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

The Ghost-Man

Detroit Free Press, December 2, 1874 (enlarge)

Keywords: William Severine Johnson, 518 Croghan Street, Croghan Street, Detroit Free Press, Davy Crockett, ghost stories, ghosts, spirits, city directory, 1874.

Ghost Story #16: Pursued By A Ghost, He Hides Behind Skirts

The Detroit News, September 4, 1927

No matter where he went, a ghost pursued Arthur Jackson, 21 years old, 2212 Sherman Avenue, so assiduously that he was nearly frantic until he conceived the plan of outwitting the specter by disguising himself as a woman, he told Judge Frank Murphy when arrained in the Recorder's Court Saturday, charged with stealing four dresses from the store of Emil Gries, 4420 Dix avenue.

"A real ghost?" the court inquired.

"A real one, your honor," the defendant replied. "He walked beside me all day long, and kept me awake at night. Unless you've been followed by a ghost yourself, you can't imagine what I went through."

So earnest did Jackson appear that Judge Murphy let him off--with $25 fine.

Ghost Must Be Quiet: Court Ruling Prohibits Noisy Spooks' in G. P.

Detroit Free Press, June 12, 1943

Phantoms are ruled out of order when they create a nuisance in restricted areas in an unprecendented ruling handed down Friday by Circuit Court Judge George B. Murphy granting neighbors a permanent injunction restraining Mrs. Henrietta A. Schnelker from holding seances, trances and readings in her home at 1357 Devonshire, Grosse Pointe.

Climaxing a two-week hearing Murphy upheld the petition of 20 residents of the exclusive neighborhood that the peace of their homes was disturbed by frequent seances.

"The proofs showed that music and weird noises emanated from the residence loud enough to be heard by the neighbors and create a disturbance in the community," according to Murphy.

"During the seances the lights were out and a large, metallic trumpet was in use, allegedly floating around in space, touching occupants and through which trumpet the spirits were alleged to have communicated with the audience, with Mrs. Schnelker acting as medium."

Murphy also held that traffic congestion developed in the neighborhood and that frequent disturbances resulted when children gathered in the neighborhood "in their desire to see 'the ghost.'"

Policemen Fear Ghosts in the Delray Station

Detroit Free Press, March 1, 1909

POLICEMEN FEAR GHOSTS IN THE DELRAY STATION

No Explanation Can Be Given For Strange Marks On the Walls.

No well regulated policeman believes in ghosts, but some at the Delray police station on West Jefferson avenue believe their quarters are haunted. This does not seem possible, but there is no other explanation.

That station is located in a cottage marshal of old Delray. The station is papered like a private residence, and the police furnishings look incongruous. But it's the paper that brings the mind to think of ghosts.

Strange hieroglyphics have appeared from day to day until the red-figured paper has been entirely covered. To be exact, it looks as if muskrats had amused themselves rubbing their greasy fur against it. No one about the station can explain the marks.

Fear of Spooks Leads Little Girl To Death

Detroit Free Press, February 10, 1923

This story is far more tragic than weird but the circumstances that lead to little Jennie Wieczarza death were as common as they were strange. Little children are afraid of the dark and the spirits which inhabit it. I would do a proper write-up but with only this article it would be a mere re-hashing of a story that I found while once again digging for Detroit's yesteryear spooks and wouldn't do it the justice of the original piece.

Fear of Spooks Leads Little Girl To Death

6-Year-Old Jennie Dies After Candle Sets Her Nightgown on Fire.

Jennie Wieczarza, 6 years old, is dead. No more will her little heart flutter in fear of "spooks." Jennie died last night at Highland Park General hospital of burns suffered at midnight Wednesday, when she sought her parents, with a lighted candle, to spread the alarm that a hobgoblin or something was abroad in the house at 13440 Riopelle street.

Jennie slept alone and often she heard queer sounds. She had imagination too--heaps of it--and in daytime it was fairies that danced through her busy mind. When the shadows fell those creepy shadows and sounds rose to terrify her. Perhaps it was only the wintery winds moaning in the crannies of the house, or a flapping window shade. Sometimes Jennies would awaken in the middle of the night with a piercing scream and her mother rushed to her bedside to comfort her.

She was sure that an evil spirit roamed the house Wednesday night. Jennie didn't scream this time, but crept quietly out of her bed, got a candle, lighted it and started for the room where her parents slumbered. Before she got to the door she was trembling and the hand that held the candle ignited her nightgown. Flames enveloped her body. She screamed and her parents ran in, discovering her rolling on the floor. They put out the fire, but not until Jennie had suffered painful second degree burns.

She lay on a cot of pain throughout Thursday and Friday. Finally at a late hour last night the pain ceased, a peaceful calm settled over the child's features and a nurse drew the sheet over her curly head. Jennie had gone, and left the spooks behind.

Ghosts and Kidnapers Mean Naught To Stella

Detroit Free Press, May 21, 1927

I found this while tracking down ghost stories. Though I'm not sure that this story qualifies as "weird", save for the parent's denial of their son's truancy, it is definitely interesting and humorous.


Keywords: Stella Janek, Judge Charles Bowles, 6829 Mansfield Avenue, Julius Janek, Dale Wilder, 6914 Plainview Avenue, John Raniszewski, 6327 Hyden Avenue, Warrenville, Grand River Avenue, ghosts, Warren Avenue, Rouge Park, 1927.

Ghost Story #13: Tillie's Wraith

Detroit Free Press, April 15, 1888

On a rain-shot evening in early November such as tonight it's easy to think of Tillie Sparks and feel a tinge of regret for the seasons lost and passions allayed. Surely her grave in Woodmere Cemetery is unmarked. Unlike the pocked earth scarred and salved over by a century's worth of sediment turning in its natural course, top to bottom, over and under until all is returned to clay and loam.

Hers was an unfinished script. A life mulled over and expended upon the hourly chafed bed-springs of a flophouse nearby the whorish slumbers of Madames Flo Fleming and Carrie Dalton where she witnessed her life come full circum through the fire and rain of human afflictions. As sure as her grave is bereft of monument and memorial she was a lower-dreg courtesan. A harlot. A common prostitute. Her address spoke of such ill-behavior. That the law and press were in on the tawdry scheme proves that life is a bastard enterprise. As such, Tillie Sparks peddled her flesh for God-knows what return and the only persons concerned with her welfare were the Reaper and his insouciant scythe.

It's hard to know what sentiment lay beneath her skull cap into the brain and heart of her circuitry. What thoughts and puerile instinct to live, learn and love as kings and commoners do. Surely she wanted the full spectrum of what life offers but she was beneath the domain of human compassion because she sold her body to assuage the pulsing trigger seed which begets the egg its vitality. Certainly her eyes were dim behind that ebony skein which concealed the wicked filament of illicit behaviors and vexed her mercilessly so.

Though not as much as William Brown. One could make a million masks--truthful or libelous--and all would turn out Devilish for our design here. Perhaps he was upstanding and kind. Maybe his gracious charity gave Tillie Sparks hope where only the animus to subsist on nothingness resided previously. Something caused this supposed hard woman to become brittle and break before the altar of Cupid and he's the only pillar standing between her happiness and demise.

She had expected to meet William for a tryst or perhaps something more sentimental. Clearly William was not equally enamored. So when she stepped out onto Fort Street in lieu of their "date" and saw him embroiled in commerce with another woman she became unhinged with jealousy and hopeless disdain for her own existence. She followed the erstwhile acquaintances as they followed up their footfalls with the intimacy that only lovers know. Yes, I realize that I'm devolving rapidly into a pantomime of Danielle Steel but indulge me as I allow the torrid hobgoblin to entirely envelop my psyche.

When they alighted from the street to a known carnal roost Tillie set her mind towards a return to Eden. To eat the poison apple and die a martyr in preference to a slavish and unrequited love. She booked her own funeral in a room near to her rival and love, departed to exchange money with a pharmacist on a nearby street corner, once more returned to commence the fulfillment of her destiny with the aid of laudanum and entered death's eerie chamber as a slumbering suicide eagerly awaiting the expiration of breath which came more gradual than her desire. All while William passionately remade himself upon his mate's tilting womb. Whatever it was that made Josephine Day more desirable than Tillie ended there as well.

But Tillie could not rest. Or so said the patrons and matrons of the brothel at 84 Fort Street East. Her visage could be seen at the midnight hour escaping its nocturnal prison only to lose itself in shrieks of sorrow and weeping moans, as lost and meandering as the wind in her death as she was in the living sphere. Perhaps the police could have assuaged the suffering of each or so thought the unnerved tenants. Even a cursory glance at the two buttressing articles from the Detroit Free Press proved that the strumpet calls had merely begun in earnest with those two so-called entities of justice and truth and no help would be forthcoming neither then or presently.

Detroit Free Press, May 7, 1888