The Spirits Speak: Inside The Séance Room With Dr Nick Richbell

Michelle: Welcome to Haunted History Chronicles, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of the past one ghostly tale at a time. I'm your host, Michelle, and I'm thrilled to be your guide on this eerie journey through the pages of history. Picture this a realm where the supernatural intertwines with the annals of time, where the echoes of the past reverberate through haunted corridors and forgotten landscapes. That's the realm we invite you to explore with us. Each episode we'll unearth stories long buried secrets, dark folklore, tales of the macabre and discuss parapsychology topics, from ancient legends to more recent enigmas. We're delving deep into locations and accounts all around the globe, with guests joining me along the way. But this podcast is also about building a community of curious minds like you. Join the podcast on social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to share your own ghostly encounters, theories and historical curiosities. Feel free to share with friends and family. The links are conveniently placed in the description for easy access. So whether you're a history buff with a taste for the supernatural or a paranormal enthusiast with a thirst for knowledge, Haunted History Chronicles is your passport to the other side. Get ready for a ride through the corridors of time where history and the supernatural converge. Because every ghost has a story and every story has a history. And now let's introduce today's podcast, August. Welcome to Haunted History Chronicles where we explore the stories, legends and fascinating figures who have shaped the world of the paranormal and spiritualism. Today, I'm joined by a truly special guest, Dr. Nick Richbell.

Michelle: Nick has recently earned his PhD in.

Michelle: History from the University of Waterloo, where his groundbreaking research sheds new light on one of spiritualism's most influential yet often overlooked figures, Maurice Barbanel and his spirit guide, Silver Birch. But Nick's interests don't stop there. During his time as head of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Waterloo, he encountered two extraordinary collections that deepened his passion for the history of spiritualism. Among them was the Maine's Pincock Family collection which documented seances held in the private Home of Jennie O'Hara Pincock in Saint Catharines, Ontario. Featuring the American medium William Carthuser. He also explored the fascinating life and.

Michelle: Trance lectures of British born medium Thomas.

Michelle: Lacey, whose seances in Kitchener were captured on over 100 reel to reel tapes. In today's episode, we'll dive into the mysterious world of Jenny O'Hara Pincock, her connection to the enigmatic medium William Carthuser. We'll hear Dr. Nick Richbel's insights into.

Michelle: The personalities, phenomena, and legacies of these.

Michelle: Spiritualists and how their stories continue to intrigue and inspire researchers today. Stay tuned for a captivating conversation that blends history with the haunting mysteries of spiritualism. You won't want to miss it.

Michelle: Hi, Nick. Welcome back to the podcast.

Dr Nick Richnell: Hi, Michelle. It's great to be back.

Michelle: Do you want to just start by.

Michelle: Reintroducing yourself to the podcast listeners for anyone maybe who's missed the previous episodes that you've been on, where you've been talking about some incredible topics on the podcast so far?

Dr Nick Richnell: Absolutely. So I'm Nick Richbel. I'm the head of Special Collections and Archives at Clemson University in South Carolina. So I'm an archivist by day. And I also have a PhD in history that I received this past spring from the University of Waterloo. And my area of research is the history of spiritualism. In particular, I'm fascinated by the people involved in spiritualism. So my doctoral dissertation was focused on Maurice Barbanel, who we got to talk about on a previous podcast. Also, you know, I've studied Thomas Lacey, who we've always also talked about. So advise folks to take a listen to those two podcasts if they haven't listened to them. And today we're going to talk about another medium I'm fascinated with, again from southwestern Ontario.

Michelle: And, you know, I really so enjoy these conversations because, you know, some of the individuals that we've spoken of before, I might have known something about, but to have that opportunity to just learn more about their life and their impact has been incredible. And, you know, certainly the individual that we're going to be talking about today and then the surrounding people around the seances and what was happening. A lot of this was really new to me, and I found it incredible being able to find out more and just having that chance to dive into someone and their experiences within the spiritualist community always fascinates me. So it's a joy that you're back to be able to share again some of your knowledge and passion for this area.

Dr Nick Richnell: I love hearing that, Michelle. And after the past two podcasts, I've heard from folks who've listened to them who, again, you know, they reached out and were just happy to have learned about these new people they'd not really heard about before. So I'm happy to share this kind of learning experience with all of your listeners.

Michelle: And similarly, I had the same from people who lived in the area who were messaging me saying, you know, I've lived here my whole, whole life and I knew nothing about this person, and I'm just literally around the corner. So, again, it was just brilliant to have that response from people within, you know, the community of which that we were speaking of and, you know, around the area that we were speaking of was just, again, really lovely to have that response from listeners. So far, with just the couple of podcasts that we've had talking about some of these individuals, that's really great. So we're going to be talking about someone completely different and like I said, different characters surrounding these individuals to what we've been looking at before. Do you want to just maybe start at the beginning and maybe provide some of the details about Jenny's early life, who we're going to be talking about, how maybe that early life that she had influenced her later involvement in spiritualism?

Dr Nick Richnell: For sure. So Jenny O'Hara, she was born in a place called Madoc, which was a small rural town in Ontario, and she was born in 1890. And what I find interesting is that this small town of Maydoc is just north of an area called Prince Edward County. So Prince Edward county is actually where the Fox sisters came from before they moved to Hydesville, New York. And of course, the Fox sisters are renowned for being the founders of modern spiritualism. So Jenny, her upbringing, I don't know that much about it, but what I have been able to kind of research and I must acknowledge a good friend of mine, Reverend Dorinda Kruger, who has studied Jenny's life. And we have had many conversations about Jenny, and William Carthuser we'll be talking about shortly. So kudos to Dorinda for helping me. But. So the O'Hara family, they were considered to be the founding families of this Madoc community. They ran a homestead and a mill. And Jenny did have what we would consider to be a fairly privileged upbringing for someone at that time in this area of Canada. Her grandfather was the local magistrate or justice of the peace, and the family therefore enjoyed, you know, good economic and social standing in this community. They were devoutly Methodist, which is interesting. And Jenny's parents were very much involved with the Methodist Church. Her mother died when she was a teenager, just before she left to go to school, which would have been terribly hard on her, I would imagine. And Jenny also had four sisters, and the sisters were involved in spiritualism with Jenny throughout her spiritualist career or life, if you like, particularly Minnie. Minnie was very close to Jenny, and they worked closely together in spiritualism. And I think what was interesting is, you know, Jenny was musical, so she played the piano growing Up. And then as she got older, she left MADOC to move to Toronto to study music at the Ontario Ladies College and then going on to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

Michelle: She seems to be so interested in so many different things. I mean, beautifully musical. She wrote. She loved writing poetry. I mean, I've read some of her pieces. They're incredible. And so she really does seem to be someone who is very much enthusiastic and interested in so many different areas. You know, just a really interesting character. And of course, with the name Ohara, you can't just help thinking she is some wonderful character person from the kind of the silver screen with this kind of lovely, wonderful life. I mean, just really fascinating just to see how. How much she has played a part in the community that she grew up in and her family played that role in that community. And, you know, something that I found fascinating, just kind of doing some of my own research and digging into that was the work that's been done since her death and obviously other family members who passed away in really preserving her homestead that you mentioned that she came back to later in her life. I mean, again, I think it really highlights just how much of an impact this family had in establishing themselves within this community.

Dr Nick Richnell: That's true. And I think with the homestead that is, you know, still running today, and it's like a little museum there, as far as I know, they don't talk about her experiences in spiritualism, which I find interesting as well. Right. Considering the impact as we'll talk about that she has on spiritualism in the region.

Michelle: And I was going to say exactly the same thing. There's brief mentions on their website, but it's much more focused on her other types of writing and things. So I find it, again, interesting in the same way that you noted the fact that it's there, but it doesn't go into it in as much detail as you might expect given how much of a part of her life it was.

Dr Nick Richnell: Right, exactly.

Michelle: So you mentioned briefly that she left this region. Do you want to tell us more about that, what that motivation was for why she moved away? Was it simply because of that pursuing that passion for music, or were there other things involved there?

Dr Nick Richnell: Yeah. So I think the initial impetus was the love of music, and she was a skilled musician. When she did leave and she'd finished studying, I believe she taught piano in the home to private students. But what happened was in June 1915, she got married. She was 25 years old, and she married a man called Robert Newton Pincock, who went by the Name of Newton, and he was an osteopath from Newfoundland, which is on the east coast of Canada. So they moved to a place called St. Catherine's in Ontario, which is down towards Niagara Falls. And her husband, Newton, he had his osteopath practice in the town. And then in around 1927, 1928, she started to discuss founding a spiritualist church with her sister Minnie, who I mentioned, and Minnie's husband, the Reverend Fred Maines, who was a Methodist minister himself. So this is what she went on to do and would have been a housewife at the same time as teaching piano.

Michelle: So you kind of just kind of briefly touched upon how she became involved in spiritualism and mediumship. Is there anything else that you think is important to kind of recognize about Jenny's route into spiritualism and mediumship in terms of that motivation, that drive to get involved within that, in that field?

Dr Nick Richnell: Absolutely. So there's a few things. So as I mentioned, her mum died fairly young and then her father died fairly young too. I think it was shortly before or just after she got married in 1915. So obviously, you know, she's lost two parents and they were a loving, close knit family. And she does talk about this as being an influence on her interest in spiritualism, this grief that she had at losing her parents, especially her mom, earlier on in her life. But there's a couple of other things as well that I think are interesting and likely contribute to her kind of beginning this journey into spiritualism is that she had two children that we know of that she lost through miscarriage. And we know this because the two children, known as Jane and Bobby, come through in the seances that she held in her home. We also believe there was a third child that she miscarried, but this child does not appear to have been named. The other issue that I think probably pushed her into spiritualism as well is that Newton became sick and he looked for spiritual healing from the Guild of Spiritual Healing in England, but nothing happened. You know, he still, he died in 1928. And then they'd only had one seance together when he was alive. And I believe that seance was at Lilydale. They went there.

Michelle: So what was then the response of her family? You've mentioned a few of her family that became involved. Is that true of her wider family?

Dr Nick Richnell: I don't know. So I only know that the immediate family didn't seem to have a problem with it. In fact, they were quite interested, especially Minnie, her dear sister, who actually continued to hold seances after Jenny passed away. Herself in 1948. There's records in the 50s and 60s of mini holding seances. But I know three of her other sisters for sure. Blanche, Myrtle, and Eileen, I believe their names are. They attended some seances with their sister Jenny.

Michelle: And I suppose the logic might be that some of those same influences that really were some of the motivations possibly for why Jenny became involved, like the loss of her parents, obviously, may have been what was also some of the driving force for her siblings. In the same way, you know, they've experienced the same kind of losses.

Dr Nick Richnell: Yeah. And, you know, you know, the parents would come through in the seances. And we all know that people. It's common for folks to turn to spiritualism or mediumship when they've experienced this loss of a family member or loved one. Because, you know, as one historian, Dr. Jay Nicholas, writes in an article called the Children's Seance, about Jenny's seances, is that people almost deny death. They deny people the right to die because they're keeping them alive in these seances, which I think is an interesting angle to look at.

Michelle: So what role did Jenny's husband, Newton, then play in Jenny's spiritual practices and seances?

Dr Nick Richnell: So this I love. So, you know, obviously, Newton's passed away. He's. He's now spirit coming through in the seances that Jenny was holding. And so really, Jenny was able to continue her love affair with Newton in the seance room. You know, she. They were clearly deeply in love, and she was, you know, very much suffering from grief after his passing. And if I can just read an Excerpt from the September 15 seance from 1928, Jenny wrote the following. And remember that Jane is the daughter that was miscarried. She wrote, Jane's radiant little voice joined her daddy's. And I played on, trying to imagine, trying to conceive, trying to be big enough, intelligent enough, strong enough, spiritual enough to grasp the significance of that fleeting moment. My sweetheart was behind me singing. I felt the touch of his vanished hand. I heard the voice that was still our angel baby, whom neither of us had ever seen on this earth, sang with us. It was a heavenly triangle, indeed, a trinity of love made possible through merciful compassion. Please, God, I may try in some measure to pass it on to others who must, as they read these words, feel their heart stirring within them with the truth of it and with the divine possibilities of their own hope. So here you can feel the love that she had for her husband and the child that she never met, and how these seances kept the family Together. She was also concerned about the lack of privacy in the seances, because clearly it's a room full of seance sitters, the medium, and then Newton's there in spirit form, confessing his love to his wife there. So she was obviously a bit uncomfortable about that. But sometimes as she was playing the piano, Newton would approach her and whisper in her ear so the others in the sound circle couldn't hear what he was saying.

Michelle: I mean, it's incredibly touching, and I think it very much highlights the tragedy that surrounded her. And like you said, just this is a means of keeping this family together, in essence. I mean, very moving. That passage of writing is just incredibly moving. I had the hairs on the back of my neck. It's just so evocative. You can't help but feel that grief, that sense of love coming through in every single word.

Dr Nick Richnell: That's true. And, you know. And that's you. You see this throughout the seances, how, you know, she. He touches her and she. And it's. It's almost like they're being. They're very intimate in this physical and spiritual way. It is. It's beautiful to see that they, you know, she continued her love with him.

Michelle: So could you maybe, you know, explore that angle of Jenny's participation then in the seances? Because obviously she wasn't a medium herself. So how is. How would you kind of explain her role within this, given that she. She wasn't a medium herself?

Dr Nick Richnell: Right. And often she's been wrongly kind of labeled as being a medium, but that wasn't the case. I think initially she set out with the hope of being a medium. And then the advice she received was that she would endure too much suffering if she went that route. So she didn't. So instead she, you know, she was the host of the seances. They took place in her. In her home in St. Catherine's and I think we. We can label her as a psychical researcher, just like Harry Wood Carrington or Harry Price. She was researching. She was taking meticulous notes about the seances. So this was her role. She was the organizer and the host of the seances.

Michelle: So what would you then describe, you know, a typical seance? How it looked, how it ran? What would you say it looked like?

Dr Nick Richnell: So, as I said, it was in her home in St. Catherine's on Church Street. Sadly, the home is no longer standing. It was in the living room. And they performed the seance in darkness, which was not uncommon. The windows were blacked out, and then there were heavy curtains. There are Photos that have been taken or were taken of a few seances in this house. They usually started with the Lord's Prayer and then they would recite the 23rd Psalm. Jenny played the piano. And as we know, music is important in seances because it raises the vibration, help spirits to come through. Jenny would take the notes, sometimes Minnie would be the notetaker. And when you read them, you can tell that the room was dark because it's very hard to read. The writing's going up one very strict angle on the paper and they can be hard to follow. There were spirit trumpets were used in the pin cock seances and they would move around the room. So that was typical. And they could go on, you know, between two and four hours. These seances. They would sometimes do them in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening. There was no, doesn't appear to be any set day or time when the seances happened. Not like Maurice Barbanel who was, you know, every Friday evening. That was when their science time was dedicated to. It wasn't the way for this home circle.

Michelle: And obviously, you know, we've touched upon the fact that Jenny herself wasn't the medium. So who was the medium then within this circle?

Dr Nick Richnell: So this was a man called William Carthuser. And I'm slightly obsessed with William and his career as a medium. I have to say he also was born in 1890, just like Jenny, but he was born to immigrant parents who came from Germany and Hungary, and he started life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States. Then I believe the family moved to New York City and they lived in Manhattan at the time of the 1905 state sentence. I don't think that William Carthuser received much formal education and records show that when he reached around the age of 27, he was what's called a machinist living in Orange, New Jersey. And I find that's interesting because as we know, Thomas Lacy, who we've talked about was also a machinist as a career. Then he married a woman called Ruth Van Geese, but that ended when she died, I think four years after they were married. Eventually he married a second time in California that we'll talk about shortly. William Carthuser, like Thomas Lacy, was a trumpet or direct voice medium. So that we know is that the voice of the spirit being channeled didn't come from the medium himself, but it came outside of his body. So through the spirit trumpet or in the air outside of his own mouth. So he developed this gift of physical mediumship that allowed the spirits to move their Spirit trumpets around the seance room, there would be a ports that would come through. And what's interesting is how William Carthuser has been described. He was a man of medium build, some have said he was small, he had blonde hair and blue eyes. And we really should note, and it's important to note that he was born with a cleft palate. So considering the time period when he was born, this cleft palate went untreated and he was left with a severe speech impediment that stayed with him all his life. I understand that he was self conscious of this and it's been said that he would concentrate so hard to overcome the impediment, but that's how he ended up falling into a trance and then that beginning his kind of journey into spiritualism around the age of 23. And actually Jenny Pincock, she noted that when she had her first seance with Carthuser in 1927 at Lilydale, she wrote that people could not logically doubt his gift. And what she was referring here was that when he was channeling spirit, the speech impediment he had in everyday life was no longer present. And then she was so impressed by this that she invited him to her home in St. Catherine's to lead the seances in the home. And then he was eventually ordained as the minister of their Church of Divine Revelation.

Michelle: So who were some of the, you know, the other typical participants then in Jenny's seances and what were their roles?

Dr Nick Richnell: There were a lot. So if you take a look at the book Trails of Truth that Jenny published in 1930, she list no less than 70 people that were seance sitters at various times over a two year period. So she listed these folks by initials only, which is interesting, but she did list them so that they were witnesses to the events that took place in her home. But the sitters included people including the Hetherington family, which included a barrister, there were medical doctors, there were nurses, there were family friends, family members, as in her sisters who would sit with Jenny and Carth user. And I think the most infamous person who sat with them was the Canadian poet E.J. pratt. He was actually listed as Mr. X in the book. So him and his wife were the only people who didn't have their own, their real initials, if you like, of their names listed, they were given this pseudonym, Mr. And Mrs. X, to conceal his identity.

Michelle: So what was Jenny's role then would you say, in maybe expanding the reach of the participants that took part in the seances?

Dr Nick Richnell: That's A great question, I think, because they were an evidential mediumship group, not like the Thomas Lacey group, who wanted to hear about philosophy and that kind of, you know, from the learned men of science. The Mains Pincott group was really all about hearing from loved ones and family members. So I imagine she wanted to include as many people that she knew who had experienced this loss and this had this desire to reconnect with their loved ones who were deceased. So I imagine that's why that was quite a wide number of people to come into the seance circle over time.

Michelle: So what kind of spiritual entities then did Carthusia channel? What messages did he convey to those that came and sat in the circle?

Dr Nick Richnell: So he started out, his main channel was a young girl called Elsie, and she's been described as a girl with a high, childish soprano voice. But we're going to come back to Elsie shortly. There was also an indigenous American called White Bear who would come through. That's, again, quite difficult to read because it's that stereotypical kind of indigenous American voice you would hear from a cowboy and western movie. And then, more Importantly, over time, Dr. Anderson came in, and he became the principal spirit control throughout these seances that Jenny O'Hara Pincock documented.

Michelle: So do you want to maybe just tell us a little bit more detail about his main control spirit, Dr. Anderson?

Dr Nick Richnell: Sure. So, you know, as I've said before in the other podcast, I think the spirit guides are one of the most problematic areas of spiritualism because it's hard to verify who they are because they are unique to the medium that's coming through. It's not like if my dead grandmother comes through, I know who she is, and I can provide kind of corroborating evidence that she is who she says she is. However, with spirit controls, it's more difficult. So not much is known about Dr. Anderson, but we believe he was John Berry Anderson, and he graduated very late in the 1700s from Pittsburgh University. He then went on to Columbia University in New York City and became a medical doctor. And I think it's interesting to note that his voice is often described as being strong or booming or loud. And I think this was possibly to prove that the spirit was real. And because, as we know, carth user spoke softly and had a speech impediment. And Jenny would comment about Anderson's voice, saying, you know, she stressed the quality of the voice that it possesses characteristics lacking in any human voice she had ever heard. Again, backing up the idea that Kath user was real in his channeling. This spirit and he wasn't being fraudulent.

Michelle: So what are then some of the significant examples of spirits that he purportedly channeled?

Dr Nick Richnell: So because this was an evidential circle, it's hard to say who was significant because they were family members mostly coming through. But I think if we look at William Carthuser, the most significant one was outside of the Pin Cock circle. It was when he was the medium in Dr. Nandor Fodor's first seance. And as we know, Nandor Fodor was a psychical researcher and this first seance he experienced with Carthuser, apparently Fodor's father came through speaking in Hungarian. So William Kathuza was speaking in Hungarian that we assume he didn't know. However, his mum was Hungarian. I don't know if Hungarian was spoken in the home, but it does leave you, as you learn more about Kathuser's career in spiritualism, whether that was real or not.

Michelle: So what insights then do you think? Jenny Pincock's book the Trail of Truth, which you've mentioned briefly, what do you think that offers up about her spiritual journey and her involvement in spiritualism?

Dr Nick Richnell: So I think if we look at the time period we're at the late 1920s, early to mid-1930s, this was after the First World War when spiritualism hit, had a heyday as folks were turning towards spiritualism because they'd lost brothers and uncles and fathers in the war. And it was similar in the uk. We know Barbanel was rising through the ranks of spiritualism at the same period. So I think it's more. I find it more interesting that this was happening around the world. This wasn't just confined to London, it wasn't just confined to southwest Ontario. There was this common resurgence of spiritualism. And this one especially because it was very behind the scenes, like Thomas Lacey's group, they were behind the scenes. And I think it's important that, you know, Jenny Pinkock was a woman as a psychical researcher, which is fairly rare, to one of a handful. I think I could probably only name one or two others that we would consider psychical researchers. So I think this book, Trails of Truth, is important in that aspect.

Michelle: And how would you say it sheds light on some of her own personal experiences.

Dr Nick Richnell: So this would be, you know, as we talked about her, you know, continuing marriage, if you like, you know, she didn't remarry. She remained committed to Newton Pinkock, you know, and people listening to this can make up their own kind of judgment on that, if they like, if that was right. Why didn't she, you know, remarry? Because, you know, having a marriage with someone who is coming to you in spirit form, it's kind of challenging, I think, for a lot of people to get their heads around and understand. But she was committed to spiritualism even after the fallout of her disagreements with Kathyuza that we'll talk about. So this was just really her way, as we said, to keep her family together and to see her children grow.

Michelle: And one of the things that really fascinated me, having the chance to read the book, was to see up close the way that her role really contributed to these seances. Because, you know, when you said earlier on that she was very much the psychical researcher, I think you see this in the meticulous way that she records every detail to the point where every single person present is recorded. I mean, it's very exact and precise, which I think really does help to reveal an awful lot about her approach to what she was doing and the note taking that she was taking and why she was there and what she was doing.

Dr Nick Richnell: It is. And that's fascinating, right, because at the beginning of each seance note, she would have this little section where, as you said, she would note who was present. She would note the conditions, which I find fascinating. So by that she would write if a sitter was new to the group, if a sitter was inexperienced, because all of these factors can contribute to the success or failure of a seance. She would write the Times, sometimes she would write the weather as weather seemingly was having an impact. Sometimes she would note that William Carthuser wasn't feeling very well during this seance, and she'll kind of admit that the seance was a failure or wasn't terribly successful at the beginning of these. So I think this is very important to note. And she led these. As we'll hear, they stopped. She stopped having seances when she fell out with Carthuser. They didn't continue in the same form, at least with her present.

Michelle: As the days grow shorter and the winter nights draw near, the chill in the air invites us to gather closer to the fire, where the flickering flames dance like specters in the dark. It's during these colder months that our spectral journey deepens, revealing even more chilling tales and unsolved enigmas. And now, dear listeners, is the perfect time to become an integral part of our ghostly congregation. With the nights lengthening and the shadows growing, we need your support more than ever to keep our supernatural flames burning bright. But fear not, for there are a myriad of ways you can help sustain our haunted explorations. Firstly, have you ever considered treated our podcast to a virtual coffee? Imagine it a humble offering to fuel our relentless pursuit of haunted histories as we delve into the unknown. Simply head over to ko fi.com HauntedHistoryChronicles and join us for a caffeine infused seance. Your support helps keep the fire burning, allowing us to continue unearthing the darkest corners of history. But that's merely the beginning of our spectral soiree. For those intrepid souls yearning for deeper communion with the paranormal, consider joining our exclusive Patreon family. And here's some truly exciting news. From the beginning of October through to the end of December, as the winter winds howl and the nights grow long, all Patreon supporters on any tier will be gifted with bonus daily podcasts. Yes, you heard that right. Daily doses of the supernatural to accompany you through the shorter days and colder nights. It's a veritable paranormal advent calendar for your soul, making this the perfect time to join the Patreon community. So why hesitate? Journey forth to Patreon the links to the Haunted History Chronicles Patreon site is found in the podcast Description notes or via the website. Become a patron today and let our tales of the eerie and unexplained be your nightly companions. But the spirit of generosity lingers still. If you seek to flaunt your allegiance to the podcast in more tangible ways, why not venture into our newly unearthed merchandise crypt? From mugs that whisper their secrets to clothing that echoes with ghostly laughter, the shop is a sanctuary for the discerning paranormal aficionado. Again, you can find links to the Tea Public Shop via the website or podcast description notes so that you can traverse the Haunted History Chronicles shop to adorn yourself with our spectral regalia. Whether it's bestowing a virtual coffee, joining our Spectral Society on Patreon, or donning Haunted History Chronicles apparel, your support keeps the ethereal flames alight. Every spectral contribution fuels the pursuit of unearthly truths. So heed the call, dear listeners. The links to our spectral sanctuaries await in the shadows of the podcast Description notes or via the website or social media platforms, dare to embrace the unknown, to journey deeper into the veiled corridors of history. For only together can we keep the ghostly embers glowing, illuminating the darkness with tales untold. Now, as the fire crackles and the wind howls outside, let us return to the mysteries that beckon from beyond the veil. What spectres await? What secrets lie dormant, waiting to be unearthed? Let us venture forth for the journey into the Unknown has only just begun.

Michelle: So what was it then? You know, what were the circumstances that led to Carthuser being investigated for fraud?

Dr Nick Richnell: So Kathuser, you know, cut to the chase. He was very interested in money. So I think over time his mediumship started to become colored by money and him saying to people what he thought they wanted to hear. So he would receive money, but. And also when your mediums were being tested, some they were being paid to be tested. So of course he was happy to do that. He was tested by the renowned psychical investigator Harold Carrington. However, Carthuser was not strip searched like women would have been and he wasn't subjected to degrading act. He was very similar to Thomas Lacey. He was in a type of a laboratory. So he was actually in a seance. Was recorded in a seance in 1933 in New York City by the World Broadcasting Company that we know now as Decca Records. So this test was supervised by the American Society for Psychical Research. And they placed many microphones around the room so they could record the spirit voices, but they positioned them away from the medium himself. Yet the report said that only the engineers in the seance room were impressed. Those associated with the ASPR were not impressed by what they saw. So that was the start of that. Then in 1935, another investigator associated with the American Society for Psychical Research, a man called Henry Clay McComas, did some investigating of Carthuser. McComas was a psychologist and was connected to Princeton University. And initially he believed Carthuser to be a great medium. But this changed once he started doing one on one experiments with Carthuser. So in 1935 McComas wrote a book called Ghosts I have Talked with. And there's this whole, whole chapter in there dedicated to carth user court. And the chapter is called A Great Medium. Basically during the tests, McComas found that William Carthuser would leave his chair during a seance in order to manipulate the spirit trumpet. So in fact Carthuser would tilt the trumpet before speaking through it to give the impression that the voice was coming from elsewhere in the room. And then, you know, we talked about Elsie a little earlier. So Elsie was Carth user's channel spirit guide who was a young girl with a high voice. So what McComas did, he used a type of stethoscope that he attached to Carthuse's throat. And McComa said that he, you know, in a normal situation he could hear Carthews carotid artery. So the pulsing of the blood through There. Yet when Elsie was speaking, you couldn't hear that pulsing in the stethoscope that stopped. So what he believed was happening was that Carthuser was pinching the stethoscope tube shut to mimic or to make this voice of Elsie. So after this, Katha was called into McComas office after these tests, and he is said to have confessed to manipulating the spirit trumpets. And in his defense, he said that this is what spiritualists often did. However, William Carthuser did not admit to any fraudulent activity concerning the voices heard in the seance room. So this is 1935, and this is when the church of divine revelation closed and Jenny O'Hara Pincock ceased her contact with William Carthuser.

Michelle: What evidence then would you say, you know, those accusations, you know, what other kinds of impact would you say those accusations had on this seance group and on Jenny going forward?

Dr Nick Richnell: So this was devastating for Jenny. You know, she was committed to spiritualism. You know, as we've talked, she had, you know, know these seances so she could, you know, see her husband and, you know, children. So in the archives where the pinoc collection is, there are two letters where a heartbreak is palpable. I'm going to read one. It's a copy of a letter from July 13, 1939, that Jenny wrote to Carth User. So this was four years after, you know, these claim fraudulent issues came up. Jenny wrote, dear William, you and your family have always had my good wishes. However, I do not think that you yet realize I am supremely contented living my life apart from any of the past associations forced upon it. It would not be fair to raise your hopes that ever again I might wish a sitting. I feel I never shall. I had hoped my silence would convey this to you more eloquently than any words of mine. However, I'm sincerely glad to express at this time good wishes to you and the happy family. I know your mediumship can be superlative if at all times in its exercise you will. A passive mind, the finest mediumship in the world without this is worse than nothing. A passive mind is the keystone both in mediumistic development and in its subsequent responsibility to God and man. That is the way God saw fit to make us wise is the medium who guards the treasure. Sincerely, Jenny O'Hara Pincook. So here this is just a heartbreaking short letter that she wrote to carth user. Clearly she wasn't getting over this loss. This is more grief in her life, not only losing her husband and children and parents, but now she'd lost this one good thing in her life that she'd spent years investigating.

Michelle: It is really, truly heartbreaking because you can see the trust that she has put in someone around something so deeply, deeply personal. And that just must have been really, you know, earth shattering to have that sense of doubt and feeling as though that trust has been broken in, in knowing what to do and how to go forward with that and how to deal with that. I mean, it's, it's unimaginable. Like you said, it is just more grief on top of grief.

Dr Nick Richnell: It is. And it's sad that it took so long for her to realize that this was happening. Because during my time in London and when I was researching Maurice Barbanel at the Harry Price archives at Senate House Library, I found three letters between Harry Price and the spiritualist H. Dennis Bradley. So it seems. So I don't see Carth user's letters, but clearly William Carthuser had written to Bradley offering to be tested by the British Society for Psychical Research, or at least by Harry Price, clearly wanting more money than they were willing to pay him to do that. Bradley actually calls William Carth user illiterate. And then they kind of tell Carthuser no, they're not going to do that. But they, they were happy to consider if he came on his own without them paying, then they would see if they could get him some sittings. Then later on that year to 1930, Jenny Pinkock, when she published Trails of Truth, she sent copies everywhere. So there's a lot of correspondence about that. So she sent them a copy to Dennis Bradley and they clearly hadn't realized that William Carthuser was a voice medium. So they said if he did ever come to the uk, they would consider testing him or hearing him because there's such a scarcity of voice mediums.

Michelle: So just to kind of sum up, what would you say then the key factors were that really contributed to Carthus departure then from the Church of Divine Revelation.

Dr Nick Richnell: So I think, you know, it's the claims of Makomas clearly brought, I'd say, shame on the church and they brought a not very good light on the church. And I think it was his, his love of money that ultimately is the problem here. As I said, he was giving messages colored by the money he was receiving and telling people what he thought they wanted to hear. But it's interesting, he didn't stop practicing. So he did have a house at Lilydale and I found he was still there in 1940. So five years after McComas claims of fraudulent activity. And I actually went to Lilydale personally in 2019 just for a visit with a friend and we went to the museum because up to that point, whenever I'd asked anyone at lilydale about carthuser, There was like this reaction of, we don't know who he is. But when I went to the museum, there was a photo of william carthuser on the wall. And even then there was like this denial that kath user was at lilydale, although clearly he was still there in 1940.

Michelle: And how would you describe his departure then received by the other church members? I mean, you've spoken about the impact that it had on jenny, but how was it received by the wider spiritualist community within the church?

Dr Nick Richnell: So it wasn't positive for sure. I haven't seen anything in writing, but we know that willincarth user relocated to los angeles, so it's almost. I feel like he ran away to escape whatever issues he caused in St. Catherine's Ontario and at lilydale from his seemingly fraudulent activity.

Michelle: And obviously you mentioned just then that he relocated to los angeles. What was the impact of that move on his spiritualist career?

Dr Nick Richnell: So by all accounts, it continued. So I did have access to some private interviews with family members in los angeles. So as I said earlier, he married his second wife, birdie in los angeles, and that was about 1961. And then with the interviews with these family members of birdie, he continued to perform seances in california, but he would hold them for family members and charge them 25 to $30 for the privilege. So I think this sums william carr fuser up quite nicely. But one family member did also comment that the speech impediment did disappear during the seances. So again, I think he was genuine up to a point. But to charge your family members to attend to seance, I think that tells you a lot about him as a man.

Michelle: And obviously just coming back to something that we briefly touched upon earlier in terms of jenny's documentation of these seances. You know, what would you say we can learn from analyzing these records? Are there particular notable examples of phenomena that she captures as part of that documentation and recording?

Dr Nick Richnell: Absolutely. So in these seance notes, they were all handwritten, as we've said, and jenny did this note taking and she does note the phenomena. So, know, spirit trumpets, they. They were common in the sounds room at St. Catherine's they would use musical instruments and spirits would play those, such as violins. They would usually have a bowl of water in the seance room as well. And then spirits would Splash that and then that's how people would know spirits were present. Flowers would appear in really interestingly, in 19, I think it's 1929, they held what's called a children's seance. This was a seance for living children to meet their dead children relatives. And at the beginning of that seance, perfume is wafted around the room from the children in spirit, which I think is quite interesting.

Michelle: How would you say that those records then also contribute to our understanding then of middle 20th century spiritualism?

Dr Nick Richnell: I think they show it was happening, right, that these seemingly ordinary people were meeting at whatever frequency they were to get together in this, you know, seemingly normal house in, you know, quiet St. Catherine's Ontario to connect with their loved ones in spirit. So I think it's, you know, it's fascinating, you know, and the type of people, as we talked about, you know, to have barristers there, you know, and medical doctors coming along who are people that normally you wouldn't think were would be attending a seance, especially in this small town.

Michelle: I think it's also fascinating that, you know, here you have someone who obviously comes from a Methodist background and yet is looking for answers within the spiritualist community. And I think it speaks volume of this time, timeframe post, you know, the first World War, et cetera. As we've kind of noted that here we have people reaching out for answers that they aren't getting from these other, you know, mainstream organizations of which, you know, they would likely go to for support for answers to help them understand their grief. And I think, you know, this is a really powerful kind of movement that we see of, just like you said, the everyday ordinary person turning to spiritualism because there isn't that ability to do so elsewhere in other organizations.

Dr Nick Richnell: That's right, Michelle. And I think we can note here as well that Jenny's brother in law, Fred Maines, who was married to Minnie, her sister, and helped found the Church of Divine Revelation. As I said, he was a Methodist, Methodist minister and he was thrown out of the church because he became the pastor of the Church of Divine Revelation. So Methodist said, no, we don't want you in our church anymore, you have to leave. He didn't attend the hearing. He refused to go. Unlike Jenny's friend B.F. austin, who writes the introduction to Trails of Truth. Again, he was a Methodist minister and he was actually charged with heresy by the Methodist Church as he turned to spiritualism again because he lost a child. So you're right, people do turn away from organized religion to spiritualism because organized Religion doesn't answer their questions about the afterlife. They're almost pretty hypocritical about it. But spiritualism welcomes everyone.

Michelle: So how is it then that the University of Waterloo came into possession of the records that it has?

Dr Nick Richnell: So that was thanks to Dr. Stan McMullen. So Stan also helped bring in the Thomas Lacey recordings that we talked about on the other podcast. I believe three women turned up at his office at the university one day and handed over these records because Stan was interested in the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, someone else who's very well known for being involved in spiritualism. So that's really simple as they turned up there, because after Minnie died, Minnie's daughter Colleen, who I haven't mentioned yet, but Colleen was one of the regular in the seance room at the age of three, and she was actually baptized by Dr. Andersen Carth, User's spirit guide, during a seance. So Colleen would often play with her spirit cousins, Jane and Bobby. And I love that one day Jane actually told tales on Colleen. Colleen would have, as kids do, have tea parties, you know, and there's empty cups and you're pretending you're drinking tea from the cup, but because the cup was empty, Colleen would spit in the cup, you know, as if to have some water in there. And it was Jane that, you know, told on her to her parents that she was doing this and, you know, kind of being naughty with the tea ceremony. So it's thanks to Colleen, who passed away, I think, this year at almost 100, that these records were saved and transferred to the University of Waterloo.

Michelle: I mean, it's quite a provenance, isn't it, to have that direct connection in how they've been preserved and then handed on. And obviously then something that people can still learn from and experience to really understand what it was like within these seances.

Dr Nick Richnell: Yeah, it's absolutely right. And, you know, through my work there, I was able to connect with Colleen's son, who donated further records that he'd found of other seances and of his grandfather, Fred Maines, records that came in. And we were able to have Colleen identify people in some of the photographs we had in the archives there. So it was great to keep her involved. All those many, many, many years after the seances ended, she was still interested in helping us. And, you know, Dave, the son, was not interested in spiritualism himself, but they had no problem. And they didn't find it odd that his mum and his relatives were involved in these seances. It was just part of the family history.

Michelle: There's something very touching in the way that, you know, we've obviously spoken about how the seance has helped to keep this family together. And yet we're seeing the same thing here. We've got family still connecting with family in helping to pass on the legacy of these records and to share in preserving that and keeping the story of what happened alive by passing them on for others to learn from. There's something really quite touching in that. I think there is.

Dr Nick Richnell: And this is, you know, the archivist side of my life. This is what I love, is that we are able to work with these amazing donors and to save these legacies for future generations to come and to understand this particular window of time in southwest Ontario that this. These seances were happening. I love it. And to be able to have students come in and read about these. The best thing in that collection, the science notes are something. But we actually had one of the seance trumpets that they used in the seances. So that was my favorite item in the whole of the archives out of any collection. I would always take people to the spirit trumpet first.

Michelle: And for me, this is why I think, you know, documentation like this is so critical, it's so noteworthy, because it really does just highlight just how alive and present these types of experiences and happenings were in communities. You know, for you, I don't know if you feel the same, but, you know, certainly for me, that's what I find particularly noteworthy about seeing these types of things. Just to see how alive it was, as I mentioned.

Dr Nick Richnell: Absolutely. I 100% agree with you there.

Michelle: So how have they been, you know, received by maybe other researchers or scholars then, who've. Who've evaluated or interpreted the material?

Dr Nick Richnell: So this collection is pretty well used. So Stan MacMullen, who I said, helped bring the collection in, he wrote a book called Anatomy of a Seance. And he was looking at seances in a certain part of Canada. He wrote about the Thomas Lacey folks. He wrote about William Lyon Mackenzie King. He also wrote two chapters, one about Jenny Pinkock and then one about the Church of Divine Revelation. So his was more of a telling the story of what happened. But one of my favorite scholars is Beth A. Robertson. Beth wrote a book called, excuse me, Science of the Transnational Networks and Gendered Bodies in the Study of psychic phenomena, 1918 to 1940. And I think that Robertson's work is really important because she, you know, as I've said, women in mediumship have been labeled as being mediums really because of their passivity or their, you know, their soft Nature. And Beth Robertson looks at gender politics in terms of William Carth user and his body size, how that's been commented on and how he, his voice, how that sounded. So she's pathologizing William Karthuser in terms of, of her research, which I think is interesting because not many male mediums have been treated this way in comparison, you know, comparison to the women.

Michelle: And you know, one of the things that I find fascinating again, and I think we've touched upon it really briefly before, but there is this sense of many of these female figures really do get lost to history, you know, comparable with their male counterparts. And so again, it's really, really intriguing to me that, you know, we have Jenny here and the records that we have in order to help understand the role that women played within these circles, outside of the medium role, how involved they were and to be able to really understand her life, her motivations in a way that we don't always get with other women who have clearly equally had as much impact on, on seances and other circles around the world. But here we have someone that we, we can really understand more about her and help to see how that really falls into this broader spiritualist movement of this time. That this was something that men, women, all ages, young, older, all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of educational backgrounds, working backgrounds, were really falling into this community, this field because of a need and a want to answer some of the questions that they had.

Dr Nick Richnell: That's right. And Dr. Jane Nicholas, she is a historian at the St. Jerome's University, which is affiliated with Waterloo. She wrote this great article about the children's seance that I talked about. And she's looking at the middle class families that were involved in these seances, especially surrounding child death. Looking at the body and grief during this, the interwar period that we've talked about is very important in the study of spiritualism.

Michelle: So just coming back to something that we spoke about really briefly, but how would you say the Methodist background then of many of the people in her circle influenced the way they structured their seances and practices.

Dr Nick Richnell: So I think, of course, starting with the Lord's Prayer and that particular psalm that they use would have been the influence there. And I think that's probably where it starts and ends with that because as we know the Methodist Church, it was said throughout two ministers as they discovered or entered into spiritualism. And just local churches in this community were not happy that the Church of Divine Revelation had been opened. There was a lot of articles in the local press. The pastors were attacked in the press by the mainstream religions, if you like, because they refused to agree that the soul continues after physical death. And then they would say that Spiritualist phenomena could be explained just due to the psychology of it. So I imagine once the church closed in 1935, these other churches, Methodist or Catholic, what have you, were quite happy that the Spiritualists were no longer holding regular church services in their region.

Michelle: So outside of the response of those mainstream religions, do we know much about the wider community response to the Mains Pincock church or circles?

Dr Nick Richnell: I think on reading in the archives, they had a fairly strong membership and, you know, and they had a supportive membership. So as they were being attacked by, you know, these, you know, the press or the other churches, people such as Mr. Hetherington, who was the barrister and attended the seances, he would publicly support the church and defend it in the local press, which I think is quite unusual for someone of that stature to be doing that. But then, you know, if we look at compare that to Maurice Barbanel, he was going through the same thing at the same time in the UK with the press attacking Spiritualism. Of course, his on a much larger scale than Jenny O'Hara Pincock. But I think it's interesting that the press turned on spiritualism in the 1930s in Canada and in the United Kingdom.

Michelle: And is there anything in terms of Jenny's personal reflections or experiences that you would say diverge from mainstream spiritualist practices?

Dr Nick Richnell: I don't think so. I think she was, you know, I think she was fairly mainstream herself in this. But I think what's interesting, even after all the upset and the grief of the church closing, of her relationship ending with William Carthuser, she still remained committed to spiritualism. I think she remained a spiritualist for the rest of her life, which wasn't that long. She died in 1948, I think from complications of breast cancer. But I think when she was practicing, she was much like anyone else who was doing it, except the fact that she was a woman who was, as I consider, a psychical researcher.

Michelle: For me, that's part of the really intriguing aspect about her, that she really does seem to embody that role. And it's fantastic. It's so empowering to see someone being that methodical and precise and clear in that motivation just simply through, you know, turning page, you know, after page after page of the book. I mean, you see it, it's so evident and it's wonderful to see. It's really, really empowering to see that. I think it's brilliant.

Dr Nick Richnell: It is and you know, and even, you know, once you read Trails of Truth, it's fairly mundane. Right. I think that's fair to say. You know, when you've got Granny coming through recounting a story, they're not always interesting, but the interesting is the connection they're having with these spirits. You know, it's important to them. But as you read them, you know, as an outsider, if you're like, you could be like quite turned off from it because it's not, it doesn't grab you with the information that's being shared with them because you can't relate to it. What you relate to is the real life story, if you like, and the loss and the grief and why they're doing it. I think that's the important. Something more than the content of the sales notes.

Michelle: Yeah, she's not intending to tell a story. It's not a narrative, it's field notes. That's effectively what you're reading. But again, I think that's the bit that's really quite intriguing because it is precisely what she's intending to do. Just to have this very precise record and capturing the environment, the people that are there, the experiences that are happening without any of the embellishments. She's not trying to turn this into, you know, a prize winning story, an author, you know, an authorship of a book. Instead, this is a record of what they're trying to achieve and what they're trying to do. And, and you can see the real drive and passion in that documentation, I think, because there is real rigor to it.

Dr Nick Richnell: There is. And I think, and you can see she's trying to convince people that this is true. She's trying to convince the skeptics. I think that's a goal of what she's doing as well, is to show that you can communicate with those that have passed on.

Michelle: So just to kind of round things up, is there anything you think we should know that we haven't talked about when it comes to Jenny or to Carthusa or just the wider spiritualist community and field in general?

Dr Nick Richnell: I think that the only thing I would say, I said I'm obsessed with Carthews. I think he's a really interesting character to study. When he died in 1966, again, coincidentally, the same year that Thomas Lacey died, however, as I said, Thomas Lacey was buried in a pauper's grave. However, William Carthuser was buried in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles where the likes of Bette Davis and Lucille Ball are buried. So I always end My talks about Carth user saying that he's still enjoying this level of celebrity in death with where he was buried.

Michelle: I mean, it's quite an accolade to be alongside some of those film stars and people within popular culture. I mean, it really is quite a leg up on society, isn't it, to be alongside them. It's an impressive note to end on.

Dr Nick Richnell: It is. And I imagine I can picture him smiling as he's laid to rest, knowing where he was gonna lay to rest forever.

Michelle: Honestly, it's always such a privilege to chat to you about some of these communities, these circles, the individuals within them and the life that they had. It brings to color and brings to life this really fascinating period of history where you just see this explosion of spiritualism and how it does just impact on the regular ordinary person. And yeah, it's fascinating to see that play out in, in a small way within just one part, just this one circle, this one community of people coming together to explore the questions around the afterlife.

Dr Nick Richnell: Yeah, it's truly fascinating. You know, I'm always appreciative of this time to talk with you, Michelle, and share this with your listeners and give them this little glimpse into this life in southwestern Ontario.

Michelle: Yeah, where spiritualism really is very much alive. And you can see that in just the few podcasts that we've spoken about. And I would, you know, following on from that very much recommend that people take a look at the links that I'll pop into the podcast description notes. And of course, they're already on the website so that they can find out more about you. They can find out what's available and have a look through some of the records that are held at the university. You know, you'll be able to see some of these things and hear some of these things that we've been speaking of. The records are incredible. The documentation that are there in the archives are really, truly exceptional and they're there for people to experience and to be able to look at and study so that we can understand this part of history better. You know, we can really understand what was going on. So, yeah, I will make sure to include all of those links and hope that people follow up with that.

Dr Nick Richnell: That's great. I hope they do. You know, those, as you just said, those records are there to be used. So I really encourage people to use them.

Michelle: And of course, Nic, you're welcome back any time to talk about any aspect of your research and what you're getting up to. I know you still have your plans for a book. I'M hoping that comes out soon.

Dr Nick Richnell: It's in the progress, so more on.

Michelle: That soon and I will say goodbye to everybody listening. Bye everybody.

Michelle: Thank you for joining us on this journey into the unknown. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. You can follow us on social media for updates and more intriguing stories. Until next time, keep your eyes open and your mind curious.