LYNN - Lynn has long been known as the City of Firsts, but somehow a 19th century clergyman's attempt to wed spiritualism with science to create "The New Messiah" has not made the list of accomplishments.
It was more than two years ago when New York author Robert Damon Schneck read two lines about John Murray Spear's God Machine in Nandor Fodor's Encyclopedia of Psychic Science and found he couldn't let it go.
"I was utterly obsessed," he said by phone from his home.
What so thoroughly piqued his interest was that in 1853 a Unitarian Minister attempted to piece together a pile of magnets, various steel shafts and spheres, zinc and copper plates and a dining room table into what he called the New Messiah. And he chose High Rock Tower as his laboratory.
Schneck, who details the story in his book "The President's Vampire," from Anomalist Books, said the idea was that the New Messiah would bring "new life and vitality into all things animate and inanimate."
Spear, whom the story centers around, became a Universalist Minister at the age 24, married and had his own church. He also was held a number of reformist views on slavery, women's rights and temperance, which he freely shared with everyone. Later he would preach free love more than a century before it became fashionable but not before his rendezvous with the God Machine.
When the age of spiritualism set in a few years later, Spear was not only drawn to it, he left his church and became a full-fledged spiritualist.
It is written that Spears developed powers as a medium such that he began to receive messages from spirits such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and his namesake the founder the Universalist Church, John Murray.
It was through these spirits that Spear divined his mission to build the God Machine.
The God Machine was essentially a rudimentary robot but as Schneck pointed out that word had yet to exist. Its metamorphosis and aim lends itself to a comparison with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein without the human parts.
Spear chose High Rock Tower, which was then home to the Hutchinson family, who were also into spiritualism and more than happy to allow Spear to use their woodshed for his creation.
When it was finished the creation sported "lower limbs," a flywheel for a profession look and various suspended magnets, steel balls, shafts and "a motor for inhalation and respiration."
Schneck said Spear then dressed himself in an elaborate construction of metal plates; strips and gemstones brought himself in gradual contact with the machine and went into an hour-long trance. Over the next few days he and a woman known only as "New Mary" performed a series of rituals that allegedly brought their creation to life.
In the end Schneck said, "precisely what happened is not clear."
Spear claimed the machine moved but critics were not convinced. Schneck said the spirits then told Spear that the machine needed a "change of air" and he was to pack The New Messiah up and take it to Randolph, N.Y.
Unfortunately, Schneck said reports say that in Randolph a mob of angry farmers broke into the storage shed where the God Machine was housed and trampled it to pieces. Again, the imagined scene is not unlike the mob of angry villagers pursuing Frankenstein with their torches and pitchforks.
Schneck, however, is not convinced the Frankenstein scenario true.
"I spoke to a local historian in Randolph who dug through all the newspapers and couldn't find any reference to the God Machine or a large riot," he said. "I suspect he dumped it or buried it at High Rock Tower."
Schneck said he suspects if an archeologist did some digging, they might find pieces of the odd machine hidden under what is now the Observatory. One reason Schneck said he believes the machine never left town because, by the time Spears was done building it, he was destitute.
"So, I assume he didn't even have the money to ship it to Randolph," he said.
As bizarre as Spears' attempt at creation seemed, Schneck said they were not unusual for the time.
"John Murray Spears, I think in his heart was a good man," Schneck said, "but I think there was some ego operating there too. I think he saw himself as a tool for raising all of humanity."
Lynn Museum and Historical Society Director Connie Colom said Lynn has a rich history of spiritualism, which Schneck said was putting it mildly.
Schneck said he came across so many reports of spiritual occurrences while doing his research he couldn't imagine why Lynn hasn't opened its own museum.
With stories of witchcraft, sea serpents, spontaneous human combustion and rioting Quakers, Schneck said it appears spiritualism received an enthusiastic welcome in Lynn.
"You've got the stone cottage, the observatory, why not build a museum to spiritualism," he said. "It could be huge. You wouldn't have to hold s?ances but you could have a statue of the God Machine."
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