Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

As I've mentioned before, a supernatural staple is “Person gets on a stranger’s bad side, weird things begin to happen.”  A perfect example is this story from the “Coshocton Daily Age,” September 7, 1906:

A remarkable story comes from just over the Tuscarawas county line, and it sounds spooky.  The people concerned can offer no explanation and it has mystified scores of people who have been witnesses to the strange occurrence.

Age readers will remember an item published about one year ago about a Mrs. Finton, dwelling in Tuscarawas county close to the line of Adams township, this county, shooting a tramp who tried to assault her.  She fired a shot gun point blank at him, and he beat a retreat.  Afterward he was tracked by copious blood stains to a big woods nearby and there all trace of him was lost.  He was never seen again and popular belief has it that he died in the woods and that his remains are still there.

The spooky part of the story now comes.  On three different occasions recently strange things have happened at the Finton home.  In brief, it is a shower of stones.

The last shower was only a few days ago and the Fintons called in several of their neighbors, all reputable people and all vouch for the accuracy of the story.  It is told that stones about the size of “river biscuits” drop on the roof of the house, seemingly from the sky.  Clods of earth and chunks of sod are likewise precipitated.  Related by one of the men, a Mr. Lockard, to the informant of The Age, the story is that several of the neighbors gathered in the yard at the last occurrence, and they could see the stones fall and hear them hit the roof, but no one could see from whence they came.  They seemed to drop straight down.  Stones and chunks of sod, dropped into the yard, some of them almost grazing the spectators but harming no one.

It is said that the stones do not at all resemble any native stone of that locality.

The neighborhood is mystified and an uncanny sensation has spread abroad.

Details of the shooting of the tramp were that the fellow approached the house and insolently asked for something to eat.  The woman ordered him away saying she would call her husband, who was in the house.  In fact the husband was away at his work.  The tramp went away and returned within half an hour and told the woman she had lied to him, that her husband was not there.  Then he said he’d kill her, and hurled a heavy bit of iron at her, which he had picked up about the barn, and it struck the house.  She then got the gun and fired at him.

Whether that occurrence and the present uncanny incidents have any connection is a matter of conjecture.  The neighborhood protests that it is not a practical joke, and all are extremely serious about it.

I was unable to find any follow-up stories.