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THE SEERESS OF PREVORST
By Scaife, Hazel Lewis, 1872-1939
MODERN spiritism, as every student
of that fascinating if elusive subject
is aware, dates from the closing years of the
first half of the nineteenth century. But the
celebrated Fox sisters, whose revelations at
that time served to crystallize into an organized
religious system the idea of the possibility
of communication between this world and
the world beyond, were by no means the first
of spiritistic mediums. Long before their
day there were those who professed to have
cognizance of things unseen and to act as
intermediaries between the living and the
dead; and although lost to sight amid the
throng of latter-day claimants to similar
powers, the achievements of some of these
early adventurers into the unknown have not
been surpassed by the best performances of
the Fox girls and their long line of successors.
Especially is this true of the mediumship
of a young German woman, Frederica Hauffe,
who in the course of her short, pitiful, and
tragic career is credited with having displayed
more varied and picturesque supernatural
gifts than the most renowned wonder-worker
of to-day. Like many modern mediums she
was of humble origin, her birthplace being a
forester's hut in the Wiirtemberg mountain
village of Prevorst; and here, among wood-
cutters and charcoal-burners, she passed the
first years of her life. Even while still a child
she seems to have attracted wide-spread
attention on account of certain peculiarities
of temperament and conduct. It was noticed
that though naturally gay and playful she
occasionally assumed a strangely intent and
serious manner; that in her happiest moments
she was subject to unaccountable fits of shud-
dering and shivering; and that she seemed
keenly alive not merely to the sights and
sounds of every-day life but to influences
unfelt by those about her. This last trait re-
ceived a sudden and unexpected development
when, at the age of twelve or thirteen, she was
sent to the neighboring town of Lowenstein
to be educated under the care of her grand-
parents, a worthy couple named Schmidgall.
Grandfather Schmidgall was an exceed-
ingly superstitious old man, with a singular
fondness for visiting solitary and gloomy
places, particularly churchyards; and he soon
began to take the little girl with him on such
strolls. But he discovered, much to his
amazement, that though she listened with
avidity to the tales he told her of the romantic
and mysterious events that had occurred
within the somber ruins with which the
countryside was liberally endowed, she was
reluctant to explore those ruins or wander
among the graves where he delighted to resort.
At first he was inclined to ascribe her reluct-
ance to weak and sentimental timidity, but
he speedily found reason to adopt an alto-
gether different view. He noticed that when-
ever he took her to graveyards or to churches
in which there were graves, her frail form
became greatly agitated, and at times she
seemed rooted to the ground; and that there
were certain places, especially an old kitchen
in a nearby castle, which he could not persuade
her to enter, and the mere sight of which
caused her to quake and tremble. "The
child," he told his wife, * 'feels the presence
of the dead, and, mark you, she will end by
seeing the dead."
He was, therefore, more alarmed than sur-
prised when one midnight, long after he had
fancied her in bed and asleep, she ran to his
room and informed him that she had just be-
held in the hall a tall, dark figure which, sigh-
ing heavily, passed her and disappeared in the
vestibule. With awe, not unmixed with satis-
faction, Schmidgall remembered that he had
once seen the self -same apparition; but he
prudently endeavored to convince her that
she had been dreaming and sent her back to
her room, which, thenceforward, he never
allowed her to leave at night.
In this way Frederica HauflVs mediumship
began. But several years were to pass before
she saw another ghost or gave evidence of
possessing supernormal powers other than by
occasional dreams of a prophetic and revela-
tory nature. In the meanwhile she rejoined
her parents and moved with them from Pre-
vorst to Oberstenfeld, where, in her nineteenth
year, she was married. It w T as distinctly a
marriage of convenience, arranged without
regard to her wishes, and the moment the
engagement was announced she secluded her-
self from her friends and passed her days and
nights in weeping. For weeks together she
went without sleep, ate scarcely anything,
and became thin, pale, and feeble. It was
rumored that she had set her affections in
another quarter: but her relatives angrily
denied this and asserted that once married
she would soon become herself again.
They w r ere mistaken. From her wedding
day, which she celebrated by attending the
funeral of a venerable clergyman to whom
she had been warmly attached, her health
broke rapidly. One morning she awoke in a
high fever that lasted a fortnight and was
followed by convulsive spasms, during which
she beheld at the bedside the image of her
grandmother Schmidgall, who, it subsequently
developed, was at that moment dying in dis-
tant Lowenstein. The spasms continuing,
despite the application of the customary rude
remedies of the time, it was decided to send
for a physician with some knowledge of mes-
merism, which was then becoming popular in
Germany. To the astonishment of those who
thronged the sick room, the first touch of his
hand on her forehead brought relief. The
convulsions ceased, she became calm, and
presently she fell asleep. But on awaking
she was attacked as before, and try as he
might the physician could not effect a perma-
nent cure. To all his " passes " she responded
with gratifying promptitude, only to suffer
a relapse the moment she was released from
the mesmeric influence.
At this juncture aid was received from a
most extraordinary source, according to the
story Frederica told her wondering friends.
With benign visage and extended hand, the
spirit of her grandmother appeared to her for
seven successive nights, mesmerized her, and
taught her how to mesmerize herself. The re-
sults of this visitation, if not altogether fortu-
nate, were at least to some extent curative.
There were periods when she was able not
merely to leave her bed but to attend to house-
hold duties and indulge in long walks and
drives. But it was painfully apparent that
she was still in a precarious condition.
From her infancy she had always been
powerfully affected by the touch of different
metals, and now this phenomenon was inten-
sified a thousand -fold. The placing of a mag-
net on her forehead caused her features to be
contorted as though by a stroke of paralysis;
contact with glass and sand made her catalep-
tic. Once she was found seated on a sand-
stone bench, unable to move hand or foot.
About this time also she acquired the faculty
of crystal-gazing; that is to say, by looking
into a bowl of water she could correctly de-
scribe scenes transpiring at a distance. More
than this, she now declared that behind the
persons in whose company she was she per-
ceived ghostly forms, some of which she
recognized as dead acquaintances.
Unlike her grandmother, these new visitants
from the unknown world did not provide her
with the means of regaining her lost health.
On the contrary, from the time they first put
in their appearance she grew far worse, suffer-
ing not so much from convulsive attacks as
from an increasing lassitude. She complained
that eating was a great tax on her strength,
and that rising and walking were out of the
question. Unable to comprehend this new
turn of affairs, her attendants lost all patience,
declared that if she had made up her mind
to die she might as well do so as at once, and
tried to force her to leave her bed. Finally
her parents intervened, and at their request
she was brought back to Oberstenfeld.
Here she found an altogether congenial
environment, and for a while showed marked
improvement. Here too, and in a most sen-
sational way, her mediumship blossomed into
full fruition. She had been home for only
a short time when the family began to be dis-
turbed by mysterious noises for which they
could find no cause. A sound like the ring-
ing of glasses was frequently heard, as were
footsteps and knockings on the walls. Her
father, in particular, asserted that sometimes
he felt a strange pressure on his shoulder or
his foot. The impression grew that the house,
which was part of the ancient, picturesque,
and none too well preserved cathedral of
Oberstenfeld, was haunted by the spirits of
its former occupants.
One night, shortly after retiring to the room
which they shared in common, Frederica, her
sister, and a maid servant saw a lighted candle,
apparently of its own volition, move up and
down the table on which it was burning. The
sister and the servant saw nothing more; but
Frederica the next instant beheld a thin,
grayish cloud, which presently resolved into
the form of a man, about fifty years old,
attired in the costume of a medieval knight.
Approaching, this strange apparition gazed
steadfastly at her, and in a low but clear tone
urged her to rise and follow it, saying that she
alone could loosen its bonds. Overcome with
terror, she cried out that she would not follow,
then ran across the room and hid herself in
the bed where her sister and the servant lay
panic-stricken. That night she saw no more
of the apparition: but the maid, whom they
sent to sleep in the bed she had so hurriedly
vacated, declared that the coverings were
forcibly drawn off her by an unseen hand.
The next night the apparition appeared to
Frederica again, and to her alone. This time
it seemed not sorrowful but angry, and
threatened that if she did not rise and follow
she would be hurled out of the window. At
her bold retort, "In the name of Jesus, do
it!" the apparition vanished, to return a few
nights later, and after that to show itself to
her by day as well as by night.
It now informed her that it was the ghost
of a nobleman named Weiler, who had slain
his brother and for that crime was condemned
to wander ceaselessly until it recovered a cer-
tain piece of paper hidden in a vault under
the cathedral. On hearing this, she solemnly
assured it that by prayer alone could its
sins be forgiven and pardon obtained, and
thereupon she set herself to teach it to pray.
Ultimately, with a most joyous countenance,
the ghost told her that she had indeed led it to
its Redeemer and won its release; and at the
same time seven tiny spirits the spirits of
the children it had had on earth appeared
in a circle about it and sang melodiously.
Nor did they leave her until the protecting
apparition of her grandmother interrupted
their thanksgivings and bade them be gone.
Whether or no the happy ghost notified
others in kindred plight of the success that
had attended her efforts, it is certain that, if
the contemporary records are to be accepted,
the few short years of life remaining to her
were largely occupied in ministering to the
wants of distressed spirits. Phantom monks,
nobles, peasants, pressed upon her with terrible
tales of misdeeds unatoned, and begged her
to instruct them in the prayers which were
essential to salvation. There was one specially
importunate group, the apparitions of a young
man, a young woman, and a new-born child
wrapped in ghostly rags, which gave her no
peace for months. The child, they said, was
theirs and had been murdered by them, and
the young woman in her turn had been mur-
dered by the young man. Naturally, they
were in an unhappy frame of mind, and until
she was able to send them on their way re-
joicing their conduct and language were so
extravagant that they appalled her more than
did any other of the numerous seekers for
grace and rest.
The dead were not the only ones to whom
she ministered. Side by side with the gift
of ghost-seeing and ghost-conversing, and with
the no less remarkable gift of speaking in an
unknown tongue and of setting forth the
mysteries of the hereafter, she developed the
peculiar faculty of peering into the innermost
being of spirits still in the flesh, detecting the
obscure causes of disease, and prescribing
remedies. Strange to say, her own health
remained poor, and gradually she became so
feeble that from day to day her death seemed
imminent. But her parents were resolved
to do all they could for her, and at last be-
thought themselves of placing her in the hands
of the much talked of physician, Justinus
Kerner, who lived in the pleasant valley town
of Weinsberg and was said to be an adept in
every branch of the healing art, notably in the
mesmerism which alone appeared to benefit
her. To Kerner, therefore, she was sent;
and it is not difficult to imagine the delight
with which she exchanged the gloomy moun-
tain forests for the verdant meadows and
fragrant vineyards of Weinsberg.
Kerner, who is better known to the present
generation as mystic and poet than as physi-
cian, was justly accounted one of the celebri-
ties of the day. Eccentric and visionary, he
was yet a man of solid learning and an intense
patriot. It was owing to him, as his biogra-
phers fondly recall, that Weinsberg's most
glorious monument, the well named Weiber-
trube, was not suffered to fall into utter
neglect, but was instead restored to remind
all Germans of that distant day, in the long
gone twelfth century, when the women of
Weinsberg, securing from the conqueror the
promise that their lives would be spared, and
that they might take with them from the
doomed city their most precious belongings,
staggered forth under the burden not of
jewels and treasure but of their husbands,
whom they carried in their arms or on their
backs. Thus was a massacre averted, and
thus did the name of "Woman's Faithfulness"
attach itself to the castle in the shadow of
which Kerner spent his days. But at the time
of which we write neither the castle nor poetry
held first place in his thoughts; instead, he
was absorbed in the practice of his profession.
And so, with the ardor of the enthusiast and
the sympathy of the true physician, he wel-
comed to Weinsberg the sufferer of whom
he had heard much and of whom he was to
become both doctor and biographer.*
It was in November, 1826, that he first met
her. She was then twenty-five, and thus had
been for six years in a state of almost constant
ill health. Her very appearance moved him
profoundly. Her fragile body, he relates in
the graphic word picture he drew, enveloped
her spirit but as a gauzy veil. She was
extremely small, with Oriental features and
dark-lashed eyes that were at once penetra-
ting and "prophetic." When she spoke his
conviction deepened that he was looking on
one who belonged more to the world of the
dead than to the world of the living; and he
speedily became persuaded that she actually
did, as she claimed, commune with the
dead.
Less than a month after her arrival at Weins-
berg, and being in the trance condition that
was now frequent with her, she announced to
him that she had been visited by a ghost,
which insisted on showing her a sheet of paper
covered with figures and begged her to give
it to his wife, who was still alive and would
understand its significance and the duty de-
volving upon her of making restitution to the
man he had wronged in life.
Kerner was thunderstruck at recognizing
from her description a Weinsberg lawyer who
had been dead for some years and was thought
to have defrauded a client out of a large sum
of money. Eagerly he plied Frederica with
questions, among other things asking her to
endeavor to locate the paper of which the
ghost spoke.
"I see it," said she, dreamily. "It lies in a
building which is sixty paces from my bed.
In this I see a large and a smaller room. In
the latter sits a tall gentleman, who is work-
ing at a table. Now he goes out, and now he
returns. Beyond these rooms there is one
still larger, in which are some chests and a
long table. On the table is a wooden thing
I cannot name it and on this lie three
heaps of paper; and in the center one, about
the middle of the heap, lies the sheet which
so torments him."
Knowing that this was an exact account of
the office of the local bailiff, Kerner hastened
to that functionary with the astonishing news,
and was still more astonished when the bailiff
told him that he had been occupied precisely
as she said. Together they searched among
the papers on the table; but could find none
in the lawyer's handwriting. Frederica, how-
ever, was insistent, adding that one corner of
the paper in question was turned down and
that it was enclosed in a stout brown envelope.
A second search proved that she was right, and
on opening the paper it was found to contain
not only figures but an explicit reference to a
private account book of which the lawyer's
widow had denied all knowledge. Still more
striking was the fact, according to Kerner 's
narrative, that when the bailiff, as a test, placed
the paper in a certain position on his desk and
went to Frederica, pretending that he had it
with him, she correctly informed him where it
was and read it off to him word by word.
Although the sequel was rather unsatis-
factory, inasmuch as the widow persisted in
asserting that she knew nothing of a private
account book and refused to yield a penny
to the injured client, Kerner was so impressed
by this exhibition of supernatural power that,
in order to study his patient more closely, he
had her removed from her lodgings to his own
house. Thither also, as soon as he learned that
their presence seemed to increase her suscepti-
bility to the occult influences by which she
was surrounded, he brought her sister and the
maid servant of the dancing candle episode.
Then ensued greater marvels than had ever
bewitched the family at Oberstenfeld. In-
visible hands threw articles of furniture at
the enthusiastic doctor and his friends ; ghostly
fingers sprinkled lime and gravel on the floor-
ing of his halls and rooms; spirit knuckles
beat lively tattoos on walls, tables, chairs, and
bedsteads. And all the w T hile ghosts with
criminal pasts flocked in and out, seeking con-
solation and advice. Only once or twice,
however, did the physician himself see any-
thing even remotely resembling a ghost. On
one occasion a cloudy shape floated past his
window; and on another he saw at Frederica's
bedside a pillar of vapor, which she afterward
told him was the specter of a tall old man who
had visited her twice before.
But if he neither saw the ghosts nor heard
them speak, it was sufficiently demonstrated
to him that they were really in evidence. The
knocking, furniture throwing, and gravel
sprinkling were the least of the wonders of
which it was permitted him to be a witness.
Once, when Frederica was taking an after-
noon nap, a spirit that was evidently solicitous
for her comfort drew off her boots, and in his
presence carried them across the room to
where her sister was standing by a window.
Again at midnight, after a preliminary knock-
ing on the walls, he observed another spirit,
or possibly the same, open a book she had
been reading which was lying on her bed.
Most marvelous of all, when her father died
she herself enacted the role of ghost, the news
of his death being conveyed to her super-
naturally and her cry of anguish being super-
naturally conveyed back to the room where
his corpse lay, in Oberstenfeld, and where it
was distinctly heard by the physician who
had attended him in his last moments. After
this crowning piece of testimony the good
Kerner felt that no doubt of her unheard of
powers could remain in the most skeptical
mind.
Judge, then, of his dismay and grief when
he saw her visibly fading away, daily growing
more ethereal of form and feature, more weak
in body and spirit. It was his belief that the
ghosts were robbing her of her vitality, and
earnestly but vainly he strove to banish them.
She herself declared, with a tone of inde-
scribable relief, that she knew the end was
near, and that she welcomed it, as she longed
to attain the quiet of the grave with her father
and Grandfather and Grandmother Schmid-
gall. When Kerner sought to cheer her by
the assurance that she yet had many years to
live, she silenced him with the tale of a grue-
some vision. Three times, she said, there had
appeared to her at dead of night a female
figure, wrapped in black and standing beside
an open and empty coffin, to which it beckoned
her. But before she died she wished to see
again the mountains of her childhood; and to
the mountains Kerner carried her. There,
on August 5, 1829, peacefully and happily,
to the singing of hymns and the sobbing
utterance of prayers, her soul took its flight.
But, unlike Kerner, who hastened back to
Weinsberg to write the biography of this
"delicate flower who lived upon sunbeams,"
we must shake off the spell of her strange per-
sonality and ask seriously what manner of
mortal she was. This inquiry is the more
imperative since the doings of the tambourine
players and automatic writers, of whom so
much is made in certain quarters to-day, pale
into insignificance beside the story of her
remarkable career.
Now, in point of fact, the evidence bearing
out the claim that she saw and talked with the
dead is practically confined to the account
written by the mourning Kerner, whom no
one would for a moment call an unprejudiced
witness. Already deeply immersed in the
study of the marvelous, his mind absorbed in
the weird phenomena of the recently dis-
covered science of animal magnetism, she
came to him both as a patient and as a living
embodiment of the mysteries that held for
him a boundless fascination, and once he
found reason to believe in her alleged super-
normal powers, there was nothing too fantastic
or extravagant to which he would not give
ready credence and assent.
His lengthy record of "facts" includes not
only what he himself saw or thought he saw,
but every tale and anecdote related to him by
the seeress and her friends, and also includes
so many incidents of supernaturalism on the
part of others that it would well seem that
half the peasant population of Wiirtemberg
were ghost seers. Besides this, detailed as his
narrative is, it is lacking in precisely those
details which would give it evidential value;
so lacking, indeed, that even such a spiritistic
advocate as the late F. W. H. Myers pro-
nounced it "quite inadequate" for citation in
support of the spiritistic theory.
Nevertheless, taking his extraordinary docu-
ment for what it is worth, careful considera-
tion of it leads to the conclusion that it
contains the story not so much of a great fraud
as of a great tragedy. It is obvious that there
was frequent and barefaced trickery, par-
ticularly on the part of Frederica's sister and
the ubiquitous servant girl; but it is equally
certain that Frederica herself was a wholly
abnormal creature, firmly self-deluded, one
might say self -hypnotized, into the belief
that the dead consorted with her. And it
is hardly less certain that in her singular
state of body and mind she gave evidence not
indeed of supernatural but of telepathic and
clairvoyant powers on which she and those
about her, in that unenlightened age, could
not but put a supernatural interpretation.
It is not difficult to trace the origin of the
nervous and mental disease from which she
suffered. Kerner's account of her childhood
shows plainly that she was born tempera-
mentally imaginative and unstable and that
she was raised in an environment well calcu-
lated to exaggerate her imaginativeness and
instability. Ghosts and goblins were favorite
topics of conversation among the peasantry
of Prevorst, while the children with whom she
played were many of them unstable like her-
self, neurotic, hysterical, and the victims of
St. Vitus's dance. The weird and uneasy
ideas and feelings which thus early took pos-
session of her were given firmer lodgment by
her unfortunate sojourn with grave-haunting
Grandfather Schmidgall. After this, it seems,
she suffered for a year from some eye trouble,
and every physician knows how close the con-
nection is between optical disease and hallu-
cinations. Then came a brief period of
seeming normality, the lull before the storm
which burst in full force with her marriage to
a man she did not love. From that time, the
helpless victim of hysteria in its most deep-
seated and obstinate form, she gave herself
unreservedly to the delusions which both arose
from and intensified her physical ills ills
which after all had a purely mental basis.
"If I doubted the reality of these apparitions,"
she once told Kerner, "I should be in danger
of insanity; for it would make me doubt the
reality of everything I saw."
It does not affect this view of the case that
she unquestionably cooperated with her con-
scienceless sister and the servant girl in the
production of the fraudulent phenomena to
which Kerner testifies. Their cheating was
probably done for the sole purpose of making
sure of the comfortable berth in which the
physician's credulity had placed them. Hers,
on the other hand, was the deceit of an irre-
sponsible mind, of one living in such an at-
mosphere of unreality that she could readily
persuade herself that the knockings, candle
dancings, book openings, and similar acts were
the work not of her own hands but of the ghosts
which tormented her. Indeed, researches of
recent years in the field of abnormal psychology
show it is quite possible that she was absolutely
ignorant of any personal participation in the
movements and sounds which caused such
wide-spread mystification. Sympathy and pity,
therefore, should take the place of condemna-
tion when we follow the course of her eventful
and unhappy life.
Finish