Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Any community can have a ghost, but I don't believe too many of them spit fire.  The “Brooklyn Eagle,” December 18, 1885:

If any community has more ghosts than Long Island, the fact has not been recorded. After a rest of five years, a specter with a tongue of fire has reappeared on the old Centerville race course, just south of Woodhaven, and men and women congregate every night to witness the strange sight. 

His ghostship appears promptly at a quarter to ten o'clock and departs at twelve minutes after eleven. There is a good deal of speculation as to whose ghost this is. Two murders on the race track form bloody chapters in its history, and public opinion argues that this spectral visitor is the troubled ghost of the murderer of one or the other of the slain. It is also the belief that when the ghost was in the flesh its avocation was that of a horse jockey, and, as the man last murdered on the race course was thought to have been killed by a rival jockey, some persons who lived in the neighborhood at the time think they can solve the mystery in which the crime remained shrouded. 

The ghost is first visible in the vicinity of the stables of the old Centerville Hotel. It is recalled that the rival jockeys quartered their stock in adjacent stables on this property. From the stable the specter proceeds by the highway to the southward to a point where a hotel formerly stood in front of the entrance to the race track. Here it halts for some minutes, just as the jockeys used to do, for they always took a drink before exercising. There is a dispute whether the ghost wears a robe of white or a garment more the color of sheep's wool. But on one other point there is no disagreement--the ghost spits fire like a foundry chimney and leaves a sulphurous odor behind it. On this fact is based a most animated discussion as to whether the original of the ghost is in bliss or a state of torment. The majority hold the latter theory, and a few think it may be a spirit sent to earth to do penance. 

The ghost never touches terra firma. It moves along through space like a feather in the wind, going a zigzag course. At regular intervals it spits fire. Scores of persons have followed in its wake without getting close enough for personal contact, and all declare that when the ghost comes to a stop, it invariably says "Whoa!" 

From the drinking place the spirit moves in on the race course apparently waiting for the word to dart away from where the wire used to be, going round the mile track at so terrific a gait that some persons argue it must be the ghost of Flora Temple or Lady Suffolk. But those who hold to the theory that it is the ghost of one of the departed jockeys affirm that they can distinctly hear the hallooing and whistling of the whip so familiar to old track habitues. After every heat comes the scoring exercise, and three heats are invariably run. 

After this tho ghost waltzes out into the highway, stops again at the old familiar barroom, and then goes zigzagging along to the stable, into which it disappears seemingly, but there are those who claim that the ghost passes on to the Bay Side Cemetery and into its grave. The keeper at this Hebrew burial place laughs at the credulity of the people. Nobody is ever buried there near enough to the surface to enable a ghost to rise up, the keeper says, but he has a suspicion that at some time, near or remote, some person has been murdered and buried in the old stable. He thinks it is the spirit of some woman who takes to the race track in pursuit of her slayer. Some of the Catholic residents who believe firmly in ghosts and declare that they often conversed with spirits in Ireland, are quite alarmed at this apparition because it is in no particular like the friendly Irish ghosts. Nearly fifty persons watched the fiery tongued visitor for more than an hour last night.

Whatever this entity may have been, you have to admit it put on quite a show.