Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Wakes--especially when adult beverages are involved--can be lively affairs, but usually the star of the show has the good taste not to actively participate in the proceedings. The “Leavenworth Post,” July 4, 1906:

Pittsburg, July 4. Fifteen men who were sitting up with the corpse of Mrs. Catherine Gulerale in McKeesport declared the wake adjourned sine die when the corpse arose from the coffin, walked to the cupboard in the room, looked into it, gazed out the window and then returned to its narrow bed, disposing itself peacefully in the cushioned box.

When the strange story was told to the police they entered the house and found the body of Mrs. Gulerale lying in the coffin. Fifteen excited foreigners gathered around the policemen and insisted the woman had arisen from her coffin. A physician was called and he pronounced her dead.

Yet those fifteen men insist they saw her alive and declare they had not been drinking any more than it is the custom at a wake. None of the men could be induced to return to the house.

The funeral took place the next day and persons who attended were in fear and trembling. They say it presages the worst kind of luck when the dead walk that way. When a ghost walks it's not so bad.

Hopefully, this time Mrs. Gulerale stayed dead.