Evening star., 1939-07-23
Old Ghost Story
With New Twist
Goes the Rounds
Yarn Is Accepted by
Many New Workers
As Authentic
BY the Associated Press

BY the Associated Press.
NEW YORK, July 22.-Some peo-
pie call this the story of THE Ghost
OF the Bronx Express" Others place
the locale in Brooklyn or in Queens,
and some give it a New Jersey set
ting.
1t Is a story of a girl of strange
unearthly beauty and of a young
man who fell in love with her and
died OF grief or shock or some other
mysterious ailment of the spirit
when he learned he had given his
heart to an apparition.
For some months the story has
been going the rounds in the metro
politan area, told in good faith by
the credulous, repeated by others as
a curious example of a recurrent
primitive motif, used in literature as
long ago as the third century, and
now the theme of an eerie tale re-
counted in home and restaurant.
How and when the 1899 telling
started no one seems to know.
The Bronx Version.
The Bronx version concerns q
young Wall Street broker who one
evening noticed a pale, beautiful
young girl sitting across from him
in the subway as he rode home. She
got off at his station, but her pallid
beauty remained with him, and to
his surprise he saw her the next
night and thereafter, for several
nights.
The coincidence of meeting her on
the same train during the rush hour
puzzled him. One night he ad-
dressed her and as they fell to talk
ing he walked with her to an apart
ment house where she said she lived.
One night. after numerous meet
ings, he invited her TO dinner. She
accepted, and he asked her to hold
his coat while he went into a drug
store to telephone his mother he
would be late. But when he emerged
she was gone. The man went to the
house where the girl had told him
she lived, but woman he met there
said there must be some mistake.
He described the girl, and suddenly
the woman looked shocked and
said, why, that sounds like Miss
-. She died year ago"
Then she showed him a photo
graph Of the girl she had in mind.
1t was the girl of the subway train.
Still wondering, he asked the
woman where the girl was buried.
Hurrying there he found the grave.
On the tombstone hung his missing
coat. The same night the young
man fell into a coma and grew pale
and sickly thin and died.
Vanishes at Cemetery.
The New Jersey story has two men
as principals with the girl. They
met her at a dance and drove her
to an address she gave 1t was a
cemetery. and at the gate she van
ished. One man died, the other
went mad.
The Queens version is similar. save
that the young man entered the
cemetery and the girl disappeared
at the grave.
One other curious thing may be
noted A couple of months ago a
local radio station began receiving
telephone calls from persons who
wanted the name of the girl and the
young men. The callers insisted
they had heard the story broadcast
as truth. The station denied ever
having broadcast 1t as a fanciful
tale.
Yet the calls continued to food the
telephone switchboard of the sta
ton. Why so many people happened
to call at one time and why they
assumed they had heard the story
mystifies the station officials: but
there was nothing they could do
about it except to issue their weary
denials.