Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This sinister little ghost story--with hints of murder and spectral vengeance thrown in--appeared in the “Garnett-Journal Plaindealer,” May 6, 1887:

New York, May 2. A New Haven, Conn., special says: Charles L. Beecher, who committed suicide Sunday, is now believed by many to have been driven to his death by a belief that he was haunted by the ghost of his wife.  The fact that he took so much pains in preparing for his death is thought to indicate that his mind had given way. He first shot his pet dog, and then seated himself in an easy chair and took aim through the medium of a hand-mirror, and put a bullet through his head. He had previously told some of his neighbors that he could not live in the house, owing to the frequent appearance of the spirit of his wife, who died about three months ago. He said her figure, increased to twice its natural size, appeared to him on the wall of his room very often.

The vision always seemed to be carrying a baby in its arms, and this, he said, was the figure of an infant that his wife had lost. Corroboration of the ghost story was given by a 16-year-old girl named Collar, who lives in the house adjoining the one occupied by Beecher. This girl, together with a servant employed in the house of L.L. Camp, nearby, went into Beecher's house one evening at his invitation to see the ghost.

Miss Collar says that a huge figure like a shadow did appear on the wall, carrying a babe in its arms. Beecher sat in his chair and pointed to the apparition, exclaiming: "There she is; there's my wife!" Miss Collar says that she ran up to the wall and slapped the vision, but when she did so it moved off to another portion of the wall, and when she repeated the slapping operation the same thing took place. The servant girl who was with her says that she, too, saw the figure. Beecher has been seen moving things out of the house of late. Some say that he did not treat his wife well toward the end of her life.

When she died one of the neighbors went to Medical Examiner White and told him the case would bear investigation, but nothing ever came of it. Beecher was once a very well-to-do boot and shoe dealer here.

The Cursed Subdivision

When you move into a new home, it’s expected that there will be one or two unpleasant surprises.  Maybe the plumbing isn’t all that it should be, or the neighbors throw a lot of noisy parties, or, oops, your couch won’t fit through the front door.  What you don’t expect to deal with are a bunch of corpses in the backyard that hold a grudge against you.  But, as you will see, such things sometimes happen.

In the early 1980s, developers completed a housing subdivision in Newport, just outside of Houston, Texas.  It was designed for upper-middle class families wanting a quiet, scenic refuge that still provided an easy commute to the big city.  Among the first people to move in were Ben and Jean Williams.  From the moment the couple settled into their home, they felt an inexplicable sense of unease, as if they were being watched by an unfriendly presence.  There also were more tangible difficulties: toilets that flushed themselves, flickering electric lights, a garage door that opened and closed on its own, and a yard that was always full of poisonous snakes.  The couple began sensing shadowy figures just beyond their peripheral vision.  Adding to the atmosphere of quiet menace was the fact that a tree in their backyard was dotted with peculiar markings--downward pointing arrows with slash marks underneath them--and the ground was covered in rectangular sinkholes.  The Williams’ neighbors told them that they were experiencing the same uncanny problems.

The source for the subdivision’s strange woes remained a mystery until 1983, when two other Newport residents, Sam and Judith Haney, began building a swimming pool in their backyard.  The excavation uncovered two very old coffins containing the remains of a man and a woman.

This disturbing discovery caused the Newport families to do a bit of detective work about their properties.  This led them to an elderly retired gravedigger named Jasper Norton.  He informed them that their neighborhood was built on top of an old cemetery called Black Hope.  Underneath their beautiful, well-maintained homes were at least sixty bodies, most of them former slaves.  Norton informed the Haneys that they had accidentally disinterred the remains of Betty and Charlie Thomas, who had died in the 1930s.

The Haneys--not knowing what else to do--decided to rebury the couple in their yard.  Unfortunately, this does not appear to have placated Mr. and Mrs. Thomas.  The Haney house was immediately plagued by some very annoyed ghosts.  The Haneys would hear spectral voices and footsteps throughout the hallways.  A clock--unplugged at the time--began to glow and shoot sparks.  One night, Judith was alone in the house when she heard the sliding glass doors open and close.  She assumed it was Sam returning from work, but when she went downstairs, nobody was there.  The next morning, she found a pair of her shoes resting on top of Betty Thomas’ grave.  Before long, the entire subdivision was facing similar supernatural menaces.  Unsurprisingly, the neighborhood became nearly deserted, with many people preferring foreclosure over phantoms.

The Williamses and the Haneys were among the few families who opted to stick it out.  They would soon regret this.  Both families began suffering inexplicable health problems.  Those ominous rectangular sinkholes kept reappearing in their yards, no matter how many times they would add dirt to them.  The disembodied footsteps continued to march through their rooms.  One night, Ben Williams saw a spectral figure floating over his sleeping wife.  When the Williams' eight-year-old granddaughter Carli visited them, she would talk to "the dead people" in her sleep.  "They don't want us here," the girl told her elders.

The Haneys sued the neighborhood’s developer for not disclosing the seemingly relevant fact that the subdivision was built over a cemetery.  The jury awarded them a settlement, but this was reversed by a judge.  The development company then counter-sued the Haneys for harassment.  The exhausted couple felt they had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and abandon their new home.   The Williamses, on the other hand, were determined to stick it out.  They too wanted to sue their developer, and were anxious to find additional evidence against the company.  When in 1987, an old-time resident of the area told them that the odd arrow marks on their tree indicated the site where two sisters had been buried, Jean got a shovel and began to dig.  Later that day, Jean’s daughter Tina, who had come by for a visit, suffered a heart attack which led to her death three days later.  She was only thirty years old.

"The Missoulian," June 9, 1991, via Newspapers.com

After this tragedy, the Williams family just wanted to get as far away from the--literally--damned house as they could.  They were convinced that moving on top of the cemetery had released “something evil.”  The couple abandoned the property and moved to Montana.  Curiously, Tina’s death appeared to mark the end of the subdivision’s haunting, leaving the remaining residents to live in peace.  Perhaps the unquiet ghosts of the old cemetery felt they had finally gotten their revenge.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Or, as we like to call it here at Strange Company HQ, "The Catty News."

Faking your own death seldom works out well.

The Carbondale UFO incident.

The Manhattan alien abduction.

The education of a 15th century Italian girl.

This week in Russian Weird: One of their spy whales is on the lam!

Britain's Great UFO Hoax.

Some revolutionary spinning pebbles.

One really freaking big fungus.

Here's your chance to play 17th Century Death Roulette!

In case you're wondering how scientists spend their days, they are teaching rats to drive.

Eggs and shee-spies.

The world's first seed bank.

A goofy around-the-world hoax.

Before you hire lawyers, make sure they know which side they're on.

The whip-poor-will, omen of death.

A naked man commits some particularly gruesome murders.

Always make sure your spouse is dead before they're buried.  It would avoid embarrassing complications.

All hail the scarlet tanager!

Places where you can travel back in time.

Descriptions of Early Modern natural catastrophes.

Memories are not just in our minds.

Whaling and the 19th century cosmetics industry.

England's Vagrancy Act of 1824.

The German-Soviet talks of 1940.

The saint who just couldn't stop levitating.

A needlework sampler with an export bar.

The Spanish vs. the Incan Empire.

Restoring Bernini.

The pubs of Old London.

Geology and aerial photography.

The legendary flights of Thomas Fitzpatrick.

The origins of the word "cheeseparing."

Elephants may like practical jokes.

Do we owe life on Earth to plate tectonics?

The mystery of the bamboo wagon in the glacier.

A beach I do not recommend visiting.

A woman's five-year pregnancy.

The return of medicinal leeches.

A letter from Joan of Arc.

Was there a silver lining to the Black Death?

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at some really bad real estate.  In the meantime, here's an old English country dance tune.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

In fictional murder mysteries, sometimes the victim manages to leave behind clues indicating the identity of their killer.  In the following real-life case, that really did happen.  Well, almost.  The “Twice-A-Week Messenger,” November 24, 1903:

Elmira, N. Y., Nov. 20--W. H. Clendenen, a telegraph operator at Brown, Pa., a station fifteen miles north of Williamsport, on the Beech Creek division of the New York Central railroad, was found dead in the telegraph tower shortly after 8 o'clock last night. At 6:50 o'clock the operator at Oak Grove, Pa., on the same road, received this message from Clendenen: "Send switch engine quick to me; I am being murdered by---" The wire opened and not another word came. A switch engine was sent to the scene and reached Brown in a short time.

The body was found lying under the desk, the head crushed in. A bloody spike maul lay on the floor beside it. Robbery apparently was the motive, the watch and money of the operator being missing. Clendenen evidently recognized his assailant and was about to wire his name when he was struck dead at the key.

In 1904, the wife of a local lowlife named Sherman Jamison told authorities that he was responsible for robbing and murdering a series of telegraph operators--including Clendenen.  When police came to arrest him, he managed to escape.  In 1905, a skeleton was found in the mountains where it was believed Jamison had fled.  It was speculated that these remains were those of the missing bandit, but this was never proven.  In any case, Jamison was apparently never seen again.  Clendenen’s murder was never officially solved.

The Witches of Innsbruck Strike Back

Witchcraft trials are hardly known for their happy endings, so I am pleased to share with you a tale where one remarkable woman took on a notorious witch-hunter--and won.

The villain of our piece is Heinrich Kramer, monk and self-appointed witch inquisitor.  Kramer was a staunch advocate of a theory which emerged in the late fifteenth century--that the practice of witchcraft was not harmless pagan superstition, but a religious heresy practiced by evil minions of Satan himself.  Kramer was anxious to stage a well-publicized trial to showcase his pet belief, and in 1485, he found his opportunity in Innsbruck, Austria.

Kramer called on Innsbruck’s ruler, Archduke Sigismund, presented him with papal decrees formally sanctioning his witch-hunting work, and informed the Archduke that he intended to set up shop.  This put Sigismund in a bind.  He was not fond of the idea of this bossy little fellow interfering in the life and work of his seemingly law-abiding subjects, but on the other hand, well, orders from the Pope are orders from the Pope.  In what I imagine was a somewhat grumpy manner, Sigismund told Kramer to get on with it already.

We know very little about the other major figure in our story.  This is a great pity, because Helena Scheuberin was clearly a person that History would have liked to have known better.  About all that is recorded about her biography is that she was a native of Innsbruck who, in 1477, married a merchant named Sebastian Scheuber.  (As was the custom in those days, when Helena wed, she took on the feminized version of her husband’s surname.  Her family name is unknown.)  

Helena was an attractive woman from what was evidently a prosperous background, so Sebastian had less fortunate rivals for her hand.  Among them was the head manager of Archduke Sigismund’s kitchens (his name is unrecorded.)  After Helena and Sebastian married, our high-level cook consoled himself by taking a Bavarian woman as his bride.  In October 1485, things took a startling turn when the cook and his wife paid a visit to Kramer in order to accuse Helena of being a witch.  The cook explained that before Helena married Sebastian, she had been the cook’s lover.  After their split, things remained so friendly between them that Helena attended the cook’s wedding.  However, at the reception afterwards, Helena made an ominous comment to the bride:  “You shall not have many good and healthy days here.”  The cook’s wife assured Kramer that, sure enough, in the seven years of her marriage, she had enjoyed only one month of well-being.  Well, what additional proof of witchcraft do you need?

Kramer picked up more local gossip about Helena.  Some of her neighbors said that since her marriage, Helena had an “intimate friendship” with a knight named Jorg Spiess.  After she rejected Jorg’s suggestion that they take things to a more physical level, the knight suddenly and mysteriously died.  Jorg’s family told Kramer that on the day Spiess died, he had dined with Helena.  Afterwards, he took ill, wailing, “I have eaten something I can’t get over…the reason why I’m dying is that woman killed me!”  Jorg sent for his doctor, but he died soon after the physician’s arrival.  (As a side note, Helena’s husband Sebastian was having an affair with one of Jorg’s relatives, which could conceivably give the Spiess family a motive for wanting Helena permanently out of the picture.)

Helena herself, meanwhile, was not shy about treating the witch-hunter with the contempt she felt he deserved.  Kramer whined in a letter that “not only did she harass me with constant rebukes from the start (I had scarcely been in town for three days)” but “one time when I passed her and did not acknowledge her, she spat on the ground, publicly uttering these words: ‘Pah—you! You lousy monk! I hope you get the falling sickness!’”  As a bonus insult, Helena not only refused to attend Kramer’s sermons, she encouraged others to boycott him as well.  She found his obsession with demons and witchcraft “heretical,” adding, “When the devil leads a monk astray, he spouts nothing but heresy. I hope the falling sickness knocks him on the head!”  As Marion Gibson noted in her recent book, “Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials,” Helena’s reaction to the witch-finder was remarkably sane: “She was not overreacting,” Gibson wrote, “nor was she ignorant of the risk--the lives of women in her town were in danger, so she spoke up. Far from being a witch, she was an intelligent, engaged Christian.”  Helena argued theology with Kramer in a way he probably had never experienced before--certainly not from a woman.

Helena was brave, of course, but bravery is an excellent way to put a target on your own back.  And that was exactly what happened.  “For this reason,” Kramer went on, “I had to investigate her name and life for the first time.”  He suspected her of being guilty of “double heresy, namely a heresy of Faith and the heresy of Witches.”  Kramer accused Helena of being not only promiscuous, but “deceitful, spirited, and pushy.”  There were other Innsbruck women Kramer believed guilty of various heresies:  Rosina Hochwartin, her mother Barbara, Barbara Pflieglin, Barbara Hüfeysen, Barbara Selachin, and Agnes Schneiderin. Kramer saw them as a literal coven of witches, with Helena as their leader.  Although a total of 63 people were investigated by Kramer, these women were the only ones to be formally charged.  Gibson found it an “inescapable conclusion” that Kramer “was looking almost exclusively for female witches.”

Their trial began on October 29, 1485.  It was a church court, with Kramer acting as judge.  Helena was the first defendant to be questioned.  It is safe to say that it did not go as Kramer had hoped.  His interrogation went off the rails almost immediately when he bluntly asked Helena if she had been a virgin when she married.  Onlookers were shocked.  Witch or not, one did not ask the wife of a respectable Innsbruck merchant that sort of question.  Christian Turner, who was in court as the representative of the local bishop, rebuked Kramer that such things were “secret matters that hardly concern the case,” and ordered him to change the subject.

Turner was not finished.  He demanded to know why Kramer had not presented the court with formal written articles detailing the charges against the women.  Caught off guard by this unexpected resistance, Kramer muttered that the proceedings would be suspended until 11 a.m. while he prepared the articles.  At eleven, Kramer received another nasty surprise.  When Helena reappeared in court, she was accompanied by Johann Merwart, a highly-respected expert in church law.  It was announced that Lord Merwart would be acting as legal representative for the defendants.

Yes.  The witches had lawyered up.

Even going by the dry historical record, Merwart clearly had fun tearing Kramer’s case into judicial ribbons.  He questioned the technical legitimacy of the whole proceedings.  He mocked Kramer for focusing on “hidden sins” rather than focusing on “articles of bad reputation”...but, whoops, Kramer hadn’t even bothered writing those articles.  Merwart declared that Kramer “just seized the women before he instituted the proceedings in the proper setup.”

Merwart was just getting warmed up.  He dismissed Kramer “as being a suspect judge in this cause,” and asked the Lord Commissary to toss the witch-hunter into the nearest jail cell.  Merwart advised his clients to not answer any of Kramer’s questions “because he was no longer their judge.”

Kramer responded to this onslaught by angrily declaring that he was indeed competent to judge the case.  Merwart cheerily replied that he would bring that question to the Pope, and have him decide.

Christian Turner then intervened, suggesting that the trial be adjourned for two days, to let everyone cool off.  He, Turner, would then give his judgment on whether Kramer was competent to try the case.

Coincidentally or not, when the court reconvened, it was on the evening before All Saints--what we today usually call “Halloween.”  When everyone had gathered together, Turner announced his decision: That the trial had been “instituted in violation of the legal system.”  He ordered that the accused women be immediately released from custody.  It was also revealed that Archduke Sigismund had paid the women’s legal bills, as well as the expenses Kramer had run up in Innsbruck.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  Everyone was now free to go on their merry way.  Court officials strongly suggested that Kramer not let the door hit him on the way out.

Unfortunately for the world, Kramer got revenge for his defeat by writing “Malleus Maleficarum,” intended as a training manual for other witch-hunters.  It is one of the most cruel and misogynistic books ever written.  Kramer described all women--going back to Eve--as stupid, sex-obsessed, dishonest, and generally dangerous.  Little wonder, he argued, that nearly all practitioners of the black arts were female.  He declared that these witches must be sought out and destroyed.  Oh, and don’t bother with “legal niceties.”  Just round up those devil worshipers, and torture them until they confess.  His arguments, deranged as they sound, were appallingly influential, resulting in the persecution and death of uncountable numbers of people, largely women.

Although Kramer lost the Innsbruck battle, you could say he won the war.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

It's not the only new thing around here, I guess.

Britain's last executed witch...may not have been executed after all.

Why we call it a "grandfather clock."

The British "bonfire night" of 1824.

Why ancient Roman concrete was so strong.

The use of medicinal herbs 15,000 years ago.

To some people, it's a museum.  To others, it's a crime scene.

The day it rained cats in Brooklyn.

The days of professional walking.

Some old-fashioned cocoa and cider recipes.

Some old-fashioned sandwich recipes.  (Be warned: Most of them sound pretty horrifying.)

A medieval nurse gets a raise.

In which a bunch of Chinese dinosaurs die boring deaths.

The cat science behind "If it fits, I sits."

The life of a British barrister in India.

Do ghosts die?

The old signage of London.

Pro tip: Before buying a home, check the attic.

The mysterious sequel to an Iron Age massacre.

Some medieval marginalia.

The cholera scourge, 1849.

Do you ever get the feeling that you belong to the wrong species?

Divination in Early Modern Britain.

The Battle of Tippecanoe.

A murder case with some wild twists.

Did prehistoric Polynesians sail to Antarctica?

Is this the world's oldest tree?

The life and death of an Ice Age infant.

A brief history of the "royal we."

A "boy murderer."

The mice of Philpot Lane.

A slice of medieval Polish history.

A bizarre ancient "Frankenstein" skeleton.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a witchcraft case with a feel-good ending.  In the meantime, bring on the mandolins!

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.

Fake Telegrams and a Genuine Death: The Elizabeth Cook Mystery

In February 1932, a twenty-year-old Bostonian named Elizabeth Barrett Cook was sailing in the steamer Chinese Prince from Naples to Gibraltar.  However, when she received a cablegram from a Helen James, announcing the death of Cook’s fiancé, St. George Arnold, the young woman naturally planned to head home as soon as possible, although the message, rather oddly, told her “on no account” to return to America.

She never made it.  Soon after she received the tragic news, she fell ill, and soon afterward was found dead in her cabin, with the cable lying beside her.

And here the story turns from mere tragedy to dizzying insanity.  It soon transpired that the cable was a hoax.  No one in the Cook family had ever heard of any “Helen James.”  And Mr. Arnold was alive and in perfect health.  It was also discovered that this was not the first time Miss Cook had been the target of such a cruel stunt.  Found among her papers was another cable she had received the previous June, alerting her to the serious illness of her mother.  That statement had been another ghoulish fiction.

How did this young woman die so suddenly, you may be wondering?  Good question.  Some reports said traces of a sleeping drug were found in her system, indicating either accidental or deliberate overdose.  Other reports discount this, saying she died of pneumonia.  An autopsy was performed, but it was unable to show the cause of Cook's death.  However, no sign of drugs were found in her organs.

Who sent the sadistic “joke” cablegrams?  You tell me.  A theory was floated at the time that, out of a peculiar sense for the dramatic, Miss Cook sent the messages to herself.  The Boston Post ran a story alleging that on a previous cruise, Cook had sent herself a fake telegram announcing the death of her mythical sweetheart, “Malcolm,” after which she staged a melodramatic scene threatening suicide.  

Many people are fond of hoaxing others, but hoaxing yourself would be something of a first.  

"Sheboygan Press," February 24, 1932, via Newspapers.com

The “Post” alluded to reports that sleeping pills had been found in her cabin, and hinted that Cook had used them to stage what she intended to be a fake suicide attempt that, unfortunately, proved to be more realistic than she had expected.  According to one story, it was discovered that the bogus messages were not cablegrams, but telegrams that had been sent from Italy, which suggested she had sent them from Naples just before boarding the “Chinese Prince.”  However, as far as I can tell this was never corroborated.  Having only the conflicting contemporary news stories to go by, it is hard to tell how much of what they printed was solid fact or fanciful fiction.

An intriguing detail was that it was well-known that Cook was an heiress.  The very next year, she was due to receive two legacies that would have made her an extremely wealthy young woman.  It was never made clear who would receive this money in the event of her death.  It is impossible to tell what, if any, connection this had to her strange demise.

If there was any solid resolution to this peculiar case, it evidently was never disclosed.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

I'd invite you all for dinner, but the kitchen staffers at Strange Company HQ are having One Of Those Days.

The Stull-Best murder.

The trick-or-treat murder.

A plant that is "both ghost and vampire."

Victorian era swapping.

The practice of feeding the dead to vultures.

Railway travel in 19th century France.

Mexico's "back door to Hell."

Why "Fido" became a popular dog name.

Rules for medieval anchoresses.

Ancient fortune-telling tools.

A genealogist goes rogue.

Scary medieval animals.

Scary medieval witches.

A murderous mother.

The range of mystical experiences.

Drunken ghosts!  Cannibal ghosts!

Julius Caesar vs. the pirates.

Humans aren't the only ones who like to tie one on.

When numbers were tactile.

Why ghosts aren't usually naked.

The nature of terror.

An alien abduction case in Los Angeles.  (A caveat: I live in L.A., and it's often hard to tell the extraterrestrial visitors from the native residents.  Just FYI.)

An alien abduction case in New York.

We see them here, we see them there, we see those damned ghosts everywhere.

A visit to the UK's most haunted castle.

A wild story about a royal dentist.

The piece of cheese that nearly destroyed a rocket test.

October 31 is more than just Halloween.

Mark Twain's haunted house.

A brief history of palm reading.

A brief history of the muses.

The grim side of Victorian humor.

A memorial to librarians who died during WWI.

The strange case of the vanishing police chief.

A demon-possessed convent.

More evidence that we've been underestimating Neanderthals.

A diplomatic incident, 1600.

A previously unknown Chopin piece has been discovered.

Victorian scientists were fascinated by ghosts.

Ancient Mesopotamians were fascinated by beer.

The Harvard astrophysicist who's fascinated by alien wreckage.

Maybe we shouldn't meditate.  (And don't even talk to me about hypnosis.  I know someone who was really screwed up by that crap.)

A brief history of the word, "scary."

The skeleton that confirmed a Norse saga.

Why smugglers used to love ghost stories.

The Corpsewood Manor murders.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a young woman's puzzling death.  In the meantime, here's a lovely bit of Bach.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This odd little maybe-it-was-a-poltergeist-maybe-it-wasn't story appeared in the "Greenville (South Carolina) News," May 15, 1960:

GAFFNEY (AP) - It's a little spooky when a milk-filled glass suddenly shatters in the hand. 

Or when the best glass ash tray cracks with a loud noise. 

Equally ghostly is the noticeable break in a sea shell that adorns a living room end table. 

A vase and serving tray also are victims of the silent menace that has plagued the fragile contents of the Brian Eppley home in Gaffney for the past several weeks. 

Mr. Eppley, a former Charlotte resident who recently moved to Gaffney, believes these breakages are caused by frequency waves emitting from his television receiver. 

"You can't hear anything," he states, "but I can feel it...like pressure, beyond the area of hearing, from these waves." 

He says he develops a headache while watching TV.

Mrs. Eppley says that objects break only after the set has been on for a long period. "And the breaks occur only while the TV is on," she adds. 

Mr. and Mrs. Eppley were sitting in front of their TV set a few days ago. Suddenly, they heard a loud report. Their ash tray had split in the center. 

Later, other objects fell under the mysterious spell. 

Then the chain of events was climaxed when a glass broke into pieces while Mrs. Eppley held it and watched TV.

I couldn't find any follow-ups to this mystery, although three months after this story was published, South Carolina papers carried a small news item informing us that Brian D. Eppley, a former Charlotte resident who had recently moved to Gaffney, was arrested on charges of armed robbery.  Maybe he needed to pay for a new television.

A Halloween Mystery: The Disappearance of Pamela Hobley and Patricia Spencer

Halloween is a day of ghosts, witches, goblin cats…and occasionally, as the case below will demonstrate, an eerie real-life mystery.

16-year old Pamela Hobley and Patricia Spencer, who was a year younger, were high school students in Oscoda, Michigan.   The public learned relatively little about the girls, but they appeared to be normal, unremarkable middle-class teenagers.  Pamela was engaged to be married, but I presume the wedding was intended to be in the distant future.  There were rumors that the girls liked to party and did a bit of experimenting with drugs and alcohol, but if so, that does not seem to have had any major negative impact on their lives.

Pamela Hobley

On October 31, 1969, some anonymous idiot decided to celebrate the holiday by phoning a bomb threat to the girls’ high school.  It was believed to be a mere hoax, but Pamela and Patricia signed out of school early.  They were seen walking away from the building at around 2 p.m.  The fact that they left together was considered odd.  The girls knew each other, but were not considered friends.  Neither of them had their purses or any other belongings with them.  

Both the girls had plans to attend a homecoming game that evening, followed by a Halloween party, so when Pamela’s mother, Lois, and younger siblings returned home from trick-or-treating, they were not surprised that she was not at home.  They only started to worry when Pamela’s boyfriend phoned, asking why she was not at the party.  Lois began phoning the families of other students, but none of them had seen Pamela.  When she reached the Spencer home, and learned that Patricia was missing as well, Lois contacted police.

Patricia Spencer

This was one of those missing-persons cases where investigators had almost nothing to work with.  At first, police assumed the girls had simply run away, but if such was the case, why did neither of them take even the basics like money or ID?  Also, both the girls seemed happy enough with their lives, with no discernible reason to disappear.  Police believed that after leaving the high school, Pamela and Patricia hitched a ride to Oscoda’s downtown area, but after that, it was as if they simply walked into oblivion.  We have no reliable clues for what subsequently became of either girl.

There is one odd footnote to this disturbingly vague case:  Shortly before the girls disappeared, an old boyfriend of Patricia’s named Francis Tebo got into some sort of trouble with the law, which caused him to be sent to Whitmore Lake Boys’ Training School.  In November 1969, he underwent an appendectomy in a Detroit hospital.  Soon after the operation, Francis ran away from the hospital and vanished.  At first, there was speculation that Francis’ disappearance was somehow linked to the Hobley/Spencer mystery, but it appears that the boy was subsequently traced, and police were able to satisfy themselves that he knew nothing about the two girls.  

Police learned that in 1968, one of the girls had, without her knowledge, been given a drugged drink by an airman at nearby Wurtsmith Air Force Base, after which she was found “in the woods having hallucinations.”  (The airman was subsequently convicted of the crime.)  However, no one could find any connection between this incident and the girls’ disappearance.

Despite the long passage of time, police are still hoping to solve the case.  Over the years, they have pursued various leads, but without any success.  The girls’ remaining family members are also actively searching for answers, but at least some of their relatives are convinced Pamela and Patricia were murdered soon after they vanished.  Pamela’s sister Mary Buehrle, who was eight when her sibling vanished, told a reporter in 2023 that "We watched my mom on her deathbed and she saw Pam.”

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

As an aside, I suspect that everyone who's lived with cats is used to being awakened in this way.

What the hell was Trunko?

A marshal's unsolved murder.

Why "W" is sometimes silent.

How "snake oil" became a term for fraud.

Elizabethan witchcraft and the legal system.

The people obsessed with Find-a-Grave.

A submerged 2,000-year-old temple.

When election ballots were works of art.

One freaking big geoglyph.

A tiny, but elaborate, house in Pompeii.

A haunted lighthouse.

The latest in the search for Noah's Ark.

A brief history of gremlins.

The fine art of being a British villain.

A look at the Qatar Digital Library.

The rediscovery of the graves of four Continental soldiers.

The mystery of "Syndrome X."

A mysterious mathematical genius.

The last chapter of the Vietnam War.

When your dead relatives come to tell you, "You're next."

Easter Island and the Earth's mantle.

The history of two prominent 18th century families.

The moon-eyed people of Appalachia.

Vintage London fogs and smogs.

Some really weird plants.

Captain Elton, who just couldn't stay buried.

Why you never want to cross paths with a mega-meteorite.  Unless, of course, you like boiled oceans.

London's haunted pubs.

The man who may have been Britain's first black voter.

A lament for the lost art of letter-writing.

Artifacts of medieval women.

The first dedicated attack chopper.

The spider that changed astronomy.

The inn that's the seventh-most haunted place in the world. I had no idea there was a competitive ranking for such things.

The notorious Hammersmith Ghost.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a Halloween mystery.  In the meantime, here's a cute little instrument that I'd never heard of until the other day.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Everyone loves a good death omen account (unless you’re the unfortunate one to see it, of course,) and this is something of a doozy.  The “Moncton Transcript,” August 20, 1896:

WILKESBARRE, Aug. 20.--Robert Montgomery, of Wanamie, near here, died today under very peculiar circumstances, and evidently from fright or a belief that he had been warned of his approaching death by a wraith, and that he had a premonition that he could not live.

For years Montgomery has been employed as pump runner in No. 18 colliery of the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal Company at Wanamie. He was a brave soldier in the late war, and was not easily frightened. Two weeks ago he said that while he was attending to his work he heard a peculiar noise in the mine. He paid no attention to it at the time.

A few moments later a peculiar feeling came over him as though there was an awful draught circulating through the mine and he became chilly. He looked up from his work, as he had just started to oil the machinery, at the repetition of the strange noise. He claimed he felt as though there was some one else about besides himself. He could not see any one, and strained his eyes far into the dark recess. Then he beheld a white object about the size of a man.

It moved about as though floating in the air and kept a certain distance from him. He spoke to the strange apparition several times, but not a sound came from it, and it soon disappeared from view, keeping its face toward him all the time. Montgomery at once made a search, but failed to find anyone lurking or hiding about, and he was in a quandary to the matter. He was very much affected, and told his friends he regarded the wraith as an omen of death. He at once gave up his position and, a couple of days later, took to his bed although he had no specific sickness which the doctors could discover.

He continued to talk of the wraith and said it was of no avail to take medicine or care for himself, that he was doomed, and might as well reconcile himself to death. Some of his friends tried to dispel his thoughts about death, by saying it was a man sent in by the company to see if he performed his duty. But the deceased would never believe anything else but that it was the omen of death, and grew gradually weaker until the death he had looked for came early this morning.

The Mystery of Flight 23

The Boeing 247 was the first modern passenger airline.  It was considered a wonder in its day.  For the first time, a passenger plane was soundproof, air-conditioned, and so quiet that those onboard could speak to each other without having to yell.  However, what the plane is perhaps best known for was its involvement with an enigmatic tragedy.

At 6:57 p.m. on October 10, 1933, United Flight 23 took off from Cleveland, Ohio for a Chicago-bound flight with seven people on board, including the crew.  It seemed a perfectly routine journey.  The plane carried the pilot, Harold Tarrant, his co-pilot A.T. Ruby, stewardess Alice Scribner, and passengers Dorothy Dwyer, Emil Smith, Warren Burris, and Frederick Schoendorff.  They were average, decent people going about their normal lives.  Tarrant, Scribner, and Dwyer were all engaged to be married.  At 8:46 p.m., Tarrant radioed from North Liberty, Indiana, that the plane was on-track to land in Chicago at 9:47.

This was the last word from anyone on Flight 23.  At around 9:15, when the plane was five miles southeast of Chesterton, Indiana, it exploded so violently it sent shock waves through the normally peaceful farmland below.  The tail end, containing two of the passengers, plummeted straight downwards.  The other half of the plane, in the words of one witness, “shot to earth like a blazing comet” near Jackson Center Township.  Seven souls had just suffered a sudden and horrifying death.

"Vidette-Messenger," October 11, 1933, via Newspapers.com

At first, investigators assumed the explosion had been caused by some tragic, unforeseen accident.  Perhaps a motor or a gas tank ruptured.  Or maybe a passenger’s cigarette ignited gas from a broken fuel line.  Was the plane hit by lightning?  A meteorite?  Some predicted that, considering there were no survivors to explain what had happened, the cause of the catastrophe was fated to remain unknown.

However, Melvin S. Purvis, the head of the FBI’s Chicago office, believed that Flight 23 had been brought down by a bomb, and FBI agents were sent to secure the wreckage.  Dr. Clarence W. Muehlberger, a crime detection expert for Chicago’s coroner’s office, studied the debris.  The shrapnel holes he found on many of the remains caused him to conclude that the plane had been brought down by some sort of very powerful explosive.  (The FBI eventually determined that nitroglycerin had been used.) It became accepted that they were not dealing with a simple freak accident, but the first act of airline terrorism in American history.

But what was the motive?  Did someone on the plane commit an act of suicide/mass murder?  Did unions or gangsters sabotage Flight 23 for some as-yet unknown reason?  Did one of the passengers or crew have a very, very deadly enemy?  Did a passenger, unwittingly or not, carry the bomb aboard, or was it secretly placed in the plane when it made a routine refueling stop in Cleveland?

The FBI first turned their attention to Emil Smith, who had boarded the flight when it made a stop in Newark.  Their suspicions were aroused by the fact that the day before, Smith had purchased life insurance promising a payout of $10,000 if his plane should crash.  Witnesses said Smith had brought on to the plane a handgun and a brown paper sack, which they thought was odd.  However, Smith, a WWI veteran who lived with his aunt, appeared to be a quiet, prosperous man completely incapable of any sort of evil.  Eventually, the paper sack was located, and although its contents were never made public, the FBI announced that Smith was clearly an innocent victim.

The investigation dragged on until September 20, 1935, when J. Edgar Hoover announced that “all undeveloped leads in this case have been exhausted,” and therefore, the Bureau was closing the books on the crime.  Since that day, no new information in the case has surfaced.  It is likely we will never know who planted a bomb on Flight 23, let alone why they did so.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

This week's Link Dump is on the march!

Remembering the victims of a long-ago mining disaster.

A perverted patrolman's revenge.

A dog climbed the Great Pyramid, and everyone is hoping he got down just as safely.

A coded tombstone.

A clandestine marriage minister.

Vintage photos show how much Los Angeles has changed over the years.  And not for the better.

Photographs of a vanished London.

Plants to banish evil.

Margery Kempe, history's weepiest mystic.

The mysterious "Red Deer Cave People."

Rediscovering ancient technology.

Why is the world filled with witches?

Why we can't seem to escape karaoke.

What New Zealanders once thought of Americans.  Maybe this is how they still think of Americans. Don't ask me.

The Great Misery Island.

A visit from the Death Angel.

A tale of a "single man."

The ghosts of Waterloo.

WWI's Attack of the Dead Men.

A swashbuckling soldier's mysterious death.

Mapping the Pacific Northwest.

The discovery of one of the world's oldest Christian churches.

Clairvoyance and the Cottingley fairies.

A lost grave, Ouija boards, and John Waters, all in the same post.

The confessions of a murderer.

The most haunted pubs in York, England.

Harry the life-saving horse.

The long history of the "vanishing hitchhiker."

In which Zelda reviews F. Scott.

A murder case where the butler really did it.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an airline flight that ended in mysterious tragedy.  In the meantime, here's Johnny!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This is one of those odd news items that is difficult to place in any of the usual categories.  The “Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Examiner,” August 25, 1875:

The Reading Eagle, of Wednesday, contains the following queer and quaint details of a strange affair, to which, it says, Mr. Jacob S. Peters, of Millersville, was an eyewitness. We give the article entire, and let it go for what it is worth, viz : 

For the past eight or ten days, the cries of a child have been heard night after night, near the road leading from Morgantown to Waynesburg. A few nights since, a party crossing the mountain saw a child near the top of a large tree, in a basket.

They heard it cry, and then the basket, in which the supposed child was, disappeared. There is a great mystery connected with the affair. Quite a number of persons have visited the place.

An Eagle correspondent writing from Morgantown sends the following strange account of the affair, which reads like a weird story of legerdemain, or like a romance of hobgoblins or witches.

The letter reads as follows: Last evening I read in the Eagle an account of a singular noise at the Ringing Rocks, near Pottstown, but we have a something on the summit of the Welsh Mountain, midway between Morgantown and Waynesburg, and about one-fourth of a mile in from the main road connecting the above places. For the past two weeks, the cries of a child could be heard by persons passing along the road, and at first nothing was thought of it, but on Sunday night last, as Robert Gorman, residing north of Downingtown, in company with another gentleman and two ladies were passing the point, the cries became heartrending, and they thought someone was treating a child shamefully. Mr. Gorman proposed to his friend to walk into the woods and ascertain the cause, the ladies to remain in the carriage. As Mr. G. thought it only a short distance to the house the child was thought to be in, the ladies concluded to go with the gentlemen, and the horses were secured to a tree, and the party started, the cries still increasing. After walking a short distance, one of the ladies, a Miss Ellie Parker, who resides near Paoli, slopped suddenly, and told the party to look up near the top of a large tree just in front of them, and there was seen a baby seated in a small basket, swinging back and forth, with but faint cries. The ladies became frightened at the sight, and begged one of the gentlemen to try and get up in the tree and bring the child down. The distance up to the first limb was some twenty feet, and the gentlemen found it impossible to get up.

While the conversation was going on as to how the child could be brought down, the child gave one scream, and as if by magic, the basket fell half the distance to the ground, causing the ladies to scream, and the entire party to be more or less frightened. In less time than it takes to write this, the basket and its contents were back in its place again, the child crying all the time. This movement struck terror into the party. They watched the movements of the basket and saw the baby plainly for five minutes afterwards, and all at once, the basket with its contents disappeared. The party states that the whole affair is one of the greatest mysteries they have ever met with.

Mr. Gorman says it was child's play, but it was nevertheless a reality. The ladies state that the child was alive, for they saw it plainly move when it fell down toward them. On Monday evening a party numbering some twenty repaired to the place, and all saw the same thing. What it is is a grand mystery, as too many reliable persons saw it to be a hoax.

Mr. J. S. Peters, residing south of Lancaster city, was one of the party, on Monday night, and he says he saw the baby in the basket, saw it move, and saw the falling and the disappearance. How long this will continue I am unable to say.

A number from Churchtown are going over on Thursday night to witness the mystery. If the affair can be explained I will write you again.

It was later “explained” that the strange phenomenon was an elaborate prank executed by a “young lady in the neighborhood” who happened to be a ventriloquist, but, frankly, that reminds me of all the poltergeist cases that wind up being blamed on the nearest available adolescent or maidservant.

Mr. A.F. Dreams a Dream

Accounts of prophetic dreams are almost tediously common, but the following narrative is quirky enough to deserve attention.  It was published in that classic supernatural smorgasbord, Catherine Crowe’s “The Night-Side of Nature.”

A very remarkable instance of this kind of dreaming occurred a few years since to Mr. A⁠—— F⁠——, an eminent Scotch advocate, while staying in the neighborhood of Loch Fyne, who dreamed one night that he saw a number of people in the street following a man to the scaffold. He discovered the features of the criminal in the cart distinctly; and, for some reason or other, which he could not account for, felt an extraordinary interest in his fate—insomuch that he joined the throng, and accompanied him to the place that was to terminate his earthly career. This interest was the more unaccountable, that the man had an exceedingly unprepossessing countenance, but it was nevertheless so vivid as to induce the dreamer to ascend the scaffold, and address him, with a view to enable him to escape the impending catastrophe. Suddenly, however, while he was talking to him, the whole scene dissolved away, and the sleeper awoke. Being a good deal struck with the lifelike reality of the vision, and the impression made on his mind by the features of this man, he related the circumstance to his friends at breakfast, adding that he should know him anywhere, if he saw him. A few jests being made on the subject, the thing was forgotten.

On the afternoon of the same day, the advocate was informed that two men wanted to speak to him, and, on going into the hall, he was struck with amazement at perceiving that one of them was the hero of his dream!

“We are accused of a murder,” said they, “and we wish to consult you. Three of us went out last night, in a boat; an accident has happened; our comrade is drowned, and they want to make us accountable for him.” The advocate then put some interrogations to them, and the result produced in his mind by their answers was a conviction of their guilt. Probably the recollection of his dream rendered the effects of this conviction more palpable; for one addressing the other, said in Gaelic, “We have come to the wrong man; he is against us.”

“There is a higher power than I against you,” returned the gentleman; “and the only advice I can give you is, if you are guilty, fly immediately.” Upon this, they went away; and the next thing he heard was, that they were taken into custody on suspicion of the murder.

The account of the affair was, that, as they said, the three had gone out together on the preceding evening, and that in the morning the body of one of them had been found on the shore, with a cut across his forehead. The father and friend of the victim had waited on the banks of the lake till the boat came in, and then demanded their companion; of whom, however, they professed themselves unable to give any account. Upon this, the old man led them to his cottage for the purpose of showing them the body of his son. One entered, and, at the sight of it, burst into a passion of tears; the other refused to do so, saying his business called him immediately home, and went sulkily away. This last was the man seen in the dream.

After a fortnight’s incarceration, the former of these was liberated; and he then declared to the advocate his intention of bringing an action of damages for false imprisonment. He was advised not to do it. “Leave well alone,” said the lawyer; “and if you’ll take my advice, make off while you can.” The man, however, refused to fly: he declared that he really did not know what had occasioned the death of his comrade. The latter had been at one end of the boat, and he at the other; when he looked round, he was gone; but whether he had fallen overboard, and cut his head as he fell, or whether he had been struck and pushed into the water, he did not know. The advocate became finally satisfied of this man’s innocence; but the authorities, thinking it absurd to try one and not the other, again laid hands on him: and it fell to Mr. A⁠—— F⁠—— to be the defender of both. The difficulty was, not to separate their cases in his pleading; for, however morally convinced of the different ground on which they stood, his duty, professionally, was to obtain the acquittal of both, in which he finally succeeded, as regarded the charge of murder. They were, therefore, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; and, so far as the dream is concerned, here ends the story. There remains, however, a curious sequel to it.

A few years afterward, the same gentleman being in a boat on Loch Fyne, in company with Sir T⁠—— D⁠—— L⁠——, happened to be mentioning these curious circumstances, when one of the boatmen said that he “knew well about those two men; and that a very strange thing had occurred in regard to one of them.” This one, on inquiry, proved to be the subject of the dream; and the strange thing was this: On being liberated, he had quitted that part of the country, and in process of time had gone to Greenock, and thence embarked in a vessel for Cork. But the vessel seemed fated never to reach its destination; one misfortune happened after another, till at length the sailors said: “This won’t do; there must be a murderer on board with us!” As is usual, when such a persuasion exists, they drew lots three times, and each time it fell on that man! He was consequently put on shore, and the vessel went on its way without him. What had become of him afterward was not known.