The Salem seer, reminiscences of Charles H. Foster

Preface

Charles H. Foster was undoubtedly the most gifted and remarkable Spiritual Medium since Emanuel Swedenborg. Since the death of Mr. Foster, I have been frequently importuned by his friends, and by many prominent Spiritualists, to give my experiences while with him. Having been associated with him for a number of years, I had the privilege, and took advantage of thoroughly testing his peculiar gifts. A prominent New York artist called on me recently, and said that he considered it my duty to give a thorough and complete account of the manifestations which I, together with friends and acquaintances, had witnessed through Mr. Foster's mediumship.- . ; -

I have rather reluctantly consented, and give in this volume a plain statement of facts and descriptions of many seances held in different parts of the world, thinking that this record may be of service to investigators of these phenomena, in the future. I sincerely hope that this book will stimulate practical and scientific men to such investigations.

GEORCE C. BARTLETT.

THE SALEM SEER.

Chapter I

I met Charles H. Foster, the famous Spiritual Medium, in 1870, while spending an evening with a poetess, in New York City, who, w T hile suffering from extreme poverty when living in New Orleans, wrote the following

verses :

A nameless joy I do begin to find, In being as I am, thus lone and poor— I never felt so far from false mankind, I never drew so near my God before !

Oh, what to me are closed, unfriendly hands ? And what care I for cold, averted faces !

One sometimes gathers gold from miry sands, And violets oft bloom in darksome places.

Mr. Foster appeared to be a jovial man of the world. The poetess was an enthusiastic spiritualist, and had spoken to me many times of " Charlie " Foster, as she called him, urging me to call on him and investigate spiritual phenomena, believing I would be more fully convinced (as she had been through Spiritualism) of an after life. No doubt, principally on the lady's account, Mr. Foster gave me a pressing invitation to call and see him as a friend, that he would not regard my visit professionally, but would gladly give me a seance free of charge. The following week, two gentlemen from the South — strangers to me — a New York friend, and myself, sat around his table, and for the first time in our experience investigated the supposed phenomena of spiritual manifestations, as given through a medium. The seance was a wonderful success. We were astonished and mystified beyond expression. Long after the others had left, Mr. Foster and I were talking over what seemed to me the most marvelous power I had ever witnessed. I said to him, "If this is true, you can entirely revolutionize the world, and — make a fortune. " He replied that he had made some money, but that it went as fast as it came ; that he was not a business man, did not understand how to advertise, and, as regarded revolutionizing the world, that I had yet to find out how unpopular mediums were, and what great opposition there was to Spiritualism.

His price for a seance at that time was two dollars for each person. I advised him to advance the price at once to five dollars, and to sit for those who were poor and in trouble free. We gradually became friends, and I took quite an interest in his business, as he seemed willing to follow many of my suggestions. I proposed that he should advertise in the New York Herald. He agreed, and asked me to insert the advertisement. I shall not soon forget my visit to the Herald office. I told the clerk under what head to place the advertisement. He seemed surprised, and said he could only insert it in what he probably would not call disreputable columns, but which seemed so to me. At the office door I met Mr. Stenhouse, who was one of the writers on the Herald at that time. I told him of my failure in attempting to insert an advertisement of Mr. Foster in a respectable part of the

Herald. He said, ''Come with me, and I will introduce you to the editor, Mr. Donnelly. There must be some mistake. " Donnelly treated me with less courtesy than the clerk, and intimated that he was surprised that I should associate myself with Spiritualism, or spiritualistic mediums. We had an animated conversation, which called to my memory what Mr. Foster had previously told me, that I did not realize the opposition to Spiritualism. I finally worded the advertisement so that it was accepted under " Amusements/' and from that day until Mr. Foster's death, he had more business than he could attend to.

That evening I called on Mr. Foster, and told him my experience at the Herald office. I also told him that if I found his manifestations genuine, and if there were no fraud nor deception connected with them, that I was positive I could induce the entire press of the country to acknowledge the genuineness of his demonstration of the phenomena. He thought it would be impossible. However, I went to work in earnest, calling usually upon the editors, offering them free seances, and allowing them to bring any one they chose with them. I was usually treated politely, but with suspicion. At first they were inclined to sneer, but I had two strong points in my favor — I was honest and thoroughly in earnest, and in time was successful. In 1873, I published quite a lengthy pamphlet, called, " Voices from the Press : All about Charles H. Foster, the Wonderful Medium. " It was sold by Brentano of Union Square. I quote a few lines from the introduction :

While making an extended tour through the principal cities of the United States with Mr. Foster, I made it my especial business to invite the editors of the principal newspapers and journals to investigate the phenomena,as they occurred in Mr. Foster's presence— having confidence in the fairness and justice of the editorial corps throughout the country, and believing that they would give truthful accounts of their experiences during the seances.

In a short time my business made it necessary for me to visit eleven of our largest cities, and I proposed that Mr. Foster should go with me, and give seances in each city; that I would attend to the press, and do the advertising. We did not at that time make any effort with the press of New York, intending to do so later. Quite extensive articles, however, did appear in the New York Day-Book, New York Sunday Era, and especially in Brick Pomeroy's Democrat, from Mr. Pomeroy's pen.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia, the first city which we visited, we called on Col. Forney, editor of the Philadelphia Press, who knew Foster, and was interested in Spiritualism, Mrs. Forney being a thorough believer. We invited the Colonel to a seance at the Continental Hotel, with the request that he should write for the Press what he there witnessed. He declined the invitation, and did not seem at all anxious to write an article on Spiritualism. He spoke as though he were deeply interested in the subject, but did not seem anxious that the public should know it. We then requested him to send a capable man from his paper. He finally consented, saying he would send the city editor, remarking that he was a thorough skeptic, and a sarcastic writer, and he thought probably that he would do us more harm than good. We replied that he was just the kind of a man we wished him to send ; all we desired of him was to write exactly what transpired , and his impressions of the seance. An appointment was made for four o'clock the next day. The gentleman was

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promptly on hand. Mr. Foster was in especiallygood form, and gave a very remarkable seance. As usual, the next morning about nine o'clock, I asked at the news-stands for the principal Philadelphia papers, and found all of them with the exception of the Press. They said they were entirely sold out. I stepped across the street to the Girard House news-stand, and inquired for the Press. "All sold." I asked if it were not unusual to be entirely sold out at that time. They replied that it was, but that the paper contained an article on Foster and Spiritualism, which had caused the unusual sale. Having inquired at several other news-stands with the same report, "All sold," I went to the office of the Press, and asked for the morning paper. The same reply came, "All sold." I finally succeeded in finding the writer of the article, and he procured a single copy for me. He remarked that they had received many orders which they could not supply. He called upon us in the evening, stating that there had been so many inquiries for the paper during the day, that they had concluded to republish the article in the weekly edition, and that if we wished a few extra copies we had better leave our order at once. The following is a part of his account of the seance which took place at the Continental Hotel, on the last day of March, 1873 :

"Well, sir" (with the usual brusquerie of the journalist, who has no time to lose in conventionalities, for the paper must go to press at a certain time)— "well, sir, let me grasp the situation at once, and I confess candidly that I have not even a scintilla of doubt as to the falsity of Spiritualism and its varied forms and phases of

HUMBUG AND JUGGLERY,

contrived and carried out for the purpose of entrapping the simpleminded, credulous ones who are always willing to prove in their own

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persons the truth of ' the fools are not all dead yet. ' First, who are you, for I confess never to have heard of C. H. Foster? "

The gentleman smiled meaningly in answer to the first part of the abrupt address of the journalist, and his smile passed into a quiet laugh, as if at the ignorance of the speaker as to who he, Mr. Foster, was. Indeed, his remark followed the laugh ; turning to his friend, he said, ''I have not heard such charming naivete for many a long day. It is quite refreshing to be spoken to in this way."

Passing by the by -plays and spicy sparring which always arise between a skeptic and a believer on almost any subject, the party, now augmented to the number of five (for a stranger and also a friend of the journalist had come up in the meantime), passed up stairs to " ROOM NO. no."

The ordinary caparison of a room in a hotel, with the usual number of stands, and trunks, and chairs, etc., was noticed more for the absence of machinery, and juggler's boxes, and absurd tokens, and cards, and all the varied contrivances for imposing upon the credulity of people who usually sit at the feet of these mountebanks. We say these things were conspicuous by their absence ; still, the utter want of faith of the newspaper man was not shaken in the ability of the quiet, gentlemanly man to even guess, with any degree of accuracy, at commonplace occurrences of the past, or to foretell any more of the future than any man of ordinary judgment and a knowledge of men and things could do.

As the journalist approaches his subject more closely, he feels that his usual impersonality must be sometimes sunk as

HE RECITES HIS EXPERIENCES

for that one-half hour in that medium's room. These experiences are not simply strange, unaccountable, mysterious, or any of the words which denote the idea of things unaccounted for by natural causes ; they are simply " awful." The writer feels as though he were drifting into sacrilege in his endeavor to give or to conceive of an idea of the power of this man. When the reporter saw this man look back over long years of time and long miles of space, and down deep into the moldering dust of long-forgotten graves, and drag up to the clear . light of the present noonday sun of Philadelphia thoughts from the inmost recesses of the heart of a woman who, in life, would hardly have confessed those thoughts to herself — when he saw the name of the woman and that of the man she loved (names which the inquirer had himself almort forgotten, time and circumstance having almost completely blotted them out of memory) — when he saw those names written in

PLAIN, DISTINCT CHARACTERS, '

in letters formed of the living blood at that moment coursing through the hand of Foster — he could not refrain from yielding to the impulse to cry out in ideal pain and awe-striking fear, stagger up from the table, and walk about the room till a modified calmness came to his excited feelings. And yet these were but the mere rudiments of the "art," if it may so be called ; but it may not be so called, even though the loss of a word leaves the sentence unfinished, for it was no "art" that enabled this man to read the events of the past and its dead, the present and its living ; to tell of deeds done years ago and forgotten by their actors, of thoughts conceived of at the passing moment and unshaped even in the brain of the thinker. It was no "art" that gave this man the power to look into the heart of a woman far away and tell her secret, which she had concealed religiously for years. It was no art ; it was — but the pen of the journalist refuses to write the impious thought, when he knows that he writes about the power of a mortal such as you and I and all of us are.

Mr. Foster spoke truth when he made the remark, "Mr. , I

will reveal to you things that you would not dare publish ; they are too sacred ; they touch family, social, and heart relations too nearly even to be mentioned by the faintest allusion." And the listener paid the penalty for his skepticism and scoffing even to the uttermost farthing, such a penalty the amount of which he dare not publish.

IT IS "TOO SACRED."

The writer then proceeded to give a lengthy account of the seance. Also favorable accounts of seances were reported in the Philadelphia Bulletin and Philadelphia Evening Day, of April 4th, 1873. In fact, all the papers of Philadelphia gave extended reports, as later did many of the leading papers of the country. The following extracts from them may be of interest. The first is by a celebrated artist of New York City. The caption of the article reads, " Is There an Invisible Human Intelligence ! " He proceeds :

A gentleman accompanied the writer to have a sitting with Mr. Foster. He had twelve questions carefully inclosed in sealed envelopes; they were all numbered. Mr. Foster took them in his hand, and passed them one by one over his brow, and gave correct or pertinent answers to each and every one. During the same sitting a word of three letters appeared upon the back of Mr. Foster's hand — the letters were formed by a red discoloration of the skin. The word was one which was agreed upon by the gentleman and his wife before her death, and it was to be used as a test by the one who should die first. The word had never been mentioned to any person. During this same sitting, Mr. Foster called the names of a number of deceased persons, who, before they died, were closely related to those who were present, and, in many cases, gave an accurate description of their persons. In addition to all this, he gave numerous tests and stated many circumstances which were unknown to any person present, but which were afterwards ascertained to be true.

{Philadelphia Bulletin, April u, 1873.] Turning to me with a cheerful smile, the medium instructed me to write as many names as I chose of " spirit-friends." I wrote three, on separate papers, and folded them, and I believe they were not opened till 1 reached my own home. Immediately three distinct knocks on the table, and a rapid communication from each. Mr. Foster wrote the communications and the signatures corresponding with the names that I had written. Now I shall state a test that I did not acknowledge to him. One of the names had a middle letter that the deceased in his lifetime always ran into the last name, and persons on reading it for the first time always pronounced the two capitals in one sound. Mr. Foster wrote that signature the same way, though I had separated the letters in my paper, and he made the same mistake in pronouncing, so that for an instant my heart stood still. Another name I wrote in full, and he signed the communication with the abbreviated name I had always used in the lifetime of my friend. The mental questions were answered before I could raise my eyes; the written ones kept the medium busy for twelve minutes, when I was perfectly bewildered with the dispatches, and left the table as I would a telegraph battery after operating the President's Message for the Bulletin. Not one mistake, and all as clear as if we had been confidants for years, though I did not exchange fifty words with the medium, and walked off with my written questions folded as I dropped them from my fingers. I have no explanation to offer, no theory to suggest ; no advice, no

THE SALEM SEER.

l 5 opposition for others to try it ; but I believe that what Joiinson said applies here : ' ' What no mortal can comprehend or explain, must be the power of something more than a mortal."

[New York Day -Book, June 7, 187 j\] We came to this meeting determined to put Foster's remarkable powers to a severe trial, and prepared the test beforehand. An intimate friend of ours, every page of whose life, for at least thirty-five years, we were familiar with, consented to sit at our side at the table on this special occasion. At our request he had prepared a question to the "spirit," should he be favored with a visitation, and put the same in a sealed envelope prior to leaving his office on that day. The question was written thus — we give it verbatim, to show that Foster, even with his superhuman vision, if he depended on sight alone, could not have divined its full meaning : ' ' Can I get a communication with S. C, of S., who died at B. in 1849 ? " These words were written on a slip of paper and placed inside of an envelope, and the envelope sealed before our friend ever looked upon the seer. Our friend sought out the place of meeting, where we joined him to see the results of his test. Seated at the table, as we have already stated, sundry slips of paper were written upon, and the results were astonishing. Finally, C. drew out his envelope, and said to the seer: "Within is a communication, written before I came here. Shall I offer it?" "Certainly," said Foster, and it was laid with the rest before him. Foster took the envelope up, touched it to his forehead, and turning to C. said : "I am impressed by several spirits anxious to communicate with you. There are two or three female spirits at the back of your chair bending over you. One is — wait a moment — her name is

A y B 1 " (Foster gave the name in full of a lady friend of C.

who died in 1853), "and the other is — is — why — your wife! How young she looks ! She died — long — long ago. Let me see ; she will write it on my hand, and I will tell you the year — 1849 — yes, 1849 — was the year. She says to you " — here a communication followed, in precisely the style of phraseology Mrs. C. used with her familiars ; so very like that it was most startling. Now, we ask, what was there in the communication within the envelope to denote that "S. C." was the "wife " of the party at the table, or anybody's " wife," or even the name of a female ? There was nothing in the communication to show that " S. C." might not have been the initials of some one of the other sex. Foster described the personal appearance of " S. C." so clearly that he evidently saw something, as he stated, at the back of

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C.'s chair. What did he see ? Why did he say wife instead of sister ?

And again, how could Foster know that A y B 1 and S. C,

near friends on earth, were evidently near friends in the spirit- world, unless he really saw them, and communed with them on this occasion, as he states he did ? If he had not thus communicated with them, how could he have told the name of the one, and the relation of the other to C. ? There was much more of strange and mystical character at this seance with Foster, which the length of this article forbids our touching upon, and we simply present these facts for the mental digestion of our readers — the great public. The test we suggested for the seer was fairly applied, and his superhuman powers were evidently equal to it. We were astonished ; though, if asked what our convictions are, we cannot answer. Nor can we announce those of our friend C. He was deeply moved and amazed, but touching his opinions as to the source of Foster's knowledge, we have nothing to say. Mr. Leaman, in the article in Scribner^s touching his interview, says : ' ' Summing up the results, it may be asserted in brief that Foster told nothing of a specific nature that had not been, by written answers, first told him ; the answers of the spirit were reproductions of the written answers." Now, as we deal with facts and not theories, having no opinions to offer on the subject of Spiritualism, our investigation in that direction being simply investigations after truth, we assert that our interview with Foster proves the complete falsity of Mr. Leaman's "summing up." There was not a word written in the communication prepared and sealed before the interview, and miles away from Foster, that could have given him the slightest indication of the information he gave our friend C, excepting that " S. C. died in 1849 " ; and with what kind of eyes did he see thus much ? The communication, exactly as it was written, and its results, we have here detailed, and speculators in mental phenomena can draw their own conclusions as to how the seer found out " S. C." was the name of a lady, that the lady was the wife, over a quarter of a century ago, of one of the gentlemen present.

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Chapter II

Mr. Foster lived some time with the novelist, Bulwer, at Knebworth, England. Bulwer was much interested in Spiritualism. He once said in speaking of these phenomena, ''No man knows how they are, nor denies that they are." He studied its phenomena, and never suffered himself or others to rail at it. Yet he was not a convert to Spiritualism, as then or now understood. He had trained himself always to look at both sides of every question, so that when others attacked Spiritualism, he would guardedly defend it ; and when others enthusiastically supported it, he would attack its abuses ; so that neither side of the argument could fairly claim it.

During Foster's visits to Bulwer the latter was engaged in constructing that wonderful novel called, "A Strange Story," in which certain spiritual phenomena are discussed and illustrated in a manner as yet unsurpassed for originality and interest. Certain points in the hero of this novel were taken from the personnel 'and history of Foster, and Bulwer often alluded to the fact that Foster was the model upon which he had based his Margrave.

On several occasions Bulwer, who evidently regarded " A Strange Story " as his greatest book, would read passages from it to Foster. The two, author and medium, would sit in the library at Knebworth, side by side ; and there, after the reading, the author would become a disciple, and Foster would hold a seance.

On one occasion Bulwer advised Foster confidentially not to call himself a " spiritualist," so that the name should not excite popular prejudice against him, but to give hib "exhibitions " merely as " scientific phenomena " ; but this advice was unpalatable to Foster.

[The New York Era. ]

And now the questions naturally arise, What does this man Foster do ? And how does he do it ?

With regard to the second question with reference to the " how " — the modus operandi of the phenomena — nothing can be definitely known. Mr. Foster says unhesitatingly that they all take place through spirit agency, of which agency he is a mere instrument, and that he does not cause the phenomena any more than he could prevent them. He says candidly that the spirits come to him, and take possession of him, and communicate with him, and that all he can do is to submit to their influences, to do as he is told, and to tell others what they tell him. He certainly seems to be sincere in what he says, and resorts to no clap-trap whatever. There are no trances, no darkened rooms, no spirit faces, no music in the air, no feeling of hands and legs, etc., no charlatanism or trickery of any visible kind. He sits during a seance in a well-lighted room, beside a small table with no apparatus upon it and extremely simple ; he holds nothing in his hands, smokes a cigar, and converses on the ordinary subjects of the day at intervals. He claims that the spirits appear to him, or else whisper in his ear, and that their communications to him are all " external "—made from without — entirely independent of his own volition or mentality. It may be that all this is not true ; it may be that there is some trickery in the matter ; but, if so, from the very nature of the case, it is so skillfully done as to amount to a positive miracle of skill ; and certainly no one, as yet, has been able either to expose the trickery or to explain

the phenomena.

[The Boston Herald.]

The spirits may not have any part in the wonderful things done by Foster the " medium," but any man who sees his performances and thinks they are done by any sort of jugglery is an idiot of the most hopeless kind.

{Boston Journal of Commerce, July 12, 1873.]

Mr. Charles H. Foster, who has excited so much attention in London and New York by reason of his wonderful powers of com-

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municating with the other world, is at the Parker House, where he is holding seances. During the week several members of the press have visited him, and he has afforded every opportunity for a close investigation. His powers seem principally to be directed to the answering of written questions to the deceased. We ourselves witnessed a most remarkable exhibition of power on the occasion of our visit. A gentleman connected with the press was notified that a brother of his was present. The journalist wrote in short-hand for his brother to write his initials on Mr. Foster's arm if he were present, and Mr. Foster immediately after notified the journalist that his brother had written his initials upon his arm, and, turning up his coat-sleeve, displayed to the astonishment of all the initials in red marks upon the arm. Other equally astonishing tests were given, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Foster is capable of astounding all with the phenomena he can develop at his seances.

The following paragraph from the Philadelphia Evening Day of April 4, 1873, gives a good idea of the condition of mind which the editors and reporters were in when about to attend Mr. Foster's seances :

We girded our armor, tightened any defective links, and grasped the sword of skepticism in one hand, with our breast guarded by the shield of unbelief, and helmet crowned by the theories of anti-spiritualistic religious education, and made our way to the Continental Hotel.

We give a few quotations of this writer's report :

A PEEP AT THE FUTURE.

One gentleman wrote, " When will I go to Europe ? " on a piece of paper, folded it up, and threw it in the pile. Rapidly, without opening the paper, or even looking at it, Foster replied, "Not before 1875." The gentleman, who was apparently an Englishman, acknowledged that such was his intention.

Then the brother of the gentleman appeared, and his name and dale of death were announced. A student then asked if his sister should take a journey. In a minute the medium was greatly excited. He said the influence was upon him very strong, and meant something urgent. "She must go at once," the spirit says; "great danger menaces if she remains. Go — go — go, by all means go " — at the same time forcibly striking the table with his hanct, and much determination. The gentleman , at our request, explained that his sister had come from England , but this climate did not agree with her, and she had urged him to send her back.