Nature’s Revenge & The Electric Lady
By Joseph A. Citro
NATURE’S REVENGE
There is a wonderful old Vermont story that reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, THE BIRDS. As you may recall, THE BIRDS is a horror story about the day our feathered friends -- for no apparent reason -- became our feathered enemies and began attacking the people.
It’s fiction, of course; birds don’t attack people.
But in the late 18th century, the good folks of Barnard, Vermont, experienced an odd episode we might call it The Animals’ Revenge.
Over a period of several months beginning in 1783, a strange madness possessed the animals in and around town. First, folks began to notice abnormally aggressive behavior among the wildlife of the area. For example, an extraordinary number of foxes or wolves would be spotted fighting at the edge of cleared land. Feral creatures that normally remained hidden brazenly marched out in the open to attack each other.
Unsettled by the unnatural behavior, the settlers began killing the feuding beasts. Soon, as if in retaliation, the wild animals began attacking the citizens.
People quickly grew frightened to venture outdoors alone or unarmed. A trip from the house to the well could be a harrowing experience. Parents, armed with clubs or firearms, escorted their youngsters to and from school.
Before long, domesticated animals, as if in misplaced retaliation, began attacking their owners. Dogs growled menacingly at their masters. Kittens bit and clawed at their keepers. Even docile barnyard critters like pigs, cows, oxen, and geese began to demonstrate odd, belligerent behavior.
In several cases, wolves would walk right into town. In one instance, there was a face-off between a wolf and a townsman on the road by the Methodist cemetery. The man saw the wolf coming, but figured it would spot him and dart back into the woods. Instead, it pressed forward, not altering its path. Finally, the man had to step aside, allowing the animal to pass. Unarmed and not knowing what else to do, the man leaped on to the wolf’s back and grabbed it by the ears, hoping to subdue and capture it. The animal proved stronger and easily tossed the man aside before continuing in its way. Luckily, the man was not harmed.
During the evening of March 17, 1784, Willard Smith heard a commotion outside his cabin near the White River. Something was attacking his sheep. Suspecting a wolf, fox, or catamount, Mr. Smith grabbed a club and headed out to do battle. Instead, he was surprised to discover the intruder was his neighbor’s dog. It had never behaved in this manner before. Mr. Smith scared it off without harming it.
But it was definitely a wolf that attacked the sheep in Mr. Steward’s barnyard. After hearing a wicked commotion, he, along with his sons John and Samuel, rushed outside. All three attacked the wolf with clubs. A savage battle ensued. Eventually, the three men killed the animal.
Sadly, all three farmers had been bitten during the scuffle. After some primitive medical intervention, the two boys survived. Their father died a month later, following severe bouts with fever and eventually madness.
At this point, all the villagers realized what a few had already suspected. The revolt of the animals was nothing supernatural -- it was the result of rabies.
Apparently, the Steward family were the only humans who became infected. And, as far as I can determine, the only human death was that of Mr. Steward.
In piecing together the events, the citizens discovered that a traveler had brought the trouble into town. Somewhere along his route his horse had been bitten by a mad dog. Upon reaching Barnard, the traveler put the suffering animal out of its misery. He buried it near the woods. But because the grave was so shallow, wolves and foxes fed on the body. When they became infected, their raids on livestock spread the contagion.
ELECTRIC LADY
I wonder how many people in Orford, New Hampshire have heard this shocking tale? It involves their one-time physician, Dr. Willard Hosford, and the weirdest medical situation he ever encountered.
In January of 1837 he was summoned to the home of what he describes as “A lady of great respectability.” I suspect the odd nature of her complaint compelled Dr. Hosford to conceal her true identity.
Anyway, this lady was his long-time patient. He calls her as a woman of “nervous temperament and sedentary habits.” She suffered “a weakened constitution” and recurring bouts of rheumatism and neuralgia.
But nothing in her medical history prepared the good doctor for what he was about to encounter -- something he had never seen before. Something he’d never even heard of....
His 30-year-old patient -- the wife of a prominent Orford man -- had suddenly, and for no apparent reason, become charged with electricity.
She had first noticed the singular affliction when she happened to pass her hand over her brother’s face. As she did, vivid sparks shot from her fingertips, giving her surprised sibling a substantial jolt.
Though the electrical energy caused her no discomfort, she found she could shock anyone nearby. This she demonstrated to Dr. Hosford with, he wrote, “...a spark, three fourths of an inch long, [that] passed from the lady’s knuckle to my nose, causing an involuntary recoil.”
To the doctor’s astonishment, she was able to produce sparks up to about one-and-a-half inches long. They were brilliant and could be distinctly seen -- and heard -- anywhere in the large room. These spontaneous electrical discharges came at the unbelievable rate of four per minute.
Thinking that her silk clothing was somehow generating the charges, Dr. Hosford had her wear all cotton. As a control, her sister dressed in silk. The woman remained highly charged; her sister remained normal.
Having thus eliminated static electricity, Dr. Hosford was completely mystified about the source of the power. Somehow, it seemed to be coming from within the lady. It was as if she were a human battery or, more aptly, an electrical generator.
Whenever her finger was brought close to any metallic surface, a spark was heard, seen, and felt. In fact, she caused sparks in every conducting body she came near, including the cast iron stove and her everyday household tools, like needles, scissors, knives, and so on.
It is hard to imagine what it must be like to inflict sparks on everything and everyone. Predictably, the poor woman suffered severe mental discomfort as a result. Her nervous agitation increased to the point that Dr. Hosford sometimes had to give her morphine to help her sleep.
But, he discovered, no medicine would relieve her symptoms.
Over time the doctor noticed that atmospheric temperature had some effect: the higher the temperature, the greater the charge. However, changes in barometric pressure had no influence at all.
The Orford woman’s eerie electrical power steadily increased from January 25th until the last of February, when it began to decline. By the end of May it was gone entirely, vanishing as mysteriously as it had begun.
During its active period Dr. Hosford tried various experiments hundreds of times. Many corroborating witnesses observed the phenomenon, including scientists from Dartmouth College. Everyone remained absolutely baffled. Neither science nor religion could explain where the charges were coming from, why, or how they were generated.
Later that year Dr. Hosford submitted his findings to The American Journal of Science. The editor validated everything before reporting the bizarre electrical events. And that is where I learned about this odd bit of New Hampshire history.
I thought you’d a charge out of it.
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author, folklorist, and longtime collector of New England’s strangest stories, from ghostly happenings to local legends and unexplained curiosities. Known to many as Vermont’s “Bard of the Bizarre,” he has spent decades preserving the tales that linger along back roads, old houses, covered bridges, and quiet hillsides. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.