Robert Damon Schneck - Mrs. Wakeman vs. the Antichrist: And Other Strange-but-True Tales from American History

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From the Oakland (CA) Tribune, December 26, 1919:

Richmond Milliner Is Run Down by Speeding Motorist, Who Fails to Halt Car After Fatally Injuring the Victim.

No trace has been found of the machine that struck Miss Moro at San Pablo and Potrero avenues, just out of Richmond toward El Cerrito. She was found unconscious in the road, the speed of the machine indicated by the finding of her hat 60ft [18m] away, but no assistance had been rendered her by its occupants.

She was taken to the Craven Hospital in Richmond, where her death from a fracture of the skull and internal injuries followed. Richmond and El Cerrito officials are seeking the machine which caused her death but with almost no clews upon which to work.

Chief of police W. H. Wood was confident that the driver would be caught: We have the testimony of an eye witness who saw the car run the girl down and flee, he told the Oakland Tribune. We know where the car was going and we expect to seize the guilty person at any time. But his prediction proved wrong.

The hit-and-run driver was not found, and eighteen-year-old Jennie Moros funeral was held on December 31, possibly the last of 1919s 3,808 traffic fatalities to be buried that year. Each year it becomes more and more dangerous for a person to walk the streets, declared the Census Bureau, but if Stutz Bearcats and Model T Fords endangered American bodies there was another, more subtle danger threatening their minds, and it would twist the Moros sorrow into madness.

Jennie Moro came from an Italian family that lived in what was then the small Bay Area town of El Cerrito, California. She was survived by her recently widowed mother, Mary, fifty-one, and a twenty-nine-year-old sister named Josephine. She had two small children and was married to Charles Soldavini, a plumber. They lived together in a two-story frame

The family apparently had a Ouija board since 1918, though they seldom used it and had no faith in its communications. When Jennie died, however, the Moros began holding sances and consulting the board in a psychical search for the hit-and-run driver.

Josephine Soldavini approached town marshal Curtis Johnson, with a jumble of numbers which she claimed that she had received in a dream and believed that they formed the fatal cars registration number. When a corresponding number was not found in the automobile register, the sances continued. Mrs. Moro contacted the spirit of her late husband, Naggaro, who threatened to punish her daughters killer, and the family was gradually drawn into the belief that communication with the dead was being had through the board and through dreams.

The board at the center of their efforts was patented as a toy or game in 1891, and a popular craze by 1920. Most players took a lighthearted approach to the results, using it to find missing objects or learn the future (Tell me Ouija, thats a dear / Wholl be president next year?), while others worried about its effect on the users mental equilibrium.

At the University of Michigan, Ouija boards were reportedly replacing Bibles and prayer books, so that a local nerve specialist was treating female students for extreme

On February 25, the Richmond Independent reported that, Tony Bena, a neighbour, said that Mrs. Moro came to his house... and said she was going to save him and his family. She had wept on his arm at the time and he had tried to calm her. This is the first time he had noticed anything peculiar in the actions of his neighbors.

A few days later, a hole appeared in the Moro-Soldavini yard (or, perhaps, a block away from their house) that was about the size of a grave, and appeared to have dirt added or removed every day. This looked like the work of the spirits to Mrs. Moro, her family, and a growing circle of sance participants that came to include two nephews, Louis and Henry Ferrerio, and the Moros neighbors: John (Giovanni) B. Bottini, forty-five; his thirty-six-year-old wife, Santina; and their daughters Rosa, age twelve, and fifteen-year-old Adeline.

The high school principal described Adeline as one of her

As the sances continued, the spirits wanted Adeline to have a comb decorated with six stones of different hue. But Mrs. Bottini was unable to find one and bought her daughter a six-colored corset instead. This, and other odd requests, might have been part of the preparations being made for a grand Passion Display that was expected to take place at five P.M. on March 3, when the evil in all of them would be cast out through the influence of Jennie Moros spirit. The mystery of the hole would be revealed soon after.

Adeline dreamed that evil spirits were in her clothes, so those were burned along with some money and, possibly, the Ouija board itself. Mr. Bottini also bought her an expensive new dress, and possibly a $150 diamond ring; the spirits apparently liked clothing and jewelry.

With the Passion Display drawing near, sances went on twenty-four hours a day. Rosa Bottini was unable to keep food down and needed to be revived several times with holy water. Adeline said that Rosas hair must be cut to save her life and it was, along with that of another child, and the clippings burned to dispel evil spirits. There were now five