The Ely miner., 1907-10-18


their cells in murderers' row with the
assistance of Mrs Kate Soffel, wife of
Warden Peter Soffel only to be run
down and shot to death near Butler,
Pa, As hours later and did not they
come back? That was during the time
Of Warden Soffel.
And did not Hill and Douglass and
many another poor wretch who went
to death from murderers' row by the
gallows route come back?
There are many who stoutly main
tain that they did, and that they
haunted their old cells and terrified
their occupants for many nights.
Another mysterious happening that
contributed to the spooky reputation
of murderers' row was not explained
away until it had been going on for
weeks.
At nine o'clock every night it has
been customary to switch the electric
lights from one dynamo to another.
This necessitated the changing of
belt and occupied from five to ten
seconds. During that time the entire
Jail was in total darkness, except for q
few isolated gas jets in the front Of
flee, at the gate and in the main cor
ridor.
An UnearthIy Shrek Was Heard.
One night several years ago just be-
fore the lights had gone out as usual
an unearthly shrek pierced the inky
blackness of the big Jail from some
where in the neighborhood Of murder
ers' row. 1t was long, moaning kind
of shrek, such as no mortal could
make, and it seemed to sweep and
circle down the main corridor before
dying away. Everybody who heard it
deputy wardens, guards and prison
ers alike-felt the marrow freezing in
his bones. An investigation was made
Immediately the lights had been
turned on again, but no solution to
the mystery was found that night. The
prisoners were questioned and, as
might have been expected, all denied
knowing anything about it. Men in
cells on the fourth tier thought the
noise, came from somewhere on the
ground floor. Those on the ground
floor thought it came from the roof.
Next night when the lights were
switched off at nine o'clock the same
unearthly scream resounded through
the building, and once more the result
ant investigation came to naught.
T 1Al
termined to trace the noise to it's
source, so on the third night he Sc
cretly stationed guards in empty cells
and along corridors, with instructions
to make careful note of the direction
from whence the yell came if it should
be repeated. The yell was repeated
without fail as soon as the Jail was in
darkness, but the worden's plan failed,
for the guards had totally different
ideas of where the sound came
from.
BY the time the uncanny yell had
been heard for five nights in success
sion, with the mystery of its source as
deep as ever, many Of the most SUI
perstitious prisoners were on the
verge of nervous prostration. Nobody
could ever tell them after that that
the Jail was not haunted: The warden
was almost at his wits end, but he
tried one more scheme. He began to
transfer the prisoners, few at
time, from cell to cell, and guards
were instructed to watch each batch
of transferred men very closely. In
this way the noise was finally traced
to practical joker among the pris-
oners, who produced the diabolical
yell with the aid of a hair comb and
a newspaper. A piece of paper was
folded across the comb and held as a
mouthpiece at the small end of a meg
aphone made by rolling the newspaper
up into cone. Everybody knows
what fearful noise can be made by
pressing the lips against paper-cov-
cred comb and blowing hard. With
the megaphone added the noise was
greatly magnified, and it made noise
calculated to give anybody cold chills
in the pitchy darkness of a big prison.
With the detection of tie culprit the