A Wealthy Widow Weds a Ghost: 1894

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MARRIED TO A SPOOK

WEALTHY WIDOW BECOMES A GHOST’S BRIDE

UNCANNY STORY FROM THE ONSET SPIRITUALISTS

The Bangs Sisters, May and Lizzie, Continue to Startle the Peaceful Residents of a Massachusetts Town—

The Spirit Bridegroom.

Onset, Mass., Special to Inter-Ocean.

May Bangs, one of the Bangs sisters, materializing mediums and slate writers of Chicago, now at Onset Bay, declares positively and without any provisos that a person in flesh and blood in this life could be married to a materialized spirit. She declares that a woman from the west, a woman of wealth, had been married to her spirit lover in the very room in which she sat.

Charming May Bangs and her sister, the great spiritualists, who, when at home, reside in Chicago, have lately startled the natives of Onset, Mass., This statement means more than might appear on the surface when it is added that the little town is almost wholly made up of spiritualists. Thither the Bangs sisters hied themselves some weeks ago to take part in the summer assembly of the eastern societies. They made their headquarters at Happy Home cottage, where they were daily visited by pilgrims in search of friends and relatives long since in the “other world.” Among those visitors was a rich widow from the far west, who wanted to see her lover, how had been a captain in the United States army. The captain, who came from Maryland, died on the eve of his marriage to the rich widow. For a year she has worn widow’s weeds and longed for even a visit from the spirit of her departed lover. Miss Bangs informed her that she could not only produce the captain’s spirit, but that the marriage ceremony that had been cut off by death would be performed in Happy Home cottage. A few days ago an item was given out for publication to the effect that the ceremony had been effectually performed some days before. In speaking of it, May Bangs said:

“I materialized the form,” she said, “and the lover came out of the cabinet attired in the uniform of an army officer. The premises had been previously examined to prove that there was no mortal about. The materialized spirit asked that the curtains be drawn for a while to shut off the front parlor. The bride wanted him to put on her slippers and he did.

“Only a faint light shone through the room where the minister and others were waiting. He kissed her numerous times. The bride was in a new wedding dress. Then the materialized spirit lover requested that the marriage ceremony be performed and the request was granted. He placed a ring on her finger. They were together a long time that evening.” The reporter who investigated the spiritual marriage had heard from other sources of such a matrimonial event and from two different persons he had heard that the woman in the case was from the west, that she was wealthy, well-educated and a woman of refinement. She is said to be a firm believer in spiritualism and has long know the Bangs sisters, Lizzie and May. She is about 35, short in stature, plump in form and dresses elegantly. Another account of the wedding from the lips of one who claims to have possession of facts, is this:

“On the night of Aug. 8, which was Wednesday, everything was ready for this strange ceremony, and the wedding party, consisting of about half a dozen persons, was within the walls of ‘Happy Home’ cottage, which is but a few rods distant from the grove where all the big spiritualistic meetings are held. Miss ___, who was to be married to one who had passed away, had purchased flowers and with her own hands had decorated the rooms. Curtains covered the windows just as at a séance. A single dim light was burning in the parlor, just a candle in a box, the tiny flame being subdued by blue glass.

“Lizzie Bangs and the minister were to be seen in this room next to the street, surrounded by the floral display of ferns and lilies. A cheese cloth had been hung across the double doorway which led into the cabinet-room behind.

“May Bangs came tripping down the stairs and entered the dark little apartment where the spirits first made their appearance. She was followed by the bride, who took a seat in the cabinet-room and awaited the appearance of the sprit who was to become her husband. May Bangs materialized the form of a late captain of the army, who in life hailed from Maryland.

“An ordained minister then went through the marriage service, and at the close declared the couple to be husband and wife. When the minister, who is a woman, at present in Vermont, finished, she was heard to say that she hoped it was really a materialized spirit that was married, for if it was a man in earth life he was married sure enough.”

It is rumored that when the Bangs sisters start for Chicago on Monday two young men will go with them. one of these young men, who struck Onset with only $2 in his pocket, has been spending money lavishly of late.

“I’ve stuck a snap,” he said to a reporter. “I am going to Chicago with May Bangs, but I’m going to get $20 in my fist before I start, or I don’t go. I’ve had a promise of $15 and week and my board bill. Have you heard of the spirit marriage? It took place all right. The spirit groom was George—Capt. George__. They wanted me to put on a uniform and represent the groom, but I was out with May once, and Miss__ bobbed up suddenly and May had to introduce me to her, so the girl knew who I was.”

The strange marriage has been the talk of Onset for some time, but as most of those there are deep-dyed spiritualists they think it nothing unusual.

RECALLS PREVIOUS NUPTIALS.

New York, Aug. 26. [This case] The Onset Bay spook wedding recalls with a difference the famous marriage in the family of the late George D. Carroll, once of Dempsey & Carroll, stationers, who wasted much of his substance on a medium named Fanny Stryker. Carroll has lost a young son, and, though the medium never materialized the youth for him, she did act as priestess in a “spirit marriage” between the boy and “Bright Eyes,” a ghost with no family name. Elaborately engraved invitations for the ceremony were sent out and the priestess officiated in white uncut velvet. The elder Carroll died recently in comparative poverty and the medium buried him.

Dallas [TX] Morning News 9 September 1894: p. 5 and The Fort Wayne [IN] Sentinel 10 September 1894: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Such “spirit marriages” were a regrettable and venal feature of Victorian spiritualism; they usually ended in tears, lawsuits, or an asylum. Lawyers would have difficulty in untangling the legal status of the young man who played the dead Captain George, although the lady parson, wittingly or unwittingly, seems to have voiced an obvious truth. There was still the question of who signed the wedding licence and, in the United States, unlike France and China, marriages between the living and the dead are not sanctioned.

That person wearing orange blossoms over at the Haunted Ohio blog has written about a gentleman who married his late sweetheart in Cincinnati and a rather stingy bridegroom who foolishly thought that he could save on household expenses by marrying a spirit bride.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

 

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