Where in the World is the Mad Hatter?

"New York Daily News," June 24, 1962, via Newspapers.com

Harriet Elizabeth Benton had what most people would consider to be a pretty sweet life.  At the age of only 22, the Ogsdenburg, New York, native had a plum job in a Boston advertising firm, where she was considered such a promising employee that she had already been given two raises.  The future looked exceptionally bright for the independent, free-spirited girl who liked to call herself “The Mad Hatter.”

However, Harriet was not quite ready to settle into a prosperous, if somewhat stuffy, career.  Like most people her age, she wanted one last adventure before settling down.  In short, she wanted to see the world while she was still free to do so on her own terms.  Against the wishes of her parents--who were understandably uneasy about their young daughter traveling abroad on her own--Harriet took a leave of absence from her agency.  On July 29, 1959, she and a German-born friend, Freda von Ostrow, sailed for England on the liner “New York.”  Harriet had sold her sports car to help finance the trip, but it’s uncertain how much money she had with her.  It could have been anywhere between $400-$1000.

In England, the two young women visited Harriet’s aunt, and then took a tour of Freda’s native land.  Every week or so, Harriet wrote home, assuring her parents that all was well.  Freda remained in Germany, while Harriet bought a motor scooter to take her through France, Italy, and Spain.  She was supposed to meet another friend, Pat Grant, in Gibraltar on September 24, but these plans had to be delayed.  The scooter turned out to be a lemon that was always breaking down.  Around this time, Harriet wrote to someone at her ad agency that she was contemplating shipping the scooter to India, a country she had always wanted to visit.  She felt the atmosphere there would foster her biggest ambition--to become a “great writer.”

On September 29, Pat Grant, who was then in Madrid, received a telegram from Harriet suggesting they meet in Gibraltar for a trip to Morocco.  Pat tried calling the hostel where Harriet was staying, but the place had no phone.  The following day, Harriet phoned her, telling Pat that she was changing her plans slightly.  She had made the acquaintance of two British women, as well as a young man named Colin John Gallon.  They were all going to sail to Casablanca in Gallon’s yacht, “Raider.”  Harriet said she would spend a couple of days in Morocco, then visit Pat in Madrid.

The next we know of Harriet’s movements was on October 6, when she wrote to Pat, “It’s foolish of me to want to go half-way around the world with a man I met yesterday--but we’re sailing tomorrow.  I’ve had a taste of Morocco.  It was thrilling. I’m going back, then on to the West Indies.”  Two days later, Harriet sent a postcard to her parents.  She told them she had her “sea legs” back, and was now first mate on the Raider.  She said she was going to Casablanca, then to the Canaries.  If Gallon agreed, she would sail with him to the West Indies and through the Panama Canal.  She added that they should write to her in care of the Yacht Club at Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands.  That same day, she wrote to a boyfriend, a GI named James Davis, “Will give you a new address as soon as I know of a port far enough ahead.  Have left my scooter to the apes in Gibraltar, and am off on a yacht tomorrow to Casablanca.  If my sea legs hold up, the captain may keep me on to the West Indies.  Then Tahiti, and at last the Orient.  Looks as if I got my wish.  Always, Hat.”  All these communications indicated that “Hat” was still having the time of her life.

This was the last her parents heard from Harriet.  When Thanksgiving passed with no further word from their daughter, the Bentons began to panic.  On December 9, Harriet’s father Edward contacted his congressman, Clarence E. Wilburn, for help in finding her.  Wilburn alerted the State Department and--since Harriet was last known to be on a ship--the U.S. Navy.

Authorities learned that the Raider left Gibraltar sometime between October 7-9.  Although a dark-haired girl had been seen on the yacht, the captain had “clearly discouraged” anyone else from coming aboard his ship, and insisted that he was sailing alone.  

Then, it looked like the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance might have been solved, and in the worst possible way.  The Navy learned that the body of a young American woman had been found dumped on a street in a suburb of Tangier.  She had been beaten and strangled to death.  Authorities suspected the victim was either Harriet or another young American tourist who had gone missing, 19 year old Barbara Helen Mueller of New York.  A young British man, William Edward Moore, was being held by police for questioning.  The State Department sent the victim’s dental information back to the U.S.  However, the dentists for the Mueller and Benton families were unable to make any certain identification.

As it turned out, the dental records were unnecessary.  Moore finally decided to talk.  He led police to where he had hidden the purse of the girl he had murdered.  Inside was the passport of Barbara Mueller.  Moore said that while Barbara was visiting Tangier, the two of them became romantically involved.  When she told him that she was leaving Morocco--and him--he became so angry that he killed her.  (Moore was eventually found guilty of unpremeditated murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.)

The riddle of one missing young woman had finally been solved.  But what about the other?

The little we know about Harriet’s time in Casablanca suggests that she and Colin Gallon had a falling-out.  Soon after their arrival, Colin told the skipper of another ship, Peter Tangvald, that he very much wanted to make the rest of his voyage alone.  Tangvald later told detectives that “The girl asked if she could switch to my boat when we reached Las Palmas.”  He apparently declined.

At this point, it was learned that James Davis had received an additional postcard from Harriet.  It had been sent from Casablanca on October 14.  It was ominously different in tone from her earlier, exuberant notes.  Harriet now sounded unhappy, perhaps even frightened.  She asked Davis to write to her “immediately” via the Yacht Club in Las Palmas, even though “It looks as if I might be there forever.”  Harriet wrote, “I have to leave the yacht there (Las Palmas) and God knows what I am going to do.  My money’s short.  I’ll probably just try and hitch another ride.”  She added a curiously contradictory postscript: “Sailing is wonderful and worth the hell of being shanhied [it is thought she misspelled “shanghaied.”]  The postcard also had what appeared to be the word “help” written on one side.  Davis, however, dismissed that, giving the odd explanation that Harriet often wrote to him using the word “yelp.”  (Unfortunately, Davis never clarified that remark.)

This disturbing postcard proved to be the last word anyone received from Harriet Benton.  It was established that the Raider arrived in Casablanca on October 10, and left five days later for the Canary Islands, but no one knew if Harriet left with it.  Colin Gallon and the Raider were also never seen again, leading to the theory that the Raider sank during the voyage, taking both Harriet and Colin down with it.  However, there is no record of the yacht sending a distress signal, and no wreckage from the Raider was ever found, which caused the Coast Guard to dismiss the idea.  

The last news item I could find about the mystery was a brief story from 1964.  It reported that Harriet's whereabouts remained unknown, but her parents were still wistfully hoping that she was alive somewhere and would eventually come home.  There is nothing to indicate that she ever did.

Considering that no one knows where or when Harriet disappeared, it is anyone’s guess what happened to her.  Did her relationship with the enigmatic Colin Gallon suddenly turn ugly--so ugly that he murdered her, threw the body overboard, and fled?   Or did she “hitch another ride” with the wrong people?  Or--as Peter Tangvald believed--did Harriet sail off on the Raider, only to find a watery grave when the yacht was swamped by huge waves somewhere on the 700-mile journey between Casablanca and Las Palmas?

All things considered, that last scenario is probably the least awful possibility.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Formal attire is not required, but is greatly encouraged.

Watch out for the Hooded Ones!

A very bad detective.

Topiary memorials to a cat.  I love these.

This week in Russian Weird travels to Siberia's Whale Bone Alley.

A guide to 19th century small talk.

The Dublin Railway Murder.

The world's remotest hotel.

New York City's smoggiest Thanksgiving.

A medieval alchemist's secret code.

A woman's double tragedy.

The strange death of a military policeman.

A look at the Nasca.

The Red Devil of Virginia.

The link between Jerusalem's Western Wall and Jack the Ripper.

Speaking of Jack, here are some lesser-known Ripper candidates.

When you're named "Corney Grain," you really have no choice but to become a comedian.

The academic study of Robin Hood.

A pilot's bizarre crash.

A very efficient undertaker.

Britain's war memorials.

A pedigree Fire Dog.

Regency Era stagecoach travel.

Killer drinking cups and nightmare doughnuts.

A cosmonaut's fatal flight.

A medieval gold Bible.

Traditional medicine strikes again!

Da Vinci's ostrich egg globe.

Meet Doug the Potato.

A "Scottish Pompeii."

The dogs of WWI.

Death by corset.

Were "werewolves" actually serial killers?

Mapping the real locations of fictional places.

A cursed tomb that isn't Tut's.

Old London at night.

Victorian matrimonial ads.

India's fireworks for Queen Victoria.

The story behind a portrait of a lady in green.

WWI's greatest sea battle.

19th century health advice for travelers.

A mysterious archaeological site in Syria.

The multiphone: the first music streaming system.

King Edward IV's first Parliament.

The Cocoanut Grove Fire.

The history of "with a grain of salt."

The hidden world of slate mines.

A haunted cabin in Arizona.

Forgotten kingdoms in Saudi Arabia.

A wonderfully catty bookstore.

Ancient scented sorceresses.

Alfred Rouse's still-unidentified victim.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the mysterious disappearance of a globe-trotter.  In the meantime, here's some early Dylan.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This creepy--and sad--story appeared in the “Tucson Citizen,” on March 1, 1985:

The urn sits in the Tucson Police property room. It looks somewhat like a steel ice bucket. Inside are the ashes of a 7-month-old boy who died in June 1982. 

The boy died in Long Island NY. The urn traveled here with the boy’s mother, a woman in her 30s. 

But the mother moved on, leaving the ashes here with people who said they heard humming noises coming from the urn. That’s why the police have it now. 

Sgt. Kirk Simmons and officer Jon M. Heiden said they were flagged down Wednesday in the University area by a man who told them he had an urn with remains in it and he wanted to turn it over to the police. 

He couldn’t take the eerie humming any longer, Heiden said. 

Heiden said the child’s mother used to room with the 22-year-old man on East Adams Street but moved out about two years ago.

She left an old wooden box behind. In it, Heiden said, was the urn, a birth certificate, a newspaper clipping on the boy’s death, and a cremation certificate from a New York mortuary. 

The former roommate said that at first he kept the box with the urn in his child’s room, but the child complained of humming coming from the room. The man’s present girlfriend told Heiden she could hear it too through the walls of the house. 

So Heiden said the man told him he moved the wooden box and urn to a broken-down van in his yard. 

But the humming didn’t stop. 

The man, Heiden said, told him that when he worked on the van the urn hummed. 

“That’s why he wanted to get rid of it.  When it started to hum it bothered him,” Heiden said.

Simmons said the paperwork with the urn showed the remains to be those of Harold Matthew Montgomery. The sergeant said the boy died of natural causes. 

“That’s something that shouldn’t lay around TPD property (and evidence room) forever,” Simmons said, adding he would like to get the remains back to the child’s mother. 

As for the humming, Heiden said that when he drove the urn back to the police station “it was quiet.”

Five days after this story was published, the “Citizen” reported that the urn had been claimed by the baby’s grandfather. 

The Beast of Knox County

I don’t normally have a great interest in cryptozoology--my attitude towards Bigfoot is that if it leaves me alone, I’ll leave it alone--but one of my exceptions to this rule is the story of an alarming creature which once terrorized an area in Knox County, Indiana.  Not only were there multiple sightings of this fearsome whatchamacallit, these eyewitness accounts were more credible than the usual "How I Took a Selfie With Sasquatch" fan fiction.

On the night of August 22, 1981, Jack Langford was fishing in the White River, in eastern Knox County.  After he had been there a couple of hours, he began having the  creepy  feeling that he was being watched. When he looked up, he saw two eyes, each about an inch in diameter, glowing red from the campfire and staring right at him from a distance of 50 yards away.  The creature was standing in the river at a depth of about four feet.  It was too dark to see the face, but Langford could tell the body was very large, and very hairy.  After silently studying the fisherman for a few minutes,  it used a tree limb to raise itself out of the water and went on its way.  Langford estimated that the creature weighed about 200 pounds, and had arms  that went down to the knees.  As it left, it “made a loud squeal or high-pitch shriek when it left, something like a young pig would make when you try to hold on to it.”  Langford had heard similar noises  on earlier visits to the area, but at the time thought little of them.  

Five days later, Vincennes residents Terry and Mary Harper, who lived not far from where Langford had his unsettling encounter, woke up to a disturbing sight: although they had heard no disturbances during the night, while they slept, something had vandalized their house.  Part of a door and chunks of aluminum siding were torn off.  Whatever it was that attacked the home left behind traces of blood--some as high as eight feet high on the house--toothmarks, and bits of white fur.  They also found paw prints four inches wide.  Oddly, the area the creature attacked was nowhere near the kitchen or food storage areas.  The food bowl belonging to the family dog was only about 10 feet away from the damaged spot, but it was untouched.  The dog herself, a German shepherd who normally chased any animal intruders from the yard, was left, according to Mrs. Harper, “shaking and whining and too frightened to move” for hours afterward.  The morning after the attack, their neighbors were horrified to find that during the night, something had killed their pet rabbit.  The poor animal had its throat torn out and the paws chewed off.  The local police shrugged and said it was probably a wolf.  The understandably nervous Harper family started a round-the-clock watch and left lights on throughout the night.  Fortunately, the incident was not repeated.  

Vincennes Sun-Commercial, October 9, 1981, via Newspapers.com. As you can guess, the local papers didn't take the whole business very seriously.

On the night of September 25, a woman named Barbara Crabtree, who lived about 12 miles south of the Harpers, was putting out the garbage when she saw a creature standing in a cornfield a short distance away.  She described it as having “dirty white hair all over and stood somewhere between 7 and 8 feet tall.  He emitted a bad smell and had huge eyes, but I couldn’t tell what color they were because I didn’t stand around long enough to look.”  (A sensible move, that.)  Before retreating to the house, she noticed that a chicken she had put in the garbage can that morning was now gone.

Later that same night, Barbara and her husband Roger went to the movies.  While on their way home at about 2 a.m., they saw the same creature heading toward the road from some nearby woods.  Mr. Crabtree notified the sheriff’s office, but when deputies searched the area, they found no trace of the strange beast.

Four nights later, Mrs. Crabtree was awakened by an ominous growling outside her house.  It was like nothing she had ever heard before.  When her husband turned on the front porch lights, the growling stopped.  A few minutes later, they heard the noise on the other side of the house.  When the Crabtrees called police, they received the same dismissive response given to the Harpers.  A wolf.  Or a coyote.  Or some overactive imaginations at work.  And so the story quickly faded from the newspapers.

In the years since then, there have been occasional claimed sightings of this large white whatzit, but no more violent incidents have been reported, fortunately for the residents of Knox County.  The Harpers had a hell of a time explaining their damaged home to the insurance company.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

The staff at Strange Company HQ will be happy to serve you tea.

A town's Halloween candy tragedy.

The Dead Man of Clerkenwell.

The insanity plea: a murderer's best friend.

An amnesiac recovered his identity.  And probably came to regret that.

The theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.

A bunch of hippies are convinced there's a civilization beneath the North Pole.

Female 19th century detectives.

The mystery of the Singapore Stone.

The O'Learys would really like you to forget about the Chicago Fire.

How an enterprising lad benefited from the death of Princess Charlotte.

Identifying the "Unknown Boy."

A type of owl that hasn't been seen for 150 years just popped up.

A remarkable hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins has been discovered.

The man with the 10-second memory.

A look at the old British Foreign Office.

How some first names became last names.

The unhealthy 19th century.

One of the most influential books about witchcraft.

The hazards of 19th century matchmaking.

A new look at the tomb of the Black Prince.

Archaeologists are finding all sorts of things in an ancient amphitheater.

The good news: you can travel through time. The bad news? You can't come back.  (Although, considering what 2021 has been like, perhaps that's the good news, as well.)

The ongoing impact of Edgar Allan Poe.

British apple folklore.

A summer camp for paleontologists. 

The merry cemetery.

Where "dead as a doornail" came from.

The psychology of haunted houses.

Archival documents dealing with the murder of Lord Darnley.

The tragedy of the first dog in space.

A cursed grave in Scotland.

George Washington's many dogs.

Three medieval ghost stories.

Tom, Post Office cat.

A selection of haunted bookstores.

The famed haunting at Hinton Ampner.

Ghostly Women in Black.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll visit the wild world of cryptozoology.  In the meantime, here's a lovely bit of Bach.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Ghost sightings often have a way of coming up with unpleasant surprises, but, thankfully, few are as violent as the one in this news item from the “Owensboro Monitor,” November 16, 1864:

A strange story is told in connection with the report of the murder at sea on board of the barque Pontiac, of Liverpool, by Jean Moyatos, a Greek sailor now in custody at Edinburgh.  

It may be remembered that on the 13th October last, five days after the Pontiac left Callao, Jean Moyatos murdered one of his fellow seamen, and stabbed another in such a dangerous manner that his life was despaired of. Two nights before the fatal occurrence, the mate of the Pontiac was standing near the man at the helm, no other person being on the quarter-deck at the time, when the latter in great terror called out, "What is that near the cabin door?" The mate replied that he saw nothing, and looked about to see if anyone was near, but he failed to discover any person. The steersman then, much terrified, said the figure he saw was that of a strange-looking man, of ghostly appearance, and almost immediately afterwards exclaimed, "There he is again, standing at the captain's window!" The mate, though in view of the captain's window, saw no figure near it, nor at any other part of the quarter-deck, though he looked round and round.  

Next day the report went from one to the other that a ghost was on board, which filled some of the sailors with alarm, while others made a jest of it. Next night, a boy (a stowaway) was so dreadfully alarmed in his bunk by something he saw or felt (we do not know which), that he cried out so loudly as to waken all the seamen in bed. The boy was sure it was the ghost seen the previous night that had frightened him; and others of more mature years were inclined to think so too. Perhaps more than half of those on board believed that something supernatural was on board, and that some calamity was about to happen. But there were two on board who did not believe the ghost stories, and these were the man who was murdered and his companion who was stabbed. 

The former joked with the boy about the ghost, and said he would have his knife well sharpened and ready for the ghost if it appeared the next night. He would give it a stab and "chuck" it overboard. The latter joined in the joke, saying he also would help "to do" for the ghost, and others said they would have letters ready for the ghost to carry to their friends in the other world.  

J. Moyatos overheard what was said as to stabbing and throwing overboard, and in consequence of his imperfect knowledge of the English language, and having previously supposed there was a combination against him, thought the threats were made against him, and therefore resolved to protect himself. A few hours after the jesting we have briefly explained took place, he stabbed the two men who principally carried on the jest, with the fatal result known.  

The murder, as might be expected. filled everyone on board with horror; and the terror of the sailors who believed there was a ghost on board was overwhelming. At night, whether in bed or on watch on deck they had great dread, which was heightened by reports that strange noises were heard below. Not even at the end of the voyage had the fear been overcome; for after the ship was moored in the docks two of the crew who had agreed to sleep on board became so frightened after their companions were paid off that they refused to remain in the vessel at night.

The moral of our story: next time you see a ghost, keep that news to yourself.

The Ghost and Mrs. Binnington

Accounts of the ghosts of murder victims returning to seek justice are far from uncommon.  One of the more unusual examples is this surprisingly little-known story from Restoration England.

In the spring of 1662, a young woman named Isabel Binnington and her husband William moved into a cottage in the Yorkshire village of Great Driffield.  Some weeks after the couple moved in, Isabel noticed a small depression in the floor of the home.  Hoping that perhaps a previous resident had buried some valuables there, she started to dig.  Imagine her disappointment when, instead of money or jewelry, she uncovered human bones.  Perhaps such unpleasant discoveries were common in 17th century villages, because Mrs. Binnington merely shrugged and put the whole business behind her.

On the evening of August 23, Isabel was sitting by her hearth fire when she suddenly noticed she was no longer alone: a blond young man, barefoot and dressed all in green, was standing before her.  Her first thought was that the stranger was some traveler seeking lodging for the night.  However, as he moved closer to her in complete silence, she became afraid and demanded in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that he speak to her.

The visitor obliged.  And did he have a story to tell.  He said that his name was Robert Eliot.  Fourteen years earlier, he had been robbed and murdered in that very cottage by a local woman named Mary Burton.  Eliot had loaned Burton money she later refused to repay.  They quarreled over the issue, which Burton and two co-conspirators brought to a fatal conclusion.  

Eliot had been compelled to haunt the location ever since, and was doomed to remain for seven more years.  Apparently the discovery of his secret grave inspired him to plead that Mrs. Binnington saw to it that his murderers paid for their crime.

Over the following days, Eliot’s spirit provided extensive information about his life, birthplace, family, and the particulars of his murder.  Mrs. Binnington related all of it to the local JPs, but although these details were startlingly specific (down to his mother’s maiden name and the street where she had been born,) the authorities were understandably uneasy about launching a murder trial where the sole witness was a ghost. However, the JPs were sufficiently intrigued to ask Eliot (via Mrs. Binnington) if there were more local spirits in his same plight.  The ghost replied that there were four others. Isabel continued to press the matter to the authorities, providing additional evidence about her spectral client, as well as demands that the village church offer prayers for his murderers to be duly punished.

Then things got really weird.  Isabel told the JPs that the ghost had warned her of an assassination plot that was currently being hatched against Charles II.  And she had all the details.  She identified two men (a father and son named Jenkins) in the king’s household as the primary conspirators, and was able to say exactly how they communicated with their confederates.  If the judges did not act on her information, Isabel insisted, the king might very well die.  And it would all be their fault!  (Intriguingly, Todd Butler, the main modern researcher of the Binnington case, noted in his 2011 article, “The Haunting of Isabell Binnington,” that two men named Robert and Philip Jenkins were part of the Royal household at the time, suggesting that this alleged conspiracy may well have existed.)

One has to have some sympathy for the JPs, who were caught between a legal Scylla and Charybdis.  If they acted on the say-so of a ghost, they ran a very good risk of looking utterly ridiculous, if not barking mad.  If they ignored Mrs. Binnington’s allegations, they risked letting a murder go unpunished, not to mention the possible assassination of their king.

Perhaps this dilemma is why our narrative ends on such a frustratingly unresolved note: no one knew what to do next.  Everyone’s reaction to Mrs. Binnington’s remarkable story seems to have been, “OK, so your ghost friend is dropping a dime on his murderers.  Whaddaya expect us to do about it?”  The two contemporary pamphlets which give details about Isabel’s testimony give no hint that it spurred any sort of constructive action, and she--not to mention the unhappy ghost of Robert Eliot--immediately disappeared back into historical obscurity.

You might say this is one of those ghost stories that starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.