Forgotten Tales of Pennsylvania (11 page)

Not long after, Redheffer was in city hall. To his astonishment, the city commissioners had constructed their own perpetual motion machine and put it on display. Realizing that his ruse had failed, Redheffer packed up his scam and took it to New York.

M
AN
F
OUND
F
ROZEN

William Shank was returning to his home in Big Pool, Adams County, when he stumbled across a man lying in the road. It was about midnight on December 4, 1908. The man was cold, and Shank believed him to be dead or dying. Shank rounded up three men who lived nearby to assist him, and when they moved the man, they realized that he was still alive and that he was Harry Starner's father. Apparently, he had been on his way home and collapsed in the road. The men carried the nearly frozen body of old Mr. Starner to Harry Starner's house. They knocked on doors, yelled and tried many times to wake the family. When no one answered the door, the men decided to leave the old man sitting on the porch.

The family discovered him in the morning, and it took several hours to revive him. The stubborn old man was still holding on to life. He was in serious condition for some time but recovered from his night out in the cold.

M
AN
C
OLLAPSED ONTO
S
AWMILL
B
ELT

Twenty-year-old Luther Spangler was an employee at his father's sawmill near Aspers, Adams County. One day in early December 1908, Luther collapsed and fell onto the belt near the large circular saw. The belt carried him all the way to the top. It was only eight inches wide, but it was moving at a high rate of speed, and none of the other employees could move his body in time. Though he missed the saw, his head got caught between the belt and a pulley. All those watching thought that his neck had been broken. They shut down the machinery and freed him as quickly as possible. Miraculously, Luther was relatively unharmed. He suffered from several cuts and burns to the right side of his face but was otherwise no worse for wear.

T
HE
M
ASSACRE AT
C
ROW
R
OCK

On a pleasant Sunday morning in early May 1791, four sisters went for a walk along Dunkard Creek in Greene County. Elizabeth, Catherine, Susan and Christina were members of the Crow family. The family had lived on the frontier for many years and were accustomed to the dangers that existed there. In recent months, conflicts with the local Indians seemed to have subsided, and they did not expect trouble on their walk.

When the girls approached a large rock, they were ambushed by two Indians and a white man known as “Spicer,” who may have been raised as a captive of the Indians. The men took hold of the girls and led them to the top of the rock. After demanding information about local settlements from the girls, they began killing them with their tomahawks. Christina managed to escape after suffering a wound to her neck, and she alerted the rest of her family. A search party was quickly assembled, but it was unable to catch up with the killers. Elizabeth was discovered barely alive, having crawled to the creek after being scalped. She died three days later from her wounds. A small historical marker stands today on the site of the tragedy.

S
CHOOLCHILDREN
P
ANICKED

It started out as a normal Wednesday morning at Leisenring No.1 School in Fayette County. It was November 1915, and students were assembling in their classrooms to start the day. One of the children in room five, located on the second floor, was already bored. He started to unscrew the air valve on the radiator, not realizing how much pressure was behind it. Before it was loosened the entire way, the pressure launched the valve across the room, and a cloud of vapor came hissing out of the radiator.

As the vapor filled the room, some of the children began to have trouble breathing and panicked. Miss Minnie Miller, their teacher, stood in front of the door and tried to calm the students. It was too late. The screaming students pushed her out into the hall and to the stairwell. As the frightened children ran down through the school, they caused panic in other classrooms. Then the fire alarm sounded, and the rest of the students rushed for the exit. Several of them were knocked to the ground, as were a few of the teachers. When the panic finally subsided, three girls and a teacher were injured, though not severely. No one was bored anymore either.

A R
AILROAD
T
RESTLE
C
OLLAPSED

A railroad trestle near Wellsboro was the site of a deadly accident on January 6, 1890. A train full of workers was passing over the trestle that evening when the structure gave way. The engine had made it across, but the rest of the cars were torn free and plunged down into the creek and debris below. Three of the men onboard were killed, and sixteen others were injured. It was believed that part of the same train had struck the bridge earlier that morning when it was travelling in the opposite direction. Unrecognized structural damage might have been inflicted at that point. When the train passed over again, the strain was too much for the trestle to handle.

F
RIED
E
GGS IN A
B
ASKET

A farmer's wife in Alburtis was on her way to a store in Millerstown one day in May 1876. She carried a basket loaded with butter and eggs wrapped in several cloths. At one point, the woman walked alongside the tracks of the Eastern Pennsylvania Railroad. Unbeknownst to her, a live coal from a passing train landed in her basket. The woman continued walking for a while until she heard a crackling noise and realized that there was smoke coming out of her basket. She looked inside to discover that the coal had melted some of the butter and cracked some eggs. The eggs were frying on the bottom of the basket.

A F
ATAL
I
NGROWN
T
OENAIL

Twenty-nine-year-old Harry Meckley died in a York hospital in early March 1912. His cause of death: an ingrown toenail. Three weeks prior to his hospital visit, he began to pick at his ingrown nail, and within days he developed blood poisoning from an infection at the site. He did not immediately go to the doctor, and the infection spread throughout his right leg. By the time he checked into the hospital on March 8, it was too late. He was dead by five thirty that afternoon.

T
HE
N
OTORIOUS
C
OOLEY
G
ANG

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, the Cooley gang terrorized residents of Fayette County. Led by brothers Frank and Andrew Jackson “Jack” Cooley and their friend Jack Ramsey, the gang committed numerous robberies and beat and intimidated anyone in their way. The gang had friends and family who would protect them and frequently hid in the mountains to avoid the law. Victims and witnesses were afraid to testify against them for fear of retaliation.

In one instance, the gang broke into the house of an old man named Samuel Humbert and demanded his money. When he did not produce any, gang members bound him and burned his feet to get him to reveal where he had hidden his cash. When that was unsuccessful, they threatened to burn his house and left him bound and gagged on the floor.

The gang used a similar technique a few months later in December 1888. Gang members broke into the house of Mollie Ross near Smithfield and demanded her money. When she refused, they bound and beat her and then burned her feet with candles. She finally told them where she had hidden her money. It was only five dollars.

Not long after, Frank Cooley was arrested for the crime. He was convicted and was awaiting sentencing in December 1889 when he and several other inmates escaped from the penitentiary. They had managed to use makeshift saws to weaken the bars of their cells. Cooley fled back into the mountains to meet up with his gang. No one chased him. The gang continued its crime spree.

Jack Cooley met his end in July 1892. Jack had been stealing food from the springhouse of Thomas Collier in Georges Township for several weeks. One of Collier's neighbors suggested setting a trap for the thieves. He rigged a shotgun to the door in such a way that it would fire if the door was opened. His intentions were to scare away the thief. Collier's trap worked better than expected and inflicted a fatal wound to Jack.

In September of the same year, the gang invaded the home of Jacob Prinkey near Gibbon's Glade. Prinkey had heard that the gang was in the area, and since he was known for being thrifty and well off, he assumed that he would be a target. He gathered some friends and family to stay at the house, arming them all with pistols and rifles. When the gang burst into the house one Saturday, Prinkey managed to get off the first shot. He wounded two men, one of whom was Frank Cooley. The gang members soon disarmed the family and, after tending to their wounded friends, proceeded to ransack the house and take items of value. They only found twenty dollars in cash because Prinkey was smart enough to deposit the rest of his money in a bank before they arrived.

Finally, in early October, Sheriff George McCormick and his men put an end to the outlaws' crime wave. The sheriff had learned that one particular Sunday Frank Cooley was to visit his family on their farm. Since it was almost impossible to catch the gang in the mountains, he thought it would be best to catch its leader off guard. His men closely watched the farm and waited for Cooley to leave. When he walked out to a path in the woods with another man, thought at the time to be Jack Ramsey, the sheriff sprung his trap. He caught them at the edge of a clearing and demanded that they throw up their hands and surrender. Both men turned and ran back toward the Cooley farm. After about twenty-five feet, both turned and fired on the pursuing officers of the law. Their shots missed. They climbed over a fence and headed across a clover field when Frank turned and fired at the sheriff again. Both of his shots missed, but one of the sheriff's deputies aimed carefully and hit him in the back while he was trying to hide behind a tree.

Frank crumpled to the ground behind the tree but kept firing one of his revolvers until it was empty. The sheriff closed in on him and asked him to throw the weapon down. Frank complied, apparently resigned to his fate. The sheriff said, “Frank, I am sorry that it had to happen this way.” Frank supposedly replied, “You're not to blame, George. You did your duty.” Half a minute later, he was dead.

The man who had been with him escaped, but it didn't matter. Jack Ramsey was picked up a few days later, and the Cooley gang was devoid of leadership. The gang never recovered, and its remaining members fled into West Virginia. Several family members and friends of the Cooleys were arrested for aiding the criminals and receiving stolen property.

H
EXENKOPF
H
ILL

Hexenkopf Hill has long been a center of supernatural activity. The hill is located south of Easton in Northampton County. The name
Hexenkopf
means “Witch's Head” in German. According to the legends, a variety of groups have used the hill to practice forms of magic. Local Indian tribes were said to perform rituals there that drove evil spirits from their sick and dying brethren and imprisoned them in the hill. For decades, the people who lived nearby said that the hill would glow at night because of the imprisoned spirits.

The area around the hill was settled primarily by German immigrants. In the early 1700s, women who practiced witchcraft supposedly met on the hill on certain evenings. They allegedly performed rituals, danced and sang strange songs. In the 1800s, the hill was utilized by practitioners of Pennsylvania German folk healing and magic known as powwowers or
brauchers
. These folk healers used the hill in a way that was similar to the Indians. There was a particular rock on Hexenkopf called the Witches' Rock. The
brauchers
used their rituals to transfer illness from their patients into the rock. Other rituals and prayers were performed on the hill as well.

In more recent times, rumors have spread of satanic cults and witches' covens performing their dark ceremonies on the hill. Hexenkopf also has the reputation of being one of the most haunted places in the state. All of the spirits that have been imprisoned there over the centuries wander the hill, forever tied to the earth.

C
ENTRALIA
—T
HE
B
URNING
T
OWN

Centralia was a small anthracite coal–mining town in Columbia County. Founded in the mid-1800s, the town's biggest claim to fame was as a center of activity for the Molly Maguires in the 1860s and '70s. That is, until the fire started. No one is sure exactly how it happened, but it is suspected that it started as a landfill fire in 1962. The local fire department had frequently carried out controlled burns in the local landfill to reduce its size. That year, however, a new landfill was being used, and it occupied the site of a former strip mine. The fire never went out completely as planned. The borough had failed to construct the clay barrier that was required by law to prevent fires from spreading.

The fire spread into the maze of abandoned coal mines that ran under the town and surrounding countryside. It has not stopped burning since. Several attempts were made to extinguish the blaze, but they all failed. The townspeople only became aware of the full extent of the problem in 1979, when the local mayor/gas station owner realized that the gasoline in his underground tanks had reached 172 degrees. Other residents complained of noxious fumes and subsidence on their property. It quickly became clear that Centralia was doomed. In 1984, the government provided $42 million to relocate the residents of the town. Most took advantage of the offer, with only a few stubborn residents staying behind. The town's population dropped from over one thousand to fewer than ten today.

Most of the town's structures have been torn down. It is little more than a ghost town, with steam and smoke rising from cracks in the streets. Nearby PA Route 61 had to be closed because the fires caused too much damage to the road. Enough coal remains under the town for the fire to burn for well over two hundred years.