The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-11-28
GRANNY OF HAUNTED HOUSE.
Queer Old Woman Who Lives in Queer
Old House,

little town of Severance in Doniphan
county, Kansas, and the people are
rather proud of this distinction. 1t i'm
parts to the community a sort of arts
tocratic antiquity, giving rise to legends
and traditions, that extend back into
the ante-beliun period, so in all the
rural district near about the abode of
Ann Crane is pointed out to the visitor
as the trysting place of specters. Evil
dence that the house is haunted is of
the best possible kind. Ann Crane, an
aged, White-haired woman, who lives
there alone with her cat, admits it.
She hears the spirits and sees them.
Then there is the evidence of the house
itself and of its surroundings. after be-
holding which no person of unbiased
mind could doubt that the place is fire.
quented by ghostly visitants
So far as known, no outsider has ever
seen these ghosts. but this is not COM
petent rebuttal, since no one has ever
had the hardihood to remain there all
night and thereby place himself in a
position to see them. The spirits,
Granny Crane says, always come at
night.
The home of this peculiar hermitess
is two and a half miles west and
little north of the town of Severance.
A mile from the nearest house, it stands
off the mai, road on stony plot of
ground, overrun with brambles and
studded hene and there with strips of
rotting fence and other attempts at
Improvement" long since Abandoned
There are a. few stunted trees in the Vi
entity, and on every side weeds grow
in rank profusion. AS to the house it
self it is crude, one-story frame struc-
ture that seems to have been built with
out the aid of a carpenter. On the
north side is a low shed, protecting the
culinary department. Over the main
portion is an attic. The only outbuild
ing-half cave, half shed-stands in
the rear and serves the double purpose
of lumber room and cyclone cellar.
But by far the most striking feature
of this strange abode is what the casual
visitor would probably mistake as an
attempt at establishment From the
caves of the facade hands, at intervals
of few inches, a long row of soda bot
ties, each nearly full of some liquid.
Over the front door is fastened an arti-
Gle which Granny" calls her boa con-
strictor." At little distance it looks
like string of spools, such as children
sometimes play with, but on closer in
spection one sees that the supposed
spools are bones from chickens necks.
Whitened and dried in the sun, they
swing and rattle in every passing
breeze, suggesting the weird fetichism
Of certain African tribes.
'.They are to keep the spirits away"
said she. "Talroage has one like it,
Standing about in the yard are queer
things made of stones, shells, crooked
sticks and bits of broken crockery and
glass. Few of these are of any practi-
cal utility, nor in designing them does
she seem to have had in mind the beau
tiful or even the picturesque. Their eff
feet is simply weird. They resemble
the crude monuments which travellers
sometimes erect as landmarks.
How Granny Crane lives is mys-
terry to everyone in the neighborhood.
She does no work. not even attempting
to cultivate a garden patch, and she
receives no mail. Nevertheless, she al
ways seems to have money with which
to buy the necessaries of life. Regu-
larry, twice month"; she goes to Sever
ance and buys few plain articles of
food and sometimes cloth with which to
make a garment, but always returns
Immediately to her lonely haunt. She
is taciturn almost to sullenness when
ever the subject of her income is men
toned. Always guarded in speech, she
WILL however, chat intelligently and
with apparent relish on nearly any COM
monplace subject
These facts have given rise to the ru-
NOR that Ann Crane has money buried
about the premises. Several of the
neighbors, mostly of the younger male
population, prompted by a love of adj
venture, have watched her for several
days in succession, but their vigil was
not rewarded. She was never seen
abroad at night, and during the day she
spends most of the time sitting just out
side the door, with her cat for company,
basking in the sun.
So much for the Ann Crane of to-day.
The Ann Crane of the past is scarcely
less interesting, though her personal
history is fragmentery and uncertain.
1t is known that she is the daughter of
trapper and trader who piled his call
tY,cr in rfc r1v S1,f,
had two brothers. OF her mother there
is no record. She has been married
three times. Her first two husbands
are dead, although she now goes by the
name of the second. Her third hus-
band reputed to be a wealthy New
York lawyer named links, still lives,
and on one occasion, two years ago,
visited her here, but only remained
few days. He told certain persons in
the neighborhood that he loved her, but
that she refused to live with him unless
he would consent TO share her lonely lot
in the haunted house. She speaks of
him often, and seems to care for him,
but declines to say why she prefers the
society of spirits to that of a mortal
She is well educated and was at one
time an instructor in New York semi
nary.
Ann Crane. familiarly known as
Granny" will say very little about her
self, but according to the most reliable
informa ton she was either born on the
spot where she now lives else settled
there with her parents at very early
age. Traditions transmitted from In
dian traders to the pioneers of the sec
ton tell of a family which lived in this
vicinity long before the days of the
Quantrell raids 1t comprised a father
two grown sons and a little girl. The
name was Lawson or LaWton. The
father, a trapper by occupation, was
killed one night during a foray upon a
train of gold miners returning overland
from California. and the sons immedi-
ately afterward disappeared. From this
point forward, until she appears as a
school teacher in New York, there is a
hiatus in the history of Granny
Crane. She must have been then about
rs years of age. There she was married
three times, as stated, but SO far as
known each was a childless marriage
She returned to Kansas some time in
the '70s and has lived there ever since