I have changed the title of COFFIN WAR to TEXAS CLIPPINGS. While I was making changes anyway, I fixed a few typos and cleaned up some of the formatting, and updated the information about the book. When I checked this morning everything had been updated but the cover, which takes a bit longer for Amazon to update.
OREGON CLIPPINGS is just about ready to go. My plan is to bundle all three books at a reduced price in time for Christmas presents for the people who are hard to buy for that won't even require postage or a trip to the post office.
Enough babbling. Because it is so close to Halloween, I have found ghost stories in a 1906 New York newspaper that had nothing to do with Halloween. The story was in a May issue of the paper. It was a long article so I didn't type up the whole thing but here are four stories for your spooky pleasure.
GHOST CLIPPINGS
New York Tribune, May 6, 1906 - Image 31
True Ghost Stories
By Robert Leffingwell
Old fashioned ghost stories nearly always used to have a queer setting. They were generally laid in the dark, in strange scenes, in out-of-the way places where witnesses were impossible. The very conditions made the role of the skeptic easy. But here are stories of ghosts seen under commonplace, every day surroundings and told in a plain, matter of fact way that carries conviction. Two of these ghosts were seen in full light, and all the tales are corroborated by others than the narrators, which makes it impracticable to laugh them out of court.
There is always something hard to shake off about the ghost story, it is so old and so universal. Our ancestors, as far back as one cares to go, had ghosts. They were, so to speak, part of the household furniture, like the woman in the organ builder’s story which follows, and were handed down with the rest of the heirlooms.
There are many good old houses in England where there have been family ghosts for generations–regular visitants, to be taken for granted just as the secret staircase, the ruined moat, and the family portraits. The same thing is true in less degree in New England. There are old Salem and Boston houses that have their ghosts, which time cannot lay; but in their appointed seasons they walk, and may still be seen upon their way.
A little while ago science was going to explain or expel the ghosts. But they are still here. They have even grown more apparent. Instead of vanishing, they have come into clearer light, and soon we may be writing their biographies. It is, in fact, from the data collected by scientists and skeptics, that these stories are taken. The narrators tell the tales in their own words.
A British Army Officer’s Story:
“About Christmas time some years ago, being officer on duty, I was seated at the mess table at Aldershot. There were ten or twelve other officers present and among them John, Atkinson, the surgeon major of the regiment, who sat on my right but at the end of the table farthest from me and next to Russell. I was sitting at the end of the table and directly facing the window.
At about eight forty-five P.M. Atkinson suddenly glared at the window at his right, thereby attracting the notice of Russell, who, seizing his arm, said: ‘Good gracious, doctor! What’s the matter with you?’
This caused me to look in the direction in which I saw Atkinson looking, at the window opposite, and I there saw (for the curtains were looped up, although the room was lighted by a powerful central gaslight in the roof and by candles on the tables) a young woman in what appeared to be a soiled or somewhat worn bridal dress, walk or glide slowly past the window from east to west. She was about at the center of the window when I observed her and outside the window. No person could have actually been in the position where she appeared, as the window in question is about thirty feet above the ground.”
The second story has an almost epic simplicity and an unstudied pathos: A little boy in a Yorkshire town lay sick unto death. His mother had died some years before. Beside him watched his elder sister and a friend of his mother. The friend distinctly saw the mother come and stoop over the boy caressingly. Next day the boy died. When the sister and the friend were laying him out, the latter said to the former:
“I had a singular experience in this room last night.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the sister. “You saw mother. I saw her, too. She came over and kissed Hughey.”
The Malignant Head:
One wonders what explanation could be offered for the apparent malignity behind this appearance.
“It was in the morning of a day in the spring of 1875 that I saw the head, which was afterward seen by another member of our family. I had been sent out of the room for someone, and as I looked up to call them, I saw the most horrible head looking over the balusters at me. It was the face of a man but the hair was long, like a woman’s. The parchment-like skin was drawn closely over the face and gave a skull-like look to it. The mouth, full of great teeth, was twisted in a horrid leer but what frightened me most was the expression of the eyes, they were so light and full of the most wicked cruelty, as if they had existed for the sole purpose of trying to terrify a little child, such as I was then. I had a great feeling of indignation in my heart, as I stood for what seemed ages to me, looking at it for I could not draw my eyes away. Then I went quietly back to the room I had come from and, being proud and sensitive, never told anyone a word about it for many years.”
The mystery is only made the deeper by the corroboration of the girl’s sister who saw the strange portent five years later.
“One evening, about nine o’clock, in the late autumn of 1880, as I was running upstairs, I paused at the foot of the top flight and looked up prior to calling to my sister, who I thought was in her bedroom. To my horror, I saw in the darkness, leaning over the balusters skirting the landing above me, a head silhouetted against a window. It was a most sinister head with a covering of shaggy hair. I particularly noticed the eyes, which were light and evil, also the mouth, which was distorted with a leer which seemed to me the essence of malignity. It was looking wickedly at me but I did not wait for it to speak for I was so frightened that I turned on my heels and ran away.”
This experience, related by a man of much experience of life, is interesting as one of many in which dogs have a part:
“I went to bed about ten-thirty and shortly afterward was sound asleep. In the night I heard loud talking in the room but at first did not open my eyes. As the talking continued, I looked up and distinctly saw an old lady standing at the foot of the bed gazing intently at me. After watching her for sometime, I reached out my hand to the matchbox to strike a light but as soon as I moved my hand toward the matches I saw the face getting more indistinct. I therefore drew back my hand and watched the figure getting more and more dim, till it suddenly vanished. Then a curious happened. Outside the house and within ten yards of the bedroom window I had two kennels in which a bulldog and a fox terrier were chained. The moment the figure vanished these two dogs began to bark furiously and seemed terribly excited, as if they were trying to get at someone.”
Some Unanswered Questions
What is to be thought of these records? The explanation eludes our minds as the ghost eludes the grasp.
“Why,” the reader will ask, “do apparitions so often appear at or near the time and place where death is coming? Do spirits revisit the scenes of their own most memorable experiences in the flesh? Are there malignant as well as benevolent visitants from the other world? Does an unhappy or unhallowed end make a ghost walk?”
He who asks such questions must as yet go unanswered. They have baffled all inquirers. The stories here collected may throw some little light upon the matter but like all other ghost stories they throw us back upon Hamlet’s reflection when he looked upon his father’s spirit: “There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
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