Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I've shared stories about ghosts.  I've shared stories about witches.  It's not often that you see the two combined.   The "Glasgow Daily Record," September 10, 1928:

The "ghost" of an old woman, reputed to be a witch, who died two years ago, is said to have been seen by many people in the Cambridgeshire village of Horseheath, and, in consequence, women and children are afraid to leave their homes after dark. 

While she lived in Horseheath, " Mother Redcap," as the "witch" was known, had a sinister reputation, and the ghost seems determined to live up to this record. The apparition is said to have shaken its fist in the faces of villagers whom it has met at night, and generally to have behaved in a very menacing manner.

Remarkable tales are told in the village about the old woman. 

"She was employed at a farm," a villager stated. "One day a black man called, produced a book, and asked her to sign her name in it." 

The woman signed the book, and then the mysterious stranger told her that she would be the mistress of five imps who would carry out her orders.

Shortly afterwards the woman was seen out accompanied by a rat, a cat, a toad, a ferret. and a mouse. When she died, her "imps" were killed, it is said, and buried with her in her coffin.

I couldn't find much more about "Mother Redcap," but apparently Horseheath was a village with a strong tradition of witchcraft that lasted well into the 20th century.  It may still exist, for all I know.

The Haunted Cottage on the Hill

In 1956, author Miriam Allen deFord (1888-1975) described the eerie phenomena she and her husband experienced after they moved into a seemingly innocuous little home, only to realize they were really renting a hefty dose of The Weird:

When the owner showed me the little cottage on a hill in Mill Valley, California, nearly forty years ago, she made a strange remark. 

We were on the sun porch, which had big glass windows around three sides. “If these windows ever break,” she said, “you will have to pay to have them replaced.” 

I assured her that it was very unlikely we would ever open them. But a few weeks later I understood what she meant. The windows had heavy hasps, almost beyond my strength to move. On the windiest days they stood firm. But often, on calm, clear days, one of them would suddenly fly open and bang against the trees outside. 

Finally, my husband, Maynard Shipley, tried an experiment. He went out on the sun porch and spoke aloud. 

“If this is a demonstration of some sort of extrasensory power,” he said, “please find another way to demonstrate. We can’t afford to have these big windows replaced if you break them.” 

They never opened again. 

But that was not the first “manifestation” to occur in the little house, furnished with the owner’s own belongings. 

One Saturday afternoon I brought home a bag of fruit. My husband picked out a pear, then observed that it was too pretty to eat, polished it, and laid it on the bare center table in the living room. 

We were both sitting near the table, reading, he facing it and I with my back turned to it, when I heard a strange bumping sound. Subconsciously I counted; there were twelve bumps in all, in rhythmic pairs. I thought he was kicking a table leg, and asked him to stop. He did not answer, and I turned around to see his eyes fixed on the pear. I was just in time to see its last two vibrations; it was jumping up and down, rising about two inches each time. 

Perhaps this is the place to explain that neither my husband nor I believed (nor do I now; he died in 1934) in occult phenomena. He was a writer and lecturer on scientific subjects, I was and am a freelance writer and a labor journalist. We were both agnostics, with no faith in survival of the personality after death. But we both had open minds and we could not deny the evidence of our senses--though the experiences we underwent made neither of us a Spiritualist convert. 

In fact, my husband’s first thought was that the pear was abnormal--perhaps that some parasite was in it. He cut it open, and it was perfectly sound. As he lifted it from the table there was a tinkle like that of a silver bell, and a tiny whiff of white smoke arose from below the table and was dissipated in the air. 

That was the first peculiar phenomenon we witnessed in the cottage. Here are some of the others; I am not including any that were not seen by at least two persons. 

There was a whirring, metallic sound sometimes that we tried in vain to locate. Finally we went into the bedroom, the doors and windows of which were closed, so that there was no breeze. Hanging on a nail on one of the doors was a metal coathanger, which was vibrating like mad. 

In the bathroom was an old-fashioned bureau with drawers which had brass pulls, so stiff that they stayed in any position in which they were placed. Twice, when my husband entered the room, all the brass pulls began to dance up and down. 

In the kitchen was a wooden gadget fastened to the wall, on whose arms we hung various utensils--basting spoons, can openers, spatulas, things of that sort. Frequently when Maynard approached them, all of these started to vibrate. 

A door led from the kitchen to the bedroom. It was always closed at night. Every night, precisely at eleven, there would be a sound like that of a wet mop striking the kitchen side of this door. When it was opened, nothing was there. 

We brought home a trailing piece of wild blackberry vine and put it in a hanging vase on the living room wall. It started to swing back and forth like a pendulum and kept it up for forty-eight hours. Maynard tried to account for this on scientific grounds, and in fact had an article published in The Scientific American in which he discussed the movement as a possible effect of radiant energy on a living plant, since it happened to be halfway between a window into which the sun poured, and a wall light which was on at night. But later, when we tried the experiment with many other plants, the vase did not swing at all. We heard constant raps, day and night, and nearly every evening small bluish-green lights, like faint electric bulbs, used to move horizontally across the room, about four feet from the floor, and then vanish; this happened in both the living room and the bedroom. 

In the living room was an old-fashioned Franklin stove--all the furniture was of turn-of-the-century vintage--which burned wood. In its lid was fixed a common iron stove-lifter. One night, in full electric glare, we saw this lifter raise itself about three inches from the lid and sail horizontally across the room, dropping with a thud on the floor at the other end of the living room. Another time we saw a large china bowl on the top shelf of an open china closet in the kitchen lifted as if somebody had hold of it, and deposited gently on the floor beneath; it was not even cracked. 

But the prize exhibit was the folding bed. For those who have never seen such an object, it is a bygone piece of furniture which when closed is just like a big closet door against the wall. This one was in the living room, and we never thought of using it until I was ill with the flu, and my husband tried to sleep in it. (It opened out into a regular double bed.) I say “tried,” because every time he got into it he had the distinct impression that he was not alone--that somebody else he couldn’t see was in the bed, somebody who didn’t want him in it. He stuck it out for three nights, and then he said, “Well, if you want the bed you can have it,” and got out and spent the rest of the night in a chair. 

After I was well we decided to try an experiment with a weekend guest. Our visitor told everybody that she was “a natural medium” and a devout believer in Spiritualism. So without mentioning anything about the bed we put Genevieve in it. About two o’clock in the morning there was a knock on the bedroom door. Genevieve said she couldn’t sleep in that bed because somebody else was in it! We fixed her up on the sun porch, but we never told her why we had given her the folding bed. 

We found our Mill Valley “ghosts” extremely interesting, and we hated to leave them when the owner decided to sell the house and we had to move. Later the house was destroyed in a fire which burned all that part of the town. 

We never had anything again approaching the crowding phenomena of our “haunted house,” but perhaps the “ghosts” did follow us for a while in San Francisco and later in Sausalito, where we lived until my husband’s death. 

One day I received a letter telling me of the death of a very dear old friend. That evening Maynard and I were washing and drying dishes together in the kitchen of another rented cottage. We were facing the window and it was very dark outside. I was talking to Maynard about my friend, whom he had never known, when suddenly there was a crashing blow at the window--enough, one would think, to have broken it. “Cats,” Maynard said, and went outside to look. No cats, no anything. He came in again and we started to talk it over. It came again, just the same as before. This time we didn’t even look. 

Almost the same thing happened later in another house. This time we were in the dining room. I was seated with my back to the front window, which looked on the porch; my husband sat opposite me, facing it. Again we were talking about somebody recently dead. And again there was a smashing blow at the window. This time Maynard caught a momentary glimpse of something round and white that had struck the blow. But when we both dashed out on the porch, seconds afterward, there was nothing whatsoever there. 

In the apartment in which we first lived in Sausalito, there was a big bare kitchen with wooden walls. On a nail on one of the walls hung several big paper shopping bags. We had a close friend whose husband had one day taken a train for a short business journey and had never been seen again; no trace was ever found of him, and nobody knows to this day whether he is alive or dead, though it is probable that he is dead. 

One morning at breakfast we were talking about our friend’s dilemma; after searching and waiting for several years, she had decided to get a divorce to remedy her anomalous position. 

“My own belief is that Charlie is dead,” my husband said. 

At which moment, suddenly, with no breeze anywhere, all the paper shopping bags on that nail raised themselves slowly to a horizontal position and then as slowly fell back again. 

If either of us could be considered a “physical medium”--whatever that really is--it was not I, but my husband, in whose presence metallic objects shook and danced. After he died, I would have given anything, including my life, for some evidence that something of him still lived and could communicate with me--as we had often promised each other to try to do, if it were possible--but it never came. There was just one slight and unexplained happening. 

About a week after his death, while I was still living alone in our Sausalito home, preparing to leave it, one of our friends came to visit me. We were sitting before the fireplace, and I was saying to her what I have just said above. There was a silence. And then we both distinctly heard a strange sound. It was like a large, soft, heavy object falling to the ground from a short height--the nearest analogy I could think of was a bag of laundry. 

We searched the house systematically, from cellar to attic. Nothing was disturbed, nor was there anything out of position that in the least resembled what we both had heard. 

Nothing of the sort ever happened to me again. It was not enough evidence. 

Only twice in my life, before I met Maynard, have I had inexplicable experiences. Once, in 1917 in Hollywood, I saw a “phantom of the living”--so distinct that I took it for granted it was the man himself, and spoke to him--when he vanished. And later that same year, in Spokane, a friend whom I was visiting and I both heard heavy footsteps climbing the cellar stairs to the locked kitchen door, and then cross the floor. We not only searched the house but we called a policeman, who searched again for us with a bored air that we soon understood when a week later, at precisely the same hour, the whole thing happened over again--and several times more. This too was a rented house, and apparently the police had often been called to find the phantom burglar. 

I never heard any story to account for this. In our Mill Valley house I made inquiries, and discovered that the owner had lived in the cottage with her old father until he died, and that he slept in the folding bed; that was all. I might add that after we left, she was unable to sell the  house after all, and rented it again. I was told by neighbors that it was rented three or four times before the fire, but that nobody ever stayed more than a month or two. 

As for my husband, he had one other strange experience during our years in Sausalito, though it did not occur there. I tell it to complete the record, though he had only a quasi-witness. 

In the course of a lecture tour in northern California, he had a speaking engagement in the town of Woodland. He could not get a hotel room, and had to take a room for the night in an apartment over a grocery store. All night he was kept awake by constant sawing and hammering downstairs; apparently the grocery store was being repaired or remodeled, and the workmen for some reason were doing the job at night. He was very much annoyed when he paid the landlady in the morning, and was about to make some caustic comment when she said, with a queer mixture of bravado and timidity, “Were you able to get any sleep in that room?” 

Puzzled, he glanced in at the store when he got outside. It was precisely as he had seen it the night before when he went there after his lecture. There was no sign that any carpentry had been done on it. 

Just how and why we should have had that intensive period of unexplained phenomena for the year and a half in Mill Valley, gradually tapering off for three or four years more, and then never recurring, neither of us ever knew. The last thing I can remember of this nature that we experienced was also in our last Sausalito house. One moonlit night I happened to glance from a front window, and saw on the steps leading to the front porch a curious thing--a sort of cone of light, about two feet tall and about a foot at the base, milky and solid-looking in texture. We both went out and stood directly above it; there it sat, looking like crystallized soapsuds, but with the line of the steps visible through it. It glowed faintly as if with its own light; no moonlight struck anywhere near it. 

Maynard was all for stooping down and touching it, but I held him back; I had a foolish nervous feeling that it might give him an electric shock, or be in some other way unpleasant to touch. Just then an automobile passed the house, down our hilly street, and instantly the cone vanished. If it had been some trick of light which the auto’s headlights had reversed,it should have reappeared when the car had passed. It did not return, and we never saw anything like it again. It was some time later that it occurred to us that the thing, whatever it was, resembled pictures we had seen of ectoplasm. 

If my husband was one of those people somehow in tune with so-called parapsychic phenomena, it seems peculiar that he had not had similar experiences in the past, instead of just during this limited period. It may have been that for some reason he was in a particularly receptive condition in those years; or it may have been that I, though not myself a “medium,” in some way supplemented his receptivity. The whole question is one which was beyond our powers of explanation. “There can be no such thing as the supernatural,” he used to say. “Everything that occurs is a part of nature. All we can say is that these things occurred, that they were not subjective, and that therefore they will be susceptible to scientific explanation some day, even though they are not now.” 

In an attempt to secure some informed outside judgment of the phenomena, we wrote an account of them and sent it to Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, of the Boston Society for Psychic Research. He was extremely interested (though no better able than we to explain our experiences), and intended to publish the account in a forthcoming volume in his series of Human Experiences, based on an extensive questionnaire sent out by the Society; but he died before another volume could be compiled. 

After Maynard’s death I again wrote a statement of what had happened in the Mill Valley house and sent it to Harry Price, the well-known English psychic researcher. He too was both interested and baffled. 

About all one can say at the present stage of our comprehension is that the house was “haunted”--whatever that word really means--and that we, and especially my husband, were susceptible media through whom the haunting became objectified. Any more satisfactory elucidation will have to come--for me, at least--as a result of further objective investigation on a purely scientific basis. I offer this detailed description, minus dubious or very minor phenomena and those witnessed by only one person, as a document for such research.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

While you read, feel free to visit our open bar.

Watch out for those hypnotic serpents!

The murder of the Coy family.

A brief history of soap.

Cats may wind up curing cancer, which wouldn't surprise me a bit.

When you're a spiritualist, you don't care if your fiance is dead.

The scientific debate over free will.

The pyramids of Mars.

A surprisingly modern ancient message.

A nursery rhyme's scandalous history.

How "ye" turned into "you."

The 2,000 year old bus fare.

The theory that UFOs are time-travelers.

A Quaker spy in the American Revolution.

The mystery of insect migration.

The trial of dueling French prisoners.

The trout that incited a mutiny.

Unraveling the mystery of a 2011 tsunami.

The strange case of the Nebra sky disc.

An ancient society that lived underground.

Burying the dead in 1896 Belgium.

You might want to know that a hen has adopted a Public Works department.

A look at the "Tibetan Book of the Dead."

What fashionable Londoners were wearing 200 years ago.

The real "Count of Monte Cristo."

"The Most Wonderful Horse in the World."

The 20 second festival.

The recluse who photographed mid-20th century New York.

A cursed creek in Pennsylvania.

The unsolved murder of Permon Gilbert.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an author's encounter with a haunted cottage.  In the meantime, here's some James Taylor.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Mysterious showers of stones are a tiresomely common Fortean phenomenon, but inexplicable egg falls are unusual enough to pique my interest.  The “Reading [England] Post,” December 11, 1974:

Flying eggs are bombarding a school in Wokingham in what must be the strangest unsolved mystery of the year. For over the past two weeks, white chickens' eggs have been 'shelling' the Keep Hatch primary school in Ashridge Road, and no-one knows where they come from, though one theory is that crows are stealing the eggs from farms and jettisoning them in flight. The ordinary standard eggs have smashed on cars parked in the road, on houses, splattered over fencing and come near to scrambling on peoples' heads. It's not the first time that Keep Hatch school has been supplied with "free' eggs. Last year, the same thing happened--and some mums are blaming aircraft for the "bombing." Five eggs landed undamaged on grass one day this week, and mothers taking their children to school in the morning have seen the eggs dropping vertically from the sky.

Now the school caretaker, Mr. Derek Dare, is investigating and keeping an egg watch until he comes up with some answers. 

"People may think we are imagining things, but we know what is happening and no-one can explain it," said Mr. Dare. 

Yesterday, at least ten mothers told of their egg sightings over the past two weeks. Mother of two, Mrs. Jean Simpson, of Whaley Road, said: "I was standing near some grass, talking to another mum, when I heard a terrific thud. "It made me jump, it was so loud.  I looked round and saw this egg on the grass, unbroken. I have seen eggs splattered on the road, and I have seen them coming down. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is absolutely true." 

And Mrs Ann Norman, of Budges Road, said: "The eggs must drop from a great height, because of the noise they make when they land. I reckon they are dropping from aircraft because when I saw one fall, an aeroplane was flying overhead." 

Eleven-year-old Trevor Agar, of Barrett Crescent, and his friend, David Thomas, 10, of Pigott Road, heard several thuds on their way to school one morning.

"We jumped over a fence and found five eggs scattered on the grass. They were dropping from the sky. It was quite frightening, really," said Trevor. 

Despite the egg jokes, caretaker Mr. Dare is taking the bombardment seriously. "It's very funny, but I am worried that an egg might hit one of the small children on the head.  It could be dangerous if they are dropping from high up in the sky. They must come down a long way because they are freezing cold when you pick them up off the ground," he said. 

Keep Hatch headmistress, Mrs. Eileen Thomson, said: "It's a mystery, but I can't believe that aircraft are jettisoning eggs. We are all baffled." 

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority at Heston, Middlesex, said: "I think someone is imagining things." He explained that modern aircraft were "sealed units and that it was extremely unlikely that eggs could be dropped from a high-flying plane. Added the spokesman: "It's the first time we have ever had such a weird complaint.  People moan about bits dropping off aircraft or fuel being jettisoned, but never have aircraft been blamed for dropping eggs. The days of miracles have come." 

Two other theories are that young children could be raiding mum's fridge, or that crows are stealing eggs from nearby chicken farms and dropping them over the school. A spokesman for Berkshire County Council said if there were serious complaints, the matter would be investigated.

Two days later, the same newspaper carried an unsatisfactory follow-up:

Another Berkshire resident has under shellfire . . . from mystery eggs. 

Earley hairdresser Peter Jones is the second person this week to report eggs falling from the sky.

Many readers must have felt that story on Wednesday--that flying eggs were bombarding Keep Hatch School, Ashridge Road, Wokingham--was merely a three-minute wonder. 

But we weren't joking. Yesterday, Mr. Jones, 31, from Launcestone Close, Earley, came up with another example.

“The last one,” he said, “was at the weekend, when an egg came from the right, flew across the garden, and landed two doors away.  Before that we had a lot of them.  It started about three weeks ago, and I didn’t take much notice.  Then one night three or four of them landed in the garden and smashed.  In all, we must have had a dozen.  They’ve all been raw, and one didn’t break because it landed on the grass.  I really don’t know where they came from.”

All his theories so far have fallen down.  Ducks’ eggs, maybe, since he lives close to a lake.  Problem--no ducks overhead.  And, anyway, says Mr. Jones, “their aim’s too good.  They couldn’t be dead-eye ducks all the time.”

Other neighbours, say Mr. Jones, have also reported eggs in the garden.  In all cases, they’ve been white, hen-type eggs.

Mr. Jones is now wondering if he can put the eggs to good use.  “I don’t use egg shampoo at the salon,"  he says, “but I thought I might put some foam rubber on the lawn and try to catch them intact.  And if pigs could fly, we might get a few rashers, too…”

I couldn’t discover if the mystery was ever solved.

Help Wanted: The Macabre Death of Samuel Resnick

There are certain people who, for one reason or another, have a way of attracting people who are eager to murder them.  What makes the following case stand out is that exactly the opposite appears to have happened: A man was desperate to find someone willing to kill him, and he had a damned hard time achieving that goal.

Samuel Resnick was a jeweler in Albany, New York, for nearly thirty years until a heart condition forced his retirement in 1959, after which he and his wife Lillian retired to Phoenix, Arizona.  However, he still occasionally dealt in gemstones.  Life went quietly enough until the evening of March 1, 1962, when the 61-year-old Samuel told Lillian he was going for a walk.  That in itself was hardly unusual--evening strolls were a frequent part of his daily routine.  What was unusual is that he failed to return home.

Lillian and their 35-year-old son Martin immediately reported his disappearance to the police.  However, the mystery of Samuel’s whereabouts was not solved until March 4, when a horseback rider found his body on a little-used desert trail 10 miles outside of the city.  He had been beaten and then strangled with a rope.

The coroner estimated that Samuel died about four hours after leaving his home.  To most observers, the motive for his murder seemed obvious--his expensive diamond ring, a watch, his wallet, and a gemstone-studded Masonic ring were all missing from his body.  Neighbors told police that on the night Samuel disappeared, they had seen him talking to a couple of young men.  

The police, however, had reason to believe that something far more complicated--not to mention bizarre--than a mere robbery had happened.  A few months earlier, a man came to them with a startling story:  He had answered a “help wanted” ad that Samuel had placed in a local newspaper.  The man was appalled to learn that the job Resnick wanted him to do was to murder him.

Unfortunately, at the time the police shrugged off the man’s claims, but upon realizing that the jeweler had evidently found someone more cooperative, they began searching the advertisements in back copies of newspapers for possible suspects.  A 19-year-old named Clemmie Jackson caught their eye.  Clemmie was not around when police went to his home, but a search of the car belonging to his uncle turned up a length of rope identical to the one that had been used to strangle Samuel.  They also found a cluster of paper strips like ones found near Samuel’s body.  Clemmie’s brother, R.E. Jackson, told police the strips came from the paper shredding company where he worked.  R.E. claimed he knew nothing about the Resnick murder, and had no idea where his brother was.

On March 17, Clemmie was arrested in Crockett, Texas.  He readily--almost eagerly--told police his version of how Samuel Resnick came to die.  And what a story it was.  Clemmie had placed an advertisement in the papers looking for work.  On February 25, Samuel responded to the ad, telling Clemmie that if he was willing to kill him, the young man could have all the jewelry he was wearing, as well as any cash in his pockets.

I would like to think that if a stranger asked me to murder them, my response would be a polite “No, thank you,” and a quick rush to the nearest exit, but Clemmie was apparently a more accommodating and open-minded sort.  He gathered together a band of accomplices--his brother R.E., and three friends, Jesse Tillis, John Henry Lewis Jones, and Ernest Spurlock--and settled with Samuel that the big day would be March 1.  However, Clemmie said that at the last moment he had “chickened out” and allowed his confederates to do the deed without him.

When these men were arrested, they all confirmed Clemmie’s story, adding that they had agreed to the murder “because Mr. Sam had cancer and had only six months to live and wanted to leave his family some money.”  They went on to say that after meeting “Mr. Sam” at the prearranged spot in the desert, he coached them on how to strangle him, adding, “Do a good job.”  Two of them stood on each side of the jeweler and pulled the rope, but it quickly broke.

Samuel was beginning to get exasperated.  He told them, “Here, let me show you how.”  He doubled the rope for them and got on his knees.  The young men began feeling qualms about the whole enterprise, and tried to talk him out of proceeding, but Samuel was insistent.  “And this time, he helped, too.”  Once Samuel was dead, the confederates stripped his body of his jewelry and money, and then beat the corpse and turned his pockets inside out to make it look like a simple robbery.  

At first, police found their story unbelievable, and one can’t really blame them for that.  But then, yet another Phoenix man came forward, saying that Samuel had tried enlisting him as a hit man.  “I think those boys you’ve arrested are telling the truth,” he added.  Three other men, including Samuel’s barber, also told police that the late jeweler had tried talking them into murdering him.

Samuel’s widow and son, along with his physician and the doctor who had autopsied him, all denied that Samuel had cancer.  However, the medical examiner conceded that the jeweler was in very poor health, suffering from a grossly enlarged heart, an enlarged spleen, and a congested liver.  It seemed possible that Samuel might have preferred a quick end to his physical woes.  It was surmised that his reason for choosing murder over suicide was to enable his wife to get the “double indemnity” benefits from his $50,000 life insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London.

Whether Samuel really wanted to die or not, the law still forbade anyone from obliging him.  The five young men were all put on trial for first-degree murder.  In brief, the defense argued that the ultimate blame for Samuel’s death rested on the victim, while prosecutors insisted that--whatever the jeweler may have requested--the defendants were fully responsible.  

In the end, the jury decided that murder was murder, whether the victim had solicited it or not.  Clemmie, the one defendant who had not directly participated in the killing, was acquitted, while the other four were convicted, with the recommendation that they be sentenced to life imprisonment.

In a final irony, Lloyd’s found the circumstances of Samuel’s death to be just weird enough to justify them refusing to pay on his policy.  You might say that his passing was a tragically wasted effort on all sides.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Happy Friday the 13th!

The languages of ancient humans.

Dodo birds actually tasted pretty good.  Unfortunately for them.

An ancient coin that tells of a massive slave rebellion.

The long war against the Barbary pirates.

Traces of a mysterious ancient religion.

An extinct marsupial turns up alive and well.

The miniatures that served as Tudor love tokens.

In which we learn that "adult" has nothing to do with "adultery."

Ancient humans loved elongated skulls.

Yet another artifact that rewrites human history.

The mystery of the man in the reservoir.

How people woke up before alarm clocks came along.

A legendary cow.

A murder mystery in Medford.

If you live in Florida, keep your eyes peeled for giant scorpions.

The fire that destroyed the SS City of Montreal.

Syphilis has been around for a very long time.

Sir John Vanbrugh and his castle.

In which undertakers Tell All.

Da Vinci and the hidden crotch detail.

The Kentucky county that celebrates the time it got showered with meat.

How France came to legalize posthumous marriages.

The possibility that Amelia Earhart wound up as crab food.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a death that was part suicide, part murder.  In the meantime, here's some Vivaldi.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This tale of…Fortean food throwing? appeared in “The Guardian,” November 11, 1978:

Police are seeking a phantom food hurler who has issued a fusillade of black puddings, eggs, bacon and other groceries at four old people's bungalows at Castleton, Derbyshire. 

The night attacks began a year ago when everything from eggs to legs of mutton hit the bungalow walls and doors and landed in the gardens. The local constable gave up free time to try to catch the thrower, and the events temporarily stopped.

Councillor Charlie Lewes, who has raised the matter with the High Peak Council, said: "It's annoying. The occupants of these four bungalows wake up to find the face of their homes strewn with food. The culprits are either raiding a deep freeze or have got a supply to be able to do it." 

Mrs. Ethel Bramley, whose home has been battered by flying food, said: “It's unreal, weird. If people want to give us food why not wrap it in a parcel and leave it on the doorstep?"

Why not, indeed?  I wasn’t able to find if the mystery of these unorthodox Door Dash deliveries was ever solved.

A Hogmanay Mystery: The Vanishing of Alex Cleghorn

On this blog, I have covered a few missing-persons cases where the victim appeared to instantly vanish into oblivion, never to be seen again.  One minute they’re going about their normal business, the next…gone.  And nobody can ever figure out why.  As peculiar and disturbing as these disappearances may be, the following mystery is startling enough that it not only made the local newspapers, but the pages of that journal devoted to all forms of High Strangeness, the “Fortean Times.”

A few hours into the first day of 1966, 19 year old Alex Cleghorn and his two older brothers, David and William, left their Glasgow home to “first foot” some friends.  (“First foot” is a Scottish New Year tradition where the first people to cross a home’s threshold on January 1 bring symbolic gifts such as coal or whisky to ensure good luck for the year.)  As they walked down Govan Road, the brothers reached a crossroads.  David and William turned to ask Alex which way they should go.  Except that Alex suddenly wasn’t there.  David and William, assuming their brother had fallen behind, retraced their steps and searched side-streets to see if Alex had taken a shortcut.  No Alex.  They called his name repeatedly.  No response.

Not knowing what else to do, David and William returned home, but Alex wasn’t there, either.  When daylight came with no sign of him, the family called around to friends and relatives, but no one had seen him.  They checked with police stations and hospitals, only to hit the same brick wall.  The following day, Alex’s father called the factory where his son worked, but they hadn’t seen him, either.  Alex’s insurance card and a week’s salary had not been picked up.

And…that’s all, folks.  From that day to this, the whereabouts of Alex Cleghorn have remained a complete mystery.  A few years after he vanished, his brothers reenacted that fateful walk, hoping it would give them some clue about what had happened, but they were still left completely baffled.

If ever a disappearance could literally be called “into thin air,” this one is it.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!  Our host for this week is Muggins!

ALL HAIL MUGGINS!

A woman's murder of her sister.

Why it took so long for you to be able to look at the bones of St. Francis.

Did the Vikings visit Maine?

The grim history of "Ring Around the Rosie."

A look at the London of Charlie Chaplin's childhood.

The mystery of "terminal lucidity."

Mutiny on a Dutch warship.

The "pitchfork poisoning."

Friendly fire incidents in WWII.

The puzzling murder of the Schultz children.

Some ancient health tips.

The first fatal airplane crash.

Poe's "mechanical imagination."

Fake photography in the Victorian era.

A brief history of dowries.

John Dee's library.

The long history of going down rabbit holes.

In praise of burial shoes.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a young man's remarkably perplexing disappearance.  In the meantime, here's more 1960s pop.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Yet another example of how returns from the grave can be quite awkward appeared in the London “Sunday Dispatch,” September 22, 1907:

The return of a man after an inquest had been held on his supposed body and after his relatives had drawn his insurance money has had a strange sequel at the Westminster Coroner's Court. Then the "dead” man appeared in person to prove that the six persons who identified the body made an extraordinary blunder.

On April 27 the body of a man, apparently about sixty years of age, who had lost his left eye, was taken from the Thames, and on April 20 an engineer named John Steer, of Cannon-road, Bromley, Kent, attended at the mortuary, with a number of his relatives, declared that the dead man was Arthur Albert Steer, aged fifty-seven, a labourer of Bromley. Steer, they said, had only one eye. 

At the inquest the evidence of identification was accepted, and the friends of Arthur Albert Steer drew his insurance money, went into mourning, and buried the body. 

A few weeks later, however, the "dead” man appeared at his son's house, and in order to set right the matter of registration of the death the identifying witness attended before the coroner to prove that he had made a mistake. 

Addressing John Steer, the son, the coroner said: “I will now read what you said at the inquest: 

“I have seen the body in the mortuary, not for the first time today, but yesterday as well.  I identify it as that of my father, Arthur Albert Steer. My brothers and sisters are also satisfied as to his identity. My father had lost the sight of his left eye, and he had had a piece of bone removed from over the same eye.  I have no doubt at all about the identity.” 

The Witness: “I find the only mistake all made was that father had lost his right eye, and that the drowned man's left one was missing.” 

How many of you saw the body besides yourself?  “Six, sir.”

How did you come to make such a mistake?--We did not make a mistake, only about the eye, sir. (Laughter.) 

But you made another little mistake, as it was not your father at all?--I am very sorry I did make a mistake, sir. (Laughter.) Are you?--Well, I am glad about it. The man had a scar under the eye, and a tooth was gone from the front, and it was the same with father. 

Did you draw the insurance money?--Yes, sir, and I paid it back again.

The coroner said all he could do was to rectify the entry on the certificate of death, and say that the identification was a mistake, the body being that of an unknown man.

As far as I can tell, the dead doppelganger was never identified, but I’m assuming that Arthur Steer was very glad it was not him after all.

The Weird Death of Joan Norkot

Sir John Maynard (d. 1690) had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, serjeant-at-arms, and Member of Parliament.  Shortly after his death, discovered among his papers was his account of an unusually eerie and puzzling murder case from Hereford, England, in 1629.  The manuscript evidently languished in obscurity until it was eventually published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for July 1851.  It reads like one of the more supernatural-tinged episodes of “Midsomer Murders,” but with an unsatisfactorily enigmatic ending.  Joan Norkot’s death may have been officially “Case Closed,” but it could hardly be called “Case Resolved.”

I write the evidence which was given, which I and many others heard, and I write it exactly according to what was deposed at the Trial at the Bar in the King's Bench. Johan Norkot, the wife of Arthur Norkot, being murdered, the question arose how she came by her death. The coroner's inquest on view of the body and deposition of Mary Norkot, John Okeman and Agnes, his wife, inclined to find Joan Norkot felo de se: for they (i.e. the witnesses before mentioned) informed the coroner and the jury that she was found dead in the bed and her throat cut, the knife sticking in the floor of the room; that the night before she was so found she went to bed with her child (now plaintiff in this appeal), her husband being absent, and that no other person after such time as she was gone to bed came into the house, the examinants lying in the outer room, and they must needs have seen if any stranger had come in. Whereupon the jury gave up to the coroner their verdict that she was felo de se. But afterwards upon rumour in the neighbourhood, and the observation of divers circumstances that manifested she did not, nor according to these circumstances, possibly could, murder herself, thereupon the jury, whose verdict was not drawn into form by the coroner, desired the coroner that the body which was buried might be taken up out of the grave, which the coroner assented to, and thirty days after her death she was taken up, in the presence of the jury and a great number of the people, whereupon the jury changed their verdict. The persons being tried at Hertford Assizes were acquitted, but so much against the evidence that the judge (Harvy) let fall his opinion that it were better an appeal were brought than so foul a murder should escape unpunished.

Anno, paschæ termino, quarto Caroli, [In the year, at the end of Easter, of the fourth year of Charles] they were tried on the appeal which was brought by the young child against his father, the grandfather and aunt, and her husband Okeman. And because the evidence was so strange I took exact and particular notes of it, which was as followeth, of the matters above mentioned and related, an ancient and grave person, the minister of the parish where the fact was committed, being sworn to give evidence according to custom, deposed, that the body being taken out of the grave thirty days after the party's death and lying on the grave and the four defendants present, they were required each of them to touch the dead body. O.'s wife fell on her knees and prayed God to show token of their innocency, or to some such purpose, but her very words I forget. The appellers did touch the dead body, whereupon the brow of the dead, which was all a livid or carrion colour (that was the verbal expression in the terms of the witness) began to have a dew or gentle sweat, which reached down in drops on the face, and the brow turned and changed to a lively and fresh colour, and the dead opened one of her eyes and shut it again, and this opening the eye was done three several times. She likewise thrust out the ring or marriage finger three times and pulled it in again, and the finger dropt blood from it on the grass.

Hyde (Nicholas), Chief Justice, seeming to doubt the evidence, asked the witness : "Who saw this beside yourself?"

Witness: "I cannot swear that others saw it; but, my lord," said he, “I believe the whole company saw it, and if it had been thought a doubt, proof would have been made of it, and many would have attested with me."

Then the witness observing some admiration in the auditors, he spoke further,

"My lord, I am minister of the parish, long knew all the parties, but never had any occasion of displeasure against any of them, nor had to do with them, or they with me, but as their minister. The thing was wonderful to me, but I have no interest in the matter, but am called upon to testify the truth and that I have done."

This witness was a reverend person as I guess about seventy years of age. His testimony was delivered gravely and temperately, but to the good admiration of the auditor. Whereupon, applying himself to the Lord Chief Justice, he said, "My lord, my brother here present is minister of the next parish adjacent, and I am assured saw all done as I have affirmed," whereupon that person was also sworn to give evidence, and he deposed the same in every point, viz., the sweat of the brow, the changes of its colour, the opening of the eye, the thrice motion of the finger and drawing it in again; only the first witness deposed that a man dipped his finger in the blood to examine it, and swore he believed it was real blood. I conferred afterwards with Sir Edmund Vowel, barrister at law, and others who concurred in this observation, and for myself, if I were upon my oath, can depose that these depositions, especially of the first witness, are truly here reported in substance.

The other evidence was given against the prisoners, viz., against the grandmother of the plaintiff and against Okeman and his wife, that they lay in the next room to the dead person that night, and that none came into the house till they found her dead next morning, therefore if she did not murther herself, they must be the murtherers, and to that end further proof was made. First she lay in a composed manner in her bed, the bed cloaths nothing at all disturbed, and her child by her in the bed. Secondly, her throat was cut from ear to ear and her neck broken, and if she first cut her throat, she could not break her neck in the bed, nor e contra. Thirdly, there was no blood in the bed, saving that there was a tincture of blood upon the bolster whereupon her head lay, but no other substance of blood at all. Fourthly, from the bed's head on there was a stream of blood on the floor, till it ponded on the bending of the floor to a very great quantity and there was also another stream of blood on the floor at the bed's feet, which ponded also on the floor to another great quantity but no other communication of blood on either of these places, the one from the other, neither upon the bed, so that she bled in two places severely, and it was deposed that turning up the matte of the bed, there were clotes of congealed blood in the straw of the matte underneath. Fifthly, the bloody knife in the morning was found clinging in the floor a good distance from the bed, but the point of the knife as it stuck in the floor was towards the bed and the haft towards the door. Sixthly, lastly, there was the brand of a thumb and four fingers of a left hand on the dead person's left hand.

Hyde, Chief Justice: "How can you know the print of a left hand from the print of a right hand in such a case?"

Witness: "My lord, it is hard to describe it, but if it please the honourable judge (i.e. the judge sitting on the bench beside the Chief Justice) to put his left hand on your left hand, you cannot possibly place your right hand in the same posture."

It being done, and appearing so, the defendants had time to make their defence, but gave no evidence to that purpose.

The jury departing from the bar and returning, acquitted Okeman and found the other three guilty; who, being severally demanded why judgment should not be pronounced, sayd nothing, but each of them said, "I did not do it." "I did not do it." Judgment was made and the grandmother and the husband executed, but the aunt had the privilege to be spared execution, being with child. I enquired if they confessed anything at execution, but did not as I was told.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

The Strange Company staffers are enjoying a snow day!

Watch out for those bloodsucking vampire vines!

Some new evidence about Easter Island.

Marmalade and the medieval House of Commons.

A "lost city" may have been found.

Tragedy on a training ship.

A diplomat's wife turns dressmaker.

The 1685 "Argyll Rising."

A thousand years of English in one blog post.

The link between breathing and memory.

When UFO hunters stopped America from getting nuked.

A brief history of the "women's page" in newspapers.

The Ice King of Boston.

Human writing is older than we thought.

Fashionable funeral flowers.

The mystery of the million-year-old skulls.

A newly discovered petroglyph complex.

Michelangelo, reluctant painter.

A financier's wandering cat.

Some impressive Iron Age surgery.

A con man turns to murder.

A Tudor scapegoat.

Us: "Why is ice slippery?"  Scientists: "Dunno."

A dinosaur's violent end.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the peculiar death of a 17th century woman.  In the meantime, here's Gordon Lightfoot.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

So, who doesn’t love stories about evil phantom cats?  The “Buffalo News,” January 25, 1897:

A special to the Cleveland Plain Dealer from Toledo, O., says: Additional details from the bewitched community of Richfield Center were brought to this city today by Henry Niemen, which fully corroborate the strange story told by A.M. Miller yesterday. Whatever the cause, the whole town, or at least the larger German element in the village, is as thoroughly stampeded as a drove of wild cattle. 

Miller, although in what seemed nearly a dying condition himself, came to Toledo last night to take some relatives to nurse his stricken family, which consists of his wife and four sons. They, together with 20 other families, feel that they have been bewitched and unless help can be given them in some manner there will be many human deaths, just as cattle have already wasted away and died.

Before Miller's relatives accompanied him last night they visited a priest, who in all seriousness gave them rules for exorcising and "laying" the evil spirit, just as would have been done 200 years ago. None of the elements is missing from the story, according to the accounts given by Miller and Niemen. The community is haunted by a demon cat and the sick aver, in all honesty, that the visits of the cat precede the demoniacal possession. This cat has been hunted in every manner, for it is believed that its death would result in the death of the witch.

A peculiarity of the disease is the fact that many of the sick cannot remain in their rooms. They have made their beds in the kitchen and living rooms, while one man, named Woolson, moved his entire family to the barn in the hope of escaping this symptom. This was to no avail, as the dreaded cat still followed them, and the Woolson family returned in despair to the house, where they are all extremely ill. Cattle affected give bloody milk, which has long been recognized as an infallible "witch sign." Another sign that is not wanting is the "wreathing" of feathers.

Miller says that his wife has burned over 10 pounds, in the hope of breaking the spell. The feathers wreathed themselves in hard shapes, and one man reported the same phenomenon in the case of a bundle of shavings that he had brought to the house from the barn. It is thought that the water in the locality is bad, which would account for the fact that both people and cattle are affected. The sick, however, do not show typhoid symptoms, but simply waste away, and after once affected the sick show an utter indifference whether they get well or die. The strange part of the case is the fact that this trouble has been going on for over a month without attracting outside attention.

Richfield Center is 22 miles from Toledo and not on any railroad. The inclement weather here has prevented any investigators from undertaking the long ride to the town today.

I was unable to find how--or if--this curious state of affairs was resolved.  That cat might still be prowling the neighborhood, for all I know.

The Vanished Gold of Gippsland

Martin Weiberg, 1880

Every now and then during my wanderings through the historical weeds, I come across a story where I think, “What a movie this would make!”  The following tale of devious thefts, daring escapes, and hidden treasure is a prime example.

In 1877, the Australian ship “Avoca” had among its cargo 5,000 gold sovereigns.  The ship’s carpenter, a Norwegian named Martin Weiberg, learned of the enticing proximity of this small fortune, and began to dream a dream.  His plan was ridiculously simple:  he had a duplicate key made for the chest where the gold was kept, and when nobody was watching, he opened the box and replaced the loot with metal bolts.  He then resealed the chest so expertly that it appeared untouched.  

Of course, once the chest arrived at its destination in Ceylon, it became instantly obvious that someone had been up to no good.  The police, naturally, centered their investigations around the crew of the “Avoca,” but were unable to find anything that would lead them to the culprit.  Weiberg continued quietly performing his duties aboard the ship as if he was as innocent as a babe in the cradle.  Fortunately for him, it was right at this time that the legendary Aussie bad guy Ned Kelly shot dead three policemen.  The hunt for the desperado naturally distracted authorities from the relatively minor crime of missing gold.  Five months after the theft, Weiberg--who had by now married--left his ship to settle on the Tarwin River, South Gippsland, for what he hoped would be a long and gold-filled future.

Weiberg must have been a bit too careless about how he spent his ill-gotten wealth, because some unknown person evidently suggested to the police that they pay the Norwegian a visit.  When detectives headed for Weiberg’s home, they bumped into their quarry on a nearby road.  When he was searched, a number of gold sovereigns were found in his pockets, thus causing Weiberg one of life’s embarrassing moments.  After throwing the carpenter in jail, officers conducted a search of his home.  They eventually found over 1300 coins, all cleverly hidden in various places.

While Weiberg was in custody, he was interrogated about his accomplices.  It was assumed that one man could not have carried off such a large stash of gold.  He eventually named the first officer of the “Avoca” as his confederate, but an investigation managed to clear the man.  Weiberg then volunteered to show police where he had buried a container full of gold, but while leading them to the alleged spot, he managed to escape.  Weiberg hid out in the bush for five months, after which he acquired an accomplice to help him move enough gold to Melbourne to buy a boat, which he hoped to use to flee Australia for good.  However, before this plan could come to fruition, he was recaptured in May 1879, and sentenced to five years hard labor.  Meanwhile, the police had no success in finding the remaining sovereigns.  Only one man knew where the gold was hidden, and he wasn’t talking.

After Weiberg was released from prison, he and his brother bought a yacht, which he moored in Gippsland’s Waratah Bay.  While there, he went ashore in a skiff to visit his family, who lived in the area.  More importantly, it was assumed that he went to get his hands on some of his hidden gold.  While returning to his yacht, Weiberg was caught in a sudden squall which capsized his little boat.  

Although it was presumed that Weiberg had drowned, his body was never recovered, which led to some highly entertaining speculation about what might have really happened to our elusive carpenter.  Did he fake his own death in order to get the authorities off his back once and for all?  Mysterious lights were seen on the normally uninhabited Glennie Group islands, causing locals to speculate that Weiberg was hiding out there.  Some reports claimed that he had been spotted in various European cities.  Or was he the proprietor of a hotel in Sweden?  Did he, against all odds, manage to get away with a fortune in gold?

Sometime around 1890, a skeleton was found at Waratah Bay, with part of the skull missing.  Was this the missing Weiberg?  Did he let the world think he had drowned, only to be murdered by some accomplice?  Nobody knows.

Twenty years after this unidentified skeleton turned up, a stash of 75 gold coins was found in an old tree.  All in all, despite the diligent efforts of treasure-hunters, to date, only about 1800 of the stolen sovereigns have been recovered.  Most people believe the rest are still concealed somewhere in the Gippsland area, just waiting to be uncovered by some lucky person with a metal detector.

Or--if you want to take the more romantic view--did Martin Weiberg’s crime pay big for him, in the end?

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!  Our host for this week is "Jimmy on the veranda," 1890.

I don't know anything more about Jimmy, but I like him.

The graffiti of Pompeii.

The woman who tried to assassinate George III.

In which we learn that South American chickens are weird.

The possible secret tunnels under the Giza pyramids.

The oldest known pieces of sewn clothing.

The evolving meanings of the word "cool."

Some skin care tips for your next trip to Antarctica.

The plot to kill Trotsky.

Don't look now, but scientists are sniffing mummies.  To each their own.

The Case of the Missing Megaflood.

Why you might not want to attend a Neolithic party.

"Death" is a more complex process than we thought.

The birth of an 18th century ghost.

The restoration of a gunboat.

Some heroic cats from the past.

Fashionable tombstones on the cheap!

A wealthy Iron Age woman's burial.

The Parliament of Bats.

The murky origins of "Yankee Doodle."

The Regency elite sure liked snuff.

A teenager's unsolved disappearance.  Officially "unsolved," at least.  It seems pretty clear what happened to the poor girl.

Thomas Jefferson, fossil hunter.

A murderous end to an ice skating party.

Unusual love stories from old newspapers.

The life of Geoffrey Chaucer's granddaughter.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll hunt for some missing gold.  In the meantime, I don't recall ever playing the Beach Boys on this blog, so here you go.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

It’s not every day that you encounter a ghost who is headless and has “remarkable eyes.”  The “Richmond [Indiana] Item,” December 12, 1912:

A ghost which has appeared frequently is striking terror into the hearts of the girls and women and the more timid of the men working nights at the Starr Piano factory. The phantom has made his appearance for the past week between the hours of 6 and 8 when the employees are going about their work.

The spirit has been seen several times in the lighter parts of the shop and on approach of any one it flees to some darker parts of the factory which are then idle. There are several descriptions as to the dress and size of the spirit. Those most alarmed credited the ghost with being very tall, without arms and having an unusually small head, in which are two remarkable eyes, which throw off a light comparable to that given by pocket-flash lights. Another employee, who has seen the spirit on different nights, says that the phantom each time was dressed in white and is without arms or head and his description of the eyes tallies with that given by others. On one of his visits the ghost met a reception from one of the watchmen.  The watchman saw his white form in the doorway leading to a covered bridge between two of the buildings. Drawing his revolver, he proceeded to the door, only to see the ghost moving at an astonishing rate of speed across the bridge. The watchman fired twice at the retreating figure and then went forward to see if any damage had been done. The ghost was not to be found but the bullets were found embedded in the side of the bridge. 

The ghost has been seen in various parts of the shop but mostly in the vicinity of the covered bridge leading across the street from one building to the other and in the door of the engine room.

The employees have leagued together and are determined to get the phantom.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any follow-up stories about this unusual spook.

The Church of Evil

Joan Forman was a member of the Society for Psychical Research who spent much of her life researching and writing about the stranger side of life.  (Her best-known book is probably “The Mask of Time,” an examination of the “time-slip” phenomenon.)  Her 1974 book “Haunted East Anglia” included her personal story of the time she and a friend encountered a force that was undefinable, yet clearly malevolent.

In January 1971, Forman moved from Lincolnshire to Norfolk.  Her busy schedule had left her little time to explore her new surroundings, so when her friend Mary came by for a visit that October, the two women decided to go on a brief road trip, with no particular destination in mind.  They drove the quiet roads west of Norwich until they encountered what appeared to be a perfectly charming village.  (Forman discreetly left the place unnamed in her book.)  It was like something from a picture postcard: quaint cottages, a pretty village green, and a fine old church.  They parked near the green and set out on foot to examine the place.

On closer inspection, both women soon sensed something “off” about the village.  The cottages which had looked so appealing from a distance proved to be oddly empty and seemingly neglected.  The streets were deserted.  They sought to escape the brooding atmosphere by entering the church.

As soon as they entered the church, the pair began to feel that things were going from bad to worse.  Forman wrote, “At first, all I felt was a sense of dampness and cold, then I recognised it as something more.  There was an oppressive quality in the atmosphere, and whatever the oppression was, grew as the seconds ticked by.

“I glanced at Mary.  She had ceased looking at pews and floor inscriptions and was standing stock still in the middle of the nave, a frown of concentration on her face.  Our eyes caught and flicked away.

“She said:  ‘It’s not very pleasant in here, is it?’  It was far from pleasant, and was getting less so every minute.”

The women walked towards the chancel, hoping the ominous atmosphere would dissipate.  Instead, standing in the chancel changed the “sensation of oppression” to “one of active and evil hostility.”

Mary couldn’t take it any longer.  She ran down the aisle and out of the church.  However, Forman’s curiosity managed to overcome her fear.  She continued to stand there, wondering what might happen next.  She sensed that with Mary gone, “the full force of the concentration seemed focused on me.  It was quite impossible to stay in the place, and I hurried out after my friend.”

When they were both outside the church, Mary asked her if she had any idea about what had just happened, but, not knowing anything about the history of the village or the church, Forman could not offer any explanation.  “All we knew was that we had experienced some malevolent force.  The fact that it was a church apparently made no difference to its power.”

The badly-rattled women just wanted to get away from the village as quickly as possible.  However, when they reached their car, they got a new shock: the automobile was covered with “a rash of green spots or dropping, the liquid being of a sticky, glutinous substance.

“Had it been red, one would have concluded it was blood.  The drops ran down the windscreen and windows and were fairly resistant to my attempts to wipe them off.”  They had never seen a substance at all like it.

Although Forman’s research into the village failed to give her any insight into what they had encountered, Mary had a simple, if disquieting, answer. 

“I think it’s witchcraft,” she told Forman.  “The county has a reputation for it.”