Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This odd little story appeared in the “New York Sun,” June 30, 1875:

One evening, a week or two since, a lady residing in one of the southern wards was returning to her home, from a social gathering at a private house, near the hour of midnight.  She was accompanied by a male relative who lived in the house. As they were about to ascend the steps, both glanced upward toward the windows of the second story, and at one of them both saw with perfect distinctness a human face pressed against the pane. The features were not known to either, but presuming it to be a friend of their neighbor (as there more than one family in the house), nothing strange was thought of it at the time.

Before retiring, but after both had bared their feet, the lady and her companion bethought themselves of some article to be procured from the lower part of the house, and as the exact location was known, they descended without a light. On returning, just as the young gentleman placed his foot upon the landing at the head of the stairs he felt beneath it a yielding substance, the shape of which was so clearly defined that he exclaimed, “Why, aunty, I stepped on someone’s thumb!”  At the same instant, the lady putting down her foot responded, “I have stepped on the hand." No sounds of retreating footsteps were heard, and such examination as the darkness permitted failed to discover any human being near them.

On procuring a light, a moment later, both soon satisfied themselves that no creature of flesh and blood was in the immediate vicinity. Wondering, and trembling at the contact with these mysteries, they retired to their beds. 

In the morning simple inquiry, which attracted no attention, elicited the fact that there had been no person in the house the previous night other than the usual members of the family, and a comparison of the features of each one with the face she had seen, a sharp impression of which was fixed in her mind, convinced the lady that it was not that of any one of them.

The most startling and mysterious of the phenomena remains to be told. As if to convince them that their imagination had not been worked upon by any means to create the impression we have detailed, there appeared upon the bottom of the gentleman's foot the next morning, plainly printed in a color quite like blood-red, the facsimile of the thumb he had felt beneath it, and upon the foot of the lady was as clearly discernible the likeness of the inside of a human hand.