Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the first Link Dump of June 2025!

Wedding season!

A tourist says a ghost is trying to kill him, and then he dies.  So.

Dolphin drug parties.  So.

That time when Petrarch was nearly killed by a book.

An attempt to explain Spontaneous Human Combustion.

The probable story behind a bizarre 1337 murder.

A look at a troubled 17th century pregnancy.

A look at auditory hallucinations.

A look at colonial ducking stools.

A look at our fear of the undead.

The knight who stood up to the Nazis.

RMS Amazon's ordeal by fire.

Bloomsbury Square during the Gordon Riots.

People are changing their brainwaves to feel less pain.

So now we may have to rewrite the history of writing.

An animal which was fossilized from the inside out.

How to build a 19th century dugout.

A famed doppelganger legend.

A betrayed woman's revenge.

A woman who disappeared 60 years ago is found alive and well.

A Victorian feminist.

The famously long-lived Thomas Parr.

A very weird ancient skull.

When Nazi U-boats prowled the Gulf Coast.

The Merry Mermaids of Margaret Morris.

The Vatican and the Monster of Ravenna.

A 17th century woman's sermon notes.

The origins of the term, "talking head."

The American colonists who picked the losing side of the Revolution.

The Dead Sea Scrolls may be even older than we thought.

The widow and her matchmaking cows.

The rat-filled origins of the Tooth Fairy.

The underwater forest that built Venice.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll learn what happens when you offend a mummified cat.  In the meantime, let's get folky.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Crimes are often remarkably mundane and unimaginative, so when I come across a story where a lawbreaker thinks outside the box--such as, say, by enlisting a cicada as a robbery accomplice--you can bet I’ll take notice.  The “Cincinnati Post,” June 5, 1987:

A 17-year-old cicada may have been coerced into a life of crime.

Cincinnati Police are investigating whether a cicada was an accomplice in a heist Thursday afternoon at the Grand Slam restaurant, 4909 Whetsel Avenue, in Madisonville.

Two men walked into the restaurant at about 3 p.m. Thursday brandishing a cicada, police said.

The men thrust the cicada at a 22-year-old cashier, and the bug flew into the cashier’s hair, said cook Tom Johnson.  Screaming, the cashier abandoned her post and ran into the kitchen screaming, Johnson said.

In the ensuing melee, the two men fled the restaurant.  Johnson came to the aid of his co-worker.

As for the cicada:  “I stepped on it,” Johnson said.

Later, after the cashier had recovered and returned to her post, she found her cash register was missing $25.  Suspicion immediately fell on the two men and the cicada, although police said no one actually saw the trio take anything.

The identification of the cicada has not been released.

Alas, if a story seems too good to be true, it’s usually neither good nor true.  The “Loveland Herald,” June 23, 2021:

The story has haunted her for nearly 35 years. Robbery while threatened by a cicada. Marquisa Kellogg just can’t shake it. 

Kellogg’s name was in papers and magazines all over the country in 1987. A brief police account of her story spread just as quickly as Brood X did that year.

Dateline Cincinnati: Two men armed with a cicada are suspected of stealing $25 from a restaurant’s cash register after using the winged insect to briefly scare away the cashier, police say. The two men walked into the Grand Slam Restaurant brandishing a cicada. They thrust the bug at the cashier, Marquisa Kellogg, 22, who then fled from her post, police said. Later, after Kellogg had recovered and returned to the register, she found that it was missing $25. 

If it had happened today, we would say the story went viral.  At least 60 newspapers picked up the story. 

“One magazine had a cicada with a little gun saying, ‘Stick ‘em up!’” Kellogg said. 

She now works for a doctor. She was raised in Madisonville where the Grand Slam used to sit. She moved to California, then South Carolina, then back home.  She now lives in her childhood home. 

“Today, I’m the girl who gets the cicadas off people,” she said. 

She finds humor in the story now, at 56, but she didn’t always. 

“You want the truth? Or do you want the lie?” Kellogg told The Enquirer. “I remember the entire thing.” 

The problem, she said, is the story that everyone laughed about isn’t what it seemed.

Not long before the incident, Kellogg said, she was sitting outside the restaurant with a friend when she decided to play a prank on him. She grabbed a fist full of cicadas and put them on his back. He screamed. 

“He went crazy, like any ordinary human would,” Kellogg said. 

Still laughing, she went back inside the restaurant to wait on two customers, men she knew, friends (or so she thought) from the neighborhood.

She served them their cheese coneys and was cashing them out when her friend returned to exact his revenge. 

Boom. He throws a handful of cicadas straight into her face and runs off. 

“I took off running like OJ in the airport,” Kellogg said, referring to the 1978 rental car commercial. “I completely forgot the register was open.  I ran like a bat out of hell.” 

When she returned, she noticed the bills were not straight in her drawer. She asked the two men at the counter if they had taken anything, but they denied it. 

She counted out the money in front of them and came up $25 short. When they still wouldn’t own up to what happened, she called the police and reported a robbery. 

And here the story turned into what it became. At best it was a cicada-assisted robbery, but what came out in the police report and, later, in news coverage was an image of two masked bandits wielding red-eyed, buzzing, six-legged insects instead of six-shooters.

“That officer put two stories into one and the joke was on me,” Kellogg said. “He heard, but he wasn’t listening. It was a joke to him.” 

She said she thinks the officer was paid for the story and said if she could track him down she ought to sue him for half his pension “for putting me through all this embarrassment all these years.” 

She said her friend, who goes by Squeaky, even made shirts. The shirts have a picture of a cicada, but instead of the cicada’s face, it’s Squeaky’s face. 

“I’m the butt of the joke,” she said, but as time has passed her mood about the situation has lightened.  She says she even tells the story to her patients now to get them laughing. They’ll often look it up on their phones right then and they can’t believe it, she said. 

She’s been enjoying this summer seeing the grandchildren of the insects that once brought her national attention. 

But she wants everyone to know, she is not afraid of cicadas, especially just one of them. A face full of any bug is enough to freak someone out.

“The only thing I’m scared of is something with eight legs,” Kellogg said. “You can have the whole restaurant if you have eight legs.”

As a side note, one has to salute Ms. Kellogg.  I’m willing to bet she is the only person in human history to gain fame for allegedly being robbed by an insect.

James Kidd's Search For a Soul

James Kidd

It is an undeniable, if slightly depressing, fact that the vast majority of humans go through life in an anonymous, unremarkable way and exit this world without leaving more than the most temporary of footprints.  However, now and then one finds an individual who is completely forgotten for long after their death, only to make a mark on history in some thoroughly Strange Company-style fashion.

This post pays tribute to one of those innovative souls.

In September 1920, a man named James Kidd wandered into Miami, Arizona, where he found work at the Miami Copper Company, doing the dull, if necessary, work of keeping the wastewater pumps running.  All anyone ever learned of his past was that he was born in Ogdensburg, New York in 1878.  Although Kidd earned a decent enough salary, he chose to live as if he were penurious.  He lived on park benches, seemed to live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and traveled by hopping freight trains, hobo-style.  He led an extremely solitary life, with no known spouse, relatives, or even real friends.  He never got a driver’s license or served in the military, all of which meant that he generated virtually no administrative records.  It was said that he liked to play the stock market and did some minor prospecting.  Despite his oddities, the very few people who knew Kidd found him to be an intelligent and likable man.

In 1941, Kidd was injured on the job by a defective pump.  Several days later, while back at work, he suffered a sudden loss of “strength or mental condition,” causing him to lose consciousness.  He asked for workers’ compensation, but since he failed to file a report immediately after his accident with the pump, the claim was denied.  Kidd then retired and moved to Phoenix, where he rented a modest $4 a week apartment.  His quiet existence became more anonymous than ever.

On November 8, 1949, Kidd borrowed a pickaxe from a neighbor, saying that he would be visiting a couple of claims he had made in the Miami area.  The next morning at 6 a.m., Kidd left his apartment and got into a waiting car.  The car drove off, and that is the last we know of James Kidd.  It remains a complete mystery who was driving the car, where it went, and how, when, and where Kidd eventually died.  This eccentric loner essentially drove into oblivion, which may have been a fate to his liking.

Thanks to Kidd’s reclusive ways, it was not until December 29th that his landlord felt compelled to inform the police of his tenant’s disappearance.  When police searched Kidd’s apartment, all seemed in order, with no clues as to what had become of him.  However, they did find something unexpected:  Despite his spartan existence, Kidd was a man of some means.  His checkbook indicated that he had over $3800 in a local bank, and had received a dividend check for nearly $400 that he had yet to deposit.  It seems that Kidd's minor forays into prospecting and the stock market made him a decent profit.

Kidd remained missing, and the sad truth is there was no one to really care what had happened to him.  The investigation into his disappearance was quickly abandoned, and he was declared dead in 1954.

It was not until two years later, when Arizona passed the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act, that Kidd’s story took an unexpectedly lively turn.  The Act required that all property that had been unclaimed for seven years be turned over to the state within ninety days.  Arizona’s Estate Tax Commissioner, Geraldine Swift, suddenly had to sort through a backlog of unclaimed estates…including that of James Kidd.

Initially, it seemed that there was little to document about Kidd’s affairs.  Then, Swift was given the contents of a safe deposit box Kidd had rented.  At first, the items seemed of little interest--a few old photographs, the transcript of his workers' compensation hearing, and several stock sell orders.  However, when Swift opened a thick envelope marked “Buying slips from E.F. Hutton Company,” she found that the missing man had actually owned thousands of shares of stocks, many of which were still issuing dividends.  In short, Kidd had left a considerable sum of money behind him.

Swift did her conscientious best to locate any relatives who might have a claim on this unexpectedly handsome estate, even going so far as to hire private detectives to search for heirs.  None were ever found.

Swift kept Kidd’s ever-growing assets in limbo until February 1963, when it was decided to finally turn it over to the state of Arizona.  Before doing so, she wanted to make one final check of Kidd’s safe deposit box, just in case something had been overlooked.  During the inventory, Swift--for the first time--began sorting through Kidd’s many buying slips.  Hidden within them was a piece of notebook paper which turned out to be James Kidd’s will.  

He had written, “This is my first and only will and is dated the second of January, 1946.  I have no heirs and have not been married in my life and after all my funeral expenses have been paid and one hundred dollars to some preacher of the gospel to say farewell at my grave sell all my property which is all in cash and stocks with E.F. Hutton Co. Phoenix, some in safety deposit box, and have this balance money to go in a research or some scientific proof of a soul of the human body which leaves at death I think in time there can be a Photograph of soul leaving the human at death.  James Kidd.”

Well.  Geraldine Swift’s job suddenly got a lot more interesting.  Not quite knowing what to do with this unusual testament, she consulted the Attorney General’s office.  Most of the staff were of the opinion that the will was probably invalid and was best ignored, but Swift seems to have developed a sort of protective fondness for her absent client.  She insisted that his last wishes, however unusual they may have been, should be honored.

The whole question of how best to proceed was tossed in the lap of Arizona Superior Court Judge Robert Myers.  Myers eventually ruled that the will was valid, and, in June 1967, held formal hearings on the issue of how Kidd’s wealth--which had by then grown to over $174,000--should be distributed.  Not surprisingly, Myers’ court was deluged with letters from people all over the world declaring that they were the ones best qualified to carry out experiments in soul-searching.  The claimants were a wild mix of sincere paranormal researchers, cranks, and grifters who saw the chance for making a quick buck.  It seemed like everybody and their grandfather wanted to prove the existence of a soul.  The long-gone recluse James Kidd was suddenly making international newspaper headlines.

After weeks of some of the most curious testimony ever offered in a probate hearing, Judge Myers finally issued a decision on October 20, 1967.  

He wrote, “Considering the language of the last will and testament of the deceased as a whole, it was the intention and desire of the deceased that the residue and remainder of his estate be used for the purpose of research which may lead to some scientific proof of a soul of the individual human which leaves the body at death…It is incumbent on the Court to ensure that the residue and remainder of the estate of the deceased be used in such a manner as to benefit mankind as a whole to the greatest degree possible.

“This can be best accomplished by the distribution of the said funds for the purpose of research which may lead to some scientific proof of a soul of the individual human which leaves the body at death…Such research can be best done in the combined field of medical science, psychiatry, and psychology, and can best be performed and carried on by the Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, Arizona.”

Inevitably, all the losing petitioners appealed the decision, with the result that on January 19, 1971, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled against the Barrow Neurological Institute.  The case was sent back to Judge Myers, with the instructions that he must choose one of four other claimants.  On July 17, Judge Myers decided that the lucky winner would be New York’s American Society for Psychical Research.

In the end, no one really profited from Kidd’s estate other than the lawyers involved, who received about one-third of the money.  The rest of the cash went into a number of different experiments and studies of deathbed experiences, all of which left the question of “Is there a human soul?” unresolved.

As far as I know, the researchers weren’t even able to contact the spirit of James Kidd to ask what the hell happened to him.

Weekend Link Dump

 

This week's Link Dump is hosted by the lovely (and youthful) Mac!

A very remote island community.

A multi-million dollar royal fraud.

The other Homo sapiens.

A massacre that never was.

Emus find themselves a home.

The grave of a 7th century "Ice Prince."

A case of levitation.

Warning: The very disturbing story of a girl who spent most of her short life in an attic.

The legends surrounding the murder of Rasputin.

In search of the remains of WWII airmen.

A naval odyssey under two flags.

A brief history of monkey bread.

A brief history of Art Deco.

This is not a chair for claustrophobics.

How snails and oysters became luxury foods.  (I personally see them as foods that I'd run miles in tight shoes to avoid, but whatever.)

The healing power of sunlight.

A lost naval portrait.

Rules for 19th century coal mines.

How root beer got its name.

The "Miracle of Amsterdam."

The mysterious moose of New Zealand.

An ancient fish may explain why we get toothaches.  It's a weird old world.

So a bunch of bored Capuchin monkeys have become kidnappers.  Like I said, the world is weird.

Palaeontologists start feuding over an ancient skull.  Like I said...

The last Papal warship.

A visit to Samuel Johnson's house.

Empress Eugenie and a spectral scent of violets.

An ancient mummy with unusual tattoos.

Some notable New Orleans graveyards.

A probable wrongful murder conviction.

Some cases of couples who disappeared along with their cars.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a Weird Will.  In the meantime, here's Neil Young.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Mysterious showers of stones are one of those Fortean classics which never get old.  The “Richmond Dispatch,” September 8, 1886:

Mr. Cuthbert telegraphs from Charleston (upon date of September 5th) the following about the shower of stones.

One of the sensations of Saturday in Charleston was the fall of three showers of stones in the neighborhood of the News and Courier building. The first was observed about 2:30 A.M., mainly in the vacant lot across Elliott street, directly south of the News and Courier job-office. The second, about 7:30 A.M., fell on the roof of the pressroom, the third, about 1:30 P.M., was in the alley alongside, scattered over the places mentioned, and all the space between them, including the roof of the job-office, and for the short space up and down the alley and Elliott street.

The first shower was heard in the darkness by an employee, who was in the vacant lot, but who naturally attributed it at the time to a fall of loose material from the neighboring roofs and broken walls, though there was no shock at the time. When the second shower was observed, five hours later, some of the falling pebbles bounced into the pressroom through the open windows, and it was thought by the pressman and his assistants that some mischievous boy was pelting them. On a close examination, however, no one was found in the neighborhood, and the pebbles themselves were found to be warm. The third fall was witnessed by a number of persons, who noticed it throughout and who are unable to account for it in any way. The line of descent was almost perpendicular, there being sufficient incline from south to north to cause one or more stones to strike the window-sill and rebound into the job-office, where they were picked up from the floor and again found to be warm.

A number of the pebbles were gathered up at once, some of them being taken from the top of the ruins of brick walls and houses that had fallen on Tuesday night. The stones range from the size of a grape to that of an egg. All were worn and polished by the action of nature, and some show clear fractures. The material in most of the cases is flint or of a flinty character, and an expert who examined the collection said that they looked as if they were a part of a cabinet of mineralogical specimens.

Another suggestion by the same person was that the largest stone of the lot was part of the head or neck of an Indian axe, the character of which he was familiar.

However this may be, the stones fell in the way that has been described, and there is no reasonable explanation or suggestion as to the source whence they came. The houses in the neighborhood are covered with tin or tile roofs. The showers fell, as has been stated, almost perpendicular, and the force of the fall, as shown by the breaking of several pebbles, was evidently very great. It should be added that the shower was slight.

The brief account of this which was sent on Saturday night has, it appears, been exaggerated into volcanic eruption, but the above is a correct statement of the occurrence.

The Restaurant That Never Was

In the June/July 1993 issue of “Fortean Times,” a civil engineer named Tony Clark shared a striking story which he claimed to have experienced while working in Iran in 1956.  There is evidently only Clark’s word that his bizarre tale actually happened, but as I can’t resist a good “time-slip” account, I will simply pass it on and let you make of it what you like.

According to Clark, one summer day he and an Iranian engineer traveled to Manjil, about 150 miles from Tehran, to assist with the building of a cement factory.  It was then a very remote place, where they were unable to even find much to eat, so by the time they began the trip back to Tehran, they were famished.  After traveling about 30 miles, they came to a village.  It was a simple settlement of one-story mud huts, with a distinctive-looking pile of rocks.  To their relief, the men also found there a “tchae-khana” (cafe.)  They didn’t expect to find much in the way of nourishment there, but the men were desperate enough to take whatever they could get.

There was nothing unusual about the interior of the cafe--crude chairs and wooden tables, with a few truck drivers resting on beds of rope and wood hanging from the walls.  The men were greeted by the owner of the establishment, who spoke perfect English.  He was an Armenian named Hovanessian, who was married to a White Russian.  Clark was pleasantly startled when Hovanessian and his wife soon brought out one of the best meals he ever had: cold cucumber and yogurt soup, wine, stuffed vine leaves, and kebab, followed by excellent Turkish coffee.  After such a feast--eaten in a vague air of unreality--the men got a second surprise: the price their host asked was incredibly small.  When Clark complimented Hovanessian on the “fantastic meal,” the Armenian beamed and said, “Do call again and tell your friends to look in.”

Before leaving, Clark took careful notes about his mileage, to ensure he could find the village again.  He was convinced that he had stumbled upon the world’s finest restaurant, and when he returned to Tehran, he couldn’t wait to tell people about it.  No one believed him.  Such wonderful--and cheap--fare from some hut out in the middle of nowhere?  Clark’s friends probably assumed he had been out in the desert sun for far too long.

Three months later, Clark had to make another trip to Manjil.  He brought with him an English engineer who was one of the “miracle cafe’s” biggest scoffers.  Clark was prepared to make his friend eat, not just soup and kebab, but a heaping plate of crow.  Before long, they found the little village with its unmistakable pile of rocks.  The only thing different about the place was the tchae-khana: it had vanished.  When they asked a resident about the cafe, he assured them that in the forty years he had lived in the village, no such place had ever existed.  Hovanessian?  Never heard of the fellow.

The men drove away, feeling hungry, disappointed, and just a little bit frightened.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

And the Strange Company staffers are here to remind you that tomorrow is bath night!

An unsolved murder in a brothel.

Argentina's secret Nazi files.

New York's oldest continuously run hotel.

The ongoing search for the Nazi "gold train."

The mystery of Japan's "underwater pyramid."

The kind of thing that happens when you make fairies angry.

Reddit and a fake Roman financial crisis.

The Amazon has been a busy place.

An incident of Decoration Day, 1868.

Did a nuclear test take down a UFO?

The language that took over the world.

Never accept chocolates from Cordelia Botkin.

The dramatic work of a naval artist.

The man who sails like a Viking.

A failed Dickensian theme park.

When you get an Indian village in exchange for a book recital.

A classic armchair historian.

America's worst school massacre.

We now know why orange cats are orange.  In case you've spent many sleepless nights pondering that question.

A famed New Orleans graveyard.

How a Yorkist family navigated the Wars of the Roses.

A real Sweeney Todd.

The invention that bankrupted Mark Twain.

The short 15th century life of Princess Margaret of Scotland.

Kids, if you're ever out looking for a missing Arctic expedition, the first thing you do is talk to the locals.

The docks of Old London.

Isabel, Queen of Castile.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll visit a restaurant that was really out-of-this-world. In the meantime, here's a bit of Bach.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of weird times at a seminary school appeared in the “St. Louis Post Dispatch,” July 8, 1906:

NASHOTAH, Wis., July 7.--At commencement time at the Nashotah Theological Seminary, a stronghold of high-church Episcopalianism in the west, you heard a strange story which concerns the man who not only founded the work here, but was also the pioneer of the Episcopalian establishment at Faribault, Minn. At this point is the theological seminary and three miles away at Delafleld Is the military academy, St. John's, which constitutes the group of schools the Rev. William Lloyd Breck began in Wisconsin.

Rev. William Lloyd Breck was known as “The Pioneer of the Church,” in Episcopalian circles. After he founded the Seabury mission, he went on to California, where he established St. Augustine’s college for boys, and St. Mary’s of the Pacific for girls, at Benicia. He died and was buried there. Several years later, the Wisconsin church asked that his body be transferred to the scene of his early labors and it was exhumed and brought to Nashotah.

After his arrival the casket containing the remains lay for a time on the ground floor of one of the seminary buildings, where each night watchers sat with it until the time for the ceremonies attending the reburial should arrive. On the night before these ceremonies, the watchers were Rev. James Ashmun of Chicago, and Rev. Charles P. Dorset, at the time of his death presiding over a parish in Texas, but then and until within the last few years as a resident of La Crosse, Wis. Along in the hours toward morning, the Chicago clergymen left the building for a little turn in the fresh air, but in a moment came rushing back with the exclamation: 

“Dorset, Dorset, the woods are full of ghosts.”

Both clergymen went out. In every direction through the trees they saw figures flitting hither and thither in a wild and fitful dance. The clergymen approached them, but the figures in front drew back, moving off to the left and right of them. The clergymen asked themselves several questions. Had the farming population of the lonely neighborhood turned out to dance there in the small hours of the morning in the seminary woods? Were the staid theological students out at an unseemly hour, on a night made solemn as the eve of the reburial of the founder of the school? And even if farmers or students had been moved to do such strange things, where did they get the untiring strength that made these creatures in the woods dance so constantly and so lightly?

The clergymen did not believe the apparitions were men, nor did they afterwards learn that anybody had been abroad in the woods at that time. They were convinced that the figures were ghosts, or that some strange phantasmagoria had deceived not one mind, but two, which an illusion does not often do. But the strange experience of the watchers had not ended. In the morning when the casket was moved, there was a round hole burned through the floor on the spot where the casket stood. A heap of old papers underneath the floor also had been burned. Had fire found its way underneath the building to this spot in the mass of paper, and so up through the floor? Perhaps. The freaks of the real are often as strange as anything we attribute to the unreal.

But several things must be noted. If the fire came in under the floor from without, it escaped setting fire to other debris in its progress. Moreover, the appearance of the hole and the area of burned paper seemed to indicate that the fire had burned from above downward, like the ray of a burning glass. How did the fire come to burn the hole under the casket, which, it must be explained, rested directly upon the floor?

A few nights later, the faculty of the institution sat in the office of Dr. Gardner, the president, discussing the recent mystifying events. Suddenly their discussion was terminated by a tremendous racket just outside the door. Waiting a moment in the hope it would cease, Dr. Gardner threw open the door. The noise ceased instantly. All was silent and dark in the hall.

Whoever it was had taken himself off with a rapidity that was astounding. Three times more the noise was resumed and three times it ceased as the door was jerked open and two searchers of the building failed to discover in it a living soul except the members of the facility. When Dr. Gardner had looked out a fourth time upon an untenanted corridor, he said, “If you are gentlemen, you will cease this disturbance.” It did not begin again.

In any other than a theological school, such a manifestation would be assigned to a very natural cause, but there is the presumption that theological students do not indulge in such unseemly pranks. While students might play tricks upon their own number in their own lodging, it seemed strange that they should go into another building to annoy their faculty. Between believing in ghosts and the impeccability of clerical neophytes, it must be said many of the clergy incline to attribute the disturbance to ghosts, while the students themselves in relating this tale, say it is a queer magnifying of a trivial student joke, unseemly, to be sure, but one which some postulant for holy orders did not perpetrate.

After the burial of Dr. Beck, a photograph was taken of the cemetery of the seminary. One of the students was the photographer. In the foreground of the picture can be seen two graves, just as they appear in the cemetery. But at the foot of each grave stands its occupant, Rev. Dr. Cole, former president of the seminary, in full canonical. At the foot of the other, stands the counterfeit presentment of its occupant, a lady who during life was a benefactor of the seminary. 

As in many other unexplainable phenomena, we may dismiss all these queer tales of a theological seminary by repudiating the testimony purporting to substantiate them. At Nashotah no one does this. At Nashotah, the testimony is believed to be unimpeachable.

A Double Disappearance

When one person inexplicably disappears, it’s weird.  When two people vanish, presumably together, things get stranger still.  When two people and a boat all go missing, never to be seen again…

In the late 1960s, an Irish couple named Kieran and Ornaith Murphy emigrated to California.  They settled in the Bay Area, where they soon did very nicely for themselves.  The couple made a small fortune investing in increasingly prestigious real estate.  As landlords, they were considered “tough, but fair.”  Kieran, a brilliant mathematician,  also worked as an actuary for San Francisco’s retirement system.  Ornaith, meanwhile, became a skilled long-distance sailor, often voyaging alone.  In 1998, she became the first woman to sail alone from San Francisco to Cape Horn.  Arthritis and a serious car accident left Ornaith unable to walk without difficulty, causing her to cherish all the more the freedom and mobility she was able to find on the water.  “I just want to go as far as I can and as far as my legs will let me,” she wrote.  “I don’t want to triumph.  I don’t want to conquer.  I’m just very happy being at sea.”  The Murphys were both witty and intellectually-inclined, fond of reading and discussing literature.  The couple had two sons.  The family was seen as hard-working, talented, and friendly.

Unfortunately, the beginning of the 21st century was not nearly as kind to the couple as had been the end of the 20th.  They hit a rocky patch, both personally and professionally.  Ornaith was deeply distraught to discover that her husband was having an affair, and the couple separated.  A divorce was planned.  They also began facing problems with their real estate holdings.  In 1999, there had been a fire at an apartment building they owned which left a child badly burned, and the Murphys were facing a costly lawsuit over the incident.

These were grave problems, to be sure, but no worse than those successfully weathered by other couples.  For the Murphys, however, things would soon take a far darker turn.  On December 15, 2001, the estranged pair planned to meet to discuss their various legal issues.  Ornaith was seen doing work on her 39-foot sloop, the Sola III, as it was docked at Oakland’s Jack London Marina.  A friend stopped by that afternoon.  Ornaith mentioned that she was planning to go for a sail with a friend that evening.  (However, she did not file a sail plan for this trip, which would be highly unusual for this experienced and meticulous sailor.)

That night, people nearby saw a man onboard who matched Kieran’s description.  (If this was indeed Kieran, it would be unusual for him to be on the sloop--he did not know how to sail and hated being on the water.)  A short time later, witnesses heard a disturbance coming from the direction of the Sola III, a loud bang that may--or may not--have been a gunshot.  At 8:36 p.m., the Sola III sailed out of the marina.  It had about a week’s worth of food onboard, but it was not otherwise outfitted for a long journey.

Early the next morning, Ornaith phoned a niece whom she had been living with, saying she was in Berkeley.  She declined an invitation to breakfast.  She also left several voicemails for one of her sons, saying she was at the Berkeley Marina, on her boat.  She sounded quite calm and normal.  But that day, the Sola III vanished.  So did the Murphys.  No one has seen either Kieran or Ornaith--or the boat--since.

"San Francisco Examiner," December 28, 2001, via Newspapers.com

The complete paucity of clues in this triple disappearance has led to any number of wildly-varying theories.  Did Ornaith lure her husband on board her boat, only to shoot him, deliberately sink both the boat and the body somewhere, and disappear to start a new life?  Or was it Kieran who was the murderer?  Was it murder/suicide?  Did the beleaguered couple agree to reconcile and escape their problems together?  

Or was a third party responsible for their disappearance?  Everyone who knew Ornaith insisted that she had no thoughts of ending her life, and was utterly incapable of plotting her own disappearance.  And Kieran was too unskilled a sailor to take the boat for even a short journey.

At least some investigators believed this was a grim case of murder followed by suicide (they declined to state publicly who they believed to be the killer.)  However, to date, not a scrap of evidence about the final fate of the couple has been found, leaving this as a particularly eerie mystery.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this Friday's Link Dump!

Our hosts for this week are some Caledonian visitors.

Bad company in 1950s Los Angeles.

The life and work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The failed attempt to get Canada to fight for the colonies in the American Revolution.

Early newspaper reporting about the Loch Ness Monster.

The origins of England's common law rule.

Napoleon's traveling bookcase.

Legends of the Emily Morgan Hotel.

Yet another case of a young girl being blamed for poltergeist manifestations.

The tragedy of Zeppelin L-19.

So, let's talk cursed souvenirs.

Chimpanzees make pretty good doctors.

The art of the Catholic counter-reformation.

The scent of ancient sculptures.

Extraordinary treasures found in ordinary places.

So, literary parties can get weird.

Why ancient reptile footprints are giving scientists migraines.

A Roman aqueduct full of cats.

The man who rebuilt the UK Parliament.

A brief history of demons.

Why you can't go on the world's longest train journey.

The days when the worst part of widowhood was ordering the mourning dresses.

The mysterious murder of San Francisco socialites.

The many lives of a container ship.

A family triple murder.

The world of intraterrestrials.

Bessie Coleman, pioneering aviator.

The man who sold his wife for 20 shillings.  And a dog.

We're all glowing.

HMS Achates and the "worst journey in the world."

A tribute to "Hoosier cabinets."

Folklore's "otherworldly brides."

When Calvinists criminalized singing.

Some particularly cold cases.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a couple's unsolved disappearance.  In the meantime, I read the other day that the former lead singer for The Spinners died.  They were one of those groups that made listening to the radio in the '70s fun.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

An unusual prowler was reported in the “London Daily Mirror,” February 13, 1974:

A one-legged barefoot ghost seemed to keep a step ahead of the police who answered a burglar alarm call yesterday. 

For when they answered the call at the home of Mr. Kenneth Broadhead in Ashill, near Thetford, Norfolk--they found the house supernaturally secure, with nothing stolen. 

And the only clue nearly made their hair stand on end. 

That was a single spooky row of footprints--all made by the same foot--which had hopped across the floor of a room and stopped against a solid brick wall.

Then the ghost apparently de-materialised through a door and set off the burglar alarm. 

A senior police officer said: “Apparently it is the ghost of a one-legged Jesuit priest, and it is known at the house. 

“But why set off a burglar alarm when you can just melt through a door?”

Why, indeed?

The Enigmatic Death of a Diplomat

On June 14, 1904, Kent Loomis, the brother of Assistant Secretary of State Francis R. Loomis, sailed from New York aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  His mission was to travel to Addis Ababa in order to deliver an important trade treaty between the United States and the Ethiopian King Menelik.  This treaty had, for some time, been a matter of intense interest among the European powers.  His traveling companion was a wealthy, flamboyant entrepreneur named William H. Ellis.  Ellis was a frequent visitor to Ethiopia, and had campaigned to be given this mission himself, but the State Department declined to entrust him with the task.  This was a bitter disappointment for Ellis.  He had hoped to use delivery of the treaty as a signal to King Menelik that Ellis had the backing of the American government in his various ambitious business ventures in Ethiopia.  There are even suggestions that he hoped Menelik would appoint him as heir to his throne.

Loomis never made it to his destination.  Sometime on June 20th, he vanished from the ship.  There was conflicting evidence for what had happened to him.  Soon after he disappeared, the Kaiser Wilhelm made a stop at Plymouth, England.  One passenger swore later that he saw a dazed-looking Loomis go ashore at that time.  The captain and head steward, however, were equally positive that Loomis could not have disembarked.  Ellis claimed that Loomis had been drinking heavily during the voyage, and had an unfortunate habit of sitting precariously on the ship’s railings.  (This was not corroborated by any of the other passengers.)  Ellis expressed his opinion that his cabin-mate, while in a state of intoxication, had accidentally fallen overboard.  A further oddity was when it was noted that the tags on Loomis’ luggage had all been altered.  They showed the initial “E” instead of “L,” and the first name had been erased.  In Loomis’ mysterious absence, Ellis was given possession of the treaty, enabling him to complete the diplomatic mission after all.

Loomis’ whereabouts remained a complete mystery until a month later, when his body was found washed up on a beach fifteen miles from Plymouth, with an ugly wound on the back of his skull.  An autopsy found that this blow on the head had killed Loomis before he entered the water, but they were uncertain whether this injury came from an attack, or from striking his head on some part of the ship’s ironwork when he fell overboard.

The mystery of Loomis’ death has remained unsolved.  Ellis died in 1923 in Mexico City.  His obituary in Time magazine called him “one of the most remarkable men who ever acted as agent for the State Department.”

One certainly cannot argue that.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

It's all in the family!

What the hell was the Deerness Mermaid?

Why clams are happy.

The mystery of the Pied Piper.

A cursed family.

The strange story of an occult historian.

Another reminder of how little we really know about our own planet.

Abbott Parker was struck by lightning.  And then things got really weird.

The skull rock on Mars.

What linguists think are the most beautiful English-language words.

VE Day celebrations in London.

Timbuktu librarians versus Al-Qaeda.  (P.S. The librarians won.)

The journalist who broke the story of Germany's surrender in WWII--and then got fired for it.

Whale urine turns out to be pretty darn important.

Space keeps exploding, and scientists are up a tree.

The days of Britain's Bright Young Things.

A strange kidnapping in 1921 Los Angeles.

A Victorian deathbed scene that's very...Victorian.

A Renaissance muse.

The dogs of the Moscow Metro.

Some people are suggesting that the Antikythera mechanism isn't all that impressive.  Spoilsports.

The origins of the phrase, "put your foot in your mouth."

The golden tombs of ancient Bulgaria.

The man who wanted to be sent to Auschwitz.

The Labyrinth of Hawara.

The latest Pompeii excavations.

When going to a state fair can be fatal.

So, you're an Ice Age traveler about to cross the Pyrenees.  Here's what to pack.

The lost London Skylon.

VE Day in British newspapers.

A mysteriously tragic honeymoon.

A look at how Mongols governed.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the strange death of a diplomatic envoy.  In the meantime, here's an all-star version of an old favorite of mine.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Little mix-ups--particularly between strangers--are always embarrassing.  The “Galveston Daily News,” July 24, 1892:

SAN ANTONIO-About a month ago a stranger, apparently 35 years of age, came to this city from Mexico, it is said. He took quarters at the Globe Hotel and remained there for ten days. One night he appeared at the Vienna Hotel on South Alamo Street with a valise and took a room. The people at the place thought he was intoxicated and paid no attention to his groans at midnight.  The next morning he was found dead. He had in his possession some shirts and papers bearing the name of C.G. Jones, also a letter addressed to Charles Finehout. His body was held here pending instructions from relatives. As a result the body of the man was sent to Seymour, Ind., and the following special from that place shows the sensational turn of affairs that developed a little later. The dispatch says:

“On July 1 there came to Western Union telegraph office here a telegram from San Antonio, Tex, signed A. R. Buchanan, addressed to Mr. Joe I. Moore saying:

“Young man found dead in bed at Vienna Hotel here this morning. Among his effects a recent letter from you addressed to Charles Finehout. Other letters and wearing apparel marked C.G. Jones. Wire information.

“The attaches of the telegraph office were twenty-four hours in tracing the ownership of this message to Mrs. Josephine Isaacs Moore, wife of one of our prominent manufacturers and daughter of C.C. Isaacs, a retired farmer. Mr. Isaacs at once replied to the message as follows:

“Think corpse my nephew, Charles Finehout. Can it be shipped here?” 

“He also telegraphed Mr. Francis Schuh, formerly of this city but now of San Antonio, to ascertain if the corpse at the Vienna Hotel was that of Charles Finehout.

“Charles Finehout is or was a man of about 28 years of age, tall, strong, and well built, who spent nearly all of his early life here, but who for the past six years had been in the southwest holding positions on different railroads as fireman and engineer. When home on a visit a year ago he admitted that he traveled under an assumed name, Frank Melville, the greater part of the time. When last heard from six weeks ago, he was at Santa Rosalia, Mexico, where he said he was an engineer on the Mexican Central Railroad and that he was in good health, had saved up $500 and intended to make a visit home shortly, but not until after he had gone to the City of Mexico to join the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

“In due course answers to Mr. Isaacs’ telegraph were received, the one from Schuh saying, ‘Corpse at Vienna is that of Charles Finehout.’ And from Buchanan, “Body can be shipped, but not in presentable condition.’ 

Isaacs went immediately to the First National Bank and had them telegraph Buchanan to ship the remains here and guaranteeing the charges. On July 6 the box was received here with advanced and express charges of $187. This was paid and the remains taken to the home of Mr. Isaacs on North Walnut Street. There the box was opened and the coffin exposed to view. It was of the very cheapest kind, probably costing about $20.

“It was opened and it was found that it was not lined and that the remains were packed in sawdust. The face was uncovered and although decomposition was well advanced, some of the friends who were present declared that the remains were not those of Charles Finehout. However, there was nothing done, and the coffin was closed and religious ceremonies held, and the remains were interred in a new lot, just purchased by Mr. Isaacs in River View Cemetery.

“After the funeral ceremonies were concluded an examination was made of the contents of the valise. Aside from the Joe I. Moore letter and one or two photographs there was nothing in the valise to indicate that it was the property of Charles Finehout. Other articles in the valise were shirts marked C.G. Jones, letters and documents addressed to the same name. Among the latter was a certificate from the general office of the Mexican Central Railroad to the effect that C.G. Jones was traveling auditor for that company. This of course, served to arouse the suspicions of the relatives that they had buried the remains of some other than Charles Finehout, and they immediately sought to get word to him at Santa Rosalia, where last heard from. No answers came, however, to their telegrams, and they concluded that they had made no mistake and that Charles Finehout was dead and buried. They decided to trace Jones, and sent a number of letters, detailing the circumstances, addressed to the correspondents of Jones, as found in the valise.

“On yesterday their suspicions that Finehout was not dead were confirmed when by the receipt of a letter from him dated Las Vegas, N.M., July 1, and postmarked July 4, saying he was well and hearty. Telegrams since exchanged are conclusive evidence that he is alive and well, and will be in Seymour within a few days.

“But who is the man sleeping his last sleep up there in the beautiful $200 lot in River View? Who is C.G. Jones? Where is he? Is he dead; or was the man a thief who stole from both Finehout and Jones? Who is to reimburse Isaacs in the expense incident to the burial of the unknown, nearly $400? Since Finehout’s last visit here his grandfather had died, leaving him property valued at $10,000.”

Apparently none of those pertinent questions were ever answered. As a side note, I'd also like to know why Finehout was in the habit of traveling under an assumed name.