An Extended Holiday

There are two theories how the Christmas Mountains in Texas got their name. One says that the peaks resembled a line of Christmas trees. The other rests upon a local legend that really should involve cannibalism.

Local folklore has it that an area ranch family decided to spend the Thanksgiving holidays camping in the mountains and got smacked by a freak blizzard that prevented the family from escaping until Christmas.

The property officially shows up as "Christmas Mountains" in the 1918 Corps of Engineers U.S. Army topographic map and also on the 1904 University of Texas Mineral Survey Map completed by Hill and Udden, according to General Land Office officials.

The land commissioner believes "the family story sounds more plausible than the Christmas trees from a distance story." Christmas trees weren't even introduced to Texas until the middle 1800s, and they didn't become common until the 1920s, he said. [Link]

Family Story Has Legs

I. A. Hutchins shot a weird wolf-like creature back in 1886. He sold the animal to a taxidermist Joseph Sherwood, who called it a "ringdocus" and put it on display.

“I never doubted the story,” said Jack Kirby, grandson of the settler who shot the animal.

After reading a Halloween-themed Chronicle story about local legends of strange creatures, Kirby tracked down the mount in the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello.

[Loren] Coleman and [Jerome] Clark suggested that a DNA test should be done on the mount to determine what it is. Kirby, however, was not so certain he was ready to end a mystery that had been passed down by his family for four generations.

“Do we want to know?” he said. [Link]

You Can't Get Blood from a Stone, But You Can Get Tears

In Riverside Cemetery in Wichita Falls, Texas, stands the statue of a young woman descending a staircase. Witnesses say that the statue, on occasion, weeps.

"I saw what looked like a tear," said Julie Coley, a genealogist who has meticulously recorded the graves of Riverside Cemetery, where the girl's statue stands.

"It was a tear stain on her right cheek. I've gone back many times since in all kinds of weather and all times of day. I've never seen the statue cry again."

Of course, you can't have a spooky gravestone story without a tragic, fictional back story.

It was on her wedding day, dressed in her flowing dress, that she tripped on her train and fell down the mansion's stairs, her young life cut short by a broken neck - or so some say. [Link]

The true story? She died of typhoid in Detroit.

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]

Two Tales of Treasure

This story of pirate gold at Moultrie Creek reminds me of a couple of stories of lost loot from my neck of the woods in Maine.

The first was related by an Abenaki healer named Mollyockett (or Molly Ockett, a corruption of the French Marie Agathe). She reported that in the mid 18th century, when the local Indians relocated to Canada, they buried some amount of gold beneath a tree in what is now West Paris. They marked the spot by hanging two traps in the tree. An iron chain was later found embedded in a tree at "Trap Corner," which lent credence to the story. My mother grew up at Trap Corner, and searched for the treasure when she was a kid. If she found it, she's kept it a secret from me.

The second story involves a man named Isaac Patch, who lived in my hometown of Greenwood. He was fairly well off and held mortgages on many of his neighbors' farms, which might explain the legend that emerged after his death in 1849. It was said that he stashed gold somewhere on his farm, and that on his deathbed he began to tell his wife where it was buried. "... the northeast corner..." he whispered. "The northeast corner of what?" his wife asked. "You're too damn curious," he replied.

For years afterward people searched his homestead for the hidden gold. My great-great-grandfather Lemuel Dunham wrote in 1896 that "the sensation in regard to finding buried treasure on Patch Mountain savors strongly of humbuggery." But still they searched—with everything from divining rods to electronic metal detectors.

The New York Journal picked up the story in 1900, branding Patch a professional gambler, and putting a value on his cache of $100,000. The article quoted his will as saying that "should anyone else save the legal heirs try to get the fortune he (Patch) would appear in the form of some animal and drive him away." I have read the will, but don't recall this bizarre provision. Still, I can confirm that some locals believed it.

Isaac Patch is buried on Patch Mountain, not far from where my great-grandmother, Mabel (Morgan) Dunham, lived as a girl. Mabel was older than her brothers, but she was given the worst job on their treasure-hunting expeditions. She was assigned the task of sitting on Isaac Patch's grave to make sure that he didn't rise from the dead and thwart her siblings' search. As far as I know, she was successful in her job.

[Image Credit: Clubhouse Tokens by Matt DeTurck]

Once Upon a Time There Were Three Brothers...

I was once a student of comparative mythology, so the notion that some family legends might spring from the unconscious mind appeals to me.

The legend of three brothers emigrating together to America and then splitting up to settle in different parts of the country is a common myth. Some ascribe the myth to genealogical laziness, but it may have roots in the "three brothers" theme found in medieval folk tales, "in which an aged king sends his sons on a quest for some magic, rejuvenating water in a distant land." Professor E. Washburn Hopkins traced the story back to "Fountain of Youth" stories told in ancient Persia, Ireland, and elsewhere.

The Persian version substitutes for three brothers two brothers and a sister; the Keltic version turns all three into girls. Elsewhere the three are brothers, the trio still preserved, perhaps, in the numerous American families (of eight or nine generations) who independently trace their origin to "three brothers who came to America in the seventeenth century to seek their fortune." How widespread this myth is, may easily be learned from casual inquiry. I once sat at table with half a dozen unrelated people, four of whom stated that this was their "family legend." Of the four, three admitted that it was a legend without historical foundation, "a myth"; one insisted that it was certain. [Link]

A Caper on the Cape

Volunteers in Sandwich, Massachusetts, waded into a pond last Saturday with "thumping" poles, in search of gravestones supposed missing from the adjacent Old Town Cemetery. George Burbank's 1946 book Highlights of Sandwich History says that ne'er-do-wells tossed the stones into the pond back in the 1880s.

In December, town workers pulled a headstone of Hannah Thacher, who died in 1785, from the water. Town workers found the headstone and other broken pieces of stone in shallow water when they were clearing bramble and brush between the pond and the cemetery.

Some believe Burbank's tale of graveyard shenanigans is accurate because while the burial ground was established in 1663, according to historical records, the oldest stone in the cemetery is marked 1685.

That's a 20-year gap with no explanation. [Link]

There are other possible explanations for the gap. In his study of colonial gravestones on Cape Cod, Stephen P. Broker was able to locate just 37 stones bearing dates prior to 1709.

Possible explanations for the slow start in gravestones being placed in Cape cemeteries include a hesitancy of the early settlers to mark the graves of their growing numbers of deceased for fear of encouraging attack by the Native Americans, the initial absence of a gravestone carving tradition in the New World, the need to import gravestones from Boston and Plymouth carving centers, the use of uninscribed fieldstones to mark early burials, the use of wooden markers that have not survived, and the use of inscribed stones that have disappeared with the ensuing time. [Link]

[Photo credit: Zad Crol by Chris Seufert]

They Want to Call It an Early Knight

Some in Westford, Massachusetts, believe that an expedition led by Scottish Prince Henry Sinclair visited their town in 1398. Their evidence? A stone on Depot Street that bears the image of a broken sword—supposed to signify that a knight in the party had died.

So is this the stuff of legend or of history? Some people in Westford are hoping science can help them find out. They've contacted a forensic geologist about testing to determine the age of the carvings.

"So we just hope they can date it and that will convince the non-believers that the knight actually did come here in 1400," said [Elizabeth] Lane. [Link]

That's Reserved for the Devil

Should you happen to visit Union Cemetery in Guthrie Center, Iowa, be sure not to sit in the cement chair located between the Miller and Peterson gravestones. It's the Devil's Chair, according to Chad Lewis, co-author of The Iowa Road Guide to Haunted Locations.

"A young man told us that if you are brave enough to sit in the chair you will experience a case of bad luck. When asked whether or not he had ever sat in the chair the man replied that even though he didn't believe in such things he wasn't going to tempt fate," Lewis added. [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]

They Might Be Giants

From Pravda:

Russian researchers discover giants' graves in Syria

12/01/2005 15:45

The grave of Abel, the second son of Adam and Eve, is the most famous and significant grave

A group of Russian scientists with Professor Ernst Muldashev at the head set off for an expedition to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt in the beginning of this year.

[snip]

Researchers discovered the graves of gigantic people after the expedition found a giant's footprints in Syria.

Q: Many a legend and fairy tale say about giants and titans. Why do you think no giant bones have been found so far?

A: Ancient giants may have never buried their dead in the ground the way we do. Different people in the present-day world bury the dead differently. It is a custom in India to burn the dead and throw the ashes in water. It seems to me that ancient people put the dead bodies into sarcophaguses where the bodies dematerialized and turned into a kind of energy blobs that were used by living people for various purposes. That is why the bones of giant people may never be found.

Q: Did you find any?

A: No, we did not. But we found the graves of ancient giants.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Perhaps I just lack imagination, but I can't think of a single use for corpse-rendered energy blobs.

Genealogy vs. the Mothman

From The (Huntington W.V.) Herald-Dispatch of Sept. 19, 2005:

Capitalizing on mystery

Organizers hope to keep expanding Point Pleasant event

By Nicole Young
The Herald-Dispatch

POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. -- Whether a horrifying monster or a really good hoax, the legend of the Mothman has been tacked on to this small West Virginia town since the 1960s. Now in its fourth year, the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant has continued to capitalize on the rich history and mystery of the Mothman himself.

With a goal of jump-starting the town's economy, the festival was originally a way to capitalize on the "Mecca of history and genealogy," in the area, said Hilda Austin, executive director for the Mason County Area Chamber of Commerce.

Now, people from as far as New York, Canada and even England came to the town this weekend with one thing in mind -- to learn about and maybe even catch a glimpse of the legendary Mothman and his "glowing red eyes," she said.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]