Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-08-21
MARCHING PHANT0MS.
A Weird, Spectral Procession Seen
at Dusk in a Lonely Wood
NEAR PITTSBURG LAST NARCH.
The Vision Encountered . Disbeliever in
Ghostly Visltationa
his STORY AND HIS EXPLANATION

HIS STORY AND HIS EXPLANATION
What appears below is not the common
ghost story. The writer contends that he
saw no ghosts; yet what he seemed to see
vas as real to him as the figures of men and
women be sees in everyday life. He
vouches only for what it seemed he saw,
and THE DISPATCH, knowing him we'll,
trusts him implicitly. His explanation is
that it was an entirely subjective phenom-
enon. He saw the phantom procession
with what he designates as temporarily de-
fective or deranged cerebral action-a sort
of waking dream.
His is probably the real explanation of
the apparitions that so frequently obtrude
themselves and to people whose veracity is
not to be questioned. They see. or are led
to think they see, as he indicates, yet so
distinctly and in such detail that they are
compelled to believe that they see with the
material eve.
The writer of what follows is inclined to
think the tendency to these waking dreams,
If such they be, is due to some hereditary
taint. He chIrges up this remarkable
phantasm to heredity and cites number Of
instances in the maternal side of his family
of occult phenomena.
Previous Instances in tn. Family.
His maternal grandfather declared on his
deathbed that he saw the Savior enter the
death chamber and described the vision to
his sisters as "white as snow," with out
stretched hand and smiling. 1t was phan-
| tasmic. Another sister of this grandfather
! had son in 1.-The War of 1872, fghting In
| dians in western Ohio. On evening she
said she saw this son approach her with a
covering over his head and making peculiar
gestures. She at once mourned him as dead
| and it afterward developed that the son
had been found dead and scalped and with
his hunting shirt covering his head, the
covering evidently done by himself ere
death ended his agony.
This and much more in the family tradi-
tions. The writer's mother, on more than
one occasion, was made to yield, in spite of
her prot estirg intelligence, to strange visi-
tations, and usually in open day. An in
stance may be given. The home farmhouse
was basement structure facing the east 1t
had high porch on the lower side.
1t was about 3 p NJ. on summer day
that the mother sat on the shady porch sew
ing. No other members OF the family were
about except two boys engaged in nearby
cornfeld. A door from the rear of the
house opened into the kitchen facing an op-
posite door that opened on the porch. Near
the porch door door opened into another
apartment-an every day parlor
Curious Case of Telepathy.
While the woman was engrossed with her
sewing, pit-a-pat sound, as OF bare feet,
came across the kitchen floor and entered
the parlor. The mother sat with her back
toward the door and a little to one side of
it, and continued sewing. Again came the
pit-a-pat, and she wondered why she had
not heard the boy go out. Directly an
other pit-a-pat and again into the
parlor. The younger lad was prank
ish. She called him by name, no
answer. Another call and no response.
Being now assured that the boy was up to
something that he thought was funny, she
gathered up her sewing, arose and entered
the kitchen, turned to go into the other
room through the open door, and just as
she stood in the doorway moan-like mur-
mur, as OF one trying to say something in
dire distress, greeted her. Being woman
of great personal courage, and though con-
vinced that the son could not producessuch
a sound, which she thought continued full
halt minute, she entered the room, explored
every place, other rooms, and finding moth
ing, went to the field, found the boys inno-
Gently at work, and was told that neither
had been at the house since dinner
The Cause of The Phenomenon.
Well, date and time were kept. and in
due season came the information that an
aunt in Indiana, whose old home this had
been, from an oil lamp spilling or explosion,
which, was never known, was fatally burned
in her room aud died in great agony on
that afternoon, trying to speak but could
only murmerl
1t is hard to explain.
Coming down to the writer, this is not
the first instance that occult phenomena
have occurred to him. although this is the
first instance of anything of SO weird and
startlingly realistic character.
OF course, cases such As these cited may be
explained as mere condolences, but now
about the following, which is told by
man of veracity, common intelligence, fair
education and inclined to be logical-a man
who has no sort of belief in ghosts who is
perfectly confident that had another person
been with him such person would have seen
nothing, with the likelihood that he also
would then not have been subjected to this
most singular mental experience Here is |
the story:
What am about to narrate was an actual |
occurrence, and took place at a point less |
than As miles from Pittsburg no longer ago |
than March of the present year. 1t relates |
to something so much at variance with |
what Is generally claimed as falling within |
the lines Of the supernatural, and it is so |
against every grain of my mental makeup |
to admit even of a supernatural that for |
months had decided to never make men,
tion of this weird and most singular appa-
rition. I now do SO because in q man
ner L am not left to my own choice, and
what I shall try to relate I have no
way to adequately explain. I protest
against doing what am about to do, and I |
shall reserve to myself the right to conceal
my name and identity with what still seems
to me must be q most ine1plicable hallu-
cinatIon.
am inclined to regard life as phenome.
non that may nationally be accounted for
and can in no way see how what we call
mind can be in and of itself, an entity and
after bodily dissolution, preserve an intelli-
gent identity.
A Procession Of Apparitiona.
Yet, so far as ocular evidence can 60, ]
have seen with the physical sight, with
mortal eyes, not one only, but an entire
procession of beings in human form, which,
if they be OF spiritual, were certainly not
in the flesh, and what is most remarkable,
and to me utterly unaccountable, is that the
entire band OF apparitions was concerned in
the preliminaries for the rite of sepulture.
1now think that my presence was, If not
an intrusion, merely an incident, that what
I witnessed had no external connection
with myself, and that it had been better had
I not been chance witness to it.
Put Iotp hon