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GHOSTS OF THE PRAIRIE History & Hauntings of America |
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GHOSTS OF THE PRAIRIE History & Hauntings of America |
BY TROY TAYLOR
What Strange Events Occurred in Watseka, Illinois to lead so many to believe that a young
girl had returned from the dead?
Truth or Fiction? You be the Judge!
The small town of Watseka, Illinois is located about 50 miles south of Chicago and
on the eastern side of the state, just a few miles from the Indiana border. The sensation
that would come to be known as the "Watseka Wonder" would first make it's
appearance here in July of 1877.
It was at this time that a 13-year-old girl named Lurancy Vennum first fell into a
strange, catatonic sleep during which she claimed to speak with spirits. The attacks
occurred many times each day and sometimes lasted as long as eight hours. During her
trance, Lurancy would speak in different voices although when she awoke, she would
remember nothing. News of the strange girl traveled about the state and during this time
of popularity for the Spiritualist movement, many visitors came to see her.
Finally, doctors diagnosed Lurancy as being mentally ill and they recommended that she be
sent to the State Insane Asylum in Peoria, Illinois. In January of 1878, a man named Asa
Roff, also from Watseka, came to visit the Vennum family. He claimed that his own
daughter, Mary, had been afflicted with the same condition as Lurancy...and he was
convinced that his daughter had actually spoken to spirits.
He was also convinced that his daughter’s spirit still existed....but little did he
know, that she was right now inside the body of Lurancy Vennum!
To understand the strange and fantastic events that took place in Watseka, we must first
start at the beginning of the tale and try to piece together a puzzle that has disturbed
investigators for years. Is spirit possession really possible? If you explore the strange
case of the “Watseka Wonder”, you just might believe that it is!
Mary Roff died on the afternoon of July 5, 1865 while hospitalized at the State Mental
Asylum in Peoria. She had been committed there after a bizarre incident when she began
slashing at her arms with a straight razor. It was the final tragedy in Mary’s
descent into madness and insanity. In the beginning, it had only been the strange voices
that seemed to come from nowhere; next were the long periods when she stayed in a
trance-like state; then came her moments of awakening, when she spoke in other voices and
seemed to be possessed by the spirits of other people; then finally, came her obsession
with blood. Mary was convinced that she needed to remove the blood from her body, using
pins, leeches and at last, a sharpened razor.
After that final incident, her parents discovered her on the floor of her room, no longer
conscious and lying in a pool of blood. Broken-hearted, they took her to the asylum and
here, Mary endured more tragedy as the “cures” for insanity in those days were
hardly up to the standards of psychiatric hospitals of today. A favored treatment in the
1860’s was the Water Cure, where a patient would be immersed naked in a tub of icy
water and then taken to a tub of scalding water.
And there was more.... female patients, like Mary, received a cold water douche,
administered with a hose and then wet sheets were wrapped tightly around them to squeeze
the blood vessels shut. This was followed by vigorous rubbing to restore circulation.
These treatments were administered several times each week.
Not surprisingly, such techniques brought little success and most patients never improved.
Mental hospitals at that time were merely cages to store the insane and it would be some
years to come before any real progress was made in mental health care.
Like most others, Mary showed no improvement and soon died.
At the time of Mary Roff’s death, Lurancy Vennum was a little more than one year
old.... but in just over a decade, their lives would be forever connected in a case that
remains today as one of the strangest, and most authentic, cases of possession ever
recorded.
Lurancy Vennum had been born on April 16, 1864 and she and her family had moved to Watseka
when she was seven years old. Since they arrived long after Mary Roff’s death, the
Vennum family knew nothing of her strange illness, nor did they know the Roff family,
other than to speak to them on the streets of the small town.
Then on July 11, 1877, a series of strange events would begin.
On that morning, Lurancy complained to her mother about feeling sick and then collapsed
onto the floor, passed out cold. She stayed in a deep, catatonic sleep for the next five
hours but when she awoke, she seemed fine. But this was only the beginning....
The next day, Lurancy once again slipped off into the trance-like sleep but this time was
different, as she began speaking aloud of visions and spirits. In her trance, she told her
family that she was in heaven and that she could see and hear spirits, including the
spirit of her brother, whom had died in 1874.
From that day on, the trances began to occur more and more frequently and would sometimes
last for up to eight hours. While she was asleep, Lurancy continued to speak about her
visions, which were sometimes terrifying. She claimed that spirits were chasing her
through the house and shouting her name. The attacks occurred up to a dozen times each day
and as they continued, Lurancy began to speak in other languages, or at least in nonsense
words that no one could understand. When she awoke, she would remember nothing of her
trance nor of her strange ramblings.
The stories and rumors about Lurancy and her visions began to circulate in Watseka.
People were certainly talking and even the local newspaper printed stories about her. No
one followed the case more closely than Asa Roff, the father of Mary Roff. In the early
stages of Mary’s illness, she too had claimed to communicate with spirits and would
fall into long trances without warning. He was sure that Lurancy Vennum was suffering from
the same illness as his poor daughter. But Roff said nothing until the Vennum family
exhausted every known cure for Lurancy. It was not until the local doctor and a minister
suggested that the girl be sent to the State Mental Hospital that Roff got involved. He
refused to see another young woman end up as his Mary did in the hands of the doctors.
On January 31, 1878, he contacted the Vennum family. They were naturally skeptical of his
story but he did persuade them to let him bring a Dr. E. Winchester Stevens to the house.
Stevens, like Asa Roff, was a dedicated Spiritualist and the two men had become convinced
that Lurancy was not insane. They believed that Lurancy was actually a vessel through
which the dead were communicating. Roff only wished that he had seen the same evidence in
his own daughter years before.
The Vennum’s allowed Dr. Stevens to “mesmerize” the girl and try to contact
the spirits through her. Within moments, Lurancy was speaking in another voice, which
allegedly came from a spirit named Katrina Hogan. Then, the spirit changed and claimed to
be that of Willie Canning, a young man who had committed suicide. She spoke as Willie for
over an hour and then suddenly, she threw her arms into the air and fell over backward.
Dr. Stevens took her hands and soon, Lurancy calmed and gained control of her body again.
She was now in heaven and would allow a gentler spirit to control her.
She said the spirit’s name was Mary Roff.
The trance continued on into the next day and by this time, Lurancy apparently was Mary
Roff. She said that she wanted to leave the Vennum house, which was unfamiliar to her, and
go home to the Roff house. When Mrs. Roff heard the news, she hurried to the Vennum house
in the company of her married daughter, Minerva Alter.
The two women came up the sidewalk and saw Lurancy sitting by the window. “Here comes
Ma and Nervie,” she reportedly said and ran up to hug the two surprised women. No one
had called Minerva by the name “Nervie” since Mary’s death in 1865.
It now seemed evident to everyone involved that Mary had taken control of Lurancy
Vennum.
Although she looked the same, she knew everything about the Roff family and treated them
as her loved ones. The Vennum’s, on the other hand, although treated very
courteously, were seen with a distant politeness. It was as if their own daughter only
knew them as friendly strangers.
On February 11, Lurancy, or rather “Mary”, was allowed to go home with the
Roff’s. Mr. and Mrs. Vennum agreed that it would be for the best, although they
desperately hoped that Lurancy would regain her true identity. The Roff’s however,
saw this as a miracle, as though Mary had returned from the grave.
Lurancy was taken across town and as they traveled, they passed by the former Roff home,
where they had been living when Mary died. She demanded to know why they were not
returning there and they had to explain that they had moved a few years back. Further
evidence that Lurancy was now Mary Roff?
For the next several months, Lurancy lived as Mary and seemed to have completely forgotten
her former life. She did however, tell her mother that she would only be with them until
“some time in May”. As time passed, Lurancy continued to show that she knew more
about the Roff family, their possessions and habits, than she could have possibly known if
she had been faking the whole thing. Many of the incidents and remembrances that she
referred to had taken place years before Lurancy had even been born.
Of course, not everyone in Watseka believed that Mary had taken possession of
Lurancy’s body and ridiculed the very idea of it. Several of the doctors who had
attempted to treat Lurancy started scathing rumors about Dr. Stevens and the Vennum’s
pastor pleaded with them to have Lurancy committed. He predicted a time when they would
wish that they had followed his advice.
In early May, Lurancy told the Roff family that it was time for her to leave. She became
very sad and despondent and would spend the day going from one family member to the next,
hugging them and touching them at every opportunity. She wept often at the thought of
leaving her “real family” and over the next couple of weeks, a battle raged for
control of Lurancy’s physical body. At one moment, Lurancy would announce that she
had to leave and at the next moment, Mary would cling to her father and cry over the idea
of leaving him.
Finally, on May 21, Lurancy returned home to the Vennum’s. She displayed none of the
strange symptoms of her earlier illness and her parents were convinced that somehow she
had been cured, thanks to intervention by the spirit of Mary Roff. She soon became a happy
and healthy young woman, suffering no ill effects from her strange experience.
She also remained in touch with the Roff family for the rest of her life. Although she had
no memories of her time as Mary, she still felt a curious closeness to them that she could
never really explain. During occasional visits to their home, Lurancy would sometimes
allow Mary to take control of her so that she could communicate with her family.
Eight years later, when Lurancy turned 18, she married a local farmer named George
Binning and two years later, they moved to Rawlins County, Kansas. They bought a farm
there and had 11 children. Lurancy died in the late 1940’s while she was in
California visiting one of her daughters.
Asa Roff and his wife received hundreds of letters, from believers and skeptics alike,
after the story of the possession was printed on the front page of the Watseka newspaper.
After a year of constant hounding and scorn from neighbors, they left Watseka and moved to
Emporia, Kansas. Seven years later, they returned to Watseka to live with Minerva and her
husband. They died of old age and are buried in Watseka.
The Vennum’s stayed on in Watseka for many years but after the death of her husband,
Lucinda Vennum moved to Kansas with Lurancy and her children.
Dr. Stevens lectured on the “Watseka Wonder” for eight years before dying in
Chicago in 1886.
Mary Roff was never heard from again.
So what really happened in Watseka? Did Mary Roff’s spirit really possess the body
of Lurancy Vennum? The families of everyone involved certainly thought so. What other
explanation exists for what happened?
To all accounts, Lurancy had the memories and personality of a girl who had been dead for
more than twelve years. She knew things about the family that no one could have possibly
known. There has been some suggestion that perhaps Lurancy acquired her knowledge of the
Roff’s to use for her own purposes. A rumor said that she had fallen in love with one
of the Roff sons and wanted to be close to the family. This claim was never taken
seriously and it seems unlikely that he could have coached her well enough to have pulled
off what she did. Others have suggested that Lurancy was psychic and somehow “picked
up” the memories of Mary Roff from the minds of the Roff family themselves. Again,
this is also unlikely as Lurancy had never, and would never, exhibit any signs of psychic
powers.
For me personally, I have always been skeptical about any type of “possession”,
usually believing in the idea of mental illness first. However, it seemed the more reading
that I did into the story of the “Watseka Wonder”, the more open I became to
idea that something very strange had occurred. Was it possible that Lurancy really had
been possessed by Mary Roff?
You can judge for yourself, but as for me..... well, I’ve begun to think that
anything might be possible.
COPYRIGHT 2000 BY TROY TAYLOR
SOURCES:
HAUNTED ILLINOIS by Troy Taylor (1999)
WATSEKA by David St. Clair (1977)
HAUNTED HEARTLAND by Beth Scott and Michael Norman (1985)
POSSESSEION: DEMONICAL AND OTHERWISE by TK Oesterreich (1966)
POSSESSION AND EXORCISM by TK Oesterreich (1974)
HAUNTED PLACES: THE NATIONAL DIRECTORY by Dennis William Hauck (1996)