Lou’s View

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I get asked that a lot. It’s a question that comes up when you do paranormal investigation. My stock answer is that I don’t believe, or disbelieve. It’s bad science to decide what result you want before you do the experiment. If I believed, I wouldn’t have to investigate.

Henry Wharton Shoemaker wrote a chapter with exactly that title. “Do You Believe In Ghosts?” appears on page 219 of his 1922 book “Allegheny Episodes.” It’s a little bit of a deviation for Shoemaker, in that it contains several stories at once, all told within the same chapter.

The story begins with the Washington Inn, which once stood in Loganton. As with so many of Shoemaker’s stories, there’s an element of truth—The Washington Inn stood in Loganton until it burned down in the 1918 fire.

Joseph Kleckner was the owner and landlord. People would gather there, stay overnight, and sit in the lobby and chat. On one rainy night, several people were sitting around the fire, talking mostly about the weather, and then one old hunter asked,”Do you believe in ghosts?”

After a pause, the conversation began. Another hunter traveling from Berks County told the story of a young girl who lost her father, and then saw him in the house. She sat and had a conversation with him, while the other family members were afraid to enter the room.

A woman told her story of traveling and stopping at a place where she could sleep in a room for the night. All night long, the candle went out and had to be relit, and the door kept opening even though it had been firmly locked.

A woman named Annie Moylan asked if anyone knew about the Big Calf.
This is a typical Shoemaker move in his stories. One of the things you notice about Shoemaker is that he tends to start at an almost irrelevant point and then work his way around to the actual plot of the story. In this case, the Big Calf was a calf born at that inn, decades before, and it was born big and continued to grow. At six months it was said to be the size of a full-grown cow.

Stories of the Big Calf spread, and people attempted to buy it. There were even attempts to steal it. And one day, the landlord’s daughter was joined by a good-looking man who just wanted to see it. He watched her milk the cows, and chatted with her, and then booked a room at the inn. The next day he became very sick, and doctors came, but they weren’t much help as their treatment consisted mostly of leeches. The daughter nursed him back to health, and he proposed to her.

After a couple of days, however, he disappeared, leaving behind a note. He confessed that he’d only been attempting to find out if her father had money, which he didn’t. Having not found money to steal, he was leaving….And the note was signed “David Lewis.”

This is another touch of accuracy in Shoemaker’s story. David “Robber” Lewis was a notorious bad guy from Centre County, back in the very early 1800s. He was shot and killed with his partner about 1820.

Realizing that she’d been conned, the girl left the house and went for a walk, and was never seen again. She disappeared, and the unverified speculation was that she’d killed herself and her body was never found.

Annie Moylan, while telling the story, explained that she’d once lived with a woman named Emilie Knecht. While talking, Annie had told Emilie the story of how she’d seen a dark-colored shadowy ghost as a child. Emilie said that her grandmother’s ghost had come to her every night when she was a child.

The two of them, one night, were invited to the home of a old woman named Mrs. Eilert for dinner. As they were walking, they noticed a woman following them, all dressed in black. She walked behind them for a while….And then disappeared.

When they reached the home of Mrs. Eilert, she told them about the young girl who’d been jilted by Robber Lewis, and said that they’d probably seen her ghost, which was still known to appear in the area.

Clinton County is full of these stories. There are some neat old legends out there. And, as I pass them along to you, I’ll ask you the same question Henry Shoemaker once did: Do you believe in ghosts?