Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This unsettling little story--which definitely belongs in the “Odd Stuff That's Impossible to Categorize” file--appeared in the “Louisville Courier-Journal” on July 30, 1876:

One of my neighbors has had a very mysterious experience lately.  He went out to plow about sunrise a short time since, and he saw, as he thought, one of his neighbors walking among his wheat shocks, thinking at the same time that he acted rather queer by keeping his back toward him all the time, though quite near; but he paid no particular attention to him, only casting an occasional glance to see what he was at.  On getting to the far side of the field, he turned his team and started back, and again saw the man very plainly; he was still walking about without any apparent object in view, but, on getting near enough to clearly note the movements of the figure, it was observed to take three long strides, throw up its hands, and then float in the air near the surface of the earth for a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, and suddenly vanish into nothingness.  Such is the tale my neighbor tells me, and he entirely believes it.  He is neither superstitious nor timid; is about twenty years old, and of undoubted courage and coolness.  Mr. Starr, the name of the gentleman who saw the vision, will convince anyone who will talk to him of his own honest belief in the apparition.  On one of two occasions he was within twenty feet of it, and it could not possibly have been an optical illusion.