The Black Aggie and the Power of Mirrors, Shadows, Photographs, and Doubles
On December 6th, 1885, Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams, Washington Socialite and an early portrait photographer, was found dead on her bedroom rug in front of the crackling blaze of her hearth. The newspaper reported that she dropped dead of paralysis of the heart, but Clover, who suffered from depression, died by suicide using potassium cyanide, a chemical she used develop her portraits in her personal darkroom.
Clover's husband Henry Adams, historian and grandson of President John Quincy Adams, was devastated by the loss of his beloved wife and commissioned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a funerary statue to look over her grave. Adams worked closely with the sculptor for five years to create a statue inspired by Buddhist iconography that represented the spiritual hell of his grief, the mystery of the hereafter, and the infinite compassion and merciful quietude of death's release from the human trappings of passion, desire, and pain.
The hooded figure had closed eyes and no gender, no discernible expression, and no name. In a letter to Saint-Gaudens' son Adams wrote: "Do not allow the world to tag my figure with a name! Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption — Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Mens' Suits Made to Measure. Your father meant it to ask a question, not to give an answer; and the man who answers will be damned to eternity like the men who answered the Sphinx."
But this expansive sculpture with a tragic backstory is not The Black Aggie, it is known as The Adams Memorial\xe2\x80\x94The Black Aggie is the unauthorized copy by Eduard L.A. Pausch, creator of President McKinley's death mask, purchased by solider and seaman Felix Agnus for his own family memorial plot. The bootleg statue was installed in 1907 at Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Md., some 40 miles away from the original. Agnus had his mother buried beside it and joined her in 1925, 18 years later.
The statue soon became known as The Black Aggie and the subject of many harrowing legends. It is said that the spirits of the cemetery gathered around The Black Aggie at night, and if a pregnant woman walked under its shadow, she'd have a miscarriage. There's a tale of frat boys who dared their pledge to sit on its lap at night, only to see him be taken into the statues' arms as it stared into his soul with glowing eyes. The boys ran to get help from the on-site caretaker, and found their pledge dead in Aggie's arms upon their return. Its arm was once found in the car of a metal worker, and when confronted the man insisted that the statue tore it off itself and gave it to him.
The origins and imposing appearance of The Black Aggie seem enough to generate some scary folklore, but The Black Aggie is extremely cursed — it has far more tales than it should, and it shares both the same appearance and tragic backstory as the not-cursed Adams Memorial. What makes it different? Is it simply the betrayal of making an unauthorized copy of a statue so sacred to Henry Adams' that the bootleg statue was imbued with negative energy, and/or haunted by the spirit of Clover Adams? I don't think so, the betrayal was an accident and not personal. And Clover was sociable and not one who'd I expect to come back as a vengeful spirit. But I do believe that the negative energy of The Black Aggie is related to Clover's practice of photography, and the folklore of doppelgängers, mirrors, shadows, and reproductions of the human form.
As soon as humans were able to see their reflection, they began to develop spiritual beliefs and superstitions around it. When a human being is reflected, they are often considered spiritually vulnerable. A broken mirror can damage the soul of the one reflected in it, mirrors are covered for the dead and dying to ensure their soul stay in the body, and it\'s even believed that a mirror can steal the soul of the living. And with the invention of photography, the belief that photographs could also steal souls was held by some Native Americans.
I believe these beliefs are connected by the concept of "sympathetic magic" described in Voudou, which states that entities that share the same appearance have a profound connection, and great power between them. Photographs can be used in magic to curse and harm another, souls reflected in mirrors are vulnerable to harm, and when that reflection is manifested into our physical reality in the form of a doppelgänger, the implications are even more ominous.
Many cultures share the concept of a doppelgänger, a copy of a person existing in the world as either an omen or an evil version of the original. Abraham Lincoln saw a doppelgänger of himself in his room in 1860 and was assassinated five years later. Elizabeth I found her double in bed, pale and ill, and died sick in the same bed soon after. The phenomena the doppelgänger also ties into our ideas about our shadows and concept of the shadow self. Shadow selves in folklore are common, whether they take the form of a doppelgänger or personal jinn or demon.
The Black Aggie functions as an unauthorized capture, doppelgänger, and shadow of the solemn Adams Memorial, and I believe this is where it derived its curse. It's the evil twin of a statue meant to watch over and protect souls, and therefore Aggie afflicted the living. Its shadow was a shadow of a shadow, and that gave it the power to extinguish would-be souls in the womb before they had a chance to emerge into our earth.
Fortunately for reckless urban-legend testing fools, The Black Aggie seems to have lost its curse after being moved from the Agnus Memorial plot to the basement of the Smithsonian (where a copy of this copy was cast — no word on the cursed status of that one), and then placed in the courtyard of the National Courts Building in Lafayette Square in Washington, DC where it can be visited today. Perhaps removing The Black Aggie from the cemetery broke its polarity with the Adams Memorial and rendered it mostly harmless, but you wouldn't know that from visiting her. Even in photographs, the ominous energy of this statue is undeniably transmitted.
References and Further Reading
Ocker, J.W. Cursed Objects: Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items. Quirk Books, 2020
Kelly, John. "Black Aggie: From Baltimore to Washington". The Washington Post. 2012
"Adams Memorial". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Object No 1970.11
"Black Aggie: The Haunted Statue". MythCrafts. 2019
"Marian Hooper Adams". Wikipedia. 2021
Coleman, Sarah J. "Clover Adams and Photographer Suicides". The Literate Lens. 2012
Sedgwick, Icy. "Evil Twins and Doppelgangers: What Meaning Does the Double Have in Folklore?". Folklore Thursday. 2017
Bobos, William. "The Art of Stealing Souls". Wedding Photography Directory: The Bleeding Edge Premiere Column. ~2006