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