Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of an…unusual marriage appeared in the “Biloxi Sun Herald,” December 5, 1900:

John Allen of Cameron Okla., was killed in a railroad wreck in the latter part of 1889. A few days ago Miss Bessie Brown of that place was married to the ghost of this John Allen, furnished a house and at this time is living there alone with the ghost of this man she loved. 

She and John Allen had been engaged for a year. The wedding day had been set and in preparation for it he bad gone to Kansas City on a business trip. Returning, the train was wrecked and his dead body was taken out from under the wreckage.  It was brought home and buried in the Cameron graveyard. 

Miss Brown received the news of it all in a daze from which she was slow to recover. She asked only to be let alone and shut herself in her room from which she seldom stirred. Her parents became uneasy. But while they watched her a great happiness came into her face. She told them that she had met and conversed with the spirit of John Allen and that they had planned for the wedding to take place at John's grave. 

The parents looked upon this as a mark of insanity and a physician was called in. He said she was sane. A specialist in brain disease was sent for and while he would not express himself regarding her queer fancy, he said that in all else she was of sound mind. 

But in all this time Miss Brown was making preparations for the marriage ceremony at the grave. She rented a house and furnished it. The minister of the church of which her parents were members at first held out against her, and tried to persuade her that it was sinful that she should marry a mere apparition but she insisted. 

The minister went with her last week into the graveyard where her lover was buried and at midnight the ceremony was performed that married the girl to the ghost. The young woman is now living in her house with her ghost husband. She has covers at the table always laid for two and chats all through the meal as though talking to someone in the vacant chair across the table.

Considering how some marriages between the living turn out, maybe Bessie didn’t make such a bad bargain.