The Hanging Hill

79

“Oh, we have quite a collection of Hanging Hill theatrical memorabilia,” said the librarian. “Especially for famous authors to look at!”

She led Judy and Mrs. McKenna into the rare books room. “I’ve pulled out all our historical playbills as well as the archives of our local newspaper.”

“Thank you,” said Judy as she and Mrs. McKenna sat down at a long table. “You sure you don’t mind helping me look into this, Mary?”

“Are you kidding? I was a history major. I love this stuff!”

They flicked on two green-shaded lamps and went to work.

“Here’s something,” said Judy, coming upon an antique playbill. “Professor Nicodemus performed here in August 1939.”

“Great,” said Mrs. McKenna. “I’ll check the local newspaper. See if there’s a review or a write-up.” She flipped through the long sheets of newsprint in a book of newspapers from 1939. “Here we go!”

Judy peered over her shoulder to read the article.

Nicodemus Packs Them In With

Mesmerizing But Horrifying Magic

Professor Nicholas Nicodemus proclaims himself a “resurrectionist” and boldly states at the beginning of his current show that he will raise the dead.

At first, this seems like innocent flimflam, the type of puffery often proclaimed by other magicians plying their trade on the vaudeville circuit.

But in his performance at Chatham’s Hanging Hill Playhouse, the self-proclaimed necromancer (one who communes with the dead), who wears a turban suggestive of the exotic East, was anything but innocent.

After some mildly amusing hypnotism and mind reading antics with willing volunteers from the audience, the “professor” proceeded to summon forth “those foul spirits who traipse between this world and the next.”

The spirits first summoned were harmless enough: a skeleton playing a banjo, a green goblin with a violin, and a waifish young woman surrounded by a flock of fluttering doves.

It was in the second half of his act that Nicodemus crossed the line from innocent entertainer to treacherous sorcerer as he pretended to call forth the souls of Connecticut’s most notorious criminals.

He summoned William Bampfield, a Pilgrim sent to the gallows in 1636 after he killed his wife and three young daughters. Next came the most egregious example of Professor Nicodemus’s ill-considered conjuring, Lilly Pruett, the psycho path who terrorized Hartford in the late 1890s. She swooped across the stage, brandishing her bloody hatchet, the one made infamous in the jump rope rhyme “Lilly Pruett said she didn’t do it.”

It was at this point in the evening’s proceedings that this reporter vacated the theater. I am pleased to report that I wasn’t the only gentleman in attendance who chose to walk out on Professor Nicodemus’s misguided shenanigans. Pretending to dabble in spirituality for the audience’s amusement is one thing. Terrorizing your spectators with foul visitations from the lower depths is quite another!

This reviewer has no idea how the “necromancy” illusions were engineered and, frankly, has no desire to find out. It was, in my professional opinion, tasteless and tawdry gimcrackery of the worst sort!

“Wow,” said Judy. “Sounds like Mr. Grimes’s grandfather put on a pretty twisted show.”

“Mr. Grimes’s grandfather?” said Mrs. McKenna.

“Professor Nicodemus was his stage name.”

“Wait a minute,” said Mrs. McKenna. “I heard Grimes was an orphan.”

“Really?”

“I asked about his crippled arm and the company manager told me Grimes injured it in an accident at an orphanage when he was very young.”

“Okay,” said Judy, sitting back from the table. “Guess you guys will have plenty to talk about at that party tonight.”