Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!  Our host is the handsome Butch, former Humane Society mascot.

Just more proof that the universe is probably weirder than we can even guess, which helps explain why scientists who play know-it-all so annoy me.

In related news, we really don't know jack about the Moon.

The Buzzell shooting.

Solving a 200-year-old volcanic mystery.

The world's deadliest sniper.

The work of the brothers Grimm.

A "lost world" in the Pacific Ocean.

Possible proof that Atlantis existed.

A mysterious secret tunnel.

The editor who annoyed Ernest Hemingway.

I now have the urge to write a short horror story titled, "Tomb of the Venom Magician."

The dogs of the Salem Witch Trials.

The oldest weapons ever found in Europe.

The rise and fall of an alchemist.

The people of the Naga Hills in the early 20th century.

Guys, stop releasing lynx into the Scottish Highlands, OK?

A champagne shipwreck.

The man who thought it would be a fine thing to circumnavigate the world in a canoe.

The wages of 18th century servants.

The original rhinestone cowboy.

A case of 16th century defamation.

The UK's "dinosaur highway."

The Flaming Hand of Doom.

Why we call high prices "highway robbery."

A "lost" chapter of the Bible has been discovered.

Tipping in Victorian times.

The Squibb family murders.

Family letters reveal a bank con from a century ago.

Why you would not want to be a German Army deserter during WWII.

An undertaker's Gothic tale.

A fascinating cave system in Israel.

A brief history of curiosity cabinets.

That time when people were panicking over teddy bears.

The unique gems of the Thames.

When Jean met Rose.

Scotland's Stone Age settlements.

Reflections on work and life in the Middle Ages.

A ghost in the London Underground.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll have a metallic Close Encounter.  In the meantime, here's some Beethoven.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

One often hears tales of ghosts returning to try to "solve" their own murder, but in this case the revenant appears to have been wasting his time.  The “Logansport Reporter,” February 18, 1899:

Thornhope, a little village northwest of Logansport on the Chicago division of the Pan Handle, is all agog over a remarkable ghost story, the details of which were made public but yesterday. The most uncanny feature of the affair is the peculiar action of the ghost in binding to secrecy for a certain period the man who is the only person who has held converse with it. At last time has absolved the oath and the facts in the case have been related. In the fall of '65, John Baer, a stockbuyer, established headquarters at Thornhope and engaged extensively in the purchase and sale of stock. He was frequently known to have large sums of money in bis possession, but be scoffed at the idea of possible robbery, He lived with John Wildermuth and on Feb. 16, 1868, he prepared to go to Star City and arrange for the shipment of a carload of cattle.

He had $3,000 in cash on his person to pay for the stock, and before starting to Star City he started to walk to the residence of John Steele, a mile south of Thornhope, to procure a heavy overcoat he had left there a few days previously. That was the last ever seen of Baer. He failed to reach Steele's, and the only clew to the mysterious affair was advanced by Gabriel Fickle, a warm friend of Baer and a resident of Thornhope to this day. Fickle and others heard pistol shots shortly after Baer started for Steele's. When Baer failed to return to Wildermuth's, Fickle associated his disappearance with the shots, but a close search failed to disclose any trace of the missing man and in a few months it came to be generally believed that he was foully murdered for his money.

Two men were suspected but there was no evidence against them and no arrests were made. Near the water tank, midway between Thornhope and Steele's, was an abandoned well close to the banks of Indian Creek, and a few years after the disappearance of Baer, some school children who were fishing in the creek hooked shreds of clothing and an old boot out of the well. The circumstances of this find were given no consideration by the children's parents, but in the light of recent developments it suggests the truth of a weird and ghastly story of murder. Gabriel Fickle is responsible for the present disturbed condition of Thornhope people in his solemn avowal that he saw and talked with the ghost of John Baer on the night of February 16, 1898, the thirtieth anniversary of the disappearance of Baer.

Fickle explains his silence for the past year by declaring that he was bound to secrecy by an oath under conditions that would have driven many men stark mad. February 16, 1899 removed the seal from his lips and he unburdened himself of a strange account that cannot be disbelieved coming as it does from a man whose standing is unquestioned. His startling tale is substantially to the effect that on the night of February 16, '98, as he was returning from Royal Center to his home via the railroad he dimly descried a form approaching as he neared the old water tank. The figure was walking slowly and as Fickle approached it stopped in front of him.

Fickle crossed to the other side of the track and the figure did likewise at the same time extending a hand and exclaiming. "Why Gabe, don't you know me?" Fickle replied negatively, but put forth his hand to shake hands with the friendly stranger when to his horror he found himself grasping thin air, although in other respects the apparition was life like. Before Fickle could make an effort to speak, the spectre further frightened him by continuing, "I am the ghost of John Baer, murdered on this spot thirty years ago tonight." Fickle declares he was seized with the most abject fear. His hair stood on end, his throat was parched and strive as he would not a sound came from his lips. He tottered past the vision of the dead, but the latter followed, conjuring him not to be afraid and finally Fickle retained his courage sufficiently ask how Baer met his death. The ghost then told of the foul murder, naming as his assassins two men still living, binding Fickle to never reveal the names or tell of his meeting with the ghost until one year from that time. A request for another interview was also made but a compliance was not authoritatively imposed. The ghost detailed minutely the circumstances of the murder. The gruesome recital ended near the abandoned well, and "This is where they put me," said the ghost stepping into the opening and sinking into its black depths.

Quaking in mortal terror, Fickle ran homeward, and for days his peculiar actions occasioned comment. He was tempted to tell of his singular adventure, but the admonition to keep silent was not to be forgotten. For a year he kept the secret and then unable to longer forbear, he told of the turn he experienced in meeting Baer's ghost. On one thing only is he silent and that is in regard to the identity of the murderers. Some night soon he proposes to return to the old tank at night to find if the vision will again appear.

Every man in Thornhope believes every word of Fickle's experience. Not a man has the courage to seek an interview with the ghost and the haunted spot is shunned like the plague. Fickle is one of the most respected citizens in the village. He enjoys the confidence of everybody and is in no sense an idle talker. He is much averse to discussing the affair.

He does not believe in ghosts, is not at all superstitious but says the memory of that fateful night will haunt him to his dying day. He does not attempt to explain the occurrence, it is beyond his understanding. He is positive that the end is not yet and that he will sooner or later be impelled to visit the scene of the crime and submit to another clasp of that shadowy hand from another world.

Fickle saw the ghost at least once more, and several other Thornhope citizens also claimed to have seen Baer’s unhappy spirit, but it seems to have done exactly nothing to help avenge his death.  I suppose the moral of our story is this:  If you are ever murdered, don’t wait thirty years before telling anyone about it.

The Lorius/Heberer Mystery

This blog has featured several stories about people who disappear or run into some other sort of disaster while on long road trips.  This week, we’ll look at yet another case that makes a strong argument for just staying at home.

Fifty-year-old George Lorius was president of a coal company in East St. Louis, Illinois.  He and his wife Laura had been married for a number of years, but had no children.  They were close friends with another childless middle-aged couple, Albert and Tillie Heberer.  We know little else about the quartet, but they were evidently prosperous, pleasantly ordinary citizens.

A favorite pastime of the two couples was going on trips together.  In May 1935, they set off in George’s 1929 Nash sedan with the goal of visiting the Boulder Dam, and then San Diego, California.  Along the way, they made various side trips, which they chronicled in frequent postcards sent to family and friends.

One of these side trips was to Vaughn, New Mexico, in order to look up an old friend who had moved there.  On May 21, they checked into the Vaughn Hotel.  It is unclear if they were ever able to locate this person, but we do know that the following morning, they had breakfast at the hotel and checked out.  George mentioned to the clerk that they planned to go to Santa Fe, and then Gallup.  Later that day, Tillie sent home a postcard from Albuquerque saying, “Came through this place in the a.m.  No trouble of any kind.  Going to Boulder Dam, then to Los Angeles.”  A clerk at an Albuquerque hotel later said that she spoke to the two couples.  They asked about available rooms, but in the end decided to drive to Gallup instead.  They later stopped at a gas station in Quemado, about 150 miles from Albuquerque.

This was the last confirmed sighting of the two couples.  After this stop, they all appeared to vanish into oblivion.  On June 5, family members, concerned about not hearing from them, notified police.

New Mexico authorities--concerned about the effect the mystery might have on local tourist trade--launched an exhaustive search for the two couples, even bringing the National Guard into the hunt.  A week into the investigation, they made an extremely unsettling discovery: the burned remains of the missing quartet’s belongings had been dumped along a highway near El Paso, Texas.  The following day, George’s sedan was found on a street in Dallas.  The gas tank was full, and the keys were left in the ignition.  Bloodstains and hair were found on the left door of the car.  Also in the car was George’s notebook of odometer readings.  The final entry was made in Socorro, New Mexico, on May 23.

In June, George’s traveler’s checks began turning up throughout New Mexico and Texas, but were clearly clumsy forgeries.  Bertha Williamson, the owner of a boarding house, was the recipient of one of these checks, and she went to the police.  She said it had come from a “nervous young man” with dark hair and a tattoo who had spent a night at her establishment.  He was driving a Nash sedan.  A Dallas gas station owner also reported getting a forged check from a dark young man with a tattooed arm.  That same man had also taken the sedan in to be repaired at a garage in El Paso.  He said he had been in an accident in New Mexico.

It was getting disturbingly obvious that the two couples had been robbed and probably murdered, most likely by the tattooed man.  But who was he, and where were his victims?

"Albuquerque Journal," June 20, 2010, via Newspapers.com

Over the years, a number of dark-haired, tattooed men of questionable character were brought in for questioning, but it proved impossible to tie any of them to the mystery.  Walter Duke, an Albuquerque real estate agent who had taken a deep interest in the case, came to believe that the two couples had been murdered during their brief stay in Vaughn.  In 1963, he was contacted by a woman who claimed to have been a waitress in the Vaughn Hotel in 1935.  She alleged that the couples had checked into the establishment, but--Hotel California style--never left.  She believed they were taken down into the basement, murdered by unspecified robbers, and buried there.  Was this true?  Maybe.  Or maybe not. 

Although the case is still considered an active one, it seems highly unlikely that the mystery of the Lorius/Heberer disappearances will ever be solved.  Curiously enough, the most solid clue we have to their fate comes from the supernatural realm.  On the night of May 22, 1935--long before anyone had reason to suspect that this road trip had gone terribly wrong--Laura Lorius’ sister suddenly woke up in horror.  She told her husband that she dreamed that Laura came to her saying, “I’ve been murdered and buried under the floor of an old building.  You’ll have trouble finding me.”

That last sentence, at least, has proven to be only too accurate.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the first Link Dump of 2025!

A "possessed" woman in India.

The links between an Italian Duchess, Thomas Cromwell, and Anne Boleyn.

Some supernatural reasons not to stray off the beaten path.

Alexander the Great's charm offensive.

A map of the Big Cats of Britain.

Superstitions can be good for you.

The strange Rohonc Codex.

Some predictions about 2025 from 100 years ago.

A medical mystery in a French village.

The ghosts of the Cuban Club.

The journeys of Daniel Defoe.

A "proper New Year's gift" for your 18th century maidservant.

In which Princess Mathilde Bonaparte breaks all norms.

Past ways of predicting the future.

Some old British New Year's resolutions.

UFOs and Jimmy Carter.

A New Year's death omen.

The New England Airship Hoax.

The traditions of Plough Monday.

A "walkable" 16th century city.

The blue-eyed murderers.

We have a new "oldest book in the world."  Catchy title, too.

Using grammar to solve cold cases.

The mystery of the body in the basement of a New York club.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a road trip that ended in mysterious tragedy.  In the meantime, here's Neil Young.

Newspaper Clipping of the New Year's Day

Via Newspapers.com

Let’s kick off 2025 with a New Year’s ghost story from Tennessee.  The “Knoxville Journal,” January 1, 1935:

TULLAHOMA Jan 1 (Tuesday)—As the new year winged through Tullahoma at midnight townsmen gathered quietly in the main streets to see the Ghost of Tullahoma walk. 

For the past 62 years there have been those who have sworn that at midnight the apparition of a beautiful woman appears walking along the edge of high buildings.

The legend stretches back through the years to 1872 when two circus performers, man and wife, came to Tullahoma on their way South. They arrived on the last day of the year.

A rope was stretched across the street between two buildings, and the woman balanced her way over the road while her husband accepted contributions to pay their expenses. 

But there was an accident that fateful day in ‘72, and the woman pitched headlong to the ground. 

Townsmen buried her in the city cemetery and erected at the head of the grave a cedar board bearing this inscription: “Nina, aerial artist wife of Peter Conway 1872.”

And each New Year’s eve at midnight the legend says that Nina comes again airily walking along above the heads of revelers. 

Did Nina walk last night? 

There were many who said she did. They say that as the whistles and bells heralded the new year, she came dressed in circus clothes tripping along the tops of buildings. 

But most thought this sheer fantasy and were certain that Nina still rests in her small cemetery with the headboard.

As far as I can tell, this legend appears to have been forgotten, so perhaps poor Nina’s ghost is finally resting in peace.

The Best of Strange Company 2024

 

Happy New Year!  Yes, it's once again time for our annual rundown of this past year's most popular posts.

Whether you like it or not, I guess.

1. The Burial of William the Conqueror.  Not only was this the most-viewed post of the year, by golly, it wasn't even close.  (Note to self for 2025:  More exploding corpses.)

2. Susie Smith's Weird Encore.  Holy hell, talk about a sprint for the finish line.  I published this post just yesterday, and it somehow wound up in the runner-up spot!

3. California's Worst Crime:  The Murder of Mabel Meyer.  Of all the unsolved murders I've covered, this one is right up there when it comes to sheer baffling creepiness.

4. The Mystery of the "Sarah Jo."  A crew vanishes from their boat.  And then things get really weird.

5. The Taking of Joan Gay Croft.   A small child is kidnapped in the aftermath of a tornado.

6. Tales of the Headless Valley.  One of those places where you really don't want to vacation.

7. The Witches of Innsbruck Strike Back.  A "witch-finder" gets run out of town.

8. All Shook Up:  A Case of Louisville Witchcraft.  Some black magic gets way out of hand.

9. Weekend Link Dump, January 5.  Can't have a Top Ten without a WLD popping in.

10. The Strange Deaths of Ruby Bruguier and Arnold Archambeau.  A minor car crash leads to an unsolved mystery.

And there you have it, the best--or, at least, best-viewed--of this soon-to-be-past year.  See you in 2025, when, if there's any luck, we'll encounter more witches, disappearances, murders, and, of course, corpses that just won't stay buried.

Susie Smith's Weird Encore

In 1874, a young woman’s extremely strange death--perhaps the right word is “deaths”--was widely reported in various newspapers and spiritualist publications.  It is one of those stories where all one can say is, “Make of it what you will.”

Lawrence, Massachusetts farmer Greenleaf Smith had a 16-year-old daughter named Susie, a perfectly normal, average teenager who worked as a dressmaker.  Sadly, she came down with a sudden, severe fever.  On September 25th, Susie told her father, “I’ve attended my own funeral.”  In a very rational-sounding tone, she described all the details of the service, including the hymns that were sung.  The girl insisted it was not some hallucination brought on by her sickness; she had seen something very real.  

Around six o’clock that evening, Susie went into violent spasms.  She became increasingly pale, closed her eyes, and died.  Well, sort of.  As her grieving family surrounded the death bed, all absolutely convinced that her life was extinct, they were shocked to see the corpse’s lips suddenly move.  A harsh, gruff voice very unlike Susie’s ordered them, “Rub both her arms as hard as you can.”

The family did just that.  A moment later, the voice said, “Raise her up in end.”  When the family, confused by this remark, hesitated, the voice snapped, “Raise her up in end--you’re deaf, ain’t you?”  Susie's body was pulled upright.  She began breathing again, but did not speak.  As Mr. Smith sat behind his daughter, propping her up, the voice commented, “If I could move her legs around so I could set her up on the foot-board, she’d be all right.”  As Mr. Smith began to move Susie, they both were lifted in the air by an unseen force and placed on the foot-board.  Susie suddenly sprang back to life, seeming to be her old cheerful self.  Before the family could fully react--it would be hard to know what to say under such circumstances--the same invisible power again pulled Susie and her father upright.  Mr. Smith was placed on his feet, while Susie was carried back to her bed.  As she lay there, she appeared to be, again, quite dead.  A few moments later, the “corpse” began speaking in another unfamiliar voice.  It spoke for three hours about how after Susie died, her corpse had been controlled by several different spirits.  Then, the body appeared to go into a “trance sleep.”

The following morning, the body opened its eyes and said to Mr. Smith, “Please lie down on the side of the bed.”  After he obeyed, the body said, “Who am I, anyway?”  Her father replied, “You are Susie Smith.”  He got the reply, “No I ain’t, Susie Smith died last night.”  During the day, Susie--or whoever was occupying her earthly remains--underwent more spasms, and, by noon, appeared to at last be well and truly deceased.

The next morning, her relatives and friends gathered in a downstairs room to decide where Susie should be buried.  As they talked, Susie herself walked into the room and said, “Right on the School Hill, right on the side of the road.”  Then she vanished, never to be seen--or heard--from again.

Susie’s relatives wisely decided to abide by their lost loved one’s directive.  The girl was buried in the town of Denmark, Maine, (Susie’s hometown) on the schoolhouse’s hillside.

Via Findagrave.com