Lou’s View – Oct. 23, 2014
by Lou Bernard
The Screaming Skull Tour
Halloween is coming, and of course, I’m doing haunted walking tours. On October 24 and 25, at seven PM, I’ll begin at the Ross Library and show haunted places.
It’s sponsored by the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers, and proceeds will benefit the Ross Library. For three dollars a person, you’ll hear all sorts of good ghost stories—Some of them, from haunted places right downtown. Others, old legends and spooky stories from elsewhere in the county, will be told because I don’t want to be a one-trick wonder. Several of the stories are new this year; I don’t want people getting bored with this.
Of course, I have to get a few Henry Shoemaker stories in on the tour. Henry Shoemaker, the writer and folklorist from Wayne Township, could tell a weird story better than anyone else.
One of his weirdest will be on the tour, a piece from a book published one hundred years ago, in 1914. The book is “Black Forest Souvenirs.” The story is “The Screaming Skull.”
There was a criminal named Mark McCoy in the late 1800s. Raised an orphan, he had served some jail time before reaching adulthood, and began preying on people, robbing them along the Coudersport Pike. (No, I don’t plan on marching people all the way up Coudersport Pike for the purpose of telling this story. I plan on just waving my hand to the north and saying,”It happened up there.” But with a story about a screaming skull, how can I not tell it?) McCoy was probably based on a real person, and adjusted for purposes of folklore—Shoemaker did that.
McCoy was robbing travelers by day, and hiding in the forest by night. He was difficult to catch, never stopping to sleep in the same place twice. He robbed a Williamsport lumberman, and disappeared into the woods. One day, he came upon a cabin, somewhere in the general area of present-day Hyner. When he knocked at the door, it was opened by a beautiful girl who lived there with her grandparents.
The girl’s name was Ava Burkheiser, and they’d all moved from Berks County to live in Clinton County. McCoy pretended to be a lost lumberman, and they let him stay. Which was maybe not so smart with a robber on the loose, but nobody in these stories ever seems to think this stuff through.
McCoy continued to visit Ava, occasionally joined by Seneca White, a Native American who lived nearby. He kept his weapons and disguise in the forest, so that Ava never saw them, which gave him a sort of secret identity. As time went by, he fell in love with Ava.
One day, he robbed five constables who were coming for him with a warrant, sworn out by the Williamsport lumberman. Another day, he tried to rob a young attorney from Smethport. The attorney tried to get away, and McCoy shot him and killed him.
That changed things. Robbery was one thing; murder was quite another. With the heat on, McCoy slipped back to the cabin with the intention of proposing to Ava. He asked her to marry him; they would run away together and live far away.
No, she said. Ava told him that she couldn’t leave her grandparents, couldn’t leave Clinton County. McCoy left, dejected.
He returned later for one more chance, and found Ava with the Native American, Seneca White. The two of them were in love; Ava couldn’t leave White.
McCoy considered shooting them both, but that hadn’t worked out so well for him last time. He walked into the woods, tied a noose around a pine, and hung himself—As he breathed his last, he let out an anguished scream.
They found him the next morning. A group of constables discovered him hanging from the tree, and buried him there where he’d committed suicide. The next fall—Right around this time of year; how spooky is that?—A hunter named Levi Trexler found the skull, which hadn’t been buried very deeply.
He took it home and nailed it to his cabin door, because Trexler apparently had the decorating skills of a homeless college student. That night, he awoke to a scream—The skull was screaming in anguish.
The next morning, he buried the skull, but again not so deeply. And over the winter, it was discovered by a camper. He kept it, but it screamed in the night, so he left it there. And in the spring, some fishermen found the skull, and guess what it did?
It continued this way—Some children found it, and then a local man. And each time the skull was found, it screamed, frightening people away.
Finally, the girl’s grandparents came out and found it, and buried it deeply.
And it didn’t scream.
But it’s still out there, somewhere, buried along the Coudersport Pike. And it is thought that if it’s ever discovered again, it will resume screaming.
How’s that for a good Halloween story? You can hear it, and some more, on my tour. The two graves of Mad Anthony Wayne, the monster of the Susquehanna, the headless man on the railroad tracks….
But I’m not stupid. I’m stopping here. You want to hear more? I’ll see you at the tour, then.
