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.