The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America Read Online Free PDF Page B

highlands” in Morris County.(2) According to various rumors, gossip, and legends, riches began accumulating there during the Revolution when Tories and Tory-sympathizers hid their wealth on the mountain. They were followed by patriots, who buried their money, but died fighting the King’s armies and were unable to dig it up. Pirates were said to have contributed to the hoard, though it’s hard to imagine a crew of buccaneers humping their doubloons so far inland. If they did, it might explain the six men said to have been murdered where “X” marked the spot; pirates had a reputation for killing members of the burying detail so their ghosts would haunt the place and drive away prospective thieves. It was these ghoulish overseers that concerned the treasure hunters, for, even if they found their prize, they couldn’t carry it away without subduing, placating, or otherwise avoiding these spirits.
    Rogers soon convinced the men that he was adept in the mystic arts and had powers equal to the task. The schoolmaster made an excellent impression for he was “very affable in his manners and had a genius adequate to prepossess people in his favor. He was an illiterate person but was very ambitious to maintain an appearance of possessing profound knowledge.“(3) (Presumably, Rogers was literate enough to teach school.) The treasure hunters invited him to settle in Morristown where they would find him a position, and Rogers accepted. It’s been suggested that his main interest was a teaching job (with, perhaps, a sideline in swindling) but whatever his motives, he would soon display a masterful hand at the art of flim-flam. In August 1788, Rogers had relocated and was teaching in a schoolhouse three miles west of Morristown. In his trunks, among the hornbooks, birches, tri-cornered hats and buckled shoes, there may have been a copy of Giambattista della Porta’s Natural Magick and a supply of chemicals, for Rogers knew something about alchemy as well as conjuring.

    Good Enough
    The sorcerer was a popular schoolmaster, but soon requested a leave of absence to visit his family in Connecticut. This was granted and when Rogers returned he brought another schoolmaster named Goodenough. Goodenough was hired by the school and would secretly assist Rogers during the magical treasure hunt. The wizard’s sponsors were anxious to begin work and he wasn’t going to disappoint them, or, more accurately, he was going to disappoint them, but not completely. They would get a good show for their money. Rogers would eventually mount displays so elaborate that more help was needed, but at this point Goodenough was, well, good enough to provide the simple spook effects needed at the first gathering of what would come to be called the Fire Club. (It would also be called the Spirit Batch, the Company, and very likely other names that are out of place in a genteel history like this.)
    In September, the first eight members of the club met in a secluded house owned by Mr. Lum, a local farmer. He lived in an area so remote it was nicknamed “Solitude,” but even in this isolated spot Rogers had the men seal the doors and windows. What they were about to do required more than ordinary privacy, and when Rogers felt sure that no one could see in (or out), he took the floor. The spirits, he announced with appropriate solemnity, had reached out to him. Post-mortem informants had confirmed the presence of immense treasures in Schooley’s Mountain and that obtaining them was possible. The process would be complicated and time consuming because Rogers needed to study the spirits and discover what might induce them to resign their guardianship. He “proposed to serve as a medium between the seekers and the guardians of the treasure,”(4) but would not expect the gentlemen assembled to simply accept what he said on faith; to prove that he was a genuine wizard, he would summon up spirits in the company’s presence and converse with them at a future