Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This quirky little tale appeared in the “Grass Valley Union,” March 11, 1914:

BLOOMINGTON (Ill.), March 10.-- The mystery of the "House of Mystery" at Chrisman, Ill., is still unsolved after seventeen years. It is now the resort of bats and owls and rapidly going to decay. It was in 1896 that the "House of Mystery" was erected. Without any previous announcement one spring morning, a gang of workmen from some outside point arrived in Chrisman.

Simultaneously came carloads of building material. Upon a large lot on the main street of the town there was speedily erected the structure that was to create so much gossip in succeeding years. The townspeople quizzed the workmen concerning the ownership of the house, but learned nothing. All engaged were sworn to secrecy, and none broke faith.

The progress of the structure was watched with curious interest. It was surmised that some well-to-do bachelor of the town was preparing a home for a prospective bride, but all such pleaded "Not guilty." Decorators and furnishers followed upon the heels of the carpenters, plasterers and painters. The house was fitted up luxuriously and with every up-to-date convenience. It was now felt that the mystery would soon be solved. The dining room was a marvel of luxury, with carved table and chairs and a buffet filled with expensive china.

The parlor was equipped with expensive rugs, a grand piano and silk upholstered furniture. The library and bedrooms corresponded in magnificence with the other rooms. The sleeping apartments varied in magnificence with the other rooms. The sleeping apartments varied in color and furnishings, from the palest blue and birdseye maple to rich green tones and heavy walnut. After the final touch of the outfitters and decorators the house was closed.

Time passed and no one appeared. No blushing bride and happy bridegroom. There were no developments of any kind. Weeks, months and years slipped by and the mystery deepened. Six years ago an Incendiary set fire to the house and before the flames were extinguished the kitchen was badly damaged.

A few days later workmen appeared from some neighboring city, repaired the damage and went their way. Although plied with queries by the residents, no one would furnish any information calculated to clear up the mystery. About that time a municipal electric lighting plant was installed in Chrisman and electricians wired the "mysterious house."

In 1919, various newspapers carried another brief story about the house, indicating that the riddle of who built it and why it stood empty for so many years had yet to be solved.  As far as I can tell, the “House of Mystery” remained just that.

The Ghost of Armit Island

Armit Island is a tiny, largely undeveloped island in Whitsundays, Queensland, Australia.  Accessible only by boat, Armit has a wild beauty that makes it a popular visit for the more adventurous and self-sufficient campers and bird watchers.  However, what has earned Armit a place on this blog is something entirely different: a very sad and lonely ghost.

Sometime around 1890, a man named Heron, obviously wishing to see civilization in his rear-view mirror, leased Armit from the Queensland government, and built himself a little hut on the island.  Heron was a great collector of plants, which he used to start an orchard on the island’s western aspect.  One day, some yachtsmen anchored off Armit, and one of them went to Heron’s hut for a chat.  The visitor was greatly impressed by the silence and isolation of the place, and he asked Heron if he didn’t find it oppressively lonely living by himself.

“Oh, no,” Heron replied casually.  “A sailor keeps me company.”

The bemused yachtsman, who had seen no other signs of human habitation on the island, tried to get more information, but the hermit suddenly clammed up and refused to say any more about the matter.  Other visitors to the island heard Heron mention this mysterious “sailor,” but they too were unable to get him to provide further details.

The explanation for Heron’s enigmatic remarks was finally discovered by one Captain Gorringe, who was raising sheep on nearby Lindeman Island.  On one occasion, Gorringe spent a week camping on Armit.  Like the other visitors, Gorringe was told of Heron’s sailor friend, but, not being a terribly inquisitive man, he asked no questions.  However, when after several days this sailor failed to make an appearance, the captain couldn’t help but ask about him.

Heron matter-of-factly explained that soon after his arrival on the island, one night he was awakened by some noise, and left his hut to investigate.  As he went outside, he was shocked to hear an agonized scream coming from the slopes of the island.  He then saw the figure of a man dressed in the clothing of an 18th century sailor emerge from the brush and walk to the water’s edge.  Heron called out to the man, but received no response.  He was stunned to see the sailor walk into the water…and disappear.

After that, Heron often watched the same scene play out: the horrible cry, the march to the water’s edge, the vanishing into the ocean.  Heron told Gorringe that he assumed this was the ghost of a crew member of a long-ago ship who had come to a tragic end on Armit.

Heron was not the only visitor to Armit to see the sailor.  One night in 1908, one Charles Anderson anchored his cutter off the island.  Happening to look towards the beach, he saw a figure walking through the trees to the water’s edge.  Anderson later said that “there was something about it which immediately convinced me that it was not the figure of a living man.  It did not walk so much as float a few inches above the sand.  The phantom came and went so quickly that I did not have time to examine it properly, but my impression was that the sailor clothes on the ghostly figure were those of the seventeenth century.”

In 1938, a Queensland author named Frank Reid visited Armit with a group of fishermen.  After fishing for some hours, the men made camp on the western beach.  After a late dinner, the party relaxed on the sand, talking and smoking.  This peaceful scene was rudely interrupted by the sound of a “shriek of horror” coming from the woods.  It was like nothing they had ever heard before.

When the dreadful cry was not repeated, one of the men dismissed it as the sound of some strange bird, and the group began to settle in for the night.  Then, Reid saw an apparition emerging from the nearby trees.  It was of a man dressed like a “sailor of Nelson’s days.”  The figure stared straight ahead, ignoring the fishermen.  Silently, eerily, the sailor glided across the beach and into the water.

I do not know of any more recent sightings of the spectre--every haunting, no matter how persistent, seems to have an expiration date.  However, if you are ever on Armit Island, and you hear a heartrending scream, don’t be frightened.  It is just a spirit, doomed to endlessly march into the sea…

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Feel free to use the Strange Company HQ skating rink.

Watch out for those exploding trees!

What the hell was the Ark of the Covenant?

The claim that the Great Pyramid may be even older than mainstream archaeologists say.

Gossip columns in the Regency Era.

The 1870 Battle of Havana.

The castle of 100 ghosts.

How seashells are created.

A mysterious medicinal wood.

Scientists are pondering about talking dogs.

Syphilis has been around a lot longer than we thought.

A "jolly mute."

A forgotten Japanese racetrack.

A Duchess' daring escapes.

Stone tools from 160,000 years ago.

How Richard Burton--the one who wasn't an actor--faked his way through the Hajj.  So I suppose he was an actor of sorts, too.

Yet another marriage ends with poison.

The oldest known rock art.

The rise and fall of a cat island.

Meeting immortal tramps.

The problem of falling cats.

The study of boredom.

Some Mystery Fires in India.

How Elizabethans kept warm.

The tragedy of a professional boxer.

The researchers who are communicating with horses.

A heroine who walked.  A lot.

The inventor of the first television.

The first electric chair execution.

A man's literal identity crisis.

We may have misnamed Halley's Comet.

Goethe and the amber ant.

The "Holy Grail" of shipwrecks.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a particularly troubled ghost.  In the meantime, let's go Down Under!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

…Well, perhaps not the worst, but certainly something you wouldn’t want in the neighborhood.  The “Rutland Daily Herald,” September 7, 1874:

From New Martinsville. West Virginia, comes the latest ghost story. If we may credit the account given by the Wheeling Intelligencer, there lives, 25 miles up Fishing Creek, and about 20 miles from Burton, one Henry Nolan, A wealthy and altogether respectable gentleman. Mr. Nolan has a son John, 18 years of age. He is a bright, intelligent boy, and has always, until lately, been in good health and spirits. Early last spring, however, he began to be troubled in a manner unaccountable to his parents, who at first thought he had lost his reason. He was followed, he said, continually when in the house, by an old gray-headed man. He could see this man plainly, but no one else could.

John's parents, becoming alarmed, sent him away from home, and he remained some time, experiencing no annoyance while absent. His friends, thinking his mind sound and health restored, sent for bim, and he returned, but to have his every step dogged in the same mysterious manner. Now, the affair took a different turn, and stones began to be hurled at him by this old but invisible man. If John was in the house the stones would fall from the roof; likewise, if he was in any of the outbuildings. If he was in the yard or fields--in fact, in any place out-doors--they would fall around and upon him, but never hurt him.

These stones varied in size from the dimensions of a pullet's egg to those of a human fist. They could be seen coming through the air, but from whose hand John alone could tell. He could always plainly see the old man hurling them at him. Things went on in this way for some time, John steadily and rapidly failing in health and strength, till in July, when he again left home, and, as before, was not troubled during his absence.

He was to return on Sunday, the 20th of the month, and now some of the friends and neighbors are determined to ferret out and expose the whole business. Accordingly, on Saturday, four men armed themselves and went to the house. Early Sunday morning, before John was up (he was never in any way disturbed while asleep), they surrounded the building, first being careful that within their circuit no one was concealed. Scarcely had John arisen when the stones began falling almost in a shower on the roof. Looking up into the air, the party could see them dropping like rain, but whence they came, or by what power impelled, was a complete mystery. Of one fact all were assured--they were thrown by no one within a long distance of the house. After breakfast John came out, and the stones fell thick and fast around him, now apparently coming from a field near the house. John could distinctly see his old assailant in the field, so, with rifles cocked, the men moved in that direction.

The boy described the ghost as sitting in a small bunch of briar bushes--the very one whence the bombardment proceeded. The patch was instantly surrounded, rushed upon with clubs and stones, and John saw the old man enter another. This was in its turn surrounded, but with the same effect. Sometimes after coming from a patch the old man would enter another a few feet away, and sometimes dash across the field. All Sunday, the search went on, but without success.

On Monday, however, while the storming party were running from briar heap to briar heap, their victim became suddenly visible to all. He was dressed in blue trousers and a shirt of fine-looking material. He was hatless, but his long, white flowing beard and hair hung in profusion around his shoulders and over his breast. His face was pale, his eyes clear and sharp, and black as night. He was ordered to surrender, but did not deign to stir.

The men then closed upon him, but he darted off like a deer. Meanwhile the stones continued to rattle down, though propelled by some other power than the arm of the phantom. John started in pursuit, running with such swiftness that he kept close by the old man's side, while the rest of the party were left far behind. Again the strange being entered a thicket of briars and became invisible to all except the boy. As soon as he was driven from that hiding place he entered another and so the chase went on.

Once more during the day he appeared in full sight, and at this time, as he spurned all attempts to make him surrender, it was decided to shoot him. One of the men took deliberate aim with his rifle and fired. The spirit, unhurt, bounded off. Another pursuer fired, but in vain. The two men prepared to reload their rifles, but upon neither of them was a lock, both having fallen off.

For two days this hunt proceeded, without satisfactory results. On Tuesday, however, a smoke was observed to rise from every bush whence the stones came, Another singular circumstance was connected with this, namely, that an Indian hen, a bird found every where in that part of the country, was seen to rise from each bush and fly to another, the volley seeming to follow in the wake of her flight. No conclusion having been arrived at with regard to this mystery, the investigation is abandoned. John, now weak and emaciated, wasted away to a shadow of his former self, has been sent away from home, and had not, up to the time the report was written, returned. The story, incredible as it may seem, comes to the Intelligencer supported by the names of citizens well known in the neighborhood where the events are alleged to have occurred.

A Shooting in Portencross

Mary Gunn

Northbank Cottage was a pleasant little home in Portencross, Scotland, on the Ayrshire coast.  Northbank was a fairly remote place, but surrounded by picturesque beauty, which would have made it a desirable location for anyone who did not fear loneliness.

In May 1913, a family trio moved into the cottage:  Sixty year old retired farmer/evangelist Alexander MacLaren, his wife Jessie, and Mrs. MacLaren’s forty-nine year old sister Mary Speir Gunn.  Mary was arguably the most notable member of the household: She had worked as a telephone operator, at a time when that was a highly unusual profession, particularly for a woman, and in her youth, was so pretty that she was known as the “Beauty of Beith.” She was still considered a very attractive woman.  The little family had a sterling reputation, and seemed quite fond of each other.

On the evening of October 18, the household had their tea, and then settled down around the fireplace in the parlor.  It was a peaceful scene: the two women knitted while Alexander read aloud from a book by W.W. Jacobs, Mary’s favorite author.  They did not bother to draw the blinds in the room, as it was a rainy night and their isolated location ensured they rarely got passers-by.

Alexander’s reading was abruptly interrupted by a frightening noise: a combination of a blast and the sound of glass shattering in the window opposite Mary.  A barrage of gunshots filled the room.  Mary suddenly clutched her chest and cried, “Oh, Alex, I’m shot!”  She dropped to the floor.  Jessie dashed to the other side of the room, with her husband yelling at her to drop to the floor.  It was only then that Alexander realized that one of the shots had shattered his left index finger.  The shots stopped, followed by an eerie silence.

Alexander ran out of the house, but the shooter had disappeared into the darkness.  After a futile search around the cottage, he ran for Portencross, which was about half a mile away.  The first house he reached was of a farmer named Alexander Murray.  He dashed into the house shouting, “Come down!  Come down!  We are all shot!”  Murray and his wife came out onto the landing to find MacLaren standing in the hall, hysterical and bleeding from his hand.  MacLaren screamed at them, “I’m shot, my wife’s shot, and Miss Gunn’s shot!”  He turned and ran back out into the night.

Murray went to the house of the local Laird, where he learned that MacLaren had just been there, after which the Laird--who had one of the very few houses in the area with a telephone--called police.

When officers, accompanied by a doctor, arrived at Northbank, they found Jessie standing in a daze, blood streaming from her back.  The doctor instantly saw that Mary was dead.  She had been shot three times, with one of the bullets piercing her heart.  The doctor led Jessie to bed, and extracted a bullet from her back.  He did not consider the wound to be life-threatening.  Outside the shattered window, police were able to make out several pairs of footprints, as well as a bullet.

At first, police evidently believed Alexander was either the intended victim, or the perpetrator.  However, the footprints found outside the window did not match his boots, and it was soon determined that his shotgun could not have been the murder weapon.  Investigators next assumed that this had been a botched robbery attempt--except, what burglar would fill a room with bullets, and then leave?  A personal motivation made little sense, either.  The three victims lived quiet, inoffensive lives, with no known enemies.  With little to go on other than unidentifiable footprints in the mud and a few bullets, the police were stymied.  They followed a number of leads about the inevitable “mysterious strangers” seen in the area at the time of the murder, but those all went nowhere.  The murder of Mary Gunn began to drift towards the “cold case” file.

"Daily Mirror," October 22, 1913, via Newspapers.com

There was one curious footnote to this particularly odd shooting.  One year after Mary’s murder, Elizabeth Gibson, who ran a Portencross boarding-house with her husband Andrew, sued Alexander MacLaren for slander.  The suit stated that MacLaren “falsely and calumniously made statements to the effect that she had participated in or had guilty knowledge of the murder of the defendant’s sister-in-law, Miss Mary Gunn, at Portencross on October 18th last year.”  The report went on to state that as a result of MacLaren’s statements, “an estrangement has resulted between herself and her husband, and her business has suffered very seriously.”

The trial was scheduled to begin on March 19, 1915, but before those proceedings could begin, Mrs. Gibson suddenly and mysteriously dropped the action, meaning she had to pay all the costs for the case, not to mention losing her hope of getting damages from MacLaren.

That proved to be the last official word on the Portencross Mystery.  As it seems virtually impossible that the murder will ever be satisfactorily “solved,” all we can do is speculate using the few clues available.  Jack House, who devoted a chapter to the case in his book “Murder Not Proven,” suggested that the murderer was Alexander MacLaren.  House theorized that Alexander, maddened by a hidden passion for his fetching sister-in-law, secretly bought a heavy revolver and snuck out of the cottage on the fatal night with the intention of murdering his inconvenient wife.  However, in his excitement, he accidentally killed the wrong woman.  As for why Jessie MacLaren did not turn her husband in, House proposed that the shock of the event caused her to have amnesia.

While we certainly live in a world where anything is possible, I personally find House’s lurid scenario to be unconvincing.  Stephen Brown’s 2018 book, “Who Killed Mary Gunn” offered a more plausible “solution.”  Seizing upon Elizabeth Gibson’s aborted slander suit, Brown speculated that Andrew Gibson was having a secret love affair with Mary Gunn, leading to Andrew’s jealous wife taking violent steps to eliminate her rival.  Brown thought it was likely that Mrs. Gibson dropped her lawsuit after it was privately pointed out to her that suing someone for calling her a murderer when she really was a murderer could lead to unpleasant consequences.

Unfortunately, Brown’s theory is too loaded with “what-ifs” to be the “last word” on the case. Also, neither “solution” to the murder addresses what I find most puzzling: The remarkably messy and slapdash manner of the shooting.  It did not appear to be the action of an assassin with a particular target in mind.  Rather, it looks like someone just stood outside the window randomly spraying the room with bullets.  The fact that Mary was fatally wounded seems to have been a case of appalling bad luck rather than a deliberate “hit job.”  This led me to consider a variation of Brown’s theory:  Perhaps Andrew Gibson had an interest in Mary that was completely unrequited, but deep enough to cause his wife a good deal of resentment.  Perhaps, in her anxiety to cool her husband’s passion, Elizabeth Gibson picked up a gun and went to the MacLaren cottage not to murder anyone, but just to put enough of a scare into the family to drive them far away from Portencross--and Andrew.  Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Elizabeth proved to be a more lethal marksman than she intended.  Or, for all we know, nobody has stumbled across the true solution to the case.

Northbank Cottage is still standing, the last surviving witness to the murder.  What a pity its walls cannot talk.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Feel free to join the Strange Company staffers in winter's first snowball fight.

No, most medieval people did not marry when they were very young.

The landscape of Antarctica.

Cows are pretty darn smart.

The world's oldest restaurant.

The souvenir-hunters of Waterloo.

The practice of "dowsing for corpses."

An 1828 mutiny on the high seas.

One for "The Moon is Weird" file.

A roundup of recent poltergeist events.

The world's longest-running lab experiment.

Scandal at an overcrowded cemetery.

The eternal battle between writers and editors.

Some real-life Robinson Crusoes.

The fossilized structures that give scientists fits.

A house that became a "cat temple."

A "Brazilian Roswell."

The life of "Einstein's sidekick."

The failed attempt for force America to use the metric system.

Boleskine is high up on my list of "Houses that maybe shouldn't be restored," but perhaps that's just me.

The Harvard scientist who thinks he's found Heaven.  Literally.

Maria Clementina Sobieska, sort-of Queen of England.

Japan's "underwater Atlantis."

The surviving ruins of an influential architect.

The man who tried to fly to Mars.  (Spoiler: it didn't work.)

An orphanage of horrors.

The casseroles of the Great Depression.

A man asks his wife to shoot him.  She obliges.

C.A. Mathew's photos of Spitalfields.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an unsolved murder in Scotland.  In the meantime, it's ukuleles-a-go-go!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This evocative tale of a missing person’s ghost appeared in the “Democratic Northwest,” October 18. 1894:

Fully 20 years have passed since Lizzie Clark, an orphan with a heritage, disappeared from a hotel in Dallas City, Illinois., as completely as if the earth had swallowed her up. In all that western country there has never been a stranger case than the disappearance of that girl, and there has never been a greater ghost mystery than has been and still is occasioned by the evidently disembodied spirit of the girl. 

The story of Lizzie Clark has been county history. She was an orphan and had some property and money.  A guardian had been appointed, and Lizzie, being ambitious to add to her little store, set about to work in a hotel hard by the river's edge. Through the dining room of this hotel runs the line between Hancock and Henderson counties, so that often a guest reached from Hancock into Henderson county when after butter.  A country swain and his lass, if seated opposite each other at this board, are in different counties. Many a man wanted for some offense in Hancock county has sat at this table in Henderson county and grinned at the sheriff of Hancock county. 

It was one afternoon about 20 years ago that Lizzie Clark, who had been washing dishes in the kitchen, stepped into the yard of the hotel.  She was seen to leave the kitchen by several working around the house, who paid no attention to the girl, but that was the last ever seen of her. Those who saw her step out into the yard heard no scream, no stifled moan, no struggling, but there are people yet living who believe that the girl was suddenly seized, strangled, concealed in the house until dark, and then cast into the dark river. Be that as it may, the murderers, if they remained in the same locality long, have been amply tormented since. It is said that the murderers did not leave the locality for some time thereafter, and yet, again, others say the girl was never murdered, but drowned herself, and that her ghost is not one of a murdered person, but one of a suicide. All one can gain from the different stories and theories is that the girl was dealt with foully in some manner, and that her ghost still haunts the locality.

Of course every effort was made to ferret out the mystery. Detectives hunted high and low, money was spent to no purpose, and finally the guardian of the girl's estate turned her money and property over to the county authorities, in whose hand it remains to this day because there is no kith or kin to claim it. 

The girl's ghost was first seen in December, 1887, when a party of duck bunters were returning to Dallas City from the islands. An excursion steamer had become disabled late in the season and was lying on the bank of the island across the bay. She was in a rather bad fix.  It was expected to leave her there during the winter. As the hunters neared the craft a form in white was seen to run out upon the upper deck. It was a young girl's figure, and she was evidently being pursued, for from across the water came screams, and then the following words: "'Leave me alone, leave me alone, or I will drown myself!" With that the specter flung itself into the river. There was a splash, and the cold waters closed over the white body. Several times during that winter the ghost of Lizzie Clark was seen at night and at early candle light around the disabled steamer.

When the steamer was taken away next spring, workmen and steamboatmen heard pitiful screams from the willows on shore as the boat moved away. The spirit did not leave the island, and it is believed now that she was buried on the island after the murder.  

Of later years, however, the girl's ghost has been seen in a skiff at night, and it was only a few evenings ago that one of the St. Louis and St. Paul fast steamers ran into the spectral thing.  The pilot did not see the ghostly craft until too late. He says he saw a boat of white that looked more like floating fleece than anything else. In the boat was a young girl in white raiment, but there were blood clots on the white dress. “She was rowing swiftly. When the prow of the steamer struck this frail craft, it cut through it like mist.  The ghostly occupant only laughed a sort of uncanny laugh--a half scream--and when we had passed I saw the spectral craft dancing on the waves behind. I doubt if an ordinary skiff could have lived in the waves of our steamer, right under the paddles." Thus spoke the pilot, and he is a man of few words and sterling integrity. 

"Have you seen Lizzie Clark's boat?" is now the question that goes from one mouth to another during the summer season. The question is not asked so often in winter from the fact that the poor girl's spirit does not seem to roam so much. Hunters have come into Dallas shaking with fright and calling for a dram to brace their nerves, saying that while coming down from the islands above on the ice they had met Lizzie Clark walking rapidly toward them.

She always wears that white dress, and the blood stains on the neck are plain. The girl's eyes are always staring wide open, as if she were being suffocated. Her spirit has been known to step out from behind a clump of dead trees at the head of the island and face passersby. She will give them a terrible look and then scream piteously. In an instant more the spirit has disappeared.- - Chicago Times.

There is a sequel to our little tale:  In March 1915, a skeleton of a human female was unearthed around the grounds of the hotel where Lizzie had worked, leading to the assumption that these were the remains of the long-missing girl.  It was said that Lizzie’s employers had been “bad characters, utterly devoid of decent principles.”  Lizzie was said to have been in “deep trouble” with the hotel proprietors, presumably because she knew too much of their evil doings.  The obvious conclusion was that Lizzie’s mouth had been permanently shut.

After the skeleton was found, Lizzie Clark’s unhappy ghost was never seen again.