Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Stories about ghosts returning to haunt someone because their earthly wishes had been ignored are a dime a dozen, but this is among the more eccentric examples.  The “Saint Paul Globe,” January 19, 1889:

A refusal of a husband to cremate the remains of his wife has, according to his story, entailed upon him a haunt by her disappointed spirit. Mrs. V. was a vivacious brunette and an esthetic woman, always abreast of the times. The idea of cremation won her most enthusiastic support in a moment, and, being a society lady, with little else to do but gratify her whims, she allowed the new scheme for disposing of the dead to enthuse her. It took so much of her attention from her devoted husband that he grew jealous, as it were, of the innovation. He grew to hate it more on the ground of its divorcing his wife's devotion from him than aught else. 

Suddenly she died, and on her deathbed made him promise to cremate her corpse. She talked until the last moment of how her spirit would delight in watching the urn containing her ashes on her husband's mantel, but vowed she would haunt Mr. V. if he was untrue to his promise. It was even said that her longing to become a subject for the furnace actually hastened her death. The husband, however, spurned the thought of giving all that was mortal of his adored wife to the cause that he believed had robbed him of his darling, and, placing the remains in a costly casket, he had her quietly buried. He kept their chamber, where the urn was to have been, sacred to her memory and his own use. Two negro servants were employed to live in the basement and take care of the house.

After a few nights the colored man's wife awakened him with the exclamation: “Mrs. V.’s upstairs." He laughed at it at first, but, after listening a little while, was convinced she was right. Mrs. V. seemed pouring out a torrent of invective and reproach against him, which was varied by a smart controversy. In the morning he appeared with a haunted look in his eyes, and face pallid.  The spook kept getting worse every night, until finally they heard a struggle and a sound as of glass breaking. They rushed up, and, breaking into the room, found him struggling with an imaginary foe.

The debris of a lot of vases that had stood on the mantel were strewn about the floor. The next day he complained to a friend of his trouble, stating that his wife haunted him every night. He was advised to have her remains taken up and cremated, but says he would rather have the company of her spirit than none if the phantom would only desist from pulling hair and breaking furniture.