Hardcover(1)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Nell intends to fake her intuitive talents, but soon she spontaneously channels Angella Wing, an actress from the 1920s once known as the “Woman of a Thousand Voices.” Nell attempts to conceal her occult interests from skeptical friends, including George, a handsome jazz musician who rents an apartment in her historic home, and Polly, a childhood friend with buried anguish of her own. But soon Angella’s mischievous presence begins to make Nell’s life more and more difficult, eventually attracting shadows of Nell’s past. As she tries to free herself from Angella’s influence, Nell is forced into an investigation of a mysterious death at the very heart of her childhood—and the revelation of surprisingly dark secrets.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780299228705 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Wisconsin Press |
| Publication date: | 07/28/2008 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Night Sisters
A NovelBy Sara Rath
TERRACE BOOKS
Copyright © 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin SystemAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-299-22870-5
Chapter One
May I come to you?"I was enrolled in Grace Waverly's beginning workshop called "Personal Development of Mediumship" when Grace taught us to begin delivering a spirit-message by addressing our subject and saying, "May I come to you?" Then we were to close our eyes and rub our hands together as though washing them in invisible water. After a moment or two, Spirit was supposed to speak through us to the person who had drawn our energy.
"In platform work," Grace explained, "we must always ask permission. When the subject has agreed, deliver the message exactly as you hear it. Take yourself completely out of it. Send the message out of your mouth as quickly as you see it, feel it, taste it, or sense it. Thinking about the message or trying to rationalize what you are getting may render it incorrect."
"May I come to you?"
After taking Grace's workshop at the Wocanaga Spiritualist Camp, where we experimented with other intriguing aspects of unfoldment (automatic writing, clairvoyance, reading auras), I rehearsed the permission phrase in my bathroom mirror at home. I tried squinting and zeroing in as I inquired, but that conveyed a seriously scary effect. Then I raised my eyebrows imploringly,which didn't exude much confidence. Finally I adopted Grace's approach, using a kindly smile and a "May I come to you?" as if to indicate that by selecting that one person from the crowd seated before me, I was ready to bestow an especially lovely gift.
Grace Waverly said right away that I was clairsentient. Some mediums are clairvoyant-they see pictures, visual images that reveal their messages. Some are clairaudient-they hear things. But clairsentience is a kind of thought-language. Clairsentience is soul sensing; a kind of "impressional" mediumship.
Apparently a lot of people receive impressions from the spirit world-artists and writers, musicians, and even doctors-although most of the time they're not aware they're even doing it. As Grace explained it, I'm supposed to be able to sense dangerous events that are about to happen and then take measures to avoid them. Well, it turned out Grace was wrong about that and a whole lot of other things, too.
* * *
I initially visited Wocanaga with the idea of writing an article for Meanderings, a travel magazine that features articles written in first person narrative (the "me" in meanderings). My stories naturally focus on areas of Wisconsin, because that's where I was born and I live in Madison. I grew up in a small north-central town called Little Wolf, which, looking back, seems like a fantasy world because we felt so safe. We had a population of one thousand but we had everything we might need-dentist, doctor, drug store, bank, library, dry goods, hardware, groceries. There was no lifeguard at the beach, we fished in the river, took our bikes everywhere, played Kick the Can outside after dark, and no one had to call home to tell their parents where they were.
Wisconsin is widely known as the "dairy state," of course, but we have other things to offer besides cheese and butter. For example, my editor loved the piece I did on Aztalan, a state park near Lake Mills believed to have been a ceremonial center for a vanished race of mound builders that became extinct around 1300 AD. Then I found an Amish farm family near Viroqua and lived with them for a week. I milked cows by hand, helped make bread and raspberry jam, and by lamplight laboriously wrote my story on lined paper.
After I wrote about Ceresco, a utopian settlement near Ripon founded in 1844 by followers of the nineteenth-century French socialist philosopher Charles Fourier, a reader wrote to my editor suggesting that I check out "Spook Hill." That's the name locals give to the Wocanaga Spiritualist Camp near Baraboo. I was surprised to learn that a relic of that curious religion was still thriving. At the entrance gate the welcome sign says those forty acres on a high bluff above the village have offered visitors a healing embrace since 1873.
Most of the Wocanaga Camp buildings look like they're over a hundred years old. An air of desolation quietly hovers around the periphery like an encroaching fringe of decay. The chapel, a wood frame auditorium that was once their glorious centerpiece, suffered greatly from a fallen tree. Now its caved-in walls prop up a sagging roof of blue plastic tarp.
Furry moss dapples the shingled roofs of forty-one rustic cabins that wind a vast warped circle through tall pines and ancient oaks. If you're ready to tolerate a few hardships you can rent one of those cabins for only ten dollars a night. Mediums who reside in the cabins during the summer months do private readings, forty dollars for thirty minutes. Séances are offered on Friday nights in Assembly Hall, where you can also witness table-tipping demonstrations and past-life regressions.
For the sake of authenticity, I opted for the whole shebang. My little white cabin with flowerbox (red geraniums) beneath the window and a birdhouse attached in front had a sign by the door that said "Rosebud." For one night it would be okay. The building reminded me of my childhood playhouse. The interior of bare studs and boards was whitewashed to give it a more finished feel. Lace curtains hung on the windows. A small table with two wooden chairs stood against one wall and another lace curtain served as a divider between the main room and the bedroom, which was a step down-both physically and in charm (a framed print of a couple too-cute puppies frolicking with a ball), although everything seemed clean if one ignored the musty smell. I wondered if I'd have the courage to leave the exterior doors open and sleep with only the protection of screens.
I dropped my overnight bag next to the single bed and opened all three windows. A sign over the sink in the bedroom said the water was not safe to drink. I knew the restrooms were in the center of the campgrounds; it would be a long walk in the dark.
The bed sagged in the middle and had an annoying squeak whenever I moved. But the pillow was plump so I rested there for a moment, gathering courage for further explorations that lay ahead.
During my initial fact-finding visit I found the atmosphere of the Wocanaga Camp surprisingly serene. I claimed a picnic table, one of several nestled in a pleasant grove of tall pines, and unpacked a lunch I'd hastily packed before leaving the city.
Nearby, a handful of men and women chatted over coffee.
One woman was saying, "I sort of squint and try to take in the entire field. Usually there's a cloud of blue around the throat."
"That must be the throat chakra," a man added.
"What about silver in the elderly?" another woman wanted to know. "I've heard that's sometimes the case."
"When the red begins to disappear, it turns pink, and then it's almost white. At least that's what I've found."
"Mother Theresa's was white."
"And then it turns to silver, when they get to be seventy, eighty."
Their conversation was baffling. If I had a throat chakra, I hoped I'd be able to cough it up.
A voice at my shoulder inquired, "Not going to the service?"
He was young, balding, maybe in his mid-thirties-not much older than my own kids-with a neatly trimmed brown moustache and a closely cropped beard.
"Oh! I'm only visiting ..."
I noticed the people at the next table were heading toward the building where the sign said "Dining Hall."
"I've heard the speaker before." The man placed his thermos mug of coffee on my table and sat across from me. "Do you mind? Hank Spencer. Everyone calls me Spence."
He was a contractor from Milwaukee, enrolled in a workshop to improve his psychic healing powers. His wife, Barbara, was taking the workshop, too, but she'd already gone indoors. They worked as a healing team.
I told him of my Meanderings research to the strains of "Bringing in the Sheaves" issuing from the dining hall. My foot was tapping in time to the tent-meeting tempo.
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness ...
"What's happening over there?"
"You can go inside and find out," he suggested. But I demurred, saying I didn't have time.
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
"Today's speaker always talks on the same subject. I've heard her lecture before. She says Jesus was our first medium," he explained. "Even if you don't think of Christ as a savior, he's still one of the greatest mediums and healers and teachers that ever lived. Then she delivers messages from Spirit."
I scribbled a few notes. "And how does she do that?"
Spence took a sip of his coffee and patiently explained.
"It's pretty simple, really. All matter is spiritual energy at different rates of vibration. For example, prayer is the sending of thought vibrations to a higher source."
"Okay," I said, nodding, writing as fast as I could.
"When a medium delivers messages from Spirit, she tunes into vibrations from the spirit world when she raises her own vibrations to a higher level. Because their vibrations are higher than ours. At the same time, the spirit who happens to be communicating with her lowers his or her vibrations. So the two can meet somewhere in the middle. Does that make sense? Then the medium communicates the message to those of us who are still on this plane."
I nodded as if this did not sound peculiar to me at all.
"You can always find mediums on the grounds here this time of year," Spence said. "Last night I was given a message at Inspiration Point. That's a spot at the end of the path, a limestone shelf that's sort of an overlook. Grace Waverly always handles those sessions. She's the most famous, and probably the oldest medium we have here at Wocanaga. She lives just outside the gate."
I vaguely wondered if Meanderings would cover the cost of a medium's fee. But by then my thoughts were all over the place. I was reminded of my daughter Odessa's unhappy encounter with a carnival palm reader who relieved her of six weeks' allowance. And when I was a kid there had been a Ouija board that a girlfriend dragged from a closet at a birthday party, although we were never able to make it spell anything that wasn't hopelessly garbled ... much like my teenaged attempts at reading fortunes from a deck of playing cards.
"You really ought to talk to Grace Waverly," Spence offered. "She's the head of the Medium's League, and she can tell you more about Wocanaga and Spiritualism than anyone else I can think of. If you want, she can read your aura and bring you a message, too."
It was research, I rationalized. Totally spontaneous. Serendipitous. Part of the adventure.
New Age philosophers insist there are no accidents and there is no such thing as coincidence. If you remain insightful and aware and trust your intuition, you will synchronistically connect with whatever is meant to be. What the hell.
Besides, for the meager payment I received from Meanderings, I doubted that I'd make an effort to drive all the way up there from Madison again. If she resembled her name, Grace would be gentle and understanding, so it was probably worth my while to get a bit of background color. I could ask her about chakras and auras and bringing in the sheaves.
"She doesn't take credit cards," Spence added.
"What for?"
"For her readings."
I didn't really want a reading; all I needed was some quotes. I hadn't come all that way to have my fortune told.
* * *
According to the homework I'd done for my Spook Hill story, modern Spiritualism began in the United States in 1849 when two girls in Hydesville, New York, identified knocking sounds in their home as coming from the spirit of a murdered peddler buried in the cellar. They discovered they could communicate with his spirit by tapping out the alphabet. After that, the practice of conversing with spirits spread all the way to Wisconsin and beyond. Here, spirit circles were formed in Milwaukee, Madison, Janesville, Fond du Lac, and Appleton. The Morris Pratt Institute-the only spiritualist college in the nation-originated in Whitewater. Our ex-territorial governor, Nathaniel Tallmadge, was an ardent supporter of Spiritualism as was Lyman Copeland Draper, the secretary of the State Historical Society. Draper said he took up Spiritualism to contact his deceased daughter and to unravel historical mysteries by communicating with Indian fighters and deceased pioneers. One of Spiritualism's most famous "trance speakers," Cora Richmond, began her career in Lake Mills in 1851, at the tender age of eleven.
Wisconsin reputedly had 80,000 spiritualists by 1860.
The Wocanaga Camp opened in 1893 for immigrants who were adherents of Spiritualism. Campers came by railroad and stayed in tents that rented for three dollars per week. More than fifty years later, in July 1949, Madison's Wisconsin State Journal sent a reporter out to Wocanaga to observe one of the regular séances:
Earl H. Williams, a slight young man from East St. Louis, Ill., was levitated without any visible means of support. While Williams was floating through space his "friend," Pansy, a small English girl dead for many years, told the crowd just what was going on. The reporter had watched Williams dress from the skin out to be sure there were no mechanical gadgets concealed on his person. The young medium had been strapped in a chair and placed behind a black curtain. All the time Pansy was keeping the visitors informed, Williams had his mouth gagged with a rubber sponge and closed with tape.
The reporter drew no conclusions about the séance but allowed that the experience was "very dramatic."
I followed Spence as he walked toward the gate to point out Shadowlawn, Grace Waverly's home. Along the way I noticed some of the cabins had hand-lettered signs in their front windows with the resident medium's name and a note that said "Please Knock," or "Please Wait."
Shadowlawn clung to the crest of the bluff near the gate where I'd entered the campgrounds. Grace's cottage also disclosed signs of neglect: white paint on the exterior clapboards was peeling in large white curls, and a pair of battered pink shutters made gentle tappings in the breeze. In the window of the front door she had placed her own hand-printed notice:
voices," she explained. "They are rarely used now. This one's an antique. Someone came across it in their attic and brought it by this morning. Our historian has several like it. Have you talked with our historian? I think she's home this afternoon."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Night Sisters by Sara Rath Copyright © 2008 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.