Genealogue Challenge #82

Cozmo's Food and Spirits in Stockertown, Pennsylvania, is supposedly haunted by a ghost named Marvin who hanged himself in a stairwell. The Pennsylvania Area Paranormal Association was called in to investigate.

Team researcher Regina Sell said she found in 1900 U.S. Census records that a Marvin Hoff, born in New Jersey, was living at the hotel with his mother Susan, an assistant cook.

Legends differ on the details, but the gist of the tale is Marvin was spurned by a woman he fell in love with at the saloon and committed suicide. [Link]

Could Marvin Hoff have been the jilted lover at the end of his rope?

Haunting Found Wanting

The story goes that 6-year-old Inez Clarke was locked out of her house by her parents on the night of Aug. 1, 1880, for being a naughty girl. She was promptly struck by lightning. Her guilt-ridden parents claimed she had died of tuberculosis, and had her buried in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery beneath a lifelike marble statue. Little Inez has been haunting the cemetery ever since.

A great story, if only Inez Clarke had existed.

"Based on cemetery records there's no such person buried in that grave," Al [Walavich] says.

He's even looked up U.S. Census records from the 1800s and found "no indication that such a child ever existed."

There's even an affidavit from Inez's "supposed mother" issued in 1910 -- 30 years after the child's death -- that claims the Clarkes had two daughters, both of whom were still living at the time. The document also stated neither parent had any other children, Walavich says.

"And the most telling fact was that one of the Clarke family [relatives] had been in touch with cemetery about statue and grave. When asked who Inez was, she said, 'I have no idea, but isn't it a lovely statue,'" he says. "It's kind of hard to have a haunting when the supposed person never really existed." [Link]

An 8-year-old boy, Amos Briggs, is actually buried beneath the statue. Walavich suspects that the intricately carved statue was an advertisement for its maker, Andrew Gage.

[Photo credit: Inez Clark in Her Plexiglass Case by Richie Diesterheft]

The Cigar-Smoking Ghost of Cape Cod

Some current residents of Sagamore Cemetery in Bourne, Mass., were transplanted from other graveyards in 1909 when the Cape Cod Canal was built. Some remains ended up in the wrong graves, under the wrong headstones. Caretaker Donald Ellis thinks that the cemetery is haunted by the troubled spirit of Isaac Keith, late owner of the company that built new coffins for the transplanted bodies. As evidence, he reports "an incredibly distinct aroma of cigar smoke."

“Isaac Keith was a big cigar smoker, and he died in 1900,” Ellis says simply.

Or the supernatural aroma could be from the ghost of Emory Ellis, who held off the folks with shovels intent on disinterring the dead in Bournedale so long ago.

Emory Ellis reportedly smoked cigars too and was not too happy – until some money passed hands – with the dead moving to Sagamore.

“That’s another story,” Ellis says. [Link]

An Illuminating Tombstone

P. Milton Lupton's headstone says that he is "not dead but sleepeth." The question is, does he sleep with a night-light?

For many years, legend has indicated that a certain tombstone along Cedar Creek Grade is somehow possessed by powers that cause it to glow when approached by cars at night.

Theories about the alleged phenomenon in the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church cemetery have ranged from the type of materials the stone contains to some slightly less scientific theories — such as ghosts and curses.

However, a trip to the cemetery on a recent evening produced no evidence of any particular reflective or glowing properties, despite an experiment that aimed several different angles of low- and high-beam car headlights at the gravestone. [Link]

The Greenbrier Ghost Contest

Juliana Smith and Ancestry.com are offering a prize to the first person who can identify the illegitimate child of The Greenbrier Ghost, Elva Zona Heaster.

In a nutshell, Elva gave birth to a son out of wedlock in 1895, married a guy named Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue in 1896, had her neck broken by Shue in January of 1897, and haunted her mother until he was arrested. But what became of her child?

Whoever identifies Elva's offspring first gets an Ancestry.com World Deluxe subscription (or upgrade or extension). How hard could it be to chase down the child of a ghost?

Get Closer to Your Ancestors, But Not Too Close

From The (Twin Falls, Idaho) Times-News of Oct. 31, 2005:

Haunted homesite?
Reporter delves firsthand into mystery

By Joshua Palmer
Times-News writer

KIMBERLY -- Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes that truth sends chills up your spine.

[snip]

I was skeptical of the stories I heard about the Stricker Homesite. Either I hadn't seen enough horror movies, or I just wasn't in tune with, well, whatever it is that ghosts do. So I decided to find out for myself if the stories were true by staying the night alone in the Stricker mansion, and this is where my story begins.

[snip]

It was about this time when I heard a loud scraping noise like somebody dragging something on the floor above me. It broke the silence and sent me into a thought crazed frenzy to come up with logical reasons for the sound. I wasn't searching for holy water and a crucifix -- although I did have a bottle of Dasani and a Maglight -- but I was searching for anything to explain something I didn't know, so I wondered if this was how ghost stories were created.

I heard that people feel closer to their ancestors when they do genealogy or visit ancestral sites, and I wondered if maybe we sometimes confused that feeling with, say, the sensation you get when total silence is broken by a loud scraping sound.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Ghosts: A Neglected Genealogical Resource

In their haste to catalog the dead, genealogists often forget that some ancestors still walk among us, and can be invaluable sources of information.

A good place to start your specter-quest is The Shadowlands—a website which claims to have gathered "Over 10,100 true ghost stories." Such a claim cannot be made on the Internet without solid proof. With your family history in mind, choose a state or country from the haunting index, and browse the listings for familiar place names. If your ancestor's home or burial spot is listed, you may be in luck.

Take, for instance, Philip Jordan of Seattle. He found a reference on The Shadowlands to a ghost haunting St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Cumberland, Maryland. The website reported that the spirit of a "Civil War soldier who was executed for killing an officer is seen in the church rectory." Jordan immediately recognized the soldier as his great-great-grandfather, Ozias B. Jordan, who in 1864 shot a lieutenant in the back for pinching his tin of meat.

Jordan flew to Maryland to visit the church. After a brief interview with the ghost, he was able to identify his ancestor's first wife as Luella Martin—not Luella Morton, as family tradition had it. He was also able to put to rest another piece of family lore, which said that Ozias volunteered for the service.

"He let me know that wasn't true," Philip told The Genealogue. "He said he'd have shot the recruiting officers if they hadn't shackled him to a fence post. I got the feeling he'd have shot me if he weren't, you know, dead."

The chance of hearing disturbing family secrets should not dissuade you from tracking down and interviewing your own ghostly forebears. Here are some tips:

• Visit them on their home turf, where they will be most comfortable.
• Bring along a tape recorder, but don't be surprised if only your voice is recorded.
• Ask questions that require more than Yes or No answers, as ghosts are known to be tight-lipped.
• Be patient. Pushing for answers may get you slimed with ectoplasm.
• Thank them for their time, and then run away screaming.

Ghosts Long in Tooth, Short on Details

From the Exeter (N.H.) News-Letter of Oct. 21, 2005:

Tracking down those taciturn ghosts: Lots of old houses

Barbara Rimkunas

One of the many services we offer at the Exeter Historical Society is assistance with house research. We can't always track down everything about a house, but we are at least familiar with the resources available for researchers.

It can be a very thrilling task as we trace the owners back through time with directory entries or bits and pieces of information gleaned from newspaper accounts. But at least two or three times a year I get a client who is interested in more than just a house's history.

"I want to know if anyone died in my house," is the usual inquiry that sends up a red flag.

[snip]

Why do the ghosts never recall their own last names? They love to tell the mediums their first names: "Charles," "Sarah," "James," or any number of names our early ancestors used over and over, sometimes within a single generation, but they never say "Oh, and my surname was Gilman and I lived in the 1700s." It would be so helpful if they would.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]