The Body in the Mine Shaft and a Strange Miscarriage of Justice

This week, we look at the case of a murder victim who turned out to not be a murder victim.  Even though a murder had definitely been committed.  Throw in a murderer who turned out to not be a murderer, and about all you can say is that Life Gets Complicated.

In January 1925, a 31-year-old man named Condy Dabney left his home in Coal Creek, Tennessee to look for work.  His wife and two children stayed behind in Coal Creek until he was able to resettle.  Fortunately, he found employment in a mine near Coxton, Kentucky.  He impressed everyone as a quiet, amiable, law-abiding man.

Soon after Dabney arrived in Coxton, a 16-year-old girl named Roxy Baker disappeared, under circumstances considered mysterious enough for a Grand Jury to be called in.  Just before the jurors met, three Coxton men also inexplicably vanished.  The Grand Jury found nothing connecting the four disappearances, but they were unable to come to any conclusions about Coxton’s sudden depopulation.

In early July, Dabney gave up his mining job to start a taxi service.  A month later, Coxton was rocked by further disappearing acts:  Two married women and a 14-year-old girl named Mary Vickery.  Although no clue was ever found about the whereabouts of the adult women, two Coxton men--William Middleton and Condy Dabney--had been seen taking Mary for automobile rides, which made them the obvious--indeed, only--suspects in her disappearance.  However, the Grand Jury was unable to find any other incriminating evidence against the men, so they were released from custody.

In September, Dabney heard that one of his children was sick, so he left Coxton to find work closer to home.  The following month, United States Marshal Adrian Metcalf got a tip that an illegal still was operating in an abandoned mine shaft on Ivy Hill, just outside of Coxton, so he went to investigate.

In the course of his search, he found something far worse than moonshine.  In yet another abandoned shaft, he found some women’s clothing and an ominous-looking pile of stones.  He brought in some backup, and the men began digging.  Before long, they unearthed a body.  The corpse was too decomposed to allow identification to be possible, but they believed it was of a girl in her early teens.  This led to the obvious presumption that these were the remains of the still-missing Mary Vickery.  Townspeople--particularly a young woman named Marie Jackson--immediately began gossiping that Condy Dabney was responsible for the girl’s murder.  The stories told about Dabney were considered damming enough for authorities to visit his home in Coal Creek to question him, but apparently he was able to convince them of his innocence.  Unfortunately for him, the Grand Jury felt otherwise.  On March 18, 1926, they returned an indictment charging Dabney with Mary Vickery’s murder.

At Dabney’s trial, Mary’s father testified that he was certain the body found in the old shaft was that of his daughter, largely on the basis of a ring he found in the shaft after the corpse was discovered.  He also claimed that a stocking found at the scene was identical to one Mary owned, and that the “sandy like and bobbed” hair on the corpse matched that of his daughter.  On cross-examination, Vickery stated that Mary had never run away from home before, and denied rumors that she had a bad relationship with her stepmother.  Defense lawyers got Vickery to admit that he had not attended the corpse’s funeral, and allowed the county to take charge of the burial.  When asked about this seeming neglect, he hesitated, which caused Dabney’s attorney, G.G. Rawlings, to declare, “You did not know that was your girl, that is what you started to say, wasn’t it?”

“At the present time I wasn’t perfectly sure,” Vickery admitted.

It turned out that there was a great deal of confusion about the body’s identity.  Witnesses were produced who testified to Vickery’s uncertainty about whether the corpse was Mary’s or not.  Nobody could agree on the color of the corpse’s hair--some described it as brown and fine, others said it was black and coarse.

The chief witness against Dabney was Marie Jackson.  She testified that on the morning that Mary disappeared, she and Mary hailed a ride from Dabney’s taxi.  He drove them to a Coxton restaurant, where Marie got out.  Dabney drove off with Mary still in his car.  Dabney and Mary came back at about 1 p.m., after which the trio drove out to Ivy Hill.  They got out of the car and sat in a clearing, where they talked for a while.  Then Dabney asked Marie to go off behind the hill for a while, so he could talk to Mary alone.  Marie claimed that she obeyed, although she could still see the two of them.  According to Marie, she saw Dabney embrace Mary.  When the girl objected, Dabney repeatedly beat her with a stick.  After the attack, Dabney walked over to Marie, warning her that if she ever told a soul about what she had seen, he would “burn her at the stake.”  As she fled, she saw Dabney carrying Mary’s body into the mine shaft.  Curiously, she willingly got another ride from Dabney the following day.  The topic of Mary’s murder, she said, never came up.

Three young women--two sisters named Stewart and a “Miss Smith”--testified that on the afternoon of Mary’s disappearance, the Stewart sisters and Mary were walking along a road, when Dabney drove by, offering them a lift. They declined, but after they were joined by William Middleton and one Otis King, the three girls rode with them for a short time, after which the Stewarts left, leaving Mary in the car with Middleton and King.  These two men substantiated this story.  All this took place between two and four p.m., which contradicted Marie Jackson’s claim that she had been with Mary and Dabney on Ivy Hill from one p.m. until dusk.

The state brought out a “jailhouse witness”--one Claude Scott, who had been imprisoned with Dabney for a short time before the trial.  He was an old friend of Marie Jackson.  He claimed that he had given Marie a letter from Dabney, and that Dabney had offered him fifteen dollars to testify in his favor.  Claude said that Dabney “tried to make me remember stuff that Marie Jackson should have said through that window to me; while he was sitting there he tried to make me remember stuff I never heard her say and she never said to me.”

When Dabney himself took the stand, he stated that he did not remember ever having Mary Vickery in his taxi, although he admitted that it might have happened, as he often gave rides to people he did not know.  He did, however, occasionally taxi Marie Jackson.  He declared that he had never been on Ivy Hill, and had no idea in the world what had happened to Mary Vickery.

Unfortunately for Dabney, the jurors obviously found Marie Jackson’s lurid tale more convincing than his protestations of innocence.  On March 31, 1926, they delivered a guilty verdict, with a recommendation for life imprisonment.  Dabney faced the prospect of spending the rest of his days doing hard labor at the state penitentiary in Frankfort.

Dabney’s lawyer immediately appealed the verdict.  While the appeal was still pending, a policeman named George Davis checked into a hotel in Williamsburg, Kentucky.  He happened to notice the name “Mary Vickery” on the register.  The name rang a bell with him, although he could not remember why.  When he asked hotel workers about it, he learned that someone by that name had once lived in the hotel, but she went across the Cumberland River to visit friends.  Davis--who had, by then, remembered that Mary Vickery was supposed to be dead--managed to track her down.

Marie Jackson

Mary told him that she had left Coxton on August 23, 1925, because she couldn’t get on with her stepmother.  She took a taxi to the train station.  The driver was a stranger, but the description she gave of him matched that of Dabney.  She said she didn’t even know Marie Jackson.  Mary went to various cities, finally settling in Cincinnati, where she worked in a woolen mill.  She admitted that while there, she heard that a man had been convicted of her murder.  When asked why she hadn’t let anyone know that she was very much alive, Mary replied, “I just never thought about that.”

After Mary was persuaded to return to Coxton, embarrassed officials immediately pardoned Dabney, and appointed a special prosecutor, G.J. Jarvis, to investigate Marie Jackson.  The young woman obviously had some explaining to do.  Despite this official inquiry, it remains uncertain why Marie was so eager to ruin an innocent man’s life.  Jarvis was of the opinion that she concocted her testimony to get the $500 reward that had been offered for information about Mary’s disappearance.  However, Dabney himself said that Marie had accused him of murder out of revenge because “I refused to desert my family for her.”  In any case, Marie was convicted of perjury on March 27, 1927.  Coincidentally enough, on that very same day Mary Vickery was married to a C.E. Dempsey.

After this coda, everyone involved went on with their lives, leaving behind one rather obvious question:  Who was the body in the mine shaft, and who killed her?   It was speculated that the corpse was that of a young woman named Leslie (or Letitia) Cole, who vanished around the same time as Mary Vickery.  Interestingly, Mrs. Cole’s estranged husband Carlo was said to have been romantically involved with none other than Marie Jackson.

It is possible that Marie knew much more about this unsolved murder than she ever let on.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Let the show begin!

The notorious disappearance of Flight 19.

A case of lethal self-defense.

Public bathing in ancient Rome.

The 1915 sinking of HMS Goliath.

That time when someone translated "Dracula" into Icelandic, and things got weird.

The volcanic eruption that may have triggered the Black Death.

Some "lost" Bach pieces have been performed for the first time in over 300 years.

When "Pride and Prejudice" was rejected by a publisher.  (Confession time: I love "P&P," but oddly enough, I've never been able to get through any of Austen's other novels.  I found them all boring.)

A man's bizarre disappearance and death.

Prehistoric "3D storytelling."

The Bayeux Tapestry is hitting the road.

King John and the lost Crown Jewels.

Confirmation of how ancient Romans made concrete.

It seems that humans can sense buried objects without touching them.

The West Point Eggnog Riot.

Why we have two nostrils.

No doubt you'll be gratified to learn that we now know what happens when you send a menstrual cup into space.

Victorian poetry killed off Santa Claus.

The ghost of Paines Hollow.

The Battle of May Island.

The female gladiators of ancient Rome.

Photos of the streets of Old London.

A heroic last stand during WWI.

The ghost of the victim of an unsolved murder.

The unsolved murder of a telegraph operator.

The near-shipwreck which inspired "The Poseidon Adventure."

The oldest known evidence for humans making fire.

A "misunderstood distaste for bathing."

Cousin Molly's Christmas fund.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an unusually complicated murder case.  In the meantime, here's a Christmas season remembrance of the late, much-missed Rev. Robert Willis.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

In January 1907, a salt merchant named Samuel Hughes left his home in Blackwood, Wales, for an ordinary business trip. Soon afterwards, his dead body was found beneath a bridge.  The investigation into his death was largely unremarkable--it was ruled that in the darkness, Hughes had accidentally fallen off the bridge--but the inquest was marked by an eerie incident related by Hughes’ wife.  Her testimony was recorded in the “South Wales Gazette” for January 25:

A curious story is related by the widow, Mrs. Hughes, who states that she sat up all Saturday night waiting for her husband to come home. At 3 a.m.  she heard a familiar voice cry out, “Bess, Bess,” whereupon she rushed to the front door, expecting to find her husband there. On opening the door, she declares that she saw a figure robed in black and wearing a tall hat, such as her husband often wore. The apparition--for such she now deems it to be--vanished immediately the door was open. Interviewed at Blackwood on Monday afternoon by a Press representative, Mrs. Hughes emphatically confirmed the statement that she had seen an apparition, which she believed to be that of her husband.

"My husband,” she said, "went to Newport on Saturday, and said that he would return by the 5 o'clock train. I met that train, but he did not come. I sat up during the night, sitting in a chair by the fire in the living room. At 3 o'clock in the morning I heard his voice calling “Bess, Bess," and I also distinctly heard his footsteps. I went to the door, and there saw a figure robed in black clothes, with a silk hat on.  The next minute it had vanished. I took the candle and went round the house, but could not find anything. It was pitch dark, and there was not a sound to be heard. I was very much startled, but went back and resumed my seat by the fire for time, and then went and lay down on the bed until daybreak.  I was the more alarmed because on the previous Thursday I had had a remarkable dream, in which I saw my husband engaged in a scuffle with men whose appearance I distinctly remember, and could, if needed, describe.

“After the scuffle ended my husband fell to the ground. This dream has made a great impression on me, so much so that when my husband left on Saturday morning I implored him to be careful, and he assured me he would follow my advice."

If you have any confidence in the concept of precognitive dreams, it may well be that--despite the inquest’s verdict--Mr. Hughes’ death was no accident.

A Family Affair: The Sinister Death of Mary Stanley

[Note: I wrote this as a guest post for the blog "Executed Today" way back in 2011, but I thought this tale of a young woman's mysterious death--with a decidedly weird cast of characters--was definitely Strange Company material.]

When reflecting upon the life and times of Edgar Allan Poe, Edward Wagenknecht once wrote that “One might also say of Poe that he lived in a Gothic novel. Hardly anybody behaves normally in this history.” Of all the names one finds in Poe’s biographies, no one better illustrates these words than Marie Louise Barney Shew Houghton. While there were many players in Poe’s life story who undoubtedly deserved to be put in the dock, (the Reverend Rufus Wilmot Griswold being merely the most famous example,) Mrs. Houghton was the only one of the lot who faced the prospect of being tried, and very possibly convicted and executed, of first-degree murder.

Mrs. Houghton is known to history as having been the nurse of Poe’s wife Virginia during her final illness, as well as an all-around Poe family benefactor. This saintly reputation, unfortunately, comes largely from her own boasts on the matter, made many years after the poet’s death. In 1875, she began a correspondence with Poe’s early biographer John H. Ingram. Her avowed intent was to insure that she—as opposed to other ladies who were vying for the title—would be remembered as Poe’s dear friend and guardian angel. Unfortunately, at the time she contacted Ingram, she was clearly in appalling shape, mentally and emotionally. The numerous extant letters she wrote him—which date from January to June of 1875–are always rambling, usually incoherent, and occasionally quite insane. She related to Ingram many colorful stories about Poe that are completely uncorroborated, patently absurd, and often at complete variance with the known facts. Ingram privately acknowledged that Mrs. Houghton was mentally unstable, and he suspected as well that she was enhancing, or even completely inventing, many Poe anecdotes, in order to keep their correspondence alive. He wound up dismissing her with the euphemism, “imaginative.” In spite of all this, Ingram—who was desperately in need of original source material about the ever-elusive Poe—wound up relaying far too much of her dubious information in his 1880 biography, and, even more unforgivably, Poe’s modern-day historians repeat unquestioningly this same apocrypha to this day.

One wonders what Ingram’s reaction would have been if he had known anything about his pen-pal’s personal life. Marie Houghton was a predecessor to today’s “New Age” devotees. Her first marriage, to the “water-cure” practitioner Joel Shew, gave her an avenue into what were the more extreme circles of Transcendentalist faddism, which embraced alternative medicine, “free love,” “freethinking,” communal living, and disdain for established institutions. Ironically, she represented everything Poe most despised in contemporary society.

In the mid-1840s, Marie Louise separated from her husband and entered into an affair with another member of their circle, Dr. Ronald Houghton, although she continued to live with Dr. Shew. In 1849, she gave birth to a son, Henry, who was probably acknowledged as Houghton’s, although at least one historian has theorized that the father was a third man who was living with (and financially aiding) the Shews. The next year, the Shews divorced and she married Houghton. Although they had several more children, the marriage proved unhappy, and they too separated. She continued to work as a nurse, while indulging in a number of extremely complicated and very dodgy financial and property transactions on the side.

However, it was this son Henry who proved to be the catalyst that brought Mrs. Houghton serious trouble. After a varied and exciting career out west where he was charged with adultery, mule thievery, swindling, and “open and notorious lewdness,” Henry Houghton returned to the family home in New York, bringing with him his mistress, Mary E. Stanley, who had evidently been Henry’s partner in crime as well. With them was a toddler who was understood to have been their child, even though Mary was at the time married to another man.

In 1876, the now-pregnant Mrs. Stanley was living with the Houghton family, although by this point Henry appears to have tired of her. Her common-law mother-in-law, Mrs. Houghton, acted as her sole medical attendant. Unfortunately, Mrs. Stanley died soon after giving birth. The Houghtons failed to summon a doctor until she was obviously at death’s door. Very curiously, she was quickly buried without a death certificate having been issued, apparently at the instigation of Marie Houghton. After her burial, the undertaker prevailed upon the physician who had been at her deathbed, a Dr. Bleecker, to provide him with some sort of certificate. Bleecker was reluctant to do so, as he had never actually treated the deceased, but finally issued one with the noncommittal statement that the cause of death appeared to be “congestive chills.”

Mary Stanley’s death would have passed unremarked had it not been for a collection of letters she had written to a friend, which was soon brought to the attention of the authorities. In brief, these letters stated that Mrs. Houghton wished to perform an abortion on her. (It was alleged that Houghton supplemented her income as a professional—and, on occasion, fatally incompetent—abortionist.) When Mrs. Stanley refused, she attempted to give her patient certain “medicines” which Mrs. Stanley believed were intended to permanently rid the Houghtons of her as well. Faced with this uncooperative attitude, Mrs. Houghton “became cruel to her, and starved both herself and her child.” The question of why she remained in the household appeared to be answered by murky and never-clarified issues regarding the estate of Mrs. Houghton’s late estranged husband. It was said that she stubbornly stayed put in an effort to defend the interests of Mrs. Houghton’s other son, Frank, who was involved with a legal dispute with his mother over a certain piece of property. There was a good deal of nightmarishly complex litigation surrounding Dr. Houghton’s estate, and evidently Mrs. Stanley played some crucial role regarding the dispute over the distribution of Roland Houghton’s properties. According to these letters, Mrs. Stanley was attempting to act as some sort of a roadblock in schemes Henry and his mother were attempting in relation to the matter. 

After the local coroner and District Attorney had read their fill of these missives, their first act was to have Mrs. Houghton arrested.

An inquest was soon held, and these letters, as well as testimonies of friends of the dead woman, were presented to the jury. A lurid picture was painted of Mrs. Houghton’s long career of poisoning (including two alleged attempts against her husband,) abortions both successful and fatal (Mrs. Stanley wrote of seeing “terrible things” in the Houghton’s cellar that related to this practice—other testimony agreed that she literally knew where the bodies were buried,) financial fraud, and all-purpose cruelty. Mrs. Stanley wrote that “I do not think there is another woman as bad as her living,” and if half of what was related about her at the inquest was true, this was a genteel understatement. Mrs. Stanley also declared that the Houghtons wanted her dead, not only for the fact that she “knew too much” about their depraved dealings, but because she was threatening to “swear her child” on Henry Houghton—i.e., hit him with a paternity suit. (The inquest also included testimony that Mrs. Houghton expressed great joy that Mary Stanley’s death freed her son from taking responsibility for his mistress and their child.)

When Mrs. Houghton took the stand in her defense, it was said that she gave her testimony “fairly and with much plausibility.” She simply denied everything the dead woman had written. Mrs. Stanley, she said, was a designing criminal who had robbed her son “not only of his money, but of his good name.” She had allowed the pregnant woman to live in her house out of pure Christian charity. Mrs. Stanley’s death, on September 12th 1876, was of a “congestive chill” that came on so suddenly there was no time to send for a doctor. She admitted that she had practiced medicine from 1851 until the previous year, when she was threatened with imprisonment if she did not cease her unaccredited ministrations. She also conceded that Mrs. Stanley had threatened to “crush” the Houghton family, and that “something disagreeable” had occurred several months before that had inspired Mrs. Stanley to write these accusatory letters. However, it was also revealed that at the time of Mrs. Houghton’s arrest, certain family papers were seized by the authorities which corroborated much of what the deceased had alleged.

When Dr. Bleecker testified, he could say only that an autopsy on the dead woman “could not determine the cause of death satisfactorily.”

After all this, it is quite startling to read that the jury ruled that Mary Stanley died of natural causes, “from hemorrhage and exhaustion while in labor.” The only way of explaining this conclusion (which seemed to have no evidence to back it up) is to note that from the newspaper reports, the jury was clearly on Mrs. Houghton’s side from the beginning. In fact, the jury attempted to halt the inquest very early on, claiming they had heard enough evidence to reach a verdict. The coroner and DA overruled them, insisting that they hear additional witnesses. Also, one of the jurors questioned a doctor who testified, asking if it wasn’t true that pregnant women were often prone to paranoid fancies, where they imagined dangers that did not exist. When the doctor admitted that such things were possible, this obviously sealed the deal for this panel. The reason for this obvious bias in favor of the defendant is, most unfortunately, unknown.

The case was left open for further investigation, but as far as can be ascertained by a search of contemporary newspapers, the matter was closed as far as the authorities were concerned. Marie Houghton left the court a free woman, if not exactly one without a stain on her character. She died less than a year later, at the age of fifty-five, on September 3, 1877.

One of the strangest things about this case is the fact that it has attracted so little attention, from that time to this. The only detailed contemporary accounts I have been able to uncover are a handful of articles from one newspaper, the “Brooklyn Eagle,” and two columns in the “New York Herald” which simply repeated some of the information published in the Eagle. Even though the story contained enough scandal to keep a platoon of yellow journalists in clover for years, it was otherwise ignored. Despite the fact that the central character was a figure well-known to anyone who has the slightest interest in Poe’s life, this grotesque little episode appears to be unknown to his biographers. It is a great pity that deeper investigation in the matter appears impossible at this late date, as from what was reported, Marie Houghton was either the most viciously slandered woman of her era, or a monster Poe himself could not have created in his darkest fits of imagination.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Feel free to visit the Strange Company HQ open bar.

In which a performance of "Julius Caesar" gets a bit too realistic.

Short version:  Human lineage is complicated.

The mystery of the "Hebridean Hum."

The mystery surrounding the discovery of penicillin.

The monsters of America.

A maharani's memorial.

Guess what?  3I/Atlas is still weird!

An overlooked Victorian illustrator.

The history of an 18th century gallows.

A fake epidemic that saved lives.

The Beardmore Relics.

A visit to the King's Chapel of the Savoy.

The medium who tricked Arthur Conan Doyle.

A brief history of Christmas carps.

A brief history of gingerbread.

How the Roman military brought cats to Europe.

The hunt for an emperor's jewels.

A dying man's burial request.

The odd case of the Woman Who Walked At Night.

Mars may have had millions of years of tropical storms.

The "great dying" of early colonial America.

The great variety of near-death experiences.

Christmas in Belle Époque France.

A new debate over old UFO reports.

The violent end to a marriage.

The life of Agnes of Dunbar.

An amiable scoundrel.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a woman's very suspicious death.  In the meantime, bring on the Christmas carols!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This tale of an unusually eerie bit of real estate appeared in the “Richmond Times-Dispatch,” August 7, 1904:

SOUTH BOSTON, VA., August 6. There is a cabin in this county that has been haunted for forty-three years. The haunted cabin is eighteen miles west of South Boston, near Stebbins, Va, two miles from the public road.

Down by a creek in an old pine field, the darkest, dreariest, most forsaken place that one could picture--there stands a lone log cabin, with a family graveyard all sunken, with ivy, locust and plum bushes. This place is known as Aunt Tabby Anderson's, who was a widow with four children, in the days of 1861--three boys and one girl, and the afflictions of this family were extremely sad in this log cabin. Her oldest son, Joe, and Meredith, the youngest, a bright lad of fifteen years, lived on the magnificent farm of Mr. A. A. Fomer, who allowed them this house, rent free.

In this cabin, in the early days of '61, her son Joe came to his mother with a sad face and told her that he had to go and join Lee's army, and he had one request to make--that was, he had seen a vision and he would be killed In battle--and he wished his remains brought home and buried at the end of this cabin. The youngest son was left alone with the widowed mother. A month later this boy came running home screaming and fell on the doorsteps and was taken with violent convulsions, and when he revived could simply say he saw something, and for thirty-five years was prostrated without reason save as a child. This was the first intimation of these mysterious happenings. 

The widow, about thirty days after the departure of her son, remarked that if she had some paper and envelopes she would go and get Chesley Andorson (a merchant) to write to Joe.  Immediately they were at her feet, the letter was written.

Her son was killed. 

She at once set to work to get his remains home, and after a lapse of two months a box supposed to contain remains of her son was placed in the family burying ground, as he had requested. 

Then these mysterious happenings multiplied.  Rocks would fall on and in the cabin and come through cracks in the log house that no one could get them back through the same openings. The door would raise from its hinges and move out doors. Articles of furniture, clothing, bedding and, cooking utensils, would move about noisily and afterwards would often be found suspended In the trees and bushes, All this caused great excitement throughout the vicinity, and parties of men, middle-aged and old men, visited this place night after night for weeks, even years, and yet the mystery can not be explained. On one occasion a party of ten men took with them dogs and guns and surrounded the cabin before night, and the dogs would whine and crouch at their feet. This only seemed to intensify the display of rocks, for they fell out and in the cabin in great force and quantities.

A few days later a plow was seen to come in one door and go out at the other. The water bucket was seen to move of its own accord, and these same conditions have existed for forty-three years. This widow lived with her afflicted son until 1896. She also had a son blind for twenty years, who died only three years ago.  She had one granddaughter who burned to death, and now the entire family has passed from this life. 

It is said that at the death of Aunt Tabby in 1896, that the shower of rocks on the cabin equalled the worst hailstorm ever heard. 

I could fill columns of your paper and yet one-thousandth part of these strange happenings could not be told. If any reader of The Times-Dispatch doubts this story, they can write any citizen in that locality and get the evidence. 

Mr. Willie Dunn now owns the place, and has a family living in this cabin, and the writer was informed by the lady that she was nervous and would not look at the ghost work, but her husband saw lights and only a week ago the door could not be kept shut. 

The picture, herewith, represents the original cabin and a group of thirteen sightseers.  Professor C. C. Firesheets planned to visit this noted place with some of his friends. A picnic was the result. The members consisted of the following: Professor C.C. Fusheets, who was elected chairman and spokesman; Mr. W. D. Stoops, Umalla, Fla,; Miss Ruselin Spiggs, of Chicago, Ill., with W. W. Murphy, of Mt. Jackson, Va.: Miss Amanda Stoops, of Denver, Col., with Mr. Joseph H. Mabine, of Asheville. N. C.; Miss Georgia Daniel, of Mt. Sterling, Ky., with Mr. Eugene Terry, South Boston. Va; Miss Marguretta Daniel, of Mt. Sterling, Ky., with E. T. Beazley, of the News, South Boston, Va.: Miss Myrtle Edwards, of Chester Springs, Va., with Captain Alex. Spiggs, of South Boston, Va. The haunted house was reached at 10 A.M. At noon. dinner was spread at the old rock spring.  The chaperone made a motion to spend a week, but being put it lost by overwhelming majority. 

The professor then gave a brief sketch of the place for forty-three years. Music, instrumental and vocal, and speech making was the order of the day.

As the shadows of evening began to fall, they left the scene of mystery and the merry party arrived home at 10 P.M. by moonlight.

The Blue Man of Studham

Every now and then, I come across a story that is hard-to-believe, essentially irrelevant, difficult to categorize, but so delightful that I feel the need to share.  This particular example was told by R.H.B. Winder in the “Flying Saucer Review” for July 1967:

The setting is near-perfect for a fairy tale: the village, 60 ft. up in the Chillerns. is quite isolated by the boundary fence of Whipsnade Park Zoo close to the N.W., and a deepish valley to the South; and by the escarpment of these chalk hills dropping steeply away on the far side of the Zoo. It all seems well removed from ions and ionization, but perhaps not quite so remote as your editor and G. W. Creighton anticipated when they suggested that I should report on this case.

It all started with a single flash of lightning which struck on or near the common at about 1:45 p.m on January 28, 1966. Probably an ordinary stroke, because rain was falling and the atmosphere was heavy, but it could have been initiated by artificial ionization of the air. l mention the possibility not because any flying object was seen. But isolated strokes are not all that frequent and this one was certainly followed by some extraordinary events.

Alex Butler, aged 10 years, and his friends—Tony Banks, Kerry Gahill, Andrew Hoar, David Inglis, Colin Lonsdale and John Mickleburgh—were playing on the Common on their way to afternoon school. They were in the vicinity of the Dell, which is a shallow valley thickly strewn with hawthorn, gorse and bracken; and a few old tin cans and motor tires. The undergrowth is riddled with passages connecting several dens under the bigger bushes, all no doubt the work of generations of children and animals; and there is a small open space hidden in the middle. The whole is reminiscent of a surface version of a miniature Viet Cong hideout, providing good cover, even in Winter, coupled with surprising freedom of movement for diminutive creatures. The school is about 200 yards away and the nearest houses maybe 150 yards, but small persons could remain concealed for a long time were it not for the children who obviously regard this as their territory and know virtually every blade of grass in it.

A few minutes after the lightning, and its associated thunder. Alex was casting a proprietary eye over the Dell from the top of its northern bank when he saw, quite clearly over the open center, "a little blue man with a tall hat and a beard" standing upright and still in front of the bushes at the opposite bank. He immediately shouted a description to his friends, who were initially skeptical but confirmed his view on joining him. Reacting as if to an intruder, they all began to run down the bank towards the stranger who was only about 20 yards away. The little man reacted, in turn, by “disappearing in a puff of smoke.”

It is easy at this stage, to rationalize the happening into a fairy story based on optical and electrical effects emanating from the lightning, but this tale continues—without further discharges.

Finding nothing at the place where he was first seen, the boys ran on. Little to their right along the bottom of the dell and then up the far bank; still searching for their elusive quarry. They soon saw him again, this time to their left farther along the top of the bank and on the opposite side of the bushes that had previously formed his background. Once again he was standing still and facing them at a range of 20 yards.  They again approached him and he repeated his disappearing trick.

The third time they saw him he was back at the bottom of the Dell, not far from his original position. His pursuers had by now reached his second location. Looking at him through the little bushes, they became aware of “voices" which they describe in a manner suggesting a continuous incomprehensible, and "foreign-sounding" babble, coming from a point in the bushes closer to them and down the slope to the right of their line of sight. A feeling that the little fellow had associates who were communicating with him and to whom he was replying, although they could detect no movement on his part. This induced a sense of caution which deterred them from rushing towards him as before. Instead, the boys continued to circle the Dell until they could look down it, whereupon they saw him for the fourth and last time still standing as motionless as ever in the same place. Uncertain what to do next, they milled around for a few more minutes before they told their teacher their experience.

They warned Miss Newcomb that she would not believe it, but, knowing them as well as she does and after assessing their excitement and listening to their story, she did believe them. She then very sensibly separated them and made each write it down in his own words. The essays were re-written two weeks later, not in order to alter their substance but simply to improve their spelling and tìdyness, and were pasted into a book entitled "The Little Blue Man on Studham Common”. It makes fascinating and convincing reading. I only wish there were space enough to reproduce it here. No doubt it will occupy an honored place in the archives of the Studham Village Primary School.

 

The case was brought to our attention by Mr. L. Moulsler, a long-standing reader of this review, who sent a cutting about it from the Borough Gazette, dated March 3. He kindly accompanied C.B., G.W.C. and myself in a preliminary survey of the district and reminded us of local sightings investigated by him in previous years: an apparent landing at the rim of the hills not far from the Zoo and another, more controversial, case at the nearby Flying Club, of which he is a member. G.W.C. has also found another cutting from the aforementioned newspaper: dated October 15, 1965, it describes mystery lights in the sky over Whipsnade. Finally, it is hardly necessary to mention the Wildman Case (Flying Saucer Review, March/April 1962,)  that took place near Aston Clinton about six miles away on February 9,1962.

Returning to our present case: Miss Newcomb arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Creighton, Colin McCarthy, and myself to meet the principals at the school on Saturday afternoon, May 13. Without any prompting from their obviously respected and loved teacher, they gave a very competent account of the whole incident. They also took us to the places involved and then returned with us to the schoolroom to go into more detail. The following additional points emerged:

They estimate the little man as 3 ft. tall (by comparison with themselves), with an additional 2ft. accounted for by a hat or helmet best described as a tall brimless bowler, i.e. with a rounded top. The blue color turned out to be a dim grayish-blue glow lending to obscure outline and detail. They could, however, discern a line which was either a fringe of hair or the lower edge of the hat, two round eyes, a small seemingly triangle in place of a nose, and a one-piece vestment extending down to a broad black belt carrying a black box at the front about six inches square. The arms appeared short and were held straight down close to the sides at all times. The legs and feet were indistinct. The "beard" is interesting: apparently it extended from the vicinity of the mouth downwards to divide and ran to both sides of the chest. Although agreeing that it could have been breathing apparatus, the boys could not see clearly enough to be certain and this thought had not occurred to them.

The disappearances caused me some difficulty at first, but became more understandable after further explanation of the "smoke" was apparently a whirling cloud of yellowish-blue mist shot towards the pursuers, possibly from the box on the belt. They agreed that he could have stepped into the bushes before this camouflage cleared, although it dissipated quite quickly. They heard no sound other than the voices and saw no movement at any time. Nor did they smell any smells or see anything strange in the vicinity, either on the ground or in the air.

The glow and the mist could have been the products of ionising radiation. Indeed, similar emanations, not necessarily from the same source could have triggered-off the lightning in an atmosphere already charged by natural processes. However, we must not carry speculation too far. All that we are certain of at this stage is that this is no ordinary fairy tale. Nobody who knows the boys disputes that it really happened.