Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

 

So, who’s ready for some walking extraterrestrial stumps?  The “Spokesman Review,” October 18, 1966:

NEWPORT, Ore. (AP)-People in this coastal logging area didn't believe 16-year-old Kathy Reeves when she told them about "the three little stumps that walked across the pasture."

Not only did they move, said Kathy, but they also were of different colors--orange, light blue, white, yellow and "watermelon-colored."

That was six months ago. 

Since then, 25 persons have seen the unidentified flying objects and 15 statements were taped by newsmen. They are from two deputy sheriffs and a chemist for Georgia-Pacific.  There are about 10,000 persons in the communities of Newport, Siletz, Toledo and Camp 12.

The latest reports were Friday.

Kathy's mother didn't believe her at first, either.

"One morning about 2," said Mrs. Reeves, "I woke up and my whole bedroom was a rosy glow so bright you could read a newspaper by it."

The Reeves family then moved out of its home on Pioneer Mountain. The new owner, Delbert Mapes, said he saw the lights before the Reeves moved out, but hasn't seen any since.

The chemist, Max W. Taylor. camped on the Reeves front lawn and saw two bluish lights on the Reeves' house, but he couldn't find the source of the light.

Taylor called Thomas Wayne Price, a deputy sheriff.

"I saw a flying object myself," said Price. "I don't know what it was, but it was orange and it was bigger than any star. I know it wasn't a meteor or a satellite because it was maneuvering. There was a noise like a giant spinning top.  It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck."

Kathy said her house was not surrounded by UFOs until one incident that happened while she and another girl were walking at night. They said they saw what appeared to be a flashlight with a cover over the end.

"I thought it was somebody playing a trick, so I threw a rock at the light," said Kathy. "A lot of big ones went on all around it and we ran home."

As far as I know, it’s still anyone’s guess what the heck was going on.

The Cursed Chest of Cornwall

"Western Morning News," January 8, 1949, via Newspapers.com

In late 1948, Trevor Ley of Stanbury Manor, Morwenstow, bought an old hand-carved, cedarwood chest from a Cornwall antique shop.  The woman who owned the shop let him have the chest for a low price, explaining that since she had acquired it, anything placed on the walls kept falling to the ground.  She thought that “some sort of ghost seemed to be attached to it.”

This purchase soon led Trevor to question his life choices.  As the shop owner had warned, wherever the chest was placed, the most damnable--literally--things began happening.  Six antique shotguns that were securely fastened to the wall suddenly smashed to the floor, even though the nails and wires that had held them were still intact.  A heavy painting leaped two feet from the wall, hitting Trevor on the head.  Two other large pictures which had been “hanging safely for generations” also propelled themselves into the center of the room.  In another bedroom, a painting did something even weirder--it somehow was pushed backwards through the paneling.  An electric light bulb which had been placed on a window sill hurled against the wall on the opposite side of the room.  

And so on.  The Leys were naturally curious why their ghost--which they had nicknamed “Old George”--had attached itself to the chest, but Trevor had a healthy distrust for self-proclaimed “mediums” and declined most of their offers to contact their “spirit.”

In January 1949, Trevor brought in the local vicar, the Rev. K. Rees, to try to exorcise “George.”  When Rees examined the chest, the men were bemused to find what appeared to be bloodstains on the object.  The red stains  were on carved figures on the outside of the chest.  One was on the arm of a woman holding a corpse. The other, three feet away, was on the body of a headless man.  Rees made the cheery remark that "The chest would make an ideal hiding-place for a body.”  When asked about conducting an exorcism, Rees demurred.  "I'm not well versed in exorcising,” he explained.  “I must look it up."

Finally, the Leys brought in a spiritualist from London to rid them of their poltergeist.  These efforts were apparently successful, as “George” subsequently ceased to bother them.  However, just to be on the safe side, the Leys put the now-famous chest up for auction.  This failed to find a buyer, and the chest was withdrawn from sale.  I have been unable to learn of its subsequent history.

Despite his efforts to trace the chest’s history, Trevor never learned for sure why the chest came to be haunted, but he did uncover one wonderfully M.R. James-ish clue.  He wrote to a psychic researcher named William H, Gilroy that he had received a letter from a Cornish curate who had recognized the chest from its photos in the newspapers.  

This curate told Trevor that “many years ago there were two sisters living in the Manor House, Newlyn, (he gave their names but I cannot find his letter at the moment, but will look it up if it is of interest to you). They had in their house quite a collection of antiques and among them was this chest which they kept in their bedroom. One time, after having been away for a few days, they returned late one night and being rather tired, placed their heavy baggage on the chest rather than unpack at such a late hour. Early the next morning their attention was drawn to the chest and as they went over to it the lid, although weighted down by the heavy baggage, slowly opened and they looked inside. What they saw they would never reveal, but it was so horrible that they were both struck stone deaf; and although they lived to an old age they never got their hearing back.

“When they died the house and furniture were sold at auction and all trace of the chest was lost until it turned up in the antique shop where I purchased it.”

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!

And we tip our hats to our hosts for this week!

Who the hell was Christopher Columbus?

Henry I's most "notorious" daughter.

The world's second-tallest man.

The loneliness of being a French POW in Britain.

Heads up, Egypt's prehistory is getting rewritten again.

Aboriginals and a dingo's well-tended grave.

A man's rant against floral funerals.

The woman who saved 13th century England.

A newly-discovered document dealing with victims of the Black Death.

Przybylski’s Star, weird stellar object and epic tongue-twister.

Science may be able to "erase" bad memories, but you might not want to.

Since the world has been longing for a scientific analysis of how geologists are portrayed by the film industry, here ya go.

The puzzle of Turkey's ancient underground city.

A very mysterious and very creepy disease.

Bermuda turns out to be a very strange island.

The man who was on the Royal Navy list for nearly 100 years.

A talented counterfeiter.

A canine hero of WWI.

A mysterious murder in Mutton Town.

British volunteers in WWI Italy.

Some 13th century plates and bowls.

A popular Georgian-era medicine.

Beluga whales are smarter than we thought.  I suspect that holds true for all animals.

People in the Andes are aces when it comes to digesting potatoes.

An unsolved murder in the Tenderloin.

A "solution" to the "Mary Celeste" mystery.  (Not that it's a new idea; I remember reading about this theory years ago.)

The mummified cat of Chetham's Library.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the dangers of buying an antique chest.  In the meantime, here's a remarkable video which explains why I will never never never never never ever even think about going anywhere near Mount Everest.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I put this missing-persons story into the “mini mysteries” file, due to the unsettling lack of information surrounding the case.  The “Miami Herald,” October 6, 1985:

You could set your clock by Irene Matheson.

Since Perrine Elementary School opened six years ago, Matheson was always the first person to arrive. She unlocked the cafeteria door at 5:45 a.m., let in the cook at 5:50 a.m. and began baking the rolls, breads, cakes and pies that feed students and faculty at five South Dade schools.

"She was never late--not once," cafeteria manager Michelle Perkins said Friday. "That's why we know something is terribly, terribly wrong."

After hearing the concern of co-workers, Metro-Dade Sgt. Carl Baaske agreed and began an immediate search when Matheson, 69, did not show up for work Tuesday morning.

Police usually will not take missing persons reports until the person missing has been gone for 48 hours. This seemed different, Baaske said. 

"It's as though she dropped off the earth," Baaske said Thursday night. "With two million people in Dade County, someone should have seen her or her car by now."

Police initiated a statewide hospital search for Matheson and her 1977 tan Honda station wagon. Officers in police helicopters looked in the many South Dade canals. They were joined by Matheson's son-in-law Tony Klopp.

Klopp, an Eastern Air Lines pilot, rented two light planes for two days so he and a friend could check out the coastline, junk yards, dumps and fields. Her daughter, Cindy Klopp, spends her days driving around looking for her mother's car or sitting by the telephone, waiting for a call.

"I pray she's had a stroke or just driving around," Klopp said. Her mother is in good health with no history of mental illness.

Matheson was last seen at 11 p.m. Monday. Klopp thinks whatever happened to her mother occurred after she left for work Tuesday. The condominium near The Falls where Matheson lives was in perfect order.

"Her coffee cup and a spoon were in the sink," Klopp said, sorting through snapshots of her mother taken at family parties. "Throw pillows were put up so the puppy wouldn't get them and the door was double-locked," she said.

Police have pieced together the hours before Matheson was reported missing from information gathered from family, friends and neighbors. Grandson Scott Klopp was the last family member to see Matheson. She drove the 12-year-old from his Redland home to the Perrine Khoury League baseball field at Franjo and Old Cutler roads.

A follow-up story appeared in the “Miami News” on December 5:

The discovery--almost by coincidence--last night of the car owned by a Kendall woman who has been missing more than two months is the first significant clue police have had in weeks, but may not be helpful if the woman does not want to be found, Metro police said.

"She's an older woman, and it could be a case that she might have gone senile for some reason and doesn't want to come home," said Metro Sgt. Ernest Pruitt, of the department's missing persons unit. "I've seen cases like that before."

Irene Matheson's 1977 tan Honda was found backed into a parking space in an apartment complex at 7941 S.W. 104th St. Police learned the car belonged to Matheson, a 69-year-old baker for the Dade County school system, while running a license plate check on the car and another nearby, Pruitt said.

The two parked cars were struck by a driver who then quickly fled the scene, he said. A resident of the complex reported the hit-and-run accident--in which no one was injured--and it was only while police were investigating the accident that they learned the slightly damaged Honda belonged to the missing woman, Pruitt said.

Pruitt said residents told police that the car had been parked in the space for about a week and had been seen parked in other spaces for about a month.

Police dusted the car for fingerprints and searched it before towing it to the station where it will be vacuumed and examined by laboratory technicians, Pruitt said.  A sticker in a panel of the car's door indicated the vehicle was serviced at a station on Oct. 1, the day she was reported missing.  The sticker also indicated how many miles the car had been driven since the time of servicing.  Since then, the car had been driven about 99 miles, Pruitt said.

Apparently the last driver of the car backed the vehicle into the parking space and against a fence in order to make it more difficult to read the license tag, Pruitt said.

Matheson was last seen on the night of Sept. 30. Her relatives believe she dressed for work at Perrine Elementary School the next morning, and left in her Honda from her home at Heatherwalk Condominium complex--a few miles from where her car was found.

The discovery last night was the first break in the case. "We worked this case continuously for the first two weeks," Pruitt said. "We searched the area around the canal, had the Water and Sewer Authority people search the canals around the house in case she may have accidentally driven into one, conducted surveillances of the area around her house, conducted aerial searches of the area using heat-sensitive equipment in case we could find a body. And we came up with nothing.”

The discovery of Matheson’s car seems to have done exactly nothing to indicate the whereabouts of Irene herself.  To date, the mystery of her disappearance remains unsolved.

The Ghost Sausage of Devon

This brief, but delightfully offbeat “ghost story” (for lack of a better term) was related by author, paranormal researcher, and photographer J.P.J. Chapman:

Many years ago my late father-in-law rented a large farm near Bampton in North Devon.  The farm buildings and the dwelling house were situated half way up a steep hill overlooking the River Exe.  During a warm summer it was quite nice but with a lingering threat of bitter winds and snow in winter.

There was a lane going from the farm to a large moor which was quite 300 feet higher than the tillage.  Now, it is well known that large open spaces, devoid of any useful vegetation and situated atop a high hill, frequently possess a bad reputation.  Of a summer evening my wife and I frequently took a walk to the moor.  It commanded a wonderful view, while the sunsets were a sight to behold.

The lane ended at a gate which led into this moor.  Quite a while before the events to be related my wife and I frequently remarked that it was an eerie spot and the sooner passed the better.  Personally, I never gave it much thought for, being a “country lad,” I knew of many such places which were not nice--and that was all that could be said.

However, things proved otherwise.  My wife and her sisters rode a lot and took turns exercising the horses.  Sometimes they went out together.  I can still see them up on the moor, putting the horses into a gallop and thoroughly enjoying the wild ride.

On one occasion one of the girls was asked by her father to go on the moor to see if some cattle had strayed.  It was in the autumn and, the sun having set, it would soon be dark.  My wife’s sister decided to ride up.  Having seen that all was well she was just about to leave the moor, through the gate which she had left open, when the horse suddenly shied.  Nothing would induce it to pass through the gate.  There was no alternative route except by a long detour, so go through they must.

After several attempts she decided to dismount and lead the horse through.  This time as they reached the gate a curious luminous shape could be seen drifting nearby.  It was like an elongated sausage, with baleful eyes.  The whole thing seemed to be pulsating, from dim to bright.  It was in a vertical position except for a sideways, wavering movement.  To say the least, the girl was frightened but made up her mind to face it.

Placing herself between what-ever-it-was and the horse she coaxed the animal through.  When the horse was half way it broke loose and galloped down the lane for about 50 yards where it stopped and waited.

There were several curious facts concerning this particular haunting.  It took place only at dusk--no other time.  No other animals, except horses--any horse--were affected.  But here again was a most remarkable fact.  It had to be a horse and a human.  If there was not this combination nothing happened.  The “Ghost Sausage” as I dubbed it, seemed anchored to one spot, its movements restricted as related.  Several times I visited the place but, while noticing there was something there, never could decide what.  The ghost seemed quite harmless.  I got the impression that it was neither good nor bad.  It was just some form of a ghost--nothing more.

There was a big disused quarry nearby; possibly some earth spirit had been released.  My sister-in-law stated it was a greenish colour, about a foot across and five feet high.

This is the end of my story.  If the present residents of the farm ever see it, I don’t know, as we have not been near the place for the last 35 years or more.

What it was, how it originated, I do not know.  I never could find out.  Your answer will be as good as mine!

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the latest Link Dump!

This week, we are honored to be visited by some genuine royalty.

That time someone stole 80,000 pounds of butter.

The complicated medieval legal term, "raptus."

The Roman Woman of Spitalfields.

How medieval Europeans ate before contact with the Americas.

You never know what you'll find in medieval latrines.  Other than the obvious, of course.

You never know what you'll find in a field.

You never know what you'll find in your kitchen.

You never know what you'll find in a Luftwaffe bathroom.

The Surgeons' Hall Riot.

Neanderthal dentistry.

The Prohibition-era "medicine" that left people paralyzed.

A Philadelphia Loyalist during the American Revolution.

The sinking of the Empress of Ireland.

The man who gate-crashed his own wake, which seems a bit impolite.

The newest research about Mary Boleyn.

Why is 3/I Atlas weird?  Because it came from a weird neighborhood.

Speaking of weird, God only knows what's lurking in our oceans.

By the way, lightning's pretty weird, too.

The CIA and the Sphinx.

Ted Turner and the Tasmanian Tiger.

Inventions that were behind their time.

90 years ago, a weird creature was found off the west coast of Canada.  We still don't know what it was.

The man who went from making razors to making a metropolis.  (Spoiler: He had more luck with the razors.)

The mystery of the "copper scroll."

The (probable) murder of "Diamond Flossie."

If you've been longing to know what outer space smells like--and who hasn't?--read on.

What might be the world's oldest arrowheads.

The "lost years" of Samuel Johnson.

A particularly grim murder case.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a ghostly sausage.  No, really.  In the meantime, here's some Vivaldi.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Here is yet another example of that popular supernatural staple, “a vision of murder.”  The “New Orleans States,” February 19, 1911:

SYDNEY, Feb. 18. — A most mysterious story comes from Perth, West Australia. The mysterious disappearance of a girl named Ethel Harris led a representative of a Perth newspaper to make an investigation, which had sensational results.

He communicated his discoveries to the police and the developments became still more remarkable. The story is briefly as follows: Some four or five years previously a man who called himself Wilson went through some kind of official ceremony with Ethel Harris, whereby she thought she was married to him. A little time ago, however, she disappeared, and some suspicion was aroused. Her father made inquiries of Wilson, who was now working at a foundry under the name of Smart, and was told by the "husband" that his daughter had gone to Adelaide on a holiday, and was well and happy. Then followed investigations which found that Wilson, alias Smart, had not really married Ethel Harris at all.

It was found also that under the name of Smythe he had shortly before married a girl named Mary Jane Pemberthy, and that he had a wife living in Victoria, and an adult son in Perth. He was arrested on a charge of bigamy, and inquiries into the fate of Ethel Harris were pursued. The strangest circumstance in the whole strange story, however, is that Miss Pemberthy told of a vision she had of an apparition in the bathroom of the house in which she was living with Wilson, or Smart. She declared that she saw the form of a woman struggling in the bath, and gave a minute description of the vision, which appeared to her on two occasions. But the police obtained several more tangible clews to the fate of the vanished girl, with the help of the marvelously clever black trackers, and eventually excavations were made under an old disused smithy in the neighborhood.

The result of the exploration was the discovery of a human body, which was strongly presumed to be that of the unfortunate girl.

At the time the message was sent Arthur William Smart had been sentenced to two years for bigamy. Further developments in the case will be awaited with great interest.

Wilson--or Smart, or Smythe, or whatever you care to call the creep--was eventually found guilty of Harris’ murder, and was accordingly executed.