A M E R I C A N - V E R N A C U L A R

Velma Stevens Truett & Harry George   “Ghost Dance”

Mrs. H. W. Cushman and Her Spirit Guitar 

 “Musical Medium” of Charlestown, Massachusetts

stereoview photograph - 1870′s

Mrs. Cushman was a psychic and a ‘Musical Medium’ who conducted singing séances accompanied with a ‘spirit guitar’ played by a ghostly hand - the strings plucked by disembodied fingers. She gave private sittings and held circles at a number of addresses, and practiced at Onset Bay and Lake Pleasant camp meetings in the summer.

Mr. Edgar W. Emerson, of Manchester, New Hampshire, relates the following experiences with Mrs. Cushman:

“A guitar was held by Mrs. Cushman, with her right hand on the key end, above the upper bearing of the strings, joining her left hand with my right, my left hand holding the body of the guitar in my lap, outside of the table. In this position, in the presence of a dozen or more persons, strangers to me, music was played on the instrument both as an accompaniment to our singing and also alone. I saw the strings vibrate as if touched in the proper place by fingers, and several times I saw fingers come up through the hole in the guitar under the strings and touch them and then disappear. They looked like materialized fingers coming from inside of the instrument. I examined the guitar, and found it perfect, with no chance for any deception, and am satisfied that it was a genuine spiritual manifestation. Her right hand, which held the head of the guitar, was firmly fastened as it were the grasp of death.”

Sister Gertrude Morgan 

Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) was raised as an active member of the Southern Baptist church. "My heavenly father called me in 1934 . . . . Go ye into yonder's world and sing with a loud voice you. . . are a chosen vessel to call men women Girls and boys." After moving to New Orleans in 1939, she began her missionary work as a singing street preacher and soon joined a sanctified fundamentalist church where the services emphasized singing, music, and dancing. With two other street missionaries in the early 1940s, Sister Morgan built and operated a small chapel and center for orphans, runaways, and other children who required food and attention.

In 1956, Morgan began wearing only white clothing, anticipating that she would be the bride of Christ. She also prepared an all-white room in her house as the prayer room. In 1966, Morgan claimed God instructed her to draw pictures of the world to come— the New Jerusalem. Her sermons on paper illustrate aspects of her life and visions, as well as her interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Her drawings, she believed, were composed by God, "Through his Blessed hands as he take my hand and write . . . I just do the Blessed work."

The Southern Kentucky Mountaineers   “Knoxville Rag”