The Ghost of Augustus Peers; Or, How to Safeguard Your Own Corpse

Fort McPherson, circa 1900

Ghost lore is full of tales of spirits who are unhappy with the way their mortal remains were treated, so they make (generally unwelcome) appearances with the intention of setting things right.  One of the more famous examples of such stories had an appropriate setting: the wild, desolate land of 19th century North-West Canada.

Augustus Peers was a fur-trader who managed the Hudson Bay Company’s post at Fort McPherson, on the Peel River.  It was a lonely, bleak place less than 100 miles from the Arctic Ocean.  Peers was good at his job, well-liked by all, and had a seemingly happy domestic life with his wife and two children.

Despite these advantages, Peers was not happy at the Fort, for reasons that are lost to history.  Perhaps the isolation took its toll on his psyche, or it could have been that he had personal troubles that were never recorded.  Although he was a vigorous man of only 31, he took to brooding about death.  Peers told his friends that he was convinced he had not long to live, and when he did pass on, he insisted that he not be buried at Fort McPherson.  He was so miserable at the Fort, the thought of spending eternity there was intolerable.  Soon after making these remarks, he did indeed die suddenly, on March 15, 1853.  His supervisor, Roderick MacFarlane, gave Peers a temporary grave on the banks of the Peel River, until his widow could decide on a more permanent resting place.

She took her time about it.  It was not until 1859 that his spouse (who was now married to Peers’ successor at the Fort, Alexander Mackenzie) requested that her first husband’s body be reburied at Fort Simpson, some five hundred miles away.  Accordingly, in early 1860, MacFarlane had Peers exhumed--it was noted that the freezing temperatures had kept his body perfectly preserved--and the corpse was placed on a dog-sledge for the long winter journey.  The coffin proved to be so unwieldy, that Peers’ body was removed from it and secured onto the sledge with just the grave-wrappings.

On March 15--the seventh anniversary of Peers’ death--MacFarlane and his men settled for the night by a river bank.  It had been an unusually warm day for that time of year, which caused Peers’ long-frozen corpse to thaw slightly.  The dogs, who had yet to be fed, smelled fresh meat.  The hungry animals began surrounding the corpse, barking furiously in anticipation.  As the party went to investigate the disturbance, they all heard a voice shouting “Marche!” (a French word used in the North-West to control dogs.)  The animals immediately fell silent.  A member of the party who had known Peers said that it sounded exactly like his voice.

The journey continued without any further incident until three days later.  While the men were making camp, they again heard the same voice again yelling “Marche!”  In the freezing temperatures, they knew the dogs could not have scented the corpse again, but it was thought best to move the body nearer the camp overnight.  The following morning, the men found the tracks of a wolverine at the spot where they had originally left Peers’ remains.

MacFarlane’s party arrived at Fort Simpson on March 21st, 1860, and two days later, Peers finally found what was hopefully a more congenial resting place.  On the night before MacFarlane and his men set out to return to Fort McPherson, he suddenly woke up from a deep sleep to find the apparition of Augustus Peers staring down at him.  The man in the bunk opposite him saw it as well.  Both men could think of nothing better to do than pull the bed covers over their heads until morning.

In 1913, MacFarlane wrote an account about his uncanny experience, commenting that he regretted passing up his one opportunity to communicate with the dead.  Considering what loving care Peers’ spirit gave his corpse, I’m sure the late fur-trader regretted it too.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!

This Friday's host gained a measure of fame for fairly obvious reasons.

The legend of Cat Man's Grave.

Evidence of a massive megaflood.

How the Big Apple became a city of brownstones.

The question of how many human rights should be granted to the dead.  As a side note, I have often wondered where the line is drawn between "archaeological excavation" and "grave-robbing."

The woman who has spent her life at Auschwitz.

Harriet Tubman goes to war.

A mystery grave in Pennsylvania.

If you're good at decoding ancient languages, here's how to earn a cool million.

The footprints of people fleeing an ancient volcanic eruption.

The beetles who imitate ants.

The rediscovery of Archimedes.

An American general, explorer, and spy.

A critique of funeral fashions.

The mystery of near-death experiences.

The mystery of ancient South American caves.

A tale of discipline and heroism at sea.

Ice Age mammoth bone structures.

Exploring an ancient underwater world.

The raising of a Tudor warship.

The papers of a British official in India.

The latest theories about the lost colony of Roanoke.

The mercurial tomb of China's "First Emperor."

Why sleeping pets (and people) wake up when you stare at them.

A collection of books that don't exist.

The possible link between "ghost lights" and earthquakes.

Solving a mystery about the Stone of Destiny.

Haggis is not a creature that lives in the wild, which just goes to show you can't believe in anything anymore.

The diaries of a Holocaust victim.

Benjamin Franklin's first stay in London.

A "fiery hell on earth" in 1861 London.

There are ancient statues of lizard people, and people naturally have questions.

If super-creepy medieval tombs are your thing, here's the link for you.

If you've been longing to read about 66 million-year-old fish vomit, enjoy.

And if you want to know more about ancient glowing bowels, you're in for quite a treat.

A cemetery's haunted phone booth.

A heroic dog in the Alaskan wilderness.

The mystery of underwater UFOs.

The ship that sank carrying millions of dollars worth of gold.

Did you know that there's such a thing as "fish addiction?"  Me neither.

Shrewsbury and the Wars of the Roses.

A feud leads to two murders.

That time when Russia and Norway nearly began a nuclear war.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a corpse that really knew how to take care of itself.  In the meantime, here's some Haydn.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Thunderstorms, Indian graves, dead cows, and mystery metals.  Now, this is what I call a busy day.  The “Inter Ocean,” July 12, 1907:

PORT JERVIS, N. Y., July 9.-In a thunderstorm late yesterday afternoon lightning struck a tree on the bank of the Neversink river two miles north of here and toppled it over, carrying a large amount of earth with it. Two boys seeking shelter came near being buried by the earth.

In examining the bank the boys discovered that the cave-in had opened two Indian graves. The bodies were buried in a sitting position facing the west, with the knees drawn up toward the head. The clay deposit surrounding the skeletons contained exquisitely formed arrow heads and beads made of shells. A little iron box the size of a snuff box and several stone tomahawks were also found. Among the latter was an iron tomahawk, which had apparently been hammered out by hand, as it bore the marks of the hammer and was beautifully shaped with a curved top. Lightning also melted a barbed wire fence dividing a pasture lot and potato patch, and cattle getting in the potatoes ate the tops, which had been sprinkled with paris green. Two died. Many bolts struck the razor edge of the rocks on the mountain across the state line in New Jersey, and investigation this morning found the cause to be mineral. Along the seams in the rocks where the lightning had struck it had melted a great quantity of metal which resembles brass.

Other metal looked like lead. In some instances it reflected a greenish color. What the metal is, no one seems to know.

The Ghost of Mink Creek

Graveyard at Mink Creek, "Logan Herald Journal," October 29, 1976, via Newspapers.com

The following ghost story was, unfortunately, never fully investigated, so it is hard to tell how much of it is solid fact, and how much is folklore.  However, it’s an intriguing enough tale that--with the above caveats--I wanted to give it a niche in the hallowed halls of Strange Company HQ.

Some time around 1900, a family named Burrell was living in Mink Creek, a small rural community in Idaho.  Rumors began spreading that there were some sort of weird and ominous happenings going on in the family’s log cabin.  Intrigued by these stories, a group of threshers who were working nearby decided to turn amateur paranormal investigators, and invited themselves over to spend the night at the Burrell place.  The family told them that all would be well as long as a lamp kept burning.  After a couple of hours of boredom, the threshers called for the lamp to be extinguished.  The oldest Burrell daughter protested, “No, it will come!”  However, the threshers got their way.  As reassurance, two men held her arms, while the rest surrounded her bed.

“It” indeed soon came.  From a distance up the canyon, everyone heard “a soft wailing sound like a high wind.”  The sound became closer and louder, until by the time it reached the cabin, it had become a terrifying roar.  The Burrell girl began moaning and trembling.  The horses outside began stamping in agitation.  A loud bang erupted in a corner of the cabin, followed by a swishing sound.  A “something” landed with a crash on the table.  The girl went into hysterics and fainted.

One of the men cursed whatever had invaded the cabin.  He instantly began to spasm, as if he was being shaken.  He began gurgling and begging to be let go.

Very wisely, the lamp was re-lit.  Everyone saw what seemed to be teeth marks on the girl’s arm, and bruising on the man’s throat, as if something had tried to choke him.  The Burrells told the man that this happened every night they failed to keep a light burning.

On another occasion, an unnamed man and his friend, Joe Johnson, expressed skepticism of these lurid ghost tales, so they also spent the night with the Burrells, just to see what might happen.  (What the Burrells thought about providing supernatural entertainment for their neighbors is unrecorded.)  The lights were turned out.  Everyone heard a sinister noise, and saw a shadow on the wall moving through the room.  Johnson grabbed his gun and gave the shadow a dose of buckshot.  Immediately afterwards, Johnson and the Burrell girl began screaming.  When the lamps came back on, finger marks were on both their throats.

The two doubters were, to say the least, convinced.

Eventually, the Burrells moved away from Mink Creek, but it was said the malevolent spirit followed them wherever they went.  Worse still, as each Burrell daughter married, the haunting was “inherited” by the next oldest girl.  Mr. Burrell, we are told, eventually died a “hideous death.”

As for why the family suffered such spiritual persecution, their neighbors talked about an old Danish couple who had lived in Mink Creek some time earlier.  Deciding that America wasn’t to their liking, the pair saved enough money to return to their home country.  Mr. Burrell volunteered to drive them to the train station.  However, their relatives in Denmark reported that the couple had never arrived.  In fact, they were never seen again.  The supposition was that Burrell had stolen their money and murdered them.  The hauntings began very soon after the couple vanished.  Possible evidence for this story emerged some years later, when during the construction of a factory, two skeletons were excavated.

To this day, local residents still speak of the “Mink Creek Ghost,” and believe the land where the Burrell cabin once stood is still haunted.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

While you're here, feel free to join the Strange Company Camera Club.

How 18 horses rewrote ancient history.

An important Elizabethan countess.

Mermaids in medieval churches.

The inventor of Coca-Cola.

Human relatives were in Europe far earlier than we thought.

Gladiator fights in Essex.

An assortment of vintage recipes.

The Little Ice Age.

The social activism of John Galsworthy.

Two siblings go on a robbery spree, big sister drops a dime on them.  Families, eh?

The secrets of butterfly migration.

The case against psychotherapy.

The legend of an open polar sea.

Queen Charlotte's Epiphany Ball.

A 200-year-old bottle of urine has been discovered, and people have questions.  Can't say I blame them.

The mystery of Coral Castle.  I've often wondered why this site isn't talked about more.

A plane's mysterious disappearance.

The newest discoveries at Pompeii.

Mars is more like Earth than we thought.

The siege of Dunbar.

This isn't the skull of Cleopatra's half-sister.  Sorry.

It's looking like an ancient mummy's curse didn't sink the Titanic, either.  Double bummer.

A court has just ruled that elephants aren't people.  No word on whether the elephants are insulted or relieved to hear that.

Evidence of prehistoric plant processing.

In praise of Satisfactory Mourning.

Graham Hancock's theory about the Easter Island statues.

A horticultural family.

An actress' cat cemetery.

A murderer's loyal friend.

The Circle C Cowboys of post-WWII Germany.

The story behind a church's hole in the wall.

That time when blimps descended upon Akron.

The mystery of why corny jokes are called "old chestnuts."

A Polish witch trial.

The mortuary roll of a medieval prioress.

The Queen of the Rockies.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at another case of ghostly revenge.  In the meantime, let's get classical.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Western entrance to Cadotte's Pass, 1855

Here’s a bit of random weirdness from the “St. Louis Globe Democrat,” October 19, 1865 (via Newspapers.com):

Mr. James Lumley, an old Rocky Mountain trapper, who has been stopping at the Everett House for several days, makes a most remarkable statement to us, and one which, if authenticated, will produce the greatest excitement in the scientific world. 

Mr. Lumley states that about the middle of last September he was engaged in trapping in the mountains, about seventy-five or one hundred miles above the Great Falls of the Upper Missouri, and in the neighborhood of what is known as Cadotte Pass. Just after sunset one evening he beheld a bright luminous body in the heavens, which was moving with great rapidity in an easterly direction. It was plainly visible for at least five seconds, when it suddenly separated into particles, resembling, as Mr. Lumley describes it, the bursting of a sky-rocket in the air. A few minutes later he heard a heavy explosion, which jarred the earth very perceptibly, and this was shortly after followed by a rushing sound, like a tornado sweeping through the forest. A strong wind sprang up about the same time, but as suddenly subsided. The air was also filled with a peculiar odor of a sulphurous character. 

These incidents would have made but slight impression on the mind of Mr. Lumley, but for the fact that on the ensuing day he discovered, at a distance of about two miles from his camping place, that, as far as he could see in either direction, a path had been cut through the forest, several rods wide giant trees uprooted or broken off near the ground--the tops of hills shaved off, and the earth plowed up in many places. Great and wide-spread havoc was everywhere visible. Following up this track of desolation, he soon ascertained the cause of it in the shape of an immense stone that had been driven into the side of a mountain. But now comes the most remarkable part of the story. An examination of this stone, or so much of it as was visible, showed that it had been divided into compartments and that in various places it was carved with curious hieroglyphics.

More than this, Mr. Lumley also discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as though caused by liquid. He is confident that the hieroglyphics were the work of human hands, and that the stone itself, although but fragment of an immense body, must have been used for some purpose by animated beings. Strange as this story appears, Mr. Lumley relates it with so much sincerity that we are forced to accept it as true.

It is evident that the stone which he discovered was a fragment of the meteor which was visible in this section in September last. It will be remembered that it was seen in Leavenworth, in Galena, and in this city by Col. Bonneville. At Leavenworth it was seen to separate in particles or explode. 

Astronomers have long held that it is probable that the heavenly bodies are inhabited--even the comets--and it may be that the meteors are also.  Possibly meteors are used as means of conveyance by the inhabitants of other planets, in exploring space, and it may be that hereafter some future Columbus, from Mercury or Uranus, may land on this planet, by means of meteoric conveyance, and take full possession thereof--as did the Spanish navigators of the New World in 1492, and eventually drive what is known as the “human race” into a condition of the most abject servitude. It has always been a favorite theory with many that there must be a race superior to ours, and this may at some future time be demonstrated in the manner we have indicated.

That last paragraph reminds me of Charles Fort’s famous comment: “I think we’re property.”

The Strange Death of Nora Smithson

"Arizona Daily Star," January 19, 1932, via Newspapers.com

Every now and then, I find in the old newspapers some case that was little-noticed even at the time and soon forgotten, but which is so hauntingly weird, I feel it deserves a second look.  The following death mystery is one of those stories.

60-year-old Nora Smithson was one of those people who seem fated to aimlessly drift through life without leaving any kind of mark behind them.  Even her relatively few acquaintances could say little about her.  She never married, had no known living relatives, and, although she was apparently a pleasant enough woman, no real friends.  She moved from town to town, working as a cook for various families in exchange for board and lodging.  She once told one of her employers that she had money in the bank and didn’t really need to work, but being a live-in cook gave her “a family.”

In early 1932, Nora was in Tucson, working for a family named Fine.  It was apparently a congenial relationship on both sides.  Nora was an excellent cook, with an amiable disposition, and she seemed fond of the family.  Around noon on January 18, Mrs. Fine left to attend a meeting, leaving Nora alone in the house with Fine's small son.  When Mrs. Fine returned sometime after 6 p.m., she was a bit surprised to find the house unlocked and unlighted.  She was even more surprised that Nora failed to answer her calls.  In the three months that Miss Smithson had lived with the Fines, she rarely left the house during the day, and was always at home in the evenings.  When Mrs. Fine failed to locate Nora anywhere in the house, she took her son to a neighbor’s and drove to a drug store, where she called police.  She told them that she felt very uneasy about her cook’s disappearance, and wished an officer would go to her home.

When three policemen arrived at the home, Mrs. Fine told them what had happened.  She said that the only place in the house she hadn’t looked was the cellar, and she was afraid to go down there by herself.  It turned out that she had reason to be scared.  When the officers went down into the basement, they found, wedged into a corner behind the furnace, the body of Nora Smithson.  The cause of her death seemed obvious.  The upper half of her body was badly charred, although portions of her legs and her shoes were undamaged by the flames.  Although the body had been exposed to an intense heat, there was little, if any fire damage on the wall behind it.  In the extreme corner was a small web containing a spider, alive and quite undamaged.  Examination of the furnace showed that Nora could not have been burned inside of it, and no indications that she fell against it.

Ten burned matches were scattered in front of the body, and between the bent knees was a tin can containing a small quantity of a “sweetish smelling liquid.”  It is not clear if this liquid was ever identified, but it was apparently  not flammable.  A search of the basement uncovered a small bottle that contained the same sort of liquid that was in the can.  The Fines did not recognize either the bottle or the can, and had no idea what the liquid could be.  

The first assumption was that the poor woman had chosen a particularly ghastly method of suicide, but the Fines knew of no possible motive for such an act.  When Mrs. Fine last saw Nora, she was in a cheerful mood, playing cards and checkers with Fine's son, and saying that she wanted to stay in Tucson for a while, because she enjoyed the country and the mountains.

A search of Nora’s few belongings failed to provide any clues about what had happened.  No suicide note was found.  Everything in her room was tidy and well-arranged.  Two of her sweaters had been washed and dried, then spread neatly over the foot of her bed.  The kitchen showed no sign that she had begun dinner, so it was presumed that the gruesome tragedy--however it came about--happened quite some time before Mrs. Fine returned home.

So, did the police have an accident, a suicide, or a murder on their hands?  No one could say.  The coroner remarked to a reporter that at first glance, there was nothing pointing to any of the three possibilities, and nothing to disprove them.

The inquest proved to be an utterly unsatisfying affair.  The coroner’s jury reached the inevitable verdict that Nora had died from burns and carbon monoxide poisoning, but how she had come to such an end remained unknown.  The county attorney threw up his hands and said that unless new information came to light, “we can take no other stand” than that “Miss Smithson put some highly inflammable matter on her clothing and set it afire.”

It was found that Smithson had a total of about $500 in two different bank accounts, with the money going to pay her funeral expenses.  And that, as they say, seems to have been that.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Fore!

An "infatuated love" ends very badly.

An old man's attempt to marry a teenager also ends very badly.

The birth of the chili cookoff.

A hidden royal trove in Lithuania.

A visit to the Glasgow necropolis.

A visit to Old Globetown.

A bullet-proof U.S. Marshall.

How to make a career out of being a wet blanket and a killjoy.  No, I'm not talking about writing this blog. Stop that.

19th century French newspapers were a "tissue of horrors."

The Beast of Birkenshaw.

A dead Captain and his sunken ship.

That classic true-crime combo: arsenic and insurance money.

In praise of 2,000 year old wine.

Some early attempts at rainmaking.

A landlady's mysterious death.

Europe's horrible winter of 1709.

A left-handed Gandhi.

A town in England is dealing with Mystery Bananas.

Saving the dogs of interwar Britain.

The mystery metal of Atlantis.

The Texas Flapper Bandit.

Mummies and their ancient tattoos.

The London Necropolis, 1856.

What we can learn from singing lemurs.

A metal ring fell from the sky, and nobody seems to know where it came from.  Swell.

A strange Neolithic burial.

The mysterious "black books" of Norway.

The tomb of a doctor to the Pharaohs.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a cook's very peculiar death.  In the meantime, this is for everyone who's wondered, "Why doesn't she ever post Romanian folk music?"

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

“You’ll never go in the water again,” 2.0.  The Greensboro “News and Record,” August 24, 1955:

EVANSVILLE, Ind., Aug 23 (UP) —An Evansville mother has decided that a creature which grabbed her leg while she was swimming was “one of those little green men from a spaceship.” 

Mrs. Darwin Johnson read a newspaper story that a Hopkinsville, Ky., family was visited by the odd-colored creatures.  That to her satisfaction cleared up the mysterious underwater incident in the Ohio River last week. 

Mrs. Johnson had told police a “hairy paw” grabbed her leg while she was swimming near Dogtown. 

"I know it must have been one of those little green men” she said.  “I knew as soon as I read the description from Hopkinsville.” 

The Kentuckians described the green men as three feet tall “with eyes like saucers, hands like claws, and glowing all over.” They said these fellows roamed around their house Sunday night. 

Mrs. Johnson said, “We saw something in the sky coming over from the Kentucky bank just a few minutes before I was grabbed.”

So.

Jeff and the Metal Man

Accounts of UFO encounters, like poltergeist reports, tend to all sound alike after a while, so I was pleased to come across one such story which has that little something special.

On the night of October 17, 1973, Jeff Greenhaw, the Police Chief of Falkville, Alabama, received an anonymous--and slightly hysterical--call informing him that a “spaceship” had just landed in a field outside of town.

Police officers tend to be skeptical about anything that smacks of The Weird, so Jeff’s instant assumption was that he was hearing from “an idiot.”  However, he dutifully drove over to the field to investigate, and hopefully have himself a good laugh.

When he arrived, he found nothing to be humorous about.  He was confronted by a tall--over six foot--figure wearing some reflective material, like aluminum foil.  He later recalled, “It looked like his head and neck were kind of made together.  He was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass.  Different angles give different lighting.  I don’t believe it was aluminum foil”  It moved in an odd, robotic manner that reminded Jeff of something out of “Lost in Space.”

He gave the stranger a polite greeting, but received no response.  The bemused cop took out his Polaroid camera and snapped a few photos of the figure.  As he did so, Metal Man began moving away from him.  “It wasn’t moving like you or I would move.  It’s like it had springs on its feet or something.”  It was traveling faster than he believed any human could move.  Jeff decided to “chase it down, and, if I have to, run over it.”  However, his patrol car was unable to catch up to the being.  Metal Man soon faded into the darkness.

Jeff kept the photos he had taken of the figure--one likes to keep mementos of interesting events--but almost exactly ten years later, someone (something?) broke into his house and stole them.  The service revolver and shotgun he had had in his police car on that memorable night also disappeared.  

Jeff told people about his encounter, only to find that he had turned himself into a public laughingstock.  Within weeks of his meeting with the strange creature, the town council fired him, and he subsequently kept out of sight as much as possible.  Years later, he mused, “I turned out to be a person I never dreamed I would be because of what happened…I came close to losing my sanity, but my wife and God kept me from losing my sanity…I am still a believer in life after death and at one point, I didn’t believe there was any other life source in the universe, but that really changed.”

The moral to our little tale is that if you should ever encounter tall, foil-covered robot aliens, it would probably be wisest to just ignore them.  And, yes, I do think that “Jeff and the Metal Man” would be an excellent name for a rock band.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!  Our host is the handsome Butch, former Humane Society mascot.

Just more proof that the universe is probably weirder than we can even guess, which helps explain why scientists who play know-it-all so annoy me.

In related news, we really don't know jack about the Moon.

The Buzzell shooting.

Solving a 200-year-old volcanic mystery.

The world's deadliest sniper.

The work of the brothers Grimm.

A "lost world" in the Pacific Ocean.

Possible proof that Atlantis existed.

A mysterious secret tunnel.

The editor who annoyed Ernest Hemingway.

I now have the urge to write a short horror story titled, "Tomb of the Venom Magician."

The dogs of the Salem Witch Trials.

The oldest weapons ever found in Europe.

The rise and fall of an alchemist.

The people of the Naga Hills in the early 20th century.

Guys, stop releasing lynx into the Scottish Highlands, OK?

A champagne shipwreck.

The man who thought it would be a fine thing to circumnavigate the world in a canoe.

The wages of 18th century servants.

The original rhinestone cowboy.

A case of 16th century defamation.

The UK's "dinosaur highway."

The Flaming Hand of Doom.

Why we call high prices "highway robbery."

A "lost" chapter of the Bible has been discovered.

Tipping in Victorian times.

The Squibb family murders.

Family letters reveal a bank con from a century ago.

Why you would not want to be a German Army deserter during WWII.

An undertaker's Gothic tale.

A fascinating cave system in Israel.

A brief history of curiosity cabinets.

That time when people were panicking over teddy bears.

The unique gems of the Thames.

When Jean met Rose.

Scotland's Stone Age settlements.

Reflections on work and life in the Middle Ages.

A ghost in the London Underground.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll have a metallic Close Encounter.  In the meantime, here's some Beethoven.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

One often hears tales of ghosts returning to try to "solve" their own murder, but in this case the revenant appears to have been wasting his time.  The “Logansport Reporter,” February 18, 1899:

Thornhope, a little village northwest of Logansport on the Chicago division of the Pan Handle, is all agog over a remarkable ghost story, the details of which were made public but yesterday. The most uncanny feature of the affair is the peculiar action of the ghost in binding to secrecy for a certain period the man who is the only person who has held converse with it. At last time has absolved the oath and the facts in the case have been related. In the fall of '65, John Baer, a stockbuyer, established headquarters at Thornhope and engaged extensively in the purchase and sale of stock. He was frequently known to have large sums of money in bis possession, but be scoffed at the idea of possible robbery, He lived with John Wildermuth and on Feb. 16, 1868, he prepared to go to Star City and arrange for the shipment of a carload of cattle.

He had $3,000 in cash on his person to pay for the stock, and before starting to Star City he started to walk to the residence of John Steele, a mile south of Thornhope, to procure a heavy overcoat he had left there a few days previously. That was the last ever seen of Baer. He failed to reach Steele's, and the only clew to the mysterious affair was advanced by Gabriel Fickle, a warm friend of Baer and a resident of Thornhope to this day. Fickle and others heard pistol shots shortly after Baer started for Steele's. When Baer failed to return to Wildermuth's, Fickle associated his disappearance with the shots, but a close search failed to disclose any trace of the missing man and in a few months it came to be generally believed that he was foully murdered for his money.

Two men were suspected but there was no evidence against them and no arrests were made. Near the water tank, midway between Thornhope and Steele's, was an abandoned well close to the banks of Indian Creek, and a few years after the disappearance of Baer, some school children who were fishing in the creek hooked shreds of clothing and an old boot out of the well. The circumstances of this find were given no consideration by the children's parents, but in the light of recent developments it suggests the truth of a weird and ghastly story of murder. Gabriel Fickle is responsible for the present disturbed condition of Thornhope people in his solemn avowal that he saw and talked with the ghost of John Baer on the night of February 16, 1898, the thirtieth anniversary of the disappearance of Baer.

Fickle explains his silence for the past year by declaring that he was bound to secrecy by an oath under conditions that would have driven many men stark mad. February 16, 1899 removed the seal from his lips and he unburdened himself of a strange account that cannot be disbelieved coming as it does from a man whose standing is unquestioned. His startling tale is substantially to the effect that on the night of February 16, '98, as he was returning from Royal Center to his home via the railroad he dimly descried a form approaching as he neared the old water tank. The figure was walking slowly and as Fickle approached it stopped in front of him.

Fickle crossed to the other side of the track and the figure did likewise at the same time extending a hand and exclaiming. "Why Gabe, don't you know me?" Fickle replied negatively, but put forth his hand to shake hands with the friendly stranger when to his horror he found himself grasping thin air, although in other respects the apparition was life like. Before Fickle could make an effort to speak, the spectre further frightened him by continuing, "I am the ghost of John Baer, murdered on this spot thirty years ago tonight." Fickle declares he was seized with the most abject fear. His hair stood on end, his throat was parched and strive as he would not a sound came from his lips. He tottered past the vision of the dead, but the latter followed, conjuring him not to be afraid and finally Fickle retained his courage sufficiently ask how Baer met his death. The ghost then told of the foul murder, naming as his assassins two men still living, binding Fickle to never reveal the names or tell of his meeting with the ghost until one year from that time. A request for another interview was also made but a compliance was not authoritatively imposed. The ghost detailed minutely the circumstances of the murder. The gruesome recital ended near the abandoned well, and "This is where they put me," said the ghost stepping into the opening and sinking into its black depths.

Quaking in mortal terror, Fickle ran homeward, and for days his peculiar actions occasioned comment. He was tempted to tell of his singular adventure, but the admonition to keep silent was not to be forgotten. For a year he kept the secret and then unable to longer forbear, he told of the turn he experienced in meeting Baer's ghost. On one thing only is he silent and that is in regard to the identity of the murderers. Some night soon he proposes to return to the old tank at night to find if the vision will again appear.

Every man in Thornhope believes every word of Fickle's experience. Not a man has the courage to seek an interview with the ghost and the haunted spot is shunned like the plague. Fickle is one of the most respected citizens in the village. He enjoys the confidence of everybody and is in no sense an idle talker. He is much averse to discussing the affair.

He does not believe in ghosts, is not at all superstitious but says the memory of that fateful night will haunt him to his dying day. He does not attempt to explain the occurrence, it is beyond his understanding. He is positive that the end is not yet and that he will sooner or later be impelled to visit the scene of the crime and submit to another clasp of that shadowy hand from another world.

Fickle saw the ghost at least once more, and several other Thornhope citizens also claimed to have seen Baer’s unhappy spirit, but it seems to have done exactly nothing to help avenge his death.  I suppose the moral of our story is this:  If you are ever murdered, don’t wait thirty years before telling anyone about it.

The Lorius/Heberer Mystery

This blog has featured several stories about people who disappear or run into some other sort of disaster while on long road trips.  This week, we’ll look at yet another case that makes a strong argument for just staying at home.

Fifty-year-old George Lorius was president of a coal company in East St. Louis, Illinois.  He and his wife Laura had been married for a number of years, but had no children.  They were close friends with another childless middle-aged couple, Albert and Tillie Heberer.  We know little else about the quartet, but they were evidently prosperous, pleasantly ordinary citizens.

A favorite pastime of the two couples was going on trips together.  In May 1935, they set off in George’s 1929 Nash sedan with the goal of visiting the Boulder Dam, and then San Diego, California.  Along the way, they made various side trips, which they chronicled in frequent postcards sent to family and friends.

One of these side trips was to Vaughn, New Mexico, in order to look up an old friend who had moved there.  On May 21, they checked into the Vaughn Hotel.  It is unclear if they were ever able to locate this person, but we do know that the following morning, they had breakfast at the hotel and checked out.  George mentioned to the clerk that they planned to go to Santa Fe, and then Gallup.  Later that day, Tillie sent home a postcard from Albuquerque saying, “Came through this place in the a.m.  No trouble of any kind.  Going to Boulder Dam, then to Los Angeles.”  A clerk at an Albuquerque hotel later said that she spoke to the two couples.  They asked about available rooms, but in the end decided to drive to Gallup instead.  They later stopped at a gas station in Quemado, about 150 miles from Albuquerque.

This was the last confirmed sighting of the two couples.  After this stop, they all appeared to vanish into oblivion.  On June 5, family members, concerned about not hearing from them, notified police.

New Mexico authorities--concerned about the effect the mystery might have on local tourist trade--launched an exhaustive search for the two couples, even bringing the National Guard into the hunt.  A week into the investigation, they made an extremely unsettling discovery: the burned remains of the missing quartet’s belongings had been dumped along a highway near El Paso, Texas.  The following day, George’s sedan was found on a street in Dallas.  The gas tank was full, and the keys were left in the ignition.  Bloodstains and hair were found on the left door of the car.  Also in the car was George’s notebook of odometer readings.  The final entry was made in Socorro, New Mexico, on May 23.

In June, George’s traveler’s checks began turning up throughout New Mexico and Texas, but were clearly clumsy forgeries.  Bertha Williamson, the owner of a boarding house, was the recipient of one of these checks, and she went to the police.  She said it had come from a “nervous young man” with dark hair and a tattoo who had spent a night at her establishment.  He was driving a Nash sedan.  A Dallas gas station owner also reported getting a forged check from a dark young man with a tattooed arm.  That same man had also taken the sedan in to be repaired at a garage in El Paso.  He said he had been in an accident in New Mexico.

It was getting disturbingly obvious that the two couples had been robbed and probably murdered, most likely by the tattooed man.  But who was he, and where were his victims?

"Albuquerque Journal," June 20, 2010, via Newspapers.com

Over the years, a number of dark-haired, tattooed men of questionable character were brought in for questioning, but it proved impossible to tie any of them to the mystery.  Walter Duke, an Albuquerque real estate agent who had taken a deep interest in the case, came to believe that the two couples had been murdered during their brief stay in Vaughn.  In 1963, he was contacted by a woman who claimed to have been a waitress in the Vaughn Hotel in 1935.  She alleged that the couples had checked into the establishment, but--Hotel California style--never left.  She believed they were taken down into the basement, murdered by unspecified robbers, and buried there.  Was this true?  Maybe.  Or maybe not. 

Although the case is still considered an active one, it seems highly unlikely that the mystery of the Lorius/Heberer disappearances will ever be solved.  Curiously enough, the most solid clue we have to their fate comes from the supernatural realm.  On the night of May 22, 1935--long before anyone had reason to suspect that this road trip had gone terribly wrong--Laura Lorius’ sister suddenly woke up in horror.  She told her husband that she dreamed that Laura came to her saying, “I’ve been murdered and buried under the floor of an old building.  You’ll have trouble finding me.”

That last sentence, at least, has proven to be only too accurate.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the first Link Dump of 2025!

A "possessed" woman in India.

The links between an Italian Duchess, Thomas Cromwell, and Anne Boleyn.

Some supernatural reasons not to stray off the beaten path.

Alexander the Great's charm offensive.

A map of the Big Cats of Britain.

Superstitions can be good for you.

The strange Rohonc Codex.

Some predictions about 2025 from 100 years ago.

A medical mystery in a French village.

The ghosts of the Cuban Club.

The journeys of Daniel Defoe.

A "proper New Year's gift" for your 18th century maidservant.

In which Princess Mathilde Bonaparte breaks all norms.

Past ways of predicting the future.

Some old British New Year's resolutions.

UFOs and Jimmy Carter.

A New Year's death omen.

The New England Airship Hoax.

The traditions of Plough Monday.

A "walkable" 16th century city.

The blue-eyed murderers.

We have a new "oldest book in the world."  Catchy title, too.

Using grammar to solve cold cases.

The mystery of the body in the basement of a New York club.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a road trip that ended in mysterious tragedy.  In the meantime, here's Neil Young.

Newspaper Clipping of the New Year's Day

Via Newspapers.com

Let’s kick off 2025 with a New Year’s ghost story from Tennessee.  The “Knoxville Journal,” January 1, 1935:

TULLAHOMA Jan 1 (Tuesday)—As the new year winged through Tullahoma at midnight townsmen gathered quietly in the main streets to see the Ghost of Tullahoma walk. 

For the past 62 years there have been those who have sworn that at midnight the apparition of a beautiful woman appears walking along the edge of high buildings.

The legend stretches back through the years to 1872 when two circus performers, man and wife, came to Tullahoma on their way South. They arrived on the last day of the year.

A rope was stretched across the street between two buildings, and the woman balanced her way over the road while her husband accepted contributions to pay their expenses. 

But there was an accident that fateful day in ‘72, and the woman pitched headlong to the ground. 

Townsmen buried her in the city cemetery and erected at the head of the grave a cedar board bearing this inscription: “Nina, aerial artist wife of Peter Conway 1872.”

And each New Year’s eve at midnight the legend says that Nina comes again airily walking along above the heads of revelers. 

Did Nina walk last night? 

There were many who said she did. They say that as the whistles and bells heralded the new year, she came dressed in circus clothes tripping along the tops of buildings. 

But most thought this sheer fantasy and were certain that Nina still rests in her small cemetery with the headboard.

As far as I can tell, this legend appears to have been forgotten, so perhaps poor Nina’s ghost is finally resting in peace.