Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This sinister little ghost story--with hints of murder and spectral vengeance thrown in--appeared in the “Garnett-Journal Plaindealer,” May 6, 1887:

New York, May 2. A New Haven, Conn., special says: Charles L. Beecher, who committed suicide Sunday, is now believed by many to have been driven to his death by a belief that he was haunted by the ghost of his wife.  The fact that he took so much pains in preparing for his death is thought to indicate that his mind had given way. He first shot his pet dog, and then seated himself in an easy chair and took aim through the medium of a hand-mirror, and put a bullet through his head. He had previously told some of his neighbors that he could not live in the house, owing to the frequent appearance of the spirit of his wife, who died about three months ago. He said her figure, increased to twice its natural size, appeared to him on the wall of his room very often.

The vision always seemed to be carrying a baby in its arms, and this, he said, was the figure of an infant that his wife had lost. Corroboration of the ghost story was given by a 16-year-old girl named Collar, who lives in the house adjoining the one occupied by Beecher. This girl, together with a servant employed in the house of L.L. Camp, nearby, went into Beecher's house one evening at his invitation to see the ghost.

Miss Collar says that a huge figure like a shadow did appear on the wall, carrying a babe in its arms. Beecher sat in his chair and pointed to the apparition, exclaiming: "There she is; there's my wife!" Miss Collar says that she ran up to the wall and slapped the vision, but when she did so it moved off to another portion of the wall, and when she repeated the slapping operation the same thing took place. The servant girl who was with her says that she, too, saw the figure. Beecher has been seen moving things out of the house of late. Some say that he did not treat his wife well toward the end of her life.

When she died one of the neighbors went to Medical Examiner White and told him the case would bear investigation, but nothing ever came of it. Beecher was once a very well-to-do boot and shoe dealer here.

The Cursed Subdivision

When you move into a new home, it’s expected that there will be one or two unpleasant surprises.  Maybe the plumbing isn’t all that it should be, or the neighbors throw a lot of noisy parties, or, oops, your couch won’t fit through the front door.  What you don’t expect to deal with are a bunch of corpses in the backyard that hold a grudge against you.  But, as you will see, such things sometimes happen.

In the early 1980s, developers completed a housing subdivision in Newport, just outside of Houston, Texas.  It was designed for upper-middle class families wanting a quiet, scenic refuge that still provided an easy commute to the big city.  Among the first people to move in were Ben and Jean Williams.  From the moment the couple settled into their home, they felt an inexplicable sense of unease, as if they were being watched by an unfriendly presence.  There also were more tangible difficulties: toilets that flushed themselves, flickering electric lights, a garage door that opened and closed on its own, and a yard that was always full of poisonous snakes.  The couple began sensing shadowy figures just beyond their peripheral vision.  Adding to the atmosphere of quiet menace was the fact that a tree in their backyard was dotted with peculiar markings--downward pointing arrows with slash marks underneath them--and the ground was covered in rectangular sinkholes.  The Williams’ neighbors told them that they were experiencing the same uncanny problems.

The source for the subdivision’s strange woes remained a mystery until 1983, when two other Newport residents, Sam and Judith Haney, began building a swimming pool in their backyard.  The excavation uncovered two very old coffins containing the remains of a man and a woman.

This disturbing discovery caused the Newport families to do a bit of detective work about their properties.  This led them to an elderly retired gravedigger named Jasper Norton.  He informed them that their neighborhood was built on top of an old cemetery called Black Hope.  Underneath their beautiful, well-maintained homes were at least sixty bodies, most of them former slaves.  Norton informed the Haneys that they had accidentally disinterred the remains of Betty and Charlie Thomas, who had died in the 1930s.

The Haneys--not knowing what else to do--decided to rebury the couple in their yard.  Unfortunately, this does not appear to have placated Mr. and Mrs. Thomas.  The Haney house was immediately plagued by some very annoyed ghosts.  The Haneys would hear spectral voices and footsteps throughout the hallways.  A clock--unplugged at the time--began to glow and shoot sparks.  One night, Judith was alone in the house when she heard the sliding glass doors open and close.  She assumed it was Sam returning from work, but when she went downstairs, nobody was there.  The next morning, she found a pair of her shoes resting on top of Betty Thomas’ grave.  Before long, the entire subdivision was facing similar supernatural menaces.  Unsurprisingly, the neighborhood became nearly deserted, with many people preferring foreclosure over phantoms.

The Williamses and the Haneys were among the few families who opted to stick it out.  They would soon regret this.  Both families began suffering inexplicable health problems.  Those ominous rectangular sinkholes kept reappearing in their yards, no matter how many times they would add dirt to them.  The disembodied footsteps continued to march through their rooms.  One night, Ben Williams saw a spectral figure floating over his sleeping wife.  When the Williams' eight-year-old granddaughter Carli visited them, she would talk to "the dead people" in her sleep.  "They don't want us here," the girl told her elders.

The Haneys sued the neighborhood’s developer for not disclosing the seemingly relevant fact that the subdivision was built over a cemetery.  The jury awarded them a settlement, but this was reversed by a judge.  The development company then counter-sued the Haneys for harassment.  The exhausted couple felt they had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and abandon their new home.   The Williamses, on the other hand, were determined to stick it out.  They too wanted to sue their developer, and were anxious to find additional evidence against the company.  When in 1987, an old-time resident of the area told them that the odd arrow marks on their tree indicated the site where two sisters had been buried, Jean got a shovel and began to dig.  Later that day, Jean’s daughter Tina, who had come by for a visit, suffered a heart attack which led to her death three days later.  She was only thirty years old.

"The Missoulian," June 9, 1991, via Newspapers.com

After this tragedy, the Williams family just wanted to get as far away from the--literally--damned house as they could.  They were convinced that moving on top of the cemetery had released “something evil.”  The couple abandoned the property and moved to Montana.  Curiously, Tina’s death appeared to mark the end of the subdivision’s haunting, leaving the remaining residents to live in peace.  Perhaps the unquiet ghosts of the old cemetery felt they had finally gotten their revenge.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Or, as we like to call it here at Strange Company HQ, "The Catty News."

Faking your own death seldom works out well.

The Carbondale UFO incident.

The Manhattan alien abduction.

The education of a 15th century Italian girl.

This week in Russian Weird: One of their spy whales is on the lam!

Britain's Great UFO Hoax.

Some revolutionary spinning pebbles.

One really freaking big fungus.

Here's your chance to play 17th Century Death Roulette!

In case you're wondering how scientists spend their days, they are teaching rats to drive.

Eggs and shee-spies.

The world's first seed bank.

A goofy around-the-world hoax.

Before you hire lawyers, make sure they know which side they're on.

The whip-poor-will, omen of death.

A naked man commits some particularly gruesome murders.

Always make sure your spouse is dead before they're buried.  It would avoid embarrassing complications.

All hail the scarlet tanager!

Places where you can travel back in time.

Descriptions of Early Modern natural catastrophes.

Memories are not just in our minds.

Whaling and the 19th century cosmetics industry.

England's Vagrancy Act of 1824.

The German-Soviet talks of 1940.

The saint who just couldn't stop levitating.

A needlework sampler with an export bar.

The Spanish vs. the Incan Empire.

Restoring Bernini.

The pubs of Old London.

Geology and aerial photography.

The legendary flights of Thomas Fitzpatrick.

The origins of the word "cheeseparing."

Elephants may like practical jokes.

Do we owe life on Earth to plate tectonics?

The mystery of the bamboo wagon in the glacier.

A beach I do not recommend visiting.

A woman's five-year pregnancy.

The return of medicinal leeches.

A letter from Joan of Arc.

Was there a silver lining to the Black Death?

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at some really bad real estate.  In the meantime, here's an old English country dance tune.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

In fictional murder mysteries, sometimes the victim manages to leave behind clues indicating the identity of their killer.  In the following real-life case, that really did happen.  Well, almost.  The “Twice-A-Week Messenger,” November 24, 1903:

Elmira, N. Y., Nov. 20--W. H. Clendenen, a telegraph operator at Brown, Pa., a station fifteen miles north of Williamsport, on the Beech Creek division of the New York Central railroad, was found dead in the telegraph tower shortly after 8 o'clock last night. At 6:50 o'clock the operator at Oak Grove, Pa., on the same road, received this message from Clendenen: "Send switch engine quick to me; I am being murdered by---" The wire opened and not another word came. A switch engine was sent to the scene and reached Brown in a short time.

The body was found lying under the desk, the head crushed in. A bloody spike maul lay on the floor beside it. Robbery apparently was the motive, the watch and money of the operator being missing. Clendenen evidently recognized his assailant and was about to wire his name when he was struck dead at the key.

In 1904, the wife of a local lowlife named Sherman Jamison told authorities that he was responsible for robbing and murdering a series of telegraph operators--including Clendenen.  When police came to arrest him, he managed to escape.  In 1905, a skeleton was found in the mountains where it was believed Jamison had fled.  It was speculated that these remains were those of the missing bandit, but this was never proven.  In any case, Jamison was apparently never seen again.  Clendenen’s murder was never officially solved.

The Witches of Innsbruck Strike Back

Witchcraft trials are hardly known for their happy endings, so I am pleased to share with you a tale where one remarkable woman took on a notorious witch-hunter--and won.

The villain of our piece is Heinrich Kramer, monk and self-appointed witch inquisitor.  Kramer was a staunch advocate of a theory which emerged in the late fifteenth century--that the practice of witchcraft was not harmless pagan superstition, but a religious heresy practiced by evil minions of Satan himself.  Kramer was anxious to stage a well-publicized trial to showcase his pet belief, and in 1485, he found his opportunity in Innsbruck, Austria.

Kramer called on Innsbruck’s ruler, Archduke Sigismund, presented him with papal decrees formally sanctioning his witch-hunting work, and informed the Archduke that he intended to set up shop.  This put Sigismund in a bind.  He was not fond of the idea of this bossy little fellow interfering in the life and work of his seemingly law-abiding subjects, but on the other hand, well, orders from the Pope are orders from the Pope.  In what I imagine was a somewhat grumpy manner, Sigismund told Kramer to get on with it already.

We know very little about the other major figure in our story.  This is a great pity, because Helena Scheuberin was clearly a person that History would have liked to have known better.  About all that is recorded about her biography is that she was a native of Innsbruck who, in 1477, married a merchant named Sebastian Scheuber.  (As was the custom in those days, when Helena wed, she took on the feminized version of her husband’s surname.  Her family name is unknown.)  

Helena was an attractive woman from what was evidently a prosperous background, so Sebastian had less fortunate rivals for her hand.  Among them was the head manager of Archduke Sigismund’s kitchens (his name is unrecorded.)  After Helena and Sebastian married, our high-level cook consoled himself by taking a Bavarian woman as his bride.  In October 1485, things took a startling turn when the cook and his wife paid a visit to Kramer in order to accuse Helena of being a witch.  The cook explained that before Helena married Sebastian, she had been the cook’s lover.  After their split, things remained so friendly between them that Helena attended the cook’s wedding.  However, at the reception afterwards, Helena made an ominous comment to the bride:  “You shall not have many good and healthy days here.”  The cook’s wife assured Kramer that, sure enough, in the seven years of her marriage, she had enjoyed only one month of well-being.  Well, what additional proof of witchcraft do you need?

Kramer picked up more local gossip about Helena.  Some of her neighbors said that since her marriage, Helena had an “intimate friendship” with a knight named Jorg Spiess.  After she rejected Jorg’s suggestion that they take things to a more physical level, the knight suddenly and mysteriously died.  Jorg’s family told Kramer that on the day Spiess died, he had dined with Helena.  Afterwards, he took ill, wailing, “I have eaten something I can’t get over…the reason why I’m dying is that woman killed me!”  Jorg sent for his doctor, but he died soon after the physician’s arrival.  (As a side note, Helena’s husband Sebastian was having an affair with one of Jorg’s relatives, which could conceivably give the Spiess family a motive for wanting Helena permanently out of the picture.)

Helena herself, meanwhile, was not shy about treating the witch-hunter with the contempt she felt he deserved.  Kramer whined in a letter that “not only did she harass me with constant rebukes from the start (I had scarcely been in town for three days)” but “one time when I passed her and did not acknowledge her, she spat on the ground, publicly uttering these words: ‘Pah—you! You lousy monk! I hope you get the falling sickness!’”  As a bonus insult, Helena not only refused to attend Kramer’s sermons, she encouraged others to boycott him as well.  She found his obsession with demons and witchcraft “heretical,” adding, “When the devil leads a monk astray, he spouts nothing but heresy. I hope the falling sickness knocks him on the head!”  As Marion Gibson noted in her recent book, “Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials,” Helena’s reaction to the witch-finder was remarkably sane: “She was not overreacting,” Gibson wrote, “nor was she ignorant of the risk--the lives of women in her town were in danger, so she spoke up. Far from being a witch, she was an intelligent, engaged Christian.”  Helena argued theology with Kramer in a way he probably had never experienced before--certainly not from a woman.

Helena was brave, of course, but bravery is an excellent way to put a target on your own back.  And that was exactly what happened.  “For this reason,” Kramer went on, “I had to investigate her name and life for the first time.”  He suspected her of being guilty of “double heresy, namely a heresy of Faith and the heresy of Witches.”  Kramer accused Helena of being not only promiscuous, but “deceitful, spirited, and pushy.”  There were other Innsbruck women Kramer believed guilty of various heresies:  Rosina Hochwartin, her mother Barbara, Barbara Pflieglin, Barbara Hüfeysen, Barbara Selachin, and Agnes Schneiderin. Kramer saw them as a literal coven of witches, with Helena as their leader.  Although a total of 63 people were investigated by Kramer, these women were the only ones to be formally charged.  Gibson found it an “inescapable conclusion” that Kramer “was looking almost exclusively for female witches.”

Their trial began on October 29, 1485.  It was a church court, with Kramer acting as judge.  Helena was the first defendant to be questioned.  It is safe to say that it did not go as Kramer had hoped.  His interrogation went off the rails almost immediately when he bluntly asked Helena if she had been a virgin when she married.  Onlookers were shocked.  Witch or not, one did not ask the wife of a respectable Innsbruck merchant that sort of question.  Christian Turner, who was in court as the representative of the local bishop, rebuked Kramer that such things were “secret matters that hardly concern the case,” and ordered him to change the subject.

Turner was not finished.  He demanded to know why Kramer had not presented the court with formal written articles detailing the charges against the women.  Caught off guard by this unexpected resistance, Kramer muttered that the proceedings would be suspended until 11 a.m. while he prepared the articles.  At eleven, Kramer received another nasty surprise.  When Helena reappeared in court, she was accompanied by Johann Merwart, a highly-respected expert in church law.  It was announced that Lord Merwart would be acting as legal representative for the defendants.

Yes.  The witches had lawyered up.

Even going by the dry historical record, Merwart clearly had fun tearing Kramer’s case into judicial ribbons.  He questioned the technical legitimacy of the whole proceedings.  He mocked Kramer for focusing on “hidden sins” rather than focusing on “articles of bad reputation”...but, whoops, Kramer hadn’t even bothered writing those articles.  Merwart declared that Kramer “just seized the women before he instituted the proceedings in the proper setup.”

Merwart was just getting warmed up.  He dismissed Kramer “as being a suspect judge in this cause,” and asked the Lord Commissary to toss the witch-hunter into the nearest jail cell.  Merwart advised his clients to not answer any of Kramer’s questions “because he was no longer their judge.”

Kramer responded to this onslaught by angrily declaring that he was indeed competent to judge the case.  Merwart cheerily replied that he would bring that question to the Pope, and have him decide.

Christian Turner then intervened, suggesting that the trial be adjourned for two days, to let everyone cool off.  He, Turner, would then give his judgment on whether Kramer was competent to try the case.

Coincidentally or not, when the court reconvened, it was on the evening before All Saints--what we today usually call “Halloween.”  When everyone had gathered together, Turner announced his decision: That the trial had been “instituted in violation of the legal system.”  He ordered that the accused women be immediately released from custody.  It was also revealed that Archduke Sigismund had paid the women’s legal bills, as well as the expenses Kramer had run up in Innsbruck.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  Everyone was now free to go on their merry way.  Court officials strongly suggested that Kramer not let the door hit him on the way out.

Unfortunately for the world, Kramer got revenge for his defeat by writing “Malleus Maleficarum,” intended as a training manual for other witch-hunters.  It is one of the most cruel and misogynistic books ever written.  Kramer described all women--going back to Eve--as stupid, sex-obsessed, dishonest, and generally dangerous.  Little wonder, he argued, that nearly all practitioners of the black arts were female.  He declared that these witches must be sought out and destroyed.  Oh, and don’t bother with “legal niceties.”  Just round up those devil worshipers, and torture them until they confess.  His arguments, deranged as they sound, were appallingly influential, resulting in the persecution and death of uncountable numbers of people, largely women.

Although Kramer lost the Innsbruck battle, you could say he won the war.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

It's not the only new thing around here, I guess.

Britain's last executed witch...may not have been executed after all.

Why we call it a "grandfather clock."

The British "bonfire night" of 1824.

Why ancient Roman concrete was so strong.

The use of medicinal herbs 15,000 years ago.

To some people, it's a museum.  To others, it's a crime scene.

The day it rained cats in Brooklyn.

The days of professional walking.

Some old-fashioned cocoa and cider recipes.

Some old-fashioned sandwich recipes.  (Be warned: Most of them sound pretty horrifying.)

A medieval nurse gets a raise.

In which a bunch of Chinese dinosaurs die boring deaths.

The cat science behind "If it fits, I sits."

The life of a British barrister in India.

Do ghosts die?

The old signage of London.

Pro tip: Before buying a home, check the attic.

The mysterious sequel to an Iron Age massacre.

Some medieval marginalia.

The cholera scourge, 1849.

Do you ever get the feeling that you belong to the wrong species?

Divination in Early Modern Britain.

The Battle of Tippecanoe.

A murder case with some wild twists.

Did prehistoric Polynesians sail to Antarctica?

Is this the world's oldest tree?

The life and death of an Ice Age infant.

A brief history of the "royal we."

A "boy murderer."

The mice of Philpot Lane.

A slice of medieval Polish history.

A bizarre ancient "Frankenstein" skeleton.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a witchcraft case with a feel-good ending.  In the meantime, bring on the mandolins!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Ghosts may be alarming, but they’re usually not hazardous to your health.  This following tale may be an exception.  The “Altoona Times,” October 27, 1884:

New York, October 25.--Dr. Charles C. King, of Buffalo, who is now here, tells a curious story. A month ago two men entered his office.  One said he was suffering from a physical injury inflicted by a ghostly assailant. The doctor was incredulous, but examined and found a couple of severe bruises on his chest, one round, as if inflicted by a club, and the other long and narrow, like a knife cut. The fourth rib had been broken and the right lung injured. The surface of the body was not injured, beyond discoloration. 

"How the injuries could be inflicted I could not guess," said the doctor. "The patient said he was asleep, felt himself suddenly seized by the throat, struggled to get away, but only succeeded in getting enough liberty to scream.  He was immediately struck in the chest, felt the bones crush and was stabbed. The blade entered his side several times. He was found lying on the floor senseless, the moon shining upon him, the windows and doors all locked on the inside, and nothing disturbed." 

The patient recovered finally, and the doctor went home, thirty miles, with him. He had gone to bed, when he heard a horrible shriek, followed by a heavy, crashing sound. He found the man lying on the floor senseless, bleeding from the mouth, with his rib broken afresh, his body bruised all over, and evidently in a dying condition.  He recovered consciousness a short time before death, and asserted that he had been picked up by an invisible foe, hurled against the wall and then thrown on the floor. 

"I believe he could not have injured himself on either occasion," concluded the doctor.