Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 149, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1912 — SPIRITS FIND MINE [ARTICLE]

SPIRITS FIND MINE

Dead Friends Direct “Mediator” to Gold Deposit. *

At Least Old Trustum H. Brown of Maine, Their Confidant, declares They Did —Neighbor Feit His Power. ~VV' +7 ■■■ 1-'- ■ Bangor, Me.—Trustum H. Brown, the “Mediator,” was in Bangor, recently, on his return from a visit to Boston, and although eighty-six years of age he tripped down town like a boy and told with enthusiasm all about a new treatise he has just completed on “The Truths of Christ and the Errors of Christianity,” Not long ago the Mediator demonstrated his reputed supernatural or unusual powers by locating a gold mine in California, getting his information, he said, .from the spirits of intimate friends long dead. For many years Brown has occupied a little cabin on a mountain slope, spending his time chiefly in fishing, hunting and philosophical meditation and research, all the while holding communication with the spirits of the departed, he says. He calls himself “Mediator between God and man." . . Beyond delivering exhortations wherever he may find a listener, the Mediator’s principal occupations are trapping for furs and bear bounties and preparing and peddling .a medicine, compounded from forest roots, barks and herbs, warranted to cure every human malady. His gala time of the year is when the Spiritualists of Maine hold their annual campmeeting at Etna Pond in Penobscott county. This he always attends, entering into the spirit of the occasion with an enthusiasm that makes the job of suppressing him the most difficult of the whole proceedings. The Mediator’s only neighbor is Nymphas Bodflsh. Becoming offended at Bodflsh, the Mediator, so the story

runs, laid the curse on him that he should catch no bear in bis traps for 500 years. Bodfißh went on setting his traps, but caught nothing. Then he went to the Mediator to* try to induce him to life the curse. The Mediator at last relented to the extent of taking off 208 of the 500 years. Bodfish went home and thought it over. Even 300 years seemed too long a time to wait, and again he called on the Mediator, who/consented that the 200 years rebate should run forward froth the beginning instead of back from the end of the original 500. At the end of the season the customary array of bear pelts was hanging on Bodflsh's fence to dry. Brown says the spirits told him of the existence of a very rich mine in California. They described is so carefully that the Mediator felt sure he would be able to find it, and he notified some of his earthly mends op the coast. The Californians told him to come on and locate the mine, and he did so, returning with the news that he had pointed out the location of a gold deposit that would make them millionaires. For himself he had no interest in wealth. - One day the Bodfishes gave Brown a cat - ; : “When I got that cat home,” Brown said, “I took it out in my dook room and placed a pan of fish on the table, and I said to the cat: ’Bodflsh cat, there is a pan of fish on the table: I am going out of the room for a while and while I am gone I do not want you to touch those fish. If you do, Bodflsh cat, I will kill you. Now, remember.’ Well, I went out of the room and returned when I said I would and part of the fish was gone. Did I kill the cat? Well, I couldn’t break my word.”