The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America (5 page)

Witchcraft was, in fact, a hanging offense in East Jersey, where the general assembly declared in May of 1668 that ‘”…If any person be found to be a witch, either male of female, they shall be put to death,’ which law was reenacted verbatim in December, 1672…”(15)

This particular law did not apply to Rogers, though. He was pretending to be a sorcerer and “Sorcery is an attempt to control nature, to produce good or evil results, generally by the aid of evil spirits.”(16) From a legal perspective sorcerers were not necessarily criminals, but witches were; they made a pact with the Devil and used infernal power to destroy people, property, and the Church. It is highly unlikely that members of the Fire Club would have done that for any amount of treasure and, of course, Ransford Rogers was neither a warlock nor a sorcerer. He was a swindler.

Citizens living in rural areas like Morristown may have been more vulnerable to Rogers’ tricks, but that does not mean their urban cousins were somehow immune to supernatural charlatanism. Historian John F. Watson describes an incident that took place in Philadelphia, when “…a young man, a stranger of decent appearance from the south… gave out that he was sold to the devil! and that unless the price were raised for his redemption by the pious, he would be borne off at midday by the purchaser in person! … at the eventful day he was surrounded, and the house too, by the people, among whom were several clergymen. Prayers and pious services of worship were performed, and as the moment approached for execution, when all were on tiptoe, some expecting the verification, and several discrediting it, a murmur ran through the crowd of ‘there he comes! he [sic] comes!’ This instantly generated a general panic—all fled, from fear, or from the rush of the crowd. When their fears a little subsided, and a calmer inquisition ensued, sure enough, the young man was actually gone, money and all! I should have stated that the money was collected to pay the price; and it lay upon the table in the event of the demand!”(17)

No one in Philadelphia seems to have wondered what the devil wanted with the money or, if they did, the question wasn’t asked. Likewise, no one in Morristown seemed to think it odd when the very moral ghosts guarding the treasures of Schooley’s Mountain turned out to have greaseable palms.

In Ghosts We Trust

Rogers showed the assembly what a real wizard could do one stormy night, when he conjured up the first spirit. With thunder booming and rolling overhead and wind whistling in the eaves, the sorcerer conjured up a specter that told them how to proceed. First, it repeated warnings that members must behave with perfect correctness. They must obey Rogers in every particular and meet in November to carry out a ritual that was necessary to achieving their aims. This ritual, however, was not without its dangers and anyone who stepped outside the magic circle during the ceremony would be destroyed. This was a sensible precaution considering that Rogers was planning to set off explosives.

The day arrived and the plotters laid out an occult design where the ritual would be conducted in a field in “Solitude.” It seems to have impressed the assembly the way a crop circle might today: “…a great variety of paths—circular, elliptical, square, and serpentine—had been marked off in the buckwheat stubble within the compass of a single night. That evening, when the dupes themselves saw these fanciful paths, they were convinced that a thousand men could not have performed the task done clandestinely by Rogers and his assiduous assistants, and they unhesitatingly ascribed it to demoniac power.”(18)

The ceremony began at ten o’clock that evening and continued for five grueling hours. The men gathered at Mr. Lum’s farmhouse for prayers and alcohol, then moved into the field where they marched around and around the ritual paths in silence. Then came the explosion, the hideous groaning, and finally the secret that would make them rich.

“The spirits informed them of vast treasures which were in their possession, and which they could not resign unless the company should proceed regularly and without variance; and as fortune had discriminated them to receive the treasure, they must deliver to the spirits every man twelve pounds for the money could not be relinquished by the spirits until that sum should be delivered into their hands…Now the whole company confide [sic] in Rogers, and look up to him for protection from the raging spirits. After several ceremonies Rogers dispelled the apparitions, and they all returned from the field, wondering at the miraculous things which had happened; being fully persuaded of the existence of hobgoblins and apparitions.“(19)

Rogers clearly had a taste for the dramatic, and his exploits have appealed to dramatists. A theatrical version of the story was performed in the late eighteenth century, but the script has disappeared. Morristown historian Donald Kiddoo wrote a dramatic recital called
The Morristown Ghost
, which was performed in 1989 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the hoax, and an opera,
Ransford Rogers, A Reverberating Opera
, appeared in 1971.

After five hours of marching and kneeling in a magic circle, the men were aching but elated. Now they knew how to get the treasure and their efforts to raise the money soon turned into a kind of contest.

It’s not easy to calculate a modern value for the “mere acknowledgement”(20) the ghosts demanded but it was enough to put solid citizens in debt. The spirits also wanted it in silver or gold, which made things more difficult because the paper money circulating in New Jersey at the time was only accepted in place of precious metal at a 25% discount.(21) It was next to worthless out of state where the ghosts were planning to spend it. Demand for gold and silver created a shortage and it took all winter for some men to raise the necessary amount in that form. They borrowed at ruinous interest, mortgaged their farms, and sold cattle for a fraction of its value on expectation of the treasures to come.

Rogers was preparing to pluck his pigeons and did not stand idle. There were more meetings, longer prayers, bumpers of applejack, and spirits that rapped, thumped, “gingled” coins, groaned, and encouraged them all to persevere.

Some of Rogers’ followers could not raise the money or get it in bullion, but the ghouls were not inflexible. Men who made a sincere effort were allowed to contribute four or six pounds and paper money if silver and gold could not be had.

By March, most of the acknowledgements had been raised but Rogers had to transfer it to the spirits, so the Fire Club assembled in a swamp and left their offerings by a tree stump the ghost had chosen for that purpose. It was a fairly smooth operation, but “as one of the company was returning he missed his foothold and plunged into the mud. Angered by the incident, he resolved to go back and retrieve his money; but he found the money already gone. The spirit had been too quick for him.”(22)

After months of anticipation, the ghosts announced that they would lead the assembly to the treasures of Schooley’s Mountain on Friday, May 1st. The news was no doubt greeted with a mixture of relief and keen anticipation.

While the men’s gullibility may seem incredible today, one writer cautions against the reader feeling complacent or too confident that they would see through Rogers’ bamboozling. A local astronomer named David Young published a history of the hoax in 1850 and wrote: “It is too common a thing after a plot is discovered, for those who were not duped themselves, to think their own sagacity would have been adequate to its detection in its infancy. Let him laugh first who is conscious of no imperfection or weakness in himself.”(23) Furthermore, belief has little to do with evidence; desire is usually enough to transform wishing into believing.

Black Friday

The time must have passed with glacial speed for men who thought they were about to get rich, but the ghosts counseled patience. Shrouded figures visited the most trusted and respected members in the group, calling them from their beds and repeating the usual admonitions about secrecy and morality, exhorting them to be cheerful and have faith in Rogers. Their forbearance would be rewarded.

At last, the day arrived. James J. Flynn and Charles Huegenin describe what happened in
The Hoax of the Pedagogues
: “On April 30, 1788 [sic 1789], George Washington took the oath of office at Federal Hall, New York City, to become our first president. On the following evening forty deluded souls convened in a large prescribed circle in an open field near Morristown to await the appearance of spirits for instructions about locating alleged caches of treasure in Schooley’s Mountain. The ghosts promptly appeared at a distance removed from the circle, but it became obvious immediately that the wraiths were in an angry mood. They upbraided the elect with irregular conduct, faithlessness, and violations of secrecy. They manifested terrifying symptoms of irascibility, twisted themselves into hideous postures, and emitted frightening groans. Rogers himself feigned alarm and exercised all his necromantic skill to placate the choleric ghosts…The guardian spirits maintained that because the members of the cult had manifested wicked proclivities and animosities, they were debarred for the time being from access to the treasures. Only by recourse to a variety of incantations was Rogers finally successful in dispelling the ghostly visitants. When the elect soon dispersed, their credulity unaccountably survived, and their confidence in the Yankee schoolmaster remained unshaken.”(24)

And that is how the affair stood, with the Fire Club’s faith in their future wealth undiminished and Rogers and his accomplices enriched to a sum of between eight hundred and a thousand colonial dollars. If it had ended there, the schoolmaster probably could have delayed the payoff, maybe not indefinitely, but long enough to decamp for the Nutmeg State with a chest of swag. There’s something about having an improbable success, though, which seems to demand a second try (and a third and fourth).

Ransford Rogers had become acquainted with two young Yankee schoolmasters who, like him, were new to the area. (New England seems to have produced a lot of footloose teachers at the time. Idle hands being what they are, the two may have impersonated ghosts during the club’s séances.) In April 1789, they moved twenty miles away, but kept in touch with Rogers and at some point decided to rekindle the Fire Club. It’s said that the younger men threatened to expose Rogers, but the prospect of coin may have been all that was needed for the schoolmaster to don the star-spangled dunce cap again. That, and it had to be more interesting than teaching the alphabet to farm boys.

The two conspirators assembled a group, but Rogers was more experienced and selected likelier prospects from Morristown and surrounding areas. This second venture would be conducted much like the first, with spirits trying to dispose of a treasure, and Rogers and an accomplice acting as mediators between the ghosts and those hoping to benefit from them.

Rogers also seems to have had second thoughts about using pyrotechnics to impress his followers, preferring the simpler, safer method of “direct writing.” This is a kind of “spirit writing which is produced
directly
[by the spirits], and not by the hand of a medium or through a mechanical device such as a psychograph or planchette.”(25) Direct writing became popular seventy years later, when fraudulent Victorian mediums would replace a blank paper or slate with prepared ones containing messages or drawings from the “spirits.” Rogers presumably used stage magic and may have consulted Della Porta for techniques in the chapters on “How letters are made visible in the fire,” and “How letters rubbed with dust may be seen.”

Let Us Prey

The first meeting was probably held in the familiar surroundings of Mr. Lum’s “Solitude” farmhouse. This time, the men stood around a table where a package of paper lay open. Each one removed a sheet and handed it to Rogers, who folded it and returned it to them. Then they left the house, walking single file to an area nearby where a magic circle was drawn on the ground.

“Within this circle they paraded, when, unfolding their papers and extending them with one arm, the [sic] fell with their faces to the earth and continued in prayer, that the spirit might enter within the circle and write their directions one of their prayers. Rogers gave the word amen and prayer ended: each one folded his paper and all marched into the house.”(26)

There they inspected the papers and were astonished to discover that one of them contained a message from Beyond. A ghostly hand had written that there must be eleven men in the group and that the spirits wanted their usual fee of twelve pounds in gold or silver. This letter was saved to impress potential converts with a sample of the kind of miracles that happened around Ransford Rogers.

Rogers had not been satisfied with the first club; some members had been caught spying on the spirits as they scooped up gold (leaving them somewhat less awe-inspired) and one night someone had actually stolen the ghost’s acknowledgement! Rogers was not taking chances this time. He was determined to defraud no one except “aged, abstemious, honest, simple church members” who could be trusted.

In June 1789, Rogers draped himself in a sheet and made a late night call on one such pious prospect. He roused the startled man from his bed and explained that this was not an ordinary ghostly visitation, but something in the nature of a business proposal. The phantom explained that it was in charge of an immense treasure and was trying to transfer the wealth to a local group, but “could not relinquish it until some church members should unite with them, whose names he mentioned.”(27)

The schoolmaster had chosen well. His candidate swallowed the story like an exceptionally wide-mouthed bass and communicated the offer to those church members the ghost had named. They were enthusiastic and Rogers began holding séances again with a new, more religious, tone that appealed to these pious men. So many wanted to join, however, that the club was expanded to twenty-six members with a potential payoff of 312 pounds.