterious in it. I told her it was all nonsense and that it could easily be accounted for.

"This was about nine o’clock in the evening. There were some twelve or fourteen persons there when I arrived. Some were so frightened that they did not want to go into the room. I went into the room and sat down on the bed. Mr. Fox asked questions and I distinctly heard the rapping, which they had spoken of and felt the jar when the sound was produced.

"Mrs. Fox then asked if it would