The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America (22 page)

NOTES

Introduction

1. Back cover of R. DeWitt Miller,
Impossible –Yet it Happened!
(New York: Ace Books 1947).

2. Charles Fort,
The Complete Books of Charles Fort
(New York: Dover Publications Inc. 1974), 1033.

3. Ibid., 210.

4. Ibid., 901.

5. Taken from the front cover of R. DeWitt Miller,
Impossible –Yet it Happened!
(New York: Ace Books 1947).

6. “Mystery of the Opera Star: Did Someone Try to Kill Her?” T
he Sun
, Baltimore, 24 July 1951.

Chapter 1: The Devil’s Militia

1. Marilynne K. Roach,
The Salem Witch Trials
(New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002), XLIV.

2. The Complete Poetical Works of Whittier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894), 53.

3. Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, March 9, 1818.

4. Cotton Mather,
Magnalia Christi Americana
(Hartford: Silas Andrus, 1820), 621.

5. Roach, 195.

6. Mather, 621.

7. “The Cocheco Massacre” <
http://www.dover.lib.nh.us/DoverHistory/cocheco.htm
>.

8. Mather, 621.

9. Mary Brooks, “Through Old Gloucester: A Walking Tour Guide.”

10. Mather, 622.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 622-623.

16. Ibid., 623.

17. Ibid., 622.

18. Marshall W.S. Swan, “The Bedevilment of Cape Ann (1692)” (Essex Institute Historical Collections Vol. 117, July 1981. No 3), 164.

19. John J. Babson,
History of the Town of Gloucester Cape Ann
(Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1972), 207.

20. James R. Pringle,
History of Gloucester
(The City of Gloucester Archives Committee Ten Pound Island Book, 1997), 32.

21. Richard Weisman,
Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th
century Massachusetts
(Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984) 125.

22. Catherina Finney-MacDougal,
The Babson Genealogy 1637-1977
(Watertown: Eaton Press, 1978), 11.

23. Roach, 189.

24. Thomas Babson, “Riverdale Story” (1950), 78.

25. Roach, 266-269.

26. Cotton Mather, 623.

27. Ibid.

28. Dr. J. Allen Hynek,
The Hynek UFO Report
(New York: Dell 1977), 214.

29. Michele Carlton, “Kelly Green Men,”
Kentucky New Era
, 30 December 2002.

30. John Green,
Sasquatch: The Ape Among Us
(Blaine: Hancock House, 1981), 92.

31. Ibid., 94.

32. Fred Beck, as told to his son, Ronald A. Beck,” I FOUGHT THE APEMEN OF MOUNT ST. HELENS, WA
.,” (
1967) <
http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/classics/beck.htm
>.

33. Ibid.

34. Green, 91.

35. Letter from Mary H. Sibbalds to the author, 6 February 2003.

Chapter 2: Bribing the Dead

1. David Young,
The Wonderful History of the Morristown Ghost
(Brooklyn: Printed and Published by James K. Magie, 1850), 4.
Magie may have known the story of Ransford Rogers before publishing the story. He was born in Morris County, New Jersey, in 1827 and lived there till he was 14. A short biography of him appears in “Old Settlers of Fulton County, Illinois” from the Atlas Map of Fulton County, Illinois, dated 1871 and published by Andreas, Lyter, and Co., Davenport, Iowa. The excerpt is available online at:
<
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilfulton/1871FultonAtlas/OldSettlers4Text.htm
>.

2. James J. Flynn and Charles Huegenin, “The Hoax of the Pedagogues” (Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, October 1958), 241.

3. David Young, 3.

4. Flynn and Huegenin, 243.

5. James Truslow Adams,
Provincial Society, 1690-1763
(New York: Macmillan, 1927), 75.

6. Flynn and Huegenin, 246.

7. Richardson Wright,
Grandfather was Queer
(Philadelphia, New York: Lippincott & Company, 1939), 56.

8. Flynn and Huegenin, 245.

9. E-mail from Ben Robinson to author, 5 March 2003.

10. Giambattists Della Porta,
Natural, Magick
(New York: Basic Books, 1957).

11. Flynn and Huegenin, 262.

12. Lewis Spence,
The Encyclopedia of the Occult
(London: Bracken Books London, 1994) 18.

13. Michael E. Bell,
Food for the Dead: on the trail of New England’s Vampires
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001), 258-260.

14.
Pennsylvania Gazette
, October 22, 1730.

15. “The New Jersey Law Journal, Vol XVII,” (Plainfield: New Jersey Law Journal Publishing Company, 1894), 169-172.

16. Lewis Spence, 471.

17. John F. Watson,
Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Vol. I
(Philadelphia: Lippincott & Company, 1870), 270-271.

18. Flynn and Huegenin, 247-248.

19. David Young, 9-10.

20. Ibid., 12.

21. Donald B. Kiddoo, “Ransford Rogers The Morristown Ghost of 1788/89” (Whippany: published by the author, 1989), 10.

22. Ibid.

23. David Young, 8.

24. Flynn and Huegenin, 251.

25. Lewis Spence, 125.

26. David Young, 17.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 21.

29. Donald B. Kiddoo, 18-19.

30. Carl Sifakis,
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
(New York: Facts on File, 1982), 311.

31. David Young, 22.

32. Flynn and Huegenin, 263.

33. Donald B. Kiddoo, 22.

34. David Young, 24.

35. I. Daniel Rupp,
History of the Counties of Berks and Lebanon
(Spartanburg: The Reprint Company, 1984 [originally published 1844]), 355.

36. Ibid., 356.

37. Donald B. Kiddoo, 18.

38. Flynn and Huegenin, 247.

39. Ibid., 264.

Chapter 3: The God Machine

1. Slater Brown,
The Heyday of Spiritualism
(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1970), 167.

2. Maurice A. Canney,
An Encyclopedia of Religions
(Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1970), 370.

3. The Foxes were Methodists, a denomination founded by John Wesley, whose family experienced poltergeist phenomena when he was a child.

4. Alan Delgado,
Victorian Entertainment
(New York: American Heritage Press, 1971), 15.

5. Andrew V. Rapoza, “Touched by the ‘Invisibles’’ from
No Race of Imitators: Lynn and her People
– an anthology, edited by Elizabeth Hope Cushing, 69.

6. Emma Hardinge,
Modern American Spiritualism
(self-published, 1870), 220.

7. Slater Brown, 170.

8. <
http://genweb.net/~books/ma/lynn1/lynn.shtml
>
. Bostonians have a saying: “Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin, you never come out the way you went in!”

9. The Hutchinson Family Singers became very popular and their descendants still perform programs of 19th-century music.

10. It was probably Mrs. Newton; though Spear’s wife, Betsey, and Semantha Mettler have also been mentioned. Nandor Fodor,
Encyclopedia of Psychic Science
(New York: University Books, 1966), 354-355.

11. Slater Brown, 171.

12.<
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/thomasstarrking.html
>.

13. Slater Brown, 172.

14. Ibid.

15. Slater Brown, 173.

16. Emma Hardinge, 221.

17. Andrew V Rapoza, 71.

18. Emma Hardinge, 223.

19. Emma Hardinge, 223–7.

Chapter 4: The President’s Vampire

1. Charles Fort,
The Complete Books of Charles Fort
(New York: Dover, 1974), 881.

2. “A Human Vampire and a Murderer,”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, 4 Nov. 1892.

3. “The NIJ [National Institute of Justice] defines serial killing as ‘a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone. The crimes may occur over a period of time ranging from hours to years.’” Michael Newton,
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
(New York: Checkmark Books, 2000), 205.

4. Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni, “Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief,”
The American Journal of Physical Anthropology
No.94 (1994).

5. Joseph Citro,
Passing Strange
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996-97), 220-230.

6. Dr. Richard Von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis
(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965), 157.

7. The Portuguese don’t have a tradition of vampires as reanimated corpses feeding on the living. In Portugal they are blood-sucking female witches called
bruxsa
that take the form of birds and attack travelers and their own children. Matthew Bunson,
The Vampire Encyclopedia
(New York, Crown, 1993), 34.

8. President Andrew Johnson’s commutation of James Brown’s death sentence. T-967, RG59, Roll 3, October 8, 1857-August 13, 1867. National Archive, NY.