Two Nineteenth-century homes in a small Illinois city sit slightly below a mile from one another however share an odd and haunting story.
About 82 miles south of the Loop within the city of Watseka, the Vennum and Roff households lived within the houses in 1878 — the 12 months the spirit of a Roff daughter who had been useless for 13 years got here into the physique of a Vennum lady and managed it for 110 days.
Since July 1877, Mary Lurancy Vennum, often known as Rancy, had been struggling abdomen issues, lack of sleep and different points. Then, on Feb. 1, the spirit of Mary Roff took over the physique of Lurancy Vennum and managed it till Could 21, when Lurancy’s spirit got here again into the physique and Mary’s willingly left.
“It was a possession for therapeutic, not a demonic possession,” stated John Whitman-Brito, who has owned the Roff home for 20 years. Set amid towering oak timber on 5 acres, the constructing had been vacant for years and was in demolition-worthy disrepair when Whitman-Brito, a Watseka native who lives in Chicago, purchased it and started an in depth restoration.
The Italianate home now has plaster inside partitions and wooden floors. A slim hallway subsequent to the entrance parlor was eliminated in some unspecified time in the future, enlarging the room and making approach for an arched entrance to the second parlor that’s now a household room with a big, trendy glass opening to the yard. The hearth mantel and fireside stay unchanged from the 1870s.
Whitman-Brito lists the home on AirBnb and permits folks to host seances on the property.
The house owners of the opposite dwelling, a extra modest farmhouse-style construction on a typical neighborhood avenue, preserve it personal and declined to remark for this story.
In 2020, Landmarks Illinois gave Whitman-Brito its Richard Driehaus Award in recognition of his lengthy, meticulous stewardship of the home, however Whitman-Brito additionally stated he’s “the steward of the story.”
It’s a exceptional one — and would possibly crash in opposition to Twenty first-century skepticism about religious possessions. There have been doubters in 1878 too. However the particulars, as recorded in an 1879 pamphlet by Wisconsin medium Dr. E. Winchesters Stevens, are at the least intriguing if not convincing.
Among the many particulars Stevens held up as proof that Mary Roff’s spirit took over Lurancy Vennum’s physique:
- A number of situations of recognizing and calling by title Roff family members and acquaintances that Vennum couldn’t have identified
- Recognizing the Roff lady’s lace collar when she discovered it in a field
- Speaking concerning the Purple River and Native Individuals the Roff household had seen once they lived in Texas within the late 1850s, virtually a decade earlier than the Vennum lady was born
The possession story begins in July 1877. Mary Roff had been useless for 12 years and Lurancy Vennum was 14 years previous.
Stevens wrote that Lurancy started speaking about voices calling her title at night time, struggling violent abdomen ache and falling to the ground, mendacity there for hours as if fully paralyzed. Whereas frozen, she was capable of discuss and describe what she was seeing, together with angels and a sibling who had died when Lurancy was 3 years previous. By January her mother and father, Thomas and Lurinda Vennum, thought of sending their daughter to an asylum.
Phrase bought out on the town. When Asa and Ann Roff discovered, they wished to plead with the Vennums to maintain her out of the asylum. Their very own daughter, additionally named Mary, had died in an asylum in Peoria when she was 18. Mary had been sick her entire life, bodily sick, vulnerable to reducing herself and at occasions, her doctor stated, a “screaming maniac.”
When Mary Roff died on July 5, 1865, Lurancy Vennum was 3 months previous. Twelve years later, Vennum’s torment started inside days of the anniversary of Roff’s loss of life.
Roff’s mother and father “had been grieving for 12 years and hoping to discover a option to penetrate the veil between the residing and the religious” realms, Whitman-Brito stated. They have been adherents of Spiritualism, a motion throughout that period that believed residing folks may talk with the useless and different spirits.
“If you say ‘possession,’ folks consider the demon-type possession,” stated Neal Gibbons, who runs the Chicago tour firm Graveside Paranormal and has been concerned in seances and different occasions on the Roff home. However in Watseka, he stated, “you see it’s not all the time a couple of demon. You come throughout a narrative of possession that’s truly good.”
Gibbons and Whitman-Brito see the 110 days when Mary Roff was inhabiting the physique of Lurancy Vennum as a time of therapeutic for each women and their households.
Lurancy Vennum, a lady experiencing among the identical issues as their daughter, introduced a form of vessel the Roffs’ baby’s spirit may come to. As Whitman-Brito sees it, “that they had misplaced their daughter all of a sudden, and now that they had a possibility to spend 100 extra days along with her.”
On the identical time, letting Mary’s spirit take management of Lurancy’s physique would give the latter’s spirit time to heal, saving her mother and father the agony of locking her up in an asylum. On Feb. 1, 1878, the particular person made up of Lurancy’s physique and Mary’s spirit left Lurancy’s household dwelling on Belmont Avenue and traveled a couple of mile north to Mary’s mother and father’ home on Sheridan Road.
In keeping with Stevens’ article, somebody throughout the possession requested the lady, who was being referred to as Mary, the place Lurancy Vennum was. “She is in heaven taking classes,” Mary replied, “and I’m right here taking classes too.”
These 110 days apparently weren’t a straightforward time for the 4 mother and father. On Could 7, this lady advised Mr. Roff, whom she referred to as Pa, that she was going to go to the house of Mrs. Vennum, who was along with her on the time. “You don’t know the way my coronary heart aches for that poor mom,” Asa Roff wrote in a letter to a good friend, “but she is way happier than she was final winter with Lurancy as she was.”
Could 7 turned out to be the identical day Lurancy Vennum’s spirit arrived to say she was able to return to the physique. They agreed to 11 a.m. on Could 22, and round that point, Mary Roff kissed her mom and sister goodbye and launched her maintain on the physique. Lurancy Vennum regained management and moved again into her mother and father’ dwelling on Belmont Avenue.
Lurancy Vennum lived to be 88 years previous, residing in Los Angeles when she died in 1952. She is buried in Sunnyside Cemetery in Lengthy Seaside, Calif. Mary Roff is buried in Watseka’s Oak Hill Cemetery.
Dennis Rodkin is the residential actual property reporter for Crain’s Chicago Enterprise and Within the Loop’s “What’s That Constructing?” contributor. Observe him @Dennis_Rodkin.
Ok’Von Jackson is the freelance photojournalist for Within the Loop’s “What’s That Constructing?” Observe him @true_chicago.
