Connecticut western news., 1889-09-11
THE SAME OLDGHOST
IT POSSESSES A EMBARRASSING
 VOICE.
Screams of a Murderers Phantom
 Heard on Long Island.

'AH"So "lO piCPdIIlS 1Of IFcSu felSH 1 of terror. The screaming ghost took up its abode here many years ago, and was a, regular hair-raiser for genera ton, but it finally disappeared for good, as it was hoped. Its sudden appear ance, therefore, is a setback for those of the citizens who have been laugh- ing the superstitious to scorn, and who have been predicting that his satanic majesty had the dreaded spook safely | and permanently chained in an out-of- corner of hades.
 Several persons who have had occa- sion to pass along the road under the bluffs on West Beach recently have that they heard screams issu- ing from the barn on the Emmet Darl- ing farm. One of those who heard the screams, says dispatch to the Brook lyn Eogle, is an employe of the shoe company which has factory near the wharf of the Bridgeport boat. The screams seemed to come from one end of the barn, and the man, who was returning from picnic at the pavilion ran toward the village as fast as his legs could carry him, firmly believing Beelzebub was at his legs. Most of those to whom he related his experi- ence smiled incredulously and asked the man how many beers he had in- dulged in. Since then, however, more than dozen persons have declared that they have heard the fearful screams issuing from the barn, and those who believe in the reality of ghosts, of whom there are not few ill this vicinity, have unanimously come to the conclusion that the famous screaming ghost is back again for an indefinite period of pernicious activity.
 This ghost has history. It is founded on one of the most dreadful tragedies that are on record as having occurred ill any community. The farm on which stands the haunted barn has been known for years as the Emmet Darling farm. Emmet Darling was 8 prosperous. farmer and the son of the original owner of the place. After his fathers death, his mother fell in love with man named Waters and mar ried him against the strong wishes of the family. Emmet Darling lived with his mother on the home farm after her marriage to Waters. In 1859 Waters brutally murdered his wife and her sister, beat Emmett Darling and his Aunt Martha into insensibility and then hung himself in the barn. These fear full crimes occurred early one morning. Waters, although good man of bus mess, was half crazy on some subjects, inheriting that strain of blood from his father, and one of his Authorizations was that his wife and her sisters and son Emmet Darling were conspiring to deprive him of his prop erty.
 He killed his wife and one of her sisters at the breakfast table, beating their brains out and frightfully man. gling their bodies with an iron bar. In his insane rage he is said to have torn their clothes from their bodies. He attacked her other sister-now Mrs. Martha Jane Davis-and left her for dead. Then he went up stairs into the room where Emmet Darling was sleep ing, and tried to kill him, but the screams of the neighbors who had been attracted by the outcries of his victims frightened him, and he hur- ried down stairs, skulked through the bushes to the barn and hung himself with blow line. His lifeless body | was found in a few minutes after its spirit had fled. Waters was a native of Smithtown.
 The double tragedy aroused tre- mendous excitement, and it was not long afterward that the so-called screaming ghost took up his abode in the barn, and it remained there several decades, puzzling the skeptical, , frightening the superstitious and defying every attempt on the part of well-regulated public opinion to banish it to the Plutonic regions. The strange, unearthly, ear piercing screams were generally heard about the hour of midnight, and they fell upon the ears of so many people from time to time that there seemed to many to be no escape from the conviction
 that here at least was genuine, un.
 adulterated visitant from another
 sphere of whose energy and authenticity l there could be no question. Many ,explanations of the ghost were offered
 by the incredulous, but none of then
 would ever fit the peculiar circum
 stances of the case. It was suggested
 that the creaking weather vane on tht
 barn was responsible for the scream
 ing; that it was due to the unfortunat'
 habits of some bird of nocturnal in
 clinations, but no wild pigeon, O
 water fowl, or bird of this localit,
 was there with voice like that of tn screaming ghost. The mystery of was never disputed and never settled
 The vicinity of the Emmet Darlih