The Best of Strange Company 2024

 

Happy New Year!  Yes, it's once again time for our annual rundown of this past year's most popular posts.

Whether you like it or not, I guess.

1. The Burial of William the Conqueror.  Not only was this the most-viewed post of the year, by golly, it wasn't even close.  (Note to self for 2025:  More exploding corpses.)

2. Susie Smith's Weird Encore.  Holy hell, talk about a sprint for the finish line.  I published this post just yesterday, and it somehow wound up in the runner-up spot!

3. California's Worst Crime:  The Murder of Mabel Meyer.  Of all the unsolved murders I've covered, this one is right up there when it comes to sheer baffling creepiness.

4. The Mystery of the "Sarah Jo."  A crew vanishes from their boat.  And then things get really weird.

5. The Taking of Joan Gay Croft.   A small child is kidnapped in the aftermath of a tornado.

6. Tales of the Headless Valley.  One of those places where you really don't want to vacation.

7. The Witches of Innsbruck Strike Back.  A "witch-finder" gets run out of town.

8. All Shook Up:  A Case of Louisville Witchcraft.  Some black magic gets way out of hand.

9. Weekend Link Dump, January 5.  Can't have a Top Ten without a WLD popping in.

10. The Strange Deaths of Ruby Bruguier and Arnold Archambeau.  A minor car crash leads to an unsolved mystery.

And there you have it, the best--or, at least, best-viewed--of this soon-to-be-past year.  See you in 2025, when, if there's any luck, we'll encounter more witches, disappearances, murders, and, of course, corpses that just won't stay buried.

Susie Smith's Weird Encore

In 1874, a young woman’s extremely strange death--perhaps the right word is “deaths”--was widely reported in various newspapers and spiritualist publications.  It is one of those stories where all one can say is, “Make of it what you will.”

Lawrence, Massachusetts farmer Greenleaf Smith had a 16-year-old daughter named Susie, a perfectly normal, average teenager who worked as a dressmaker.  Sadly, she came down with a sudden, severe fever.  On September 25th, Susie told her father, “I’ve attended my own funeral.”  In a very rational-sounding tone, she described all the details of the service, including the hymns that were sung.  The girl insisted it was not some hallucination brought on by her sickness; she had seen something very real.  

Around six o’clock that evening, Susie went into violent spasms.  She became increasingly pale, closed her eyes, and died.  Well, sort of.  As her grieving family surrounded the death bed, all absolutely convinced that her life was extinct, they were shocked to see the corpse’s lips suddenly move.  A harsh, gruff voice very unlike Susie’s ordered them, “Rub both her arms as hard as you can.”

The family did just that.  A moment later, the voice said, “Raise her up in end.”  When the family, confused by this remark, hesitated, the voice snapped, “Raise her up in end--you’re deaf, ain’t you?”  Susie's body was pulled upright.  She began breathing again, but did not speak.  As Mr. Smith sat behind his daughter, propping her up, the voice commented, “If I could move her legs around so I could set her up on the foot-board, she’d be all right.”  As Mr. Smith began to move Susie, they both were lifted in the air by an unseen force and placed on the foot-board.  Susie suddenly sprang back to life, seeming to be her old cheerful self.  Before the family could fully react--it would be hard to know what to say under such circumstances--the same invisible power again pulled Susie and her father upright.  Mr. Smith was placed on his feet, while Susie was carried back to her bed.  As she lay there, she appeared to be, again, quite dead.  A few moments later, the “corpse” began speaking in another unfamiliar voice.  It spoke for three hours about how after Susie died, her corpse had been controlled by several different spirits.  Then, the body appeared to go into a “trance sleep.”

The following morning, the body opened its eyes and said to Mr. Smith, “Please lie down on the side of the bed.”  After he obeyed, the body said, “Who am I, anyway?”  Her father replied, “You are Susie Smith.”  He got the reply, “No I ain’t, Susie Smith died last night.”  During the day, Susie--or whoever was occupying her earthly remains--underwent more spasms, and, by noon, appeared to at last be well and truly deceased.

The next morning, her relatives and friends gathered in a downstairs room to decide where Susie should be buried.  As they talked, Susie herself walked into the room and said, “Right on the School Hill, right on the side of the road.”  Then she vanished, never to be seen--or heard--from again.

Susie’s relatives wisely decided to abide by their lost loved one’s directive.  The girl was buried in the town of Denmark, Maine, (Susie’s hometown) on the schoolhouse’s hillside.

Via Findagrave.com

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the final Link Dump of 2024!

Murder at a Christmas party.

Pro tip: If you're going to murder someone, it's wisest not to have it show up on Google Maps.

Having some personal difficulties?  No problem!  Just summon some demons!

The lore of rosemary.

That time when humans may have nearly become extinct.

Why you don't want to eavesdrop on animals at Christmas Eve:  You probably won't like what you hear.

A millionaire dog's Christmas.

Keening on Christmas Eve.

An Australian survival story.

Was Stonehenge all about unity?

How the Moon influences animals.

Photos of a vanished London.

The mystery of the missing monument.

An epidemic of stolen Christmas dinners.

A poltergeist in Ireland.

The early career of Bob Dylan.

OK, so maybe the dinosaurs weren't killed by volcanoes.

Why we say, "Getting the pink slip."

The birth of Handel's "Messiah."

A Georgian-era judge fights pornography.  I think you can guess which side won.

The colorful marital history of Bess of Hardwick.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at one of the weirder deathbed scenes on record.  In the meantime, here's some lovely choral music.

Newspaper Clipping of the Christmas Day

Via Newspapers.com

This startling story--which sounds like something out of a Christmas-themed horror movie--appeared in the “Lichfield Mercury,” January 4, 1907:

A Belfast schoolboy, named Samuel Atchison, has had a terrible Christmas experience, which he is likely to remember to the end of his days.

On Christmas Eve the lad went out to gather holly for the decoration of his heme, and was lost from that hour until Sunday night, when he was found in the attic of an untenanted house, at the point of death and wasted to a skeleton. All through the heavy snowstorms of the last few days the police and bands of searchers had dragged ponds, swamps, and rivers for his body without result, and the circumstances of the disappearance and recovery of the boy are so remarkable as to lead the police to the belief that it is a case of kidnapping. No sounds had been heard by the occupants of the house on either side of that in which the lad was found until Friday last, on which day both neighbours recall they heard what they took to be a faint knocking. No attention, however, was paid until Sunday, when the rapping became so persistent that one of the nextdoor neighbours scaled the yard wall and entered the house, he searched every room without result until he came to the attic, the door of which was closed and the handle had been removed. The neighbour forced open the door and, entering, found the room in darkness, the snow having covered the skylight.

Striking a match he saw the figure of a lad lying unconscious on the floor. Nearby lay his coat, torn to rags, and his waistcoat and trousers were likewise in shreds, the latter, in fact, having only the upper part whole. The searcher, who had read the accounts of Atchison’s disappearance, immediately concluded that this was the missing boy, and he sent at once for the father. The latter hastened to the empty house and, stripping off his coat, wrapped up the lad and rushed home through the binding snowstorm. Two doctors were speedily in attendance.

All their unremitting care and attention have been so far successful that, though the poor boy is still in grave danger, there is, however, some slight hope of his ultimate recovery.  On Monday morning the police made a thorough examination of the attic, and found the inside of the door all clawed where the boy, in the agonies of starvation, had sought to tear through the panels with his nails, and even with his teeth. A correspondent who saw the boy says as he lay moaning and tossing in bed he cried out again and again to imaginary assailants to have pity on him, but there was nothing coherent in his speech, the only person he seemed to recognise being his mother. How the boy came to be in that house, why the handle should have been removed from the lock, whether the interval from Monday until Friday had been entirely spent inside the room, and whether it was a case of kidnapping are all questions which are greatly puzzling the police. The doctors stated on Monday that in a very short time—a matter of minutes, in fact—the boy would have been a corpse, and it is probable that his mind will be permanently affected by his terrible experience.  It is hoped, however, that when he recovers consciousness some light will be thrown on the mystery.

What adds to the strangeness of this case is the fact that I haven’t been able to find any published resolution.  By the end of January, the story seemed to have disappeared from the newspapers.  I am unable to say if Samuel fully recovered from his ordeal, or if the puzzle of his Christmas imprisonment was ever solved.

A Christmas Eve Mystery: Where Are the Sodder Children?

A family named Sodder once lived in Fayetteville, West Virginia.  It was a large household:  The parents, Jenny and George, and nine of their ten children.  (Their eldest son was away serving in the military.)  Their life was, as far as is known, a perfectly ordinary one until Christmas Eve 1945, when their routine middle-class existence suddenly morphed into something out of the most chilling psychological horror story.

On that night, as the family prepared to go to bed, five of the younger Sodders--Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty--asked to be allowed to remain downstairs to play with their presents.  Their parents indulgently agreed, and went upstairs to retire for the night.  It was the last time they would see these children again.

The Sodders did not notice anything amiss until around midnight, when Jenny Sodder was awakened by a phone call.  She noticed that lights were still on in the house, the shades were up, and the doors unlocked.  The house was quiet, and she assumed everyone was now asleep.  When she picked up the receiver, an unfamiliar female voice asked to speak to a name Jenny did not recognize.  In the background of the other end of the line, she could hear wild laughter and glasses clinking.  Before she could respond, the caller hung up.  Shrugging it off as a prank, she went back to sleep.  Some time later, she thought she heard a noise on their roof.  Not long after that--around 1:30 a.m.--she smelled smoke.  The house was on fire.

Jenny began screaming for everyone to get out of the house.  Once they were outside, Jenny and George saw that five of their children were still missing--the same five that had stayed downstairs past their bedtime.  Mr. Sodder went for a ladder he always kept by the house, so he could climb up to the bedrooms, but it was gone.  It was later found in an embankment some distance away.  He tried to drive off for help, but his trucks--which had worked perfectly the previous day--now refused to start.

By the time the fire department arrived--in this small town, with primitive communications and equipment, it took them seven hours--the house was a mass of smoldering ashes.  In less than an hour, it had completely burned to the ground.  Officials assumed bad wiring was to blame for the conflagration, but that seemed questionable, considering that lights in the home were still on after the fire started.  Besides, just a few months before, the local power company had inspected their wiring.  We simply do not know for sure why the home was destroyed.

Whatever the cause of the blaze may have been, the most important question was, where were the five Sodder children?  Some newspapers reported that some fragmentary bones and flesh were found in the ruins, but other accounts say that not a single trace of human remains were ever found on the site.

Despite the eerie events preceding the fire--not to mention the fact that telephone line had been cut just before or after the flames erupted--the authorities shrugged the incident off as a tragic accident and ignored the Sodders' pleas for an investigation.

The many peculiar circumstances surrounding the fire, coupled with the lack of remains, increasingly convinced the Sodders that their missing children had not died in the fire, but were kidnapped.  Searches of the site in the years after the fire eventually turned up a few stray pieces of bone, but a pathologist working with the Sodders noted that it was highly unusual not to find more of the children's bodies.  The fire simply did not burn long enough to completely incinerate bodies.  Another oddity is that these bones were not fire damaged, leading pathologists from the Smithsonian to theorize that the  fragments were in the dirt George Sodder used to bury the site of the fire.  And was it anything more than coincidence that the children who were allowed to stay up late were the only family members to disappear?  No one could say.  

"Calgary Albertan," October 6, 1953, via Newspapers.com

George Sodder--who was, like his wife, Italian-born--had been very vocal about his dislike of Mussolini.  This had made him very unpopular in their Italian-American community, leading the family to harbor the fear that the tragedy had been some horrendous payback for his political views.  This may well have been merely paranoia, but unless they found some definitive answers, it was a paranoia they could never shake.

The Sodders lived through years of painful uncertainty about the fate of their children.  The events of that Christmas Eve seemed just too strange to be an ordinary accident, but, on the other hand, the idea of some maniacs singling them out and torching their house in order to spirit off their children was too weird to even contemplate.  George and Jenny did everything in their power to publicize the mystery--they even rented a billboard with photos of the missing children that stood for forty years--but no one came forward with any information.  The private detectives they hired to chase every possible lead, every "sighting" of the missing children, came up with nothing.  The remaining family members were left in a nightmarish limbo.

Life went on, with no concrete developments in the case until 1968, when the Sodders were anonymously mailed a photograph of a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties.  On the back of the photo someone had written, "Louis Sodder," "I love brother Frankie," "ilil Boys," and the cryptic "A90132 or 35."

The Sodders were convinced the young man in the photo was their son Louis, who was nine when he disappeared.  No one can say for sure if they were correct, or if the mailing was merely a sick prank by some unknown creep.

That unsettlingly enigmatic photo is the last word to date on the Sodder mystery.  George Sodder died in 1969 and his wife twenty years later.  Sylvia, the last living Sodder child, (that we know of, at any rate,) was only two when disaster struck.  She passed away in 2021, still haunted by what had befallen her family.  She believed her siblings did not die in the fire, but she had no more luck than her parents in finding evidence of that theory.  The story of what really happened that Christmas Eve remains as baffling as ever.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

A deadly box of chocolates.

A brief history of Devil's Island.

A suburban Messalina.

What may be the oldest story on Earth.

A bit of current events weirdness: a mysterious man who keeps showing up at car crashes.

A meeting with Napoleon on St. Helena.

Christmas and an ancient Roman god.

The famed Lincolnshire Ox.

Americans are using a lot of British words.

Rome sure got sacked a lot back in the day.

A failed faith healing.

Tiny photo jewelry from the 19th century.  Quite adorable.

In Sweden, it's illegal to have sex with fairies.  Wait, what?

A Christmas in Tibet.

How to be chic in Early Modern England.

Miss Marshall, mysterious bookbinder.

Dickens looks at Christmas in country places.

So, who doesn't want to spend Christmas in a morgue?

The confusion over the day Pompeii was destroyed.

A silver amulet that helps tell the history of Christianity in Europe.

A remembrance of Charles Fort.

The collapse of the Hyatt Regency skywalk.

A visit to the Holy Rude Kirkyard.

Disabled people in ancient Egypt.

A Christmas murder mystery.

Christmas at a stately home.

A disappearance in the Great Smoky Mountains.

An unfortunate wife.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a mysterious Christmas Eve tragedy.  In the meantime, here's Emmylou.  My taste in Christmas music tends to be traditional--hymns, Handel's "Messiah" and the like--but I delight in playing this song every Yuletide.  In fact, if you have a liking for country-folk, the whole album is terrific, but this one is my favorite.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

It’s time for another peep at that ever-popular Fortean category, Mystery Fires!  The “London Daily Mail,” February 5, 1921:

A remarkable series of fires, described in the official report as "of doubtful origin," caused the London Fire Brigade to pay four separate visits yesterday morning to Upper Frognal Lodge, Hampstead. A few minutes after 2 a.m. firemen were called to the lodge, where they extinguished with buckets of water a small fire in the front room on the second floor. At about 3.45 a.m. the brigade were again summoned and overcame a small outbreak in the back room on the second floor.

At about 5.30 a further alarm was given, and when the firemen arrived small fires were in progress in the front room on the first floor and the front room on the second floor. As in the two previous cases, buckets of water were used to extinguish the outbreak. Again, at 9.30, the brigade were called to Frognal Lodge, where three separate fires in the front and back rooms on the second floor had to be extinguished. 

The house is a large one occupied by Lieutenant-Colonel R.S. Webber. With the first call there were two separate fires, one causing damage to an armchair and the other to a sofa and four chairs. The second outbreak was in a cupboard in the bathroom on the second floor; in the third case a cupboard in the front room on the first floor and window curtains in the front room on the second floor were dealt with.

A brief sequel appeared in the “Daily Telegraph” four days later:

More mysterious fires occurred yesterday morning at 67 Frognal, Hampstead, the residence of Lieut. Colonel R.S. Webber. 

On the arrival of the fire brigade outbreaks were discovered in a cupboard in the bath-room on the first floor, a cupboard in the bathroom on the second floor, a bedroom front of the first floor, and another front room on the first floor There were, according to the fire brigade report, four separate fires. No appliances were used, the flames being quickly subdued. The cause is given as “doubtful." On Friday last, the fire brigade was called four times to the same house where ten separate “seats” of fire were discovered. The cause then was ascribed as “doubtful.”

I did not find any more reports of fires, “doubtful” or otherwise, at the home, which must have come as a great relief to both Lt. Webber and the overworked Hampstead fire brigade.

Helen Hulick, Famous Slacker

In the fall of 1938, the Los Angeles home of 29-year-old schoolteacher Helen Hulick was burglarized.  A bad thing, to be sure, but this seemingly unimportant event was to catalyze a series of events which would turn Hulick into a nationwide newspaper sensation, provide a unique footnote in judicial history, and--last but certainly not least--earn our young teacher a place in the hallowed halls of Strange Company.

On November 9, Hulick appeared in Los Angeles Municipal Court to testify against the two men accused of the burglary.  (As a side note, tell modern-day Angelinos that there was a time when burglary suspects were not only routinely apprehended, but, if convicted, sent to serve long prison terms, you will receive stares of wide-eyed wonder.  But I digress.)  However, before Hulick could take the stand, the judge in her case, Arthur S. Guerin, announced that he had a problem with the young lady’s attire.

Hulick was wearing slacks.  Blue flannel slacks.  Judge Guerin was not about to allow any woman to wear “pants” in his courtroom.  A bailbondswoman offered to loan Hulick a skirt.

Our educator of young minds was having none of it.  “I like slacks,” she retorted.  “They’re comfortable.  It’s my constitutional right to wear them.”

Judge Guerin was not happy.  “I don’t set styles,” he told Hulick sternly.  “But costumes acceptable at the beach are not acceptable in formal courtroom procedure.  Slacks are not the proper attire in court.”  He added plaintively, “It’s tough sometimes to be a judge.”

Regarding that last statement, the judge would soon learn that he didn’t know the half of it.

Hulick’s lawyer--naturally anxious to pacify the judge--motioned to postpone the hearing.  Guerin rescheduled the hearing for November 14th, with the earnest hope that Hulick had learned her lesson about “maintaining the dignity in my courtroom.”

On the morning of the 14th, Hulick strolled into Guerin’s court wearing…slacks.  Orange and green, this time.  By her side was her attorney, William Katz, carrying a thick stack of law books containing various citations proving that Hulick had the right to wear whatever she damned well pleased.

Guerin was beginning to wish he had never laid eyes on Miss Hulick.  He fumed, “The last time you were in this court dressed as you are now and reclining on your neck on the back of your chair, you drew more attention from spectators, prisoners and court attaches than the legal business at hand. You were requested to return in garb acceptable to courtroom procedure.

“Today you come back dressed in pants and openly defying the court and its duties to conduct judicial proceedings in an orderly manner. It’s time a decision was reached on this matter and on the power the court has to maintain what it considers orderly conduct.

“The court hereby orders and directs you to return tomorrow in accepted dress. If you insist on wearing slacks again you will be prevented from testifying because that would hinder the administration of justice. But be prepared to be punished according to law for contempt of court.”

Outside the courtroom, Hulick told reporters (the affair was already becoming a local sensation,) “I’ve worn slacks since I was 15. I don’t own a dress except a formal. If he wants me to appear in a formal gown that’s okay with me.

“I’ll come back in slacks and if he puts me in jail I hope it will help to free women forever of anti-slackism.”  She added that she refused to wear silk stockings “because the silk comes from Japan and every pair means a dead Chinese.”

"New York Daily News," November 19, 1938, via Newspapers.com

The following day, Hulick entered the court wearing a plaid coat, a red-and-white blouse, and…gray slacks.  At first, Guerin ignored the outrage, concentrating on what by now was the nearly forgotten business of the hearing--namely, the two men who had robbed Hulick’s home.  He ordered that the defendants be bound over for trial.

Then, Guerin got to the really important part.  In seven typewritten pages, the judge came down on the erring schoolteacher like a ton of judicial bricks.  He fumed that Hulick had, after all his warnings, appeared in “a tight-fitting sweater and tight-fitting pants, commonly known as slacks,” thus disrupting “the orderly procedure of the court.”  He snorted that according to Hulick’s logic, nudists might come into his court, simply because they felt more comfortable sans clothing.”  Guerin sentenced her to five days in jail.

Hulick--followed by a pack of reporters from newspapers across the nation--was taken to the county jail, booked, fingerprinted, and presented with a denim dress.  An hour later, Katz saw to it that she was released on a writ of habeas corpus.

On November 17, two judges from the Appellate Division held a hearing on the controversy.  Katz argued that Hulick had every right to wear slacks in Guerin’s court.  Judges, after all, were not the fashion police.  Prosecuting attorneys responded by saying that the real issue was not Hulick’s attire, but her attitude.  She not only repeatedly defied direct orders from the bench, she did so with a “leering and contemptuous expression on her face.”

The following day, the Appellate judges issued their decision.  They wrote, “While the court record indicates by way of recital that petitioner in a court room during proceedings indulged in a type of exhibitionism which may have tended to impede orderly procedure, and which she might have been required to discontinue on pain of disciplinary action, the commitment appears to be based solely on petitioner’s failure to obey the judge’s order to change her attire, which attire, so far as the record before us discloses, did not of itself interfere with orderly court procedure, but involved merely a question of taste, a matter not within the court’s control.”  They ordered that her sentence be absolved.

In short, the judges ruled that while Miss Hulick may have been an irritating exhibitionist, Judge Guerin should have just kept his mouth shut about it.  Guerin, wisely knowing when he was beaten, graciously announced, “I accept the decision as final and will be guided by it in the future.”

The coda to our little story took place on January 17, 1939, when Hulick finally testified against the two accused burglars.  Our heroine appeared in court wearing what one admiring reporter described as “a close-fitting, rust silk dress, sheer hose, high-heeled shoes and a pert up-tilting hat with flowing veil.”  Hulick explained to the press that she had come to believe that “Maybe there’s something to this dressing-up business after all.  Because I’ve been stepping out every night since I decided to dress like the rest of the girls.”

After hearing this, Judge Guerin could surely be forgiven if he had decided to end his day with a few stiff drinks.

"St. Louis Globe Democrat," January 19, 1939

[Note: In her later years, Hulick--who specialized in teaching deaf children--gained a more conventional fame by developing what is known as the “auditory/verbal” technique for working with the hearing-impaired.  By the time of her death in 1989, she was a renowned and respected educator.  However, she remains best known as The Girl Who Wore Slacks.]

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

This week's Link Dump is so big, it had to be hosted by a septet!

Yet another case of a spouse deciding to say it with arsenic.

Mr. Morgan's magnificent library.

The collapse of one of the world's first known governments.

The Ghoul of Gettysburg.

The healing power of music.

What we are learning about Neolithic architecture.

The pyramids at Giza are really eight-sided.

The link between a seal bag and Charlemagne's shroud.

Don't underestimate pigeons.

From Lord to cave-dweller.

The Vatican is opening up "sacred portals."

A solar system with three suns.

The journey of a state bed.

An exorcist tells all.

Somewhat related: Demonic possession and the Carolingian Dynasty.

A sailor who died at Pearl Harbor is finally identified.

Some tips for everyone on your macabre Christmas list.

The disappearance of King Coal and the Silver Queen.

If you're a professional psychic, it's probably best not to use the words, "unforeseen circumstances."

The oldest named resident of a Roman city.

Maybe Venus isn't an Earth-gone-bad after all.

Judy, Grant Street Court cat.

The lost home of Doggerland.

The Hot Dog Santa Claus.

Some lost Christmas traditions.

Beatrix Potter was more than an author.

In 1394, one Eleanor Rykener was arrested, and things got very interesting for modern scholars.

The life of Margaret More Roper.

What's an ancient home without a Christmas ghost?

The big business of antiquities theft.

Out: "Prehistory."  In: "Deep history."

Do organ donations also transfer memories?

Oarfish as earthquake harbingers.

The first battle of the American Civil War.

They may have just dug up Santa Claus.

The Sisters' Rebellion of ancient Vietnam.

The shops of Old London.

Mysterious Neolithic chalk drums.

An 18th century miniaturist.

Can goats predict earthquakes?

A really bad Yelp review from 1925.

The king of the pirates.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a court battle over slacks.  In the meantime, here's a lovely Mexican Christmas song.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

It occurred to me that, through some unaccountable omission, this blog hasn’t covered too many unexplained “ghost lights.”  I hope this story from the “Raleigh News Observer,” December 17, 2006, will help balance out that deficit.

The mysterious Maco Light, also called the Ghost at Maco Station, is one of North Carolina’s most well-known and enduring supernatural phenomena. It dates to a fatal train wreck in 1867 at a small rural station then called Farmer’s Turnout, 14 miles west of Wilmington on the line serving Wilmington, Florence, S.C., and Augusta, Ga. Conductor Joe Baldwin, riding in the last car of a wood-burning train, discovered that his car had come uncoupled. He died waving a lantern from the rear of that car in a failed attempt to signal and stop a second train coming from behind. One witness saw Baldwin’s lantern fly clear of the train wreck, land and right itself in the adjacent swamp, and burn on.

Shortly afterward and for over a century since, a flickering light has appeared regularly along the railroad tracks in the vicinity of the 1867 collision. Legend attributes this light to the ghost of Joe Baldwin, who was decapitated in the wreck; the ghost is said to be looking for its head. From 1873 until after an 1886 earthquake, railroad workers reported a pair of Maco lights that would appear together. Over the years, the Maco light has been bright enough to fool many railroad workers into stopping their trains. To remedy the ghost’s schedule-thwarting attempts, signalmen at Maco used two lights, one red and one green.

While President Grover Cleveland’s train was wooding and watering up at Maco in 1889, the president saw the two signal lights, asked about them, and got the full story of Old Joe Baldwin. 

In the spring of 1964, the South Eastern North Carolina Beach Association contacted parapsychologist and ghost-hunter Hans Holzer to come to Maco and investigate the mysterious light. After his visit, Holzer gave an apparent certification of the phantom conductor, citing the consistency of his return appearances. Since the railroad tracks were removed around 1980, sightings of the Maco Light have “greatly diminished, if not completely disappeared,” according to Cape Fear Museum historian Harry Warren. In its time the Maco Light has been the object of many a dark vigil at Maco Station, where anywhere from a few to dozens of people would frequently gather at night.

It has also been the subject of numerous newspaper stories and at least one narrative ballad, “The Maco Light,” which sums up the tale: 

They found Joe’s body, 

They found Joe’s head! 

They buried ‘em both, 

But he’s not dead! 

On a dismal night in a dismal swamp, 

You can see his lantern shine!

The Trouble With Ouija Boards

On the day after Christmas 1919, eighteen-year-old Jennie Moro was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver just outside her hometown of El Cerrito, California.  This tragic event would normally have soon been forgotten by everyone except the girl's grieving loved ones.  However, Jennie's death proved to be a catalyst that would give the Moros a memorable place in the annals of California Weird.

The surviving Moros consisted of Jennie's widowed mother Maria and a married sister, Josie Soldavini.  The family had, for some months, owned a Ouija board--a faddish novelty item of the era.  They had never taken the board very seriously, but after Jennie's death, the Moros began using it try communicating with the spirit world, in the hope of discovering the identity of the driver who had killed Jennie.  Shortly afterward, Josie had a dream where she pictured "a jumble of numbers."  She believed they were the car's registration numbers.  However, such a number could not be found in the automobile register.  Undaunted, Maria and Josie continued their seances, becoming increasingly convinced that they were indeed contacting the dead.  Two of Maria's nephews, Louis and Henry Ferrerio, a Mrs. Sangine Bena, and a neighboring family, the Bottinis, became drawn into these Ouija experiments.

Life became increasingly eerie for the Moros and their friends.  A grave-sized hole mysteriously appeared near the Moro home.  The family believed it was the work of spirits.  Maria Moro, who had been planning to remarry, became obsessed by a fear that her late husband's ghost would punish her for her decision.  The Bottini's fifteen-year-old daughter Adeline became convinced that she was possessed by the ghost of Jennie Moro, who "was completely in control of her body."  The climax to their spirit communications was to take place on March 3, 1920, when the circle believed a great "Passion Display" would take place.  Jennie's ghost, they declared, would cast out "the evil in all of them," and reveal the secret purpose of that hole.

As the great day grew near, the Moros, Mrs. Bena, and the Bottinis kept up a round of non-stop seances.  Twelve-year-old Rosa Bottini lost the ability to keep down food.  The others kept her alive with doses of holy water.  Adeline informed the others that the only way to save the child was to cut off her hair and burn it.  Adeline also destroyed most of her own clothes.  In a further attempt to cleanse the house of "evil spirits," the group burned $700 in cash, but they continued to feel persecuted by demons they had unwittingly unleashed.

Mrs. Bena's husband, Tony, became increasingly alarmed by what was going on in the Moro house. Not knowing what else to do, he went to the town marshal, A.W. MacKinnon, and informed him that the group had barricaded themselves in the Moro home and were "acting queerly."  Complaints were also made that neighborhood children had been lured into the house and were being held prisoner.  (It emerged that the group had shaved the children's heads and burned the hair, as part of their efforts to drive off the malevolent forces.)

When six police officers arrived at the Moro's door, they learned that this description was no exaggeration.  The residents refused to let the police inside, but they were persuaded to allow in J.J. Hennessy, a Catholic priest.  He found the group half-starved and near collapse from "nervous exhaustion."  They had not eaten or slept in days.  When the police finally forced their way in, Mrs. Moro screamed that her late husband's ghost would kill them.  Mrs. Bottini told them that "she had gone through the torment of the crucifixion, and then, being addressed by the Deity through her daughter, she had been brought back to Earth."  After a "lively tussle," the spiritualists were all hauled off to the county hospital.

"San Francisco Chronicle," March 5, 1920, via Newspapers.com

  

The next day, the County Lunacy Commission examined the group.  After hearing their story, the doctors ruled that Maria Moro, Adeline Bottini, Mrs. Bottini, and Josie Soldavini had gone insane, and the women were committed to local asylums.  (However, they were released within a few weeks.)  Their menfolk, who had "disavowed their belief in the alleged messages of the board," were set free.  Curiously, however, Mrs. Bottini's husband afterwards told reporters, "We believe in the Ouija board and our faith is unshaken.  The board will drive away evil spirits."  He rather unwisely added, "Do you think we look like maniacs?"

Ministers and psychiatrists used the incident as proof that Ouija boards were "an instrument of evil."  A mass meeting was held in El Cerrito's town hall addressing "the Ouija board craze."  It was proposed that all the town's citizens should be examined by mental health professionals, to make sure they had not been infected by the "craze."  There was also talk of barring the boards from the city limits, as a danger to public safety. 

Meanwhile, the would-be spiritualists, chastened by their frightening experience, reportedly burned their Ouija board, and life in what the newspapers called "The House of Mystery" slowly returned to a measure of sanity.  

The strange hole near the Moro home was never explained.  And the driver of the car that killed Jennie Moro was never found.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Let the show begin!

Watch out for the White Things of Appalachia!

Watch out for the ruched widow!

A young woman's unsolved murder.

The works of a medieval female poet.

A visit to the Museum of British Folklore.

What you could eat at an 1845 London Christmas market.

George III's regency crisis.

Letters from the real "Wolf Hall."

When clothing wasn't boring.

When the Knights of Malta had an air force.

A duel that wound up being an unexpected medical treatment.

One of the odder footnotes in the world of publishing.

Sir John Pryce, who really should have stayed a bachelor.

A medieval countess enters a convent.

An early female photographer.

The actor and the sea serpent.

Orcas are back to wearing dead salmon hats.  Carry on.

A death from a broken heart.

A mysterious ancient stone slab containing an unknown language.  H.P. Lovecraft, call your office.

A look at Hogarth's "cruelty."

History and haunted places.

Victorian letters to Santa.

The cat came back!

Jim the Wonder Dog.

The literary landscape of 19th century Paris.

A line of ancient humans who may have been more intelligent than we are.  Low bar, I know.

Chinese Emperors and supernatural horses.

That time when wild monkeys terrorized New York.

The origins of the phrase, "tuckered out."

The mysterious Hellenikon Pyramid.

The latest theory about the Loch Ness Monster.

A fountain that may have once been a clock.

Hitler's disastrous "halt order."

The latest "rewriting history" discovery.

A Roman dinner of death.

The history of the bidet.

Archaeologists have found an ancient clay head, and everyone's a bit creeped out by it.

The graffiti of Tower of London prisoners.

A woman who reshaped the Canadian frontier.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the sort of thing that happens when you start messing around with Ouija boards.  In the meantime, here's Percy Sledge.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This is one of those news items that is brief, ambiguous, apparently completely unresolved, and just plain weird.  The "Wilmington Sun," February 25, 1879:

Three weeks ago a lady died in Straitsville, and her body was buried in the cemetery. About a week subsequent, a lady and gentleman called upon the sexton who has charge of the cemetery, representing themselves to be the brother and sister of the dead woman. They requested the sexton to open the grave. Supposing that they wished to identify the remains, this request was complied with. The coffin was exhumed, the lid was removed, and the two parties stepped forward, and, to the astonishment of the sexton, proceeded to lift the corpse from the coffin.

Having accomplished this, they made a minute examination of the shroud and grave clothing, carefully removing every pin which was used in fastening the clothes. These, together with a finger-ring which they removed from a finger of the corpse, were thrown far off into the surrounding snow. Then, after rolling the corpse over several times, they replaced it in the coffin, screwed down the lid, assisted the sexton in replacing the same in the grave, and expressed themselves satisfied. Not a word of explanation was given to the bewildered sexton relative to their strange procedure. The twain are said to be from Hartford.

I can't even guess what this was all about, but I'm betting this family had quite a history.

The Colonel and the Civilian: A Wartime Ghost Story

Bernhard-Georg Meitzel fought in the German Army during WWII, reaching the rank of SS-Obersturmführer.  British forces captured Meitzel after the Normandy invasion, leading him to spend some months in an internment camp.  After the war, while in Germany awaiting his “denazification” trial, Meitzel--who was fluent in English--wrote an eerie tale which appeared in the Winter 1949 issue of “Fate” magazine, describing the time that he was an indirect witness to a ghostly vengeance.

While Meitzel was in the camp, he made the acquaintance of another prisoner, whom he simply described as “the Colonel in the threadbare uniform of a General Staff Officer.”  The two men discussed books and did a bit of horse-trading over their rations of cigarettes and black bread.  (As Meitzel did not smoke, he gave the Colonel his cigarettes, getting some bread in return.)

On the third day, the Colonel told him a grim story.  In 1942, the Colonel was commanding officer of a reconnaissance battalion.  They were advancing toward Demjansk to relieve a German garrison under siege from Russian forces.  When they were in Kobylkina, two corporals took a civilian prisoner when they saw he had a gun.  The man had no identity card, no other military equipment, and did not appear to know Russian.

The Colonel saw that the man was--hardly unreasonably, given the circumstances--very frightened.  The Colonel tried questioning him in both Russian and German, but got only the replies, “Nix Russian.  Nix German.”  The Colonel did not know what to make of the man.  Was he a civilian agent?  Or had he merely picked up a gun left by the retreating Russians in the hopes of trading it for food?  Unfortunately, no one there could speak the man’s language, so getting any story out of him was impossible.

The Colonel pitied the man, but did not see what could be done with him.  His battalion could not take him with them.  As the man was conceivably a guerrilla fighter, they could not turn him loose, either.  And the Colonel had strict orders to continuously advance.  A decision about the stranger had to be made immediately.  The Colonel decided there was only one thing he could do.  He gave the man bread, a cigarette, and a glass of vodka.  He then made a surreptitious gesture to his adjutant.

The prisoner was taken out and shot, desperately shouting, “Nix Russian!  Nix German!” until the bullets quieted him forever.

The Colonel felt a sense of guilt over the man’s execution, but rationalized to himself that during war, one had no choice but to do some ruthless things.  Before long, he was able to dismiss the matter from his mind.

In 1943, the Colonel flew to Army HQ in Pleskau.  An armored car was on the tarmac, about to leave the airfield.  The driver told him, “I’m in a hurry, please get in.”  As the Colonel was about to follow the driver, he saw a man in ragged civilian clothes on the far side of the road, waving to him.  The Colonel couldn’t hear anything over the loud car engine, but he thought the man was shouting something.  The Colonel ignored the increasingly impatient driver and went towards the man.  As he drew nearer, he suddenly recognized the waving, shouting figure.  It was the man whom he had ordered killed at Kobylkina.  As the Colonel stared in increasing horror, the man entered a control-booth.  The Colonel followed him into the room, only to find it empty.

When he came back out, the Colonel asked a passing soldier if he had seen a civilian hanging around.  “No sir. No civilians are allowed on the airfield, sir.”

The shaken Colonel began walking back to the armored car.  An ambulance raced past him.  And the armored car was gone.  A few moments later, the ambulance returned.  He heard the ambulance driver shout to a medical officer, “Dead.  All of ‘em.”

The Colonel asked him if he was talking about the car that left the airfield just a few moments earlier.  He was.

The Colonel told Meitzel, “Since then, I’ve kept asking myself why did it happen?  Why was I saved by a man whose execution I had ordered?  Was he sent by my guardian angel?  Was he my guardian angel?  Why was my life spared at all?  To get another chance in life?  To try to prevent a recurrence of the madness of the last war?

“I don’t know the answer yet.  But after spending three years in this internment camp I am about to believe that I was only spared to meet a more dreadful fate.  Who knows when they are going to turn me over to the Russians or to the Jugoslavs?”

The Colonel stared into space for a moment, and went back to his book.

The following day, Meitzel did not see his friend around the camp.  He was told that the previous night, the Colonel left the camp under guard.  Nobody knew where he had been taken.

Meitzel never learned what became of the Colonel.  He guessed the man had been taken to a Soviet concentration camp to meet the “more dreadful fate” he had predicted for himself.