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The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 Title: Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories Author: Ambrose Bierce Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext #4387] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 20, 2002] [Most recently updated: January 20, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII The Project Gutenberg Etext of Present at a Hanging et. al. by Ambrose Bierce ******This file should be named prhg10h.htm or prhg10h.zip****** Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, prhg11h.htm VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, prhg10ah.htm Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1918 Boni and Liveright "Can Such Things Be?" edition. 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PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES
Contents:
The Ways of Ghosts
Present at a Hanging
A Cold Greeting
A Wireless Message
An Arrest
Soldier-Folk
A Man with Two Lives
Three and One are One
A Baffled Ambuscade
Two Military Executions
Some Haunted Houses
The Isle of Pines
A Fruitless Assignment
A Vine on a House
At Old Man Eckert’s
The Spook House
The Other Lodgers
The Thing at Nolan
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
An Unfinished Race
Charles Ashmore’s Trail
Science to the Front
THE WAYS OF GHOSTS
My peculiar relation to the writer of the following narratives is such
that I must ask the reader to overlook the absence of explanation as
to how they came into my possession. Withal, my knowledge of him
is so meager that I should rather not undertake to say if he were himself
persuaded of the truth of what he relates; certainly such inquiries
as I have thought it worth while to set about have not in every instance
tended to confirmation of the statements made. Yet his style,
for the most part devoid alike of artifice and art, almost baldly simple
and direct, seems hardly compatible with the disingenuousness of a merely
literary intention; one would call it the manner of one more concerned
for the fruits of research than for the flowers of expression.
In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim to attention by
giving them something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously
refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction
as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not only have
been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given me a somewhat
closer relation to the work than I should care to have and to avow.
- A. B.
PRESENT AT A HANGING
An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected
by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission
to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling
was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended
with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed
the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely
upon the country people for hospitality. This brought him into
relation with queer characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous
in their methods of making a living, murder being an acceptable means
to that end. It occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished
pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some
rough character and never could be traced beyond. This was so
in the case of “old man Baker,” as he was always called.
(Such names are given in the western “settlements” only
to elderly persons who are not esteemed; to the general disrepute of
social unworth is affixed the special reproach of age.) A peddler
came to his house and none went away - that is all that anybody knew.
Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well known
in that part of the country, was driving by Baker’s farm one night.
It was not very dark: there was a bit of moon somewhere above the light
veil of mist that lay along the earth. Mr. Cummings, who was at
all times a cheerful person, was whistling a tune, which he would occasionally
interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse.
As he came to a little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the figure
of a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background
of a misty forest. The man had something strapped on his back
and carried a heavy stick - obviously an itinerant peddler. His
attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker.
Mr. Cummings reined in his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave
him a pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat in the vehicle -
“if you are going my way,” he added. The man raised
his head, looked him full in the face, but neither answered nor made
any further movement. The minister, with good-natured persistence,
repeated his invitation. At this the man threw his right hand
forward from his side and pointed downward as he stood on the extreme
edge of the bridge. Mr. Cummings looked past him, over into the
ravine, saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man
again. He had disappeared. The horse, which all this time
had been uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror
and started to run away. Before he had regained control of the
animal the minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along.
He looked back and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the
same attitude as when he had first observed it. Then for the first
time he was conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home
as rapidly as his willing horse would go.
On arriving at home he related his adventure to his family, and early
the next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White Corwell and
Abner Raiser, returned to the spot. They found the body of old
man Baker hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge, immediately
beneath the spot where the apparition had stood. A thick coating
of dust, slightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge,
but the only footprints were those of Mr. Cummings’ horse.
In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose, friable earth of
the slope below it, disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered
by the action of water and frost. They were identified as those
of the lost peddler. At the double inquest the coroner’s
jury found that Daniel Baker died by his own hand while suffering from
temporary insanity, and that Samuel Morritz was murdered by some person
or persons to the jury unknown.
A COLD GREETING
This is a story told by the late Benson Foley of San Francisco:
“In the summer of 1881 I met a man named James H. Conway, a resident
of Franklin, Tennessee. He was visiting San Francisco for his
health, deluded man, and brought me a note of introduction from Mr.
Lawrence Barting. I had known Barting as a captain in the Federal
army during the civil war. At its close he had settled in Franklin,
and in time became, I had reason to think, somewhat prominent as a lawyer.
Barting had always seemed to me an honorable and truthful man, and the
warm friendship which he expressed in his note for Mr. Conway was to
me sufficient evidence that the latter was in every way worthy of my
confidence and esteem. At dinner one day Conway told me that it
had been solemnly agreed between him and Barting that the one who died
first should, if possible, communicate with the other from beyond the
grave, in some unmistakable way - just how, they had left (wisely, it
seemed to me) to be decided by the deceased, according to the opportunities
that his altered circumstances might present.
“A few weeks after the conversation in which Mr. Conway spoke
of this agreement, I met him one day, walking slowly down Montgomery
street, apparently, from his abstracted air, in deep thought.
He greeted me coldly with merely a movement of the head and passed on,
leaving me standing on the walk, with half-proffered hand, surprised
and naturally somewhat piqued. The next day I met him again in
the office of the Palace Hotel, and seeing him about to repeat the disagreeable
performance of the day before, intercepted him in a doorway, with a
friendly salutation, and bluntly requested an explanation of his altered
manner. He hesitated a moment; then, looking me frankly in the
eyes, said:
“‘I do not think, Mr. Foley, that I have any longer a claim
to your friendship, since Mr. Barting appears to have withdrawn his
own from me - for what reason, I protest I do not know. If he
has not already informed you he probably will do so.’
“‘But,’ I replied, ‘I have not heard from Mr.
Barting.’
“‘Heard from him!’ he repeated, with apparent surprise.
‘Why, he is here. I met him yesterday ten minutes before
meeting you. I gave you exactly the same greeting that he gave
me. I met him again not a quarter of an hour ago, and his manner
was precisely the same: he merely bowed and passed on. I shall
not soon forget your civility to me. Good morning, or - as it
may please you - farewell.’
“All this seemed to me singularly considerate and delicate behavior
on the part of Mr. Conway.
“As dramatic situations and literary effects are foreign to my
purpose I will explain at once that Mr. Barting was dead. He had
died in Nashville four days before this conversation. Calling
on Mr. Conway, I apprised him of our friend’s death, showing him
the letters announcing it. He was visibly affected in a way that
forbade me to entertain a doubt of his sincerity.
“‘It seems incredible,’ he said, after a period of
reflection. ‘I suppose I must have mistaken another man
for Barting, and that man’s cold greeting was merely a stranger’s
civil acknowledgment of my own. I remember, indeed, that he lacked
Barting’s mustache.’
“‘Doubtless it was another man,’ I assented; and the
subject was never afterward mentioned between us. But I had in
my pocket a photograph of Barting, which had been inclosed in the letter
from his widow. It had been taken a week before his death, and
was without a mustache.”
A WIRELESS MESSAGE
In the summer of 1896 Mr. William Holt, a wealthy manufacturer of Chicago,
was living temporarily in a little town of central New York, the name
of which the writer’s memory has not retained. Mr. Holt
had had “trouble with his wife,” from whom he had parted
a year before. Whether the trouble was anything more serious than
“incompatibility of temper,” he is probably the only living
person that knows: he is not addicted to the vice of confidences.
Yet he has related the incident herein set down to at least one person
without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is now living in Europe.
One evening he had left the house of a brother whom he was visiting,
for a stroll in the country. It may be assumed - whatever the
value of the assumption in connection with what is said to have occurred
- that his mind was occupied with reflections on his domestic infelicities
and the distressing changes that they had wrought in his life.
Whatever may have been his thoughts, they so possessed him that he observed
neither the lapse of time nor whither his feet were carrying him; he
knew only that he had passed far beyond the town limits and was traversing
a lonely region by a road that bore no resemblance to the one by which
he had left the village. In brief, he was “lost.”
Realizing his mischance, he smiled; central New York is not a region
of perils, nor does one long remain lost in it. He turned about
and went back the way that he had come. Before he had gone far
he observed that the landscape was growing more distinct - was brightening.
Everything was suffused with a soft, red glow in which he saw his shadow
projected in the road before him. “The moon is rising,”
he said to himself. Then he remembered that it was about the time
of the new moon, and if that tricksy orb was in one of its stages of
visibility it had set long before. He stopped and faced about,
seeking the source of the rapidly broadening light. As he did
so, his shadow turned and lay along the road in front of him as before.
The light still came from behind him. That was surprising; he
could not understand. Again he turned, and again, facing successively
to every point of the horizon. Always the shadow was before -
always the light behind, “a still and awful red.”
Holt was astonished - “dumfounded” is the word that he used
in telling it - yet seems to have retained a certain intelligent curiosity.
To test the intensity of the light whose nature and cause he could not
determine, he took out his watch to see if he could make out the figures
on the dial. They were plainly visible, and the hands indicated
the hour of eleven o’clock and twenty-five minutes. At that
moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an
almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the
stars and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself athwart the landscape.
In that unearthly illumination he saw near him, but apparently in the
air at a considerable elevation, the figure of his wife, clad in her
night-clothing and holding to her breast the figure of his child.
Her eyes were fixed upon his with an expression which he afterward professed
himself unable to name or describe, further than that it was “not
of this life.”
The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness, in which, however,
the apparition still showed white and motionless; then by insensible
degrees it faded and vanished, like a bright image on the retina after
the closing of the eyes. A peculiarity of the apparition, hardly
noted at the time, but afterward recalled, was that it showed only the
upper half of the woman’s figure: nothing was seen below the waist.
The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute, for gradually all
objects of his environment became again visible.
In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering the village at
a point opposite to that at which he had left it. He soon arrived
at the house of his brother, who hardly knew him. He was wild-eyed,
haggard, and gray as a rat. Almost incoherently, he related his
night’s experience.
“Go to bed, my poor fellow,” said his brother, “and
- wait. We shall hear more of this.”
An hour later came the predestined telegram. Holt’s dwelling
in one of the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire. Her
escape cut off by the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window,
her child in her arms. There she had stood, motionless, apparently
dazed. Just as the firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor
had given way, and she was seen no more.
The moment of this culminating horror was eleven o’clock and twenty-five
minutes, standard time.
AN ARREST
Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive
from justice. From the county jail where he had been confined
to await his trial he had escaped by knocking down his jailer with an
iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the outer door, walking
out into the night. The jailer being unarmed, Brower got no weapon
with which to defend his recovered liberty. As soon as he was
out of the town he had the folly to enter a forest; this was many years
ago, when that region was wilder than it is now.
The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and
as Brower had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of
the land, he was, naturally, not long in losing himself. He could
not have said if he were getting farther away from the town or going
back to it - a most important matter to Orrin Brower. He knew
that in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would
soon be on his track and his chance of escape was very slender; but
he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit. Even an added hour
of freedom was worth having.
Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there before
him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the gloom.
It was too late to retreat: the fugitive felt that at the first movement
back toward the wood he would be, as he afterward explained, “filled
with buckshot.” So the two stood there like trees, Brower
nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart; the other - the
emotions of the other are not recorded.
A moment later - it may have been an hour - the moon sailed into a patch
of unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible embodiment of Law
lift an arm and point significantly toward and beyond him. He
understood. Turning his back to his captor, he walked submissively
away in the direction indicated, looking to neither the right nor the
left; hardly daring to breathe, his head and back actually aching with
a prophecy of buckshot.
Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged; that
was shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had
coolly killed his brother-in-law. It is needless to relate them
here; they came out at his trial, and the revelation of his calmness
in confronting them came near to saving his neck. But what would
you have? - when a brave man is beaten, he submits.
So they pursued their journey jailward along the old road through the
woods. Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head: just once,
when he was in deep shadow and he knew that the other was in moonlight,
he looked backward. His captor was Burton Duff, the jailer, as
white as death and bearing upon his brow the livid mark of the iron
bar. Orrin Brower had no further curiosity.
Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but deserted;
only the women and children remained, and they were off the streets.
Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way. Straight up
to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy
iron door, pushed it open without command, entered and found himself
in the presence of a half-dozen armed men. Then he turned.
Nobody else entered.
On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff.
SOLDIER-FOLK
A MAN WITH TWO LIVES
Here is the queer story of David William Duck, related by himself.
Duck is an old man living in Aurora, Illinois, where he is universally
respected. He is commonly known, however, as “Dead Duck.”
“In the autumn of 1866 I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth
Infantry. My company was one of those stationed at Fort Phil Kearney,
commanded by Colonel Carrington. The country is more or less familiar
with the history of that garrison, particularly with the slaughter by
the Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and officers - not one escaping
- through disobedience of orders by its commander, the brave but reckless
Captain Fetterman. When that occurred, I was trying to make my
way with important dispatches to Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn.
As the country swarmed with hostile Indians, I traveled by night and
concealed myself as best I could before daybreak. The better to
do so, I went afoot, armed with a Henry rifle and carrying three days’
rations in my haversack.
“For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the
darkness a narrow cañon leading through a range of rocky hills.
It contained many large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the hills.
Behind one of these, in a clump of sage-brush, I made my bed for the
day, and soon fell asleep. It seemed as if I had hardly closed
my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was awakened by the
report of a rifle, the bullet striking the bowlder just above my body.
A band of Indians had trailed me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot
had been fired with an execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight
of me from the hillside above. The smoke of his rifle betrayed
him, and I was no sooner on my feet than he was off his and rolling
down the declivity. Then I ran in a stooping posture, dodging
among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm of bullets from invisible
enemies. The rascals did not rise and pursue, which I thought
rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that they had to
deal with only one man. The reason for their inaction was soon
made clear. I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the
limit of my run - the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a cañon.
It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute
of vegetation. In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in
a pen. Pursuit was needless; they had only to wait.
“They waited. For two days and nights, crouching behind
a rock topped with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back,
suffering agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance,
I fought the fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke
of their rifles, as they did at that of mine. Of course, I did
not dare to close my eyes at night, and lack of sleep was a keen torture.
“I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew was to
be my last. I remember, rather indistinctly, that in my desperation
and delirium I sprang out into the open and began firing my repeating
rifle without seeing anybody to fire at. And I remember no more
of that fight.
“The next thing that I recollect was my pulling myself out of
a river just at nightfall. I had not a rag of clothing and knew
nothing of my whereabouts, but all that night I traveled, cold and footsore,
toward the north. At daybreak I found myself at Fort C. F. Smith,
my destination, but without my dispatches. The first man that
I met was a sergeant named William Briscoe, whom I knew very well.
You can fancy his astonishment at seeing me in that condition, and my
own at his asking who the devil I was.
“‘Dave Duck,’ I answered; ‘who should I be?’
“He stared like an owl.
“‘You do look it,’ he said, and I observed that he
drew a little away from me. ‘What’s up?’ he
added.
“I told him what had happened to me the day before. He heard
me through, still staring; then he said:
“‘My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck I ought to inform
you that I buried you two months ago. I was out with a small scouting
party and found your body, full of bullet-holes and newly scalped -
somewhat mutilated otherwise, too, I am sorry to say - right where you
say you made your fight. Come to my tent and I’ll show you
your clothing and some letters that I took from your person; the commandant
has your dispatches.’
“He performed that promise. He showed me the clothing, which
I resolutely put on; the letters, which I put into my pocket.
He made no objection, then took me to the commandant, who heard my story
and coldly ordered Briscoe to take me to the guardhouse. On the
way I said:
“‘Bill Briscoe, did you really and truly bury the dead body
that you found in these togs?’
“‘Sure,’ he answered - ‘just as I told you.
It was Dave Duck, all right; most of us knew him. And now, you
damned impostor, you’d better tell me who you are.’
“‘I’d give something to know,’ I said.
“A week later, I escaped from the guardhouse and got out of the
country as fast as I could. Twice I have been back, seeking for
that fateful spot in the hills, but unable to find it.”
THREE AND ONE ARE ONE
In the year 1861 Barr Lassiter, a young man of twenty-two, lived with
his parents and an elder sister near Carthage, Tennessee. The
family were in somewhat humble circumstances, subsisting by cultivation
of a small and not very fertile plantation. Owning no slaves,
they were not rated among “the best people” of their neighborhood;
but they were honest persons of good education, fairly well mannered
and as respectable as any family could be if uncredentialed by personal
dominion over the sons and daughters of Ham. The elder Lassiter
had that severity of manner that so frequently affirms an uncompromising
devotion to duty, and conceals a warm and affectionate disposition.
He was of the iron of which martyrs are made, but in the heart of the
matrix had lurked a nobler metal, fusible at a milder heat, yet never
coloring nor softening the hard exterior. By both heredity and
environment something of the man’s inflexible character had touched
the other members of the family; the Lassiter home, though not devoid
of domestic affection, was a veritable citadel of duty, and duty - ah,
duty is as cruel as death!
When the war came on it found in the family, as in so many others in
that State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the Union,
the others savagely hostile. This unhappy division begot an insupportable
domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and brother left home
with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal army not a hand was laid
in his, not a word of farewell was spoken, not a good wish followed
him out into the world whither he went to meet with such spirit as he
might whatever fate awaited him.
Making his way to Nashville, already occupied by the Army of General
Buell, he enlisted in the first organization that he found, a Kentucky
regiment of cavalry, and in due time passed through all the stages of
military evolution from raw recruit to experienced trooper. A
right good trooper he was, too, although in his oral narrative from
which this tale is made there was no mention of that; the fact was learned
from his surviving comrades. For Barr Lassiter has answered “Here”
to the sergeant whose name is Death.
Two years after he had joined it his regiment passed through the region
whence he had come. The country thereabout had suffered severely
from the ravages of war, having been occupied alternately (and simultaneously)
by the belligerent forces, and a sanguinary struggle had occurred in
the immediate vicinity of the Lassiter homestead. But of this
the young trooper was not aware.
Finding himself in camp near his home, he felt a natural longing to
see his parents and sister, hoping that in them, as in him, the unnatural
animosities of the period had been softened by time and separation.
Obtaining a leave of absence, he set foot in the late summer afternoon,
and soon after the rising of the full moon was walking up the gravel
path leading to the dwelling in which he had been born.
Soldiers in war age rapidly, and in youth two years are a long time.
Barr Lassiter felt himself an old man, and had almost expected to find
the place a ruin and a desolation. Nothing, apparently, was changed.
At the sight of each dear and familiar object he was profoundly affected.
His heart beat audibly, his emotion nearly suffocated him; an ache was
in his throat. Unconsciously he quickened his pace until he almost
ran, his long shadow making grotesque efforts to keep its place beside
him.
The house was unlighted, the door open. As he approached and paused
to recover control of himself his father came out and stood bare-headed
in the moonlight.
“Father!” cried the young man, springing forward with outstretched
hand - “Father!”
The elder man looked him sternly in the face, stood a moment motionless
and without a word withdrew into the house. Bitterly disappointed,
humiliated, inexpressibly hurt and altogether unnerved, the soldier
dropped upon a rustic seat in deep dejection, supporting his head upon
his trembling hand. But he would not have it so: he was too good
a soldier to accept repulse as defeat. He rose and entered the
house, passing directly to the “sitting-room.”
It was dimly lighted by an uncurtained east window. On a low stool
by the hearthside, the only article of furniture in the place, sat his
mother, staring into a fireplace strewn with blackened embers and cold
ashes. He spoke to her - tenderly, interrogatively, and with hesitation,
but she neither answered, nor moved, nor seemed in any way surprised.
True, there had been time for her husband to apprise her of their guilty
son’s return. He moved nearer and was about to lay his hand
upon her arm, when his sister entered from an adjoining room, looked
him full in the face, passed him without a sign of recognition and left
the room by a door that was partly behind him. He had turned his
head to watch her, but when she was gone his eyes again sought his mother.
She too had left the place.
Barr Lassiter strode to the door by which he had entered. The
moonlight on the lawn was tremulous, as if the sward were a rippling
sea. The trees and their black shadows shook as in a breeze.
Blended with its borders, the gravel walk seemed unsteady and insecure
to step on. This young soldier knew the optical illusions produced
by tears. He felt them on his cheek, and saw them sparkle on the
breast of his trooper’s jacket. He left the house and made
his way back to camp.
The next day, with no very definite intention, with no dominant feeling
that he could rightly have named, he again sought the spot. Within
a half-mile of it he met Bushrod Albro, a former playfellow and schoolmate,
who greeted him warmly.
“I am going to visit my home,” said the soldier.
The other looked at him rather sharply, but said nothing.
“I know,” continued Lassiter, “that my folks have
not changed, but - ”
“There have been changes,” Albro interrupted - “everything
changes. I’ll go with you if you don’t mind.
We can talk as we go.”
But Albro did not talk.
Instead of a house they found only fire-blackened foundations of stone,
enclosing an area of compact ashes pitted by rains.
Lassiter’s astonishment was extreme.
“I could not find the right way to tell you,” said Albro.
“In the fight a year ago your house was burned by a Federal shell.”
“And my family - where are they?”
“In Heaven, I hope. All were killed by the shell.”
A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE
Connecting Readyville and Woodbury was a good, hard turnpike nine or
ten miles long. Readyville was an outpost of the Federal army
at Murfreesboro; Woodbury had the same relation to the Confederate army
at Tullahoma. For months after the big battle at Stone River these
outposts were in constant quarrel, most of the trouble occurring, naturally,
on the turnpike mentioned, between detachments of cavalry. Sometimes
the infantry and artillery took a hand in the game by way of showing
their good-will.
One night a squadron of Federal horse commanded by Major Seidel, a gallant
and skillful officer, moved out from Readyville on an uncommonly hazardous
enterprise requiring secrecy, caution and silence.
Passing the infantry pickets, the detachment soon afterward approached
two cavalry videttes staring hard into the darkness ahead. There
should have been three.
“Where is your other man?” said the major. “I
ordered Dunning to be here to-night.”
“He rode forward, sir,” the man replied. “There
was a little firing afterward, but it was a long way to the front.”
“It was against orders and against sense for Dunning to do that,”
said the officer, obviously vexed. “Why did he ride forward?”
“Don’t know, sir; he seemed mighty restless. Guess
he was skeered.”
When this remarkable reasoner and his companion had been absorbed into
the expeditionary force, it resumed its advance. Conversation
was forbidden; arms and accouterments were denied the right to rattle.
The horses’ tramping was all that could be heard and the movement
was slow in order to have as little as possible of that. It was
after midnight and pretty dark, although there was a bit of moon somewhere
behind the masses of cloud.
Two or three miles along, the head of the column approached a dense
forest of cedars bordering the road on both sides. The major commanded
a halt by merely halting, and, evidently himself a bit “skeered,”
rode on alone to reconnoiter. He was followed, however, by his
adjutant and three troopers, who remained a little distance behind and,
unseen by him, saw all that occurred.
After riding about a hundred yards toward the forest, the major suddenly
and sharply reined in his horse and sat motionless in the saddle.
Near the side of the road, in a little open space and hardly ten paces
away, stood the figure of a man, dimly visible and as motionless as
he. The major’s first feeling was that of satisfaction in
having left his cavalcade behind; if this were an enemy and should escape
he would have little to report. The expedition was as yet undetected.
Some dark object was dimly discernible at the man’s feet; the
officer could not make it out. With the instinct of the true cavalryman
and a particular indisposition to the discharge of firearms, he drew
his saber. The man on foot made no movement in answer to the challenge.
The situation was tense and a bit dramatic. Suddenly the moon
burst through a rift in the clouds and, himself in the shadow of a group
of great oaks, the horseman saw the footman clearly, in a patch of white
light. It was Trooper Dunning, unarmed and bareheaded. The
object at his feet resolved itself into a dead horse, and at a right
angle across the animal’s neck lay a dead man, face upward in
the moonlight.
“Dunning has had the fight of his life,” thought the major,
and was about to ride forward. Dunning raised his hand, motioning
him back with a gesture of warning; then, lowering the arm, he pointed
to the place where the road lost itself in the blackness of the cedar
forest.
The major understood, and turning his horse rode back to the little
group that had followed him and was already moving to the rear in fear
of his displeasure, and so returned to the head of his command.
“Dunning is just ahead there,” he said to the captain of
his leading company. “He has killed his man and will have
something to report.”
Right patiently they waited, sabers drawn, but Dunning did not come.
In an hour the day broke and the whole force moved cautiously forward,
its commander not altogether satisfied with his faith in Private Dunning.
The expedition had failed, but something remained to be done.
In the little open space off the road they found the fallen horse.
At a right angle across the animal’s neck face upward, a bullet
in the brain, lay the body of Trooper Dunning, stiff as a statue, hours
dead.
Examination disclosed abundant evidence that within a half-hour the
cedar forest had been occupied by a strong force of Confederate infantry
- an ambuscade.
TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS
In the spring of the year 1862 General Buell’s big army lay in
camp, licking itself into shape for the campaign which resulted in the
victory at Shiloh. It was a raw, untrained army, although some
of its fractions had seen hard enough service, with a good deal of fighting,
in the mountains of Western Virginia, and in Kentucky. The war
was young and soldiering a new industry, imperfectly understood by the
young American of the period, who found some features of it not altogether
to his liking. Chief among these was that essential part of discipline,
subordination. To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating
fallacy that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority
is not easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his “green
and salad days” is among the worst known. That is how it
happened that one of Buell’s men, Private Bennett Story Greene,
committed the indiscretion of striking his officer. Later in the
war he would not have done that; like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would
have “seen him damned” first. But time for reformation
of his military manners was denied him: he was promptly arrested on
complaint of the officer, tried by court-martial and sentenced to be
shot.
“You might have thrashed me and let it go at that,” said
the condemned man to the complaining witness; “that is what you
used to do at school, when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good
as you. Nobody saw me strike you; discipline would not have suffered
much.”
“Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that,” said the
lieutenant. “Will you forgive me? That is what I came
to see you about.”
There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door of
the guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained that the
time allowed for the interview had expired. The next morning,
when in the presence of the whole brigade Private Greene was shot to
death by a squad of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley turned his back
upon the sorry performance and muttered a prayer for mercy, in which
himself was included.
A few weeks afterward, as Buell’s leading division was being ferried
over the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant’s beaten
army, night was coming on, black and stormy. Through the wreck
of battle the division moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the
enemy, who had withdrawn a little to reform his lines. But for
the lightning the darkness was absolute. Never for a moment did
it cease, and ever when the thunder did not crack and roar were heard
the moans of the wounded among whom the men felt their way with their
feet, and upon whom they stumbled in the gloom. The dead were
there, too - there were dead a-plenty.
In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance had
paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle, and skirmishers
had been thrown forward, word was passed along to call the roll.
The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley’s company stepped to the
front and began to name the men in alphabetical order. He had
no written roll, but a good memory. The men answered to their
names as he ran down the alphabet to G.
“Gorham.”
“Here!”
“Grayrock.”
“Here!”
The sergeant’s good memory was affected by habit:
“Greene.”
“Here!”
The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable!
A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from
an electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident.
The sergeant paled and paused. The captain strode quickly to his
side and said sharply:
“Call that name again.”
Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field
of curiosity concerning the Unknown.
“Bennett Greene.”
“Here!”
All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line
turned and squarely confronted each other.
“Once more,” commanded the inexorable investigator, and
once more came - a trifle tremulously - the name of the dead man:
“Bennett Story Greene.”
“Here!”
At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond
the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of
an approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly,
punctuating as with a full stop the captain’s exclamation, “What
the devil does it mean?”
Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear.
“It means this,” he said, throwing open his coat and displaying
a visibly broadening stain of crimson on his breast. His knees
gave way; he fell awkwardly and lay dead.
A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the congested
front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not again
under fire. Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions,
ever again signify his presence at one.
SOME HAUNTED HOUSES
THE ISLE OF PINES
For many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old
man named Herman Deluse. Very little was known of his history,
for he would neither speak of it himself nor suffer others. It
was a common belief among his neighbors that he had been a pirate -
if upon any better evidence than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses,
and ancient flintlock pistols, no one knew. He lived entirely
alone in a small house of four rooms, falling rapidly into decay and
never repaired further than was required by the weather. It stood
on a slight elevation in the midst of a large, stony field overgrown
with brambles, and cultivated in patches and only in the most primitive
way. It was his only visible property, but could hardly have yielded
him a living, simple and few as were his wants. He seemed always
to have ready money, and paid cash for all his purchases at the village
stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two or three times at the
same place until after the lapse of a considerable time. He got
no commendation, however, for this equitable distribution of his patronage;
people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual attempt to conceal
his possession of so much money. That he had great hoards of ill-gotten
gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling was not reasonably
to be doubted by any honest soul conversant with the facts of local
tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of things.
On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead body
was discovered on the 10th, and physicians testified that death had
occurred about twenty-four hours previously - precisely how, they were
unable to say; for the post-mortem examination showed every organ
to be absolutely healthy, with no indication of disorder or violence.
According to them, death must have taken place about noonday, yet the
body was found in bed. The verdict of the coroner’s jury
was that he “came to his death by a visitation of God.”
The body was buried and the public administrator took charge of the
estate.
A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known about
the dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises
by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded. The administrator
locked up the house against the time when the property, real and personal,
should be sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, the expenses
of the sale.
The night of November 20 was boisterous. A furious gale stormed
across the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet.
Great trees were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads.
So wild a night had never been known in all that region, but toward
morning the storm had blown itself out of breath and day dawned bright
and clear. At about eight o’clock that morning the Rev.
Henry Galbraith, a well-known and highly esteemed Lutheran minister,
arrived on foot at his house, a mile and a half from the Deluse place.
Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in Cincinnati. He had come
up the river in a steamboat, and landing at Gallipolis the previous
evening had immediately obtained a horse and buggy and set out for home.
The violence of the storm had delayed him over night, and in the morning
the fallen trees had compelled him to abandon his conveyance and continue
his journey afoot.
“But where did you pass the night?” inquired his wife, after
he had briefly related his adventure.
“With old Deluse at the ‘Isle of Pines,’” {1}
was the laughing reply; “and a glum enough time I had of it.
He made no objection to my remaining, but not a word could I get out
of him.”
Fortunately for the interests of truth there was present at this conversation
Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, a lawyer and littérateur of Columbus,
the same who wrote the delightful “Mellowcraft Papers.”
Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr. Galbraith’s
answer this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the exclamations
that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly inquired: “How
came you to go in there?”
This is Mr. Maren’s version of Mr. Galbraith’s reply:
“I saw a light moving about the house, and being nearly blinded
by the sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put
up my horse in the old rail stable, where it is now. I then rapped
at the door, and getting no invitation went in without one. The
room was dark, but having matches I found a candle and lit it.
I tried to enter the adjoining room, but the door was fast, and although
I heard the old man’s heavy footsteps in there he made no response
to my calls. There was no fire on the hearth, so I made one and
laying [sic] down before it with my overcoat under my head, prepared
myself for sleep. Pretty soon the door that I had tried silently
opened and the old man came in, carrying a candle. I spoke to
him pleasantly, apologizing for my intrusion, but he took no notice
of me. He seemed to be searching for something, though his eyes
were unmoved in their sockets. I wonder if he ever walks in his
sleep. He took a circuit a part of the way round the room, and
went out the same way he had come in. Twice more before I slept
he came back into the room, acting precisely the same way, and departing
as at first. In the intervals I heard him tramping all over the
house, his footsteps distinctly audible in the pauses of the storm.
When I woke in the morning he had already gone out.”
Mr. Maren attempted some further questioning, but was unable longer
to restrain the family’s tongues; the story of Deluse’s
death and burial came out, greatly to the good minister’s astonishment.
“The explanation of your adventure is very simple,” said
Mr. Maren. “I don’t believe old Deluse walks in his
sleep - not in his present one; but you evidently dream in yours.”
And to this view of the matter Mr. Galbraith was compelled reluctantly
to assent.
Nevertheless, a late hour of the next night found these two gentlemen,
accompanied by a son of the minister, in the road in front of the old
Deluse house. There was a light inside; it appeared now at one
window and now at another. The three men advanced to the door.
Just as they reached it there came from the interior a confusion of
the most appalling sounds - the clash of weapons, steel against steel,
sharp explosions as of firearms, shrieks of women, groans and the curses
of men in combat! The investigators stood a moment, irresolute,
frightened. Then Mr. Galbraith tried the door. It was fast.
But the minister was a man of courage, a man, moreover, of Herculean
strength. He retired a pace or two and rushed against the door,
striking it with his right shoulder and bursting it from the frame with
a loud crash. In a moment the three were inside. Darkness
and silence! The only sound was the beating of their hearts.
Mr. Maren had provided himself with matches and a candle. With
some difficulty, begotten of his excitement, he made a light, and they
proceeded to explore the place, passing from room to room. Everything
was in orderly arrangement, as it had been left by the sheriff; nothing
had been disturbed. A light coating of dust was everywhere.
A back door was partly open, as if by neglect, and their first thought
was that the authors of the awful revelry might have escaped.
The door was opened, and the light of the candle shone through upon
the ground. The expiring effort of the previous night’s
storm had been a light fall of snow; there were no footprints; the white
surface was unbroken. They closed the door and entered the last
room of the four that the house contained - that farthest from the road,
in an angle of the building. Here the candle in Mr. Maren’s
hand was suddenly extinguished as by a draught of air. Almost
immediately followed the sound of a heavy fall. When the candle
had been hastily relighted young Mr. Galbraith was seen prostrate on
the floor at a little distance from the others. He was dead.
In one hand the body grasped a heavy sack of coins, which later examination
showed to be all of old Spanish mintage. Directly over the body
as it lay, a board had been torn from its fastenings in the wall, and
from the cavity so disclosed it was evident that the bag had been taken.
Another inquest was held: another post-mortem examination failed
to reveal a probable cause of death. Another verdict of “the
visitation of God” left all at liberty to form their own conclusions.
Mr. Maren contended that the young man died of excitement.
A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT
Henry Saylor, who was killed in Covington, in a quarrel with Antonio
Finch, was a reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial. In
the year 1859 a vacant dwelling in Vine street, in Cincinnati, became
the center of a local excitement because of the strange sights and sounds
said to be observed in it nightly. According to the testimony
of many reputable residents of the vicinity these were inconsistent
with any other hypothesis than that the house was haunted. Figures
with something singularly unfamiliar about them were seen by crowds
on the sidewalk to pass in and out. No one could say just where
they appeared upon the open lawn on their way to the front door by which
they entered, nor at exactly what point they vanished as they came out;
or, rather, while each spectator was positive enough about these matters,
no two agreed. They were all similarly at variance in their descriptions
of the figures themselves. Some of the bolder of the curious throng
ventured on several evenings to stand upon the doorsteps to intercept
them, or failing in this, get a nearer look at them. These courageous
men, it was said, were unable to force the door by their united strength,
and always were hurled from the steps by some invisible agency and severely
injured; the door immediately afterward opening, apparently of its own
volition, to admit or free some ghostly guest. The dwelling was
known as the Roscoe house, a family of that name having lived there
for some years, and then, one by one, disappeared, the last to leave
being an old woman. Stories of foul play and successive murders
had always been rife, but never were authenticated.
One day during the prevalence of the excitement Saylor presented himself
at the office of the Commercial for orders. He received
a note from the city editor which read as follows: “Go and pass
the night alone in the haunted house in Vine street and if anything
occurs worth while make two columns.” Saylor obeyed his
superior; he could not afford to lose his position on the paper.
Apprising the police of his intention, he effected an entrance through
a rear window before dark, walked through the deserted rooms, bare of
furniture, dusty and desolate, and seating himself at last in the parlor
on an old sofa which he had dragged in from another room watched the
deepening of the gloom as night came on. Before it was altogether
dark the curious crowd had collected in the street, silent, as a rule,
and expectant, with here and there a scoffer uttering his incredulity
and courage with scornful remarks or ribald cries. None knew of
the anxious watcher inside. He feared to make a light; the uncurtained
windows would have betrayed his presence, subjecting him to insult,
possibly to injury. Moreover, he was too conscientious to do anything
to enfeeble his impressions and unwilling to alter any of the customary
conditions under which the manifestations were said to occur.
It was now dark outside, but light from the street faintly illuminated
the part of the room that he was in. He had set open every door
in the whole interior, above and below, but all the outer ones were
locked and bolted. Sudden exclamations from the crowd caused him
to spring to the window and look out. He saw the figure of a man
moving rapidly across the lawn toward the building - saw it ascend the
steps; then a projection of the wall concealed it. There was a
noise as of the opening and closing of the hall door; he heard quick,
heavy footsteps along the passage - heard them ascend the stairs - heard
them on the uncarpeted floor of the chamber immediately overhead.
Saylor promptly drew his pistol, and groping his way up the stairs entered
the chamber, dimly lighted from the street. No one was there.
He heard footsteps in an adjoining room and entered that. It was
dark and silent. He struck his foot against some object on the
floor, knelt by it, passed his hand over it. It was a human head
- that of a woman. Lifting it by the hair this iron-nerved man
returned to the half-lighted room below, carried it near the window
and attentively examined it. While so engaged he was half conscious
of the rapid opening and closing of the outer door, of footfalls sounding
all about him. He raised his eyes from the ghastly object of his
attention and saw himself the center of a crowd of men and women dimly
seen; the room was thronged with them. He thought the people had
broken in.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, coolly, “you see
me under suspicious circumstances, but” - his voice was drowned
in peals of laughter - such laughter as is heard in asylums for the
insane. The persons about him pointed at the object in his hand
and their merriment increased as he dropped it and it went rolling among
their feet. They danced about it with gestures grotesque and attitudes
obscene and indescribable. They struck it with their feet, urging
it about the room from wall to wall; pushed and overthrew one another
in their struggles to kick it; cursed and screamed and sang snatches
of ribald songs as the battered head bounded about the room as if in
terror and trying to escape. At last it shot out of the door into
the hall, followed by all, with tumultuous haste. That moment
the door closed with a sharp concussion. Saylor was alone, in
dead silence.
Carefully putting away his pistol, which all the time he had held in
his hand, he went to a window and looked out. The street was deserted
and silent; the lamps were extinguished; the roofs and chimneys of the
houses were sharply outlined against the dawn-light in the east.
He left the house, the door yielding easily to his hand, and walked
to the Commercial office. The city editor was still in
his office - asleep. Saylor waked him and said: “I have
been at the haunted house.”
The editor stared blankly as if not wholly awake. “Good
God!” he cried, “are you Saylor?”
“Yes - why not?” The editor made no answer, but continued
staring.
“I passed the night there - it seems,” said Saylor.
“They say that things were uncommonly quiet out there,”
the editor said, trifling with a paper-weight upon which he had dropped
his eyes, “did anything occur?”
“Nothing whatever.”
A VINE ON A HOUSE
About three miles from the little town of Norton, in Missouri, on the
road leading to Maysville, stands an old house that was last occupied
by a family named Harding. Since 1886 no one has lived in it,
nor is anyone likely to live in it again. Time and the disfavor
of persons dwelling thereabout are converting it into a rather picturesque
ruin. An observer unacquainted with its history would hardly put
it into the category of “haunted houses,” yet in all the
region round such is its evil reputation. Its windows are without
glass, its doorways without doors; there are wide breaches in the shingle
roof, and for lack of paint the weatherboarding is a dun gray.
But these unfailing signs of the supernatural are partly concealed and
greatly softened by the abundant foliage of a large vine overrunning
the entire structure. This vine - of a species which no botanist
has ever been able to name - has an important part in the story of the
house.
The Harding family consisted of Robert Harding, his wife Matilda, Miss
Julia Went, who was her sister, and two young children. Robert
Harding was a silent, cold-mannered man who made no friends in the neighborhood
and apparently cared to make none. He was about forty years old,
frugal and industrious, and made a living from the little farm which
is now overgrown with brush and brambles. He and his sister-in-law
were rather tabooed by their neighbors, who seemed to think that they
were seen too frequently together - not entirely their fault, for at
these times they evidently did not challenge observation. The
moral code of rural Missouri is stern and exacting.
Mrs. Harding was a gentle, sad-eyed woman, lacking a left foot.
At some time in 1884 it became known that she had gone to visit her
mother in Iowa. That was what her husband said in reply to inquiries,
and his manner of saying it did not encourage further questioning.
She never came back, and two years later, without selling his farm or
anything that was his, or appointing an agent to look after his interests,
or removing his household goods, Harding, with the rest of the family,
left the country. Nobody knew whither he went; nobody at that
time cared. Naturally, whatever was movable about the place soon
disappeared and the deserted house became “haunted” in the
manner of its kind.
One summer evening, four or five years later, the Rev. J. Gruber, of
Norton, and a Maysville attorney named Hyatt met on horseback in front
of the Harding place. Having business matters to discuss, they
hitched their animals and going to the house sat on the porch to talk.
Some humorous reference to the somber reputation of the place was made
and forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of their business
affairs until it grew almost dark. The evening was oppressively
warm, the air stagnant.
Presently both men started from their seats in surprise: a long vine
that covered half the front of the house and dangled its branches from
the edge of the porch above them was visibly and audibly agitated, shaking
violently in every stem and leaf.
“We shall have a storm,” Hyatt exclaimed.
Gruber said nothing, but silently directed the other’s attention
to the foliage of adjacent trees, which showed no movement; even the
delicate tips of the boughs silhouetted against the clear sky were motionless.
They hastily passed down the steps to what had been a lawn and looked
upward at the vine, whose entire length was now visible. It continued
in violent agitation, yet they could discern no disturbing cause.
“Let us leave,” said the minister.
And leave they did. Forgetting that they had been traveling in
opposite directions, they rode away together. They went to Norton,
where they related their strange experience to several discreet friends.
The next evening, at about the same hour, accompanied by two others
whose names are not recalled, they were again on the porch of the Harding
house, and again the mysterious phenomenon occurred: the vine was violently
agitated while under the closest scrutiny from root to tip, nor did
their combined strength applied to the trunk serve to still it.
After an hour’s observation they retreated, no less wise, it is
thought, than when they had come.
No great time was required for these singular facts to rouse the curiosity
of the entire neighborhood. By day and by night crowds of persons
assembled at the Harding house “seeking a sign.” It
does not appear that any found it, yet so credible were the witnesses
mentioned that none doubted the reality of the “manifestations”
to which they testified.
By either a happy inspiration or some destructive design, it was one
day proposed - nobody appeared to know from whom the suggestion came
- to dig up the vine, and after a good deal of debate this was done.
Nothing was found but the root, yet nothing could have been more strange!
For five or six feet from the trunk, which had at the surface of the
ground a diameter of several inches, it ran downward, single and straight,
into a loose, friable earth; then it divided and subdivided into rootlets,
fibers and filaments, most curiously interwoven. When carefully
freed from soil they showed a singular formation. In their ramifications
and doublings back upon themselves they made a compact network, having
in size and shape an amazing resemblance to the human figure.
Head, trunk and limbs were there; even the fingers and toes were distinctly
defined; and many professed to see in the distribution and arrangement
of the fibers in the globular mass representing the head a grotesque
suggestion of a face. The figure was horizontal; the smaller roots
had begun to unite at the breast.
In point of resemblance to the human form this image was imperfect.
At about ten inches from one of the knees, the cilia forming
that leg had abruptly doubled backward and inward upon their course
of growth. The figure lacked the left foot.
There was but one inference - the obvious one; but in the ensuing excitement
as many courses of action were proposed as there were incapable counselors.
The matter was settled by the sheriff of the county, who as the lawful
custodian of the abandoned estate ordered the root replaced and the
excavation filled with the earth that had been removed.
Later inquiry brought out only one fact of relevancy and significance:
Mrs. Harding had never visited her relatives in Iowa, nor did they know
that she was supposed to have done so.
Of Robert Harding and the rest of his family nothing is known.
The house retains its evil reputation, but the replanted vine is as
orderly and well-behaved a vegetable as a nervous person could wish
to sit under of a pleasant night, when the katydids grate out their
immemorial revelation and the distant whippoorwill signifies his notion
of what ought to be done about it.
AT OLD MAN ECKERT’S
Philip Eckert lived for many years in an old, weather-stained wooden
house about three miles from the little town of Marion, in Vermont.
There must be quite a number of persons living who remember him, not
unkindly, I trust, and know something of the story that I am about to
tell.
“Old Man Eckert,” as he was always called, was not of a
sociable disposition and lived alone. As he was never known to
speak of his own affairs nobody thereabout knew anything of his past,
nor of his relatives if he had any. Without being particularly
ungracious or repellent in manner or speech, he managed somehow to be
immune to impertinent curiosity, yet exempt from the evil repute with
which it commonly revenges itself when baffled; so far as I know, Mr.
Eckert’s renown as a reformed assassin or a retired pirate of
the Spanish Main had not reached any ear in Marion. He got his
living cultivating a small and not very fertile farm.
One day he disappeared and a prolonged search by his neighbors failed
to turn him up or throw any light upon his whereabouts or whyabouts.
Nothing indicated preparation to leave: all was as he might have left
it to go to the spring for a bucket of water. For a few weeks
little else was talked of in that region; then “old man Eckert”
became a village tale for the ear of the stranger. I do not know
what was done regarding his property - the correct legal thing, doubtless.
The house was standing, still vacant and conspicuously unfit, when I
last heard of it, some twenty years afterward.
Of course it came to be considered “haunted,” and the customary
tales were told of moving lights, dolorous sounds and startling apparitions.
At one time, about five years after the disappearance, these stories
of the supernatural became so rife, or through some attesting circumstances
seemed so important, that some of Marion’s most serious citizens
deemed it well to investigate, and to that end arranged for a night
session on the premises. The parties to this undertaking were
John Holcomb, an apothecary; Wilson Merle, a lawyer, and Andrus C. Palmer,
the teacher of the public school, all men of consequence and repute.
They were to meet at Holcomb’s house at eight o’clock in
the evening of the appointed day and go together to the scene of their
vigil, where certain arrangements for their comfort, a provision of
fuel and the like, for the season was winter, had been already made.
Palmer did not keep the engagement, and after waiting a half-hour for
him the others went to the Eckert house without him. They established
themselves in the principal room, before a glowing fire, and without
other light than it gave, awaited events. It had been agreed to
speak as little as possible: they did not even renew the exchange of
views regarding the defection of Palmer, which had occupied their minds
on the way.
Probably an hour had passed without incident when they heard (not without
emotion, doubtless) the sound of an opening door in the rear of the
house, followed by footfalls in the room adjoining that in which they
sat. The watchers rose to their feet, but stood firm, prepared
for whatever might ensue. A long silence followed - how long neither
would afterward undertake to say. Then the door between the two
rooms opened and a man entered.
It was Palmer. He was pale, as if from excitement - as pale as
the others felt themselves to be. His manner, too, was singularly
distrait: he neither responded to their salutations nor so much as looked
at them, but walked slowly across the room in the light of the failing
fire and opening the front door passed out into the darkness.
It seems to have been the first thought of both men that Palmer was
suffering from fright - that something seen, heard or imagined in the
back room had deprived him of his senses. Acting on the same friendly
impulse both ran after him through the open door. But neither
they nor anyone ever again saw or heard of Andrus Palmer!
This much was ascertained the next morning. During the session
of Messrs. Holcomb and Merle at the “haunted house” a new
snow had fallen to a depth of several inches upon the old. In
this snow Palmer’s trail from his lodging in the village to the
back door of the Eckert house was conspicuous. But there it ended:
from the front door nothing led away but the tracks of the two men who
swore that he preceded them. Palmer’s disappearance was
as complete as that of “old man Eckert” himself - whom,
indeed, the editor of the local paper somewhat graphically accused of
having “reached out and pulled him in.”
THE SPOOK HOUSE
On the road leading north from Manchester, in eastern Kentucky, to Booneville,
twenty miles away, stood, in 1862, a wooden plantation house of a somewhat
better quality than most of the dwellings in that region. The
house was destroyed by fire in the year following - probably by some
stragglers from the retreating column of General George W. Morgan, when
he was driven from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio river by General Kirby
Smith. At the time of its destruction, it had for four or five
years been vacant. The fields about it were overgrown with brambles,
the fences gone, even the few negro quarters, and out-houses generally,
fallen partly into ruin by neglect and pillage; for the negroes and
poor whites of the vicinity found in the building and fences an abundant
supply of fuel, of which they availed themselves without hesitation,
openly and by daylight. By daylight alone; after nightfall no
human being except passing strangers ever went near the place.
It was known as the “Spook House.” That it was tenanted
by evil spirits, visible, audible and active, no one in all that region
doubted any more than he doubted what he was told of Sundays by the
traveling preacher. Its owner’s opinion of the matter was
unknown; he and his family had disappeared one night and no trace of
them had ever been found. They left everything - household goods,
clothing, provisions, the horses in the stable, the cows in the field,
the negroes in the quarters - all as it stood; nothing was missing -
except a man, a woman, three girls, a boy and a babe! It was not
altogether surprising that a plantation where seven human beings could
be simultaneously effaced and nobody the wiser should be under some
suspicion.
One night in June, 1859, two citizens of Frankfort, Col. J. C. McArdle,
a lawyer, and Judge Myron Veigh, of the State Militia, were driving
from Booneville to Manchester. Their business was so important
that they decided to push on, despite the darkness and the mutterings
of an approaching storm, which eventually broke upon them just as they
arrived opposite the “Spook House.” The lightning
was so incessant that they easily found their way through the gateway
and into a shed, where they hitched and unharnessed their team.
They then went to the house, through the rain, and knocked at all the
doors without getting any response. Attributing this to the continuous
uproar of the thunder they pushed at one of the doors, which yielded.
They entered without further ceremony and closed the door. That
instant they were in darkness and silence. Not a gleam of the
lightning’s unceasing blaze penetrated the windows or crevices;
not a whisper of the awful tumult without reached them there.
It was as if they had suddenly been stricken blind and deaf, and McArdle
afterward said that for a moment he believed himself to have been killed
by a stroke of lightning as he crossed the threshold. The rest
of this adventure can as well be related in his own words, from the
Frankfort Advocate of August 6, 1876:
“When I had somewhat recovered from the dazing effect of the transition
from uproar to silence, my first impulse was to reopen the door which
I had closed, and from the knob of which I was not conscious of having
removed my hand; I felt it distinctly, still in the clasp of my fingers.
My notion was to ascertain by stepping again into the storm whether
I had been deprived of sight and hearing. I turned the doorknob
and pulled open the door. It led into another room!
“This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish light, the
source of which I could not determine, making everything distinctly
visible, though nothing was sharply defined. Everything, I say,
but in truth the only objects within the blank stone walls of that room
were human corpses. In number they were perhaps eight or ten -
it may well be understood that I did not truly count them. They
were of different ages, or rather sizes, from infancy up, and of both
sexes. All were prostrate on the floor, excepting one, apparently
a young woman, who sat up, her back supported by an angle of the wall.
A babe was clasped in the arms of another and older woman. A half-grown
lad lay face downward across the legs of a full-bearded man. One
or two were nearly naked, and the hand of a young girl held the fragment
of a gown which she had torn open at the breast. The bodies were
in various stages of decay, all greatly shrunken in face and figure.
Some were but little more than skeletons.
“While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle
and still holding open the door, by some unaccountable perversity my
attention was diverted from the shocking scene and concerned itself
with trifles and details. Perhaps my mind, with an instinct of
self-preservation, sought relief in matters which would relax its dangerous
tension. Among other things, I observed that the door that I was
holding open was of heavy iron plates, riveted. Equidistant from
one another and from the top and bottom, three strong bolts protruded
from the beveled edge. I turned the knob and they were retracted
flush with the edge; released it, and they shot out. It was a
spring lock. On the inside there was no knob, nor any kind of
projection - a smooth surface of iron.
“While noting these things with an interest and attention which
it now astonishes me to recall I felt myself thrust aside, and Judge
Veigh, whom in the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings I had altogether
forgotten, pushed by me into the room. ‘For God’s
sake,’ I cried, ‘do not go in there! Let us get out
of this dreadful place!’
“He gave no heed to my entreaties, but (as fearless a gentleman
as lived in all the South) walked quickly to the center of the room,
knelt beside one of the bodies for a closer examination and tenderly
raised its blackened and shriveled head in his hands. A strong
disagreeable odor came through the doorway, completely overpowering
me. My senses reeled; I felt myself falling, and in clutching
at the edge of the door for support pushed it shut with a sharp click!
“I remember no more: six weeks later I recovered my reason in
a hotel at Manchester, whither I had been taken by strangers the next
day. For all these weeks I had suffered from a nervous fever,
attended with constant delirium. I had been found lying in the
road several miles away from the house; but how I had escaped from it
to get there I never knew. On recovery, or as soon as my physicians
permitted me to talk, I inquired the fate of Judge Veigh, whom (to quiet
me, as I now know) they represented as well and at home.
“No one believed a word of my story, and who can wonder?
And who can imagine my grief when, arriving at my home in Frankfort
two months later, I learned that Judge Veigh had never been heard of
since that night? I then regretted bitterly the pride which since
the first few days after the recovery of my reason had forbidden me
to repeat my discredited story and insist upon its truth.
“With all that afterward occurred - the examination of the house;
the failure to find any room corresponding to that which I have described;
the attempt to have me adjudged insane, and my triumph over my accusers
- the readers of the Advocate are familiar. After all these
years I am still confident that excavations which I have neither the
legal right to undertake nor the wealth to make would disclose the secret
of the disappearance of my unhappy friend, and possibly of the former
occupants and owners of the deserted and now destroyed house.
I do not despair of yet bringing about such a search, and it is a source
of deep grief to me that it has been delayed by the undeserved hostility
and unwise incredulity of the family and friends of the late Judge Veigh.”
Colonel McArdle died in Frankfort on the thirteenth day of December,
in the year 1879.
THE OTHER LODGERS
“In order to take that train,” said Colonel Levering, sitting
in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, “you will have to remain nearly
all night in Atlanta. That is a fine city, but I advise you not
to put up at the Breathitt House, one of the principal hotels.
It is an old wooden building in urgent need of repairs. There
are breaches in the walls that you could throw a cat through.
The bedrooms have no locks on the doors, no furniture but a single chair
in each, and a bedstead without bedding - just a mattress. Even
these meager accommodations you cannot be sure that you will have in
monopoly; you must take your chance of being stowed in with a lot of
others. Sir, it is a most abominable hotel.
“The night that I passed in it was an uncomfortable night.
I got in late and was shown to my room on the ground floor by an apologetic
night-clerk with a tallow candle, which he considerately left with me.
I was worn out by two days and a night of hard railway travel and had
not entirely recovered from a gunshot wound in the head, received in
an altercation. Rather than look for better quarters I lay down
on the mattress without removing my clothing and fell asleep.
“Along toward morning I awoke. The moon had risen and was
shining in at the uncurtained window, illuminating the room with a soft,
bluish light which seemed, somehow, a bit spooky, though I dare say
it had no uncommon quality; all moonlight is that way if you will observe
it. Imagine my surprise and indignation when I saw the floor occupied
by at least a dozen other lodgers! I sat up, earnestly damning
the management of that unthinkable hotel, and was about to spring from
the bed to go and make trouble for the night-clerk - him of the apologetic
manner and the tallow candle - when something in the situation affected
me with a strange indisposition to move. I suppose I was what
a story-writer might call ‘frozen with terror.’ For
those men were obviously all dead!
“They lay on their backs, disposed orderly along three sides of
the room, their feet to the walls - against the other wall, farthest
from the door, stood my bed and the chair. All the faces were
covered, but under their white cloths the features of the two bodies
that lay in the square patch of moonlight near the window showed in
sharp profile as to nose and chin.
“I thought this a bad dream and tried to cry out, as one does
in a nightmare, but could make no sound. At last, with a desperate
effort I threw my feet to the floor and passing between the two rows
of clouted faces and the two bodies that lay nearest the door, I escaped
from the infernal place and ran to the office. The night-clerk
was there, behind the desk, sitting in the dim light of another tallow
candle - just sitting and staring. He did not rise: my abrupt
entrance produced no effect upon him, though I must have looked a veritable
corpse myself. It occurred to me then that I had not before really
observed the fellow. He was a little chap, with a colorless face
and the whitest, blankest eyes I ever saw. He had no more expression
than the back of my hand. His clothing was a dirty gray.
“‘Damn you!’ I said; ‘what do you mean?’
“Just the same, I was shaking like a leaf in the wind and did
not recognize my own voice.
“The night-clerk rose, bowed (apologetically) and - well, he was
no longer there, and at that moment I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder
from behind. Just fancy that if you can! Unspeakably frightened,
I turned and saw a portly, kind-faced gentleman, who asked:
“‘What is the matter, my friend?’
“I was not long in telling him, but before I made an end of it
he went pale himself. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘are
you telling the truth?’
“I had now got myself in hand and terror had given place to indignation.
‘If you dare to doubt it,’ I said, ‘I’ll hammer
the life out of you!’
“‘No,’ he replied, ‘don’t do that; just
sit down till I tell you. This is not a hotel. It used to
be; afterward it was a hospital. Now it is unoccupied, awaiting
a tenant. The room that you mention was the dead-room - there
were always plenty of dead. The fellow that you call the night-clerk
used to be that, but later he booked the patients as they were brought
in. I don’t understand his being here. He has been
dead a few weeks.’
“‘And who are you?’ I blurted out.
“‘Oh, I look after the premises. I happened to be
passing just now, and seeing a light in here came in to investigate.
Let us have a look into that room,’ he added, lifting the sputtering
candle from the desk.
“‘I’ll see you at the devil first!’ said I,
bolting out of the door into the street.
“Sir, that Breathitt House, in Atlanta, is a beastly place!
Don’t you stop there.”
“God forbid! Your account of it certainly does not suggest
comfort. By the way, Colonel, when did all that occur?”
“In September, 1864 - shortly after the siege.”
THE THING AT NOLAN
To the south of where the road between Leesville and Hardy, in the State
of Missouri, crosses the east fork of May Creek stands an abandoned
house. Nobody has lived in it since the summer of 1879, and it
is fast going to pieces. For some three years before the date
mentioned above, it was occupied by the family of Charles May, from
one of whose ancestors the creek near which it stands took its name.
Mr. May’s family consisted of a wife, an adult son and two young
girls. The son’s name was John - the names of the daughters
are unknown to the writer of this sketch.
John May was of a morose and surly disposition, not easily moved to
anger, but having an uncommon gift of sullen, implacable hate.
His father was quite otherwise; of a sunny, jovial disposition, but
with a quick temper like a sudden flame kindled in a wisp of straw,
which consumes it in a flash and is no more. He cherished no resentments,
and his anger gone, was quick to make overtures for reconciliation.
He had a brother living near by who was unlike him in respect of all
this, and it was a current witticism in the neighborhood that John had
inherited his disposition from his uncle.
One day a misunderstanding arose between father and son, harsh words
ensued, and the father struck the son full in the face with his fist.
John quietly wiped away the blood that followed the blow, fixed his
eyes upon the already penitent offender and said with cold composure,
“You will die for that.”
The words were overheard by two brothers named Jackson, who were approaching
the men at the moment; but seeing them engaged in a quarrel they retired,
apparently unobserved. Charles May afterward related the unfortunate
occurrence to his wife and explained that he had apologized to the son
for the hasty blow, but without avail; the young man not only rejected
his overtures, but refused to withdraw his terrible threat. Nevertheless,
there was no open rupture of relations: John continued living with the
family, and things went on very much as before.
One Sunday morning in June, 1879, about two weeks after what has been
related, May senior left the house immediately after breakfast, taking
a spade. He said he was going to make an excavation at a certain
spring in a wood about a mile away, so that the cattle could obtain
water. John remained in the house for some hours, variously occupied
in shaving himself, writing letters and reading a newspaper. His
manner was very nearly what it usually was; perhaps he was a trifle
more sullen and surly.
At two o’clock he left the house. At five, he returned.
For some reason not connected with any interest in his movements, and
which is not now recalled, the time of his departure and that of his
return were noted by his mother and sisters, as was attested at his
trial for murder. It was observed that his clothing was wet in
spots, as if (so the prosecution afterward pointed out) he had been
removing blood-stains from it. His manner was strange, his look
wild. He complained of illness, and going to his room took to
his bed.
May senior did not return. Later that evening the nearest neighbors
were aroused, and during that night and the following day a search was
prosecuted through the wood where the spring was. It resulted
in little but the discovery of both men’s footprints in the clay
about the spring. John May in the meantime had grown rapidly worse
with what the local physician called brain fever, and in his delirium
raved of murder, but did not say whom he conceived to have been murdered,
nor whom he imagined to have done the deed. But his threat was
recalled by the brothers Jackson and he was arrested on suspicion and
a deputy sheriff put in charge of him at his home. Public opinion
ran strongly against him and but for his illness he would probably have
been hanged by a mob. As it was, a meeting of the neighbors was
held on Tuesday and a committee appointed to watch the case and take
such action at any time as circumstances might seem to warrant.
On Wednesday all was changed. From the town of Nolan, eight miles
away, came a story which put a quite different light on the matter.
Nolan consisted of a school house, a blacksmith’s shop, a “store”
and a half-dozen dwellings. The store was kept by one Henry Odell,
a cousin of the elder May. On the afternoon of the Sunday of May’s
disappearance Mr. Odell and four of his neighbors, men of credibility,
were sitting in the store smoking and talking. It was a warm day;
and both the front and the back door were open. At about three
o’clock Charles May, who was well known to three of them, entered
at the front door and passed out at the rear. He was without hat
or coat. He did not look at them, nor return their greeting, a
circumstance which did not surprise, for he was evidently seriously
hurt. Above the left eyebrow was a wound - a deep gash from which
the blood flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck
and saturating his light-gray shirt. Oddly enough, the thought
uppermost in the minds of all was that he had been fighting and was
going to the brook directly at the back of the store, to wash himself.
Perhaps there was a feeling of delicacy - a backwoods etiquette which
restrained them from following him to offer assistance; the court records,
from which, mainly, this narrative is drawn, are silent as to anything
but the fact. They waited for him to return, but he did not return.
Bordering the brook behind the store is a forest extending for six miles
back to the Medicine Lodge Hills. As soon as it became known in
the neighborhood of the missing man’s dwelling that he had been
seen in Nolan there was a marked alteration in public sentiment and
feeling. The vigilance committee went out of existence without
the formality of a resolution. Search along the wooded bottom
lands of May Creek was stopped and nearly the entire male population
of the region took to beating the bush about Nolan and in the Medicine
Lodge Hills. But of the missing man no trace was found.
One of the strangest circumstances of this strange case is the formal
indictment and trial of a man for murder of one whose body no human
being professed to have seen - one not known to be dead. We are
all more or less familiar with the vagaries and eccentricities of frontier
law, but this instance, it is thought, is unique. However that
may be, it is of record that on recovering from his illness John May
was indicted for the murder of his missing father. Counsel for
the defense appears not to have demurred and the case was tried on its
merits. The prosecution was spiritless and perfunctory; the defense
easily established - with regard to the deceased - an alibi.
If during the time in which John May must have killed Charles May, if
he killed him at all, Charles May was miles away from where John May
must have been, it is plain that the deceased must have come to his
death at the hands of someone else.
John May was acquitted, immediately left the country, and has never
been heard of from that day. Shortly afterward his mother and
sisters removed to St. Louis. The farm having passed into the
possession of a man who owns the land adjoining, and has a dwelling
of his own, the May house has ever since been vacant, and has the somber
reputation of being haunted.
One day after the May family had left the country, some boys, playing
in the woods along May Creek, found concealed under a mass of dead leaves,
but partly exposed by the rooting of hogs, a spade, nearly new and bright,
except for a spot on one edge, which was rusted and stained with blood.
The implement had the initials C. M. cut into the handle.
This discovery renewed, in some degree, the public excitement of a few
months before. The earth near the spot where the spade was found
was carefully examined, and the result was the finding of the dead body
of a man. It had been buried under two or three feet of soil and
the spot covered with a layer of dead leaves and twigs. There
was but little decomposition, a fact attributed to some preservative
property in the mineral-bearing soil.
Above the left eyebrow was a wound - a deep gash from which blood had
flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and saturating
the light-gray shirt. The skull had been cut through by the blow.
The body was that of Charles May.
But what was it that passed through Mr. Odell’s store at Nolan?
“MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES”
THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD
One morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six miles
from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on the veranda
of his dwelling. Immediately in front of the house was a lawn,
perhaps fifty yards in extent between the house and public road, or,
as it was called, the “pike.” Beyond this road lay
a close-cropped pasture of some ten acres, level and without a tree,
rock, or any natural or artificial object on its surface. At the
time there was not even a domestic animal in the field. In another
field, beyond the pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an overseer.
Throwing away the stump of a cigar, the planter rose, saying: “I
forgot to tell Andrew about those horses.” Andrew was the
overseer.
Williamson strolled leisurely down the gravel walk, plucking a flower
as he went, passed across the road and into the pasture, pausing a moment
as he closed the gate leading into it, to greet a passing neighbor,
Armour Wren, who lived on an adjoining plantation. Mr. Wren was
in an open carriage with his son James, a lad of thirteen. When
he had driven some two hundred yards from the point of meeting, Mr.
Wren said to his son: “I forgot to tell Mr. Williamson about those
horses.”
Mr. Wren had sold to Mr. Williamson some horses, which were to have
been sent for that day, but for some reason not now remembered it would
be inconvenient to deliver them until the morrow. The coachman
was directed to drive back, and as the vehicle turned Williamson was
seen by all three, walking leisurely across the pasture. At that
moment one of the coach horses stumbled and came near falling.
It had no more than fairly recovered itself when James Wren cried: “Why,
father, what has become of Mr. Williamson?”
It is not the purpose of this narrative to answer that question.
Mr. Wren’s strange account of the matter, given under oath in
the course of legal proceedings relating to the Williamson estate, here
follows:
“My son’s exclamation caused me to look toward the spot
where I had seen the deceased [sic] an instant before, but he
was not there, nor was he anywhere visible. I cannot say that
at the moment I was greatly startled, or realized the gravity of the
occurrence, though I thought it singular. My son, however, was
greatly astonished and kept repeating his question in different forms
until we arrived at the gate. My black boy Sam was similarly affected,
even in a greater degree, but I reckon more by my son’s manner
than by anything he had himself observed. [This sentence in the
testimony was stricken out.] As we got out of the carriage at
the gate of the field, and while Sam was hanging [sic] the team
to the fence, Mrs. Williamson, with her child in her arms and followed
by several servants, came running down the walk in great excitement,
crying: ‘He is gone, he is gone! O God! what an awful thing!’
and many other such exclamations, which I do not distinctly recollect.
I got from them the impression that they related to something more -
than the mere disappearance of her husband, even if that had occurred
before her eyes. Her manner was wild, but not more so, I think,
than was natural under the circumstances. I have no reason to
think she had at that time lost her mind. I have never since seen
nor heard of Mr. Williamson.”
This testimony, as might have been expected, was corroborated in almost
every particular by the only other eye-witness (if that is a proper
term) - the lad James. Mrs. Williamson had lost her reason and
the servants were, of course, not competent to testify. The boy
James Wren had declared at first that he saw the disappearance,
but there is nothing of this in his testimony given in court.
None of the field hands working in the field to which Williamson was
going had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire
plantation and adjoining country failed to supply a clew. The
most monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks,
were current in that part of the State for many years, and probably
are to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly
known of the matter. The courts decided that Williamson was dead,
and his estate was distributed according to law.
AN UNFINISHED RACE
James Burne Worson was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington, Warwickshire,
England. He had a little shop in one of the by-ways leading off
the road to Warwick. In his humble sphere he was esteemed an honest
man, although like many of his class in English towns he was somewhat
addicted to drink. When in liquor he would make foolish wagers.
On one of these too frequent occasions he was boasting of his prowess
as a pedestrian and athlete, and the outcome was a match against nature.
For a stake of one sovereign he undertook to run all the way to Coventry
and back, a distance of something more than forty miles. This
was on the 3d day of September in 1873. He set out at once, the
man with whom he had made the bet - whose name is not remembered - accompanied
by Barham Wise, a linen draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer,
I think, following in a light cart or wagon.
For several miles Worson went on very well, at an easy gait, without
apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was
not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them. The three men in
the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly
“chaff” or encouragement, as the spirit moved them.
Suddenly - in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from
them, and with their eyes full upon him - the man seemed to stumble,
pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible cry and vanished!
He did not fall to the earth - he vanished before touching it.
No trace of him was ever discovered.
After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless irresolution,
the three men returned to Leamington, told their astonishing story and
were afterward taken into custody. But they were of good standing,
had always been considered truthful, were sober at the time of the occurrence,
and nothing ever transpired to discredit their sworn account of their
extraordinary adventure, concerning the truth of which, nevertheless,
public opinion was divided, throughout the United Kingdom. If
they had something to conceal, their choice of means is certainly one
of the most amazing ever made by sane human beings.
CHARLES ASHMORE’S TRAIL
The family of Christian Ashmore consisted of his wife, his mother, two
grown daughters, and a son of sixteen years. They lived in Troy,
New York, were well-to-do, respectable persons, and had many friends,
some of whom, reading these lines, will doubtless learn for the first
time the extraordinary fate of the young man. From Troy the Ashmores
moved in 1871 or 1872 to Richmond, Indiana, and a year or two later
to the vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, where Mr. Ashmore bought a farm
and lived on it. At some little distance from the farmhouse was
a spring with a constant flow of clear, cold water, whence the family
derived its supply for domestic use at all seasons.
On the evening of the 9th of November in 1878, at about nine o’clock,
young Charles Ashmore left the family circle about the hearth, took
a tin bucket and started toward the spring. As he did not return,
the family became uneasy, and going to the door by which he had left
the house, his father called without receiving an answer. He then
lighted a lantern and with the eldest daughter, Martha, who insisted
on accompanying him, went in search. A light snow had fallen,
obliterating the path, but making the young man’s trail conspicuous;
each footprint was plainly defined. After going a little more
than half-way - perhaps seventy-five yards - the father, who was in
advance, halted, and elevating his lantern stood peering intently into
the darkness ahead.
“What is the matter, father?” the girl asked.
This was the matter: the trail of the young man had abruptly ended,
and all beyond was smooth, unbroken snow. The last footprints
were as conspicuous as any in the line; the very nail-marks were distinctly
visible. Mr. Ashmore looked upward, shading his eyes with his
hat held between them and the lantern. The stars were shining;
there was not a cloud in the sky; he was denied the explanation which
had suggested itself, doubtful as it would have been - a new snowfall
with a limit so plainly defined. Taking a wide circuit round the
ultimate tracks, so as to leave them undisturbed for further examination,
the man proceeded to the spring, the girl following, weak and terrified.
Neither had spoken a word of what both had observed. The spring
was covered with ice, hours old.
Returning to the house they noted the appearance of the snow on both
sides of the trail its entire length. No tracks led away from
it.
The morning light showed nothing more. Smooth, spotless, unbroken,
the shallow snow lay everywhere.
Four days later the grief-stricken mother herself went to the spring
for water. She came back and related that in passing the spot
where the footprints had ended she had heard the voice of her son and
had been eagerly calling to him, wandering about the place, as she had
fancied the voice to be now in one direction, now in another, until
she was exhausted with fatigue and emotion.
Questioned as to what the voice had said, she was unable to tell, yet
averred that the words were perfectly distinct. In a moment the
entire family was at the place, but nothing was heard, and the voice
was believed to be an hallucination caused by the mother’s great
anxiety and her disordered nerves. But for months afterward, at
irregular intervals of a few days, the voice was heard by the several
members of the family, and by others. All declared it unmistakably
the voice of Charles Ashmore; all agreed that it seemed to come from
a great distance, faintly, yet with entire distinctness of articulation;
yet none could determine its direction, nor repeat its words.
The intervals of silence grew longer and longer, the voice fainter and
farther, and by midsummer it was heard no more.
If anybody knows the fate of Charles Ashmore it is probably his mother.
She is dead.
SCIENCE TO THE FRONT
In connection with this subject of “mysterious disappearance”
- of which every memory is stored with abundant example - it is pertinent
to note the belief of Dr. Hem, of Leipsic; not by way of explanation,
unless the reader may choose to take it so, but because of its intrinsic
interest as a singular speculation. This distinguished scientist
has expounded his views in a book entitled “Verschwinden und Seine
Theorie,” which has attracted some attention, “particularly,”
says one writer, “among the followers of Hegel, and mathematicians
who hold to the actual existence of a so-called non-Euclidean space
- that is to say, of space which has more dimensions than length, breadth,
and thickness - space in which it would be possible to tie a knot in
an endless cord and to turn a rubber ball inside out without ‘a
solution of its continuity,’ or in other words, without breaking
or cracking it.”
Dr. Hem believes that in the visible world there are void places - vacua,
and something more - holes, as it were, through which animate and inanimate
objects may fall into the invisible world and be seen and heard no more.
The theory is something like this: Space is pervaded by luminiferous
ether, which is a material thing - as much a substance as air or water,
though almost infinitely more attenuated. All force, all forms
of energy must be propagated in this; every process must take place
in it which takes place at all. But let us suppose that cavities
exist in this otherwise universal medium, as caverns exist in the earth,
or cells in a Swiss cheese. In such a cavity there would be absolutely
nothing. It would be such a vacuum as cannot be artificially produced;
for if we pump the air from a receiver there remains the luminiferous
ether. Through one of these cavities light could not pass, for
there would be nothing to bear it. Sound could not come from it;
nothing could be felt in it. It would not have a single one of
the conditions necessary to the action of any of our senses. In
such a void, in short, nothing whatever could occur. Now, in the
words of the writer before quoted - the learned doctor himself nowhere
puts it so concisely: “A man inclosed in such a closet could neither
see nor be seen; neither hear nor be heard; neither feel nor be felt;
neither live nor die, for both life and death are processes which can
take place only where there is force, and in empty space no force could
exist.” Are these the awful conditions (some will ask) under
which the friends of the lost are to think of them as existing, and
doomed forever to exist?
Baldly and imperfectly as here stated, Dr. Hem’s theory, in so
far as it professes to be an adequate explanation of “mysterious
disappearances,” is open to many obvious objections; to fewer
as he states it himself in the “spacious volubility” of
his book. But even as expounded by its author it does not explain,
and in truth is incompatible with some incidents of, the occurrences
related in these memoranda: for example, the sound of Charles Ashmore’s
voice. It is not my duty to indue facts and theories with affinity.
A.B.
Footnotes:
{1} The Isle
of Pines was once a famous rendezvous of pirates.
End of the Project Gutenberg eText Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
by Ambrose Bierce