Cow Hampshire

Photograph of Mrs. Nellie Titus from
a 1905 Boston Sunday Globe
newspaper.

I am not writing this story to dispute whether clairvoyants exist, nor to argue whether Mrs. Nellie M. (Lewis) Titus of Lebanon New Hampshire was gifted or not with psychic visions. What I do know is that Mrs. Titus was an interesting, eccentric woman.  She was in the public eye several times as she claimed to see what others could not while in a  trance–a drowning victim, a murder scene, and buried treasure. That she led an intriguing life and she spent most of her time in New Hampshire qualifies her for a story here.

Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum mentions Mrs. Titus in her book “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death” published in 2006. She says that William James of the Society for Psychical Research, a Harvard College philosopher and psychologist, reported on Mrs. Titus ‘seership.’ As a result of Mrs. Titus’ search for the body of Bertha Huse in New Hampshire’s Mascoma Lake (as mentioned later),  William James reportedly  concluded that “my own view of the Titus case consequently is that it is a decidedly solid document in favor of the admission of a supernatural faculty of seership.”[See full report in the Proceedings of the American Society For Psychical Research]. Continue reading →