Newspaper Clipping of the Christmas Day

Via Newspapers.com

This startling story--which sounds like something out of a Christmas-themed horror movie--appeared in the “Lichfield Mercury,” January 4, 1907:

A Belfast schoolboy, named Samuel Atchison, has had a terrible Christmas experience, which he is likely to remember to the end of his days.

On Christmas Eve the lad went out to gather holly for the decoration of his heme, and was lost from that hour until Sunday night, when he was found in the attic of an untenanted house, at the point of death and wasted to a skeleton. All through the heavy snowstorms of the last few days the police and bands of searchers had dragged ponds, swamps, and rivers for his body without result, and the circumstances of the disappearance and recovery of the boy are so remarkable as to lead the police to the belief that it is a case of kidnapping. No sounds had been heard by the occupants of the house on either side of that in which the lad was found until Friday last, on which day both neighbours recall they heard what they took to be a faint knocking. No attention, however, was paid until Sunday, when the rapping became so persistent that one of the nextdoor neighbours scaled the yard wall and entered the house, he searched every room without result until he came to the attic, the door of which was closed and the handle had been removed. The neighbour forced open the door and, entering, found the room in darkness, the snow having covered the skylight.

Striking a match he saw the figure of a lad lying unconscious on the floor. Nearby lay his coat, torn to rags, and his waistcoat and trousers were likewise in shreds, the latter, in fact, having only the upper part whole. The searcher, who had read the accounts of Atchison’s disappearance, immediately concluded that this was the missing boy, and he sent at once for the father. The latter hastened to the empty house and, stripping off his coat, wrapped up the lad and rushed home through the binding snowstorm. Two doctors were speedily in attendance.

All their unremitting care and attention have been so far successful that, though the poor boy is still in grave danger, there is, however, some slight hope of his ultimate recovery.  On Monday morning the police made a thorough examination of the attic, and found the inside of the door all clawed where the boy, in the agonies of starvation, had sought to tear through the panels with his nails, and even with his teeth. A correspondent who saw the boy says as he lay moaning and tossing in bed he cried out again and again to imaginary assailants to have pity on him, but there was nothing coherent in his speech, the only person he seemed to recognise being his mother. How the boy came to be in that house, why the handle should have been removed from the lock, whether the interval from Monday until Friday had been entirely spent inside the room, and whether it was a case of kidnapping are all questions which are greatly puzzling the police. The doctors stated on Monday that in a very short time—a matter of minutes, in fact—the boy would have been a corpse, and it is probable that his mind will be permanently affected by his terrible experience.  It is hoped, however, that when he recovers consciousness some light will be thrown on the mystery.

What adds to the strangeness of this case is the fact that I haven’t been able to find any published resolution.  By the end of January, the story seemed to have disappeared from the newspapers.  I am unable to say if Samuel fully recovered from his ordeal, or if the puzzle of his Christmas imprisonment was ever solved.