120 years ago, 1906, transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

“An evening with spooks filled with surprises. Manifestations that raise the hair of the uninitiated. A lively seance through which a reporter passed without loss of limb or life — the worst to come.

“The Rev. D. A. Herrick, as announced in Monday’s Vindicator, held a spiritualistic seance last evening. Eighteen people held hands and formed a close circle about a heavy dining room table, a guitar and rude aluminum trumpet a yard long. The room was as dark as … the proverbial stack of black cats. …

“The circle, after the extinguishment of lights, sang ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ repeated the Lord’s prayer, and sang again several verses before any demonstrations occurred. …

“But at last after a painful silence at the end of a verse, the guitar began to thrum and float, and the spirits had come. … Then the hollow whisper of a ghost voice began to call faintly from somewhere out of the center of the blackness.

“As it called it grew stronger, and at last became intelligible to the person addressed, talked for a brief time, then gave way to another. During a half hour, perhaps, midway in the seance, two or more voices were apparently talking at once in different parts of the circle. …

“One spirit, in particular, grew strong in accents and inspiration and spoke of a few moments most eloquently. ‘Don’t pray,’ was one of his expressions. ‘Prayer won’t do anything unless you do something yourself. A man who spends his Sunday on his knees and does no good accomplishes nothing here. Do good, help the poor, comfort the down-hearted, lift people up. “Faith without work is dead. …”‘

“At intervals Timothy O’Boyle, the spirit control, laughed and joked, interrupted with minute speeches or answered questions. Just before the close of the seance he requested the circle to convene the next night at an earlier time as it is easier for the medium whose strength becomes exhausted in a seance prolonged to a very late hour.

“‘Start at 8 o’clock,’ said Timothy.

“‘Why,’ said a man, in a joking voice — think of anyone discharging levity at a spook! — ‘I didn’t know you spirits had time, Tim.’

“‘We don’t. But when we talk t’ ye we have railroad time here.’

“Then Tim hit the Rev. Herrick two or three tremendous blows on the chest — ‘To get me strength up,’ says Timothy — and then without more ado lifted the gentleman who sat next to the medium, up from the floor, chair and all, slid the gentleman artistically upon the floor, and flung the chair across the room. …

“As soon (as) the chair had made a dinge in the doctor’s knee, Tim went for the table like a mad cyclone, and the middle of the blackness seemed full of table. Then all was still save the labored breathing of the medium. ‘The power’s gone,’ he gasped and the gas was lit. The big table was upside down.

“Those who were at a seance for the first time stared in bewilderment. …

“‘Were you afraid,’ asked one man of another.

“‘Well, there were 18 of us. But were I alone and things like tonight started to cut up shin-digs in my room I’d leave through a window without the formality of raising it.'”

Compiled from the Youngstown Vindicator by Dante Bernard, Mahoning Valley Historical Society Museum educator.