Posted on 10/29/2006 9:00:00 PM PST by CurlyBill
Spooky legends and ghost stories abound this time of year. Some may be far-fetched, even outlandish, but local history does record some unexplained oddities and some of the darker events of human existence.
Before Scranton was founded in the 1700s, the Slocum family settled along the banks of Roaring Brook. According to research conducted by Christine Schaefer, a member of the Lackawanna Historical Society who develops living history programs, a young girl hanged herself at her family’s home near the present-day courthouse. The family no longer wished to stay in their home and tried to sell the property. This is the stuff of ghost stories, but whether local residents believed in ghosts or were simply anxious to avoid a place that had seen human suffering, no one else wanted a property where such a gruesome event had occurred.
Some years later, in 1895 in the midst of a thriving downtown Scranton, a gentleman by the name of N.H. Shafer, a former cashier at the Third National Bank, opened an insurance office in the Odd Fellows Hall Building on Lackawanna Avenue near Wyoming Avenue. An account from those days reports that papers occasionally burst into flames — on shelves, in waste baskets, and even in Mr. Shafer’s pockets Some say that spontaneous combustion is a sign of demons at work. Mr. Shafer, it seems, was a more practical man and brought in detectives from the famous Pinkerton agency. After three weeks on the job, they were unable to find a cause. The spontaneous fires eventually stopped, but they were never explained.
Legends sometimes grow around recorded facts. Dr. Isaiah Everhart, the local physician who gave his natural history collection and the museum that houses it to the city of Scranton, died when he fell down the stairs of that museum. A prominent member of the community, an untimely death, an old building full of relics — legends are made of such things, and some say that Dr. Everhart haunts the museum.
No one can account for the strange things people see and hear. For example, early in the 1900s, it is recorded that in a wooded stretch in the Mount Vernon section of Archbald, Peter Wiltz is said to have witnessed — on a number of occasions — a pair of boots walking along the road without visible occupants.
Strange phenomena have continued into modern times. Ms. Schaefer tells about the odd events that happened about three years after her family had moved into a second-floor apartment at 412 East Gibson St. Contained within Christine’s bedroom was a tiny bathroom with a wall that had no discernible purpose. The bathroom was always cold, even on the hottest summer day.
When Christine’s father pulled down the wall in 1950, he found the oddest thing. The center of the wall was filled with dirt.
Soon, a strange visitor began to appear. Chris’s mother saw it first, a brilliant green glow with the face of a fox.
The Russian priest was called in to bless the house, but several months later, that face appeared again. One day, Chris found it sitting on a day bed in her room, a grin on its eerie face. After that, it made daily appearances. It never made a sound, never harmed the family. Further blessings by the priest failed to banish the presence, and the family moved out of that house in the spring of 1951, leaving its fox-faced roommate behind.
Encounters with the darker elements of life, the strange and the unexplained, always leave their mark upon unsuspecting people. Sometimes those encounters grow into extravagant stories. Sometimes they just remain haunting memories.
Ghost Ping!!
ping
The builder sounds like he was pretty clever.
One year it threw eggs.
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