Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This is another of what I call “mini-mysteries”--murder or missing-persons cases where there just isn’t enough information for a regular blog post.  This account of a “Missing 411”-style disappearance appeared in the Glens Falls “Post-Star,” November 15, 2017:

HORICON — Two years ago Wednesday, Thomas Messick Sr. vanished in the woods of Horicon while deer hunting with friends and relatives. And despite the thousands of hours dedicated to the search, it remains unclear what happened to Messick, whether he got lost in the woods, had a medical problem or was the victim of foul play. His son, Thomas Messick Jr. of Troy, said loved ones are hoping for some closure and remain as “perplexed” about what hap- pened as the professional and volunteer searchers who scoured the woods south of Brant Lake for weeks in November and December 2015.

“We’re still praying for answers,” he said. Messick Sr. was 82 when he disappeared Nov. 15, 2015 near Lily Pond in an area of state land that is part of the Lake George Wild Forest. Messick was supposed to remain in a stationary post while others in his party moved into the woods to push deer toward him and another hunter. When the group reassembled late that afternoon, Messick was not among them. The state Department of Environmental Conservation oversaw a massive search that went on for weeks, using dogs, helicopters and divers to check ponds in the remote area, to no avail. The DEC scaled back the effort to a “limited continuous search” after two months, in which local forest rangers and search-and-rescue teams will conduct spot searches and training exercises in the search area and nearby areas not previously searched. State Police Aviation helicopters and forest rangers also periodically checked the lands and waters in and around the search area, but no one has reported finding any sign of him or any of his belongings, including the rifle he carried.

The area is also popular with hunters, anglers and hikers, but no one who has been there in years since has reported finding anything that could be linked to Messick. 

“The search for Thomas Messick remains in limited continuous status since Jan. 20, 2016 after DEC forest rangers and others spent two months and more than 10,000 searcher hours seeking him to no avail,” DEC spokesman David Winchell wrote in an email. “Since that time, DEC forest rangers and others have periodically searched and conducted search training in and around the area where Mr. Messick went missing but have not found any sign of him.

“DEC asks hunters and others in the woods to report any possible signs of Mr. Messick or his belongings to the DEC Ray Brook dispatch at 518-897-1300.” 

Messick Jr., who was not among the family members hunting with Messick Sr. that day, said the family theorized that his father walked off and either had a medical problem (he had a history of heart issues) or got lost and settled in a spot behind a tree or rock where he couldn’t be found. The forest area also has some caves and crevices. 

“They had over 300 people a day in the woods for over two weeks,” Messick Jr. said. “They covered a lot of ground.” 

He said his father was an avid woodsman and hunter. 

“He was a hunter instructor for a lot of years, so he knew what to do,” his son said. 

The State Police continue to investigate an active missing persons case for Messick Sr., but the agency reported no new developments in its investigation as of this week. The disappearance was one of two unexplained missing persons cases in the region involving outdoorsmen in a matter of days in November 2015.

On Nov. 24, Fred “Fritzie” Drumm, 68, disappeared from his property on Burgoyne Road in the town of Saratoga. Police theorized he went for a walk on his 170-acre piece of land along Fish Creek, but no trace of him was found, either. Police do not believe the two cases were related.

To date, no trace of Messick has been found.  As far as I can tell, Drumm remains missing, as well.

The Return of Pavlova

Lady Eleanor Smith (1902-1945) was one of the “Bright Young Things,” the name given to the group of aristocrats and socialites who enlivened 1920s London society.  The Bohemian, eccentric Lady Eleanor had a short, but busy career as a society journalist, novelist, and circus publicist.

Lady Eleanor was a great admirer of the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, who stars--sort of--in this passage from Smith’s 1939 memoir, “Life’s a Circus.”  If Smith’s story is to be believed, the legendary dancer made a brief, posthumous return to the stage, during a 1933 rehearsal of “Ballerina,” a play based on one of Smith’s novels.

Once, at a dress rehearsal at the Scala Theatre, something happened that made a profound impression upon my mind.  If I had been the only person to see what I saw, I should be willing to dismiss the whole matter as an illusion.  But I was not alone; Pat was with me and saw it too; Charles Landstone, our levelheaded business manager, was another witness; so was Hank; so was Hank’s manager, Ralph Glover.

It was about three o’clock in the morning, and the auditorium was dark and empty.  The five of us sat together in the dress circle watching the final rehearsal of the “Snowbird” ballet.  Pat had purposely put on his understudy, Freddy Franklin, because he wanted to watch, in complete concentration, Frances’ [actress Frances Doble] efforts as a dancer.

 

I have explained before that watching Pavlova from the side of the stage had inspired me to write “Ballerina.”  Had I not watched Pavlova so closely that day at Golders Green, the book would never have been written, although my heroine’s private life was, of course, pure fiction, borrowing nothing at all from the greatest ballerina of all.  At the same time, I think that Pavlova had either directly or indirectly inspired us all, and Pavlova was dead.  She had certainly inspired Pat, Frances, and myself.

The stage revolved to show a woodland glade with nymphs in white tartalan grouped in a traditional entrance.  Previously we had see Varsovina haggard and dejected in her dressing room, wrapped, shivering, in her shabby grey dressing gown.  Now, as we watched, a slight figure walked onto the stage.  A figure snow white in a fluffy tutu, its head bound with swans’ plumage.  The figure paused, crossing itself.  It seemed to me that Frances had grown much smaller.

Then, as it glided into the spotlight, I caught my breath.

For the figure was not that of Frances.  It had assumed the form of Anna Pavlova.

Pat gripped my hand until I thought he would break it.  I looked at him; he was ice pale, and there was sweat on his face.

He muttered:

“This is uncanny…it’s awful…What have we done?  Oh, God--why did we ever bring up the past?”

The white form on the stage stood effortlessly upon one pointe; it pirouetted three times--a thing Frances could not do--and drifted like swansdown into Borek’s arms as the curtain fell.  I looked again at my companions.  They were white and dazed.

Somebody mumbled:

“We’re all very tired…Don’t let’s imagine things…”

Somebody else said:

“We can’t all have seen--what we saw…”

Pat and I ran to the pass door.

We were afraid.

Frances stood there on the stage and said to Pat in a perplexed, mechanical voice:

“Pat, I’m sorry…Let’s take it again.”

“Take it again?  Why?”

“I couldn’t dance.  I must be awfully tired.  My mind suddenly seemed to go blank.  Will someone get me a glass of water?”

Pat gave me a warning look, and we said nothing at the time.

Later he affirmed:

“We can’t deny it.  For a moment, that particular spirit from the past took possession of Frances’ mind and body.”

I was silent, for at the time it occurred to me that what we had seen was an unfavorable omen.

Later on I mentioned this to Lydia Kyasht, who was playing with great charm in the prologue of our play.

Lydia grew white and said:

“I saw what you all saw.  I was in front--hidden away in the pit.  I saw it too…”

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Our host for this week's Link Dump is Edwin!

I know nothing more about him, but he was obviously quite a charmer.

What the hell is the Baltic Sea Anomaly?

Where the hell is Mata Hari's head?

Why you wouldn't want to encounter ancient Indian snakes.

I admit, I like this guy's flair for self-promotion.

The hoax that got Franklin Pierce accused of treason.

So, kids, don't mess with ancient mummies.  Or elephants.

Uncovering an ancient city in Tonga.

Some lost, stolen, and unreleased music.

A haunted Louisiana courthouse.

The horror at Hillcrest School.

Prisons that have unusual rules.

The death of the publishing industry.

The King and the Vasa Knife Incident.

That time when over 29,000 pizzas were buried alive.

Getting the obituary right.

A look at 16th century "Spittle Fields."

A look at England's 1604 Witchcraft Act.

One of the odder "lost civilization" theories.

The origins of "flash in the pan."

Celebrating Passover during the American Civil War.

The sort of items that were unclaimed in the Bombay Custom House in the mid 19th century.

The oldest curse word in the English language.

Related: The oldest writing in the English language.

Quaker women gone wild.

Why the U.S. was unprepared for the Battle of the Atlantic.

The belief that animals have consciousness.  I'd actually be shocked if they didn't.

A famed 18th century opera singer.

The oldest known example of Neanderthal culture.

What makes a castle?

Yet another marriage that ends in murder.

Portraits of 1920s Londoners.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a legendary ballerina's Fortean encore.  In the meantime, here's some Handel.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This curious little tale of a haunted park appeared in the “Atlanta Georgian,” May 25, 1912:

So many witches and ghosts flit and moan about and generally haunt Springvale park that T.L. Bond, of the Atlanta park commission, has today seriously advised his colleagues to drain the lake, plow up that stretch of land and sow it with salt to drive away the evil spirits, while W.L. Percy and J.H. Porter head petitioners who want the lake made over into a sunken garden. Perhaps the board will adopt Mr. Bond's suggestion. Anyway, its members are investigating his emphatic claim that hobgoblins can’t abide a salted field and if their probe shows that ghosts do really cavort o’ nights about that park, as many folk thereabouts avow, nobody need wonder at seeing a plowman plodding his way through one of the fairest strips of land in all Atlanta, nor marvel if, suddenly, the saline trust increases its prices.

Up to that time some years ago when a very good looking young woman hung herself to a tree that overhung its mirroring lake, Springvale park was one of the most loved recreation spots in Georgia. Nestling in the heart of Inman Park, it smiled up at the lording terraces at its sides and flowers laughed out from the grass that mantled its bosom. Down in the vale a clear, cool lakelet rippled in the sunbeams between the weeping willows that fringe its banks, and it was all so beautiful that bevies of little children played there all day along with squirrels and the birds of many brilliant hues. By daylight Springvale park seemed veritably the haunt of all the good fairies.

Then the girl came there, despondent, and killed herself above the lake, and after her came the ghosts and ghouls. It is still quite well remembered that she was a poor girl who had journeyed to Atlanta from some outlying town in a desperate hope that she would find work here and a chance to earn the honorable living that she craved. She found no work, and after many days when the last of her money was gone she made her way one evening to the dark pond of water in the heart of Springvale and took the life that she thought hopeless.

Next day, when they found her swinging from the tree limb, quite dead, frightened children who hovered fearfully about cried out that they saw her phantom floating in the lakelet beneath the tree.

Of course, that was the shadow of the girl's body cast upon the water, but it was terrible enough for little ones, and for weeks after that no children went to play in the park. Then residents of the Inman Park district caught the morbid infection. Many said they heard the whippoorwill singing in the park at dusk and that its cry sounded like the wail of a spirit damned. One or two, more timorous, began to tell about that those cries were not the whippoorwill's calls at all, but the plaints of ghosts that might be seen flitting dimly about above the shrubbery through the late hours on all dark nights.

The more practical residents thereabout laughed these tales to scorn, but they also had their complaint, and they took it to the park commission with a demand that the Springvale lake be drained to rid it of its suddenly acquired pest of frogs. The park board didn't drain it. They took the word of Joel Hurt, who built Inman Park, that there weren’t enough frogs to speak of. When Hurt, backed by Major Guinn, offered $1 for every wiggletail found in the lake the commissioners declined to investigate further any claim that Springvale reeks with pests. The board also accepted Mr. Hurt’s denial of another claim that mosquitoes had appeared. The sanitary commission did take action. It put oil on the lake surface to drive away the frogs, and for a time things were a bit more quiet. But a little later Inman Park residents began to see strange men lurking in the shadows. A burglary epidemic happened around there about that time, and those who weren't superstitious joined the police in the belief that that park had become a rendezvous for tramps.

But the ghost stories would not down. They have gained such credence among certain folk in that vicinity that children do not play as much in Springvale, even by day, as they used to before the despondent girl hanged herself to the tree there. The residents' disagree about the visitations, but complaints recur, and they have forced the matter up to the park board again, with the renewed demand that something strenuous be done to rid the place of the nuisances—whether they are ghostly or things in nature. Sorely puzzled, the commissioners have been casting about for a solution of the problem for weeks.

While they consider Mr. Bond's plan for a salt sowing they are also giving heed to a petition headed by W.L. Percy and J.H. Porter urging that the lake be drained and made over into a sunken garden. But Mr. Bond insists that the complaints of the superstitious will never be stopped until the saline sesame is employed, and more than one of the commissioners think the scheme, however silly, might not be a bad plan by way of winning the board some peace of mind.

Springvale Park still exists, but, thankfully, any ghosts it may once have had seem to be long gone. Maybe it was the salt.

That Horrid, Hissing Hag

"Detroit Free Press," November 4, 1962, via Newspapers.com

In 1961, a 28-year-old auto worker named Bill Adams, along with his wife Lillian and their five children, moved into a seemingly perfectly normal rental house on Detroit’s Martin Street.  They soon earnestly wished they had found a different place to live.  Before long, the young family found themselves in the middle of what has been described as “Michigan’s most terrifying haunting.”

Almost immediately, the Adamses sensed that there was something strange about the back bedroom.  Bill, who worked the midnight shift at a Cadillac plant, slept there during the day to avoid the noise of children playing.  He soon began having dreadful nightmares, “The kind where I’d see all kinds of horrible things and wake up screaming.  In the morning, I’d never be sure whether they were dreams or whether I had been awake all the time.”

In August 1961, Bill’s grandmother, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, came to visit.  She spent one night in the back bedroom.  Emphasis on “one.”  Bill later said, “She told us she heard sounds like someone was trying to get in all night.  She wouldn’t sleep there again.”  One night, they locked the family dog in the bedroom and the poor creature “nearly went mad” until he was let out.

In late October 1962, Shirley Patterson, a cousin of Bill’s, came to Detroit to buy a car.  He spent the night with the Adamses.  Without any warning from anyone--which seems rather unkind--he was given the back bedroom.  Patterson later recalled, “I went to bed at about 11:30 Saturday night, right after Bill left for work.  I was in bed for only a couple of minutes, facing the wall, when something turned me over.

“Don’t ask me to describe the feeling.  All I know was that it rolled me over and then I saw it standing outside the bedroom door.

“At first I thought it was Lillian but I started to tremble.  It was a woman with long hair and she had her back to me, looking into the kitchen.”

Patterson screamed and leaped out of bed.  “At that second,” said Patterson, “every light in the house went out.”

The terrified man ran into the kitchen, where he ran into Lillian.  The lights all went on again.  Then, from the back bedroom they heard a bone-chilling “crying groan.”  This was followed by a terrible stench that sickened them both.

Unsurprisingly, neither of them got any more sleep that night.  When Bill returned home, they told him what had happened.  The trio called in the police (the third time they had done so since moving in.)  A search was made of the house and basement, but nothing was found.

Bill had never believed in ghosts, and stubbornly refused to consider that something otherworldly was going on.  He decided to sleep in the bedroom again, just to see what would happen.  While he was in bed, but still awake, he heard a noise in the room.  “I turned to look,” he later said, “and the face was inches away from me.”

“It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen.  The eyes stared past me and the mouth moved to talk but only a hissing noise came out--and a terrible stench.”

Adams ran screaming from the room, so hysterical he was pulling handfuls of hair from his head.  The same horrible smell permeated the house.

The Adamses had seen more than enough.  They gathered up their children and fled, leaving all of their possessions behind--not to mention forfeiting the month’s rent for November they had already paid.  They moved in with Lillian’s parents in Dearborn until they could find another place to live.

After the “Detroit Free Press” covered the Adamses bloodcurdling tale, the “Horrid Hag of Martin Street” became a fixture in local legend.  In 1973, the “Free Press” interviewed the then-current occupant of the home, Mrs. Grace Willis.  She scoffed at the old stories, noting that she now slept in the back bedroom--although she admitted that she couldn’t sleep unless her back was turned to the door.  The “Free Press” reported that locals had various explanations for the “haunting.”  Some believed that the Adamses invented the whole story to get back at their landlord for threatening to evict them.  Others said that the incidents were the work of a “deranged boy” lurking in the house’s basement.

Mrs. Willis did admit that one peculiar thing had happened during her six-year residence in the house.  One day, she and her sister-in-law heard what sounded like a “crashing cascade of breaking dishes” in the kitchen.  When they rushed into the kitchen, they found no broken crockery--all the dishes were neatly stacked in the cupboard.

If that incident was the work of “The Hag,” that appears to have been her swan song.  As far as is recorded, the paranormal has fled Martin Street.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

The Strange Company staffers are here to bring you this week's news from A to Z!

What the hell is a stately home?

Where the hell is Planet Nine?

Organ transplants may trigger changes in personality.  (Two of my relatives had, at different times, large blood transfusions.  Afterwards, they both had vivid dreams where they were certain they were "seeing" events in the lives of their blood donors.  There's a lot about the human body that we simply don't understand.)

On a related note, we may not know jack about evolution, either.

A really weird sound has been recorded deep in the Pacific.

Three castaways prove that cliches sometimes work.

Yet another ancient city that's rewriting history.

A particularly barbaric Neolithic human sacrifice.

A funeral that featured an arrest.

The latest theory about the Voynich Manuscript.

The origins of the phrase, "Roger that."

Medieval dogs had some pretty cool names.

More on that story I linked to earlier about the Scottish whaler stranded in the Arctic.

A murder/suicide from 1912.

The bathroom that features a Neanderthal.

WWII's Operation Title.

The strange tale of a firefighter's handprint.

Star forts and conspiracy theories.

Old Hollywood's most famous "fixer."

17th century tanks.

The case of an Indian stranded in Italy, 1879.

So, let's talk writs of replevin on corpses.

Charles Fort as UFO pioneer.

In which we learn that Joseph Stalin's granddaughter is a Buddhist antique store owner in Portland, Oregon.  It's pleasant to think that the old monster would be highly irritated at this.

Remembering the magazine devoted to flappers.

Benjamin Franklin on 1760s British politics.

A wife and a vampire go to court.

An important farm laborer strike.

A sci-fi author's strange double life.

Charles Darwin's correspondents.

Some curious ways of holding land in medieval England.

Culinary fusion goes a long way back.

When scientists got drunk on nitrogen for God and country.

The last of London's phone boxes.

The Maya Snake Kings.

Something weird just fell into the Delaware River.

Emily Dickinson wasn't all that reclusive.

The "walk of shame."

A shrewd--and murderous--rascal.

London's time-traveling tomb.

The "Peanuts" character who wound up with an ax in her head.

An ancient monument has been discovered in France, and everyone's puzzled about it.

The origins of the phrase, "left for dead."

Yet another mysterious disappearance in the wilderness.

Finding Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

The many descendants of Charlemagne.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a hissing ghost in Detroit.  In the meantime, here's one of my favorites from back in the day.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I have a particular fondness for obscure, unimportant, but intriguing little mysteries.  One such example appeared in the “London Morning Chronicle,” April 21, 1809:

Nevis, Feb. 7, 1809.

“Dear Sir,

"I beg leave to mention the following circumstances, and leave to your better judgment the propriety of making the same public.-- 

"About a fortnight since, the Overseer on the Camp Estate discovered a chest, floating in the wash of the sea, and with the assistance of several negroes he had it brought on shore. On opening it, it was found to contain a female corpse wrapped in several folds of seer cloth, and a quantity of tea was spread between each fold. The box or coffin was also filled up with tea, to the quantity, it was supposed, of two hundred weight. The body was in a tolerable state of preservation, and had the appearance of having been that of a person about 30 years of age, rather corpulent, with a remarkable handsome hand, a good set of teeth, and long dark hair--the mouth had been filled with tea, and some moisture having occasioned the tea to swell, left the teeth exposed; on touching them one fell in. The box was better than six feet long, and made remarkably strong, having 16 iron clamps, the whole of it covered with cloth, which had Burgundy pitch rubbed over it, and was perfectly water tight. It must have been in the sea a very long time, as it had a number of barnacles upon it.

“The wood was supposed to be what is called in the East Indies, Teak wood--Around the middle of the box was a tarred rope, which had the appearance of having suspended it, or been a lashing to it. 

"Should the publishing of this account be the cause of making it known to the relatives of the deceased, it may prove grateful to their feelings, to know that the body was decently interred, in this island, and every attention paid it. 

"I remain, dear Sir, yours, very truly, JN. COLHOUN MILLS.

To the very Rev. the Dean of St, Asaph.”

Although we’ll never know who this woman was, it’s easy to reconstruct what probably happened.  In the past, tea leaves were sometimes used to preserve the dead, although as tea was very expensive back then, it was not commonly used.  Our mystery corpse was likely a wealthy woman who died far from her native land.  Relatives arranged for her to be embalmed and shipped back home for burial.  Sometime during the voyage, the boat encountered some disaster at sea which sank it, killing everyone on board.  The coffin--the only survivor of the wreck, you might say--drifted for who knows how long before winding up on the shores of Nevis.