Signal Hill, the massive rock formation that rises above St. John’s, is said to be a very haunted place. Small wonder, because over the centuries this landmark has seen its share of violence, misery, and death. Given the claim that St. John’s is one of the most haunted cities in North America, it would be strange if Signal Hill did not have ghosts.
In the mid eighteenth century, a promontory on Signal Hill became the site of a gibbet. This was a structure that resembled a gallows pole, but was used to display the bodies of executed criminals. In those days people were “hanged by the neck until dead” not only for major crimes, like murder and rape, but also for petty theft, forgery, and rustling cattle or pigs. After the execution, the body was coated with tar and hung from a gibbet as a grim warning to others. Whatever was left by the carrion birds was eventually tossed into Deadman’s Pond below Signal Hill. The promontory on which the gibbet was erected became known as Gibbet Hill.
In 1762, Signal Hill was the scene of the final battle of the Seven Years War between the French and the British. The clash was a minor one by the standards of the time, but there were casualties before the French finally surrendered. When the victorious British realized the military importance of Signal Hill, they built fortifications there.
It was a fact of life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that a common soldier was more likely to die from disease than from battle wounds. This was very true for the redcoat troops stationed at Signal
In this sketch from 1851, Gibbett Hill can be seen to the right in the background. The bodies of executed criminals were hung there as a warning to others. Their remains were eventually dumped in Deadman’s Pond.
Hill. Indeed, some considered it the most miserable outpost in the British Empire.
Crowded into poorly constructed barracks that were exposed to the elements, the men were almost always cold. Their quarters were damp and verminous. Sanitation was primitive. Epidemics swept through the ranks, and there was little the army doctors could do for the sick men. Long after the final battle had been fought, Signal Hill became the last post for many soldiers.
In 1847 a fire destroyed the St. John’s courthouse and jail. A barracks on Signal Hill was made into a prison; it was in operation for twelve years. The prison was crowded, and for most of those locked up there, conditions were harsh.
Between 1879 and 1920, whenever epidemics struck St. John’s, Signal Hill was used as an isolation ward for the sick. Victims of smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, and tuberculosis were all brought up to the drafty old barracks on the hill. Many of them died, and quite possibly their unhappy spirits joined those already haunting Signal Hill.
The Cabot Tower on Signal Hill is said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman whose baby died in her arms.
One of the most enduring Signal Hill ghost stories is that of a baby that died in its mother’s arms. According to a report written in 1842, the mother was sitting in a rocking chair in a room heated by a fireplace. Because of poor ventilation, the room would become very smoky, and the mother would have to open a window from time to time to clear the air. But then the room would get cold, and she would have to close the window again. She finally fell asleep while the window was closed. She awoke, coughing, in a smoke-filled room, to find that the child in her arms had died from smoke inhalation. Her ghost is now said to sit in Signal Hill’s Cabot Tower every night, rocking in a chair and wailing over the lost baby.
Another Signal Hill ghost is that of a woman whose husband went away with the Newfoundland Regiment to fight in the First World War. In 1918, when a troop ship brought the men back, all of their mothers, sweethearts, and wives were waiting for them on the dock. The woman in question was there with her child. Sadly, she was among the women whose men did not return. Now, every night the ghosts of the woman and child fly across Signal Hill in search of the fallen soldier.
Besides being a dumping ground for corpses from Gibbet Hill, Deadman’s Pond is also the site of several drownings. Among the victims were two girls who, in 1869, went through the ice while skating. Frederick Carter Jr., the son of Newfoundland’s premier, Sir Frederick Carter, made a heroic effort to save them. All three died. Deadman’s Pond is also said to be the hiding place of pirate treasure, and therefore would have resident pirate ghosts. According to legend, the pond is bottomless. From Deadman’s Pond up to Gibbet Hill, it seems there is hardly a spot on craggy Signal Hill that is not haunted.
Of all the apparitions that have found their way into lore, legend, and literature, perhaps none would be more unnerving than a headless ghost. The spectre of Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s unlucky second wife, who was decapitated for her alleged infidelity, is said to roam the Tower of London with, as the old song says, “her head tucked underneath her arm.” In Washington Irving’s classic short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the Headless Horseman terrifies poor Ichabod Crane. St. John’s also has a legendary headless ghost.
In 1745 a man named Samuel Pettyham rented a St. John’s house that had once been the home of a beautiful woman who was part of a tragic love triangle. Pettyham knew nothing of the building’s history or its former occupant. However, soon after he moved in, he was disturbed at night when the latches of the front and back doors began mysteriously lifting, as though someone was trying to gain entry. He would throw the door open, expecting to confront the would-be intruder, only to find no one there.
Pettyham found this annoying, but he likely put it down as the work of pranksters. The nightly jiggling of the door latches certainly wasn’t enough to make him want to move to new quarters. He simply ensured that his doors were well-bolted at night to discourage thieves. Then, one night, Pettyham saw something that frightened the wits out of him.
He had been visiting a friend, and was returning home late. As he walked along the street toward his residence, Pettyham saw what appeared to be a glowing light in the shadows. His first thought was that it must be someone with a torch. He got closer, and then saw the figure of a tall man silhouetted in the moonlight. The man was standing in front of Pettyham’s house. Due to the lateness of the hour, the street was otherwise deserted. Most decent, law-abiding people were home in their beds. Pettyham thought that this might be the scoundrel who’d been trying to get into his house.
He strode forward quickly, prepared to confront the knave and demand to know what he was up to. But Pettyham had taken but a few steps when he suddenly stopped, frozen in his tracks with fear. The tall figure standing in the street in front of him was indeed that of a man — with no head!
Pettyham took a few unsteady steps backwards, wide-eyed at the sight of the thing in front of him. Then he turned and ran. He rounded a corner, and saw a light in the window of a boarding house. Afraid that the headless man might be right behind him, Pettyham pounded on the boarding house door. When the landlord opened it, Pettyham begged the man to let him in.
Once he was inside, with the door closed and locked behind him, Pettyham calmed down enough to tell the landlord what had happened. He was afraid that the man would think he was drunk or crazy. Instead, the landlord listened to him patiently, and told him the story of the house in which he’d been living.
The beautiful woman who had once resided in Pettyham’s home had two lovers. One was a man who lived in St. John’s. The other was a tall, dashing English sea captain who would stay with her whenever his ship put in at St. John’s. The woman tried to keep her relationship with one lover secret from the other. But in a small community like St. John’s, where everybody knew everybody else’s business, that was next to impossible.
The lover who resided in St. John’s found out about the English sea captain and the woman he’d thought was his own ladylove. He was consumed with jealousy. There was nothing else he could do, he thought, but murder the interfering captain.
The next time the captain visited the woman’s house, the jealous lover was outside, lurking in the shadows of the night. He had rage in his heart and a sword in his hand. His fury grew as he thought of the woman he loved in the arms of another man.
When the unsuspecting captain came out of the house, the assassin struck quickly. Attacking from behind, with one stroke of his sword he cut off the captain’s head. As the body collapsed in a pool of blood, and the head rolled in the street, the killer fled. He disappeared from St. John’s, and was never apprehended.
The landlord told Pettyham that other people had seen that headless ghost. They had no doubt that it was the murdered English captain. But did the ghost haunt that street because it longed for the love of the beautiful woman, or was it searching for the unpunished killer? As for Samuel Pettyham, he made arrangements for new living quarters, and never set foot in that house again.
On the night of August 31, 1833, John Snow of Salmon Cove, Port de Grave, was murdered. The killers were Arthur Spring, Snow’s bonded servant; and Tobias Manderville, who was a cousin of Snow’s wife, Catherine. After shooting Snow, they dumped his body at sea (it was never recovered), and then arranged the crime scene to make it appear that Snow had been a robbery victim.
Spring and Mandeville were found out, however, and Spring confessed. He said that Mrs. Snow was behind the murder plot. Catherine and Mandeville were lovers, said Spring. She wanted her husband dead so she and Mandeville could get married and go away together.
In January 1834, all three were tried in St. John’s for murder, and found guilty. Spring and Mandeville were hanged, and their bodies were gibbeted. But Catherine’s execution had to be postponed because she was pregnant.
For the next few months Catherine Snow was kept in the St. John’s jail, awaiting the birth of her child and her own death. All the while, she pleaded her innocence. Many people in Newfoundland supported her cause, especially since Arthur Spring had retracted his claim that she had been involved in the murder conspiracy. But the magistrate who condemned her would not be moved. In July, shortly after her baby was born, Catherine was hanged. The execution took place outside the old St. John’s courthouse, just east of the site of the present courthouse on Duckworth Street. Catherine protested her innocence to the very end. The local Roman Catholic clergy did not believe Catherine’s guilt had been proven in court, so they allowed her body to be interred in consecrated ground in the Catholic cemetery at the bottom of Long’s Hill. Years later, most of the bodies in that graveyard were exhumed and reburied in Belvedere and Mount Carmel cemeteries.
Catherine Snow wasn’t long in the ground before rumours began to circulate throughout St. John’s that her ghost had been seen in the area where she had been hanged. The stories were reported in the local newspapers. Soon, people came forward to say that they had seen her ghost in the Catholic cemetery.
Years passed, and the tragedy of Catherine Snow was all but forgotten. Then, in the 1950s, a pair of cleaning women who worked in the courthouse claimed that they had seen the ghost of a woman wandering through it at night. Old timers who knew of Catherine’s story were sure that the apparition the women had seen was that of Catherine Snow. Could it be that Catherine’s spirit could not rest because the law had in fact hanged an innocent woman?
For hundreds of years, right up into the nineteenth century, any military officer or upper-class civilian who considered himself a gentleman subscribed to a code that required him to demand satisfaction on the field of honour should he ever be publicly insulted. Even after dueling was outlawed throughout the British Empire, men with scores to settle challenged each other to ritualized combat with swords or pistols. The would-be duelists’ seconds, or honorary representatives, would often manage to negotiate a satisfactory compromise before any actual violence occurred. Failing such a peaceful resolution, the duelists and their seconds would meet at a prearranged location — out of sight of the law — to cross swords or exchange shots at twenty paces. A duel with swords usually ended with the first nick to draw blood. In pistol duels, the matter was often considered honourably settled after one exchange of shots, even if both shooters missed. Duels did not always end in death; but very often they did. One such fatal duel gave rise to the legend of a famous St. John’s ghost.
On a snowy evening in late March 1826, the officers of Fort Townshend were in their quarters drinking rum toddies and passing the time at cards. It’s uncertain what game they were playing, but the officers were definitely gambling. Two of the players were Captain Mark Rudkin of the British army, and twenty-seven-year-old Ensign John Philpot of the Royal Veteran Company. Apparently, these two men were more than just opponents in a card game; they were also rivals for the affections of a pretty Irish girl who lived near Quidi Vidi. Philpot had allegedly been goaded into insulting Rudkin earlier at a social function, but had apologized.
Philpot was losing money in the game. As the evening wore on and his losses increased, he drank too much and became quarrelsome. Other players folded their hands and left the table, until only Captain Rudkin and Ensign Philpot remained.
It was the last hand of the game: a showdown, with Rudkin dealing. The pot on the table totalled two pounds, eight shillings, and sixpence, which was a considerable sum at that time. Philpot desperately wanted to win it and recoup at least some of his losses. But Rudkin dealt himself the winning hand.
Rudkin started to pull in his winnings, but Philpot accused him of cheating and seized the money. Not one to be intimidated by some whelp of an ensign, Captain Rudkin forcibly took the money back and headed for the door. Drunk and enraged, Philpot pursued Rudkin. He threw a drink in the captain’s face and, to the astonishment of all present, kicked him on the backside. Rudkin had been insulted three times in the presence of his fellow officers; he challenged Philpot to a duel.
The following morning, March 30, the antagonists met on a field near Brine’s Tavern at Robinson’s Hill, which was about a mile outside of town. Philpot’s second was Captain George Farquhar Morice, commander of HMS Grasshopper. He tried to talk the young man out of proceeding with the fight. But Philpot was still angry and insisted that Rudkin had been cheating.
Rudkin’s second was Dr. James Coulter Strachan, an army surgeon. Rudkin was a twenty-two-year veteran of the British army who had fought in several campaigns and been wounded in battle. He had cooled down, following his outrage of the night before, and offered to call off the duel. But Philpot would have none of it.
The two men were given loaded pistols and took up their firing positions. Rudkin cleverly placed himself so that the rising sun was at his back, leaving Philpot to squint into the morning glare. Dr. Strachan gave the signal and both men fired. Philpot’s bullet nicked Rudkin’s collar; Rudkin, a crack shot, fired his gun into the air. With gunsmoke floating in the air, and neither duelist hurt, Rudkin and the seconds were willing to let the matter rest. Philpot demanded a second exchange.
The guns were reloaded, and this time Morice gave the signal. According to different versions of the story, either Rudkin or Philpot leapt into the air as he fired. Such an action might have made a man a more difficult target for his opponent to hit, but it would have thrown off his own aim. If anyone actually jumped, it was likely Philpot, and it would have been because Rudkin’s bullet struck him in the chest, just above the heart, while his own shot went wild. The young ensign fell dead, a victim of his own foolishness and an archaic code of honour. He was buried in the Anglican churchyard, ironically, on April Fool’s day.
News of the fatal duel spread through St. John’s, and Captain Rudkin and the seconds were arrested. Rudkin was charged with murder, and the seconds with being accessories. Public sympathy was initially on the side of the slain ensign, but it eventually shifted in favour of the captain. At the trial on April 17, the jury found Rudkin and the seconds not guilty. A crowd of friends and supporters carried them on their shoulders from the courthouse to the fort on Garrison Hill.
Not long after the trial, stories began to circulate that a restless spirit had been seen near the dueling grounds. It was said that when Captain Rudkin was on his way to the fatal encounter, his horse had become skittish, almost as though it sensed something bad was about to occur. After the duel, other horses also shied away from the place.
People who claimed to have seen the ghost said it wore a military uniform and had a bloodstain on the breast. Years later the area in which the ghost had been sighted became popular with courting couples. Perhaps the idea of a ghost lurking nearby was a good excuse for a young lady to huddle close to her young man.
During the construction of St. John’s Anglican Cathedral, a grave that was possibly that of Ensign Philpot was exhumed. Ghostly lore suggests that the spirits of the departed do not rest well when their earthly remains are disturbed. In the urban developments that have spread over the ground where Ensign John Philpot took an unwise stand on the field of honour, perhaps his spirit still wanders, lamenting having been cheated once more, this time out of his final resting place.
Movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho, and novels such as The Shining by Stephen King are modern — and masterful — variations on a very old suspicion held by nervous travellers: smiling innkeepers might not be as hospitable as they appear; and places of lodging, however comfortable, do not necessarily guarantee a safe night’s sleep. TrvTrav–eller’s lore is full of stories about murders that are committed in hotel and motel rooms, and of unwary guests who find themselves sharing accommodations with a lingering spirit. St. John’s has not, thankfully, had the equivalent of Norman Bates sitting at a hotel registration desk. But it has had a hotel haunting that would impress even Stephen King.
Foran’s Hotel on Water St. in St. John’s stood on the site now occupied by the Post Office. It was one of many lodging businesses catering to travellers in the busy seaport. One night, sometime early in the twentieth century, the guests were awakened by a loud knocking. Two men traced the racket to an upstairs room. As soon as they entered, the knocking stopped. The men searched the room, but couldn’t find the source of the noise.
This became a nightly occurrence. Guests would awake to loud knocking, but as soon as someone entered that room, the noise stopped. Business began to suffer, because people were afraid that the hotel was haunted. After a few months the knocking stopped, and the guests came back. But nobody would stay in that room.
Water Street, St. John’s, circa 1880. St. John’s is North America’s oldest city, and according to local paranormal experts, also its most haunted.
One day a stranger who was unfamiliar with the story of the strange room came to Foran’s Hotel. Every room in the hotel was occupied except the one from which the knocking had come. The manager didn’t want to send the stranger to another hotel and, since the room had been quiet for a long time, decided it would be okay to give the room to the man. The staff found it amusing to finally have a guest in that room.
At midnight everyone in the hotel was awoken by a thunderous knocking. As guests stood in the corridor wondering what was happening, the manager went to the stranger’s room and opened the door. The knocking immediately stopped. When the manager entered the room, he saw the stranger lying on the floor, dead! He had a look of terror on his face. When an undertaker came to remove the body, the knocking commenced again, but lasted for only a minute. The stranger, who was never identified, was buried in the cemetery on Waterford Bridge Road. The exact location of the grave was eventually lost.
After the mysterious death of the stranger the knocking stopped. Nonetheless, the hotel’s management closed the room to the public. Foran’s Hotel was eventually torn down, and the General Post Office was built on the site. That structure in turn was replaced in the 1960s by a modern office building that is used by Canada Post. Before long, postal workers began to report strange knocking noises in one of the upper rooms. If the cause of the knocking is the same as that which disturbed the guests in Foran’s Hotel, then this location is one of the oldest continuously haunted sites in St. John’s.
Whether we call it a tombstone, gravestone, monument, or simply a marker, it is a final, and hopefully lasting, signal to the world that the person lying beneath it once walked the earth. It might be a simple, unadorned slab of stone, or it could be a large, elaborate work of art worthy of a Renaissance sculptor. The inscription below the person’s name is usually their birth and death dates, but there could also be a moving epitaph. There might even be, as in Shakespeare’s case, a curse on the stone. But whether grave markers are humble or ostentatious, it is evident from the numerous ghost stories associated with them that if they are violated, the spirits of the departed do not rest in peace.
Alice Janes was a colourful figure in nineteenth-century St. John’s. A frequent patron at the racetrack, she was usually seen wearing an Irish-knit shawl and holding a jug of brew. In fact, Alice died at the racetrack of a sudden heart attack. Almost everyone in town attended her funeral. She was buried in the old cemetery adjacent to the Anglican Cathedral.
A year later, on the anniversary of Alice’s death, a young couple was strolling through Flower Hill field near racetrack. It was dusk, and the woman suddenly noticed a sharp chill. She asked her companion to take her home. As they neared the edge of the field, they saw something that made them turn and run.
At first they thought they saw an old woman sitting on a rock, holding a jug in her hand. But as they drew near, the figure stood up straight and looked right at them. It was a hag, with fiery red eyes, and white hair that stood out like the whisks on a broom: the young couple recognized the apparition as Alice Janes.
When the story of the ghost spread around town, Alice’s friends went to the cemetery to pray at her grave. They immediately saw that the gravestone was missing. They searched all through the cemetery, but could not find it.
For the next ten years, Alice Janes’s ghost could be seen in the same place on the anniversary of her death. Until one day while clearing out an isolated corner of the cemetery, the caretaker found the missing gravestone and respectfully returned it to its proper location. After that, Alice Janes’ ghost was never seen again.
In Celtic lore, a banshee is a death-omen spirit. It was often the ghost of a woman who had died in childbirth, and was cursed to roam the earth until the time of her naturally destined death. A banshee would attach itself to a family, giving warnings of impending death. The banshee was usually heard, but not seen. Her warning of an approaching death came in the form of mournful singing or loud wailing. The cry was said to be so sorrowful that it was unmistakably a harbinger of doom. On the rare occasions that a banshee was seen, it appeared as a woman — usually beautiful, but sometimes a hag — with fiery eyes, dressed in white or red. It might also appear as a figure flying in the moonlight. The Celtic people of the British Isles carried the legend of the banshee with them to Newfoundland.
William Welsh was a successful and well-respected businessman in St. John’s at the end of the eighteenth century. He owned a public house and banquet hall on the west side of Hill O’Chips. Welsh was descended from the chiefs of Barony, Ireland, where the first Welsh had been a warrior chief. There was a tradition in the family that a banshee’s cry would always foretell a death or misfortune. William dismissed this as superstitious nonsense, even though his wife and family firmly believed it.
One night, Mrs. Welsh suddenly became distraught. She told her husband that she had heard the cry of a banshee. “It was like a weirdly wailing and sobbing keen, coming nearer and nearer each moment until it reached the window,” she said. “Then with a wild shriek it died away with unearthly sobbing. Anyone hearing it would never forget it.”
A banshee wrings her hands in despair in this old Scot–tish illustration. The cry of a banshee was heard before the death of William Welsh of St. John’s.
William had heard nothing, and thought his wife was imagining things. The next day, however, their youngest son Felix cut himself badly with an axe while chopping firewood and almost bled to death. William still refused to believe in the banshee.
Several years later, Welsh was celebrating his sixtieth birthday. He was sitting at the head of the table in his banquet hall, enjoying a meal with some of St. John’s most prominent citizens, including a colonel named Skinner from the British garrison. Suddenly the door flew open and William’s eldest son, Michael, burst into the room. The young man was ashen faced, and oblivious to everyone except his father. Before the stunned dinner guests he said to William, “We all heard the cry tonight! Are you all right?”
Surprised by the sudden intrusion, William said, “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m as healthy as an ox.”
Satisfied that his father was all right, Michael left. Colonel Skinner asked Welsh what Michael had meant by “the cry.” William told his guests the legend of the Welsh family and the cry of the banshee. He said it was all childish superstition, and most of the diners agreed. Colonel Skinner, however, wasn’t so sure about that.
After all the guests had left, Welsh admonished his family for believing in a silly superstition. “No one should concern himself about me,” he said. “I never felt better in my life.”
The following morning at breakfast, with no warning whatsoever, William Welsh dropped dead!
Colonel Skinner was stunned when he heard the news. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “He was so healthy!” But recalling the story Welsh had told him, he added, “There was something in the banshee’s cry after all.”
People have always been in awe of fire: it is a warm and useful tool, to be respected and feared. It’s no small wonder that fire has many supernatural connotations, from the punishments of hell to the mysterious blazes that sometimes accompany poltergeist activity. One of the strangest fiery phenomenon, though, is that of fire that burns without burning.
Willicott’s Lane is in one of the oldest parts of St. John’s. In the early nineteenth century it was part of a crowded slum district that featured shoddy houses and smelly open-ditch sewers. This unsightly neighbourhood was completely gutted by fire in 1855. It was rebuilt only to be destroyed again in the Great Fire of St. John’s in 1892. That this section of the city was twice devoured by flames may be the reason that a building there is haunted by cold fire.
One of the houses that was built after the Great Fire backed onto Willicott’s Lane. For many years its sole occupant was an old woman. She died in the house sometime in the mid-twentieth century, and her house remained empty for a while following her death.
Or did it?
From time to time, passersby would notice a flickering light in a second storey window — the kind of light produced by a blazing fireplace. Concerned about a fire in what was supposed to be a vacant house, they would go in to investigate. While there was never anyone in the house, each inquisitive passerby would find a fire burning in the fireplace of a second storey bedroom. After a minute, the flames would disappear right before their eyes, as though the fire had never been there. When the bewildered witnesses touched the bricks, they were cold. This strange event allegedly continued to occur periodically even after new owners took possession of the house.
The phenomenon took a different turn in the 1980s, when a male tenant was renting the house. He was in bed on the same floor as the room with the mysterious fire when his bedroom door suddenly flew open. He could see into the hall, and was startled by the flicker of firelight dancing on the walls.
Nobody else was in the house, so there was no reason for fire to be burning in any of the fireplaces. The man got out of bed to investigate, and found nothing: the strange lights had vanished.
Perplexed, the man went back to bed. His head had barely touched the pillow, when his door swept open again! Firelight once more reflected off the walls of the hallway. The man looked in the other bedroom, but found no fire. The bricks and the iron grate in the fireplace were cold to the touch.
To the man’s exasperation, this happened a third time! Was he imagining things? Was this a waking dream? Were the flickers he had seen just reflections of car lights from the street?
If so, what caused his door to open on its own three times? And what was the explanation for the phantom flames earlier witnesses had seen in the fireplace? Was this an extraordinary form of residual haunting, left over from one of the devastating conflagrations? The Cold Fire case remains an intriguing St. John’s mystery.
In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, it was not uncommon to see haunted house stories reported in the papers as news items. People took their stories of strange experiences to the press, hoping they would be taken seriously. One such story tells the tale of a nightmarish haunting that was no laughing matter.
In 1907 a Newfoundland couple who had been living in the United States returned to St. John’s to visit for a few months. They rented a house on Gower Street, and paid for their three month stay in advance. They’d have been better off paying by the week: on the very first night, something happened that made them flee the house in terror.
According to a report in the St. John’s Evening Telegram, “… the woman had been startled in the night by a series of blood-curdling screeches. Horrified she sat up in bed and saw a woman who had been known to her, but had died several years before in the same room.”
As if one ghost was not enough, this house was haunted by two. “The apparition was dragging another woman, also known to be dead, by the hair of her head. The woman being dragged was screaming.”
The woman who witnessed this unnerving scene was so frightened, she fell into a faint. She was revived at daybreak, upon which she and her husband immediately packed up their belongings and left the house, swearing that they would never set foot in it again. It was, as it turned out, a costly fright they’d had: the landlord refused to refund their rent money.