The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-11-16
REMOVING A GHOST.
Story of Man Who Moved Into c
 House Said to Be Haunted.

From the New Orleans Times-Demecrat.
 '"rhe strangest experience ever had in anything like a haunted house." said man whe delights in telling weird tales, twas ever here on the coast a few years ago, when I was making experiment in the business of raising terrapins. There was house which remained vacant greater part of the time on account of the many ghost stories told about 1t. It was a fine place, and 1 concluded to rent 1t and take my chances on the ghost propo- sition. I moved in from another place on the coast not very far from the haunted house among the things I carried along with me was an old trunk which had not been put to any important use for some time. It was looked upon as so much rub bish. It had been in an old outhouse for some months. The house we removed into was large, roomy place, with an upstairs of considerable size. We decided to use the upstairs part of the place for a sort of storage room for the old plunder we had brought with us. Among other things we put the old trunk to which I have referred in this part of the house. It was put in back room, one we rarely entered because we had but little use for the things we had placed in it.
 ''We had not been in the place long before we began to hear strange sounds in the back room where we had placed the old trunk. At first we did not pay much attention to the sounds. In fact, we allowe1 the thing to run on for several months before making any sort of in- vestigation of the rather queer noises we heard. In the meantime, the thing had become a source of much annoyance to me and members of my little household. Every night we could hear the same old scratch, scratch, in the back room. I | al .sext.f xxvhA r same familiar sound. I concluded that I would investigate 1t. I did not want the members of my family to know that I attached any importance whatever to | the report that the house was haunted, so I took advantage of the fact that I was completely alone when I started out on the gruesome mission. The sound was coming from the back room. There was no mistake about this fact In few moments I found myself in the room from which the sounds cape.
 | I was surprised to know that my enter ing the room had made no impression on the ghost, and to tell the truth, I was just a little inclined to resent the boldness and effrontery of the mysterious thing which had annoyed my folks and myself for so long time. I was deter mined to rout the ghost, boot and spurs. I began to cruise around in the room. I had a candle in one hand. Directly I found that the noise was coming from the old trunk we had moved into the house with us. There was nothing to do but open the trunk. opened the trunk. There was the ghost. laughed outright. There was an old rusty terrapin we had put in the trunk probably six months be- fore when we were living at the other place. He had been doing all the scratch ing.
 q never said anything to my people about the gruesome excursion I made in the dead of night, but they often com mented on the absence of the sound whicl
 had annoyed them so much before that
 They never knew I had removed the ghost"