Another curious incident took place at the Cayce’s home on Seventh Street. On a particularly cold winter night, Edgar and a friend from out of town were returning from a revival meeting at the Tabernacle. The plan was for his friend to spend the night with Edgar in his bedroom. But when they walked into the Cayce house, they were surprised that extended family had unexpectedly dropped in from Beverly. Leslie had requisitioned Edgar’s bedroom, and there was no place for him or his friend to sleep. Edgar was steaming mad. This was his bedroom. Further, he was paying the rent on the house. While Edgar and his father exchanged angry words, Edgar’s friend bid a hasty retreat.
Edgar, fully dressed, went to sleep on the sofa in the living room. As he later told the story, which was corroborated by family members, at some point after everyone had gone to bed, the sofa upon which Edgar slept burst into flames. He ran outside and rolled in the snow, putting out his burning clothes. By this time everyone else in the house had awakened and helped to haul the burning sofa out the front door as well. As Edgar had not been smoking, the lamps were extinguished, and the sofa had not been near the stove, the cause of the fire remained a mystery. However, evidence suggested that the fire had started in Edgar’s clothes before spreading to the sofa and that somehow or another, the incident was directly connected with Edgar’s state of mind.
But as he and the Cayce family, and Gertrude too, would one day experience when they entered the photography business, fires had a strange way of igniting under unusual circumstances when Edgar was angry. Two of Cayce’s four photo studios would burn down, and a third suffered serious fire damage. In later years, special efforts would be made to fireproof the various storerooms which housed the Cayce trance readings.
The impact that such incidents had on Gertrude were more profound than commonly thought. She would be the last of her family members to receive or witness a trance reading. For the first eighteen months of their courtship and for years to come, she and Edgar would not talk about or discuss anything related to his psychic gifts. This was how she wanted it, and it may have been a condition when Edgar, on March 7, 1897, days before his twentieth birthday, proposed to seventeen-year-old Gertrude.
“It’s true that I love you,” she told him. “But I will have to think about it.”
Edgar naturally wanted to know when he would have an answer, and a part of him still believed she wouldn’t accept his proposal. There were times when Gertrude looked at him, he said, as if he were “a strange fish that ought to be thrown back.”
Perhaps, even in their relative youth, both suspected that theirs would never be a normal life together. They would never simply be Edgar and Gertrude. There would always be a third unseen “other,” what in years to come would simply be called “the Source.” It seemed at times to threaten to end their relationship and as events would unfold, was ultimately what held them together.
On the evening Edgar proposed to her, however, Gertrude was holding her ground for a different reason. One of her aunts had counseled reserve in matters of the heart. She shouldn’t seem too eager. Gertrude went to a calendar in the parlor, closed her eyes, and put her finger on a date. “I’ll tell you on the twelfth.”
Five days later, in a driving rain, Edgar arrived back at The Hill on horseback. Gertrude, after giving the matter consideration, said she would marry him. As Edgar later related the story, he didn’t know what to do next. She was standing in front of him, waiting for him to kiss her. When she asked him why he hesitated, he explained that he had never kissed a woman before. Gertrude showed him how.
The matter of how her voice, in particular, had a profound effect upon him, and other psychic matters, was forgotten for the moment. Like her, he envisioned a day, not long in the future, in which he and she would stroll through the park on a Sunday afternoon, taking turns pushing a stroller, and greeting friends they met along the way. He believed, if he tried hard enough, he could put the strange incidents of his past behind him.
Gertrude and Edgar portrait, c. 1903.
AL LAYNE:
INTRODUCING THE PSYCHIC DIAGNOSTICIAN
Hypnosis is widely regarded as an effective therapeutic technique to relieve pain, overcome bad habits, and recall past events. Less understood is its ability to enhance psychic ability. People who are hypnotized routinely perform better in laboratory tests of clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition. This was the case for twenty-four-year-old Cayce who, with the help of self-taught hypnotist and osteopath Al Layne, produced his first trance reading on March 31, 1901.
Putting Edgar into trance was more difficult than one might suppose for a young man who had already displayed a wide range of other talents. The first attempt to hypnotize him was made by Stanley “The Laugh King” Hart, who invited Edgar onto center stage at Holland’s Opera House shortly after Edgar and his family had moved to Hopkinsville. Although Hart was an ardent spokesman for the alleged powers of hypnotism to cure headaches, treat alcoholism, and eliminate self-destructive behaviors, it was comedy that drew crowds to his performances. He invited members of the audience onto the stage, put them into a hypnotic trance, and ordered them to do embarrassing things. Hart swore just by looking at Edgar that he would make the ideal hypnotic subject, but to everyone’s disappointment, Hart was unable to put Edgar into a trance, and he was asked to leave the stage.
Four years later “Herman the Great” made a second attempt. While visiting the Louisville printing company where Edgar was then working as a clerk—Edgar needed a greater income if he was to marry Gertrude and raise a family—Herman declared the young man would make an ideal subject for hypnotism and asked permission to put him “under.” Edgar agreed to be hypnotized but advised Herman of the previous attempt. The hypnotist was not put off. He told Edgar that the more often a person was hypnotized, the easier it was to put him under, and the deeper he could go.
Hart the Laugh King’s Newspaper Ad, c. 1899.
Holland’s Opera House.
Herman had Edgar concentrate on some object that was held up in front of him while Herman repeatedly made suggestions that he relax and go to sleep. The next thing Edgar remembered was that he was lying on a countertop surrounded by co-workers. He had not only gone under but had done everything that the hypnotist told him to do. Edgar laughed about the experience and promptly forgot about it until a year later when he was hypnotized in Madisonville, Kentucky, while on a business trip with his father, Leslie.
Edgar and Leslie had been in Madisonville only a few hours when state health officials arrived at their hotel and ordered its doors closed. The hotel was being quarantined due to an outbreak of smallpox. No one could come or go for three days. By coincidence, a fellow guest at the hotel was a stage hypnotist who volunteered to provide entertainment.
Like Herman the Great, the hypnotist succeeded in putting Edgar into a trance. Again, Edgar had no memory of what happened because he lost consciousness the moment the hypnotist put him “under.” Edgar knew only what Leslie and the other hotel guests told him when he woke up. According to them, the hypnotist suggested that Edgar play the piano.
Leslie had expected Edgar to simply bang away at the keys like a child pretending to make music. After all, he had never had a single lesson. Only Edgar took the hypnotist’s suggestion literally, exhibiting a skill far beyond what even the hypnotist believed possible. Edgar played