Writing Under Spirit Influence - Indian Guides

Arizona Silver Belt Newspaper Oct 10 1885
Writing under Spirit Influence,
A special dispatch to the Globe Democrat, dated New York, says: The Spiritualists have convinced themselves of a case of more remarkable Mediumship than any heretofore discovered. That they are sincere in the belief is shown by the fact that there is no money in it, the supposed medium being dead and not a believer when alive. She was Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, the authoress, and the remarkable theory, originated by our ex-School Superintendent Kidder, is that she wrote entirely under spirit influence. Her novel illustrating the injustices done to the Indians, called “Romona” was said by her, in a letter to Robert Brothers, the publishers, to have been written ''through not by” her, and she used to make many such assertions. Kidder says that Indian spirits abound among the controls of mediums and that they employed Mrs. Jackson to go to California, investigate her strange subject of Indian wrongs, and write the story.
Some of her poems she declared to have been composed during sleep, which the spiritualists construe as trance. Andrew Jackson Davis is positive about this. He declares that he knew it before her death and talked with her on the subject. She admitted to him that she wrote on impulse that seemed to come from without her consciousness, but she wouldn’t be convinced of her mediumship. Elliot McCormack, of the Christian Union, once requested Mrs. Jackson to write a poem on a certain topic. He has a letter from her saying that she had sent the desired copy to him but he never received it. As it was one of her dreamed compositions, the supposition is that she never put it on paper at all. The proposition has proved interesting enough for discussion in literary circles, where the gifted woman’s peculiarities are known, as well as credulous Spiritualists.

Interesting piece. I have associations with Arizona (I'll be back there this August) and I'm interested in anything I might look up locally although I realise that most records may have long since gone.

Took some finding Mac but you know what we do and I am on a project. I would love to know what the newspaper was.

Seperately I have found some intereting articles from the WACO newspaper of the same day but my mind drifts to Blazing Saddles and the WACO kid

Admin wrote:Took some finding Mac but you know what we do and I am on a project. I would love to know what the newspaper was.

Seperately I have found some intereting articles from the WACO newspaper of the same day but my mind drifts to Blazing Saddles and the WACO kid

We were in Waco, TX a couple of years back - that was the site of the Branch Dravidian Davidian sect whose compound went up in a blaze and many were killed in a raid by the police.

I don't know the WACO kid but I switched off Blazing Saddles part way through as the humour didn't appeal to me.

I took a look to see if there was anything else of interest in the newspaper - how did you learn about the piece detailed above?

It was also hard to read text from the image - doing that has got to be a labour of love!