Happy Halloween! Today is a day of scares and haunts, and what better captures the spirit of all things mysterious than a ghost? Ghost stories have existed for hundreds of years. Maybe you even have some of your own?
The people interviewed for this 1889 article did, and they shared it all.
The article is a full page of stories, suspicions, and skepticism. But here are some of the best and most entertaining of the bunch. From passenger-packed trains to murdered bunnies, a wide range of spirits and specters can be found in these clippings.
Ghostly Objects
First up, a carriage apparition startles a couple of interested gentlemen:
Here, a Mr. Ed Pemberton remembers a time when the train tracks beneath his feet shook from the passage of a beautiful phantom train.
Ghostly Animals
Ever heard of a phantom cow? If not, this clipping will do the trick:
A certain aforementioned bunny makes his appearance in this roller-coaster ride of a story:
Headless humans make frequent appearances in ghost stories, but how about a headless dog?:
Ghostly Humans
Human ghosts often present themselves in two ways: either to haunt a place where they resided or died, or to serve as an omen for the living. The following two clippings give accounts of the former.
This clipping shares a slightly longer story, but is perhaps the most quintessential ghost story in this collection. It involves an old man, the home where he died, a fiddle, and a gruesome cat.
Here we have a spirit whose presence at the place where he was killed seems to curse the very ground:
The next two clippings are stories of ghosts acting as omens. In this first clipping, a super-human phantom hops into an fresh grave to warn the observer of impending death:
And in this clipping, the ghost of a Confederate soldier disappears when fired upon by the storyteller, who came to believe it had been a friendly warning:
A Soldier Ghost Sun, Jun 2, 1889 – Page 26 · St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America) · Newspapers.com
Ghostly Surprises
Finally, we have a couple of ghost stories with surprise endings. This clipping describes a haunting shadow that no one could explain…until they could:
And perhaps most surprising at all was this clipping, in which a man describes a very real ghost who had a very peculiar favor to ask:
So what do you think? Are ghosts real, or simply the imaginations of minds that are often over-tired or overworked? Perhaps the truth of it all should be left alone, just as this clipping suggests:
Find these ghost stories and more from this article here, and more on Newspapers.com with a search through the collection.