Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This creepy little tale appeared in the “Morristown Republican,” February 3, 1900:

The citizens of the northwestern part of Bracken county, Kentucky, in the vicinity of the village of Minerva, will, on the slightest provocation, revive one of the most remarkable ghost stories ever heard. The astounding incident occurred more than 25 years ago, but the old settlers relate the affair as though it had taken place only yesterday. A singular part of the story is that the ghost was a daylight prowler. He did not wait until the twilight of after dark to perform the ghastly trick which he did in this case. A respectable woman residing on a farm was engaged in making washing soap in the yard. A bright 3 year old boy was sitting in the grass nearby. Suddenly in front of the very eyes of the mother he arose and, with arms outstretched, fairly floated away over the top of the fence to a graveyard about a mile away. The frantic mother followed, calling in vain to the little fellow to stop. With outstretched arms be moved along without paying the slightest attention to her cries. 

While the terrified woman could see no one leading or carrying the boy she felt that something, a ghost or unseen power, was impelling him forward. When the graveyard was reached the lad skimmed over the fence in the same miraculous manner as at his home. When he reached the gravestone under which the remains of his ancestors were buried he sat down in an apparently hypnotic state. his mother rushed up to him. The boy did not recognize her and jabbered away in an unintelligible way. She took him home and he was then and has ever since been a hopeless idiot. Occasionally he has partly lucid periods in which he talks about the other world and seems to be looking into a country that exists in space. No one has ever been able to furnish an explanation of the strange occurrence. One theory advanced by the superstitious is that the little fellow, who is now a grown man, with a mind that is blank, was afflicted as a punishment on the parents. The father and mother had buried the children, who were not baptised, in a corner of their yard, but the older members of the family and those who had received the rites of the church were taken to the family cemetery on the hill about a mile away. No matter what may have produced the insanity in the child there are many people who believe implicitly the story of the mother of the boy, who followed him to the graveyard on that fatal day.