Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

MEDDLINGS WITI THE OCCULT

167

leaving himself and his wife bewildered and shivering.
Next morning the blankets and comforters were found
piled up neatly in the haymow of the barn.
The superior class of manifestations (from the point of
view of adepts in spirit philosophy) comprised spectral
apparitions of recognizable faces and forms. It has been
mentioned that Mr. Bodwell held his ground longer than
any other tenant; to his honesty and veracity, as well as
to his endurance, all Springvale testified. Bodwell told
of one night when he suddenly awoke to behold a female
figure standing near the bed. He took it to be his wife, up
to look after an ailing child; but Mrs. Bodwell was sleeping calmly beside him. He aroused her, and what she saw,
or thought she saw, shall be told in her own language, as
noted in May, 1874:
"It was the ghost of an old woman, with a wizened-up
face and a pretty heavy beard-pretty heavy for a woman.
She was an ugly looking old crone. She had on a white
nightgown, frilled round the neck. The nightgown was
long; it covered her feet. She also had on a white nightcap
which looked as if it hadn't been washed for weeks. The
old witch had her hair done up in blue curl papers. She
nodded at us three times and then vanished."
That was the sole occasion when the Bodwells saw or
thought they saw the ghost of Mrs. York. The two
Canadians never appeared to them. But Mr. Phillips
and his wife, with whom I conversed on the subject for
at. least two hours and who frankly avowed their faith in
the possibility of the return of the dead, asseverated that
on several nights they had beheld the three spectres
assembled at their bedside. One of the ghosts was the
woman described by Mrs. Bodwell. The other two were

men, both dark; a large, stout and heavy man, if heavy
is the word to apply to so imponderable a being, and a
younger and smaller companion. The big man carried
a club; the little man an open knife; and the old woman