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File this one under “Life’s random little oddities.”  The “Miller County Vidette,” May 6, 1875:

A correspondent of the Toledo Blade, writing from Hastings, Michigan, says:

About ten miles south of this place, a farmer, while driving some cows through a deep forest adjoining his fields, unexpectedly came upon an unusually large buck, stretched out upon the ground, and moaning away the last moments of its existence. The animal was evidently very old, and in a sadly emaciated condition, so the fact that the farmer immediately put a bullet through its head should rather be looked upon as an act of compassion than otherwise. Just as he was about to leave he observed a round lump upon the animal's side, which so attracted his attention that he stopped to examine it. Quickly discovering that close under the skin was deposited a round, hard body, he used his knife and brought to light a silver bullet, such as was used in olden times for the inclosure of secret dispatches.

He carried this curiosity to his house, where, after considerable trouble, he succeeded in opening it, and found to his great surprise that it contained a message written in cypher upon paper attenuated to a high degree. Otherwise than that the paper was slightly discolored, not sufficiently, however, to obliterate the characters. Neither the bullet nor what it inclosed bore any evidence of its late surroundings or of the strange vicissitudes through which it might previously have gone. Several men of science have carefully inspected this relic of the past, and are as much at loss to decipher the message as they are to satisfactorily explain when and how the bullet came to be lodged in the side of the buck.

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The following story goes in that bulging file known as “restless ghosts of murder victims.”  The “Ithaca Journal,” August 12, 1922:

Painesville, Ohio, Aug. 12--A "ghost" which farmers living near Paines Hollow say has been haunting them for seven years, is "at rest" today. It disappeared several days ago with the burial of the body of Henry Lipenstick, found in an abandoned well on a farm. Lipenstick, a farm hand, disappeared seven years ago. Since then the farm is said to have had poor crops.

A farm house burned down and the "ghost" was blamed for that. Owner after owner has come and gone. Carl Logies purchased the farm about a year ago. Whenever he went to his barn at night, Logies said today, he would see "a white wraithlike figure" walking about. At times he declared, he followed it with his gun in hand and it always disappeared in the direction of the well. Determined to find out what caused the apparition, Logies cleaned out the old well, which had been filled with stones.

He came upon the body of Lipenstick. Sheriff Spink was called and he and his deputies suspected murder. The next day the sheriff ordered the body buried and now the "ghost"' is gone. Frank Loerman, who owned the farm at the time Lipenstick disappeared, is in Lake County Jail. He was bound over to the grand jury on charges of murder.

The actual evidence against Loerman (his name was most often given as “Lerman” in contemporary accounts) proved to be virtually nonexistent, and he was soon freed.  Lipenstick’s murder was never solved, but the ghost apparently vanished for good.  Perhaps just seeing the body given a decent burial was enough to satisfy his spirit.

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On this blog, I’ve covered what many Fortean experts like to call “Anomalous Falls From the Sky,” but this is a new one for me.  Lousy actors and criminals in the stocks used to get pelted with tomatoes, but it’s a bit unusual for modern-day suburbanites to get such treatment.  The following is from a syndicated 1998 Dave Barry column which summarizes the incident.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the original story, which appeared in the “Calvert County Recorder” on August 27, 1997.

This article states that on Aug. 25, Gloria Daniels, 68, of Lusby, Md., was working in her garden with a young neighbor boy when she was hit by a falling tomato. Then the boy was hit by a tomato. Then tomatoes--more than 30 of them--began raining down all over her yard.

Friends, neighbors and the media were called in to investigate, but nobody could figure out where the tomatoes--which appeared to be falling straight down out of the sky--were coming from. Rob Terry, the reporter who wrote the story for The Recorder, states that, while on the scene, he personally was struck by a tomato, and although he quickly investigated, he could find no evidence that it was hurled by pranksters. 

I called Gloria Daniels recently and asked her if anybody had come up with an explanation for the falling tomatoes, and she said nobody had. 

"It's a mystery," she said. 

I asked her if she had been in touch with anybody at "The X-Files," and she said she'd never heard of it.

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This odd case of a man and his apparent doppelganger appeared in the “Vancouver World,” July 21, 1894:

"There is a mystery now of five years standing in the lumber regions of Northern Pennsylvania," said George W. Culp of the Upper Susquehanna Valley, “the clearing up of which would give a great deal of satisfaction to the people in that region. Five years ago John Shehan came to work as a logger in the west branch. He was from Canada--a very giant of a fellow, with a red scar on his left cheek, the result of an accident in the lumber woods of the Dominion, and one eyetooth missing, He was a surly sort of a person and got into frequent disputes with his fellow workers, as well as with his employer.  After a very heated dispute with the foreman of his camp one day, the foreman discharged the man and he went away, telling one of the loggers that he was going back to Canada.  The next day somе of the men went to town and the postmaster said to one of them, 

‘That man Shehan of yours is a little off ain't he? He came in here yesterday and asked if there was any mail for him. There was a letter. I gave it to him. Hе opened the letter and read it, seemed satisfied with its contents and put it in his pocket and walked out. In less than 20 minutes afterward he came in again and asked me if there was any mail for him. I was considerably surprised, and told him I had given him all there was for him.

‘When?’ said he.

‘Why, a few minutes ago,’ I replied.

‘I haven't been in here for a month!’ he exclaimed.

‘In spite of all my efforts to convince him of his error, he insisted that he had not been in the store and had received no letter, and he went out furious.’

“The day after that the men on the creek were collecting the logs as they came down into the boom, when suddenly a driver startled all of his companions by exclaiming, ‘Here's the dead body of a man!’

"In a moment a half dozen men were at the spot and the body was dragged ashore. As it rolled over on its back the men recognized it as that of John Shehan. Subsequent investigation showed that there must have been some ground for the postmaster's belief as to Shehan's sanity, for the letter was found on the body.  If there had been any doubt as to the identity of the body, the scar on the cheek and a missing eyetooth would have them all at rest. Some were of the opinion that he had committed suicide, while deranged, but the coroner's verdict was that the drowning was accidental. The men gave the body a decent burial and a letter was sent to Shehan's mother in Canada notifying her of her son's sad death. A week later a letter came from her which contained the incredible information that there had to be a mistake about her son's death.  He had arrived home the day before the receipt of the letter announcing his death, and was even then there, alive and well.  This letter was followed by another from Shehan himself to a friend in the camp wanting to know what the report of his drowning meant.  There wasn't a man in the camp but what would have sworn he had seen John Shehan's body buried, and the grave was even opened to see if the body was still there, and it was.  On the strength of this the camp could not be satisfied until someone went to Canada and investigated the alleged living John Shehan there. Shehan's friend, who had known him from a boy, and another man at the camp went to Canada. They returned in a few days and reported that there was no mistake about the man in Canada. He was John Shehan beyond any kind of doubt, alive and in the flesh, as quarrelsome as ever. Then who was John Shehan’s double, whose name must have been John Shehan too, for it was he who inquired for the letter under that name and got it. Neither John Shehan in Canada nor his mother had ever known such a person.  The letter the Shehan double took from the post office was intended for the Canada Shehan, as it was identified by him as from bis mother: but the Shehan double must have expected a letter, too, of similar import, for it had seemed to satisfy him when he read it in the post office. Then who was the drowned man? And where did he come from?  That was an unsolved mystery then, and it is an unsolved mystery yet.”

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This eerie little tale appeared in the “Shamokin News Dispatch,” November 26, 1929:

To have been haunted day and night by the apparition of his wife who passed away just a month ago with the result that he could not sleep and then went into a state of nervous collapse, is believed to have been the cause of the sudden death yesterday of William Waslouksas, 55, of Minersville. 

Since the death of his wife the man repeatedly told members of the family that a ghost was constantly about him and he dreaded to be left alone. He sought companionship of his children all the time and during the past weeks had been unable to sleep except at brief intervals. A daughter, residing with relatives at New. Minersville, called yesterday to visit her father and was apprised by other members of the family that he was still in bed, having failed to get up at his usual hour.

Going to his bedroom the girl was horrified to find him lifeless. Death is believed to have occurred during the night and attributed to fright resultant from the man's hallucination concerning the ghost of his departed wife.

One has to wonder if Mr. Waslouksas had a very uneasy conscience regarding his late wife.

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This account of a particularly lively poltergeist appeared in the “Edmonton Journal,” August 15, 1939:

The Germans have a word for it; so have the Africans of the West Indies. The disciples of Herr Hitler call it "poltergeist"; the children of Mother Africa speak of it in awesome breath as "duppy" or "duppy 'pon de 'ouse.' The German word "poltergeist" is made up of the words "polter" meaning noisy and "geiste" meaning spirits. A "duppy." to the West Indian negro, is the ghost or spirit of one who has departed this life which returns to earth to avenge the wrongs to its corporeal master, But as to whether such uncanny events as are ascribed to "duppy 'pon de 'ouse" or poltergeist are occult, psychic or plain human prankstering, who can tell? Certainly, His Honor the Acting Magistrate who presided over the court in that weird and mysterious case in Grenada on a day in January in 1935 was as frankly mystified as anyone else who had listened to the two days' hearing of evidence. One witness after another including a police detective detailed to the case had corroborated a macabre story of ghostly goings on. The case was typical of many others of its kind in the West Indies.

It had started one night at around seven o'clock when the mother, two daughters and grandchild who lived together in a little house had been startled out of their wits by hearing stones falling on the roof of their home. Surprised and puzzled they had gone to the windows and looked out to see if by chance it had been a joke or the act of some mischievous person. In the meanwhile, queer things were happening inside the house. Entering one of the rooms one of the women was petrified with fear when a table suddenly advanced by itself towards her; as it did so, a chair following suit made two or three jumps in her direction. Elsewhere in the house a heavy iron moved itself along a shelf and a picture or two just left the wall and fell on the floor. All the while the stones continued to fall on the roof until at midnight they stopped as suddenly as they had begun.

The women cowered in fear in the darkness until daylight, the girl claiming to see strange people moving around in the house, who, however, were not visible to the others. The next morning they reported the matter to the police and that night several detectives were sent to investigate. Secreting themselves in the surroundings they waited and watched. They did not have to wait long. Suddenly the quiet of the night was broken with the steady thud of stones falling on the roof of the house.

Evidence was given that the detectives searched the grounds and surroundings but could find no one around. Again the little girl claimed to see the mysterious figure in white. The detectives went to the spot she pointed but could find no one although she claimed the figure was still standing there. The detective relates that one morning he went to the house and removed the stones from the roof and just as he had finished doing so the girl pointed to the roof and said she saw a man sitting there holding a parcel. Looking in the direction he could see no one but going to the spot which, by the way, he had just cleared off, he picked up a parcel which he found contained a script, a bottle containing some liquid and some loose powder which he turned over to the Chief Police.

The detective also states that while was in the house a stone came through the roof without leaving a hole and fell at his feet. The evidence of the detective corroborated practically in every detail that given by the mother, her daughters and grandchild and some of the crowd who had been attracted to the scene by curiosity. To cut a long story short these weird happenings continued nightly for several weeks. The mother relates that to propitiate the spirits she made a 'sacrifice.' This probably was in the form of a salacca, a mixture feast and 'burnt offering' practised by the more primitive and superstitious among the natives of this island. Apparently the spirits refused to be bought off so easily and the stone pelting and other queer doings continued.

Terrified, the occupants took refuge elsewhere visiting their home only in daylight. And then one night the house mysteriously took fire and dissolved away in flames. It was at the ensuing court of enquiry to investigate the source and origin of the fire that the amazing evidence recorded above was produced; and it was no wonder, indeed, that presiding magistrate decided that "no evidence could be found as to the cause or origin of fire."

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This account of a strange figure that seemed to take fashion tips from the Ku Klux Klan appeared in the “Syracuse Post Standard,” December 8, 1901:

CAZENOVIA, Dec. 7.-The usual calm of this quiet village has given way to unwonted excitement.

Strong men do not venture out at night unarmed, and even the most daring urchins have suddenly discovered a new charm in an evening at home. The cause of this state of things is the advent of some apparently unearthly object which wanders at will about the streets frightening men. women and children. The apparition is variously described as ranging in height from five to six feet. By some it is said to have a slight figure, while others, who claim to have good reason to know of what they are talking, declare it to be of much greater dimensions.

It sulks behind hedges, in the shadow of buildings and glides between the lofty elms for which Cazenovia is noted. Its head is described as enclosed in a white hood which terminates in a point which sways backward and forward as the ghost glides over the ground. The figure below the head is robed in a long flowing mantle of snowy whiteness. Several times on its nightly errands it has been seen to display threateningly a long. rusty knife and a revolver which glistens in the moonlight.

Its favorite haunts seem to be about the old skating rink, the Inhigh Valley Station, and Sullivan street. A few nights ago several boys were chased into a house by the strange object, but that same night it also was pursued through a vacant lot by three men, when it suddenly disappeared.

One evening some sash factory hands were wending their way homeward along the railroad tracks, boasting of the heroic deeds they would do if the apparition should appear to them, when on rounding a curve they were surprised by the subject of their conversation.  Without a moment's hesitation they took to their heels and did not once stop for breath until they burst excitedly into their own homes. 

Some insist that it is simply some boy out for a little fun. Others say it is merely a delusion. Still others believe it to be a sick man slightly demented. Another theory is that it is someone having the interest of the village at heart and is trying to do the young lads a service by frightening them off the streets at night.

As far as I can tell, the mystery of this armed-to-the-teeth apparition remained unsolved.

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A ghost that was, you might say, all things to all people was reported in the “Moncton Transcript,” February 1, 1922:

London, Jan. 30-Eastbourne is being troubled, or entertained, by a "ghost" mystery.

A strange apparition has been seen several times gliding along the Crumbles, near the fishermen's huts, and across Fishermen's Green. As the place is within 800 yards of the spot on which Irene Munro was murdered, some of the local residents accept the theory that the spirit of the murdered girl is abroad by night; but one of those who has seen the "ghost" says it was a male figure.

It was first seen in the half-light of a December morning by Mг. Richard Prodger, a fisherman, who says he was walking towards the huts when an apparition, clothed in a long black gown, suddenly rosе from the ground in front of him. As he moved forward the ghostly figure went ahead some distance. When he stopped the ghost stopped also.

"It was wearing a thing like an ulster cape, that reached down to the ground," he says. "It did not walk: it glided along. It wore also a big round hat.

"Three times I stopped, and the ghost stopped, too. It continued in front of me right across Fishermen's Green, and then suddenly sank into the ground and disappeared. I walked to the spot but saw no signs of the ghost. If I had not been loaded down with beat-hooks I should have gone for it."

The same apparition has been seen by Mrs. Goldsmith, caretaker of the Fishermen's Institute, adjoining Fishermen's Green. She says the ghost was white and luminous. She was walking near the huts when the strange figure emerged from between two of them like a white cloud. She stopped, trembling with fright, when, just as suddenly, the apparition disappeared--"vanished into nothing."

Bolder spirits are making nightly visits to the spot in an effort to run the strange visitor to earth.

Mr. Prodger is certain that the figure looked like a man who hanged himself in a house close to the huts, and thinks it is only natural that he should return to his old home at Christmas time.

On the other hand, Mrs. Goldsmith is equally sure that Irene Munro walks The Crumbles every night, while a girl who saw the ghost on her way home one night said she could "see right through it" as it glided along and vanished through the side of a hut.

More superstitious people dare not face the desolate waste after dark.

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This account of an extremely weird cloud (?) appeared in the “Caledonian Mercury,” January 18, 1821:

COSENZA. On the 29th Nov. last, about half-past six in the evening, there suddenly appeared, on the west of the horizon, a luminous body, more brilliant than the moon at its full. This body had the figure of a dragon. After passing with great velocity across the horizon, it changed into a dark and thick cloud. After three or four minutes several violent flashes of lightning burst from the cloud, which, after playing awhile through the air, died away. In the moment of their disappearance a long and loud peal of thunder was heard, and a considerable motion was felt in the air. The cloud then took a triangular figure, and rolling rapidly to the east, disappeared. On the following morning the mountains to the east were found covered with snow. Where it exploded there remained a long via lattea near the cloud.  

My opinion is that it was a meteor composed of the same materials as in lightning: Neither it nor its precipitations fell in direct lines, because their specific gravity was less than that of the air. On the tops of the mountains it was met by winds which dissolved it into snow. 

This luminous body was visible at Naples, but none of its characteristics were observed; in some parts of Calabria and on the part of Sicily opposite, we have heard that its appearances were more singular than those described in the foregoing letter.

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This unnerving account of the mysterious deaths of two sisters appeared in the “Patriot News,” March 24, 1968:

A soft sigh, a stare of horror, a piercing scream and death that as yet is unexplained…that was the fate of Beverly Stephens and her sister, Patricia, who died in almost identical circumstances five years apart. Neither girl uttered a word before she died. Neither gave any sign that anything was wrong before the seizure. The only sound either made was a scream. In both cases, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation failed.

Death came almost instantly. Neither girl had a medical history of serious ailments or emotional upsets. Exhaustive autopsies that included microorganisms tests revealed no clue to what killed either girl. Their death certificates read: "Sudden death, natural." Natural, perhaps, but inexplicable. 

Beverly Stephens died in August, 1963.  She had just stepped from a swimming pool in Porterville, Calif., when she sighed, looked about her with horror, uttered a single, high-pitched scream and collapsed. She was 17. Equally inexplicable was the death of Patricia Stephens Rush, who succumbed in her home in Santa Monica, Calif. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in bed ... then came the sigh, the look of fear, the scream and death.

She was 23. What haunts the girls' parents, Everett and Ruth Stephens, who live in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is the thought that whatever killed the sisters might be a hereditary disorder afflicting the female side of the family. The Stephenses have two other daughters, Barbara, 17, and Diana, 11, in addition to sons Larry and Robert. 

The same thought weighs heavily on Staff Sgt. Robert Rush, an Army combat engineer, who had been home from Vietnam just four days when his wife, Patricia, died, leaving him with two girls, Kristen, 1, and Kimberly, 6. 

The family made appointments with Los Angeles heart specialists for the surviving girls. The parents can shed little light on the deaths of the sisters, and neither does their personal background provide a clue. The family moved to California from St. Louis shortly after World War II. By 1954, Everett Stephens was working as a correctional officer for the state, first in Salinas, then in Porterville. He now works in San Luis Obispo at the California Men's Colony. 

The Stephenses were living in Porterville when Beverly, a high school senior, died. Although the autopsy showed nothing, her parents recall that a week before her fatal seizure, Beverly had survived a similar attack.  This occurred at a dance one warm August night. The girl uttered one short, piercing scream and collapsed. Two registered nurses, who happened to be at the dance, said she wasn't breathing when they began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She regained consciousness in a short time.

Doctors at the Porterville hospital could find nothing wrong with her. Suspecting that she was suffering from fatigue, they sent her home to bed. Beverly didn't remember a thing about what her mother still calls "the fainting spell." 

"She was perfectly normal the next day, and she went to a ball game that night," her mother recalled. "In fact, she went shopping with me the day after that." 

If Beverly had any premonition of death, she gave no sign to her family or friends. She went swimming with her younger brother, Robert, who was 13 at the time, a few days after the incident at the dance. It was Robert, now a high school senior, who described what happened to his sister at Porterville's Sunnyside Pool--the sigh, the terror-stricken look, the scream, and the frantic attempts to revive her. 

Dr. James Sargent, Tulare County autopsy surgeon, said he could find no marks on the body, no heart damage, no brain injury, nothing. Since the couple's other children seemed healthy enough, Beverly's strange death attracted little attention. There wasn't even a story about it in the local paper. All that changed recently when her sister died in almost identical circumstances. Patricia's death freshened coroner Sargent's memory of the original case: 

"Actually, you know as much about what caused the girl to die as we do," he said.  "I'm not satisfied with the explanations that were conjectured at the time. There simply was and is no theory on the subject that makes medical sense." 

One theory was that a sinus reflex had slowed the girl's heart action and ultimately killed her, but Sargent rejected that with the observation that such an explanation is a popular "medical dumping ground." 

Now the conjecture has started all over again. Like Beverly's brother, Patricia's husband, a 10-year army veteran, can't provide a clue even though he, too, was an eyewitness. Rush said he awoke about 6 a.m. to find his wife sitting upright, staring straight ahead and screaming.

He said he had the feeling that the scream was involuntary, that she was unconscious. Rush could detect no pulse. He called for an ambulance and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but it was too late. Patricia was dead when she reached Valley Community Hospital 27 minutes later.

Again there were tests, the autopsy, the funeral. Her badly shaken father said: "They'll never find out what caused it." 

And Dr. John P. Blanchard, the Santa Barbara coroner, as baffled as Dr. Sargent had been, was forced to agree. "In all probability," he said, "the girl's father is right." 

Dr. Blanchard's autopsy report mentioned "pulmonary edema," a sudden accumulation of fluid in the lungs. "But in truth," the doctor said, "we just don't know what happened to her.  It's an unexplained natural death. I don't even have any theories." 

Dr. Blanchard has said he would continue his post mortem studies into Patricia's death and consult the pathologist who sought to find the cause of her sister’s death.  "Obviously, there is a medical reason for both deaths," he said, "but our science isn't sophisticated enough to find the answers."

Doctors at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, where a foundation grant is financing studies of inexplicable sudden death, may look into the cases of the Stephens sisters. Although their experiments have involved laboratory animals and not humans, a team led by Dr. Stewart Woll is convinced that panic can literally switch off a healthy heart and cause sudden death.

Wolf says that many drowning victims are often found without enough water in their lungs to have drowned them, and snake bite victims are known to have succumbed to an amount of venom that ordinarily would not have been fatal. 

"In such cases, the patient just dies of a turned-off heart as a result of panic," he said. Other members of the research team mentioned the possibility that Patricia might have had a particular vivid nightmare that produced death-dealing panic. But that explanation would not account for the death of her younger sister five years earlier at the swimming pool. The Stephenses have about reconciled themselves to the conviction that the deaths of their daughters will remain a mystery.

"Naturally, we're very concerned now about our older daughters, but we're not going to dwell on it. We can't let it ruin our lives," the father said.

I don’t know what happened to the other Stephens girls, but hopefully they were more fortunate than their sisters.  Still, their lives must have been very very uneasy.

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On this blog, we’ve met mysterious Women in Black.  Not to mention the occasional Women in White.  So, who’s up for making the acquaintance of a Welsh Woman in Yellow?  The “Bradford Weekly Telegraph,” February 18, 1905:

A silent woman, shimmering in a bright yellow light, with gleaming eyes and up-lifted knife, is the latest ghostly form to be reported from South Wales. She has taken up her abode in a large building at Rhymney, now used as a Salvation Army barracks. The silent apparition, it is claimed, had been seen by many members of the corps, and, at the request of the Salvationists the local Wesleyan minister remained in the building through Friday night in order to investigate.

He was accompanied by two or three friends and a lady, the Salvationist Army lieutenant, and other Salvationists. The minister certainly did not see anything like what some of the others aver they saw, but he did see in the passage a body of very bright light moving to and fro. The party hoard many things during the night, such as the noisy walking and of a lady's dress rustling. 

“About half-past three," continued the minister, in describing his experiences, "my attention was called by one of the members of the Army to a face in the broken pane of the pantry window. I could not see the form of a face, but I saw something like a body of light.

“The lieutenant declared about that time that she saw apparition in the form of a woman dressed in yellow standing by my side, with a terrible look in its eyes and a knife in its band. I did not see  my undesirable companion. The Salvationist shouted out, ‘Oh, look at the knife!' and then fainted. 

“Coming to herself again, she appeared to follow the apparition with her eyes until they rested on the doorway, then she made a dash towards it, and was prevented by force from descending the cellar. 

“It occurs to me from what I saw,” adds the minister, that some enemy is using undue influence upon the Salvationists,such as hypnotism.  If it were not so, then it must be the hand of God revealing past events to the Salvationists, as well as to the world." 

In a conversation, the lieutenant informed the minister that she had been supernaturally informed that events had taken place in the house years ago, and that they would shortly be revealed to her and another lady Salvationist. The rev. gentleman has advised the Salvationists to close up the building for the present, and suggests that an exhaustive search should be made.

After a number of other sightings of the knife-wielding yellow lady, the Salvationists decided that they wished to gather someplace where life was less exciting, and cleared out of the barracks.  After that, as far as I know, the story disappeared from the newspapers.

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It’s time for some Mystery Blood!  The “Sacramento Bee,” August 16, 1870:

At the Juapa, at the residence of Mr. John Baldwin, one of those phenomena occurred for which it is so difficult to account. On the 15th instant, a shower of blood fell at the dwelling of Mr. B., spattering the doorstep and the surrounding grounds. There had been only an instant before a perfect calm, without a cloud in the horizon, when suddenly a whirlwind arose, scattering everything in all directions, and leaving as the result, large clots of blood in the immediate vicinity of the house. The question arises, where did this blood come from. The circumstances are altogether different from that which occurred a few months ago at Los Nietos, where it was finally agreed that it was made by vultures who had been preying upon dead carcasses upon the plains, and from the ratification of the air, in passing over that place, gave up their gorged repast.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This brief, but particularly unsettling UFO account was given by John Keel in the “Staten Island Advance,” June 29, 1967:

One rainy night in early March, Beau Shertzer of Huntington, W. Va., and a young nurse, were riding in a Red Cross Bloodmobile along Route 2 in the Ohio Valley. Suddenly, according to their story, a bright glare fell over the night-shrouded road. Looking out of his window on the driver's side, Shertzer was astounded to see a huge luminous machine hovering directly overhead and keeping pace with his vehicle.

Two long arm-like projections seemed to come from the object, one on either side of the Bloodmobile, he said later. The nurse became hysterical as Shertzer stepped on the gas, certain that the object was trying to pick up his truck. 

Fortunately for the horrified pair, another truck appeared from the other direction and its approaching headlights seemed to scare the "thing" away. 

Today Beau Shertzer refuses to drive along Route 2, even in the daytime.

I for one don’t blame him.  You have to wonder what would have happened if that other truck hadn't interrupted the proceedings.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

One is continually reminded that Life likes to play little pranks on us.  The “Idaho Statesman,” November 12, 1947:

BOSTON (UP)-Being alive on his 65th birthday Tuesday meant that Allan Sharpe of Boston had lost a $10 bet--a wager he was very pleased to have lost. 

Ten years ago he learned he was suffering from heart disease. The doctor told Sharpe he needed rest--a lot of rest. But Sharpe also needed his job--he told the doctor he would go on working until he reached retirement age. 

"Of course, I'll never live that long,” he said. "I'd have to live until I was 65 to retire and I'll never make it. I'll bet you $10 I'm dead before I'm 65." 

The doctor tried to encourage him: 

"I have a hunch you'll be all right," he told Sharpe, "I'll take that bet." 

So, Tuesday Sharpe was up early. It was a great day. It marked the beginning of his retirement from the Boston Edison Co. 

"First thing I'm going to do is mail the doctor the $10," Sharpe told his wife.  "I'm going right out to do it now."

On the way to the mailbox he dropped in the neighborhood drug store to see his old friend Christopher Cirullo. 

"This is my birthday and I'm still alive," he told the druggist jubilantly. "The doctor won. I'm on my way to pay the debt." 

Sharpe went to the mailbox in front of the drug store and mailed the letter. Then he hurried home, dashed up the three flights of stairs to his apartment and dropped dead.

I wonder if the doctor felt he had won or lost the bet.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

 

Here is just one of those minor little oddities that help keep life on this earth from getting too dull.  The “Boston Globe,” December 17, 1928:

SANTA BARBARA, Calif, Dec 16 (A.P.) -There may be sermons in stones and books in the running brooks, but it was left for a Santa Barbara woman to reveal today that there is a Schubert melody in a pan of boiling vegetables. 

As the hoarse voice of a radio announcer burst through the kitchen steam of a quiet home here, and the strains of "Ave Maria" filtered from a pan of beans simmering on the electric range, the housewife might have been excused had she exhibited a touch of nervousness, because there wasn't a radio set anywhere in the house. 

But she didn't. She approached the range in a scientific spirit and stirred the beans vigorously.  In answer a whole chorus burst into a hunting song, followed by a crooning plantation melody. 

Radio experts admitted they were baffled by the phenomenon, but pointed out that music has been heard in hot air shafts connected with electric furnaces. The bottom of the pan might have acted as a diaphragm and reproduced a radio program picked up inductively by the electric power line, they added.

Believe it or not, on December 30 the “Red Bluff Sentinel” carried a sequel of sorts:

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29.-And a radio program came right out of the lamp! 

Mrs. Wilmot Williams, San Francisco housewife. reported yesterday that she received a radio program from the parchment shade of her bedside lamp when she turned the switch.

An authenticated instance of radio music received from the element of an electric stove was reported in Santa Barbara this month when a housewife there heard a program through a pan of simmering beans.

There was just music in the air in late-1928 California, I guess.