Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Door-to-door salespeople can be a pesky lot, but it would be hard to top the one featured in this report in the “St. Louis Post Dispatch” on August 2, 1908:

That a gypsy woman has bewitched her and her little nephew is the firm belief of Mrs. William Koester of 4126 Osceola street. 

An old gypsy woman, with a pack on her back, who looked like a witch, called at her home last Wednesday and became angry because Mrs. Koester did not buy from her. As she left, the gypsy said: "You will be sorry you did not buy," and Mrs. Koester says the old crone gave her a look that made her think of stories she had heard of "the evil eye." 

"She was the queerest old hag I ever saw,” says Mrs. Koester.  “She was bent and had a hump on her back exactly like the pictures of witches you see in the story books.  When she first came in I was afraid of her. She put her pack down and opened it, and although I told her I would not buy, she insisted on taking out all her goods and showing them.

"And as I refused to buy each article she became more and more angry. At last she packed up and with a look in her eyes that I can never forget she patted my little nephew on the head and then came over to me and rubbed the palm of her hand across my head and mumbled something in a strange tongue.” 

The old gypsy woman had not been gone long from the house until strange things began to happen. The first unusual thing Mrs. Koester heard was the striking of a clock in her front room, although she has no clock in the house. 

“It struck four times slowly and distinctly like the tolling of a funeral bell," says Mrs. Koester.  

Next she saw the table go tipping and dancing across the floor, she says. Then, as she sat at the table, some strange force took the shoe lace from her shoe and wound it around a broom-handle. 

Her little nephew became frightened and declared that he saw a man in the house moving around from room to room. He was a little old man, bent and with an evil-looking face. Mrs. Koester tried to soothe him and convince him that he saw nothing, but every little while he would run, screaming to her and bury his face in her lap and cry out that the man was after him. 

Mrs. Koester’s husband works in a shoe factory; they own their home and they have never been erratic.  But Mrs. Koester told this story last night: 

"As I went into my front room this afternoon leading my little nephew by the hand I saw a man standing at the chiffonier. I saw him plainly. He was small and old and his figure was bent. His face bore a strong resemblance to the gypsy woman. I asked him: 'Who are you?’  He answered: 'I am a friend of yours.' I asked him:’What's your name?' He answered: 'M.W.’  I never knew anyone with a name those initials would fit and I am mystified to know what it means." 

The neighbors are taking a deep interest in the case and nearly two hundred of them visited the house last night.

So now you know why people put up “No Soliciting” signs.