Monthly Archives: October 2021

Witchcraft, Werewolves, & Vampires

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Sepia toned image of black cat, old woman, and woman flying on broomstick in the countryside.
Image from the title page of Salem Witchcraft.

In addition to the various ghost-related books discussed in the previous post, the Galvin Rare Book Room is also home to a variety of materials pertaining to witchcraft. While the notion of “a witch” existed for hundreds of years, the witch trials in Europe and the British colonies in the Americas reached their peak between 1450 and 1750. Historians continue to study the many aspects of this phenomenon, exploring the varied cultural, social, religious, and political foundations that led to, and supported, the belief structures behind them. A quick search in the Boatwright Library catalog offers many options to read further on this topic.

The collections of materials on witchcraft in the Rare Book Room offer research opportunities into the topic, especially for students in Professor Sydney Watts’ History 199 course “Witches, Heretics, and Unbelievers: Orthodoxy & Heterodoxy in Western Europe, 1520-1800.” In this course, students focus on the basic elements of historical thinking and research by exploring the challenging concepts of the problem of truth and reality through the lens of witchcraft and heresy in early modern Europe. Examining primary and secondary sources are part of that research journey, and we always appreciate the opportunity to work with faculty, students, and staff on their research projects.

One of the primary texts defining the concept of a witch was the Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of Witches, first published in 1486. Written by Catholic clergymen, the book functioned as a handbook for secular courts across Europe to assist in the identification, and eradication, of those deemed guilty of witchcraft.  Its three sections use natural philosophy and theology to prove the existence of evil, illustrate how witches recruit protégés, offers remedies and reversals for the spellbound, and provides legal guidelines on how to run a witch trial. The Galvin Rare Book Room copy is a facsimile edition featuring an English translation of the 1486 text. This edition totaled 1275 numbered copies, of which this item is number 537; it was a gift from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.  (catalog link)

Earlier this year, we added a new work to the materials available to study the history of witchcraft, Del Congresso Notturnao delle lammie libri tre. (catalog link) Published in 1749, this item is a first edition printing highlighting arguments about practical magic and witchcraft coming from the Venetian Inquisition.  Arguing against the more traditional viewpoints, the author Girolamo Tartarotti, claims that rather than demonic possession and satanic pacts, the behaviors tagged as magic relate more to medicinal herbs and potions and the fantasies and visions those concoctions produced. Even further, he suggests that the public spectacles of witch burnings fueled additional charges and outbreaks, noting that implementing less harsh measures might reduce the allegations by giving them less public attention.  One notable chapter focuses specifically on werewolves, which Tartarotti believed were also the result of drug-induced visions.

Studying witchcraft in the American colonies focuses primarily on the trials held in Salem, Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693 when more than 200 people were accused and 19 executed by hanging after being found guilty of the charges. Several items in the collection relate directly to the happenings in Salem, including:

Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World: being an account of the tryals of several witches lately executed in New-England; to which is added, A Farther Account of the tryals of the New-England Witches by Increase Mather. London: John Russell Smith, 1862 (catalog link)

Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World displayed: in Five Parts Boston: T. Bedlington, 1828.  (catalog link)

Salem Witchcraft: Comprising More Wonders of the invisible world, collected by Robert Calef; and Wonders of the Invisible World, by Cotton Mather; together with notes and explanations by Samuel P. Fowler. Boston: W. Veazie, 1865 (catalog link)

R.R. Hinman, The Blue Laws of New Haven Colony, usually called blue laws of Connecticut; Quaker Laws of Plymouth and Massachusetts; blue laws of New York, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. First record of Connecticut; interesting extracts from Connecticut records; cases of Salem witchcraft; charges and banishment of Rev. Roger Williams, and other interesting and instructive antiquities. Hartford: Case, Tiffany, 1838 (catalog link)

Other materials in the Rare Book Room also offer information on the study of witchcraft, including Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1841 (catalog link).  Witchcraft appears in other texts as well, including fictional works and in the artists’ books collection. Mary Johnson’s The Witch, published in 1914, is a novel set in 1600s England about a young English girl and a county physician who were part of the accused of sorcery and witchcraft (catalog link). Stories of witchcraft in colonial Virginia include James Bowyer’s The Witch of Jamestown, a story of colonial Virginia, published in 1890 (catalog link) in the Rare Book Room collection, while various depictions of the case of Grace Sherwood can be found in the circulating collection of the library. Even the historic children’s literature collection has two books on the topic: Tomie DePaola’s Strega Nona meets her match, published in 1993 (catalog link) and perhaps my personal favorite, Ib Spang Olsen’s The Marsh Crone’s Brew, translated by Virginia Allen Jensen in this 1960 version (catalog link).

Finally, one of the items in the artists’ books collections brings a contemporary experience to the study of witchcraft with the recently added work by Raeleen Kao, The Witch is Inside of Me. As indicated in the accompanying information sheet with the work, Kao describes it as a piece that “upends the nefariousness attributed to curiosity, sexuality, and disobedience in females and imbues the characters who raised me with power by embracing the corruptible, dual-faced nature within all of us.” (catalog link)

Oh, in case you were wondering when we’d get to the vampires in the title? There is indeed a work about vampires available.  The Galvin Rare Book Room is home to a first edition, printed in 1746, of Augustin Calmet’s Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des demons & des espirits. Et sut les revenans et vampires De Hongrie, de Moheme, de Moravie, & de Silesie. This comprehensive study contains nearly 500 pages of analysis about sorcery and witchcraft, demons and angels, and perhaps his most controversial comments about vampires.  As with some of the studies on witchcraft that attempt to reframe the conversation away from psychic or demonic elements and more towards physical aspects, Calmet’s opinions on vampires center on the effects of chemical substances in the soil on corpses. (catalog link)

Although under construction through Summer 2022, materials in the Galvin Rare Book Room are made available to UR faculty, staff, and students by appointment during this time.

Spiritualism & Ghost Stories

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Cover image of Ghosts of Virginia, grey with white flowers.

Ghost stories have long been a part of American storytelling traditions.  During the 19th century, however, those stories took on new depth as the beliefs of Spiritualism took hold. Many historians date the beginnings of the Spiritualist movement to the 1848 occurrences in Hydesville, New York, where the young Fox sisters engaged in rapping games with unseen spirits. These three sisters raised the possibility of having not merely encounters but conversations with those who had passed away, including the exchange of information and knowledge between this world and the next.  Although talking to spirits was nothing new, their work, which included founding the first Spiritualist society, is credited as being the start of Spiritualism, a movement that would eventually expand worldwide and capture the imagination of millions, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Much like the time of the Scientific Revolution, where the triumph of reason was expected to destroy magical belief systems, many individuals at the end of the 19th century expected the rising industrialism and new science to quickly stamp out what appeared to be mere ghost stories. Such was not the case, as Spiritualists quickly adapted the tools of science to help further their cause, developing their own language of communication and tools during an era which saw tremendous advances in technology.  Historian Molly McGarry noted, “Speaking to the dead may have seemed no less strange than communicating across cables or capturing the living on film. Like freezing an image on a photographic plate, the Spiritualists’ ghost catching was a collapsing of time: the past perceived in the present for the future” (McGarry, 20). Spiritualism in the 19th century, then, was much less about the reality of life after death and communicating with the spirit world, as this belief predated the Spiritualist movement. Rather, it was the guiding rubric of science and technological development which shaped Spiritualism in this age, as practitioners “aimed to authenticate the immaterial presence of spirits of the dead through ‘objective,’ observable, and repeated experiences and through a rationalist discourse of ‘factual’ evidence” (Weinstein, 126).

While no ghosts (that we know of anyway), the Galvin Rare Book Room is home to a small collection of works about Spiritualism and ghost stories.   

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1918 Galvin Rare Book Room BF1272 .D7 1918  Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Verser Todd. (catalog link)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first became interested in Spiritualism around 1881 after attending a lecture. With further reading and study, Conan Doyle became a supporter and advocate of the movement. He was involved with organizations such as the British Society for Psychical Research and the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, where he served as vice-president. In addition to his two-volume work on The History of Spiritualism, he also wrote about spirit photography (The Case for Spirit Photography) and about his own experiences with Spiritualism (The New Revolution, and The Wanderings of a Spiritualist). With the loss of his son during World War I, Conan Doyle continued his work and was considered an international expert in the field. Some credit his work in Spiritualism for one of his more famous quotes from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Charles Beecher, Spiritual Manifestations Boston: Lee & Shepard; New York, C.T. Dillingham, 1879.  Galvin Rare Book Room BF1251 .B42 1879 (catalog link)

Charles Beecher was a noted American Congregationalist minister, composer, and author, something common among his siblings, including his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe and brother Henry Ward Beecher. His book, Spiritual Manifestations (1879) offers descriptions of his own experiences and encounters with Spiritualism.

Walter Cooper Dendy, The Philosophy of Mystery. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845. Galvin Rare Book Room BF1031 .D5 1845 (catalog link)

Practicing surgeon as well as an author.  A collection of anecdotes about spectral apparitions, this work highlights dreams and spectral illusions in an attempt to explain or demystify the mysterious nature of fantastical things, and it is written in the style of a narrative dialogue.

Ray Bradbury, The Ghosts of Forever New York: Rizzoli, 1981.  Galvin Rare Book room PS3503 .R167 G47 1981 (catalog link)

Originally started as a script for a Smithsonian planetarium show that was never produced, The Ghosts of Forever combines the wordsmithing of Bradbury, in poems and a short story, with illustrations by Aldo Sessa into a delightful space-age adventure as only Bradbury’s mind could conjure up.

Amélie Rives (Princess Troubetzkoy). The Ghost Garden: A Novel. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1918.  Galvin Rare Book Room PS3092 .G47 1918 (catalog link)

Best known for her book The Quick and the Dead, Rives’ work is set in colonial Virginia and tells the tale of lovelorn struggle between the living and the dead. Richmond-born, Rives was a prolific writer who was especially interested in educational reform and women’s suffrage. Also of note is the study of Rives’ life written by prominent UR faculty emeritus W.D. Taylor in 1973.

Marguerite du Pont Lee, Virginia Ghosts & Others. Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1932. Inscribed “To my ghosts” by the author to the Marion Garnett Ryland Virginiana Collection at the University of Richmond. Galvin Rare Book room F227 .L48 1932 (catalog link)

Printed in Richmond in 1932, Virginia Ghosts contains more than 100 ghost stories from around the commonwealth, many with pictures of the haunted sites and homesteads. Stories from Richmond include ones near Englewood and Westover as well as the governor’s mansion.  Not surprisingly, the author was a serious student of psychic phenomena of Richmond and beyond as well as being a proponent of women’s rights.

Works Cited

McGarry, Molly. Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Practices of Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Weinstein, Sheri. “Technologies of Vision: Spiritualism and Science in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Jeffery Andrew Weinstock, ed. Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination, 124-140. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.