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Speaker 1: Now Here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back George Nory along with Varla Ventura back

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Speaker 2: with us. An authored traveler, botanist, and lover of the strange,

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Speaker 2: she has authored several books on strange and bizarre and

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Speaker 2: freaky things, from paranormal women's history to werewolves and Benshi's

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Speaker 2: The Plants that Smelled Like Death. She is a committed supernaturalist, folklorist,

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Speaker 2: and seeker of those shadowy things that scrape at your window.

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Speaker 2: With tonight, varlet welcome back. Have you been Ah?

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Speaker 3: Thank you, George. I've been well. I've been well. It's

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Speaker 3: nice to be back with you.

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Speaker 2: Always great to have you on the program. You're always

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Speaker 2: in high demand. Varla.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think that's good.

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Speaker 2: Let's go back to the beginning. How did Varla get

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Speaker 2: involved in the strange and unusual?

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Speaker 4: Well, you know, I mean, honestly, I was born into it.

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Speaker 4: I've come to understand that, especially, you know now as

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Speaker 4: a grown up, I realized that the way that I

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Speaker 4: was raised was a little bit unconventional. But my mom

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Speaker 4: was a is a practicing witch and always had unusual

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Speaker 4: books on her bookshelf and she was like the original

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Speaker 4: Coast to coast crowd really, George, Yeah, with uh, you know,

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Speaker 4: we had everything from Dion Fortune to Alista Crowley to

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Speaker 4: how you know how to interpret you know, how to

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Speaker 4: how to increase your psychic abilities. Those are the kind

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Speaker 4: of books that were on my on my mom's bookshelf,

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Speaker 4: and I was an avid reader. In addition to that,

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Speaker 4: there was there were always old collections of fairy tales

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Speaker 4: and a lot of a lot of classic horror on

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Speaker 4: the shelves. So I always used to picnic in cemeteries.

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Speaker 4: You know, we celebrated Halloween for months, if not year round,

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Speaker 4: and so that was sort of the backdrop of my

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Speaker 4: childhood and I think I just always found comfort and

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Speaker 4: gravitate toward it.

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Speaker 3: And then as I became a grown up and you.

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Speaker 4: Know, started writing, I started kind of melding the two

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Speaker 4: things together. So my love of the bizarre, It just

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Speaker 4: one day occurred to me, Oh, I could actually write about.

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Speaker 3: The things that I love.

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Speaker 4: I think I thought a writer needed to be, you know,

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Speaker 4: a novelist. And then I know that was actually that

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Speaker 4: first book was the that really kind of broke through,

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Speaker 4: was the Book of the Bizarre, and I think you

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Speaker 4: were my first interview ever as an author. Talk got

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Speaker 4: frying pan into the fire, straight to coast to coast

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Speaker 4: to talk about were wolves or something like that.

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Speaker 3: It was great, it worked well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Barla, there's a book called jap Head One published

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventeen by someone who claimed to have been

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Speaker 2: channeling Mark Twain's goes via Luigi Board. What do we

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Speaker 2: know about this story?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a wonderful story.

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Speaker 4: I brief touched on this story when I wrote Paranormal

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Speaker 4: Parlor a few years ago, but I never it never.

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Speaker 3: I couldn't get the full story in there.

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Speaker 4: I knew there was a lot more to the story,

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Speaker 4: and so more recently, just a couple of months ago,

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Speaker 4: Jeff Ballinger asked me to write a zine for his

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Speaker 4: new project, which is called Shadow Zine. And this is

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Speaker 4: a series of sort of old school publications zines, little

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Speaker 4: toind of mini magazines about different topics. And I said,

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Speaker 4: I really want to tell this full story of Jacque

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Speaker 4: Perone and Emily Grant Hutchings and essentially the you know,

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Speaker 4: as you mentioned, the nutshell is Emily was she attended

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Speaker 4: a psychic salon and there was a medium there who

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Speaker 4: had apparently channeled Twain multiple times before, and at this

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Speaker 4: particular one, the ghost of Twain came through and said,

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Speaker 4: I want that Hannibal girl to be my scribe, basically

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Speaker 4: Hannibal meaning Hannibal, Missouri, which is where Emily Grant Hutchings

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Speaker 4: is from and also where Mark Twain is from. And so,

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Speaker 4: over the course of about a year and some change,

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Speaker 4: Emily and the medium who is named Lola B. Hayes,

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Speaker 4: and she was quite she was quite famous at the

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Speaker 4: turn of the twentieth century there as she was very

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Speaker 4: renowned as a medium and was well respected among the

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Speaker 4: Society for Psyclical Research. And so they sat down and

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Speaker 4: had sessions probably nearly every day where they were channeling

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Speaker 4: this novel. Actually they channeled two short stories as an experiment,

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Speaker 4: and then they dove into the novel via the Ouija board.

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Speaker 4: And at one point, I mean, how painstaking is that.

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Speaker 4: At one point they painted characters onto the board with

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Speaker 4: india inks such as parentheses semi Colin's M dashes and

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Speaker 4: M dashes to in order to expedite because he was

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Speaker 4: spelling out this is a parenthetical statement and that was

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Speaker 4: taking extra time. So they came up with this like

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Speaker 4: psychic keyboard shortcut and sort of turned the wachboard into

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Speaker 4: a kind of psychic typewriter. Really, this book was actually published.

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Speaker 4: It was published by a pretty a pretty well known

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Speaker 4: New York publisher named Mitchell Kennerley and the Harper and Brothers,

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Speaker 4: which is, you know the original who started out Harper

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Speaker 4: Collins Publishing company. That it was the three Harper brothers

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Speaker 4: and the daughter of Mark Twain, Clara Clemens, found out

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Speaker 4: about this and actually the Harper brothers sued Mitchell Kennerley

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Speaker 4: and the publisher of Jack Berne for copyright infringement for

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Speaker 4: the use of Mark Twain's likeness.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were claiming Mark Twain did not write this

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Speaker 2: book from the other side.

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Speaker 4: They were saying not only did he not write the

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Speaker 4: book from the other side, but that even if he did,

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Speaker 4: they couldn't say he did because they actually the reason

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Speaker 4: it ended up being copyright is because Mark Twain is

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Speaker 4: a pen name that is copyrighted, and that copyright was

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Speaker 4: held by the Harper brothers and the daughter received the

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Speaker 4: proceeds to that. And interestingly, George, there were at least

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Speaker 4: two other novels that were published or one was like

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Speaker 4: kind of a longer essay, But there was another novel

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Speaker 4: published two years prior to Emily's nineteen fifteen. Twain died

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Speaker 4: in nineteen ten, So nineteen fifteen a woman published a novel,

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Speaker 4: but she self published it, and I think it just

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Speaker 4: kind of went saying that this was a channeled through

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Speaker 4: Mark Twain. I think this one she did like automatic

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Speaker 4: writing or something like that, but it never didn't cause

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Speaker 4: a stir well, partially, I think she self published it

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Speaker 4: because you know that then it didn't get quite the distribution.

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Speaker 3: Then, and.

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Speaker 4: I'm not exactly sure why they didn't catch on to

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Speaker 4: that one, but I do know that during the course

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Speaker 4: of Emily's sessions, there was a man who kept attending

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Speaker 4: and taking notes and he during and I learned this

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Speaker 4: part of the story when I was researching for the shadowscene.

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Speaker 3: He was taking.

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Speaker 4: Notes throughout the sessions, and then he started writing to

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Speaker 4: Clara Clements and asking her to verify details such as,

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Speaker 4: what was your grandfather's middle name?

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Speaker 3: And did he have this kind of appearance?

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Speaker 4: And so he was kind of going behind their back

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Speaker 4: talking to Clara Clements trying to quote unquote prove these details,

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Speaker 4: and it irritated Clara. I mean wouldn't it irritate you? You know,

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Speaker 4: someone's harassing you years after your loved one's death and

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Speaker 4: asking you to verify these ridiculous details that don't matter

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Speaker 4: to you.

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Speaker 2: That you would claim would be none of their business exactly.

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Speaker 4: And so apparently he wrote to her multiple times, and

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Speaker 4: her response to the last time was you could talk

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Speaker 4: to my lawyers. So by the time the book came out,

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Speaker 4: this same man gave it a wonderful review, but he

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Speaker 4: was kind of he was kind of responsible for its

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Speaker 4: downfall and away because he drew this attention to it,

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Speaker 4: and she was irritated because ultimately there was quite a

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Speaker 4: bit of controversy around it. You know, the more scathing

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Speaker 4: reviews said something like, if this is the best Twain

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Speaker 4: can do from the afterlife, he should stand down, or

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Speaker 4: something like that.

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Speaker 3: But other people said, you know, this was actually a

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Speaker 3: wonderful novel.

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Speaker 4: It's too bad she didn't just publish it and not

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Speaker 4: add this claim to it.

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Speaker 3: So there's just all of these elements to the story

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Speaker 3: like that. There was, so they went to.

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Speaker 4: The Supreme Court. There's all kinds of articles published. We

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Speaker 4: put some imagery of the articles in the zine so

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Speaker 4: you can see these headlines. It's like Twain's ghosts wrote

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Speaker 4: a story. And one of the funnier tidbits about the

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Speaker 4: lawsuit was, at one point a journalist was saying that

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Speaker 4: something like the proof of existence of afterlife will not

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Speaker 4: be discussed in psychic parlors, that will be discussed by

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Speaker 4: lawyers in a courtroom.

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Speaker 3: And there was even talk at one point.

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Speaker 4: That they were going to bring a board into the

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Speaker 4: courtroom and have Emily make contact with Twain as like proof,

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Speaker 4: but that unfortunately never manifested because that would have been

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Speaker 4: that would have been another amazing part of the story.

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Speaker 2: Well, Hachen's agreed to destroy all the existing copies of

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Speaker 2: the book and to cease publication, so they dropped the lawsuit.

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Speaker 3: Right right, they dropped the lawsuit. However, not all copies

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Speaker 3: were destroyed.

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Speaker 2: Ah uh huh.

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Speaker 4: Because if you went to all that trouble and you

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Speaker 4: wrote a book and you were told to destroy all copies,

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Speaker 4: I think you wouldn't destroy all the copies. So we

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Speaker 4: know that a few copies remained. One because there's a fascimile.

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Speaker 4: There's a scan of one that you can find online

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Speaker 4: on Gutenberg dot org, which is a wonderful resource for

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Speaker 4: public domain works. And then during the course of writing

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Speaker 4: the zine, Jeff went to the Salem Witchboard Museum and

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Speaker 4: the curator of that museum he had a copy of

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Speaker 4: it actually, so there's actual photos of it in the

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Speaker 4: zine that they took of this very novel. I have

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Speaker 4: this fantasy that one day I'm going to be in

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Speaker 4: a used bookstore and it's just going to be there,

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Speaker 4: marked down to five dollars.

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Speaker 3: No one's going to know what it is.

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Speaker 4: And I'm just gonna, you know, say it cool and

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Speaker 4: get the copy of that book. But there are copies

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Speaker 4: out there that exist, and yeah they're rare. I'm sure

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Speaker 4: you can go on eBay and dig one up or something,

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Speaker 4: but that's not as fun as finding your own out

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Speaker 4: in the real world.

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Speaker 2: Well, this is was very popular then. Ouiji boards were

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Speaker 2: hot items, and the fact that Mark Twain, through the

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Speaker 2: other side wrote it got a lot of people interested

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Speaker 2: in it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it actually, you know, it stood to it really

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Speaker 3: stood to be a success.

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Speaker 4: And one of the elements of the story that doesn't

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Speaker 4: always come across when people tell the story is sort

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Speaker 4: of the position that Emily was in at the time.

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Speaker 4: So one of the accusations toward her has been that

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Speaker 4: it was a publicity stunt, and if it was, it

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Speaker 4: was a great one in some ways, right, because it

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Speaker 4: actually really drew a lot more attention to this. Right,

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Speaker 4: what's the saying, there's no such thing as bad publicity

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Speaker 4: because it draws attention to it. But you know, at

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Speaker 4: the she was actually a very successful writer at the time.

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Speaker 4: And keep in mind, you know, the early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 4: women couldn't vote yet, so they're options for what they

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Speaker 4: could do for a quote unquote for a living usually

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Speaker 4: revolved around waiting. You know, they do something for a

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Speaker 4: while and then they get married or so. She was

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Speaker 4: actually a pretty successful journalist and maintained an independent career

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Speaker 4: during that time, which is sort of unusual, and she

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Speaker 4: published a lot of mainstream publics. In fact, she had

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Speaker 4: a column that was a little bit like an advice column,

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Speaker 4: a little bit like she appeared as this woman who

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Speaker 4: would I forget the character's name, but she would you know,

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Speaker 4: it was like Lady something or other, and she would

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Speaker 4: respond to sort of a Missmanners type type of column.

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Speaker 4: She would respond to questions and stuff. So she actually

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Speaker 4: had a lot to lose by purporting something that would

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Speaker 4: damage her reputation and so called you know, you know,

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Speaker 4: upstanding society. And so I sort of reject the notion

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Speaker 4: that she was doing it just just to get attention.

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Speaker 3: The other the other.

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Speaker 4: Suggestion has been she had a friend has had a

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Speaker 4: friend named Pearl Kuran, and Pearl channeled through originally made

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Speaker 4: contact through a wigiboarg with Emily, actually with Emily's board,

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Speaker 4: but she made contact with this entity from the sixteen

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Speaker 4: hundreds named Patients Worth, and she went on to use

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Speaker 4: mostly automatic writing and some spirit board channeling to write

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Speaker 4: several volumes of poetry and novels from this spirit Patient's Worth.

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Speaker 4: And so Pearl Kouran had great success as this, and

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Speaker 4: she received like wonderful reviews and she won awards. And

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Speaker 4: so I've heard the theory that Emily was like, oh,

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Speaker 4: it worked for her, I want to do it too.

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Speaker 4: But in fact, if you look at the timeline, they

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Speaker 4: would have had no way of knowing how successful the

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Speaker 4: other would have been because they were actually doing these

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Speaker 4: projects simultaneously. So Pearl's success was at the same time

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Speaker 4: or just after, Emily had already ventured into this project.

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Speaker 3: So again I kind of like I don't think that

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Speaker 3: that's now.

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Speaker 4: I don't know if she really made contacts with the

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Speaker 4: ghost of Twain, but I do believe that she sat

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Speaker 4: down and used a wig aboard every day for a

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Speaker 4: better part of a year and made contact with something

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Speaker 4: and turned that into a story.

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Speaker 2: And the book was two hundred and forty five pages long.

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Speaker 2: That's pretty good.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a full length novel.

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Speaker 4: And so what they said they would do is they

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Speaker 4: would usually they had somebody. Sometimes it was that guy

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Speaker 4: that got them into trouble, but they usually had somebody

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Speaker 4: taking notes, right, they had like the two women would

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Speaker 4: be at the board and then someone would take notes.

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Speaker 4: Sometimes it was Emily's husband, sometimes it was a member

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Speaker 4: of the Cyclical Research Society, and that then they would

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Speaker 4: take that handwritten thing, and then Emily, who was a

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Speaker 4: writer and an editor, she would do like light edits

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Speaker 4: to it, and then they would actually read it back.

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Speaker 4: While Emily and Lola were on the board. They would

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Speaker 4: read it back and the ghost would interject if.

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Speaker 3: He didn't like any of the changes.

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Speaker 1: I love.

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Speaker 4: Quite a laborious process, but you know, you've written books, George,

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Speaker 4: not that much more laborious than you know, being copy edited.

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Speaker 2: Well, what got you to write Mark Twain's Luigi Mystery?

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Speaker 2: Why did you key in on this story?

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Speaker 4: So I stumbled upon the story years ago when I

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Speaker 4: was researching some paranormal parlor projects for Wiser Books, and

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Speaker 4: it always kind of stuck with me. And then when

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Speaker 4: I wrote the Paranormal Parlor book, I kind of have

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Speaker 4: a whole chapter in there about women of the paranormal

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Speaker 4: and you know, kind of the context of the spiritualist

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Speaker 4: movement and Emily's story. It just there were a few

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Speaker 4: things about it and what the sources that were available

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Speaker 4: that didn't I knew there was more to it, and

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Speaker 4: there were everything that I read was taking history into

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Speaker 4: you know, it was either written from the point of view.

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Speaker 3: Of a skeptic.

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Speaker 4: And like a skeptical history story and who didn't necessarily

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Speaker 4: believe in, you know, ghosts, or was written from like

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Speaker 4: sort of a Twain scholar point of view and as

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Speaker 4: sort of like as a Twain adjacent story, and what

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Speaker 4: hadn't existed was somebody who kind of I'm not I'm

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Speaker 4: not a Twain scholar, but I am a scholar of

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Speaker 4: the of paranormal and paranormal women's history certainly, and also

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Speaker 4: I've used Ouija board. I know that they that things happen,

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Speaker 4: so I'm less of a less of a skeptic. But ultimately,

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Speaker 4: for me, it wasn't about whether or not Twain came through.

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Speaker 4: It was really about the story of Emily and who

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Speaker 4: she was and what happened to her and what happened

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Speaker 4: to you know, and the fact that there.

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Speaker 3: Was this this lawsuit.

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Speaker 4: And and then she was sort of erased from history

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Speaker 4: after that, even though she had contributed all of these

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Speaker 4: other things, and and in fact, some of you know,

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Speaker 4: for example, Pearl Kuran, it was Emily who got the

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Speaker 4: board and dragged her friend. They were both housewives, and

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Speaker 4: Saint Louis dragged her friend to this salon with her

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Speaker 4: and they started experimenting together. So when Jeff approached me

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Speaker 4: and said, hey, do you know I'm starting this new

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Speaker 4: zine called Shadow Zine, and we're going to you know,

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Speaker 4: just kind of dive deep into paranormal stories, and I said,

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Speaker 4: I have always wanted because every time I would think

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Speaker 4: about it, I would find out something else. For example,

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Speaker 4: her ashes were never claimed, which I think is such

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Speaker 4: an odd thing, right, And of course, you know, you

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Speaker 4: you know how it goes, you find out this stuff,

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Speaker 4: like you know, I found that out two years after that.

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Speaker 4: I had written the story in the in the book,

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Speaker 4: so I just know so much more about it now,

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Speaker 4: and I just want to tell the full encompassing story

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Speaker 4: and talk about the context of what she was up against,

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Speaker 4: what she what she succeeded, what were the failures, and

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Speaker 4: then why, you know, why did she kind of get

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Speaker 4: erased from history to the point where her ashes remained unclaimed.

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