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THIS AMAZING CASE & STORY - 1993

Visiting Mary Surat's Gallows

FROM ELIZABETH BARON'S MEMORIES: In the early 90's, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit Mary Surat's gallows.  (She was the only woman who was tried because of her involvement with Lincoln's assassination.)  It's now a tennis court as part of the grounds of the officer's quarters at Ft. Myer in downtown Washington.  I had gone there with a sergeant in the Army to see if I could sense her vibrations.  He told me he had seen her spirit wandering through the halls in the nearby officer's quarters. 

             On that cold, dreary, snowy and rainy day, I sat on a bench on the tennis court and tried to allow her to come through my body.  As I drifted out of my own thoughts into the vibrations of what had been there in that spot over one hundred years ago, I went deeper and deeper.  I could see, in my mind's eye, the gallows which were all lined up to hang the men and one woman who were supposedly responsible for Lincoln's death.  I glanced up at the officer's quarters.  There was a window to the room where Mary Surat had been incarcerated.  It is said by the officers who have lived there that this window must be replaced quite frequently because something like fog appears on it and cannot be washed off.

             The sergeant could not get the post commander to allow us to enter the house, even though many had claimed to see her ghost, because of the families living there at the time.  However, my attorney's friend, a Congressman, has told us that he would get us in there when we return in the future.

             I sat down on the bench in the freezing weather and gave Mary permission to use my vocal cords to come through and clarify what it was she was trying to communicate with her hauntings.  I had not made contact, so I got up and started walking toward the sergeant's car.  We were disappointed!  But just as I was about to leave, Mary Surat's voice shouted through me!  The sergeant looked back at me to find tears of agony and desperation flowing down my face!  "I didn't do it!  I didn't do it!  Louis will tell you I didn't do it!" I allowed her voice to scream though me.  It was hard on my body to feel the pain that had lingered for over one hundred years.  I told my friends to call out my name to pull me out of the trance.

             When I came to, the sergeant told me that a man named Louis Payne had been hung just before Mary Surat, and he had indeed shouted right there in that place long ago, "Mary's not guilty.  Please let her go!"  We all were amazed - all of us who had gone on that trip to free Mary Surat's spirit.  I would like to go there again, when it isn't so cold and snowy, to allow Mary to use my body to go into the Light of God.  I'd really like to help free her lost soul of the awful earthbound agony - the unfinished business she has sought to complete for so long.

             When a person is killed or doesn't go into the spirit realm willingly, the spirit suffers.  They go to a stopping-off place and wait to be set free.  (The Catholics call it Purgatory.)  If they are lucky enough to be afforded the opportunity to take care of their unfinished business (if someone cares enough to help set them free) - to allow themselves to channel back messages to those who are left here on earth who are still in pain over their death - then they can go on and meet their Master in a higher realm.  However, until they have been forgiven, until they have forgiven themselves and have made it right with God, they stay earthbound.