“Having on the usual garb of an ANGEL”

The Wonderful Appearance of an Angel, Devil and Ghost described the experiences of an unnamed “Gentleman of Boston” over the course of three days and nights, 14–16 Oct 1774.

On the morning of 17 October, that man reportedly narrated his experiences to a friend, identified by the initials S.W., in front of three witnesses: S.P., J.W., and P.R.

S.W. prepared the manuscript for publication, adding “a few Marginal Notes,” a preface, and a paragraph and poem at the end. He completed his work on 1 December, and John Boyle advertised the book on sale a week later.

At least, that’s what the booklet said. All but the most credulous readers knew that this presentation was a sham, designed to lend a wild cautionary tale some veneer of veracity.

There was in fact a genre of pamphlets about supernatural visitations, as Robert Girouard studied in a paper published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1982. The printer Ezekiel Russell was especially active in issuing these, and he soon reprinted A Wonderful Appearance.

In the 1769–1791 period Girouard studied, most of the supernatural visitors voiced a mix of religion and politics, as did those in A Wonderful Appearance. There were also older ghostly booklets with more purely religious messages, such as the oft-reprinted Prodigal Daughter.

This gentleman’s story starts with him “supping abroad among a select company of my jovial acquaintance” and returning to his “lodgings”—he doesn’t have a wife or appear to own his home. As the man gets ready for bed:

I heard an uncommon noise, which to me appeared but at a little distance from the house; the sound, though awful, was very harmonious; it continued I apprehended about ten minutes; I was amazingly terrified at it, not knowing how to account for such an unnusual sound. However, being very anxious of knowing what it was, I immediately went to the window, opened it, and looked out, but before I was able to unfasten it the noise ceased, though my astonishment still continued.

The noise recurs for short bursts as the gentleman goes to bed at midnight. (The booklet is interesting evidence about sleeping hours, at least for a wealthy gentleman in Boston.)

Then, “just after the town-clock struck two,” the noise returns along with “a violent wrap against the window next my bed-side.” The shutter bursts open.

About two minutes afterwards a person appeared outside of the window, having on the usual garb of an ANGEL, (with a sword in one hand, and a pair of scales in the other) who unfastened it, and entered the room—— . . .

He…taking a large chair which stood by the bed-side, seated himself close by me, and said, “Arise man from your bed—put on your cloaths—take a chair and seat yourself down by me—I have something to communicate of the greatest importance—your temporal—your eternal welfare are interested in it.”

I like the detail of the Angel (shown above) being able to appear in midair in the midst of unearthly harmonies but needing to unfasten the window and pull up a chair.

The Angel tells the gentlemen he brings a warning to “you, and through you, all those of your cast,…such abandoned, such hell-deserving wretches as you are”:

“…unless prevented by a speedy repentance, and restitution being made to the many hundreds who are now groaning under the weight of that oppression you have been instrumental in bringing upon them, you may expect (and that justly) to meet with the severest punishment, if not in this, in the future state, the hottest place in hell being reserved for all those who have proved themselves TRAYTORS to their KING and COUNTRY.”

The gentlemen begins to repent of being “tempted as I have been, to sell my country for unrighteous gain.” A footnote explains that some suspected he “received an annual stipend for his unwearied endeavors to carry into execution the wicked designs of a cursed Cabal.”

But once the angel “flew rappidly out at the same window” at “about three o’clock in the morning,” the gentleman starts thinking the visitor “might be nothing more than a delusion, as I had drank a little too freely in company the last evening.” He concludes: “I at last determined…to sit up the next night and if the Devil should chance to come, as the Angel had predicted, to arm myself with courage, and stand, if possible, the combat, like a man of spirit and resolution.”

TOMORROW: Oh, yeah, that’ll work.