The First Mrs. Bennett

William Bell Scott, Woman Startled by the Ghost of a Girl by a Mirror

Second marriages can be awkward, especially when the ex-spouse has issues with their former partner entering into a new union.  If said ex-spouse happens to be dead, you know your domestic life has well and truly entered Strange Company territory.

In her 1974 book “Haunted East Anglia,” Joan Forman described an unsettling episode in the life of an acquaintance of hers to whom she gave the pseudonym “Mrs. June Bennett.”  At the time our story opens, June had recently married a widower, after which the couple settled into the Wroxam home Mr. Bennett had shared with his first wife.  The late Mrs. Bennett had greatly loved the home and had been very possessive of it--as it happened, she had even died there.  June knew of all this, but felt no superstitious unease at becoming the house’s new mistress.

However, as soon as June took up residence, she noticed odd things going on around her.  She would hear phantom footsteps walking up and down the stairs, and she began noticing strange odors in some of the rooms.  The smells were like nothing she had ever noticed before--she could only describe them to Forman as “like incense, and yet unlike.”

The Bennetts employed a cleaning woman, who had also worked for the first Mrs. B.  She too heard the mysterious footsteps and smelled the strange odors.  However, what really frightened her was that she began hearing an invisible figure calling her name.  It was the voice of the first Mrs. Bennett.  The woman was so unnerved by this that she visited the grave of her late employer and begged to be left alone.  Unfortunately, this had no effect.  Oddly, Mr. Bennett heard and saw nothing unusual.

As unpleasant as all this was, June did not start to become seriously alarmed until she had been living in the house for about a year.  The Bennetts had just arrived back home from a holiday, when June heard both doorbells ring simultaneously.  By this point, she was not particularly surprised to find no one at either door.  A few nights later, June woke up to feel some substance clinging to her face.  She tried brushing it off, to no avail.  She told Forman “It was unlike material, but resembled cobwebs, and was certainly sticky.”  June got up to get something to drink, and by the time she went back to bed, the strange sensation had gone.

The most frightening incident of all came a short time later.  June was putting on makeup in front of the mirror on her dressing table.  Then, the mirror began to mist over.  When she tried to wipe it clean, she saw a reflection of a woman…that was not her.  It was the face of a stranger.  When she later described the woman to her husband, he said it must have been the face of his first wife.  June never used that mirror again.  Soon after this incident, she persuaded her husband to sell the home, and they moved to Norwich.  The home’s new owners reported no unusual occurrences, which seems logical.  The late Mrs. Bennett had no reason to feel jealous of them.

Even after moving away, June was not completely free of her predecessor.  One room in the new house contained furniture that had belonged to the first Mrs. Bennett.  The new cleaner who worked for June told her that this room often smelled strangely:  “Not quite like baking bread, but very near it.”

Pro tip:  If you plan to marry a widow/widower, always clear things with the ghost of the previous spouse first.  It could prevent a lot of uncomfortable situations.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where the Strange Company staff is off on an early summer road trip!

Daniel Webster prosecutes an "extraordinary case."

Is there a planet hidden behind Neptune?

A woman's unsolved disappearance.

A medieval domestic violence case.

"London characters" of the early 20th century.

Exploring some fairy caves.

The actor and the crisis apparition.

A bride returns from the grave.

The earliest known domesticated dogs.

Percy Fawcett and the "lost city of Z."

The landscapes of John Constable.

Why we toss coins in fountains.

The busboy who witnessed RFK's assassination.

Bees are mighty darn smart.

A very ancient whale graveyard.

The efforts to reconcile Britain and the American colonies.

A mysterious castle in Wyoming.

Some facts about the Black Death.

The "strangers burial ground."

Ancient humans may have used fire a lot earlier than we thought.

Instructions for medieval monks.

The "Wizard of Oz" curse.

A "most hateful decision" during WWII.

The many alter egos of Benjamin Franklin.

A "coal cracker" makes good.

A Galileo forgery.

A betting tip from the past.

A terrifying UFO in Costa Rica.

Some medieval warrior women.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a dead wife stirring up trouble.  In the meantime, here's Merle.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This tale of strange goings-on in a seemingly unremarkable apartment was told in the “Western Mail,” March 10, 1927:

An extraordinary story of queer happenings in an unoccupied Fulham (England) flat was told recently by a foreman and two workmen who have been decorating it (declares the "London Daily News").

One of the men mentioned to the foreman some days ago that when working in the flat he received a severe blow on the head, seemingly from nowhere. On the foreman's going to investigate he, too, so he says, heard mysterious thuds, saw a cup wobble along the floor, matches vanish, candles appear from nowhere, and so on.

The climax came when one of the workmen also vanished, and was found lying unconscious on the floor of another room.

The three men all tell the same story, but unfortunately no one else has been inconvenienced in the same way in the flat. Tenants in the neighbouring flats have heard nothing.

Most unfortunately, I was unable to find out any more about this intriguing bit of weirdness.

The Bizarre Murder of Pauline Amsel

"Indian Citizen," November 12. 1914, via Newspapers.com

A frightening and inexplicable tragedy hit the normally peaceful town of Durant, Oklahoma in 1914.  According to Jake and Celia Amsel, a well-to-do, respectable couple, at about one-thirty a.m. on the night of November 11, they were awakened by screams emanating from their home’s outdoor sleeping porch.  They were horrified to recognize the voice as that of their only child, fourteen year old Pauline.  Jake Amsel leaped out of bed, only to be confronted with an intruder.  The man took out a pistol and fired it into the floor, while pleading with Amsel to let him go.  After his gun jammed, the stranger pulled out a small knife, and began to stab at the father.  The two men struggled for several minutes before the stranger broke away and escaped.

While this fight was going on, Pauline walked into the bedroom and announced that she was sick.  While the mother called for help, the girl walked into her own room, and fell onto the floor.

As it happened, Pauline had good reason to be ill.  The entire right side of her throat had been deeply slashed.  She died half an hour later.

What followed was the usual depressing pattern seen in all hopelessly perplexing murders:  Searches were made for the killer, rewards were offered, private detectives hired, the usual suspects hauled in for questioning and quickly released, with no one left any closer to obtaining justice for the victim.  It probably did not help the inquiry that Pauline was buried before an autopsy could be performed.  (Her family was Jewish, compelling them to bury her before sundown.)

Pauline was buried in Corsicana, Texas, where her mother had family ties, and soon afterwards, her parents left Durant for good.

It is rare that such a violent murder provides so little information, or even speculation, to work with.  No valuables in the house appeared touched, so robbery was ruled out as a motive.  It was as if a phantom had picked a house at random, attacked the first person he saw, and disappeared into a permanent fog.  No one could guess who would have wished to harm the girl.

Well, no one guessed in public, at least.  In private, it was evidently a very different matter.  As is always the case with mysterious crimes, the local rumor mill went into overdrive.  Residents of Durant had little difficulty solving Pauline’s murder.  Chillingly, the top suspects were the only witnesses to the crime, the dead girl’s parents.  Melody Amsel-Arieli, an indirect descendant of Pauline's, began to research the case during the 1980s.  She contacted many locals who still had memories of the shocking crime.  According to some, Pauline had fallen in love with a certain boy, and this youthful romance horrified her parents.  The suggestion is that this family conflict somehow inspired her murder.

One hesitates to take such a theory seriously—if it is false, such claims are a cruel disservice to a couple who had surely suffered enough.  However, there is no getting away from it that the story they gave is decidedly odd.  First of all, why would Pauline be outdoors, in the middle of a frigid Oklahoma winter night?  If her throat was slashed so deeply that—according to some accounts—she was nearly decapitated, how could she walk upstairs, announce that she was “sick,” and then go off to her own room to die?  Didn’t the parents notice she was covered in blood?  And if this intruder had a gun, as well as a knife, why didn’t he use the more efficient weapon on the girl?  And why did it take thirty minutes for help to be summoned?  And would a man who had just fatally wounded a girl and was waving around a gun, ask her father to just let him go?  Why, after attacking Pauline, did the intruder go upstairs and do this pointless and ineffectual wrestling with her father, rather than immediately flee?

According to a doctor who examined Pauline’s corpse, her injuries were made with a razor.  So, this intruder came equipped with a gun, a knife, and a razor?  How could it be that blood was found on the sleeping porch and Pauline’s bedroom, but nowhere in between, assuming that she had actually summoned the superhuman strength to walk upstairs with a fatally slashed throat?

I give the Ansels the benefit of the doubt and assume they were incapable of murdering their own daughter.  But there is no question that what we are told about Pauline’s death is disturbingly illogical…which is undoubtedly why it haunts the town of Durant to this day.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

I'm sure our host this week needs no further introduction.  The caption says it all.

A medieval anti-war satire.

Mysterious meat shower?  Or vulture vomit?

The paranormal side of the Cold War.

Ernest Hemingway, boxing, and, uh, salad dressing.

The man who blew up a nuclear power station.

Mystery in a medieval tomb.

More proof that scientists have way too much spare time on their hands.  (Note to self:  When any scientist offers me bread, check the recipe very very carefully.)

An "impossible" sword from the Bronze Age.

A bizarre medical scandal.

The first viral crop circle.

A disappearance in Pennsylvania.

A brief history of Wonder Bread.

A brief history of "hand mnemonics."

George Washington's beer recipe.

A disgrace at sea.

The women of the American Revolution.

WWII's Operation Sea Lion.

Was there a Jack the Strangler?

The 19th century Grand Prix de Paris.

The ship that conquered the Northwest Passage.

Some fatal weddings.

A 12th century liturgical comb.

Mysterious airborne saboteurs in WWI.

One heck of a medieval barn.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the bizarre murder of a teenage girl.  In the meantime, let's dance!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

 

Proof of reincarnation--sort of--appeared in the “Ottawa Citizen," December 16, 1933:

LONDON (by mail).-Here is the man who has "died" three times in three years. He is Mr. Tim Sandell, of Templar street, Camberwell.

On the first occasion the report spread among his friends that he had met with a sudden and mysterious death, and that a post-mortem was to be made. His wife's friends called to console her.

A few months ago he was in hospital. Again the report went round that he had died.  Again the friends called to sympathize.

At five o'clock on a recent Monday morning a policeman knocked at the door to tell Mrs. Sandell that her husband had been knocked down by a motor car at Wandsworth and was dead.

Mr. Sandell answered the knock, and protested that he hadn't and wasn't.  The cause of the mistake was that the dead man had with him a pair of boxing gloves bearing Mr. Sandell's name and one-time address.

Mr. Sandell told the story of his latest "death" to a press representative.

"The police, in their efforts to trace me," he said, "first went to the address in Brixton marked on the gloves, and subsequently to every address at which we have lived since.

"All along the trail the news spread like wildfire that I had been killed.  A friend at Smithfield disgustedly informed me last night that they had whipped round for a wreath for me!

"A man I met that night turned deathly pale when he saw me. He took some time to recover.

"Then I attended the inquest on the still unidentified body.  I shall always think of it as my own inquest."

When Mr. Sandell finally did shuffle off this mortal coil for good and earnest, I assume everyone--including Mr. Sandell--was a bit surprised.

“Deserved A Better Fate”: The Misadventures of the “Great Eastern"

Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern, by Robert Howlett

It would not be overly hyperbolic to describe Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the man who built the Victorian Era.  Brunel was not merely a brilliant engineer, he was a visionary.  His building projects such as massive dockyards, steamships, bridges, tunnels, and the Great Western Railway, were all tangible symbols of his age's optimism, drive, and fervent belief of humanity's limitless potential.

His magnum opus was the “Great Eastern,” one of the most remarkable engineering feats of the 19th century.  Sadly, his greatest achievement proved to be his biggest disaster.  "Great Eastern" is now often alluded to as a “cursed” ship.  While her history was certainly one of the most ill-starred in maritime history, this can largely be attributed to a combination of simple mismanagement, not the occult.  Brunel's creation was (if you will pardon the cliche) ahead of its time.

"Great Eastern" was designed to be not just a ship, but a thing of wonder, a floating palace that would travel the world in grand style.  It could hold up to 4,000 passengers.  The hull was 692 feet long.  Brunel designed a remarkable series of bulkheads that formed 16 watertight compartments, which he believed would make the ship virtually unsinkable.  The monster ship was held together by over three million inch-thick rivets--all of which were driven in by hand.  The ship weighed 22,500 tons, and looked it.  Brunel's "great babe," as he affectionately dubbed it, was six times bigger than any ship that had ever been seen before.  Its vast storage capability meant it was capable of sailing around the world without ever needing to stop to refuel.  (The vessel was originally christened "Leviathan," which would have been almost too appropriate.)

When the "Great Eastern" was finally completed, just launching it into the Thames was itself a herculean effort.  Ordinary chains and barges snapped and sank under the effort.  It took days just to move the ship a few inches.  Finally, on January 31, 1858, "Great Eastern" was afloat.  The effort of moving it the 330 feet down to the water had taken three months and cost an estimated £1,000 a foot.  

The total expenses that went into building the "Great Eastern" were over a million pounds.  The cost sent the company behind the ship into bankruptcy.  Undaunted, Brunel managed to raise more money under a new board of directors.

It was this new ownership that helped doom "Great Eastern."  Brunel had designed the ship for long ocean journeys to India and Australia.  Unfortunately, the new management decided they wanted a quicker return on their investment.  They abandoned these plans in favor of making shorter runs across the North Atlantic.  The day before the ship first set sail, Brunel himself came to give his masterpiece one last inspection.  It proved to be the last act of his illustrious career.  Just after posing for photographs in front of the ship, the 53-year-old engineer suddenly collapsed.  He had suffered a massive stroke which led to his death one week later.

Brunel breathed his last just as word came of the first great disaster to hit the "Great Eastern."  As the ship was making a trial run, through some unaccountable negligence, a steam valve had been left shut, causing an explosion.  Six men died in the accident, and the ship's luxurious grand salon was destroyed.  The planned maiden voyage to America had to be canceled.

While they waited for the ship to be repaired, its owners brought the "Great Eastern" to Holyhead, Wales, where they opened it to paying sightseers.  When the repairs were nearly finished, a massive gale wrenched the ship from its moorings and flung it out to sea.  Although Brunel's bulkheads kept the "Great Eastern" from sinking, by the time it was recovered, the newly-finished salon had been re-demolished.  Weeks later, the ship's captain, the coxswain, and the young son of the chief purser were drowned in a storm.

When news of this latest calamity reached London, the directors of the ship's managing company threw up their hands and resigned.  Word was spreading that Brunel's magnificent vessel was a massive iron-hulled hoodoo.

"Great Eastern's" maiden voyage had been scheduled for June 9, 1860, but various difficulties forced a week's delay.  Three hundred people had bought tickets for the 12-day journey, but most got tired of waiting and booked passage on a Cunard liner instead.  By the time "Great Eastern" finally set sail for New York on June 16, there were only 35 passengers.  They must have felt very small and lonely in the enormous surroundings.  Adding to the increasing aura of failure and unease was the fact that this would be the very first time the ship's new captain had ever crossed the Atlantic.

As a money-saving measure, the cheapest coal had been used to power the ship.  This proved to be yet another mistake.  It damaged the funnel casings, which made the dining room so hot as to be unusable.  Aside from that, the voyage was uneventful (a word one seldom gets to use when discussing the "Great Eastern,") and the ship arrived in New York to something of a hero's welcome.  So great was the interest in the amazing vessel that the owners charged the curious $1 a head to tour the ship.  (This high price so offended Gothamites that they chose to increase the return on their money by vandalizing the ship for souvenirs.)

While awaiting the return to England, a short two-day pleasure trip was planned.  The excursion attracted two thousand passengers, all of whom would very soon regret their decision.  It was only after they set sail that the paying guests learned there were only 300 beds available.  A burst pipe flooded the food supply, leaving nothing to eat but dried chicken, salt beef and biscuits that could have passed for the iron rivets holding the ship together.  And soon, even that wretched fare was gone.  When the passengers went on deck, the five funnels rained soot on them.  And there was no water available for them to clean up.  The first night out, a navigation error left the ship 100 miles off-course.  By the time the nightmare cruise finally ended, there were two thousand more people firmly convinced that the "Great Eastern" was a floating curse.  

New York had had enough of the ship.  When the "Great Eastern" left for Milford Haven with 90 passengers, it virtually slunk out in disgrace.  During the voyage, a screw shaft broke.  As the "Great Eastern" approached the harbor, it fouled the hawser of a small nearby boat, drowning two of its passengers.  As a sort of encore, it then rammed into a frigate.

After all this, the captain, not surprisingly, never wished to set eyes on the "Great Eastern" again.  The third captain had what were probably prudent second thoughts and quit before he had even set foot on the ship.  

The next voyage of the "Great Eastern" carried only 100 passengers.  Hundreds of would-be emigrants were willing to travel on it in steerage, but the board of directors, with remarkable short-sightedness, refused to invest the money to add third-class accommodation to the ship.  They wanted the "Great Eastern" to be solely a luxury cruise ship for rich passengers, ignoring the fact that the enormous vessel would have been uniquely well-suited for transporting large amounts of emigrants.  Instead, they dismissed what would surely have been an immensely lucrative enterprise in favor of trying to lure in the wealthy--most of whom had more alluring travel options than the slow, notoriously unlucky "Great Eastern."  The ship was too cold to cross the ocean during the winter, which only decreased its profitability.  Adding to the its problems was that there were no docks or harbors anywhere in the world fully capable of handling such an overwhelming vessel.

In September 1861 the "Great Eastern" was hit by a hurricane which caused £60,000 worth of damages.  The next year, it hit an uncharted rock that ripped its outer hull.  This latest escapade cost £70,000 to repair.

By 1864, the owners gave up on ever turning the "Great Eastern" into a luxury liner and sold it for £25,000.  It was to be used to lay cable across the ocean floors.  Typically, its first effort in this new role ended in disaster, when an accident caused the cable to slip and sink to the ocean floor.  The cable was never recovered.  However, the "Great Eastern" went on to have a successful run as a cable layer until 1874, when the debut of ships specially designed for cable made the "Great Eastern" obsolete.

The owners just did not know what to do with the ship after that.  They simply dumped it in the harbor at Milford Haven and left it to the rust and the barnacles.  By this point, the ghost of Isambard Brunel was undoubtedly weeping.

In 1886, the "Great Eastern" was sold for £20,000.  The new management towed it to Liverpool (it crashed into a tug along the way.)  It was used as a giant advertising banner.  The ship was plastered with slogans touting local stores and brands of tea. It was as if an aging, once-magnificent movie icon had been reduced to doing late-night infomercials.

The "Great Eastern" was finally sold to metal dealers in 1889.  The ship was so well-built it took 200 men two years to tear it apart.  Brunel's ambitious dream ended her days as a great heap of anonymous scrap parts. 

The final victim of the legendary "Curse of the Great Eastern" turned out to be the ship itself.  Sir Daniel Gooch, one of the engineers who sailed with the ship during its cable-laying days, wrote sadly, "Poor old ship; you deserved a better fate."

Let that be the "Great Eastern's" epitaph.

[Note:  Five people were killed while the "Great Eastern" was being built--not an overly high death rate for such a project--but the real source of the alleged "jinx" on the ship is believed to stem from another tragedy.  During the "Great Eastern's" construction, it is said that a riveter and his apprentice disappeared.  According to this legend, their fate remained a mystery until the ship was dismantled.  Inside the double hull, two skeletons were discovered.  They had accidentally been riveted inside the ship, with the noise of construction drowning out their desperate cries for help.  Popular belief has it that this dreadful incident, which in effect turned the "Great Eastern" into a floating graveyard, was responsible for the long run of bad luck that plagued the ship.

Accounts differ on whether or not this macabre tale is fact or imaginative fiction.  In either case, as I said at the beginning of this post, the true curse of the "Great Eastern" was human stupidity rather than spectral revenge.]

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

It's a family affair!

How Napoleon took Malta.

Is consciousness everything?

Tesla's key to the universe.

The mystery of the Great Sheep Panic.

A whole lot of info about the Bayeux Tapestry.

Some popular medieval swear words.

A 108 year old female soldier.

If your laboratory is haunted, consider bringing a sword to work.

An ancient cosmic massacre.

A shipwreck that was turned into dresses.

The role of a Jewish Caribbean community in the American Revolution.

A very rare King Arthur manuscript is going up for auction.  Don't assume you'll be able to buy it with the spare change in your pocket, though.

The origins of the phrase "cutting corners."

The Great Airship Semi-Hoax.

The unsolved murder of Kate Scharn.

Two dueling steam warships.

The "psychic sensitive" and the apports.

The weather forecast that changed the course of WWII.

A freaking big fence that is one of those "It could only happen in the 1970s" stories.

The link between mushrooms and fairies.

Following the trail of Johnny Appleseed.

Ancient Roman backpacks for the win!

The "repulsive graft" of undertakers.

The strange patterns of Venus.

A serial rapist is killed by his victims.  Right in the courtroom.

The shipwreck at the top of the world.

3I/Atlas might have seeded some of its weirdness into our solar system.

The Year Without a Summer.

A little blue octopus is making scientists very happy.

How water affects our minds.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll sail on an ill-fated ship.  In the meantime, here's some '70s country rock.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

 

So, who’s ready for some walking extraterrestrial stumps?  The “Spokesman Review,” October 18, 1966:

NEWPORT, Ore. (AP)-People in this coastal logging area didn't believe 16-year-old Kathy Reeves when she told them about "the three little stumps that walked across the pasture."

Not only did they move, said Kathy, but they also were of different colors--orange, light blue, white, yellow and "watermelon-colored."

That was six months ago. 

Since then, 25 persons have seen the unidentified flying objects and 15 statements were taped by newsmen. They are from two deputy sheriffs and a chemist for Georgia-Pacific.  There are about 10,000 persons in the communities of Newport, Siletz, Toledo and Camp 12.

The latest reports were Friday.

Kathy's mother didn't believe her at first, either.

"One morning about 2," said Mrs. Reeves, "I woke up and my whole bedroom was a rosy glow so bright you could read a newspaper by it."

The Reeves family then moved out of its home on Pioneer Mountain. The new owner, Delbert Mapes, said he saw the lights before the Reeves moved out, but hasn't seen any since.

The chemist, Max W. Taylor. camped on the Reeves front lawn and saw two bluish lights on the Reeves' house, but he couldn't find the source of the light.

Taylor called Thomas Wayne Price, a deputy sheriff.

"I saw a flying object myself," said Price. "I don't know what it was, but it was orange and it was bigger than any star. I know it wasn't a meteor or a satellite because it was maneuvering. There was a noise like a giant spinning top.  It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck."

Kathy said her house was not surrounded by UFOs until one incident that happened while she and another girl were walking at night. They said they saw what appeared to be a flashlight with a cover over the end.

"I thought it was somebody playing a trick, so I threw a rock at the light," said Kathy. "A lot of big ones went on all around it and we ran home."

As far as I know, it’s still anyone’s guess what the heck was going on.

The Cursed Chest of Cornwall

"Western Morning News," January 8, 1949, via Newspapers.com

In late 1948, Trevor Ley of Stanbury Manor, Morwenstow, bought an old hand-carved, cedarwood chest from a Cornwall antique shop.  The woman who owned the shop let him have the chest for a low price, explaining that since she had acquired it, anything placed on the walls kept falling to the ground.  She thought that “some sort of ghost seemed to be attached to it.”

This purchase soon led Trevor to question his life choices.  As the shop owner had warned, wherever the chest was placed, the most damnable--literally--things began happening.  Six antique shotguns that were securely fastened to the wall suddenly smashed to the floor, even though the nails and wires that had held them were still intact.  A heavy painting leaped two feet from the wall, hitting Trevor on the head.  Two other large pictures which had been “hanging safely for generations” also propelled themselves into the center of the room.  In another bedroom, a painting did something even weirder--it somehow was pushed backwards through the paneling.  An electric light bulb which had been placed on a window sill hurled against the wall on the opposite side of the room.  

And so on.  The Leys were naturally curious why their ghost--which they had nicknamed “Old George”--had attached itself to the chest, but Trevor had a healthy distrust for self-proclaimed “mediums” and declined most of their offers to contact their “spirit.”

In January 1949, Trevor brought in the local vicar, the Rev. K. Rees, to try to exorcise “George.”  When Rees examined the chest, the men were bemused to find what appeared to be bloodstains on the object.  The red stains  were on carved figures on the outside of the chest.  One was on the arm of a woman holding a corpse. The other, three feet away, was on the body of a headless man.  Rees made the cheery remark that "The chest would make an ideal hiding-place for a body.”  When asked about conducting an exorcism, Rees demurred.  "I'm not well versed in exorcising,” he explained.  “I must look it up."

Finally, the Leys brought in a spiritualist from London to rid them of their poltergeist.  These efforts were apparently successful, as “George” subsequently ceased to bother them.  However, just to be on the safe side, the Leys put the now-famous chest up for auction.  This failed to find a buyer, and the chest was withdrawn from sale.  I have been unable to learn of its subsequent history.

Despite his efforts to trace the chest’s history, Trevor never learned for sure why the chest came to be haunted, but he did uncover one wonderfully M.R. James-ish clue.  He wrote to a psychic researcher named William H, Gilroy that he had received a letter from a Cornish curate who had recognized the chest from its photos in the newspapers.  

This curate told Trevor that “many years ago there were two sisters living in the Manor House, Newlyn, (he gave their names but I cannot find his letter at the moment, but will look it up if it is of interest to you). They had in their house quite a collection of antiques and among them was this chest which they kept in their bedroom. One time, after having been away for a few days, they returned late one night and being rather tired, placed their heavy baggage on the chest rather than unpack at such a late hour. Early the next morning their attention was drawn to the chest and as they went over to it the lid, although weighted down by the heavy baggage, slowly opened and they looked inside. What they saw they would never reveal, but it was so horrible that they were both struck stone deaf; and although they lived to an old age they never got their hearing back.

“When they died the house and furniture were sold at auction and all trace of the chest was lost until it turned up in the antique shop where I purchased it.”

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!

And we tip our hats to our hosts for this week!

Who the hell was Christopher Columbus?

Henry I's most "notorious" daughter.

The world's second-tallest man.

The loneliness of being a French POW in Britain.

Heads up, Egypt's prehistory is getting rewritten again.

Aboriginals and a dingo's well-tended grave.

A man's rant against floral funerals.

The woman who saved 13th century England.

A newly-discovered document dealing with victims of the Black Death.

Przybylski’s Star, weird stellar object and epic tongue-twister.

Science may be able to "erase" bad memories, but you might not want to.

Since the world has been longing for a scientific analysis of how geologists are portrayed by the film industry, here ya go.

The puzzle of Turkey's ancient underground city.

A very mysterious and very creepy disease.

Bermuda turns out to be a very strange island.

The man who was on the Royal Navy list for nearly 100 years.

A talented counterfeiter.

A canine hero of WWI.

A mysterious murder in Mutton Town.

British volunteers in WWI Italy.

Some 13th century plates and bowls.

A popular Georgian-era medicine.

Beluga whales are smarter than we thought.  I suspect that holds true for all animals.

People in the Andes are aces when it comes to digesting potatoes.

An unsolved murder in the Tenderloin.

A "solution" to the "Mary Celeste" mystery.  (Not that it's a new idea; I remember reading about this theory years ago.)

The mummified cat of Chetham's Library.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the dangers of buying an antique chest.  In the meantime, here's a remarkable video which explains why I will never never never never never ever even think about going anywhere near Mount Everest.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I put this missing-persons story into the “mini mysteries” file, due to the unsettling lack of information surrounding the case.  The “Miami Herald,” October 6, 1985:

You could set your clock by Irene Matheson.

Since Perrine Elementary School opened six years ago, Matheson was always the first person to arrive. She unlocked the cafeteria door at 5:45 a.m., let in the cook at 5:50 a.m. and began baking the rolls, breads, cakes and pies that feed students and faculty at five South Dade schools.

"She was never late--not once," cafeteria manager Michelle Perkins said Friday. "That's why we know something is terribly, terribly wrong."

After hearing the concern of co-workers, Metro-Dade Sgt. Carl Baaske agreed and began an immediate search when Matheson, 69, did not show up for work Tuesday morning.

Police usually will not take missing persons reports until the person missing has been gone for 48 hours. This seemed different, Baaske said. 

"It's as though she dropped off the earth," Baaske said Thursday night. "With two million people in Dade County, someone should have seen her or her car by now."

Police initiated a statewide hospital search for Matheson and her 1977 tan Honda station wagon. Officers in police helicopters looked in the many South Dade canals. They were joined by Matheson's son-in-law Tony Klopp.

Klopp, an Eastern Air Lines pilot, rented two light planes for two days so he and a friend could check out the coastline, junk yards, dumps and fields. Her daughter, Cindy Klopp, spends her days driving around looking for her mother's car or sitting by the telephone, waiting for a call.

"I pray she's had a stroke or just driving around," Klopp said. Her mother is in good health with no history of mental illness.

Matheson was last seen at 11 p.m. Monday. Klopp thinks whatever happened to her mother occurred after she left for work Tuesday. The condominium near The Falls where Matheson lives was in perfect order.

"Her coffee cup and a spoon were in the sink," Klopp said, sorting through snapshots of her mother taken at family parties. "Throw pillows were put up so the puppy wouldn't get them and the door was double-locked," she said.

Police have pieced together the hours before Matheson was reported missing from information gathered from family, friends and neighbors. Grandson Scott Klopp was the last family member to see Matheson. She drove the 12-year-old from his Redland home to the Perrine Khoury League baseball field at Franjo and Old Cutler roads.

A follow-up story appeared in the “Miami News” on December 5:

The discovery--almost by coincidence--last night of the car owned by a Kendall woman who has been missing more than two months is the first significant clue police have had in weeks, but may not be helpful if the woman does not want to be found, Metro police said.

"She's an older woman, and it could be a case that she might have gone senile for some reason and doesn't want to come home," said Metro Sgt. Ernest Pruitt, of the department's missing persons unit. "I've seen cases like that before."

Irene Matheson's 1977 tan Honda was found backed into a parking space in an apartment complex at 7941 S.W. 104th St. Police learned the car belonged to Matheson, a 69-year-old baker for the Dade County school system, while running a license plate check on the car and another nearby, Pruitt said.

The two parked cars were struck by a driver who then quickly fled the scene, he said. A resident of the complex reported the hit-and-run accident--in which no one was injured--and it was only while police were investigating the accident that they learned the slightly damaged Honda belonged to the missing woman, Pruitt said.

Pruitt said residents told police that the car had been parked in the space for about a week and had been seen parked in other spaces for about a month.

Police dusted the car for fingerprints and searched it before towing it to the station where it will be vacuumed and examined by laboratory technicians, Pruitt said.  A sticker in a panel of the car's door indicated the vehicle was serviced at a station on Oct. 1, the day she was reported missing.  The sticker also indicated how many miles the car had been driven since the time of servicing.  Since then, the car had been driven about 99 miles, Pruitt said.

Apparently the last driver of the car backed the vehicle into the parking space and against a fence in order to make it more difficult to read the license tag, Pruitt said.

Matheson was last seen on the night of Sept. 30. Her relatives believe she dressed for work at Perrine Elementary School the next morning, and left in her Honda from her home at Heatherwalk Condominium complex--a few miles from where her car was found.

The discovery last night was the first break in the case. "We worked this case continuously for the first two weeks," Pruitt said. "We searched the area around the canal, had the Water and Sewer Authority people search the canals around the house in case she may have accidentally driven into one, conducted surveillances of the area around her house, conducted aerial searches of the area using heat-sensitive equipment in case we could find a body. And we came up with nothing.”

The discovery of Matheson’s car seems to have done exactly nothing to indicate the whereabouts of Irene herself.  To date, the mystery of her disappearance remains unsolved.

The Ghost Sausage of Devon

This brief, but delightfully offbeat “ghost story” (for lack of a better term) was related by author, paranormal researcher, and photographer J.P.J. Chapman:

Many years ago my late father-in-law rented a large farm near Bampton in North Devon.  The farm buildings and the dwelling house were situated half way up a steep hill overlooking the River Exe.  During a warm summer it was quite nice but with a lingering threat of bitter winds and snow in winter.

There was a lane going from the farm to a large moor which was quite 300 feet higher than the tillage.  Now, it is well known that large open spaces, devoid of any useful vegetation and situated atop a high hill, frequently possess a bad reputation.  Of a summer evening my wife and I frequently took a walk to the moor.  It commanded a wonderful view, while the sunsets were a sight to behold.

The lane ended at a gate which led into this moor.  Quite a while before the events to be related my wife and I frequently remarked that it was an eerie spot and the sooner passed the better.  Personally, I never gave it much thought for, being a “country lad,” I knew of many such places which were not nice--and that was all that could be said.

However, things proved otherwise.  My wife and her sisters rode a lot and took turns exercising the horses.  Sometimes they went out together.  I can still see them up on the moor, putting the horses into a gallop and thoroughly enjoying the wild ride.

On one occasion one of the girls was asked by her father to go on the moor to see if some cattle had strayed.  It was in the autumn and, the sun having set, it would soon be dark.  My wife’s sister decided to ride up.  Having seen that all was well she was just about to leave the moor, through the gate which she had left open, when the horse suddenly shied.  Nothing would induce it to pass through the gate.  There was no alternative route except by a long detour, so go through they must.

After several attempts she decided to dismount and lead the horse through.  This time as they reached the gate a curious luminous shape could be seen drifting nearby.  It was like an elongated sausage, with baleful eyes.  The whole thing seemed to be pulsating, from dim to bright.  It was in a vertical position except for a sideways, wavering movement.  To say the least, the girl was frightened but made up her mind to face it.

Placing herself between what-ever-it-was and the horse she coaxed the animal through.  When the horse was half way it broke loose and galloped down the lane for about 50 yards where it stopped and waited.

There were several curious facts concerning this particular haunting.  It took place only at dusk--no other time.  No other animals, except horses--any horse--were affected.  But here again was a most remarkable fact.  It had to be a horse and a human.  If there was not this combination nothing happened.  The “Ghost Sausage” as I dubbed it, seemed anchored to one spot, its movements restricted as related.  Several times I visited the place but, while noticing there was something there, never could decide what.  The ghost seemed quite harmless.  I got the impression that it was neither good nor bad.  It was just some form of a ghost--nothing more.

There was a big disused quarry nearby; possibly some earth spirit had been released.  My sister-in-law stated it was a greenish colour, about a foot across and five feet high.

This is the end of my story.  If the present residents of the farm ever see it, I don’t know, as we have not been near the place for the last 35 years or more.

What it was, how it originated, I do not know.  I never could find out.  Your answer will be as good as mine!

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the latest Link Dump!

This week, we are honored to be visited by some genuine royalty.

That time someone stole 80,000 pounds of butter.

The complicated medieval legal term, "raptus."

The Roman Woman of Spitalfields.

How medieval Europeans ate before contact with the Americas.

You never know what you'll find in medieval latrines.  Other than the obvious, of course.

You never know what you'll find in a field.

You never know what you'll find in your kitchen.

You never know what you'll find in a Luftwaffe bathroom.

The Surgeons' Hall Riot.

Neanderthal dentistry.

The Prohibition-era "medicine" that left people paralyzed.

A Philadelphia Loyalist during the American Revolution.

The sinking of the Empress of Ireland.

The man who gate-crashed his own wake, which seems a bit impolite.

The newest research about Mary Boleyn.

Why is 3/I Atlas weird?  Because it came from a weird neighborhood.

Speaking of weird, God only knows what's lurking in our oceans.

By the way, lightning's pretty weird, too.

The CIA and the Sphinx.

Ted Turner and the Tasmanian Tiger.

Inventions that were behind their time.

90 years ago, a weird creature was found off the west coast of Canada.  We still don't know what it was.

The man who went from making razors to making a metropolis.  (Spoiler: He had more luck with the razors.)

The mystery of the "copper scroll."

The (probable) murder of "Diamond Flossie."

If you've been longing to know what outer space smells like--and who hasn't?--read on.

What might be the world's oldest arrowheads.

The "lost years" of Samuel Johnson.

A particularly grim murder case.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a ghostly sausage.  No, really.  In the meantime, here's some Vivaldi.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Here is yet another example of that popular supernatural staple, “a vision of murder.”  The “New Orleans States,” February 19, 1911:

SYDNEY, Feb. 18. — A most mysterious story comes from Perth, West Australia. The mysterious disappearance of a girl named Ethel Harris led a representative of a Perth newspaper to make an investigation, which had sensational results.

He communicated his discoveries to the police and the developments became still more remarkable. The story is briefly as follows: Some four or five years previously a man who called himself Wilson went through some kind of official ceremony with Ethel Harris, whereby she thought she was married to him. A little time ago, however, she disappeared, and some suspicion was aroused. Her father made inquiries of Wilson, who was now working at a foundry under the name of Smart, and was told by the "husband" that his daughter had gone to Adelaide on a holiday, and was well and happy. Then followed investigations which found that Wilson, alias Smart, had not really married Ethel Harris at all.

It was found also that under the name of Smythe he had shortly before married a girl named Mary Jane Pemberthy, and that he had a wife living in Victoria, and an adult son in Perth. He was arrested on a charge of bigamy, and inquiries into the fate of Ethel Harris were pursued. The strangest circumstance in the whole strange story, however, is that Miss Pemberthy told of a vision she had of an apparition in the bathroom of the house in which she was living with Wilson, or Smart. She declared that she saw the form of a woman struggling in the bath, and gave a minute description of the vision, which appeared to her on two occasions. But the police obtained several more tangible clews to the fate of the vanished girl, with the help of the marvelously clever black trackers, and eventually excavations were made under an old disused smithy in the neighborhood.

The result of the exploration was the discovery of a human body, which was strongly presumed to be that of the unfortunate girl.

At the time the message was sent Arthur William Smart had been sentenced to two years for bigamy. Further developments in the case will be awaited with great interest.

Wilson--or Smart, or Smythe, or whatever you care to call the creep--was eventually found guilty of Harris’ murder, and was accordingly executed.

The Fatal Honeymoon

Our story began like a fairy tale:  At a New York City social gathering, a handsome, suave young Chinese lawyer meets the pretty, cultured daughter of a wealthy merchant prince from Macao, and the pair fall in love virtually at first sight.  Seven months later, in May 1928, the two are married, and go off on a romantic honeymoon trip, after which they live happily ever after…

Well, scratch that last part.

After they were wed, Chung Yi Miao and his bride, Wai Sheung Siu, traveled to Montreal, where they took an ocean liner to Glasgow.  After seeing the sights in Scotland, they headed for London, prefaced by a side trip to the Lake District.

The newlyweds checked into the Borrowdale Gates hotel at Grange-in-Borrowdale, in Cumbria, on June 18, 1928.  Chinese tourists were at the time a rarity in the area, so the young couple attracted a good deal of attention, especially since the new Mrs. Miao was fond of bedecking herself with striking and extremely costly jewelry of pearls, jade, and gold.  The pair seemed to be as happy and affectionate as you would hope to see from any honeymooners.

The day after their arrival at the hotel, the couple had lunch, and then went out arm-in-arm for a walk to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings.  Around 4 p.m., Chung returned to the hotel alone.  When a staffer asked if he wanted to wait for his wife before having tea, he said “no.”  Chung explained that she had gone shopping, and wouldn’t return until six.

6 p.m. came and went.  No Wai.  At 7 p.m., Chung dined alone, seemingly completely unconcerned about his bride’s absence.  Two hours later, the hotel’s manager, a Miss Crossley, asked him about Wai’s non-arrival.  He said calmly that he had a slight cold, and so Wai had gone to Keswick to buy him some medicine and warmer clothes for herself.  At 10:30, Chung casually asked a maid, “What do you think we ought to do?  Should we inform the police?”  Instead, he went to bed.  

Meanwhile, around 7:30 that evening, a farmer named Thomas Wilson was walking near a river about a mile outside of Grange.  He saw a woman wearing a fur coat sleeping--at least, that’s what he thought she was doing--under an open umbrella.  Odd, that.  When he mentioned this to friends, one of them, a police detective who was vacationing in Grange, decided to turn his leisure time into a busman’s holiday, and went to see the woman for himself.

The “sleeping” woman proved to be the missing Mrs. Miao, quite dead.  She had been strangled with a piece of string and two lengths of cord from a window blind.  (The cord was established to be identical to those used at the Borrowdale.)  She had also been badly beaten around the head and face.  The expensive jewelry she had been wearing was gone, and the murderer had arranged her legs and clothing in a way to suggest that she had been raped, but the autopsy found no sign of sexual assault.

Despite these attempts to make Wai look like a victim of some random footpad, investigators had no trouble focusing on one particular suspect.  By 11 p.m., the dead woman’s husband received a visit from the police.  When told only that his wife was dead--without anyone relating the circumstances of her death--Chung immediately exclaimed, “It’s terrible--my wife assaulted, robbed, murdered!”  He continued to behave in a strange manner while being questioned by detectives--for some reason, he was anxious to know whether his wife was still wearing “knickers” when she was found.

Chung’s trial, which was held at Carlisle Assizes, was relatively brief and lacking in drama.  The young lawyer insisted he was innocent--that his wife was the victim of Chinese jewel thieves.  (This argument was considerably weakened after the jewels Wai had been wearing were found hidden in Chung’s luggage.  However, Chung claimed that Wai herself had put the jewelry there, for safety.)  The defense pointed to the fact that shortly before the murder, locals had observed two unknown Chinese men around Grange. These men were seen getting on a train for parts unknown the morning after the murder.  Chung claimed that these men had been following him and his bride ever since they were in Glasgow.  He also stated that under Chinese law, Wai’s considerable property reverted to her family, leaving him with no financial reason to want her dead.  His seemingly incriminating remarks to police were, he said, a misinterpretation of his imperfect English.

The prosecution did not bother to offer a motive for the murder--their case was essentially, “We don’t know why he did it, but we know he did it.”  The case against him was largely circumstantial, but such evidence can be remarkably convincing.  The jury had little difficulty delivering a guilty verdict, and Chung was accordingly hanged at Strangeways, Manchester, on December 6, 1928.  He maintained his innocence to the end, bitterly complaining about the police “not trying to trace the real murderer.”

Crime historians generally agree that the jury made the right decision.  What makes this case unique is that no one has ever been able to find a reason why this educated, sophisticated young man, who appeared to have a golden future ahead of him, threw it all away by committing the cold-blooded murder of his new wife.  (And in a remarkably bungling fashion, at that.)  This gaping hole at the center of the story has led to a number of possible theories, each more baroque than the last.  It has been pointed out that soon after the wedding, Wai went to a female doctor with a very intimate problem: she was physically unable to consummate her marriage.  Did this lead Chung to kill his bride in a burst of sexual frustration?  Alas for this proposal, it is also known that on May 25, Wai had minor surgery which presumably resolved the issue.

A newspaper article of questionable validity claimed that after discovering that his wife would never be able to bear children, Chung felt he had no choice but to murder Wai so he could marry someone who could perpetuate his bloodline.  It seems most likely that this story emerged from some reporter’s over-imaginative fancy.

Did the Chinese tongs have something to do with the murder?  At the time of Chung’s trial, there was a rumor afloat that he had belonged to the Chapa tong, which led to the suggestion that the tong had ordered him to marry and then murder Wai, in order to gain her wealth for the secret society’s benefit.

Or did the tong instruct Chung to kill Wai out of some revenge plot against her rich and powerful family?  Or perhaps--just perhaps--did some Chinese tong murder Wai themselves, meaning that Chung was guilty of nothing more than possible prior knowledge of the deed?  After all, no one has ever been able to explain the presence of those two unknown Chinese men in Grange…

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!  Our host for this week is the very handsome mascot of HMS Barham!

The herbalist of Spitalfields.

The "Exposition Universelle" of Paris.

The King of Switzerland.

Cleopatra's mysterious death.

A shipwreck from WWI has just been discovered.

The real "Lord of the Flies" was nothing like the novel.  Thankfully.

The laughter epidemic of 1962.

Ancient Roman nanotechnology.

The life of the "American Dwarf."

Private jets and the apocalypse.

French POWs in Britain.

A disappearing cat in 1894.

The Southampton Plot of 1415.

A Victorian tale of a mother's grave.

China's Cold Food Festival.

The still-mysterious Great Pearl Robbery.

The still-mysterious Min Min Lights.

A murder and a questionable "guilty" verdict.

The madcap theory that "ghosts" are just infrasound.  Look, kids, my house is haunted, and I can assure you, it ain't infrasound.

A 19th century murder investigation.

That's it for this week!  See you next week, when we'll look at the tragic--and mysterious--end to a honeymoon.  In the meantime, here's Bob Seger: