Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where the Strange Company HQ staffers wish you a lucky Friday the 13th!

Watch out for the Beast of Bladenboro!

J.R.R. Tolkien and Catholicism.

A book for a 15th century prince.

A tale of love and revenge in medieval Cyprus.

The enigma of Saki, one of my favorite short-story writers.

Some object is speeding towards our planet, and scientists have no idea what it is.  Obviously, not to worry.

An American literary festival in France.

When ghosts cause real estate shortages.

The spider that caused a dancing mania.

Most of human history might be underwater.

The first printed nursery rhymes.

We might find ourselves talking to birds.  Poor birds.

The terrifying world of sleep paralysis.  Oddly, that used to happen to me fairly often when I was very young, but never since.

Something is taking a weird flight around our solar system.

Souvenir hunting may go a long way back.

Ancient Egypt's "braided lady."

When Charles Dickens was summoned to an inquest.

The "Kongolese Joan of Arc."

When you almost bomb your own troops.

Vindication for an ancient historian.

The mystery of a vanishing plane.

Solving the mystery of a 400 year old padlock.

Yet another relationship ends with murder.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a young woman's very disturbing death.  In the meantime, here's ABBA.  Because why not?

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

An example of that Fortean favorite, mysterious showers of stones, appeared in the (Brisbane, Australia) “Courier-Mail” on February 3, 1923:

The police are engaged in investigating a series of mysterious happenings in Albert Square.    About 8 o'clock last night Miss Billie Macdonald was engaged in putting some soda into a lemon squash in the Tivoli Cafe, of which her mother, Mrs. S. Macdonald, is the proprietor, when a small stone fell into the shop through the back door. During the next three hours the mysterious bombardment continued. Later in the evening a customer was struck by a stone, a glass on a table was splintered, and while Miss Macdonald was cooking some eggs in the kitchen she was struck by a stone. The affair became more strange when the attackers piled up rubbish bins at the back door, and when Mr. Macdonald opened the door a stone narrowly missed his head. 

The happenings were assuming alarming proportions, when the assistance of the police was sought. Sergeant Hamilton, assisted by Plain Clothes Constables Wootton and Campbell, and Constables Hird, Burke, Zeller, and Gray commenced investigations. 

The large empty building was at one time occupied by the Green Coupon Tea Company, the windows of which overlook the rear of the shop. came under suspicion. Miss Macdonald was showing the police the way up the back fire escape, when a piece of metal piping fell close to her. Later, when she was with another party of policemen in the Ann-street Presbyterian churchyard, a large stone fell only a few feet away from her. A little pile of large stones was found on a landing at the rear of the Tivoli Theatre, which is next door to the shop. 

Meanwhile, every floor of the premises recently occupied by the Green Coupon Tea Company had been searched. The lift well was pried into, and even the gap between the ceiling and the roof was investigated, but no outlet could be found on to the roof. The police next turned their attention to the Tivoli building, to which the miscreants might have escaped either from the top of the roof or round the back of the building, but up to an early hour this morning no entrance had been made into the building. The throwing of stones ceased at about midnight.

As far as I can tell, the assault on the Tivoli Cafe was a one-off.  I couldn’t find any further reports on the matter.

The Ghost of Yorkshire Museum

Ghosts are usually associated with dank old castles, cemeteries, lonely moonlit roads, and the like.  It charms me that at least one had the good taste to haunt a museum instead.

The site of our little tale is the Yorkshire Museum in York, England.  On Sunday, September 20, 1953, it was hosting an evangelical meeting.  The museum was rarely open on Sunday evenings, so it was unusual for the caretaker, George Leonard Jones, to be on duty at that time.  After the meeting ended, Jones locked the front door, and he and his wife went into the kitchen, which was located in the basement.  While there, they heard footsteps above them, so George went to investigate.  Some time afterward, he explained to a reporter from the “Yorkshire Evening Press” what happened next:

"I told her it must be Mr. Willmott, Keeper of the Museum, going to his office.  I went upstairs to tell him we were ready to leave. I fully expected to see him, but when I was halfway up the stairs I saw an elderly man crossing from Mr. Willmott's office into another room. I thought he was an odd looking chap because he was wearing a frock-coat, drain-pipe trousers and had fluffy side-whiskers. He had very little hair and walked with a slight stoop.

"I decided he must be an eccentric professor. As I neared the top of the stairs, he seemed to change his mind, turn, and walk back into the office. When I got to the door, he seemed to change his mind again and turned quickly to come out.

"I stood on one side to let him pass and said, excuse me, sir, are you looking for Mr. Willmott?  He did not answer but just shuffled past me and began to go down the stairs toward the library.

"Being only a few feet from him, I saw his face clearly and could pick him out from a photograph any time. He looked agitated, had a frown on his face, and kept muttering: 'I must find it; I must find it.'

"It was queer, but I did not think about ghosts for one minute. He looked just as real as you or me. But I did not want him roaming around so late at night, and anyway I wanted to lock up and catch my bus.

"As I followed him down the stairs, I noticed that he was wearing what seemed to be elastic-sided boots, and I remembered thinking how old-fashioned the big black buttons looked on the back of his coat.

"Still muttering, he went into the library. It was in darkness and I switched on the lights as I followed him in a few yards behind. He was standing between two tall book racks pulling first one book and then another from one of the shelves. He seemed anxious to find something.

"I thought to myself, this has gone far enough. So, thinking he was deaf, I stretched my right hand out to touch him on the shoulder. But as my hand drew near his coat he vanished, and the book he had been holding dropped to the floor."

The book was “Antiquities and Curiosities of the Church.”  It hardly sounds like a book to draw one back from the grave, but you never know with ghosts.

Mr. Jonas, understandably wanting proof that he was not going mad, persuaded Willmott to stand guard with him at the museum for the next few Sunday evenings.  However, the ghostly book-fancier did not make another appearance until Sunday, October 18.  Soon after Willmott left, George saw the figure again.  It came downstairs from the first floor, crossed the hall, and went through the closed door of the library.  This time, no books were displaced.

George asked another friend, Walter French, to join him on his Sunday vigils, but their curiosity was unrewarded until the night of November 15.  As the men were walking through the library, they heard the sounds of book pages being turned, followed by a sharp thud.  Down one of the aisles, “Antiquities and Curiosities of the Church” was lying on the floor, its pages still fluttering.

George noted that the ghost seemed to appear every fourth Sunday at precisely 7:40 pm.  Accordingly, on the evening of December 13, he gathered a small group in the Museum library to await events.  Among the ghost-hunters was George’s brother James.  He did not believe in ghosts, and had been making unkind speculations about his brother’s sanity.  He must have felt a bit sheepish when he saw the copy of “Antiquities and Curiosities” being pulled out from the shelf by invisible hands, after which it fell to the ground in an odd manner.  “It didn’t seem to fall at the same speed books usually fall,” he explained.

He called the rest of the group over.  They all saw the book lying on the floor, its pages turning.  The shelf where it had rested was examined.  No strings, wires, or any other sign of human trickery was found.  One of the witnesses admitted that just before the book was moved, his legs suddenly felt a strange chill, which vanished after the book fell.

“Maybe somebody will believe me now,” poor George sighed.

On January 10--the ghost’s next expected appearance--George was home ill.  Willmott stood vigil in his place, but the literary spook failed to make an appearance.  On February 7, 1954, Eric J. Dingwall and Trevor H. Hall of the Society for Psychical Research arrived to investigate for themselves.  Sadly, the ghost--clearly a shy, bookish type who just wanted to be left alone--again refused to show itself, leaving Dingwall and Hall muttering about tricks of the light and secret string-pulling.

And so the ghost of the York Museum quietly drifted back off into whatever shadowy realm it came from.  It was theorized that it was the spirit of Edward Wooler, a Darlington solicitor and antiquary--dead for the past thirty years--who had once owned the copy of “Antiquities and Curiosities.”  Whoever our spectral gentleman was, I hope he found whatever he was looking for in the book, and was satisfied.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where we're all full of brotherly love!

Watch out for the Fresno Nightcrawler!

The ghosts of Newcastle.

A pioneering architect.

A mysterious scandal.

A bloody poltergeist.

The great medieval famine.

The actress who was arrested for the way she rode a horse.

Extrajudicial witch hunts.

The Maya woman who was given a whole lot of teeth.

Medieval ways of keeping warm.

The 19th century Paris "season."

A tribute to "Gulliver's Travels."

Remembering an "ordinary" death from over 200 years ago.

UFOs over Melbourne.

UFOs over Wiltshire.

The final voyage of the "New Era."

In which we debate the smell of crape.

The social history of love.

Mars isn't dead, it's just taking a nice nap.

A historic Gilded Age party.

Flesh falls and blood rains.

The Pompeii of Greece.

The last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Old London fogs and smogs.

Real-life trick-or-treat horrors.

The mystery of the Kyshtym Dwarf.

The Mad Trapper of Red River.

When climbers and explorers suddenly feel they're not alone.

Some mysterious apparitions.

An affair's murderous end.

The "trick or treat" murder.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a bookish ghost.  In the meantime, here's some Albinoni:

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This is for all of us who tend to think most small children are a bit demonic.  The “New York Herald,” December 2, 1888:

To the north and west of this city, about fifteen miles away, dividing this county from Cumberland and Franklin counties, is a ridge of mountains. In some of the mountain valleys the people are in a state of deep ignorance, seeing little of the outer world and scarcely touched by the civilization that is all around them. In one of these little corners of the mountain about two weeks ago was born a monstrosity that has filled the mountaineers with terror and dread. Among many of them superstition is religion, and they believe that the devil has appeared among them incarnate in the monster born in their midst.

During the past week rumors have reached this city of a fabulous creature, born in the mountain, and of the intense excitement prevailing in the neighborhood of its birthplace. The excitement spread to the lowlands, and those who had the courage to overcome their superstitious fears and visit the creature describe it as being somewhat larger than the average new born babe, and although the offspring of a white father and mother, dark in color and covered with short, black hair. From either side of its head grew short horns. A long tail hung to its feet, which strongly resembled the cloven hoof. In fact, to use the words of one who saw it, "It was the very picture of the devil."

There are many stories as to the incidents attending the birth of the monster, but the following story is the one which seems to have so fixed itself in the minds of the mountaineers that they cannot be convinced that the devil has not lived and been among them in the flesh. From what they say it appears that the father of the creature had some sort of a superstitious religious belief and tried to persuade his wife, who did not agree with him, to accept his opinions. Finally she declared that she would not do as he wished, and in blasphemous language declared that she would rather see the devil than to have a cross always before her eyes. Shortly after this declaration she gave birth to a horrible monster, as described above.

In terror the father summoned several neighbors, and one of them, more brave than the rest, offered to open a vein in the arm of the creature and bleed it to death. As he took his knife from his pocket the creature raised itself, got down from the bed, walked across the room, and returning addressed its would-be executioner in most terrible language, and threatened him with dire misfortune if he attempted to do it harm, and then declared it would live for seven days, and having revealed its object in coming into the world, would then die. It lived for seven days, and on last Monday, the eighth day, died, but without having spoken again. As strange as it may seem, this story has many believers, and there are few who do not shun the little cabin in the mountain in which lives the poor mother of the miserable creature whose birth and death have filled her neighbors with such uneasiness.

Arne Gandy's Final Phone Call

"Hackensack Record," May 24, 1934, via Newspapers.com

20-year-old Arne Gandy of Teaneck, New Jersey, was a restless, adventurous young man who, like so many restless, adventurous sorts throughout history, felt the call of the high seas.  After several voyages to South America, in December 1933 he signed on to serve as “messboy” on the “President Harrison.”  Gandy carried with him a letter of introduction to Stanley Dollar, president of the ship’s line.  After the “President Harrison” arrived in San Francisco, he planned to ask Dollar for a rating of cadet.  Gandy planned to make sailing his life’s work.

Unfortunately, when Gandy landed in San Francisco, he was unable to get a meeting with Dollar, and he agreed to continue his job on the “President Harrison.”  However, on January 5, 1934, he mysteriously left the ship, in such a hurry that he left all his belongings behind.  The “President Harrison,” on the assumption that he had deserted, sailed off without him.  We know nothing of Gandy’s subsequent actions.

At 2:45 a.m. on January 10, Arne’s mother back in Teaneck was awakened by the ringing of the telephone.  When she answered, she was confused, and a bit frightened, to hear it was an utterly bizarre call.  A man’s unfamiliar voice went into a rambling monologue.  “The kid is OK,” he told her.  “What I said about him in my letter is all true.  He is a fine kid.”  When Mrs. Gandy asked who was speaking, her question was ignored.  The man went on, “I told the truth and he’s coming home now.”  Mrs. Gandy said he must have the wrong number, as she knew nothing about any letter.  When she asked what number he was calling, he repeated the Gandy’s private, unlisted number--known only to family and their closest friends.

Mrs. Gandy heard Arne’s voice in the background, and asked to talk to him.  The man chuckled and said, “That’s all right; he’s coming home now.”  She then heard a roaring sound, and the man sighed, “I am helpless.  Here I lie propped up on pillows, helpless.  I can’t move.”  His voice began fading out.  Then, she heard another voice saying, “When shall we operate, doctor?”  A third voice replied, “Right away.”  Then the line went dead.  Mrs. Gandy quickly awakened her husband Curtis.  Mr. Gandy, oddly enough, had been in the middle of a nightmare where either Arne or the boy’s twin, Curtis III--he couldn’t tell which--was in serious trouble.

The Gandys contacted the telephone operator, who told them that it had been a station to station call from San Francisco.  They were unable to find out who had placed the call.

At about the same time as this ominous communication, Arne’s twin brother Curtis, who was a cadet aboard the freighter “Scanstates,” which was then in the mid-Atlantic en route to Denmark, had an alarming dream where he heard Arne, clearly in great distress, calling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

Early on the morning of January 11, the naked body of a young man was found floating in San Francisco Bay.  At first, the corpse was known only as “John Doe No. 4,” but after the local police sent on the body’s fingerprints to the National Bureau of Identification in Washington D.C., a check of the fingerprint records of steamship lines identified the dead man as Arne Gandy.  This was corroborated by checking Arne’s dental records.  It was believed that Arne had been in the water since January 9--the day before Mrs. Gandy received the mysterious phone call where she heard her son’s voice.

The autopsy revealed that Arne had died by drowning.  The coroner added, “whether by accident or force could not be determined.”  There were no signs of external injury.  Arne’s parents insisted that their son was a cheerful, healthy young man who had no reason to commit suicide, but police saw no indications of foul play, either.

It is depressing to relate that this superlative bit of weirdness ended on a frustratingly inconclusive note.  Arne’s wealthy father hired private detectives to investigate his son’s mysterious death, but they were unable to make any more progress than the police had.  We will never know why Arne deserted his ship, or whether his death was due to suicide, accident, or murder.

And needless to say, we will never know who made that eerie phone call in the early hours of January 10…where the voice of a dead man could be heard.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Everyone here at Strange Company HQ wishes you a happy Halloween!

In which an 18th century priest meets a troll.

Gunnhild, Mother of Kings.

The strange case of the Crow Hill Bones.

So now we know what is the oldest pub in England.

The Abominable Snowman visits Massachusetts.

I thought you'd like to know that someone is cataloging public restrooms.  (And, yeah, I don't want to know what this person's other hobbies might be.)

All right, I know you're itching to read about coffin torpedoes.

Video killed the fairylore star.

A haunted Pennsylvania farm.

Rewritng Mesoamerican history.

Gef, everyone's favorite talking mongoose.

A UFO wave in Puerto Rico.

A terrifying wake.

The difference between Suffragettes and Suffragists.

More particularly disturbing deaths.

Mysteries of the pyramids.

A brief history of dangerous fairies.

AI is helping scientists recover a library from Pompeii.

When London had a railway for the dead.

A real-life Dr. Frankenstein.

An example of ancient Roman nanotech.

The Green Man of Pittsburgh.

How Bruce McCandless earned the Medal of Honor.

An 1888 electric vehicle.  (As an aside, "Flocken Elektrowagen" would be a great name for an electropunk band.)

Ivan the Terrible wanted to marry Elizabeth I, and wouldn't they have been a fun couple.

Three hangings in Pennsylvania.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a young man's eerie death.  In the meantime, here's Linda Thompson.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

One for the “mini mysteries” file: This unresolved poisoning case was reported in the “South Wales Argus,” February 8, 1934.

How did cyanide of potassium, used for electro-plating, find its way into a teacup from which a girl of 20 drank tea and died shortly afterwards? This was the mystery inquired into at Sheffield on Wednesday.

An inquest was held on the girl, Lilian Charlotte Corbridge, of Ripon-street, Sheffield, who drank the tea on January 30 at the electro-plating works of Messrs. Biggins Brothers, Ltd., Arundel-street, Sheffield.

A verdict of "Accidental death" was returned, and the jury expressed the opinion that the poison should be locked up.  The evidence, said the Coroner, suggested that different arrangements ought to be made as to where the girls had their meals. "It has not been definitely ascertained how the poison got into the cup of tea," added the Coroner.

Evidence was given that tea was brewed for a girl employee named Catherine Stringer in a teacup and for Corbridge in a teapot.  Stringer complained about the nasty taste of her tea, which she threw away, whereupon Corbridge gave her some from her teapot.

Having thus run short of tea, Corbridge took the kettle and teapot to get some water, and poured tea out of the teapot into a cup. After drinking she reeled, and another girl dashed to the telephone for assistance. Pointing to her teacup, Corbridge said: "It is the tea."

Mr. Mark Leslie Biggins, an electro-plater, said he gave Corbridge 12 plated teapots to weigh. They had been in vats containing cyanide of potassium in solution. Asked by the Coroner if he thought there could be any poisonous solution left in those teapots he replied "Very, very little."

Dr. J. M. Webster, police surgeon, said he found poison in the girl's teacup, but none in the teapot. From the post-mortem examination he was of the opinion that the girl died from swallowing potassium cyanide.

And that seems to have been that.

The Plum Tree Hanging

I’ve noticed that in recent years, Halloween decorations have grown increasingly macabre.  In my neighborhood, at least, grinning Jack o’lanterns and innocuous ghosts are being replaced by ghoulish skeletons (both human and animal,) gravestones, knife-wielding devils, and various other ugly monstrosities.  Last year, a house near me put in their yard such a revolting handmade display of chopped-up doll parts covered in unsettlingly realistic-looking fake blood that some neighbors complained vigorously enough to get the DIY abattoir removed.  However, as ghastly as it all is, at least nobody around here has hung a genuine dead body outside anyone’s house.  To date, at least.  For an example of such real-life Halloween horror, you would have to look back to Evansville, Indiana in 1925.

While returning from a party on October 31, a couple named George and Helen Erhard saw something large dangling from a plum tree in their front yard.  At first, they assumed it was a mannequin someone had left as a holiday prank.  However, when they went closer to the object, they realized that hanging in their property was no dummy, but a very real, and very dead, man.

The man was wearing a fairly pricey serge suit, a cap, a sweater coat, and a shirt.  His necktie had been used as a noose attaching him to the tree branch.  The body carried no identification, money, or jewelry.  His most notable features were a missing finger on the right hand, and an anchor and heart tattoo on one arm.

Despite the way the body was found, it was soon determined that this was no simple suicide.  The dead man had suffered two skull fractures, a deep laceration to the head, as well and other cuts and bruises to the body.  He had evidently been badly beaten with a blunt object before being dragged to the tree.  He had died about an hour before the Erhards discovered him.  George’s mother, who lived with the Erhards, told police that at 10:30 pm--about an hour before George and Helen arrived home--she had been awakened by her dog barking.  She then heard a woman’s scream, and the sound of a car screeching swiftly away.

A man named John Zakrzewsky heard of the gruesome find.  He thought the body’s description matched that of his brother Seraphine, a punch press operator from Toledo, Ohio, who had disappeared from his home on October 25th.  On November 3, John was able to identify the corpse as that of Seraphine.  John told the police that he could not explain his brother’s disappearance or his subsequent murder.  According to John, Seraphine was a law-abiding sort with no enemies.  However, he did admit that Seraphine may have become “mixed up with bootleggers.”  (Although becoming “mixed-up” with such characters was an excellent way to get into serious trouble, this intriguing clue went nowhere.)

"Evansville Courier," November 4, 1925, via Newspapers.com

John also informed police that he did not believe Seraphine owned the clothes he was wearing when he died--they were too good a quality to belong to someone of his modest means.  (It was later learned that Seraphine had been given most of his clothing from a worker at an Evansville Salvation Army.)  Seraphine had spent a few days in Evansville before his death--he had been seen eating alone several times in a local restaurant--but it was never determined what he was doing in the city, where he had no known friends or other ties.

Witnesses claimed that between the hours of 10:30 and 11 on the night of the crime, а “dilapidated touring car” was parked near the Erhard farm.  Three men who looked like “underworld characters,” were seen on the road nearby.  These men were never identified, leaving it as anyone’s guess if they had anything to do with the tragedy.

And, with that, the murder investigation quickly came to a sputtering end.  Although the police duly interrogated all possible witnesses/suspects (including the Erhards,) no one had any information about who might have committed this odd, seemingly motiveless murder.  Sadly, the crime known as the “Plum Tree Hanging” soon disappeared from the newspapers, the police file was sent to the “cold case” bin, and life went on.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

The Strange Company HQ staffers wish you pleasant reading!

A handy reminder that bees are weird.

A look at medieval executioners.

The world's oldest dated printed book.

A stupid theory about the Salem Witch Trials that refuses to die.

The 11th century abbot and the recycled sarcophagus.

The duel between W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley.

The man who made a living from being a conjoined twin.

The death of Pretty Boy Floyd.

Remembering the Cat Lady of Spitalfields.

A pattern has been found in cases of alleged reincarnation.

The legend of "Mountain Charley."

The only prison with its own zoo.

In search of the Woman in Black.

A meeting with Bigfoot.

The oldest known dwelling in the Western Hemisphere.

The mystery of the Dancing Plague.

Remembering the Aberfan disaster.

Not to worry, just empty space sending out mysterious signals.

The War of Jenkins' Ear.

The cat who missed out on being the hero of Rikers Island.

If a ghost wants his widow to get the funeral money, you should probably oblige.

A notorious 19th century swindler.

New York's "house of many mysteries."

The woman who could sew with her tongue.  And no improper jokes, please.  I know what the internet is like.

When the Royal Society went ghost-hunting.

The mystery of the "Tully monster."

Some very disturbing deaths.

George III visits Oxford.

A really bad 18th century job.

A murderous medical student.

The real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.

A cave of dragon bones.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an unsolved Halloween murder.  In the meantime, here's something a bit different.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I guess you could say that this is one of those UFO stories that has everything, including satanic fungus.  The “Jacksonville Journal,” January 28, 1974:

After sighting an Unidentified Flying Object and being felled by a ray apparently from an occupant of the craft, a strange "devil's head" was found growing in his yard, a Jacksonville man has reported to the UFO Research Institute.

Norman R. Chastain, 62, of 2507 Kershaw Drive W., said he delayed reporting the strange incident after it occurred for fear he would be ridiculed as "some kind of a nut."

Chastain's photograph with the "devil's head" appeared in the Journal nearly two years ago after he brought the plant to the newspaper and reported finding it in his yard.

At that time, however, he did not mention the earlier incident. He said he is telling the story now because of the investigation being made by the research institute.

Chastain is an electrician with the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Co. He was out in the St. Johns River fishing late at night Jan. 26, 1972, near the eastern tip of Blount Island.  At 3 a.m., he was sitting at anchor in a slack tide about 50 feet from shore when he noticed "several orange and blue lights from over St. Johns Bluff Monument," he said.  At first he thought it was a mosquito control or police helicopter.

Chastain said his boat lights were on and a Coleman lantern was burning.  He said the object made no noise.

"After a few minutes, the lights came directly towards my boat and I could make out the outline of something like a half of a ball with lights flashing and changing colors about every minute," he said.

He said the object was about 150 feet in the air directly over his boat. He snapped off the lights on his boats and turned out the lantern and the object moved slowly back to the bluff.  His boat had run aground by this time and he went ashore, he said.

Chastain said he went looking for a lever to pry his boat free, found a piece of 2-by-6 wood and was carrying it back when he stopped to rest, 75 feet from his boat.

"I raised my spotlight to see if my boat was still in the muck and, in the edges of the bushes, I saw the darndest-looking human-like creature one could ever imagine," he said.

He said he dropped the timber and immediately was hit by a "brilliant white light." It made him dizzy and he lay down on the grass.

His arms and legs became numb and tingled, but he stayed on the ground, praying, until daybreak, he said.  He then crawled farther inland and stayed until about noon, when his strength returned.

He swam out to his boat, which had drifted about 50 feet from shore. He noticed an "overpowering stench" in his clothes and hair that was not present until he met the "devil-looking creature."  He said he washed and threw away his old clothes before going home. Still his wife commented that he didn't look right and asked if he were all right. Chastain said he told her he got seasick.

Three nights later, Chastain said, he found himself dreaming that he was on a strange planet. Suddenly, he was awakened by a clap of thunder and saw that it was raining outside.  He also noticed the same overpowering smell he experienced three days before, he said.  Chastain remained awake the rest of the night, holding a gun.  When morning came, he went outside.

"There in the grass directly behind my boat at the same distance the creature was positioned on Blount Island was a cluster of several flesh-colored heads looking at me and they looked so much like that devil looking creature I saw on the island that my first thought was the UFO was over my house that night looking for me."

He went to his neighbors' homes looking for witnesses but they were all away. He dug up the plants and brought one to the Journal, he said.

"Blood" was coming from the plant, he said. it also had teeth, big eyes, a wide mouth and pointed ears, Chastain said.

Chastain said each of the plants shriveled up into a ball about six hours after they came out. No morе have grown since then, he said.

 

Since the sighting, Chastain has been back to the same spot on Blount island several times, he said. In fact, he was fishing in the same spot recently and caught a 40-pound red bass, good enough for a third place in a fishing tournament.

He says the reaction from persons he tells his story to is "peculiar."  

"The educated person is very, very interested," he said. "Those who are uneducated--the reaction is nil."

"Railroad men are the hardest to convince," he said. That is the reason he took one of the plants to show his fellow workers, some of whom advised him to move out of the house, he said.

When the Journal contacted the University of Florida's botany department, a mycologist there appeared to recognize the plant immediately from a verbal description.

He said it is a stinkhorn, very common in Florida, especially during cold weather after a drizzly rain. It is not poisonous, but generally is not considered edible because of the smell, he said.  It is a form of mushroom.

It was not until he attended a lecture at Florida Junior College by Stanton Friedman, director of the UFO Research Institute, that Chastain decided to report the incident.  He had letters from the institute, which is located in California, indicating his report is being investigated.

Friedman told the Journal by telephone that he is a nuclear physicist who spends all of his spare time investigating UFOS.

Chastain said that he submitted his story to the Journal now "to let the public try and decide whether or not the saucers are from Planet Earth or some other planet."

The Bootleg Boyer Baby

If you are at all familiar with my blog, you know that I delight in sharing moral tales that provide both spiritual uplift and valuable practical advice at navigating this thing called Life.  For instance, if you are going to fake a pregnancy in order to gain a claim to your husband’s inheritance, make sure you have all your paperwork in order.  Acquiring bogus heirs is not a job for amateurs.

Read on.

In 1902, Joseph Boyer, the owner of a machine shop in St. Louis, Missouri, took over as company president of what became the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, which he subsequently relocated to Detroit.  The company soon became a huge global success, which, naturally, made Boyer an extremely wealthy man.

However, in 1913, dark clouds hovered over the horizon for Boyer and other rich Americans, in the form of the Revenue Act, which brought in a federal income tax.  The ominous prospect of turning a substantial amount of his income over to Uncle Sam--and, one would like to think, fatherly affection--inspired Boyer to prudently shelter most of his wealth in the form of lavish trust funds for his seven children.  One of these trust funds--the one in the name of Joseph’s son Myron--was to lead to some unexpected complications.

In 1921, Myron married one Laura Lucille Miller.  In one important sense, Laura was an unlikely choice for his bride.  The childless Myron was anxious to have an heir to his substantial fortune, but as Laura was forty years old at the time of their wedding, it seemed unlikely she would ever have children.

However miracles do happen.  Just as the Biblical Elizabeth became pregnant with John the Baptist at an advanced age, in mid-1923 Laura was able to announce the joyous news that she was pregnant.  One day in November, as her due date approached, Laura sent Myron off on some errand which kept him away from home for a few hours.  As at the time he left, his bride was showing no signs of imminent labor, one can understand Myron’s astonishment when he returned to find that in his absence, he had become the father of a fine baby boy.  They named the child “Joseph Andrew Boyer III.”

As far as we know, all went well for the little family until about a year later, when Myron, for reasons lost to history, began to doubt the baby’s paternity.  He quietly hired private investigators to see if his sudden doubts about Laura’s fidelity had any basis in fact.  He wound up getting much more than he bargained for.  The PIs soon informed Myron that sadly, yes, the baby was not his biological son.  And guess what?  Little Joseph was not Laura’s biological son, either.

When confronted with the investigator’s findings, Laura realized the game was up and she had no choice but to tell all.  She had paid a handsome sum to a Detroit doctor for him to find her a baby--any baby would do.  The doctor found a pregnant, unmarried 19-year-old in Windsor, Ontario, who was very anxious to find a home for her baby.  He arranged for Laura to adopt the child, who was then brought to Detroit.  And then Laura--after presumably divesting herself of a very large pillow--staged her little tableau of new motherhood.

Discovering that your wife had faked a pregnancy and brought in a ringer admittedly would be a hard thing for any husband to accept.  What made it still worse for Myron and the other Boyers was that this child stood to inherit a fortune that they felt he was completely unentitled to possess.  On March 1, 1928, Myron--who had separated from his wife--filed a suit to have the birth certificate of his erstwhile son deleted from official records.  He literally wanted the boy erased from Boyer family history, thus, he hoped, making little Joseph ineligible for any inheritance.  Laura outwardly accepted Myron’s actions, telling reporters that what mattered to her was that she still had her legally adopted son, whom she loved “more than anything else in the world.”

This brought up a new complication:  Was Joseph legally her son?  The necessarily secretive nature of her adoption put that question in doubt.  She had no paperwork proving her claim to the child, the doctor who had arranged the whole business was dead, and the courts had no record of any formal adoption.

But wait, there’s more!  Edith Howarth, the mother of the baby Laura had acquired, was convinced that she had given birth to a girl.  Although the records of the hospital where the birth took place stated that she had had a son, the birth certificate listed the baby as a girl.  In short, nobody could say who Joseph Andrew Boyer III really was at all.

If you’re starting to get a headache at this point in our story, my apologies.

Laura’s legal troubles were just beginning.  As little Joseph had (as far as anyone could tell) been born in Canada, it was highly possible that he was technically an illegal alien facing deportation.  She was summoned to appear before the Federal Immigration Commission in Detroit on March 5, 1928, in order to determine the boy’s legal status in the U.S.  As Laura was unable to find any record to show that she had formally adopted the boy, his fate was looking grim.  However, one of Laura’s attorneys was able to find a last-minute solution.  Edith Howarth signed the necessary papers relinquishing the child, and Laura, at long last, was able to legally establish herself as the boy’s mother.  When she adopted the child, she changed his name to “Dode Alfred Boyer.”  All of this satisfied the immigration officials, and Dode was safe from deportation.

"Bangor News," March 1, 1928, via Newspapers.com

Myron was making it clear that he couldn’t care less what Laura and Dode did, as long as they were unable to get their hands on the Boyer fortune.  Just to make sure, he filed a second lawsuit asking the court to legally bar the boy from any access to the trust fund.  In retaliation, Laura--who was still Myron’s legal wife--filed suit asking that his two lawsuits be dismissed.  Myron’s response was to file a third suit asking that the $800 a month payments the trust fund had been making to Joseph/Dode be cancelled.

The court’s decision on all this wrangling was made on November 22, 1928.  The judge ruled that Dode was not only disinherited from the Boyer estate, the payments from the trust fund were to be immediately stopped, and Dode’s initial birth records, now known to be fraudulent, were ordered to be erased from public records.  Both Laura and Myron told reporters that they were satisfied with the judge’s decision and were prepared to move on with their separate lives.

The end of the story?  Oh, surely you jest.

As Fate would have it, Myron did not enjoy his legal victory for long.  Just one month later, on December 29, he suddenly collapsed from a heart attack and died.  He had never thought to update his will, dated April 26, 1923, which left “all of my earthly possessions” to “my beloved wife, Laura Miller Boyer.”

This will wound up making a great deal of happy lawyers very wealthy.  Myron’s siblings wasted no time filing lawsuits addressing the question of what, exactly, Myron’s “earthly possessions” were.  The battle centered around his trust fund, which, by then, was a cool $2.5 million.  In brief, Laura’s lawyers said it had belonged to Myron, while Boyer attorneys asserted that after Myron died, the fund reverted to the estate of his father.

The argument dragged on for years, until on July 9, 1937, the court ruled that the Boyers were to give Laura $1.2 million.  This was appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court.  That body reversed the decision.  The United States Supreme Court denied Laura’s appeal, leaving her and Dode without a penny more of Boyer money.

Laura and her son disappeared from the newspaper headlines, leading anonymous, but, let us hope, not unhappy lives.  Laura found work as a saleslady until her death in 1940.  Dode died in Long Beach, California, in 1995.  When people would casually ask him about his family background, I wonder what he told them?

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where our host will be Little Tim!

Although I don't think he approves of us one bit.

Watch out for the Skunk River Monster!

The Los Angeles novelist who is forgotten at home, but loved in Italy.

From "miracle vine" to invasive species: yes, yet another instance of government and unexpected consequences.

A ramming disaster at sea.

Europe's "hunger stones."

Japan's Roswell.

How King John blew it.

The hidden history of paper.

A mother's death kicks off a weird saga.

The real Christopher Robin was no fan of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Grave stories from a grave digger.

That time when people wanted a silver-plated Grandma.

A reminder to please leave the Sun alone.

Life in the 1860s Royal Navy.

The oldest known spear attack.

Will o'the wisps and William Blake.

Authors are easy marks.

A case of mysterious stone throwing in India.

Beer comes to medieval England.

The days of werewolf trials.

Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone.

So, maybe some things on the bottom of the sea should be left there.

The disappearances of two sets of sisters.

A ghost visits a morgue.

A brief history of English vampires.

More evidence that we've been underestimating Neanderthals.

The bad, bad Bender family.

That time when the police recorded ghost activity.

Why ancient Romans drank gladiator blood.

The mystery of ancient mounds in Louisiana.

An 1875 balloon tragedy.

Peru's "Band of Holes."

The mystery of kissing.

In Elizabethan England, there was such a thing as bad publicity.

A love affair that ended with a bullet.

The many H.L. Menckens.

A very haunted school.

Some very haunted cemeteries.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a family gone very, very weird.  In the meantime, this seems appropriate for your Friday reading:

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Treasure hunting and ghosts seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly.  As an example, peruse this story from the “Bartlesville Examiner,” February 13, 1927:

OKMULGEE, Okla. - (AP) -Snake Creek, in Okmulgee county, still believes in her six lively ghosts and sets back to laugh at outsiders when they invade the playground of the spirits.  Investigation has failed to disprove fantastic stories of phantom hailstones, eerie lights and wailing cries about a wooded section where gold is supposed to be buried and guarded by the shades of five Indians and a white man.

No explanation was offered for the tales told by a number of reputable men of the community, in the northeast part of the county.  They, and a number of others, declare they have been terrified a number of times by the ghostly manifestations, while digging for the hidden treasure, located two and a quarter miles south of the county line and a mile and a half south of Snake Creek school on the farm of Arthur Straughan.  Parties from nearby cities have been organized to probe the mystery, but they too have been frightened away, Snake Creek residents say. Now that the story has leaked out, Snake Creek expects to have a lot of fun. Ghost hunters are planning to find out just what is going on.

The six spirits have been at work for several weeks chasing away invaders of their home.  There are six, a spiritualist declares, and they are sad, sad boys, wishing to be let alone and asking mortals to stay away. In defense of their home the Indian ghosts have offered their best in screaming war whoops, while their white comrade flits about the tree tops lighting dim ghost lights. When that fails to dislodge the visitors, the sextet resorts to a thundering storm of invisible hail, which can be felt but cannot be seen, according to the Snake Creek residents.  Several residents of the community, in the northeast corner of Okmulgee county, will testify to the existence of unseen things that utter blood-curdling howls, flash lights and throw hailstones.

One of the men is suffering from nervous prostration. His companions swear they never again will approach the haunted place where the spirits hold forth and defy men to molest them.  Four of the farmers of the Snake Creek district, who have made several trips to the place and claim to have heard and seen the weird signs, are Hayworth Baker, who located the place, James Lee, Bob Benson and Earl Douglas.

The haunted treasure is located two and a quarter miles south of the county line, and a mile and a half south of the Snake Creek school. It is on the farm of Arthur Straughan.  Some of Snake Creek is skeptical, but the majority is not. Those men are well known and the stories they tell hang together well.  The ghostly manifestations are supposed to have begun several weeks ago when the men decided to dig for buried treasure they had heard could be found in a wooded section north of Snake Creek school.

The party had dug a few feet when a frightful Indian war whoop brought them to attention.  It was not repeated, and they began again to dig. The screaming challenge was heard again, this time from several different directions. The men dropped their tools and fled in horror.

A few nights later, the same men regained courage and again started to hunt for the treasure. They just had touched their tools to the earth when the Indian yell was uttered in their very ears, from the tree-tops, from all sides, and some said from the hole where they were digging. They fled.

The original party decided to get in more direct communication with the spirits. They consulted a spiritualist. He told them that the bodies of five Indians and one white man had been buried near the place many years before, The ghosts rather liked the place and were hanging around. They did not wish to be disturbed and were using the only defense a poor ghost has to keep marauders away.

The treasure story was too much of a lure, however, and the men did not stay away long. This time the band of dead men went deeper into their bag of tricks and decided to show the boys just what a ghost really can do. The voices started the show, coming from every direction, above and below. Lights were seen hanging all about. The tree tops were alive with them. The woods looked like phosphorus in the moonlight. The weird lights shone on the ground, in the treasure hole and under the men's feet.

A strange noise began overhead, gathering force until it resembled a heavy thunderstorm.  Something rained down upon the men. The objects fell like hailstones, but when they were caught, the men opened their hands to find they held nothing. The invisible hail fell with more intensity. It was too much for the treasure hunters. They thought they heard ghostly laughter as they sped homeward. Ghost hunters are going to investigate again.

The stories told by the men are terrifying, but Snake Creek has her skeptical ones. They must be satisfied.

The treasure seekers, hunting for the gold that legend has placed there and which spiritual messages are said to have confirmed, have hunted only at night because they wished to hide any possible discoveries from other residents of the Snake Creek district. The search now is expected to be continued by daylight, due to the publicity given the treasure ghosts.

Unsurprisingly, there is no record of anyone finding the reputed gold.  The ghosts obviously did their work well.

The Undeciphered Death of Paul Rubin

The Rubin ciphertext

Eighteen-year-old Paul Emanuel Rubin was a sophomore at New York University, where he studied chemistry.  We have contradictory reports about his scholastic success:  His father Samuel said that Paul was an excellent student, while a police detective later told reporters that the teenager was doing so poorly at the University that he was in danger of flunking out.  (This is one of those cases that is full of contradictory details.)  

On the morning of Monday, January 19, 1953, Paul left his home in Brooklyn.  His mother Bessie assumed he was going off to his classes.  She claimed that he seemed in good spirits, showing absolutely no sign that things were about to become very, very weird.

Just before 10 am on the following morning, one Reverend Robert Anderson was walking through Philadelphia International Airport when his attention was arrested by a “wild-eyed” “stocky man” walking on the ramp between the terminal building and the air express office.  Anderson wished the stranger a “good morning.”  The man did not reply, but simply paced up and down.  He stared straight ahead, and appeared very nervous.

About twenty minutes later, U.S. Army Private Madrid King was walking to the airport, when he saw a man’s body at the bottom of a steep ditch.  (Note:  Some newspaper reports stated that the body was found by a taxi driver.)  This was the same man Rev. Anderson had seen pacing in the airport, but as the corpse had no identification on him, immediate identification was impossible.  However, the body was wearing a sports jacket with a label reading “Witte Brothers, 5th Avenue,” which made police suspect he was a New Yorker.

Police had more immediate success finding out how the man died.  According to the coroner, his body contained enough cyanide “to kill ten men.”  The coroner hesitated in calling the death a suicide.  To his mind, the body was so “immaculately arranged”--the dead man’s thick-lensed glasses had not even been dislodged--that it seemed possible that the corpse had been placed where it was found.

It was never determined how the cyanide had been administered.  It was not believed that the poison was taken in capsule form.  An empty test tube was found a few feet from the body, but no traces of cyanide were found in the tube.  

The strangest clue was a small piece of paper taped to the man’s abdomen.  It was a cipher message that, to date, has yet to be decoded, although over the years, many cryptologists have tried.  The man’s wallet contained nothing but a photo of an airplane with a Nazi swastika on its tail and a picture of Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker.”  The other items the man had carried with him were equally bizarre: a plastic cylinder containing a signal fuse, the casing of a spent .38 caliber bullet, a “fountain pen gun,” (whatever that may have been,) forty-seven cents, four keys on a chain, and the February issue of “Galaxy Science Fiction.”

The body was finally identified when Bessie Rubin phoned the Philadelphia police.  She had read a newspaper report about the dead man found near the airport, and thought his description matched that of her son, who had not been heard from since the morning of the 19th.  Paul Rubin’s parents, as well as Bessie’s brother Max Gerstman, flew to Philadelphia, where Samuel was able to identify the mystery corpse as that of his son Paul.

Although the body now had a name, it failed to help solve how or why he had died.  Paul had the habit of sending coded messages to his friends, although no one who knew him could make any sense of the cipher found on his body.  As a chemistry student, Paul would have had access to cyanide, but he had no known reason to kill himself.  No one could explain what he was doing in Philadelphia, or how he got there.  According to Bessie Rubin, Paul had $15 on him when he last left home, but only 47 cents were left by the time of his death.  Where was the rest of the money spent?

Paul’s parents were at least able to explain some of the other unusual items found with him.  Paul was fond of doing magic tricks, and the cylinder with a fuse was probably used for one of them.  The four keys belonged to an old car the family had once owned.  The empty shell cartridge probably came from a friend who did target-shooting.  Paul may have planned to reload it with gunpowder he had created as part of his chemistry experiments.  Bessie added that her son “frequently brought home jars filled with strange liquids.”  She had no idea what they may have contained.

Detectives questioned Paul’s friends, relatives, and classmates, as well as NYU faculty members, but they were unable to find any solid leads pointing to either suicide or murder as the cause of the young man’s death.  An inquest was held on February 23, which produced the unsatisfactory verdict that Paul had died under “circumstances presently unknown.”  It remained a mystery how--or why--the dead youth had traveled to Philadelphia, or how he came to ingest cyanide.  And that, as far as law enforcement was concerned, seemed to be that.

There is one footnote to this extremely odd story:  While researching the Rubin case for his book, “Unsolved!: The History and Mystery of the World's Greatest Ciphers from Ancient Egypt to Online Secret Societies,” Craig P. Bauer obtained a copy of the FBI file on Paul’s death.  The file held no “smoking guns,” (other than the curious information that Paul had used the alias of “Galen Templar,”) but Bauer found it notable that the FBI had quietly devoted three months to investigating the teen’s death, suggesting that the Bureau felt this was more than a simple suicide.  Even more tantalizingly, the FBI had classified the Rubin case under “Espionage.”

Assuming the cipher found on Paul’s body is ever decoded, will it finally explain what led to his utterly inexplicable death?  Or will it be just another brick wall?

[Note: For what very little it’s worth, here is my take on this case:  The little we know about Paul gives the impression of a bright, eccentric youth who may well have been going through typical teenage angst--a sort of Brooklyn Holden Caulfield.  Paul was interested in spycraft, politics, and ciphers. My personal hunch--and that’s all it is, a hunch--is that he decided to commit suicide, but in a way that he could playact the role of an espionage agent, leaving a trail of baffling clues behind him.  I suspect that the reason no one has yet been able to decode the message found on his body is that it was no real cipher at all--just a stream of gibberish to add to his self-created mystery.

If I am right about this, Paul Rubin deserves a lot of credit.  If he wanted to leave this world confusing people, he did an excellent job of it.]

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

And you're just in time for afternoon tea!

A flying horse in Staffordshire.

A mysterious murder-suicide.

New York's war against banana peels.

The houseplant that can count.

Fun and games in medieval London.

Hitler's dress rehearsal for war.

A coded letter from Napoleon has finally been deciphered.

A woman is cleared of being a witch.  Three hundred years after she died.  All together now: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

So maybe we've been reading the Voynich Manuscript incorrectly.

Moths and butterflies as souls of the dead.

How to mail yourself a ghost.

An ancient mystery hidden in spear points.

Ghost stories from the mortuary.

Edward Despard:  Hero or traitor?

A very weird "cone hill" in the Amazon.

The mystery of the "Phoenix Lights."

Pancho Villa's well-traveled skull.

More rewriting of human history, fresh off the grill!

George III visits Oxford.

A brief history of spittoons.

The difference between ghosts and ghouls.

The cat who has taken over a train station.

If you want to drink a mix of battery acid and orange syrup, do I have the recipe site for you.

A cursed murderer.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a teenager's baffling death.  In the meantime, here's some Handel.