Spiritualistic Christening

Detroit Free Press, March 28, 1898

Rev. Nellie S. Baade was a different kind of preacher. As a longstanding member of the First Spiritual Philosophical Society of Detroit, along with her husband Charles, a prominent businessman, she believed in ghosts and reincarnation along with some of the more standard tenants of religion. In this case baptism or a spiritualistic christening. Though instead of dousing the children in water she presented them with bouquets of nosegay.

Her and husband Charles are buried at Woodmere Cemetery.

Evansville Press, August 5, 1907 (enlarge)

St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 10, 1897 (enlarge)

Mrs. Dr. Stanley's Last Week in Detroit

Detroit Free Press, April 10, 1898

Ghost

Detroit Free Press, September 25, 1863

Civil War era paranormal theater at Young Men's Hall in Detroit.

GHOST

The spectres of the dead, shadows of the grave.

Terrible awe and solemnity.

Prof. Martin Leo Jean's Ghost of Conway Castle with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Linden and a complete dramatic troupe.

Tickets 50 cents.

Ghost Story #19: A Voice in the Night

Detroit Free Press, April 15, 1888

I've never quite figured out what the purpose of my finding out about Gundella the Witch was so I just assumed that I should collect ghost stories as she did. Since I don't believe a word of the haunted nonsense coming out of the last 2 or 3 generations' mouths the whole concept of the oral tradition of the living as it pertains to apparitions and spooks goes out the window. Enter newspaper clippings.

I've also been rather lax on that matter because life gets in the way and then there's also STUFF. "Never mind that" I tell myself and then it's six months later. Nonetheless, I always return with something and since Nankin isn't doing it for me at present I'm seemingly back on Detroit proper. Mainly because it's the path of least resistance towards researching and since I can barely force myself into the task it'll have to do.

While I've compiled a thing or two relevant to the Detroit Opera House here is an early "haunting". A gruesome death-rattling moan-cry that came from behind the building which puzzled a cop, a bothered bystander, some gamblers and general neighbors to the building at Monroe and Farmer.

A Genuine Devil

Ordinary places sometimes cradle strange secrets in the hold. Russell McLauchlin's 1946 book Alfred Street is anything but an innocuous re-telling of the history of Alfred Street, as seen from the vantage point of the author during his boyhood at the turn of the twentieth century. It's musical and redolent of  the primitive majesty of yesteryear but it would be stretching to say that it's a thriller in any sense of the word.

Yet, on page 87 starts a seemingly mundane tale of the endless litany of Mrs. Clarks who ran the washing loads for the families of Alfred Street, though of supposedly modest means were the author's parents. Recounting one such woman's tale and the scorn it brought from Mary Doyle, another member of the nanny and household staffs of the area, comes this recollection of a devil child being born in Detroit circa 1900:

"I remember well the sensible scorn which she heaped on one of the Mrs. Clarks who reported that there had been born in her neighborhood (Detroit circa 1900), a day or so before, a genuine devil, complete with horns and tail and cloven hood. This, according to Mrs. Clark, much embarrassed the presumed parents and family connection of the prodigy, and euthanasia was proposed by the more radical."

A genuine devil child complete with horns, tail and cloven hoof! Biblically not Satan in the least as Ezekiel tells us, for he comes "as an angel of light". But as a demon or a reincarnation of the fabled Nain Rouge? Who knows!