[8] In that year, James Giddings, the deputy sheriff of Boscawen, New Hampshire, offered a reward for the arrest of a "transient person, calling himself Laman Walter, [who] has for several days past been imposing himself upon the credulity of the people in this vicinity by a pretended knowledge of magic, palmistry and conjuration".
[12] In 1822 and 1823, Walters served as a seer for a treasure dig on the property of Abner Cole in Palmyra, Wayne County, New York.
[3] Reportedly, Walters "pointed out Joseph Smith, who was sitting quietly among a group of men in the tavern, and said, 'There was the young man that could find [the treasure]', and cursed and swore about him in a scientific manner: awful!
[16][failed verification] Quinn cites a family history which lists Luman Walters as a "clairvoyant who moved to Ohio".
[20] Her husband, Benjamin Hoyt, was ordered by his bishop to cease using a divining rod, calling other people wizards and witches, and "burning boards" to heal the bewitched.
This parody described the role of "Walters the Magician" in these treasure digs, who "sacrificed a Cock for the purpose of propitiating the prince of spirits .... And he took his book, and his rusty sword, and his magic stone, and his stuffed Toad, and all his implements of witchcraft and retired to the mountains near Great Sodus Bay".
"[23] Abner Cole's non-satirical account, published in the February 28, 1831, Reflector, mentions "a vagabond fortune-teller by the name of Walters, who [...] was once committed to the jail of this country for juggling, was the constant companion and bosom friend of these money digging impostors.
According to Cole, Walters would read, in Latin, from Cicero's Orations, "to his credulous hearers, uttering at the same time an unintelligible jargon, which he would afterwards pretend to interpret and explain, as a record of the former inhabitants of America"[24] Cole recalls nights where Walters led a band of treasure hunters, "and drawing a circle around laborers, with the point of an old rusty sword" and "sacricides a fowl" to "the guardian of hidden wealth."
The last time he came he pointed out Joseph Smith, who was sitting quietly among a group of men in the tavern, and said There was the young man that could find it, and cursed and swore about him in a scientific manner: awful!” Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph's mother, recalled a conjuror who tried to find the plates:[27] It has been suggested that Walters might be the 'fortune-teller' whom Brigham Young referred to on multiple occasions in the 1850s.
[28][29] In 1850, Young told the General Conference "I remember once at the commencement of the church a necromancer embraced it but he could not be satisfied; he came and said he had fingered and handled the perverted priesthood so much, the course I have taken is downwards; the devil has too fast hold of me, I cannot go with you.
Young recalled the fortune-teller sought the golden plates and "rode over sixty miles three times the same season they were obtained by Joseph Smith."