The Welsh Servant

The 1883 book “Shropshire Folk-lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings” included a story about what we today would call a “poltergeist” which appeared to center around an enigmatic farm servant.  While the tale purports to be true, at this distance of time it is impossible to say how much of it is fact, and how much is legend.  Still, it’s such a quaintly charming little curiosity that I wanted to bring it under the Strange Company tent.

It is perhaps a hundred years or more since a certain Mr. Nichols lived at Yockleton Park, some miles west of Shrewsbury, farming his land and bringing up a large family of sons and daughters. One summer he engaged a Welshman to help in the harvest, and as he proved industrious and a good workman, he was allowed by his own wish to stay on through the winter, till the usual West Shropshire “changing time,” in May. He was lodged and boarded in the house, of course. “The men”—i.e. the unmarried farm-labourers—were an important part of every homely country household in those days. Well, time went on; the Welshman continued to give satisfaction, and nothing unusual occurred during his stay, till one night during “the Christmas,” the whole family were suddenly aroused just after midnight by an extraordinary noise downstairs, something like heavy chains being dragged about, clanking and rumbling. Hours were early in those days, every one had long been in bed, and they were perplexed and frightened. The farmer’s sons got up and called the men, and all went down in a body to see what was the matter. Everything was perfectly quiet; the furniture was all in its place, no one was about, nothing was to be seen or heard. Then the Welshman proposed to go out-of-doors; but his masters, unnerved by finding it impossible to account for the mysterious noise, refused to allow the door to be opened. Still the man persisted. “I must go out,” he said, “I cannot rest in!” He urged his request with so much earnestness and anxiety, that at last, impressed by his excited manner, they opened the door. Out went the man at once into the black darkness, all alone. The door was shut and barred behind him—the awe-stricken watchers waited and listened — 

He never came back!

What became of him no one ever knew; his wages lay unclaimed in his master’s hands, put carefully aside in readiness for his return: but alive or dead, the Welsh servant was never seen nor heard of more, 

This story was long afterwards related by one of the daughters of the house to her grand-daughter, now an old lady, from whom we have it. She gave it as a narrative of facts, believed in the family to be perfectly true, with no hint of any supernatural character attaching to the Welsh servant; yet I cannot but regard him as a modern rationalized version of the trusty “drudging goblin,” who takes service with an earthly master, and generally vanishes mysteriously at last.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump, where this week, our Strange Company HQ staffers give a shout-out to Clarence, Iowa!

Well, why not.  I'm sure it's a charming place.

Where the hell is the Pedro Mountain Mummy?

The tomb of King Midas' father.

Graham Greene in Mexico.

A look at supernatural smells.

A German liner goes to war.

A woman accused of murdering her sister.

A mysterious object named Phoebe is zipping around the galaxy.

A reminder that it's really not a good idea to steal cursed rocks.

An appreciation of Washington Irving.

The enigma of the Tartaria Empire.

A visit to Volvo Island.

Two aristocratic New York cats.

A successful 18th century silk designer.

The strange case of the Burning Boarder.

A 3,000 year old gold ceremonial headdress.

A history of the UK's "marriage franchise."

The Canadian town with a gopher museum.

The "hard and sorrowful" job of photographing the dead.

Some newly discovered ancient standing stones.

The medieval version of Artificial Intelligence.

America's deadliest maritime disaster.

Leopold II, the King of Terror.

The homes that inspired "Rebecca."

The latest news from Gobekli Tepe.

Some decisive medieval battles.

The most remote spot on Earth is--not really surprisingly--a rather odd place.

WWII's worst civilian air disaster.

A technological revolution from 146,000 years ago.

Rewriting history in the Amazon.

A teenager who was a spy during the American Revolution.

A brief history of the smorgasbord.

Someone finally figured out what the Civil War needed:  More cats.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a very strange servant.  In the meantime, wind your way down to Baker Street.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

On this blog, I’ve covered what many Fortean experts like to call “Anomalous Falls From the Sky,” but this is a new one for me.  Lousy actors and criminals in the stocks used to get pelted with tomatoes, but it’s a bit unusual for modern-day suburbanites to get such treatment.  The following is from a syndicated 1998 Dave Barry column which summarizes the incident.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the original story, which appeared in the “Calvert County Recorder” on August 27, 1997.

This article states that on Aug. 25, Gloria Daniels, 68, of Lusby, Md., was working in her garden with a young neighbor boy when she was hit by a falling tomato. Then the boy was hit by a tomato. Then tomatoes--more than 30 of them--began raining down all over her yard.

Friends, neighbors and the media were called in to investigate, but nobody could figure out where the tomatoes--which appeared to be falling straight down out of the sky--were coming from. Rob Terry, the reporter who wrote the story for The Recorder, states that, while on the scene, he personally was struck by a tomato, and although he quickly investigated, he could find no evidence that it was hurled by pranksters. 

I called Gloria Daniels recently and asked her if anybody had come up with an explanation for the falling tomatoes, and she said nobody had. 

"It's a mystery," she said. 

I asked her if she had been in touch with anybody at "The X-Files," and she said she'd never heard of it.

The Mystery of "Mary Anderson"

"Kitsap Sun," February 18, 1997, via Newspapers.com

Every suicide is a tragedy, of course.  However, among the most poignant ones are where the person remains unidentified.  Did they leave behind loved ones who suffered the agony of never knowing what happened to them?  Or--possibly even sadder--did this person have no one in the world who cared if they lived or died?  The following case could fall into either category.

On October 9, 1996, a neatly-dressed, well-groomed woman took a cab to the posh Hotel Vintage Park in Seattle, Washington.  She had phoned earlier in the day to reserve a room.  She paid $350 in cash for a two-night stay, and signed the register, “Mary A. Anderson.”

Her stay in Room 214 was eerily quiet.  She made no phone calls, ordered nothing from room service.  She merely put out a “Do Not Disturb” sign, and made her very private plans.  At some point, the woman reapplied her lipstick, tidied her hair, wrote a brief note on hotel stationary, took up a Bible, and in a glass, mixed together Metamucil, water, and cyanide.  She drank the liquid down, and lay down on the bed to die.  She obviously researched her method of death very carefully.  Although cyanide on its own is a very nasty way to go, mixed with Metamucil, potassium cyanide turns into hydrogen cyanide, which ensures an equally quick, but fairly painless end.

When the guest in Room 214 failed to check out by noon on October 11th, the front-desk manager sent the bellman to speak to her.  There was no answer to his knock on the door, and a deadbolt prevented him from entering the room.  A passkey was used to open the door.  When they finally were able to enter the room, they found “Mary Anderson” lying on her back on her bed, with the Bible clasped to her chest, open to the 23rd Psalm.  At first glance, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but a quick check of her pulse confirmed that she was very dead.  The note she had written was on the desk.  It read, “To whom it may concern:  I have decided to end my life and no one is responsible for my death.”  She added, “I have no relatives.  You can use my body as you choose.”

At first, police felt they had little to investigate.  The room was in perfect order.  The dead woman’s expensive clothes were hanging neatly in the closet.  Her purse contained $36.78 in cash, but no ID, credit cards, or anything else to identify her.  There were no signs of foul play.  A remarkable number of people choose to commit suicide in hotel rooms--if you live alone, it’s a way of insuring that your body is quickly found--and this seemed to be just another in that grim list.  Sad, but hardly unusual.

Then things began to get weird.  The New York address she gave the hotel did not exist.  Neither did the phone number.  Later analysis of her signature on the hotel register found signs of hesitation which strongly suggested that “Mary Anderson” was a name she made up on the spot.  Investigators ran her fingerprints through the FBI’s identification system.  They checked missing-person records in the U.S. and Canada.  They checked with Interpol.  They checked with manufacturers of cyanide.  They spread the story to the media, hoping that someone would come forward to identify her.  And they wound up with absolutely nothing.  In short, the dead woman wanted to ensure that she could not be identified, and she did a damned good job of it.  

This unusual suicide gave investigators a few clues into her personality: she was clearly an intelligent and meticulous woman.  She appeared to have been prosperous.  Her ability to procure cyanide--not something you can just pick up at a local drugstore--and her expertise about mixing it with Metamucil suggested she might have had a background in the mining or chemical industries.  Her ability to erase any clues to her identity made some wonder if she had been connected to intelligence services.

The dead woman’s body provided a bit more information about her.  She had a copper IUD in her uterus, but the serial number on the device was too worn away to allow it to be traced.  At some point, she had cosmetic surgery done on her breasts.  She was 5’8” and weighed 240 pounds.  She had short auburn hair and brown eyes.  Her age was estimated at between 35 and 45.  She had never given birth.  She had been in good health.  Her plucked eyebrows, expensive Estee Lauder makeup, perfect teeth, and manicured nails suggested that she had been in the habit of taking care of herself.  Many years later, DNA testing determined that “Mary” likely had genealogical roots in Eastern Iran or Afghanistan, with Persian heritage.  Unfortunately, none of this explained who she was, and why she had taken her own life in such a mysterious manner.  M. Arly of the King County Medical Examiner’s Office sighed, "She did one of the most thorough jobs of obliterating her ID that I have ever seen in my career.  She could have taught the FBI tricks."  Arly’s comments highlight the question that has kept this case alive:  Why was this woman so determined not to be identified?

To date, all efforts to discover the true name of “Mary Anderson” have continued to hit a brick wall.  The county paid $479 for her “Jane Doe” burial in Crown Hill Cemetery, where she rests in the anonymity she so obviously craved.  One almost wants to congratulate her for outwitting us all.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

IS EVERYBODY HAPPY???

What the hell was the Whitechapel Mount?

Fair play for cannibals.

The "wonderful year" 1759.

The mysterious Great Serpent Mound.

Why the number 17 was not popular in ancient Rome.

BREAKING:  Scientists have just discovered dogs.  (Note: Cats can tell if you're sad, too.  They just usually don't care.)

The lady who was eulogized as "phosphate of lime."

Five notable female writers of fairy tales.

It's a bedsheet!  It's a wartime diary!

The days of deadly hatpins.

The mystery of the disappearing town.

A look at medieval pets.

The records of a medieval inquisitor.

A congressman commits a scandalous murder.

Herbert Hoover's unexpected road to the White House.

Love letters from a WWII soldier turn up in an unexpected place.

It wasn't always easy to be an Assyrian king.  Especially if you wanted to die in your bed.

Alchemy has always been a strange line of work.

The MP who may have invented lawn tennis.

Two cases of families going missing.

The DNA on the Shroud of Turin.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a mysterious suicide.  In the meantime, here's Randy Newman and friends:

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This odd case of a man and his apparent doppelganger appeared in the “Vancouver World,” July 21, 1894:

"There is a mystery now of five years standing in the lumber regions of Northern Pennsylvania," said George W. Culp of the Upper Susquehanna Valley, “the clearing up of which would give a great deal of satisfaction to the people in that region. Five years ago John Shehan came to work as a logger in the west branch. He was from Canada--a very giant of a fellow, with a red scar on his left cheek, the result of an accident in the lumber woods of the Dominion, and one eyetooth missing, He was a surly sort of a person and got into frequent disputes with his fellow workers, as well as with his employer.  After a very heated dispute with the foreman of his camp one day, the foreman discharged the man and he went away, telling one of the loggers that he was going back to Canada.  The next day somе of the men went to town and the postmaster said to one of them, 

‘That man Shehan of yours is a little off ain't he? He came in here yesterday and asked if there was any mail for him. There was a letter. I gave it to him. Hе opened the letter and read it, seemed satisfied with its contents and put it in his pocket and walked out. In less than 20 minutes afterward he came in again and asked me if there was any mail for him. I was considerably surprised, and told him I had given him all there was for him.

‘When?’ said he.

‘Why, a few minutes ago,’ I replied.

‘I haven't been in here for a month!’ he exclaimed.

‘In spite of all my efforts to convince him of his error, he insisted that he had not been in the store and had received no letter, and he went out furious.’

“The day after that the men on the creek were collecting the logs as they came down into the boom, when suddenly a driver startled all of his companions by exclaiming, ‘Here's the dead body of a man!’

"In a moment a half dozen men were at the spot and the body was dragged ashore. As it rolled over on its back the men recognized it as that of John Shehan. Subsequent investigation showed that there must have been some ground for the postmaster's belief as to Shehan's sanity, for the letter was found on the body.  If there had been any doubt as to the identity of the body, the scar on the cheek and a missing eyetooth would have them all at rest. Some were of the opinion that he had committed suicide, while deranged, but the coroner's verdict was that the drowning was accidental. The men gave the body a decent burial and a letter was sent to Shehan's mother in Canada notifying her of her son's sad death. A week later a letter came from her which contained the incredible information that there had to be a mistake about her son's death.  He had arrived home the day before the receipt of the letter announcing his death, and was even then there, alive and well.  This letter was followed by another from Shehan himself to a friend in the camp wanting to know what the report of his drowning meant.  There wasn't a man in the camp but what would have sworn he had seen John Shehan's body buried, and the grave was even opened to see if the body was still there, and it was.  On the strength of this the camp could not be satisfied until someone went to Canada and investigated the alleged living John Shehan there. Shehan's friend, who had known him from a boy, and another man at the camp went to Canada. They returned in a few days and reported that there was no mistake about the man in Canada. He was John Shehan beyond any kind of doubt, alive and in the flesh, as quarrelsome as ever. Then who was John Shehan’s double, whose name must have been John Shehan too, for it was he who inquired for the letter under that name and got it. Neither John Shehan in Canada nor his mother had ever known such a person.  The letter the Shehan double took from the post office was intended for the Canada Shehan, as it was identified by him as from bis mother: but the Shehan double must have expected a letter, too, of similar import, for it had seemed to satisfy him when he read it in the post office. Then who was the drowned man? And where did he come from?  That was an unsolved mystery then, and it is an unsolved mystery yet.”

In Which Mary Grimes Wallace Makes Life Difficult For Everyone

"Dayton Daily News," October 6, 1966, via Newspapers.com

Investigating a violent death can be difficult enough if it is uncertain whether it is a case of suicide, or murder.  When even trying to establish the identity of the victim leads everyone down various rabbit holes, and the unfortunate corpse gets permanently misplaced…well, have some pity for the police detectives involved.

32-year-old Mary Grimes Wallace of Xenia, Ohio, did not have an easy life.  After her husband deserted her, she found that her job as a cook at a supper club left her unable to adequately provide for their two young sons, forcing her to put them into state-run orphanages.  She eventually moved in with a man named William Byrd, but he soon proved to be yet another source of misery.  Byrd was an abusive bully who, during his frequent fits of rage, would threaten to kill Mary.  She told friends that she wanted to break things off with William, but feared what he might do if she left him.

At 7:38 a.m. on the morning of January 10, 1954, the engineer of a Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive phoned the Xenia Police Department.  He said that as the train neared the crossing at Jasper Street, he saw a man walking hurriedly away from the east side of the tracks.  Immediately after that, he saw the body of a woman lying in his train’s path.

When police arrived at the scene, they noted that the woman’s gruesome head injuries (the body was undamaged) were consistent with being hit by a train, although they found it curious that there was little blood at the site.  The coroner was unable to say if the woman was a suicide, or a murder victim who had been placed on the tracks.

For reasons not given publicly, police immediately identified the woman found on the tracks as Mary Wallace.  However, the woman’s face had been so disfigured as to render her unrecognizable.  Mary’s father Oliver believed that the corpse probably was his daughter, but he could not say for certain.

The assumption that the dead woman was Mary Wallace made things a bit easier for investigators, because it gave them an obvious suspect in her death:  William Byrd.  When interviewed by police, William insisted he was innocent.  He stated that last saw Mary when she returned home from work at about 3 am on the morning of the 10th.  After that, he fell asleep on the sofa, and knew nothing more until the detectives arrived to put him into custody.  His lack of an alibi earned William a visit to the county jail, under investigation for possible homicide.  However, after a month went by without police finding anything connecting him to the murder--if it was indeed a murder--they were forced to release him.

Investigators had one more lead to pursue:  Nine days before the woman’s body was found on the tracks, Mary was a witness to a murder.  She had been a bystander when someone had fatally shot their domestic partner during a “lovers’ quarrel.”  No further details about the incident were given to the public, as apparently police wound up concluding that it had no discernable connection to Mary’s death.

Just two days after the body was discovered, the dead woman was buried in Silvercreek Cemetery.  Despite the highly ambiguous nature of her death, no autopsy was done, and no blood or fingerprint samples were kept.  Everyone seemed content to shrug off the whole strange business and move on.

The case was considered closed until five years later, when none other than William Byrd insisted on reopening it.  He told the local sheriff, Russell Bradley, that rumors were rampant in Xenia that Mary was still alive, and he  begged police to investigate.  He hoped to finally remove the cloud of suspicion that had hung over him for so long.  Mary’s relatives also visited Sheriff Bradley saying that they too had heard the rumors.  In fact, they had been contacted by an old friend of Mary’s who was now living in Cincinnati.  This friend told them that she had run into Mary at a Cincinnati bar.  She said that Mary had remarried, started a new life, and most definitely did not want to be found.  When shown photographs of the corpse found on the railroad tracks, Mary’s family now said that the dead woman was definitely not their missing relative.

Sheriff Bradley felt there was nothing for it but to go to Cincinnati.  He interviewed Mary’s friend, who confirmed that Mary was living in the city, but had begged her friend to not tell anyone where she was.  Bradley found several other people who claimed to have seen Mary around Cincinnati, but his efforts to find the elusive Mary herself were unsuccessful.

Bradley was still determined to learn if Mary Wallace was alive or dead.  He obtained a set of her fingerprints from when Mary had worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and obtained a court order that the body buried under her name in Silvercreek Cemetery be exhumed in order to compare prints.

There was, unfortunately, an unexpected complication:  When the grave presumed to be Mary’s was opened, it was found to hold a different female corpse.  After re-reading the cemetery’s burial records, they tried again.  This time, they exhumed the corpse of a man.

Perhaps third time would be the charm?  After a careful probe, an unmarked coffin was found, in the location where Mary’s family believed she had been buried.  However, this coffin was found to hold another man.  After this, one cannot really blame the authorities for throwing up their hands and giving up on Mary Wallace.

Was Mary murdered?  Did she commit suicide?  Or--as seems very possible--did she escape the unhappiness of her life and start anew?  In which case…who was the woman on the railroad tracks?

What a fine mess this world can be.