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~99~CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER NINE Sadler Meets the Sleeping Subject A fter the Sadlers graduated from the American Medical Missionary College they set up medical practice in La Grange, Illinois. This is where Sadler had settled in a “country environment.”He wished to remain there. He also opened an Institute in downtown Chicago where he could have a practice in the city, maintain close contact with the medical profession, and be helpful in training other physicians. His purpose was to open a center for Physiologic Therapeutics, an area he felt was not adequately covered by the medical schools. Sadler’s concern was in the prevention of disease, and not merely medical reaction to disease that has already appeared. Sadler’s practice went well for two years. He had many cases of surgery, more each month, “without loss of a case.” He and Lena decided to buy their own home, rather than continue to lease. Advertisements from the La Grange newspaper for 1908, 1909 and 1910 show Dr. William S. Sadler and Dr. Lena Kellogg Sadler with office and residence at 96 Sixth Avenue in La Grange. Their office hours were before 9:00 AM and between 3:00 and 5:00 PM. They also advertised hours in the Reliance Building in Chicago at 100 State Street from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. I must now introduce Harold Morrow Sherman, sports-fiction and moviescreen writer, and avid pursuer of spiritualism and psychic phenomena. Sherman becomes important to our investigation because he is the only person on record to whom Sadler gave significant details of his first meeting with the Sleeping Subject. (Other evidence has now appeared. See Addendum.) Sherman also created a disturbance within the ranks of the Forum. This disturbance has been described as a rebellion but it did not develop to those proportions. Sherman first appeared in Chicago in 1941 to make contact with Sadler through connections with Harry Loose, a Chicago detective and later Chautauqua lecturer. Loose himself met Sadler during World War I, as a patient of Sadler’s. Through that contact Loose later became a member of the Forum, learned much about events in the early unfolding of the Revelation, and about the strange activities surrounding the Sleeping Subject. Through notes circulated by Martha Sherman, Harold’s wife, and through letters written by Loose to Sherman, we know Sherman attended a Chautauqua lecture by Loose in Marion, Indiana in the summer of 1921 where Sherman was employed as a newspaper reporter for the Marion Chronicle. Sherman was fascinated with Loose, and his detective experience, and had requested a private audience with Loose. Beyond that the two men did not meet again until many years later, in 1941, when Sherman was on a writing assignment in Hollywood.  Just before traveling to California for his movie writing contract, Sherman had a sudden interest in contacting Loose and, through a police chief in Saginaw, Michigan, found his address. They exchanged letters in which they shared their common interest in psychic phenomena. Loose urged Sherman to contact Sadler in Chicago. Sherman and his wife also recalled a contact they had made in Marion many years earlier in which they met a Dr. Merrill Davis and his wife Josephine. They remembered that Jo had an uncle in Chicago who was a physician and psychiatrist and who also was a serious investigator of psychic phenomena, but the Shermans had not developed contact with the uncle at that time. After inquiring of the Davises they discovered that Jo’s uncle was indeed, William Sadler. They asked her to write a letter of introduction. They took this with them on their way through Chicago to Hollywood. In July, 1941 they stopped at 533 Diversey Parkway, Sadler’s home, where they introduced themselves. They did not tarry on that initial contact but, on their return from California in May, 1942, rented an apartment at a hotel across the street from 533 Diversey where they intended to make a serious study of the Revelation. In a later chapter I shall discuss the series of events which led to the disturbance among the ranks of the Forum. Here I wish to concentrate on the episode which caused Sadler to describe his first contact with the Sleeping Subject. Sherman published this account in his 1976 book he called How To Know What To Believe. Chapter 4 was on The Wisdom of Harry J. Loose, while Chapter 5 described his experience in Chicago and the Revelation as Pipeline To God. This chapter in Sherman’s book was filled with acrimonious remarks about Sadler because Sadler would not reveal details of the presentation of the Revelation, and because he felt Sadler had an obligation to include material in the Revelation on psychic phenomena. Only after Sadler was dead, and Sherman no longer felt a concern about legal suits, did he bring his public attack upon Sadler. His deep emotional feelings strongly biased his report, but within that context he was faithful to the account Sadler had related to him back in 1942, as he best remembered it. Sherman used pseudonyms in his chapter, perhaps out of the same concern for lawsuit, but I shall replace them with the real names as I know them in the following quotation of his account.
On August 20 our friends, H.C. and Mary Mattern (real names) were on their annual tour of a big city firm for which they did the cleaning and preserving of leather-upholstered office furniture. We had planned to introduce them to Dr. Sadler on their arrival and planned to arrange for their membership in the New Revelation Forum. It was an evening appointment, and we found the doctor to be in an unusually amiable, talkative mood, disposed to give us a more complete version of the origin of the paper than we had ever heard before or since. As soon as the long session was over, Martha and I crossed the street to our apartment at the Rutledge Hotel and worked into the early morning to make a detailed written record of the information that had been imparted.
9 - Sadler Meets SS ~101~This was Sadler’s account, as recorded by Sherman. About thirty-five years ago when Dr. Lena and I were young physicians together, we decided to move, but the place we had in mind was not yet available. We were directed to a furnished apartment in the neighborhood, which we took for several months until our place was ready. We had been there about two weeks, and some of the tenants had apparently learned we were physicians, because one of them, a woman living directly below us, rapped on our door about 11:00 P.M. as we were in the act of retiring. She said, ‘Will you please come downstairs with me? Something has happened to my husband. He’s gone to sleep; he’s breathing very strangely; and I can’t wake him up.’ We slipped into our bathrobes and went down to her apartment, where I saw a medium size man, approaching middle age, asleep in bed, breathing very fitfully. He would take a couple of short, quick breaths for a time, and then would hold his breath for a long time, long enough for any normal human to have gotten black in the face, but nothing happened. I took his pulse and was surprised to find it was normal. I then tried to arouse him with every known method, even to sticking pins in him — but failed. His wife seemed to be a somewhat nervous and superstitious type. She was frankly frightened, even though I assured her that he seemed to be in good physical shape, despite his peculiar actions. We sat about and waited for him to return to consciousness, during which time his body gave several violent jumps and starts. Finally, after about an hour, he awoke and looked around and saw us. We had propped him up on pillows, and he now turned to his wife and asked, pointing at us, ‘Who are these people?’ She explained that we were doctors she had called in when she found she couldn’t awaken him, and he said, ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’ I asked him ‘How do you feel?’ He said ‘I feel fine.’ I said, ‘What have you been dreaming about?’ He said, ‘I haven’t been dreaming at all.’ I said, ‘You have been jumping about on the bed.’ He said, ‘I don’t know anything about that. I can’t understand it.’ I told him I would like to keep him under observation, to which he readily agreed. I made him promise that he would come to my office the following morning for a complete physical exam. This he did, and I gave him every test but found him to be in excellent physical shape. I got his family history, and there were no cases of insanity or epilepsy among any of his antecedents or present relatives. In my investigation of psychic phenomena I have witnessed many so-called trance states, but this phenomenon he experienced seemed to be something different. Most of the trance cases I had contacted were those of emotionally unstable or hysterical women. But here was a hard boiled businessman, member of the board of trade and stock exchange, who didn’t believe in any of this nonsense and who had no recollection of what happened during these strange unwakeable sleep states. I told him I would like to keep him under observation, to which he readily agreed. Nothing happened for several weeks, and then, one night, about the same time, his wife called us and said he was having one of those spells again. We went down, and I gave him some more tests and tried new ways to rouse him — all to no effect. His labored breathing; his sudden breaking off and then no breathing at all would have been alarming had not his pulse remained strong and even throughout. The whole thing was baffling. When he awakened, he was, as before, unconscious of anything having transpired.
This sort of experience was repeated at different times of night, until the fall of the year, when we were able to move to the residence of our choice. This man’s lease expired that same fall, and he moved into an apartment house in the same block so he could be near us(1). One night, when we were called to his new address, as we sat by the bedside, Dr. Lena noticed that he was moistening his lips as though he were preparing to speak. She said, ‘Perhaps he wants to talk to us. Maybe if we ask him a question, we will get an answer.’
Except for this portion, I reproduce Sherman’s account in Chapter 18. We must keep in mind that this is Sherman’s account, written some thirty-five years after his session with Sadler, and that it may not be exact in every detail. However, the description is so clear, based on detailed notes he made that evening with his wife Martha, it probably well reflects what Sadler had to say. The account is highly informative, for it places Sadler in circumstances which, through research of Sadler’s locations, permit us to identify the location and time of the first SS contact. It is also informative in other important respects. This meeting with Sherman took place in 1942. About thirty-five years ago would place the contact about 1907, within a year or two. They were young physicians. This would make the contact after their graduation from American Medical Missionary College in 1906.The place they had in mind was not yet available. They took up temporary residence in a furnished apartment. They remained in the temporary apartment for several months.This sort of experience was repeated at different times of the night, until the fall of the year. This means the first contact probably was in the spring of the year. If so, the Sadlers moved into the temporary apartment in the spring.Note that there was no communication from the man until the fall of the year, when the man moistened his lips, whereupon Lena suggested that perhaps he wished to talk. This led to the onset of the strange communications. Note also that these episodes were repeated at different times of the night. They could be in the late evening, in the early morning, or at any other time during the night. But always they were after the man had fallen asleep. Furthermore, they came randomly and unexpectedly. The episodes would arouse the wife from her sleep, whereupon she would contact the Sadlers, who would arrive and observe. The episodes continued through the summer months, until the Sadlers were able to move into their place. We know Sadler had returned to Chicago, or the Chicago environs sometime in March, 1904. He had reestablished himself with the Life Boat Mission; his name appears on that letterhead with a date of August 31. We are uncertain of his exact residence address from independent evidence until 1906. However, a letter to Willie White dated March 9, 1904 shows his activities. As I wrote you some time ago, I have read all the (White) communications that I know of, to the family here. There is a very much more settled state, as the
9 - Sadler Meets SS ~103~result of it. I have had an interesting time, I assure you, since I came to B.C. I have done the best I could, and am very sure it is not all done, for there is lots of work to be done here. I am very sorry I will have to go to Chicago in a couple of weeks and leave it. The whole Class are going to live with Mrs. Sadler and me in Chicago. We are going to rent a place on the West Side. Thus it appears that he rented a house in La Grange (West Side) in March, 1904.We know from the La Grange City Directory that Sadler had boarders and renters. Lena’s sister Anna lived with them during the entire period of their residence in La Grange. A newspaper advertisement dated 1907 shows a Harry W. Rose providing instruction in shorthand from the address at 38 Calendar Avenue. The La Grange City Directory shows Smith Moses Kellogg, Lena’s and Anna’s father, living with them in 1906, and their mother in 1907. An Emma B. Kellogg, a trained nurse, also lived with them in 1909, but the identity of this Emma is uncertain, except that she probably was a blood relative. A newspaper advertisement for February, 1907 shows the Sadlers operating with office hours out of the same residence. In 1910 a Miss Francis Given was listed as a boarder at 56 South 6th Avenue, together with Sarah Willmer, a close friend to Anna Kellogg. Sarah later married Edward Van Bond, active in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Sadlers kept a busy household. In a letter to Ellen White dated March 23, 1905 he makes remarks which confirm the residence in La Grange. For some time I have been going to write to you, and in a recent visit with your son, Eld. J. E. White, after I had told him of our experience in moving out of Chicago into the country, he told me he thought I should write and tell you about it, so I made up my mind I would.“For some time” would take this back to at least the first of 1905 or even into 1904. They were definitely out of Chicago. The suburb of La Grange was one train stop from Hinsdale, where the Church, at the ever persistent urging of Ellen White for the country, was establishing a branch of the Chicago Mission. According to that same letter the hope was for the Hinsdale operation to take patients in about May 1, 1905. The Life Boat Mission also moved on that date, since the owners of the Chicago building had doubled the rent on them. This same Church policy had relocated the Chicago branch of the American Medical Missionary College to Hinsdale the previous year, where the Sadler’s wished to continue their medical education. Between April, 1904 and March, 1905 Sadler wrote on letterheads from the Chicago Life Boat Mission, where he is shown as Treasurer and Pastor. We have a letter dated November 21, 1905 from 38 Calendar Avenue in La Grange. In other surviving letters Sadler continues to date from that address until February 7, 1907. Sadler does not appear in the La Grange City Directory until 1906; there is no independent confirmation for his residence in La Grange for 1904 and 1905. Lack of listing in the La Grange City Directory in 1904 and 1905 may be due to
many different possibilities. Putting all of this together it seems he leased a single family dwelling at 38 Calendar Avenue in La Grange and moved into that residence on the 1st of April, 1904. Since he did not purchase a personal residence “that was not yet ready” until 1908 he could not have met the Sleeping Subject until after he moved from 38 Calendar Avenue into the temporary apartment. If Sadler took yearly leases, and if he signed the first lease on his departure from Battle Creek about the end of March in 1904, the lease at 38 Calendar Avenue would come up for renewal on April 1st each year. This time would agree with the move into a furnished apartment in the spring. Sadler owned only two properties in his life. The first was at 56 South Sixth Avenue in La Grange; the last was at 533 Diversey Parkway in Chicago. When did he purchase the first, and when did he move into it? My search of records at the Cook County Courthouse in Chicago, with the kind help of Harold Wolff, revealed that Sadler signed a Property Sale Agreement with Susan A. Beatty and James T. Beatty on April 4, 1908. This was filed for record on April 9. Following is the text of that Property Sale Agreement. PROPERTY SALE AGREEMENT 56 SOUTH 6TH AVENUE, LA GRANGE, ILLINOIS This Memorandum Witnesseth that Susan A. Beatty and James T. Beatty hereby agree to sell and William S. Sadler agrees to purchase at the price of sixty two hundred fifty ($6250.00) dollars the following described real estate situated in Cook County Illinois: Lots three (3) and four (4) in block three (3) in Leiter’s Addition to La Grange in section four (4) Township thirty eight (38) North Range twelve (12) East of the third principal meridian Township North Range East of the third principle meridian. Subject to
9 - Sadler Meets SS ~105~ten notice thereof the said earnest money shall be refunded and this contract is to become inoperative. Should said purchaser fail to perform this contract promptly on his part at the time and in the manner herein specified, the earnest money paid as above shall at the option of the vendor be forfeited as liquidated damages including commissions payable by vendor and this contract shall become null and void. Time is of the essence of this contract, and of all the conditions thereof. This contract and the said earnest money shall be held by/for the mutual benefit of the parties herein. In Testimony, whereof said parties hereto set their hands this fourth day of April A.D. 1908. Susan A. Beatty Jas T. Beatty William S. Sadler 7- No. 4184294 Filed for Record Apr. 9 A.D. 1908, 9 A.M. ABEL DAVIS, RECORDER The property consisted of two combined lots. The house was a single family Victorian dwelling, recently built, styled after neighboring houses. La Grange was then in a building boom. The house was located directly to the rear of the La Grange Town Hall, but has since been razed to make room for a parking lot. The Town Hall still operates, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Agreement showed the terms of payment by Sadler over a five-year period until March 30, 1913. The mortgage was held by a Frank L. Borwell, who ran a wholesale dry goods business in Chicago. Thus the date of the Agreement agrees with our estimate of the expiration of Sadler’s lease at 38 Calendar Avenue. However, as Sadler stated to Sherman, he could not move into the house because “it was not yet ready. ” Examination of the Agreement shows the reason. Three conditional clauses were included in the Agreement. The last two dealt with unpaid taxes or special levies. The first contains the clue to our understanding. Occupation was subject to existing leases expiring. Sadler could collect the rents from those existing lease(s) but agreed to not move into the house until those leases had expired.This explains his need for a furnished apartment. He probably stored his personal household furniture until the fall of the year, when the house became available. Given this information we can date his meeting of the Sleeping Subject within one or two weeks. If, as was common, his lease on 38 Calendar Avenue was made at the beginning of the month, in April, 1904, it would have expired at the end of March the following year. He continued to renew the lease until he stopped four years later, in 1908. This was the date of his purchase of the Beatty property. If they immediately moved into the furnished apartment, and the woman came knocking on his door about two weeks later, this would have been about the middle of April, 1908. That was the date he first met the Sleeping Subject. No other date in Sadler’s life meets the conditions he described to Sherman. At no time in his life after that event did Sadler live in a temporary furnished apartment.
• They were young physicians. • They were living temporarily in a furnished apartment, until their house was ready.• This took place about thirty-five years before his meeting with Sherman in 1942.• It was in the spring of the year. • Sadler’s move to La Grange probably was late in March, 1904, with yearly or bi-yearly leases on the house at 38 Calendar Avenue.We do not know the address of the furnished apartment. However, the house at 56 South 6th Avenue and the one at 38 Calendar Avenue were no more than three blocks from one another in downtown La Grange. One was on the west side of La Grange Road, the main thoroughfare, (then called 5th Avenue) and the other on the east side. It is highly probable that the apartment house also was not too far away. As Sadler stated, it was in the neighborhood. My search of United States Census reports for the neighborhood in La Grange in 1910 failed to reveal an apartment location that suited Sadler’s description, “in the neighborhood. ”According to further remarks by Sadler the lease of the apartment of the Sleeping Subject also expired in the fall and he moved into an apartment “in the same block.” This desire of the Sleeping Subject to be near Sadler became a part of both their lives, for several decades, and is a clue to an important understanding of the strange behavior of the man, and why he was not a trance spiritualist subject.
9 - Sadler Meets SS ~107~
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