And now, the rest of the story...
Last Thoughts
That the FATE story is the original source of both Wilkins' and Edwards' versions of the David Lang mystery, there can be no doubt1. But there appears to have been some form of outside editing done even before either of these two authors penned their versions.
Both authors' versions have details that agree and disagree with each other and the FATE account. For instance, the FATE account describes the grass circle as tall and yellow with a fifteen foot diameter... Edwards says it was short and yellow, but agrees with the diameter, while Wilkins says it was a twenty foot diameter, but agrees it was tall and yellow. In other places, Wilkins and Edwards both seem to be adding details with a distinctly similar pattern: the FATE article gives no date whatsoever for the children's visit to the circle, but both Wilkins and Edwards do... Wilkins stating it as August 1881, and Edwards calling it April 1881. Stranger still, both accounts omit the section of the story dealing with Spiritualism, as previously noted.
My initial assumption as I first ran across their two accounts was that either Edwards copied Wilkins, or Wilkins copied Edwards; but the nature of the differences are confusing. At this point, I'm assuming one of two things happened: either one did copy the other, but from memory rather than from print, thus making simple errors from mis-memorization2, or both authors copied their stories from a third source that I have yet to find, which may have had more or less detail than the FATE account. At this point, I don't know which is more likely... but, in the end, it's all really beside the point. Why?
Some readers may be asking themselves the same question a few people started to ask when the FATE article was first published: why did Palmer wait twenty-three years to publish the story?3 At the time, however, even more people were impressed and inspired by the story than were questioning it... so it took a while before someone decided to check. In December, 1977, twenty-four years after the FATE article about the David Lang mystery had been published and eighteen years after both Harold Wilkins and Frank Edwards re-published it in it's more familiar form, FATE Magazine printed an apology for and a retraction of the account of the dissappearance of David Lang written by Stuart Palmer.
The article was called "David Lang Vanishes... FOREVER", and it notes how, in 1976, two researchers for Fortean Times magazine4 -- Robert Forrest and Robert Rickard -- tried to verify the original story of Lang's disappearance. They contacted the public library of Nashville and Davidson County about the story, and received a reply from a librarian there named Hershel G.Payne.
Payne wrote: "The story is supposedly only a fabrication which was told by one Joe Mulhatten, a traveling salesman who was in these parts during the 1880's. There were, at that time, lying contests in which men vied for the title of 'biggest liar' and Joe Mulhatten was a champion. The story of David Lang was his best. Throughout my research I have talked and corresponded with the top newspaper and literary people in this area who have written on this subject and they guarentee me there is no such thing as documentation to be found.
"I personally have checked census records and other material in our collection and there is nothing to indicate that David Lang or Judge Peck were ever in this vicinity. I have talked with the librarian of the Gallatin Public Library and she in turn has contacted knowledgeable persons there who also attest to the story's fictitiousness. The Sumner County historian, whom I have also contacted, says there is abolutely no verification and no pictures of the farm to be found. Even with all the above information from the most reliable sources I did not 'accept or believe' that the story was not possible and even drove up to Sumner County to check it out myself. The farm was supposedly located on what is now called 'The Cottonwood Road.' I had a beautiful drive -- nothing more!"
This new information directly conflicted with Palmer's earlier story... if Lang had never existed, then how could his daughter have told Palmer the story? Robert Schadewald, author of the FATE Magazine retraction, did the only obvious thing possible; he re-tested Palmer's physical evidence, the handwriting samples and the affidavit.
The affidavit had no notary seal, and the notary's name was neither typed nor stamped on it, which is unusual... and the writing on it looked familar. With the permission of Jerome Clark, then Associate Editor of FATE, a copy of the 1953 FATE article -- with its illustrations of the documents -- were sent to handwriting expert Ann B. Hooten of Minneapolis, a nationally known Examiner of Questioned Documents. The resulting five-page report came to one simple conclusion: the note on the flyleaf and the sample of automatic writing had been written by the same person... unfortunately, so had the signatures on the affidavit. All three documents were fake.
So the only real question left is, did Palmer fabricate the story entirely, or did it actually originate in the 1880's as a lie told by Joe Mulhatten? Mulhatten had become legendary in the Nashville, Tennessee, area before Payne did his research, and Payne never tried to verify that Mulhatten had actually told the story... or if he existed. In Secrets of the Supernatural, Joe Nickell brings this last point into question, noteing that no evidence has been presented to prove Joe Mulhatten was anything more than a legend himself, likely based on stories about a very real person, one Joseph M. Mulholland who is described as "a traveling salesman of Washington, Pennsylvania, who wrote... in the 1880s and '90s and read his semiplausible yarns in many a serious publication..." In any case, it's not unlikely that, had Mulhatten or Mulholland not actually told the story of David Lang, the story would have been attributed to him at a later date anyway simply because it sounded like something he would have come up with. So some research will need to be done to see if Mulhatten or Mulholland was involved or not5; but neither needs to be.
In the original 1953 FATE article, "Sarah" at one point states: "This story is a famous one now. Ambrose Bierce, the writer of stories, was one of the many visitors who came that month after Father went and he wrote several of his most famous works about our mystery, cloaking it under the guise of fiction." Palmer then adds, in a footnote to the account, that Ambrose Bierce wrote three stories based on the Lang story; Palmer even quotes a theory from Bierce's book about what could be causing such disappeances [all three stories are from a very short section of Bierce's "Can Such Things Be?", and are re-printed in the NOTES following this article 6]. So it's clearly obvious that Palmer was well-aware of Bierce's stories, one of which -- entitled "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" -- was likely his model for the creation of the basic Lang story, and another -- "Charles Ashmore's Trail" -- likely the origin of the part of the story about the circle and Lang's voice. Ambrose Bierce didn't steal the story from the Langs; Stuart Palmer stole the story from Bierce.
Looking back, it's interesting to note that at least three different authors -- Frank Edwards, Harold Wilkins, and Nandor Fodor -- who all referenced the original Palmer story in the July 1953 FATE also all failed to mention the aspect of the David Lang story that involved Sarah contacting her parents through Spiritualism. If these authors didn't copy each other, and it seems unlikely they did, then why did all three choose to edit out the same part of the story? Here are three thoughts on the matter.
First possible reason: the story is more mysterious with no closure to it. In offering a solution, the story loses the emotional impact of a loved one being lost and it becomes less convenient for use as an example of various bizarre theories about fourth dimensions, UFOs, and fairy circles.
Second possible reason: Spiritualism was no longer the "in" thing, nor a popular topic to be caught talking about. Spiritualism, as seen by the public eye, was full of frauds and hoaxes; so the authors removed the part of the story that would remove that unpopular association from it. (See also: Anomalies Article: Spiritualism)
Third possible reason: The section of the story about Sarah contacting her deceased parents is the only part of the story which offered any physical evidence, evidence which eventually spelled out doom for the account, as we have seen. Perhaps the section was neglected in an effort to divorce the story from the questionable evidence... this, of course, assumes that there were more than a few authors who knew the story was false when they took it from FATE Magazine in the first place.
In the end, we'll likely never know -- all three authors are dead, now. Strangely, though, the story itself -isn't-... since the 1976 Fortean Times article and the 1977 FATE article, the fact that the David Lang mystery is a falsehood has been mentioned many, many times in books -- more times than I've found it treated as a true story7 -- but it makes no real difference to it's longevity. In it's singular endurance in the folklore of parapsychology, the Mystery of David Lang stands out as a shining example of one of the completely unverified "facts" that are, unfortunately, so commonly still passed on and theorized about by new authors. Be wary.
