The Waxahachie daily light. [volume] (Waxahachie, Tex.) 1894-current, 1908-04-04

Iidlti Ito EliOoI ibuNNs il9 s1liC9A ~
gend is fairly OLD and mellow now,
but no good competitor has appear
ed. A little Canadian town has
boosted of house with two ghosts,
but what are two ghosts alongside
of the three Holden House ghosts,
one of them with a CHASTITY wooden
Lego
Wraiths, witches, 5ogies and
ghosts have made headquarters at
the old Pinborn house for nearly
half century according to reports
of the neighbors. The building was
constructed for boarding house be-
fore the Civil War, and when the
town of Holden was sliced off from
the town of Brewer the then aged
boarding house was bought by
the new town of Holden and convert
ed into a town poor farm.
A few years before the war one of
the inmates, a Miss Sarah Goodell.
who had seen better days, became
demented and endeavored to get
away. She was recaptured many
times, but one cold night she slipped
away. and the next morning her
frozen body was found in a patch of
woods two miles distant. From this
date the "hant" of old Sarah Goodell
started to patrol the almshouse.
Men and women in bed We're
awakened by the sound of the old
woman s voice crying out, Save me!
/ am freezing!" and as soon as
search was made for the cause all
became silent, though the spectral
words were repeated again and
again as soon as all were in bed and
the lights out.
In the course of few weeks the
inmates of the poorhouse were panic
stricken, some of the women becom-
ing sick from fright. and finally,
finding that nothing could lay the
ghost, the town sold the house and
farm to a Brewer farmer, Michael
Reardon, who moved onto the pace
with his family, built a residence
for himself and used the late aims
house as a place for storage of carts
and other farm utensils.
There were no reports concerning
ghosts or other uncanny visitors
during the Reardon occupancy,
which lasted from 1868 to 1885, but
when Mrs. Reardon sold out to
George Hart, a Holden farmer, the
ghost of the Goodell woman return
ed again bringing lantern with
her
On dark nights she was seen fit
ing about the uncurtained rooms
and stealing through the lilac bush
es at the end of the house. Several
young men of the neighborhood.
who had seen the light, entered the
house at different times during the
next two years and hunted from cell
lar to attic to find the spectral viSi-
tor, but their search was not re-
warded.
In the early nineties Tom Kyah,
Brewer barber with a wooden leg,
rented the old house, and he, and his
family resided therein through one
very cold winter moving away early
in the spring
Kyah died the following summer.
The night after he was buried he
was heard humping about the dark
rooms and crying: Give me back my
leg, ! am cold and want to kindle a
fire. He had been very fond of
camping out in the woods when
alive. and on these occasions he
was in the habit of stripping up his
trousers and whiting shavings from
his willow leg sooner than go out
and find kindling, so those who
heard the ghost make its emphatic
demands for the wooden leg. were
led to believe that Kyah was camp
ing out somewhere in a cold climate
of the spirit world.
The young men who had wasted
much time in trying to learn what
the ghost of Miss Goodell wanted
refused to investigate the Kyah APP
partition, as the barber had been
well liked in life, and nobody fear
ed he would do any harm.
All q once third ghost was add
ed to the burden taa-cid house had
TO bear, This time ii was the
speerit' Of George Hart, the owner
of the place While working on his
new barn, he took a iackknife from
his pocket, cut his throat and died
almost instantly
In less than a week from the day
of the Hart funeral Herbert Patter-
son, young man of the neighbor-
hood while returning home passed
the old house late at night, saw Hart
in front of window, which came
alight all at once. The ghost went
through the performance of cutting
his throat with a jackknife.
More than this, young Patterson
asserted that the light which Hum
mated the room and shown through
the window was from a lantern held
in the hands of Sarah Goodelrs
ghost, and that the shade of Kyah,
the barber. stood in the DOORWAY
leading to the next room, holding his
wooden leg in his hand so as to pre-
vent Hart and the Goodell woman
from escaping.
This exhibition of three ghosts in
one room was given a year ago last
summer, and young Patterson was
the only living person who saw it.
But the stories he told of his ad-
ventures gained wide circulation.
and last winter a photographer of
Bangor took his camera and passed
month in the old almshouse for
the purpose of photographing the
ghosts
He cooked his simple meals over
wood fire in the room where he
had made his bed, and spent most
OF his daylight hours asleep. At the
coming Of darkness, he arranged his
b. y foe i