A New Play Pulls Back the Curtain on Infamous Vermont Mediums the Eddy Brothers 

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• Courtesy Of David Devine
• From left: Ryan Mangan, Piper Harrell and Ethan DeWitt in Second Sight

The anointed were folks said to have so-called "second sight," an ability to reach beyond the grave and summon the spirits of the departed. In the second half of the 19th century, no practitioners of the spiritualism movement were better known than Chittenden's Eddy brothers, William and Horatio. The reputation of these rare mediums conferred on Vermont a kind of exalted status in the poltergeist zeitgeist.

Claiming psychic abilities as young boys and armed with a family history that reached back to the Salem witch trials, the brothers set up shop in the 1870s on a small hilltop farm where their widowed mother operated an inn. The Eddys held séances replete with ghostly visions, spirit guides and even musical accompaniment that drew the spiritually inclined from all over.

More recently, the Eddys' star turn in spiritualism attracted the attention of playwright Ryan Mangan, who grew up and still lives in Rutland. The result is a new full-length play, Second Sight, which brings the great beyond to Middlebury's Town Hall Theater for its debut run next Thursday to Sunday, October 19 to 22, presented by the Middlebury Community Players.

"The project started with the idea of doing a magic show using the techniques that fraudulent mediums used during the spiritualist movement from the mid-1850s to the 1920s," Mangan explained during a rehearsal at a private home near Middlebury.

But Mangan decided the play needed a narrative framework to support the magic. When his research turned up the "Stranger Things"-like Eddy saga, he practically levitated. "We discovered an unbelievable story that remains open to this day," the 26-year-old writer and performer said, "and makes you think there must have been something going on."

Mangan described Second Sight as a play about people "trying to understand what to believe, how to act and how to find light in the darkness." The expository first act shows the Eddy brothers stirring up the nation with their seemingly miraculous "spirit circles." When the question of fraud arises among their paying clientele, the brothers are compelled to consider the morality of their mediumship.

Whether real or not, the Eddy brothers knew how to stage a spectacle. Many of their spirits were costumed, and some played musical instruments — think Gene Simmons and KISS as holograms. Patrons were invited to measure and weigh — yes, weigh — the spirits. ("Does this shroud make me look fat?")

Director Kim Moyer said the play is designed to be immersive, even interactive. "It's something to be experienced," she explained, "rather than just to be witnessed." The experience can shiver one's timbers, she added, and is not designed for the Casper crowd. "We just realized a couple days ago we have to put sort of a warning sign for kids," said producer Kevin Commins, who lent his house for rehearsals.

The two-act play runs about two hours. A magician is key to the action, so Mangan, an accomplished illusionist, is doing double duty. He promised some startling illusions heightened by dramatic lighting.

The play takes liberties with the historical record, but it is mostly faithful to the story of the Eddys and the sensation and controversy they created, Mangan stressed. He noted that Moyer has been with the production since it was first workshopped several years ago.

Was Vermont in the 1800s fertile ground for spiritualism, a kind of beyond-the-grave little state? Author Joe Citro of Windsor, who has written extensively about the Eddy brothers and the spiritualism movement, said the state's remoteness and low profile at the time contributed to the sense of mystery. The Eddy farm, he said in an interview, "was kind of a mystical destination, a sort of mecca type of thing. People had to come here by carriage or horseback, by foot or by train, and then be transported from Rutland to Chittenden in a wagon. It was kind of a pilgrimage for a lot of people."

The Eddys' chief skeptic and antagonist was New York attorney and colonel Henry Steel Olcott, who was commissioned in 1874 by the New York Daily Graphic newspaper to investigate the Chittenden circus. He was unable to completely debunk the mystery. As Citro wrote in an article for the now-defunct Vermont Life magazine:

"Col. Olcott said he observed every manifestation known to psychic science including spirit rappings and writing, prophesy, human levitation, teleportation, remote vision, and more. But most amazing and controversial were the full-body materializations."

Of course, the Eddys had their share of disbelievers. Despite repeated visits by self-styled detectives and others attempting to unmask the boy mediums, the vast majority of visitors to the Eddy séances came away convinced that they'd witnessed spirits who had crossed the River Styx and come to Chittenden. How could this be? All these decades later, we marvel and shake our heads at the outlandish idea that so many people could be taken in by an obvious con creating mass delusion — despite all evidence to the contrary.

Citro suggested that the Eddys projected a lack of guile. "They could not be faking," he imagined people thinking. "They're just a couple of innocent farm boys from the hills of Vermont." He attributed the continuing interest in the story to "the apparently nationwide, perhaps worldwide, resurgence of interest in the strange and unusual and the mystical ... The Eddy brothers and the Lake Champlain monster are probably our local contributions."

Now in his mid-seventies, Citro has willingly withdrawn from the poltergeist beat and endorsed Milton author Jason Smiley as the keeper of the Eddy saga. Smiley pushed back at the widely accepted notion that the brothers were never conclusively proven to be frauds.

"There are multiple instances where the Eddy family members were exposed and caught in the act. This is one of many common myths that continue to be circulated about their story. In the end, everyone loves a good ghost story, so it's a hard myth to shut down," Smiley said.

Mangan said if the ghost story doesn't frighten you, perhaps the déjà vu will. "It certainly lays out a nice demonstration of fanaticism and dogma that we see today," he said, "and the creation of your own reality."