The Wall Street Journal - 31.10.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, October 31, 2019 |A

They See

Dead People

The In-Betweens By Mira Ptacin (Liveright, 260 pages, $26.95)

BOOKSHELF| By Marc M. Arkin

W

ho doesn’t like a good ghost story? And in Camp Etna, the 143-year-old Spiritualist summer retreat located in the Maine hinterland just west of Bangor, author Mira Ptacin has found a whopping good one. To be clear, the Spiritualism involved is not the New Age “I’m-not- religious-I’m-spiritual” variety. It is a legally recognized, federally tax-exempt religion, with ministers, weekly services and a standard creed. Basically, Spiritualists believe in two things: the Golden Rule and the ability of the living to communicate with the dead. The book interweaves in equal measure the history and development of Spiritualism, the stories of the people in the Camp Etna community, and the author’s own account of her losses, difficulties and “riding the fence of faith” while building a young family on Peaks Island in Maine. While the history may be a bit breezy, Ms. Ptacin’s depiction of Camp Etna’s residents—a “quirky underworld of fringe characters” and “their truth”—is both nonjudgmental and, pardon the pun, dead-on. From its earliest days, Maine has been fertile ground for religious experimentation. By the middle of the 19th century, Maine provided a home to everyone from celibate Shakers to free-love Cochranites, from Mormons and Free Will Baptists to Universalists whose oaths were suspect because they did not believe in an eternal hell. Perhaps it’s the long, isolated winters, but even today, and even in cosmopolitan coastal towns, the occult is never far from the surface. A few years ago, my Down East neighbor’s sailboat was overtopped and sank on a gusty day; with hersails still up, the lost boat continued sailing along the bottom currents of the Eggemoggin Reach near Rockland. The boat’s builder, a local man of some stature, promptly took out a nautical chart and began to dowse over it to find the wandering vessel. No one seemed to think this odd, much less that it might be ineffective. Spiritualism is a 19th-century development, arising out of a yeasty subculture of social-reform movements, including abolition and women’s rights; health and well-being groups like the Quimbyists and the Christian Scientists; and early Western followers of Eastern religions and the occult. Most historians date Spiritualism’s rise to 1849, when Margaret and Kate Fox, young sisters from upstate New York, went on public tour with their purported ability to receive messages from the spirit world. Although the Foxes eventually recanted, séances and Spiritualism permeated all levels of society as families bereaved by the Civil War’s massive death toll sought comfort. According to Ms. Ptacin, by 1875 there were more than a million Spiritualists in the United States and Europe. A loosely affiliated group, they were made up mainly of women, particularly those with spirit gifts, and have resisted male control to this day. In the 1920s, Spiritualism even managed to weather magician Harry Houdini’s famous campaign to debunk its practices and secure a federal law criminalizing psychics.

In the late 1860s, Spiritualism literally retreated to the woods, like an occult Chautauqua movement. Adherents set up summer camps where followers could pursue ordinary recreational activities as well as communicate with the dead and attend edifying programs staged by professional mediums and psychics. Camp Etna was founded in 1876 and in its heyday—the early 1900s—boasted a pavilion seating a thousand, more than 130 private cottages, and a 50-room hotel, as well as a boarding house, a restaurant known for its pie, and a dedicated train stop on the shores of Etna Pond. Visitors— who on a summer weekend could number 2,000 in a region that is sparsely populated to this day—enjoyed swimming, cricket, boat rides and strolling through the camp’s gardens, as well as attending séances led by Mary Ann Scannell Pepper Vanderbilt and her Native American spirit guide, Bright Eyes. In later years, they could worship at the Gladys Laliberte Temple, named after the camp’s most famous medium of the 1960s. By 2017, when Ms. Ptacin enters the picture, Camp Etna had fallen on hard times. After a fire in the 1920s only a few of the original cottages were left standing; Ms. Ptacin finds much of the camp’s infrastructure gone or in disrepair and the facilities occupied by a small remnant of believers organizing for a summer season of classes, lectures and workshops. They are busy with the routine of any religious organization—paying the bills and keeping the lights on— only they are offering instruction in angel painting, trance channeling and candle meditation. Under their guidance, Ms. Ptacin gamely has her house purged of the previous owner’s bad karma by sage smoke and tourmaline crystals, opens herself up to table tipping (when the table rubs against her, the medium explains that it is a lick from Ms. Ptacin’s long-dead family dog), takes a class on dowsing (she misses her target, the camp’s aboveground water line), and attends a Penobscot powwow (the drumming feels like a communal heartbeat, recalling the camp’s belief that Native Americans were the original Spiritualists). Repeatedly she encounters otherwise ordinary people who say that they have seen the spirits of the dead since childhood, or that they can view the future or read past lives in the Akashic record of a soul’s energy. They explain that part of their mission is to help spirits trapped in this world by their egos, persuading them to enter the white light and cross over into eternity. They recount a grand release of spirits, among them that of Gladys Laliberte herself, which had to be locked out of Gladys’s former cottage and then pounded on its door until cajoled by mediums into leaving Camp Etna for the hereafter. They explain that their ultimate aim is to heal the living as well as the dead. They routinely observe spirits hovering nearby and tell Ms. Ptacin things about herself that she thought only she knew. She finds in them greater empathy and insight than in the therapist she has been paying for years. I won’t spoil the ending of the book; it’s a very good one, although not entirely unexpected. And, oh, about that sailboat: It was found right about where her builder predicted. With only a little help from a side-scan sonar.

Ms. Arkin is a professor at Fordham University Law School. She divides her time between New York and Maine.

A visit to Camp Etna, a 143-year-old retreat in the Maine woods where Spiritualists and mediums gather to commune with the dead.

Halloween Has Taken a Sadistic Turn

O

nce upon a time, a medi-
eval pope declared Nov.
1 a holiday to remember
and honor the saints. The day
was known as “All Saints Day”
or “All Hallows Day.” The eve-
ning before this saintly holiday
was known as “All Hallows
Eve,” which became corrupted
over time into “Halloween.”
In the British Isles, Hallow-
een overlaps the medieval pa-
gan holiday of Samhain. Many
of the things Americans do at
Halloween can be traced to the
confluence of these traditions.
Growing up in the 1960s, I
knew nothing about the ori-
gins of the holiday I loved.
What I did know was that Hal-
loween was a day for kids, and
it was fun. Putting on masks,
going door to door trick-or-
treating, collecting chocolates
from neighbors—this was the
epitome of delight.
Those were different times.
Our costumes were homemade.
Kids were cowboys, astronauts

and princesses. Decorations were likewise simple. Happy jack-o’-lanterns on the porch, some spider webs and scare- crows in the yard, and an occa- sional black cat in the window were the extent of it. Today, Halloween is much different from what I remember as a boy. The day is now for everyone, not children only.

Teenagers and ever more adults are dressing up. While the secularization of America has made Christmas controver- sial, Halloween has become a celebration for all. It’s also big business. Amer- icans spend billions each year on candy, home decorations and costumes. America’s re- tailers and theme parks are cashing in. Schools are too—

bizarrely raising funds through haunted houses and fairs. The overall tenor of the holiday seems to have changed as well. Halloween has always had a certain transgressive ap- peal—as with Mardi Gras, the evening before a holy day is a natural occasion for naughti- ness and mischief. But like a scene in a movie when events go awry and the music cre- scendoes to a cacophonous din, the Halloween of today has taken a sadistic turn. Costumes have become particularly bizarre. Terror has replaced mere fear. Ghosts, once adorned in bedsheets, now sport ghoulish and de- monic smiles. Clowns have morphed into lecherous “Jok- ers” who hover over our drive- ways. Hideous and howling werewolves hold kidnapped children in their arms. We decry mass shootings but “decorate” our front yards with body parts. We regret rising suicide rates but revel in the macabre. We condemn ISIS

for beheading its enemies but stand a bloodied, headless torso in the driveway and, in the balcony, hang rows of de- capitated heads on meat hooks. (Not that I’m thinking of any neighbors in particular.) Maybe I’m the only one bothered by all of this. Or maybe Halloween has become a mass psychological exercise in which we face our deepest fears to overcome them. This would be quite an irony, con- sidering the holiday’s popular- ity among the generation who invented “safe spaces.” My deeper concern is this: Cultures reap what they sow. When we sow goodness, hope and life, we get health, growth and prosperity. When we drift toward sadism and thanatoptic horror, we get destruction, sadness and death.

Dr. Hamilton practices pedi- atrics in Santa Monica, Calif., and is author of “7 Secrets of the Newborn” (St. Martin’s, 2018).

By Robert C. Hamilton

We decry violence but ‘decorate’ our front yards with body parts.

OPINION

J

oe Biden has a Hunter
problem, and it’s not go-
ing away. We saw that
during the former Vice Presi-
dent’s tone-deaf appearance
Sunday on “60 Minutes.”
Before we get to the inter-
view, some context: In Febru-
ary 2014, Ukrainians pushed
out President Viktor Yanuk-
ovych, widely reviled for both
tolerating corruption and de-
laying and then rejecting a
popular agreement that tied
the country closer to the Eu-
ropean Union. Mr. Yanuk-
ovych escaped to Moscow,
where Vladimir Putin gave
him refuge.
The next month, Mr. Putin
seized the Ukrainian Crimea
and in April he invaded east-
ern Ukraine, taking control of a
significant amount of Ukrai-
nian territory in a war that
continues today.
At about the same time, Mr.
Biden’s son Hunter joined the
board of Burisma, Ukraine’s
largest gas company, along
with Devon Archer, a longtime
associate of then-Secretary of
State John Kerry. The younger
Mr. Biden received as much as
$600,000 a year for attending
a handful of company meet-
ings, despite his complete lack
of experience in the energy
business or Ukraine.
Burisma was controlled by
an Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola
Zlochevsky. He formed the
company after serving under
Mr. Yanukovych as Ukraine’s
minister of ecology and natural

Hunter Will Dog Joe Biden

resources and doling out gas distribution rights, some of which ended up with Burisma. By April 2014, the month the younger Mr. Biden joined Bu- risma, the United Kingdom had opened a money-laundering probe into Mr. Zlochevsky and froze $23 million in his London bank accounts. (Mr. Zlochevsky was never convicted of any crimes and denied any wrong- doing, and the money was later released after Ukrainian offi- cials failed to cooperate with the investigation.) In August 2014 the Ukrainian prosecutor general announced an investigation into Burisma and Mr. Zlochevsky. That case was closed in 2016 and no charges were filed. Even before his son joined Burisma, Vice President Biden had been leading U.S. efforts to encourage Ukraine to crack down on the country’s corruption, which was giving ammu- nition to those Ukrainians seeking accommodation with Russia. In October 2014, Ukraine responded by creating a new anticorruption bureau and a special prosecutor to handle the cases it developed. By late 2015 the vice president was calling for the ouster of Ukraine’s prosecutor general for going soft on corruption. With that as background, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell asked the former vice president on Sunday, “You understand people say, ‘Joe Biden, he’s an ex- perienced politician, statesman, knows the issues of Ukraine. Why didn’t he just say to his

son, ‘this is one to take a pass on. It may not look good.’ ” Mr. Biden’s reply was that his son “was already on the board and he’s a grown man. And it turns out he did not do a single thing wrong.” So Hunter Biden’s cashing in on his dad’s position by joining a murky Ukrainian company’s board for which he was un- qualified wasn’t wrong. Appar- ently it’s perfectly acceptable

for Hunter to be paid vast sums to lend Burisma his last name as a potential shield against action from Kyiv. After all, Hunter is a grown man. So is his father. And the se- nior Mr. Biden had plenty of time between April 2014 and December 2015 to either tell his son to get off Burisma’s board or inform President Obama that he, the vice president, was compromised because of his son’s involvement and couldn’t take the lead on pressuring Ukraine on anticorruption issues. Neither happened. How could the elder Mr. Bi- den be so blind to the impro- priety of his son serving on Burisma’s board while he was pressuring Ukraine to fight the corruption that Burisma alleg- edly represented?

There were many public warnings. When Burisma announced the appointment of the younger Mr. Biden and Mr. Ar- cher in May 2014, it drew criti- cism in the Washington Post and elsewhere. When the vice president went to Kyiv in De- cember 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported on the conflict of interest, quoting a Ukrainian anticorruption official: “If an in- vestigator sees the son of the vice president of the United States is part of the manage- ment of a company...that in- vestigator will be uncomfortable pushing the case forward.” President Obama, Mr. Kerry and national security adviser Susan Rice also bear responsi- bility. Were they blind to the conflict of interest or simply unwilling to tell good old Uncle Joe that his son’s activities were problematic? Joe Biden’s campaign is already plagued by big chal- lenges from poor fundraising to subpar debate performances to a dismal message. The Hunter debacle has eaten away at the vice president’s greatest strength: He’s the most elect- able Democrat. The Hunter-Burisma problem that’s plaguing the Biden campaign could have been avoided. It wasn’t. And now it’s here to stay.

Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of Wil- liam McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).

The Ukraine debacle eats away at the candidate’s biggest strength: electability.

By Karl Rove

It was this
weekend in
2012 that I
went to a Hal-
loween party
wearing a
quite realis-
tic-looking
Joe Biden
mask. After
about an hour,
people said it
was too spooky and asked me
to take it off. When the Obama
presidency ended, I threw the
Biden mask away, assuming I’d
never need it again. Wishful
thinking is always a mistake.
With Halloween in the air,
it’s the right moment to dis-
cuss the central role played
in presidential politics by bo-
geymen—creatures conjured
to distract and scare the citi-
zenry. In politics, the bogey-
man is always just around the
corner. For John F. Kennedy
it was “the missile gap”; for
Barack Obama, “the wealthi-
est”; and for Donald Trump,
criminals pouring across “the
border.”
Naturally, the Democrats
running for their party’s presi-
dential nomination needed a
bogeyman, and they have cre-
ated one even scarier than the
Trump monster. It’s them —
“corporations!” At their recent
presidential debate, one candi-
date after another claimed
corporations were wrecking
the country.
Elizabeth Warren, who
knows a thing or two about
scaring people: “They have no
loyalty to America. They have
no loyalty to American work-
ers. They have no loyalty to
American consumers. They
have no loyalty to American
communities. They are loyal

The Democrats’ Spooky Politics

only to their own bottom line.” And by the way, “I have a plan.” Yikes. Cory Booker ranted about “corporate tax incentives,” and Amy Klobuchar wants a roll- back of “what we did with the corporate tax rate.” Beto O’Rourke somehow related a woman he said was working four jobs with “some of these corporations,” and Tom Steyer, billionaire, said we have to “break the power of these corporations.” Finally Joe Biden, seeing where this was going, invoked the “corporate greed” of companies that are “not investing in our employees.” Politics, as has been proved lately, can get crude, and one understands why candidates play the race card, the class- warfare card or the anti-immi- grant card. But how has the Democratic Party arrived en masse at playing the anti-cor- poration card? If one sits through any of these three-hour-long Demo- cratic debates or their climate and LGBTQ town halls, it’s hard not to notice that there is an 800-pound elephant in the room that none of them (including the moderators) want to talk about—the Amer- ican economy in the here and now. Unless the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is another front for Donald Trump, the reality of historically high job creation and rising wages for people regardless of income level, race, sex or sexual orien- tation has become impossible not to notice. Even the New York Times recently admitted the jobs boom was forcing “corpora-

tions” to dig deeper for workers: “With the national unemployment rate now flirting with a 50-year low,” it noted that companies are offering work-from-home options to parents, accommodating employees with disabilities, re- ducing educational require- ments and waiving criminal background checks.

This 50-year unemployment low—and the self-respect and sense of personal possibility that comes with it—didn’t just happen. It is the explicit result of Congress and President Trump redeploying two proven pillars of Reaganomics. They dropped the tax rate on—yes—“corporations” to 21% from its investment-kill- ing decades at 35%, and he un- wound a waaay-overboard Obama regulatory regime that was imposed on virtually ev- ery private-sector producer in the U.S. economy. You’d have to be obtuse not to recognize the historic burst of individual economic oppor- tunity happening now. The wonder wasn’t so much the economic revival this pro- duced but the astonishing scope of the Trump boom. The Democratic presidential candidates aren’t talking about the real economy because most of them don’t understand it. The Democratic Party’s historic link to the real

economy was private-sector labor unions affiliated with in- dustries such as steel, mining and cars. With the decline of those unions, the Democrats have become an almost wholly public-sector party, for which the private economy, which employs millions of workers, has become a distant planet whose only function is to send the oxygen of tax revenue. Which is why Democrats pro- pose unpriceable ideas like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal. Which is why so many blue-collar workers in 2016 managed to identify their lot with an unapologetic billionaire businessman. This is the real reason a moderate and totally embed- ded private-sector Democratic figure such as Mike Bloomberg isn’t likely to run. The party, captured by cotton-candy so- cialists like Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, has deserted him. The real-world disconnect even got to primo Never-Trumper Alec Baldwin, who recently la- mented the attacks on “a country built on both free- doms and commerce.” Com- merce? What’s that? The economy slowed to a 1.9% growth rate in the third quarter as business investment fell beneath the endur- ing weight of the Trump tar- iffs, which could yet take some sheen off his accomplishment. But come the general-election debates next year, Mr. Trump will relentlessly pound his op- ponent with the fact of real work created for real people. Whether it’s Joe Biden or Eliz- abeth Warren, they’re going to need a better bogeyman to compete than corporate greed. Write [email protected].

Their candidates make ‘corporations’ a bogeyman even scarier than Trump.

WONDER
LAND
By Daniel
Henninger

The Wall Street Journal - 31.10.2019

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