Forgotten Tales of Pennsylvania (5 page)

The next day, the brothers told some of the other local farmers what they had encountered. They discovered that two others in the community had also seen the goat man. One farmer was attacked by the creature but managed to grab his scythe to defend himself. The goat man snatched the scythe from the farmer's hands and bit the handle in half while he fled. A woman reportedly saw the goat man in her yard going after the animals. When she startled it, the creature threw down a dead goose and fled into the woods.

F
LYING
J
ACK
-
O
'-L
ANTERNS IN
R
ACCOON
T
OWNSHIP

The
Beaver Argus
reported a strange incident that occurred at the Zion Church in Raccoon Township, Beaver County, on the evening of December 21, 1876. Services had just ended, and much of the congregation was standing outside the church. To the northwest, they noticed close to fifty bright jack-o'-lantern lights (another term for will-o'-the-wisps or spooklights) rise up and dance across the sky in front of the church. The lights were described as being larger than the size of a man's fist. Each one had a two- to three-foot-long streamer of fire behind it, and they all emitted sparks. The others seemed to quickly follow the lead fireball before they all began to fade and disappear from sight. The strange lights caused panic among some of the almost one hundred witnesses, who thought that it may have been a sign from God.

D
EATH OF
P
ITTSBURGH
D
OG
M
ADE
New York Times

One Pittsburgh show dog was so famous that an article concerning his death was featured in the
New York Times
. Count Noble, a $10,000 Irish setter, passed away on January 21, 1891. He was owned by B.F. Wilson, who lived in Pittsburgh's affluent suburb of Sewickley. The article even mentioned the dog's next of kin, as would a human obituary. Count Noble was born in 1879 to Nora and Count Windom. His children included other famous show dogs such as Gath, King Noble, Roderigo, Katie Noble, Sam Roy, Prince Noble Jr. and Roger. Wilson described Count Noble as “brave as a lion and gentle as a lamb.” He also stated that the dog “understood the English Language thoroughly.” The obituary went on to list the numerous awards that the dog had won at various shows.

A
LBAWITCHES

Tales of the albawitches originate with the Susquehannock Indians who once lived in central and eastern parts of the state. Their legends describe short and hairy humanoids that inhabited remote areas. European settlers also claimed to have had contact with the strange creatures. Stories of encounters with the albawitches most frequently occur around Chickie's Rock Park in Lancaster County. Their name is thought to be a corruption of “apple snitch” because they were frequently seen sitting in apple trees and eating the fruit. Though reports of this legendary humanoid are not as common as they once were, there are still occasional sightings.

A
RMY
P
LANE
E
XPLODES
O
VER
M
IDDLETOWN

Two army aviators were tragically killed during a routine flight near the Susquehanna River on November 3, 1933. First Lieutenant Lloyd E. Hunting and Staff Sergeant John J. Cunningham were on their way back to Langley Field. News reports at the time did not identify the type of aircraft they were flying. A few minutes after takeoff, witnesses reported seeing a bright flash and hearing a loud explosion. The burning wreckage of the plane plunged down to a hillside above the river. Both men were killed instantly. It took ninety minutes to reach the wreckage on the heavily wooded hillside.

A S
TEEL
P
RODUCTION
R
ECORD

In the month of September 1944, a rolling crew headed by Lawrence Murphy, Oscar Jernstron and Walter Forsbert turned out a world record forty-two thousand net tons of steel. The feat was accomplished at the No. 18 rolling mill at the Jones & Laughlin Pittsburgh Works. The amount was 12.5 percent higher than the previous record that the same crew had set the month before. The large quantities of steel produced by the mill were vital to the war effort. The three men were personally thanked by the president of J&L, H.E. Lewis. Murphy, the oldest of the three boss rollers, learned the trade in 1900 and worked in the mill for fifty-two years before he retired.

P
ENNSYLVANIA
'
S
M
ETEORITES

Eight meteorites have been discovered in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Each has been given a unique name, often based on where it was found or identified. The first, called the Pittsburgh, was discovered by a farmer who picked it up to kill a snake in 1850. Realizing that it was probably made of iron, the farmer took it to nearby Pittsburgh to have it melted down. Luckily, a Yale professor managed to get a sample to preserve it.

In 1886, Allegheny County farmer George Hillman heard something hit the ground in his cornfield. He followed a hissing sound until he reached the stone meteorite that would be known as the Bradford Woods. The Mount Joy was found by Jacob Snyder in 1887 while he was digging a hole to plant an apple tree. It turned out to be the largest found east of the Mississippi River. Railroad workers found the Bald Eagle in 1891 while constructing a roadbed. Both the Shrewsbury and the New Baltimore were discovered by farmers plowing their fields in 1907 and 1923, respectively. Both were made of iron.

The stone meteorite known as the Chicora made quite an entrance through the skies over Butler County in 1938. Dozens of witnesses saw the fireball before it slammed into the ground (and a cow). Robert Reed was lucky enough to have the Black Moshannon Park meteorite come to him in 1941. He was camping in the park when he heard a strange whistling sound. When he went outside to investigate, he found the meteorite on the ground, four feet from his sleeping son's tent.

E
LOPERS
T
RACKED
D
OWN BY
P
OLICE

Helen May Hoagland, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a Bucks County farmer, ran off with twenty-two-year-old Burroughs Wolverton on October 18, 1895. The problem was that Wolverton was already married and had two children. Farmer Hoagland, who was described as “very wealthy and heavily armed,” promised to kill Wolverton when he caught him. With the help of a constable, the farmer tracked the young man to his Uncle George's house in New Jersey. The constable was barely able to prevent the farmer from killing him. Wolverton was arrested and charged with kidnapping. The farmer's defiant daughter claimed that she was in love with Wolverton and did not care that he was married. She planned to run off with him again as soon as possible.

U
NLUCKY
E
NGINE
1313

By March 1890, the Pennsylvania Railroad's employees decided to ask the company to stop using Engine No. 1313. It had a terrible and well-deserved reputation among the engineers and firemen who worked the trains. Over the previous year, it had been involved in more accidents than any other engine. In the summer of 1889, it plunged off a bridge near Latrobe, mangling the entire train and killing the engineer, fireman and a dozen others. A month later, the engine was repaired and back on the tracks, only to collide with another train near Manor, severely injuring the fireman. A few weeks after that, the boiler exploded while crossing the mountains, throwing the fireman from the train through a window and seriously injuring him. It was repaired again, and in January it ran into a freight train at Manor Station, destroying a dozen cars. While the engine passed Sang Hollow in early March, its oil can exploded and badly burned the engineer and fireman. After the last incident, no engineer or fireman wanted to be assigned to the engine.

S
POOKLIGHTS OF THE
L
ACKAWANNA
V
ALLEY

For much of the 1800s, mysterious lights would be spotted moving through the sky in the Lackawanna Valley. The phenomenon seemed to be centered on the town of Archbald, halfway between Scranton and Carbondale. Hundreds of residents of the area reported seeing the spooklights in various locations. They were spotted floating over the river, above houses, along the mountainsides and in the graveyards. They were most frequently seen emerging from the abandoned Sebastopol Mine. Some residents claimed that the lights were ghosts. They were often seen in spots where people had died tragically. In 1890, one old woman stated that she saw one close up and that it was actually a ghostly candle held by a phantom hand. Others dismissed the spooklights as will-o'-the-wisps, arising from the gases that were present in the old mines.

A D
EADLY
H
EAT
W
AVE

In the first week of June 1925, the temperature in Philadelphia hovered around 100 degrees. Thousands fled the city to the seashore to escape the heat. Those who could not leave slept outside in public parks and open areas because it was cooler than indoors. In total, over 105 people died directly or indirectly from the heat.

T
HE
L
EGEND OF THE
F
RENCHMAN
'
S
G
OLD

There is a legend in Potter County that barrels full of French gold were buried near Coudersport. Louis de Buade de Frontenac was traveling back to Montreal after defeating the British near New Orleans in 1696. His group supposedly returned via the Mississippi, Ohio and Allegheny Rivers. When they reached present-day Potter County, they had to continue by land. The gold they had captured proved to be too cumbersome, and fearing British retaliation or Indian attack, Frontenac decided to bury it and return later. They covered the site with a large stone that had a cross carved into it. Frontenac and his men never returned for the gold, and he died in 1698. Over the years, the cross wore away and was said to be barely recognizable on the stone. The gold is said to still be buried somewhere, waiting to be found.

T
HE
M
YSTERY OF THE
L
ENAPE
S
TONE

The story of the Lenape Stone begins in Doylestown, Bucks County, in the spring of 1872. A farm boy named Bernard Hansell was plowing his family's field when he unearthed a strange artifact. It appeared to be about two-thirds of an Indian gorget or amulet. On one side of the stone was a variety of pictographs. On the other was something more interesting. There appeared to be a drawing of an elephant or mammoth. The gorget was the shape and style common around 1000 BC. Though it appeared old, mammoths were considered to have been extinct thousands of years before that. It was called the Lenape Stone after the Lenape or Delaware Indians, the most recent native inhabitants of the area.

Hansell supposedly held on to the stone for a while and continued to search for the other piece. Nine years later, he decided to sell it to a collector named Henry Paxton for $2.50. According to Hansell, he then returned to his field and looked even harder for the missing portion of the stone. After several months, he found it and gave it to Paxton for free. The total length of the combined pieces was four and a half inches.

The stone was immediately controversial after it was made public. Henry Mercer of the Bucks County Historical Society examined the stone in the mid-1880s but never reached any definitive conclusion, other than the fact that it could never be accurately dated. The account of its discovery was purely based on Hansell's word. Mercer did discover other Indian legends that allude to mammoth-like creatures in the northeastern and north central parts of the continent. He also noted that Hansell did not make much of a profit off the stone and implied that he was not intelligent enough to pull off such a hoax. On the other hand, none of the carvings cross over the break in the stone, which could indicate that it was carved later. And of course, there have never been any other verified mammoth carvings from that time period.

A B
ULL
B
ATTLES A
B
EAR

An account of an interesting battle between a bull and a bear appeared in the Philadelphia paper the
North American
on Halloween 1891. A farmer in an unnamed part of the state was eating dinner one evening when he heard a disturbance among his cattle. He went out to find that a black bear had climbed over his fence to get to the herd. The farmer went to get his rifle, and when he returned, a bull had approached the bear and was attempting to scare him off. The bull jabbed the bear once with its horns, and the bear tried to climb the fence to get away. The bull attempted to poke the bear again but was met with a swat of the bear's paw between the horns. The bull backed up and charged, and this time both animals went tumbling through the fence. After the animals staggered back to their feet, the bull charged again, but this time the bear slammed him on the top of the head and drove him to the ground. When the farmer realized that the bull was dying, he fired at the bear several times, wounding it. The bear then fled at full speed into the woods. The bull died from its injuries.