Bagonye’s Chapel Is Weirdly Fitted Up For His Seances With Spirits
Milltown Man, Held on Witchcraft Charge, Tells of His Psychic Powers – Declares Woman’s Charge to Be Unfounded.
“Professor” Eugene I. Bagonye, head of the “First Christian Spiritualist Chapel of All Denominations” at Milltown, was released from the county jail late yesterday afternoon after a stay of several hours when his father, Stephen Bagonye of Milltown, furnished $1,000 bail for his appearance when wanted.
A charge of pretending to practice sorcery, conjuration, and enchantment will be threshed out by the Middlesex county grand jury next Friday.
The complaint is based on Section 71 of the New Jersey Crimes Act which provides that any person who “pretends to exercise conjuration, sorcery, and enchantment and pretends from his skill or knowledge to give good luck” shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
The complaining witness, Mrs. Hilda Hobsholt of 145 Codwise Avenue, this city, claims that Bagonye not only did this but that he sold her a “good luck” powder for $5 and that he took her pocketbook containing $13 in addition. Bagonye claims that the case is simply a matter of persecution because he spurned Mrs. Hobsholt’s advances. He declares that she told him she was unhappy with her husband and that she wanted his help but that he told her he could work only through prayer.
The spiritualist is quite serious about his psychic powers. The chapel in which he holds his seances is weirdly fitted up. It is a room twelve feet long and eight feet wide on the ground floor of his “sanitarium,” Begonia Health House on Ryder’s Lane, Milltown, midway between the front porch and the back entry.
Red and Yellow Candles.
It has an altar before which yellow tapers burn while the “professor” is giving his seances and holding services and on the wall is his private creed before which a red candle burns.
These are the only lights in the room. The walls are decorated with religious pictures and figures and testimonials from grateful patients. There are figures of the Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. John, St. Joseph, St. Anthony, and others, and there is a photograph of a bald-headed man living in Chicago who drew pictures on the back of it of spooks which Bagonye had summoned from the other world for his enlightenment.
Bagonye went over the collection last night with a reporter and named the person who had given him each of the decorations in the room. A cross sprouting miraculously from a turbulent ocean, with an attractive young woman clinging to one of the arms, was the gift of a man whom he had rescued from religious doubt, he said, and returned to his church. A figure of the Virgin Mary stamping on the head of a snake was a present from the parents of a seven-year-old boy whom Bagonye had cured of epilepsy.
The young man spoke with intense conviction of his supernatural powers but said he never did any levitation or table rapping or pretended to tell fortunes or cast horoscopes.
“The spirit takes control of me,” he said. “I go into a trance and I say what my spirit guide discloses to me and I interpret it to my patients. Sometimes the spirits of the loved ones of my patients take hold of me.”
Chauffeur and Secretary.
Begonia Health House is situated in the midst of large grounds, fairly well kept up. Bagonye says he gained possession of it in the course of his real estate business. He owns a powerful motor car and employs a chauffeur to drive it. He also employs a youth of this town as his secretary.
He intimates that he has vast resources at his command, but says that his present apparent affluence is the result merely of his success in the real estate business and that of the store which he turned over to relatives to run for him and recently sold.
Men of wealth and prominence, he says, are ready to back him in turning Begonia Health House into a spiritualistic sanatorium, but he is not sure whether he will take up their offer, as he fears they may be making it from selfish motives, and not with a desire to benefit humanity. If he does not take up that offer, he says, he may accept one to adopt a career in the motion pictures, appearing only in spiritualistic pictures.
Felt Psychic Power.
Bagonye, according to his own account, was born in Hungary twenty-six years ago and has been in this country since he was five years old. He is dark, with brilliant black eyes and wears a small mustache. He denies that he ever pretended to practice witchcraft or that he ever took any money from Mrs. Hobsholt or from any
others of his congregation except what was given to him freely.
He studied in a chiropractic school in Davenport, Iowa, but entered the army before being graduated. He always had felt that he possessed psychic power and spiritual healing power, he said, and when on November 1, 1918, when he was an instructor in cooking at Camp Raritan he involuntarily announced that the war would end within the next two weeks, he became convinced that this power should not be neglected.
The conviction grew upon him, and last August he gave up the confectionery store and real estate office he was running here and established Begonia Health House, the big yellow structure under Hungry Hill, in which his chapel, the First Christian Spiritualist Chapel of All Denominations, is situated.
He has about 25 regular “Communicants,” and a large transitory clientele.
Woman Tells Story.
Mrs. Hobsholt, whose parlor table decorated with a copy of Cupid’s Messenger, explained this morning to a reporter how she came to make a charge against Bagonye. She was interested in spiritualism, she said, and with others had been attending seances given by him since last December.
At various times, she said, she had given him sums of money for which he had asked her, the total being about $50, including $5 for a “good luck” powder. Recently, she said, she demanded her money back, and it was refused. This convinced her, she said, that Bagonye was a faker and that the factory employees, mostly of foreign birth, who attended the seances in his chapel, were his dupes.
In justice to them, she asserted, she obtained a warrant for Bagonye’s arrest. She showed a letter dated April 11, to which Bagonye’s name was signed, in which the writer admitted loans aggregating $38, but put forward counterclaims amounting to $80 for automobile trips to Newark and Trenton.
Under Modern Statute.
The complaint is not drawn under the old common law witchcraft charges, but is under a modern statute against those who pretend to practice the black art.
In colonial times, when New Jersey was under English kings, the law against sorcery and witchcraft was strictly enforced. The nearest reference to the old law, taken from an act of Parliament in the reign of Charles I., reads as follows:
“All women of whatever age, rank, profession or degree, whether virgins, maids or widows, that shall from after the passing of this act impose upon and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s male subjects by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the laws now in force against witchcraft, sorcery and such like misdemeanors, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.”
Defendant’s Statement.
In an interview with a reporter of the Home News at the office of his attorneys, Kalteissen & Danbery, “Professor” Bagonye related the circumstances of his meeting with Mrs. Hilda Hobsholt, more familiarly known by the name of Ferguson, who has brought about his arrest. He stated that the first time he met Mrs. Hobsholt was some time last December when Mrs. Hobsholt, in company with her husband and a Mrs. O’Connell, came to him for a spiritualistic seance. Mrs. Hobsholt explained to him that she was having considerable matrimonial trouble and came with her husband to seek relief if possible through the spirit world.
“Professor” Bagonye stated that the message he received from the seance with Mr. Hobsholt came from the former wife of Mr. Hobsholt, who told him to have courage in his marital troubles, as his present wife was controlled by evil spirits. As a result of the seance with Mrs. Hobsholt, the “Professor” says that the spirit of the deceased child and former husband of Mrs. Hobsholt gave messages that urged her to be different and more home-abiding. He stated that at this meeting, Mrs. Hobsholt requested not to be called by the name of Hobsholt “as I won’t want to be known as the wife of a Hun.”
“Professor” Bagonye stated that he claims no power to tell fortunes or cast horoscopes, nor does he claim any power of witchcraft or sorcery. He stated that he simply communicates with the spirits of deceased ones and returns the message to his hearer. No fee is paid for any of the seances thus rendered, and if money is left it is only as a contribution, he declared.
