- When it comes to ghosts, Winnipeg has no peers. In fact,
the city could be dubbed the Ectoplasm Capital of the World.
-
- Take it from Walter Meyer zu Erpen, a Victoria-based
archivist who has spent a dozen years studying Winnipeg's Hamilton collection
-- photographs from seances conducted during a 24-year period at the Elmwood
home of Dr. T.G. Hamilton.
-
- "It's the best collection of its kind in Canada
-- and I would have to say the best collection of its kind in the world,"
says Meyer zu Erpen, whose lecture on the subject drew a packed house at
the University of Manitoba last month.
-
- "I don't know of anything that compares to it. There's
been a lot of research done, but nobody documented it like the Hamiltons.
And I don't think you'll find the research in many cases has survived."
-
- Stored at the U of M, the massive collection documents
dozens of examples of table levitations, trance writing and spirits literally
showing their faces in the ectoplasm exuding from the medium, usually a
woman named Mary Ann Marshall.
-
- The research, which started in 1918, attracted the city's
elite -- doctors, lawyers, academics -- as well as international figures
of the day.
-
- Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attended
one of the seances in 1923; in a bizarre twist, Doyle died a few years
later and then "appeared" during seances in the Hamilton home
in 1932.
-
- Meyer zu Erpen says the high number of quality images,
the rigorous controls placed on the experiments and the credibility of
the people involved have erased any doubts he had when he began the research.
-
- "I started off not wanting to believe in this stuff
-- the ectoplasm. But if it was fraudulent, it would have had to be faked
-- and faked very well -- 50 different times."
-
- And, unlike ghosts visiting the living, that just doesn't
seem possible, he says.
-
- The Hamilton collection does not represent "proof"
that the human personality survives death -- "there is no proof yet,"
Meyer zu Erpen admits. But it remains, after more than half a century,
the best evidence to date, he says, and "a fantastic example"
of survival research.
-
- Shelley Sweeney, head of archives and special collections
at U of M, says other paranormal experts have also rated the Hamilton collection
the best in the world.
-
- Sweeney confesses she finds some of the images "ridiculous,"
but doesn't dismiss the research. She does note, however, that the death
and disappearance of so many young men in the trenches during the First
World War left distraught relatives seeking answers from the spirit world.
-
- The unexpected high turnout for last month's lecture
on the Hamilton collection -- it had to be moved at the last minute to
a larger theatre -- suggests people today are in a similar state, she says.
-
- "In times of uncertainty, there is a search to know
what is beyond."
-
- Northern, southern ghosts
-
- Like Meyer zu Erpen (and yours truly), Sweeney is a West
Coast native who is also struck by Winnipeg's "thing" with ghosts
and haunted landmarks. She ascribes it, in part, to the continuity of old
families and "substantial older buildings."
-
- "There is so much ghost real-estate here,"
she laughs.
-
- But it goes beyond the city and "haunted" old
buildings like the Fort Garry Hotel and the former downtown Masonic Temple.
-
- Go to a summer backyard party in Manitoba and chances
are you'll start hearing about ghostly encounters.
-
- What I noticed this year, though, is the marked difference
between southern and northern Manitobans when it comes to the spirit world.
-
- Many southerners believe in ghosts, and some claim they've
encountered the real thing. With wide eyes and deadly pauses they describe
the first sightings, the fear and denial that follow, the successive sightings
that leave no room for doubt -- and finally, in some cases, the much-needed
change of address.
-
- Even if we're talking about something less than a full-blown
haunted house, the general feeling is one of "very scary stuff."
-
- Northerners are different.
-
- A woman from Shamattawa, for instance, told me the staff
at the nursing station there have fairly regular sightings, one of the
most frequent being a young boy who appears in the X-ray room.
-
- The assumption is that he died there at some point, and
his spirit has yet to move on.
-
- "But they're not bad," the woman said in the
softest of voices, of ghosts in general.
-
- I have to admit, I like the northern way better.
-
-
- A Curse That Made History
-
- What Halloween is complete without the story of a wicked
curse?
-
- One of the great curses in history was uttered by a Quaker
woman named Catherine Ring in a New York City courtroom in 1800.
-
- New York's first big murder case had ended with the jury
acquitting defendant Levi Weeks, the young nephew of a prosperous builder.
Weeks was accused of strangling Mrs. Ring's cousin, the "pert and
pretty" 22-year-old Elma Sands, and then dumping her body down an
unused well in Greenwich Village.
-
- Weeks' wealthy family hired the first legal "dream
team" in American history. Along with a future Supreme Court justice,
the defence included two of the republic's Founding Fathers: Aaron Burr,
who later that year would become vice-president under Thomas Jefferson,
and Alexander Hamilton, a former Secretary of Treasury and once the most
powerful Federalist in the U.S. after George Washington.
-
- When the not-guilty verdict came down, the pious Mrs.
Ring shocked all present by turning to Hamilton and saying:
-
- "If thee dies a natural death, then there is no
justice in heaven."
-
- Deadly duel
-
- Four years later, in what Henry Adams later called "the
most dramatic moment in the early politics of the Union," Burr and
Hamilton were rowed across the Hudson River to New Jersey and exchanged
pistol shots at 10 paces. The duel was fought over a letter to the editor
in which a third party claimed Hamilton considered Burr "despicable."
-
- Hamilton was struck on his right side and died the next
day. Burr was denounced as a murderer (duels were illegal, and Hamilton
had not even attempted to hit his opponent) and eventually fled the east
to live out the rest of his days bitter and disgraced.
-
- Some said Mrs. Ring's curse went beyond the two Founding
Fathers, who had expertly created "room for doubt" in every piece
of testimony heard at the trial.
-
- Chief Justice John Lansing, who had all but told the
jury they could not convict on the evidence presented, a few years later
was walking to catch the night boat to Albany and vanished into thin air.
-
- Richard Croucher, a witness with a history of hostility
toward the victim, returned to his native England and was soon thereafter
hanged for a "heinous" crime.
-
- And Levi Weeks, Elma Sands' lover and accused killer,
was acquitted but convicted in the court of public opinion.
-
- Shamed into leaving the Big Apple, he was never heard
from again.
-
- Crazy as it sounds, the story is reported as sober fact
by one of the most reliable popular crime historians of the 1930s, Russel
Crouse, in his "high crime" collection, Murder Won't Out.
-
- John Gleeson is the editor of the Winnipeg Sun.
|
