The Press., 1885-03-12
New York Mercury.l LEVINE TWO LIVES.
The singular Experience of Miss Miranda Davis.-B
 lieved to be Infested by Demon

STAFFORD, CONN.,, January 10.-In the ex- treme northwest corner of this town shelter ed on the west by the gigantic and precipitous crags of rambling spur of the White Monn tains, stands strange shambling old house. It is two-stories high in front from the ground sill to the jutting caves, and only one story at the rear, indeed rather less than one, being banked with earth almost to the level of the small dark, diamond-paned windows, shut terless and deeply embrasured. There is, and always has been, according to the gossip of the neighbors, suspicion of something weird and uncanny about the western windows of the old Davis homestead, two in number only, extending from the ground, or with in less than a foot of it, to the heavy over hanging. caves, whose gray and weather-beat- en appearance suggests the eyebrows of with cred old man, while the windows themselves are like a pair of glassy lifeless eyes, and the rickety door between, (to deepen the simili- tude) would pass muster with vivid fancy as a Grecian nose whose tip forms perfect right angle. Ihe door was opened yesterday to your correspondent by strange, emaciated and almost spectral fgure-that of tall wom- an, unnaturally thin, and so pallid that incar- nate ghostliness is the only epithet applicable. The facts of the case of the Starving Woman fo the Stafford" as Miss Davis is styled, are SC remarkable that a brief narrative will be inter sting.
 Hansa Miranda Davis is now 54 years of age and has been an inmate of the old house since her birth. 1.-The first signs of trouble said the remarkable valetudenarian ''came or when I was girl of IS, but so gradually tha can scarcely tell you with precision in wha manner they commenced. 1 had been tt school all winter, without missing a day o1 getting a single tardy mark, and came ou of the ordeal in the spring languid, tired, ane subject to peculiar nervous symptoms that can hardly describe. That is, I would fee at times as if I was going to fly all apart Il little pieces, then a kind of darkness would gather about me, my eyes growing dim, Il perception of objects indistinct and uncertain Faces and figures in the room would appea to be moving around me in a sort of fog while objects at distance-trees, cattle, hill ~ and houses-grew so vague and unreal that often had to ask mother whether such ant such thing really existed or was merely al
 
 was vexed with terrible apparitions, aud thes were so indescribably vivid and lfe-like tha ofentimes they haunted my memory for days What was stranger still, this horrible dream life was continued from night to night in in regular order of passing events. My mothe could awaken me in the morning from one o y these vivid episodes of dream life, and Whe1 : night came again my morbid brain would talk : up the thread of the dream exactly where l was sundered."
 1T was not sick" she went on, ''at least nc sick in the proper sense of the term. But on symptom accompanied these strange expeT1en es,, and that was the loss of all relish for food Dr. Peabody, of Springfield, made a thorougl study of the case, attended me for more thai a year, and ended by declaring that was or ganically just as sound as he, in body, nerv and brain. In other words, nothing alled m whatever except that was nervous, fdgett and listless. But my disrelish for nutrimen went on ull the same, until I absoutely live on nothing, or next to that.
 For months after my seventeenth Dlrthda was passed I ate nothing but a Boston cracke each day, nibbling it bit by bit when wa faint, and taking little water afterwards
 Suddenly her eyes blazed, sudden spasl stiffened her limbs, her lips turned hvid, an her features ashen, yet sharply defined.
 tell you,' she said, ''that possession of tn devil is a real thing. Havn't I lived two live these long, long thirty-fve years; one terr ble, more terrible than the damned, the othe my own? Have I not felt the movement of malign spirit thrilling in every nerve, takin possession of me, swaving in this way an that, against my own will, tempting me to e7 cry species of deviltry?"
 Though emaciated by habitual abstinene from food, Miss Davis is in good gener' health. Her pulse is regular hers srespiratio normal: her movements, when unSWayel b the paroxysms to which she is subject, stead and exceedinglY free from nervousness.