Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories Read Online

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.