From "New York Evening Telegraph", February 18, 1870
Cincinnati was known throughout the 1800s and early 1900s as a stronghold of Spiritualism, the belief that dead folk are able to communicate with the living through the agency of a medium, as reported by Emma Hardinge in her 1870 book, Modern American Spiritualism:
“Since the period we have been writing of, spiritual manifestations have steadily gained and maintained a foothold in Cincinnati, which justly entitles it to take rank as one of the great fortresses of the cause. Vast numbers of the most respected and respectable inhabitants of the city have become openly avowed partisans of its truths, and contributed most liberally of their influence, money, hospitality, and advocacy, for its promotion.”
Here are a few anecdotes illuminating Spiritualist activity in the Queen City.
The Amazing Claflin Sisters
The Claflin Sisters, Tennessee and Victoria, ended up in Cincinnati before 1860 because their parents, a pair of incorrigible grifters, were chased out of Homer, Ohio, after fleecing half the populace there. Mom and Dad announced that their teenage daughters were “Wonderful Children, Second-Sight Seers And Astrologists.” Setting up shop in Cincinnati as clairvoyants, the sisters offered fortune-telling, magnetic healing and séances. They also sold “Magnetic Life Elixir” at two dollars the bottle. From such inauspicious beginnings the Claflin sisters gained international notoriety. Tennessee became the mistress of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in the country, and Victoria made history as the first woman to run for President of the United States. After a few more remunerative affairs and marriages, they ended their days among the British nobility.
Spiritual Divorce
As Spiritualism gained adherents in Cincinnati, it regularly emerged as a factor in divorce cases, particularly among the higher strata of society. Such was the case with General Hal Young, an officer in the Ohio National Guard, and his wife, the former Helen Edgerton. Mrs. Young sued for divorce in 1882, based on abundant evidence of General Young’s infidelities. He countersued, claiming that she, in fact, was the adulteress, because she attended Spiritualist séances with Cincinnati businessman Frank Foster. The General alleged that, in the dimly lit parlor, “she allowed Foster to take all manner of improper liberties with her.” Foster took offense and thrashed Young with a horsewhip one day on Fourth Street. Mrs. Young prevailed in court, though the General defaulted on the alimony he owed her.
The Ouija Fad
After 1890, the preeminent supernatural fad in Cincinnati was the Ouija board. The Catholic Telegraph claimed Ouija users were on the road to insanity and damnation. At least the insanity was documented. In 1894, a whole community just outside Harrison, Ohio went on a treasure-hunting rampage, when an apparently persuasive “prominent gentleman” of the area consulted his brand-new Ouija board and determined that substantial treasure was buried nearby in Indiana. Fifty local men marched out and dug up a seven-acre cornfield without the slightest success. Foremost among Ouija’s detractors, surprisingly, were Cincinnati’s Spiritualist churches. After endeavoring to gain respectability for their beliefs, the thought that their religion could be reduced to a parlor game was infuriating.
Catching A Ghost
From "Illustrated Police News", March 29, 1890
Aaron Willis had spent some years eking out a pitiful living as a cobbler down at the foot of Broadway in Cincinnati. One day he decided that the realms beyond the veil of death offered a better salary, and he gave up cobbling for Spiritualism, charging a dollar a head for his séances and attracting a clientele as far away as the deep South. One day in 1890, a party of ladies from Mississippi called for his services and joined an audience totaling some 35 adherents. As Willis dimmed the lights, some curtains parted and a white shape drifted into the room. Mrs. Nancy Pledge, one of the Dixie delegation, leaped onto the spirit’s back as it passed and shouted, “It’s a real live man, and a strong one, too!” Her outburst and the precipitous flight of the “spirit” back through the curtains unleashed pandemonium and threats of violence against Mrs. Pledge. The next day, seer Willis, despite dozens of witnesses, insisted that the Southern lady had grasped nothing but ectoplasm.
Magnetic Machine
In 1897, Cincinnatian Fred Lamparth wanted to buy a saloon. He consulted a “Mrs. Wendel,” a Spiritualist clairvoyant on Ninth Street, for advice. Mrs. Wendel told him that she knew where a large amount of treasure was buried in the hills of Kentucky. The treasure was said to be buried on the farm of a widow but, years ago, two men went to seek the hidden gold and, upon opening the earth, were both killed when fire burst from the pit. Mrs. Wendel offered to send away to England for a magnetic machine to safely uncover this gold, if only Lamparth would invest $150. Amazingly, although Mrs. Wendel caused Lamparth’s money to disappear, she was unable to produce the treasure-hunting machine.
Countess von Blucher
Claiming to be a world-renowned Spiritualist medium, a woman who identified herself as the Countess Von Blucher announced her arrival in the Queen City with an advertisement in the Cincinnati Post. The Cincinnati “Countess” (later revealed as one Helen Krolage, nee Hildebrandt) boasted Spiritual powers to advise anyone on business or love. The phony countess rocketed to the front page in 1901 with the revelation that she was actually a procuress, luring girls as young as 15 to ruin in the brothels near her shady fortune-telling operation on Ninth Street. If a pretty girl sought her services as a clairvoyant, the countess drugged her and sold her to conniving madams. After posting bail, the countess skipped town, first to New Orleans and then to New York, where she was recaptured in Brooklyn. She never served time for her crimes.
Temptations of the Flesh
Growing up in Cincinnati, Jesse Charles Fremont Grumbine was a deeply thoughtful lad. Ordained as a minister of the Universalist church, he resigned to join the Unitarians and later the Spiritualists. He claimed to be guided by the late poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who mentored him from beyond the grave. In 1901, the Reverend Grumbine attracted scandalous national attention when it was revealed that he, although married with two young children, had been intimately involved with an 18-year-old woman from his congregation. He wrote reams of lascivious letters describing the highlights of her nubile body, which fell into the hands of her mother. Mom accused Grumbine of employing hypnotism and black magic to seduce her daughter. After a flurry of lawsuits and countersuits, Grumbine retreated to the West Coast and relative obscurity and his love interest moved back into her mother’s house.
From "Cincinnati Post", January 11, 1898
Embarrassing Photograph
The Cincinnati Post waged a long campaign against Spiritualists in general and their clairvoyant hangers-on in particular. After a couple dozen exposés, the Post had to send its reporters under fake names to get admission into séances. Such was the case in 1898, when the Post sent two reporters, Wilson R. Tenney and Helen West, who claimed they were brother and sister named Anderson, into the parlor of Emily Drees. Helen West hid a camera in her voluminous dress and Tenney carried a flash pistol. As 27 people gathered in the room, the lights were extinguished and various spirits made their appearance. Just as Madame Drees introduced a ghost she claimed was Tenney’s late grandfather, the reporter fired off the flash pistol, exposing the film in his confederate’s camera. The Post published a drawing the next day, taken from the photograph clearly showing Madame Drees, and not a departed grandfather, speaking into a “spirit trumpet.” Madame Drees was not amused.
The Garrett-Woodruff Feud
Mrs. Mary Garrett, alias Mrs. Mary Sharron, ran séances out of a house on West Ninth Street, channeling messages from deceased husbands and relatives to women of means. Her Spiritualist congregation was rattled in 1903 when her assistant and lodger, one Oscar Woodruff, was arrested for stealing from his day job at a downtown haberdashery. Mrs. Garrett ratted him out and Oscar repaid her treachery by exposing her Spiritualist tricks including her techniques for faking spirit photography, slate writing, “sealed” envelopes and trumpet speaking. The Cincinnati newspapers blasted her nefarious methods all over the front pages, but she was still in business almost a decade later.
Spirit Children
Lewis Kraft was the last person you might expect to believe in spirits and Spiritualism. He was a hard-nosed, no-nonsense politician when George B. “Boss” Cox owned Cincinnati and was Cox’s hand-picked successor as captain of the old Eighteenth Ward. But Kraft was addicted to Spiritualist mediums, visiting veiled ladies with crystal balls so frequently that ambitious politicians bribed Kraft’s favorite clairvoyants to influence his political decisions. When his favorite medium, one Jessie Clinger, died, Kraft sought solace with another Spiritualist named Plymouth Weeks. Madame Weeks convinced Kraft that he had fathered two children with the late Miss Clinger via “spiritual communion” and produced two infant boys as evidence. Kraft bought the scheme completely, which led to quite a stir in 1914 when he died and left much of his estate to his “spirit children.” Kraft’s widow sued, but the court upheld the will regardless of the alleged spiritual origin of the beneficiaries.
Elementary, Sir Arthur
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited the Queen City in 1923, he said not a word about his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. On this tour, Doyle presented himself as a missionary for Spiritualism and secured the Emery Theater for a lecture on “The Promise of Immortality.” He was particularly animated about “spirit photographs” which purported to illustrate ghosts who appeared during séances. Doyle announced that he included Cincinnati on his tour so he could interview Mrs. Laura Pruden, a Price Hill medium he had heard about back in England. Few shared Doyle’s belief in her powers. Curiously, Mrs. Pruden’s son, Albert C. Carter, would later go on to help create the Magic 8-Ball novelty toy, basing his prototype on one of his mother’s fortune-telling gadgets.
Houdini Harrumphs
Harry Houdini came to Cincinnati in 1925 carrying a check for $5,000, in search of an authentic spirit medium, someone who could uncontrovertibly demonstrate true communication with the spirit of a person who had died. Lois and George McGehean claimed they had the goods, receiving via table-tapping thousands of words daily from Mrs. McGehan’s departed mother. With the great magician observing, the McGehans translated a barrage of furniture knocks as a kindly note from “Mother.” Houdini asked if he might give it a try and, generating similar taps, produced a brief and dismissive note, allegedly from Abraham Lincoln. He left town, taking his $5,000 check with him.
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