OCR: THE GHOST DOWNED
The Donahue Ghost off on a visit—Skunk Left to Keep House for it—Davenport Party Probes the Ghost Scare.
The haunted house scare at Donahue’s is ended. Four Davenport young men, armed to the teeth went out there Saturday night to stay in the house and investigate the alleged ghost. They proposed to lay it if it was flesh and blood and to see and converse with it if it was a really and truly “sperrit.” The young men, Wade Willy Charles Harford, [name unreadable] and Frank Easterly arrived at the house about 11 o’clock at night. It was apparently old and rickety enough to be haunted and was so gloomy looking that the boys began to hesitate a little as they thought of the terrible ghosts. Finally Willey went in ahead and the rest followed. They first searched all through the house and could find nothing out of the way so they began to fix themselves for the night. Two laid themselves out on the hard floor in the room said to be haunted and the other bunked in the hall on an equally soft bed.
The news of their coming had spread about the neighborhood. Everybody about there truly believed in the spooks and no one had had the temerity to go near the house after dark since the experience of Coulter and his two companions. Every little while, however, some one would drop in, being less afraid when they found some one there who had not been troubled by visitors from the other world.
At 12 o’clock the two who slept in the ghost haunted room heard a terrible noise. It seemed to come from under the house, then from one side, again from another. They sat up, and then commenced to investigate with jumping hearts and staring eyes. They went into another room and found nothing suspicious, then went outside. The other two were ahead of them. They each had long poles and were knocking out the foundation which was of stones put together without mortar. They had found the ghost—it was a skunk. They all labored for an hour to lay that ghost without success and finally went back to their vigils. No more ghostly disturbances troubled them. There was not a sign of white misty garments, slamming doors, strange footsteps, crashing of dishes or other sounds as reported by their predecessors and they were a tired, sleepy, disappointed quartatte when they arrived home Sunday morning. The only way they can account for the previous racket was that some plastering fell from the ceiling of one of the rooms. They found some on the floor at any rate.
What an opportunity the boys lost of making the scare greater than ever by the exercise of their imagination as they believe the other party did. But they did not embrace it and now the neighborhood of Donahue which was thoroughly terrorized, sleeps with a sweet sense of safety whether near or far from the “haunted house.”
Source: The Democrat-Gazette (Davenport), June 07, 1887.
