Ghost Story #21: The Haunted Corner

Detroit Free Press, September 19, 1877 (enlarge)

Keywords: ghost, haunting, Detroit, Michigan, Officer Furman, Officer Wilford, Thomas Kennedy, Jefferson Avenue, R. R. Lansing, Charles Van Anden, Woodward Avenue, Griswold Street, Louis Desnoyer, American Express Company, 1877.

Ghost Story #20: A Ghost

Detroit Free Press, September 19, 1873

"A family named Morrison, living on Ohio street, vacated their house Wednesday night because they heard strange noises, cries and groans. They believe that the ghost of a man who was murdered near the house several years ago had taken possession of the domicile."

Herman Menz's Devil

Statues of slave owners, NAZIs, Confederate officers...pffft!

In 1905 Detroiter Herman Menz erected a gargoyle statue that the residents of the city mistook for Satan himself (Menz played into the fervor) and demanded its fall lest they riot and tear it down. 

Detroit Free Press, November 9, 1905 (enlarge)

Menz mollified the mob by allowing visitors a chance to visit the statue for 10c a pop but still the city wanted it gone.

Detroit Free Press, November 11, 1905

Pastors denounced it and so did his neighbors and countrymen. Menz grew tired of the notoriety and removed it himself.

Later, a man sued him and the statue was auctioned off to pay the settlement.

It was purchased by the owner of the Electric Park but after suffering losses for nearly two years after his purchase it was returned to Menz who vowed to resurrect it.

Detroit Free Press, September 24, 1908 (enlarge)

Alas- he resurrected the statue on November 1, 1908, nearly three years after he caused an outrage throughout Detroit. This go-around nobody seemingly cared, not even the Devil himself.

Ghosts Explain

Detroit Free Press, February 23, 1898 (enlarge)

If somebody was inclined to write a book about Spiritualism, ghosts and murder in Detroit they could write 20 sequels as well. The city was a spiritualist hotbed at the turn of the 20th century and any particular character involved in the trade of producing ghosts usually spawned a web of other such personages that involved themselves in various other cases, scandals and incidents.

Medium E. Medford Gilman was an admitted fraud. It took a few years in prison on such charges for him to confess to his charlatanism. His game was so good that before coming to Detroit he had swept up another man's wife in Wisconsin and she, along with several other spooks who had set up in a house of tricks on Lafayette Avenue in Detroit, were arrested along with him. Though most of the participants seem to have been spared jail time as they testified against him. For her part, Mrs. Johns, supposed mistress of Gilman, her mother explained in a letter to the editor that it was a working partnership between the two that Mr. John heartily agreed to. Gilman also denied any wrongdoing in matters of the heart.

Also in the city at the time was a man named Edward Ascher (alias E. Robert Lang) who had performed trumpet séances at the home of Prof. Donovan, another Spiritualist. A farmer from Pittsfield Township named Valmore Nichols who had an affinity for Spiritualism was murdered by Ascher after taking out a several hundred dollar loan from a friend and travelling to Detroit to meet the medium. Ascher was charged and found guilty twice for the killing, having had the first conviction revisited, after an earlier hung jury, only to be sentenced to life in the fourth trial.

Detroit Free Press, August 19, 1898 (enlarge)

Lang was apparently a serial killer of sorts. Before he offed Valmore Nichols in Detroit in 1898 he seemingly did a similar job on a widow named Sabra Gates in Louisville, Kentucky a year or two earlier. She had been poisoned after he managed a few hundred dollars and a watch from her but the evidence against him was circumstantial and flimsy at that. Our old pal E. Bedford Gilman made the connection for the authorities having been made privy to Ascher-Lang's scheme of magnetic healing through talks with him and Prof. Donovan. One could write a novel about these charlatans.

The Louisville and Detroit connections grow closer with the revelation that John Kuprion, one of Lang's Kentucky victims, testified in the original trial that ended in a hung jury. Lang had used similar tactics on Kuprion that he employed on Valmore Nichols, the murdered Pittsfield Twp. farmer whose body was found in the Detroit River. It had floated to the top of the water and been spotted several times but with only the head semi-sticking above the water it was mistaken for a buoy before a boatman from Belle Isle discovered the grisly truth. While the first trial ended in a hung jury Ascher-Lang was eventually re-tried an additional three times, two ending with convictions which sandwiched another trial that was dismissed (I believe).

Detroit Free Press, March 26, 1903 (enlarge)

Lang, a Russian Jew, said that he was a native of Detroit, though he obviously did some travelling to practice his trade.

Detroit Free Press, January 13, 1898

Professor Donovan, as mentioned in a few articles, fled prosecution and I haven't tracked his fate while Gilman went into the iron moldering profession after his prison time. Likewise, I haven't tracked his movements thereafter.

Detroit Free Press, April 16, 1899 (enlarge)

FURTHER READING:

Spiritualistic Christening

Detroit Free Press, March 28, 1898

Rev. Nellie S. Baade was a different kind of preacher. As a longstanding member of the First Spiritual Philosophical Society of Detroit, along with her husband Charles, a prominent businessman, she believed in ghosts and reincarnation along with some of the more standard tenants of religion. In this case baptism or a spiritualistic christening. Though instead of dousing the children in water she presented them with bouquets of nosegay.

Her and husband Charles are buried at Woodmere Cemetery.

Evansville Press, August 5, 1907 (enlarge)

St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 10, 1897 (enlarge)

Mrs. Dr. Stanley's Last Week in Detroit

Detroit Free Press, April 10, 1898

Ghost

Detroit Free Press, September 25, 1863

Civil War era paranormal theater at Young Men's Hall in Detroit.

GHOST

The spectres of the dead, shadows of the grave.

Terrible awe and solemnity.

Prof. Martin Leo Jean's Ghost of Conway Castle with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Linden and a complete dramatic troupe.

Tickets 50 cents.

Ghost Story #19: A Voice in the Night

Detroit Free Press, April 15, 1888

I've never quite figured out what the purpose of my finding out about Gundella the Witch was so I just assumed that I should collect ghost stories as she did. Since I don't believe a word of the haunted nonsense coming out of the last 2 or 3 generations' mouths the whole concept of the oral tradition of the living as it pertains to apparitions and spooks goes out the window. Enter newspaper clippings.

I've also been rather lax on that matter because life gets in the way and then there's also STUFF. "Never mind that" I tell myself and then it's six months later. Nonetheless, I always return with something and since Nankin isn't doing it for me at present I'm seemingly back on Detroit proper. Mainly because it's the path of least resistance towards researching and since I can barely force myself into the task it'll have to do.

While I've compiled a thing or two relevant to the Detroit Opera House here is an early "haunting". A gruesome death-rattling moan-cry that came from behind the building which puzzled a cop, a bothered bystander, some gamblers and general neighbors to the building at Monroe and Farmer.

A Genuine Devil

Ordinary places sometimes cradle strange secrets in the hold. Russell McLauchlin's 1946 book Alfred Street is anything but an innocuous re-telling of the history of Alfred Street, as seen from the vantage point of the author during his boyhood at the turn of the twentieth century. It's musical and redolent of  the primitive majesty of yesteryear but it would be stretching to say that it's a thriller in any sense of the word.

Yet, on page 87 starts a seemingly mundane tale of the endless litany of Mrs. Clarks who ran the washing loads for the families of Alfred Street, though of supposedly modest means were the author's parents. Recounting one such woman's tale and the scorn it brought from Mary Doyle, another member of the nanny and household staffs of the area, comes this recollection of a devil child being born in Detroit circa 1900:

"I remember well the sensible scorn which she heaped on one of the Mrs. Clarks who reported that there had been born in her neighborhood (Detroit circa 1900), a day or so before, a genuine devil, complete with horns and tail and cloven hood. This, according to Mrs. Clark, much embarrassed the presumed parents and family connection of the prodigy, and euthanasia was proposed by the more radical."

A genuine devil child complete with horns, tail and cloven hoof! Biblically not Satan in the least as Ezekiel tells us, for he comes "as an angel of light". But as a demon or a reincarnation of the fabled Nain Rouge? Who knows!

Ghosts of the Twentieth Century...

Plymouth Mail, March 19, 1897

Ghosts of the Twentieth Century...

To all Political, Literary, Dramatic, Artistic and Historic Ghosts, and to the Spirits of Events, Ideas, Customs, and Things belonging to this Century.

FELLOW GHOSTS You are summoned to Penniman Hall, Plymouh, Mich., on Tuesday evening, the 22nd of October, at four hours before midnight. Appear in costume appropriate to the occasion. Old-time apparitions are politely requested to absent themselves.

Assemble at the foot of the stairs and then rise.

Spook march at 9:00 o'clock. Come prepared to participate in the mysteries and rites of HALLOWE'EN.

Lady spooks, free. Gentlemen sppoks are expected to donate 55 cents to this ghostly gathering. Spirit of the Occasion,

Underwood Dancing Academy

How Detroit Police Solved Baffling Murder of 'Count'

Detroit Free Press, June 30, 1929 (enlarge)

Although he was an auto worker by trade the self-ascribed count Andrew Kaczmarek, a Polish national, was killed for his small fortune as he sought to retire in his native Poland in 1925

A Colossal Battle

Detroit Free Press, March 31, 1860

Sarah Ann Rabb and Harriet Gaines, the former a white woman who followed fortune-telling for a living, and the latter a sturdy negro wench, were arrested in a row and disturbance of the peace. They were discharged, having remained in jail over night.

Hindu Mystic Told to Leave

Detroit Free Press, August 3, 1929

If you know nothing of the mystic frenzy which encompassed Detroit in the first quarter of the 20th century then you've been cheated. Anyway...here's one of the least successful fortune tellers to hit the scene.

Silva Synci arrived in Detroit from Houston in late July of 1929 and quickly got to work. Just as quickly the police department were on to his trade. Police woman Victoria Wasney paid an undercover visit to Synci to get her fortune read.

He told her that she'd get married the next year. Then he asked if she had a steady boyfriend. When she said no he informed her that a mystical man would soon make love to her. That man was him. Then proceeded to put his arms around her and attempt a purloined kiss.

Instead he was arrested and ordered to leave town by Judge W. McKay Skillman or face jail with the former part mandatory, calling Synci's business a high class call girl racket. It was a brief 3 day stay in the city of the straits. 

"Gypsy Curse" is Feared

Detroit Free Press, October 22, 1913

Refuge Taken in Law to Put Stop to Mystic Passes

Fearing the workings of the dreaded "gypsy curse,' Mrs. Esther Holson, of 312 Winder street, took refuge in the law Tuesday, and got a warrant for Mrs. Mary Rylick, a fortune teller.

Mrs. Bolson and the fortune teller live in the same house. Mrs. Rylick, it is alleged, exchanged her professional services for Mrs. Holson's money at regular intervals.

Since Mrs. Holson ceased her visits to the fortune teller, she says Mrs. Rylick has stopped her in the hall, made mystic, fateful passes at her and projected evil spirits through the wall which separates their rooms.

Wife is Kept in Italy By "Witch"

Detroit Free Press, September 20, 1914

It's difficult to know whether the superstitions of old Europe which came to the new world were a byproduct of ignorance or just a predisposition against husband-husbandry. In this case it's likely a bit of both as a matter of convenience. 

Peculiar Plea Brings Husband Divorce in Circuit Court.

Because a "witch" told her not to cross the ocean, Mrs. Vito Basirico refused to join her husband in America, and the disappointed spouse sorrowfully received a decree of divorce Saturday from Judge Hosmer.

Giuseppi Basirico, the husband, said he wrote her that a much more potent American witch predicted dreadful things if she did not come, but Vito probably thought the ills he wished her to fly to might be worse than those she would not fly from. She would not leave sunny Italy, despite the three crosses Giuseppi placed on his last letter to her, which were to assure her of his undying love.

Separated From 'Hexed' Parents

Detroit Free Press, July 24, 1929 (enlarge)

So you've got a plague, eh? Well, at least you're not being pursued by a witch. Detroit of the 1920s was a mystical malaise of voodoo, occultism, cults and mob murder. Not that Detroit was alone in such incidents, as the last article shown here attests to, concerning the Burgess murder in Kalamazoo not long before this incident, as well as the Evangelista cult slayings in Detroit where the entire family was decapitated.

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In the summer of 1929 Roy and Della Tomlin went to Detroit police with their 5 children (Alec, 9, Elvina, 4, Evelyn, 16, Clice, 1 and Leona, 8) begging for protection from a witch and were promptly placed under psychiatric care at Receiving Hospital.

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According to their 16-year-old daughter Evelyn the episode started with a hex from an old Livonia woman with an evil eye near their previous home at Plymouth and Farmington Rds. She was capable of moving tables and making a broomstick dance and had warned them that perhaps she was a witch, PROOF!.

Apparently there was a ghost, too. After the family moved to Detroit a white visage appeared at a window in their home at 15016 Bramell Avenue. Roy chased the ghost down the street and struck at it but his hand went through the white figure to the astonishment of the afflicted family. Or so they said.

Detroit Free Press, July 26, 1929

Hospital officials thought otherwise and Delia was later adjudged insane, having previously suffered mental failings. I could find no determination upon Roy but his wife destined for the asylum at Eloise or Pontiac, though I can find no record of which she was eventually sentenced to.

Detroit Free Press, July 25, 1929

The Big Hill

Detroit Free Press, March 30, 1890

This story of a treasure found and lost on the "Big Hill" by supernatural means on the outskirts of old Detroit Village as foretold to three men--one later became a prominent County official--by a soothsayer, guided by a rubber ball and recounted here by Luke Sharp ("look sharp" AKA novelist Robert Barr) is probably bunkum but who can know for sure.

I included the full page below for the excellent Wonderland advert featuring the "Mammoth Hoosier Boy" Chauncey Morlan, esquimaux, Col. Fisher the prize package midget and Zip (Barnum's What-is-it?) and Ash (The Spotted New Zealander), noted freaks who made their first appearance in Detroit in a Burlesque Boxing Bout. The two semi-human, semi-savage, semi-civilized beings. Their words, not mine.

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Wormer & Moore's Almanack & Le Loup Garou

Detroit Free Press, March 7, 1926 (enlarge)

Gundella wrote of Le Loup Garou (were-wolf) as did Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin in her classic Legends of Le Détroit but Wormer & Moore, in the February 1926 issue of their Almanack, claim to have written the definitive text of the half man-wolf skulking Grosse Pointe. Gimme!

Mystic Animal Famed 2,600 Years is Traced to Detroit

Detroit Free Press, June 5, 1920 (enlarge)

Black Cat, With Jade Eyes and Three White Hairs in Tail, is Dancer's Quest

Trace of a mystic animal said to have been famed more than 2,600 years ago is reported to have been found in Detroit. It is expected tha antiquarians, bibliologists and those who delight to delve into the occult and ancient will conduct exhaustive researches if the report is found to have substance.

In the sixth century B. C. there appeared in a large Semitic city in the Euphrates valley a cat. It was jet black. Its owner was Loof Lupa, a youth of common lineage. As it has been found engraved on a cobbled tablet in the code of Hammuraki, this feline was possessed of strange powers. It brought to Loof great riches and honors. So wondrous was its mystic ability to ferret out precious stones and metals that its eyes turned green to match priceless jade and upon its tail tip appeared three hairs of silver white. About the time King Cyrus the Great paid an uninvited visit to the town, the cat disappeared and Loof was out of luck.

On numerous occasions in varying ages there have been mentions in chronicles and legions of the cat. Sinbad the Sailor records having met it on a desert island while bringing a carload of beans from Lima. About the year 1750 Baron Munchausen recounts an encounter with the jade-eyed feline. And, more than a century later, the original Bosco is said to have carried it a season with Barnum.

From that date until several months ago the silver-tipped tabbie has been invisible to mortal eyes. At the above mentioned time, it appeared to a short-story writer just as he was sampling the second quart of home brew. Only the fleeting glimpse brought him luck in form of a check in which jade eyes played a prominent part.

This week this cat of 900 lives is said to have been seen for a second as it whisked around a rubbish pile in a Hastings street alley. Again it brought good luck. The alley was cleaned a few minutes later.

This latter materialization came to the attention of a certain dancer filling a Detroit engagement. She had heard of the peculiar pussy and its strane powers while studying the rhythmic movements of the Akkadians. She must have it. So at once--only stopping to powder her nose and interview her manager of publicity--she inserted an advertisement for said cat.

Remember: it must be black; have jade eyes; three white hairs on tip of tail. If you find it, just take it to The Hotel and make a dancer wriggle with joy. Or, better still, if not as gallant, give it to Hughey Jennings--he certainly needs it.

Ernest Vegesack: Expert Occultist

Detroit Free Press, December 26, 1897

When the time finally comes for me to write a book it will be under the nom de plume of Ernest Vegesack (pronounced veggie-sack) because Ernie Meatsack sounds profane and unseemly for such an upstanding voice as my own.

Vegesack was an expert occultist, gave correct life readings according to the art of palmistry, did horoscopes, advice on everyday affairs and phrenology.

He held court at both 200 Woodward Avenue and 158 Lafayette Avenue.

Detroit Free Press, February 11, 1898

World To Burst; John D. Blamed

Detroit Free Press, November 17, 1910

Detroit mystic Jacob Forlow held the belief--he considered it a seismic theory--that the Earth's mantle being so compromised from the boring of oil, would collapse in upon itself.

Chiefly to blame for this cataclysmic event was none other than oil tycoon John D. Rockerfeller.

The veracity of his claims held widespread sway over the general public despite their reticence to openly tout or bemoan the postulation.

The only caveat to this universal claim to truth was that it would take centuries for the "bursting" to occur. Further complicating the equation is the prospect for a Green New Deal. But surely Forlow considered that feeble attempt into the mathematics. Cross cancel and divide, I say, because oblivion awaits us either way.

Forlow's foray into predictions had only ripened to doom and gloom when he mastered the taming of the weather. Meteorological ascents being the barometer which differentiates the mere mystic from the sage.

Detroit Free Press, June 29, 1911

Fooled: Conan Doyle vs. Houdini: Who's Right?

Detroit Free Press, February 10, 1926

See Mystic Spencer produce Spirit Paintings on the stage of the Fox Washington Theatre this week.

While I was hoping that Mystic Spencer was a local psychic & crystal gazer it seems that he was a regional performer, oft in Ohio and the Midwest.

The Coshocton Tribune, September 14, 1922

Hereafter, The Raczkowskis Are Off Psychic Strangers

Detroit Free Press, December 20, 1919 (enlarge)

This story isn't exactly a spiritualist wet dream but more for the huckster in every psychic. As such when George Boudreaux scammed George and Mary Raczkowski, 799 Riopelle Street, out of a cool $820 via a sleight of hand and eventually through the wooing of their daughter Isabel it was only a matter of time before the police got involved. But not until Boudreaux was arrested for the innocuous crime of alleged operation of a Ouija board did justice find him. At that point the Raczkowskis jumped into the fray and further charged the besmirched occultist with theft.