Mary Mary, Quite Contrary

A teenager restrained in a windowless room, a doctor’s letter that reads like a warning, and a father who refuses to accept “coincidence” as an answer—this chapter of Small Town Whispers moves from the Roff family’s newfound prosperity to the most unsettling moment in Mary’s treatment at the Peoria Water Cure. We walk through Asa’s confrontation with physicians who mock spirit claims and lean on the Fox sisters as a tidy explanation, while he counters with dates, details, and a demand for proof that feels surprisingly modern. It’s not a ghost hunt; it’s a debate about how we decide what’s real when the facts refuse to fit. 

From there, we step beneath the Porch Light and into 1969, where the legend of Lantern Lane carries a different kind of evidence: a steady, approaching light on an empty country road with no cars, no houses, no swamp gas. Becky Mackenzie, a Watseka native and teacher-to-be, recounts her band-night sighting with clarity and restraint. The story endures because it remains stubbornly ordinary and stubbornly unexplained. University researchers reportedly found nothing, and that nothing only makes the light harder to dismiss. 

What ties these threads together is the small-town method of knowing: patient observation, passed-down stories, a willingness to hold discomfort without smothering it under easy narratives. We explore the tension between medicine and belief, the practical courage of a parent insisting on evidence, and the way local legends archive anomalies that science hasn’t yet claimed. If you’re drawn to historical mysteries, paranormal folklore, and the messy, human process of making sense of the unknown, you’ll feel right at home on these streets and crossroads. If the story stirred something in you—curiosity, doubt, a memory—tap follow, share it with a friend who loves a good mystery, and leave us a review. And if you’ve got a whisper of your own, send it our way so it can step into the light next Friday.

Chapters

• 0:11 Welcome And Personal Ties
• 1:32 Listener Shoutouts And Radio Feature
• 2:47 Setting The Stage In 1860
• 4:18 Railroad Wealth And Asa’s Rise
• 5:18 Mary’s Fits And Peoria Water Cure
• 6:40 Civil War Looms And Family Strains
• 7:55 The Letter Of Mary’s Relapse
• 9:34 Doctors Debate Spirits And Science
• 12:20 Asa’s Stand For Proof Over Coincidence
• 18:41 Reflection On Fear And The Unknown
• 19:35 Introducing Porchlight Whispers
• 20:10 Lantern Lane Legend Begins
• 22:08 Becky’s Firsthand Sighting
• 24:05 Legacy, Family, And Local Lore
• 24:30 Host’s Band Memories And Closing

Transcript

Speaker: 0:11

Welcome to Small Town Whispers, where history, folklore, and the paranormal collide. I'm Bethany Yucuis Borden, and I lived in Watseka, Illinois from 1988 to 1999. For over a decade, I walked the same streets, saw the same houses, and even had friends connected to the story we're about to dive into. This isn't just history for me, it's personal. If you're new to the podcast, I suggest you go back and listen to episode one and two, because the story we're telling here builds from the beginning. And if you haven't followed the show yet, what are you waiting for? I need you here every Friday as we continue to tell the story of Mary Roff, Watseka, and more. You do not want to miss us. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Go do it. Go. I'm so grateful for all the feedback I've received about the podcast so far. It's been such a joy hearing from people I've known across so many different chapters of my life, and from new listeners who've discovered small town whispers for the first time. I'm looking forward to hearing from even more of you as we keep learning and growing together. I also want to give a special shout out to my hometown radio station, WGFA 94.1 in Watseika, for letting me come on the air this Halloween to spread the word about the show. I hope it helps the history and the legend reach Watseca residents, past, present, and maybe even future. Thank you, Justin, Stacey, and everyone at WGFA for keeping the spirit of local storytelling alive. Now, let's step back in time once more and see what was stirring in Watseka all those years ago. When we left off, the year was 1852, Mary Roff was six years old, and her strange episodes were growing harder to ignore. Now, our story moves forward to 1860. Much has changed for the Roff family. They no longer live in Middleport, and Asa has left behind the shoemaker's trade. He and Josiah have become wealthy thanks to the coming of the railroad. In 1858, the Peoria and Oqua Railroad planned to expand into Indiana, and Middleport sat at the perfect junction. Not everyone in town was eager. The vibrations unsettled both people and animals. But Asa and Josiah saw an opportunity. They negotiated for the line to cut across their land, and soon businesses, families, and fortunes followed. Asa was the first to build a home near the new tracks. Then he built a second home, Watsika's first brick house, modern, elegant, with arched windows, two parlors, a wide front porch, and a hand-carved staircase that led to four bedrooms upstairs. The land stretched back to the Iroquois River, a fine estate for a man now serving as postmaster, sheriff, and eventually a lawyer. Asa had made it, but Mary had not escaped her afflictions. Her strange fits kept returning, and only Dr. Pittwood knew the full extent. One time, Mary claimed she was a woodsman speaking in an odd English accent. Another time, she screamed that her body was on fire. In desperation, Dr. Pittwood suggested the Peoria Water Cure, an institution known for its strict diets, regimented exercise, and its unusual electrochemical baths. Expensive? Yes, but the Roffs were running out of hope. Mary's mother, Ann, pregnant again and overwhelmed by five children, leaned on the help of Loozie, a woman she called her African godsend. Lucy had come to Watseka from Mississippi as a free woman and had stayed with the Roffs ever since. Before Mary left for Peoria, Loozie pressed a small wooden charm into her hand, a carved figure meant to ward off evil spirits. Asa took Mary to Peoria himself. The doctors promised progress, and within three months they sent back a good report. Mary, they said, was improving. But Asa hadn't told them everything. Not about the time Mary twisted the necks of 17 chickens in the hen house, or the violence that seemed to live just beneath her skin. And while Mary battled her demons in Peoria, the outside world was unraveling. In April 1861, Southern cannons fired on Fort Sumter and the Civil War began. Asa had voted for Lincoln, had even shaken his hand during the famous debates with Stephen Douglas and Kankakee. Now that same Lincoln was president. Back in Watseeka, Ann delivered another son, and by the time Mary's 15th birthday approached that October, her mother was ready for her to come home. And that is where we return to the book, Watseeka, America's Most Extraordinary Case of Possession and Exorcism. Tonight, I'll begin on page 34 with a letter sent to Asa from Peoria. My dear Mr. Roff, sir, it is with the greatest reluctance that I write to inform you of a relapse in the condition of your daughter Mary. It came most unexpectedly and without the slightest provocation. I am, dear sir, at a loss to explain it and loath to detail it on paper. However, as her parent and benefactor, you must be apprised of the situation. It was five days ago. The letter was dated September twelfth. And Mary was in the music room as was her usual wont after luncheon. She was seated at the piano playing her favorite hymn, We Are Coming, Sister Mary, and singing with Miss Green and Miss Whitfield, two elderly ladies who frequent this establishment annually for the water cure, when she began to pound upon the keys and shout in a loud voice. Both Mrs. Green and Whitfield attempted to soothe her, but Mary began to shout obscenities at them. Miss Green swooned into a chair, and Miss Whitfield hastened to the door to summon one of the attendants. But Mary ran ahead of her and closed the door, bolting it from the inside. At this, Miss Whitfield began to scream for assistance. Mary jumped on her, knocking her to the floor, and sat astride her back, and tugging on the lady's hair began to pull at it and call her all sorts of vile and wicked names. By the time I and my staff were able to enter the music room, we found Miss Whitfield's clothes to be torn and in complete disarray, and Mary was beating the unfortunate woman's bare buttocks with the woman's own belt. Mary was laughing and speaking in a very low voice and shouting about the necessity of thrashing a sinful nun. When we overpowered your daughter, and it took four of us, she said she was a Jesuit priest, and that Miss Whitfield had broken her vows and needed to be castigated. Mary was placed in a separate room with no windows and dressed in a special restraining jacket. She insisted that she was a priest and that we would all be excommunicated. Mr. Roth, sir, you did say that you raised her a Methodist, did you not? I attempted to administer a sedative to her, but to no avail. She would not swallow it, but spat it out, one time directly into my face. Then just as rapidly as this fit took her, it released her and she fell onto the floor. We placed her on her bed where she remains today, five days later, and still in her restraining jacket. I cannot arouse her, even though her heartbeat, her pulse, and her breathing are normal. If I am to continue my treatment of your daughter, I beg you, sir, to inform me whether anything like this has ever happened before, and if so, when and under what circumstances? Mary has been a perfectly normal girl and a model patient since the first day she was admitted. This episode, I do not need to tell you, has upset not only the staff, but the other patients as well. A complete reply by return post will be appreciated and is anxiously awaited. Your obedient servant, Dr. Mordecai Nevins, proprietor. Asa took a train to Peoria the next day. I'm sorry, he told Dr. Nevins and Kenyon. That's the entire story. I should have told you everything when I was here. Why didn't you? Dr. Nevins asked. I was afraid that if I told you, you'd think my daughter was crazy and wouldn't have admitted her at all. That she was crazy? Dr. Kenyon said in her low voice. Or that you were crazy for giving credence to an idea such as spirit possession. Asa looked down at the floor. That I was crazy too, I suppose. Do you believe in spirits? Aside from those in the Bible, of course, Dr. Nevins asked. I don't know, Asa replied truthfully. One part of me says it's all superstition, and yet the other part, the part that's seen what comes over Mary, tells me that something must be there. Something He looked from face to face, trying to imagine what they must be thinking as they sat examining him. There was a long pause, broken only by the ticking of a large clock on the far wall. Asa coughed and crossed his legs, then uncrossed them and brushed a bit of mud from the cuff of his trousers. They were still looking at him. I don't know what to believe, he said defensively. The Bible says there are more things on earth than man can dream of. I don't believe we have all the answers. About spirits? Dr. Kenyon inquired in her flat, now I'm questioning a patient tone. About anything, Asa replied quickly. I think there are many things here on earth that man cannot explain away by his own reasoning. Like how a seed grows into a flower, for instance, and he was searching, knowing they were examining him. And why a man can have an idea and turn that idea into a real thing, like an invention or a business, things like that. He felt good that he had expressed himself on their level. Dr. Kenyon adjusted her long skirt so that the hem hung evenly above her buttoned shoes. Do you consider yourself a Christian man, Mr. Roth? She pronounced Christian as if it had all three syllables. Christian. Yes, of course. I was born into the Methodist faith, and am a member of that faith today. So are the members of my family. It was thirteen years ago, she said, that some hysterical girls, they were the Fox sisters, deluded the world into thinking they had communicated with the spirit of a dead peddler. Imagine, doctor Nevins broke in. A peddler. Supposedly the man had been killed and buried in the basement of their home. This was before they moved into it with their family, of course, but he had been killed, and after several nights of knockings on the walls and foolishness like that, they claimed to have communicated with the man's spirit. Asa nodded. Yes, I believe I've heard about it. Well, because of all the nonsense that followed it, these girls have become some sort of heroes, especially to the ignorant and impressionable. And they have amassed a large following of foolish persons, the spiritualists, anxious to communicate with the dead. But they did find the body, didn't they? Asa asked. What body, Mr. Roff? Why, the body of that peddler. Didn't the knockings on the wall tell them where to dig in their cellar? And when they dug in that spot the body of the peddler was uncovered? Yes, said Dr. Nevins. And that's what started it all. But if they actually found the body, Asa continued, then the information the spirit, or the knockings, if you prefer, gave them must have been correct. Hmm coincidence, doctor Kenyon said between pressed lips. Yes, coincidence, Dr. Nevins repeated. But a rather unusual coincidence, Asa said. Dr. Kenyon said, it was exactly because it was unusual that this whole spirit nonsense started. And she looked at her companion for confirmation. And since that incident, many young girls have deluded themselves into thinking they can communicate with spirits. Asa wished he could light up a cigar, but he was in the presence of a lady. He would have to wait. He needed it to keep his hands busy as he tried to put his words together. Are you telling me that you think my Mary has been imagining all these things? That she is trying to emulate the fox sisters? It is a possibility, said Dr. Nevins. I don't think so, Asa said. I can't see how. Mary had her first fit when she was just six months old. Six months. That was almost two years before those girls heard the knockings. And anyway, he searched for the words. How could she have been trying to delude herself at that tender age? He got up from the chair and walked to the window. The trees were leafless outside, leafless and cold. As cold as the attitude of the doctors in the room, he thought. May I have a cigar? He bowed slightly toward the lady doctor. She nodded her assent. He pulled the silver case from his waistcoat pocket and snapped it open. He removed a thin black stick of tobacco and a wooden match. He bit off one end of the cigar, twirled it around in his mouth for a second, then struck the match against the sole of his shoe. The warm aroma filled his lungs and cleared his head. The entire process had given him time to think. And now he turned around to face them. The first time Mary's personality really changed, he said carefully, was when she said she was a German woman and took the knife and cut her arm. Mary was six years old at the time. Six. How could she have heard about the Fox Sisters at the age of six? Maybe she heard you and your wife discussing the matter, Dr. Nevins said. Children can be most impressionable. No, Asa was on firmer ground now. A friend of mine was in the house when it happened. It was his knife Mary used. He told us about the Fox Sisters for the first time only after Mary had that attack. Again, coincidence, said Dr. Kenyon. It is exactly these coincidences that have built this spirit nonsense into what it is today. That's what we have been trying to tell you. Asa ignored her. In my profession as a lawyer, we look for coincidences to help our study of the cases we get, but in your profession, I would think you would look deeper than coincidence. Anything can be turned into a coincidence. Have you questioned Mary as to her knowledge of these Fox sisters? We have not had the opportunity, Mr. Roff, doctor Kenyon said. After all, we didn't suspect any of this until Mary attacked the two ladies the other day, and being as she is still unconscious and cannot hear us, or won't hear Dr. Nevins put in. We have no way of knowing just how much she is aware of this so called spirit madness. Asa turned back to the window. He didn't like the bars, but he supposed they were a necessary precaution. He took a long pull on the cigar. I've come to a decision, he said. They were both watching him. Mary is in no condition to be taken home. I don't know if being here will help her or not. He put up his hand to stop Dr. Kenyon before she could interrupt. She cannot come home because she is an unsettling influence on my wife and the other children. I will keep her here a few months longer, hoping she can be cured. I am willing to pay for better and more direct treatments if necessary. She is to continue her studies, and I am to get a full report once a month. And he waved his cigar for emphasis. I want you to thoroughly investigate this theory you have about her imagining she is possessed by spirits. If you should be correct, she must be broken of this habit. If you are not correct, you had better find out what her real ailment is. He walked toward the door, putting on his coat. And, he added, for all the time and money I will have put in here, I want to be presented with proof, not coincidences. Wow. It's hard to imagine what Asa must have felt in that moment. Watching his daughter lose herself to something no doctor could explain. What was scarier, really? The way Mary would change, her voice, her face, even her strength, or the thought of sending her miles away to a hospital full of strangers who didn't believe her. In a time when science and superstition walked hand in hand, families like the Roth were left standing in the dark, unsure which fear to trust. That same uncertainty, that uneasy feeling that something might be real, even when the experts say it isn't, still lingers in small towns like Watseika. We see something strange, something we can't explain, and we're left wondering: is it all in our heads, or is there something more? Which brings us to this week's Porchlight Whispers. Now, join me under the Porch Light, the place where memories meet the present and voices from the past still linger in the dark. Tonight we listen not to the pages from a book, but to the people who have felt the unexplained and found the courage to share it. Welcome to Porchlight Whispers. The year was 1969. Watseka, Illinois. High schoolers packed into cars, engines rumbling down country roads, hearts racing as they searched for something they couldn't quite name. The story of Lanterns Lane had already been whispered for generations. The ghostly light that swayed through the fields, the farmer and his wife who never made it home. Tonight's Porchlight Whisper story comes from Becky Mackenzie, a Watseka native, class of 1972, who grew up hearing that same legend and one night saw the light for herself. Here's her story. I don't know how far back the story stretches, nor how far forward. The legend of Lantern Lane played large in our high school adventuring. We'd pile into cars and twos and threes and sixes and drive out to the southern edge of Iroquois County, hoping to spot that bobbing light. As I remember it, way back in the early 1900s during a blinding blizzard, a farmer went out with a lantern looking for an unaccounted-for calf. When he hadn't returned well into the night, his wife grabbed her own lantern and went out looking for him. Neither ever made it home. In my memory, the story ends there, but other versions have mutilated human and bovine corpses showing up after the thaw. I think I fancy the simple vanishing. Regardless of what happened to the two that night, the light from the wife's lantern did not disappear, and instead could be spotted along the road alongside the couple's house and farm. I heard reports of a far-off wavering light, a speeding fireball of light, and even a light that rested on the car. We understood that scientists had come from the University of Illinois to study this light, but had never found any evidence of swamp gas or weird reflections. At that time, now, still, there was no solid explanation for this light. Of course I wanted to see it too. I went out a few times in my high school years with buddies, and we told stories and perhaps partied a bit, but there were no sightings. Except that one time. My first time out there. During my freshman year of high school, well before I dabbled in intoxicants, I, a percussionist, ventured out to Lantern Lane with my trumpet-playing boyfriend Will and our clarinetist friend Vicky. We'd spent the day collecting newspapers for a fundraising event, raising money for our upcoming high school band trip to Winnipeg, Canada. It was dark, of course, and we parked along a deserted stretch of Lantern Lane. We hadn't been there long before we saw ways down the road a single steady light. No other cars either moving or stopped. No lit up houses, no one walking with a flashlight. Nothing reflecting light from elsewhere. Just a single steady light. It did appear to move closer to us. I don't remember how long we watched or how long it hovered. I imagine we were excited, laughing, scared. Did we stay until it disappeared? Or did we decide the sighting was enough and we didn't need to stick around to see what might happen next? I don't know. I don't remember how our night and our own Lantern Lane story ended, but we did see that light. Becky went on to become a teacher, a reading specialist, and even a college professor, helping others find meaning and story in the written word. Her father, Gordon Mackenzie, coached football at Watseca Community High School for 25 years, shaping generations of students both on and off the field. Maybe that's what I love most about small towns like Watseka. How our stories, our lessons, and even our legends are passed down through family, through memory, through time. And sometimes, if you're lucky, through a faint, flickering light at the end of a long country road. What a story! Thank you again, Becky, for submitting this tale so we can pass it along into the night. I can relate with the band fundraiser, but by the time I was in band, we sold fruit door to door in the winter. Brilliant, right? And we did not go to Winnipeg. I had a personal achievement one year of selling a thousand dollars worth of fruit. Apples, oranges, grapefruit. It was all fun and games until I had to deliver it all in my Chrysler LeBaron. Good times. Until next time. That was this week's edition of Porchlight Whispers. Do you have an experience of your own to tell? We want to hear your stories, share your experience, and let your small town whispers become part of ours. And with that, the porchlight dims, but the whispers stay with us. Join us again next time when another voice steps into the light.