William Fishbough Revealed as Author of ‘The Planchette Mystery’

Abstract : Citation : Online Sources : Other Notes

View this article on Notes and Queries’ website or download the accepted manuscript (pdf).

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Abstract

Currently available from around thirty e-book purveyors is a nineteenth-century Spiritualist work entitled The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism, with Dr. Doddridge’s Dream, generally attributed (as by Project Gutenberg and Amazon.com) to ‘Harriet Beecher Stowe and Phrenological Journal’. This book is a compilation of four independent works previously printed in the Phrenological Journal, published together with added notes by S. R. Wells in May 1872. New editions were printed until at least 1886, yet its proper authors have yet to be fully credited. ‘The Planchette Mystery’ and ‘Dr. Doddridge’s Dream’ are presented without authorial credit, and have been left as such for the last century and a half; thanks to the digitization efforts of Google Books, I have uncovered the author of the former.

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Citation

Pentangelo, Joseph. 2016. William Fishbough Revealed as Author of ‘The Planchette Mystery.’ Notes and Queries 63(2), 263–265.

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Online Sources

Many of the sources that I refer to in this and my other papers are publicly available online for free. This section provides links to all such sources. (It’s not my complete reference list.)

A Scientific Puzzle Board. 8 May 1885. The Plattsburgh Sentinel, 2.
(NYS Historic Newspapers)

Fishbough, William. 14 January 1854. Ancient Christian Spiritualism. The Spiritual Telegraph 2(37), 1.
(IAPSOP)

Fishbough, William. September 1870. What They Say: ‘The Planchette Mystery’. The Phrenological Journal & Packard’s Monthly 3(3), 221–222.
(Google Books)

Hodge, Brandon. G. W. Cottrell. Mysterious Planchette.

Journal Miscellany, Ready May 1st. 1872. The Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated 54(5), 3.
(Google Books)

My Acquaintance with Planchette. 7 August 1868. The Native Virginian, 1.
(Chronicling America)

The Spiritualists’ Directory. 6 June 1857. Spiritual Telegraph 6(6), 2.
(IAPSOP)

Weird Writings. 14 November 1893. The Morning Call, 8.
(Chronicling America)

Wells, S.R. (ed.). 1886. The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism, with Dr. Doddridge’s Dream. New York: Fowler & Wells Co.
(Archive.org)

What is Planchette? 1868. Scientific American 19(2), 17–18.
(Archive.org)

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Other Notes

• The planchette is best known today as the pointer used in conjunction with a ouija board, but it has an independent history, and in fact predates the talking board. Swap out today’s viewing hole for a pencil and replace letter-selection with automatic writing and you’ve got the idea.
• This work would have been impossible without the incredible digitization/archiving efforts of Google Books, Chronicling America, Archive.org, NYS Historic Newspapers, and the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP).
• IAPSOP also has this interesting planchette booklet, Planchette’s Biography (pdf), written by M.D. Wellcome and published in Maine in 1869.