Phantoms and Monsters

Father Moody's Black Veil

In 1770 the Reverend Joseph Moody died at York, Maine, where he had long held the pastorate of a church, and where in his later years his face was never seen by friend or relative. At home, when any one was by, on the street, and in the pulpit his visage was concealed by a double fold of crape that was knotted above his forehead and fell to his chin, the lower edge of it being shaken by his breath. When first he presented himself to his congregation with features masked in black, great was the wonder and long the talk about it. Was he demented? His sermons were too logical for that. Had he been crossed in love? He could smile, though the smile was sad. Had he been scarred by accident or illness? If so, no physician knew of it.

After a time it was given out that his eyes were weakened by reading and writing at night, and the wonder ceased, though the veiled parson was less in demand for weddings, christenings, and social gatherings, and more besought for funerals than he had been. If asked to take off his crape he only replied, "We all wear veils of one kind or another, and the heaviest and darkest are those that hang about our hearts. This is but a material veil. Let it stay until the hour strikes when all faces shall be seen and all souls reveal their secrets."

Little by little the clergyman felt himself enforced to withdraw from the public gaze. There were rough people who were impertinent and timid people who turned out of their road to avoid him, so that he found his out-door walks and meditations almost confined to the night, unless he chose the grave-yard for its seclusion or strolled on the beach and listened to the wallowing and grunting of the Black Boars—the rocks off shore that had laughed on the night when the York witch went up the chimney in a gale. But his life was long and kind and useful, and when at last the veiled head lay on the pillow it was never to rise from consciously, a fellow-clergyman came to soothe his dying moments and commend his soul to mercy.

To him, one evening, Father Moody said, "Brother, my hour is come and the veil of eternal darkness is falling over my eyes. Men have asked me why I wear this piece of crape about my face, as if it were not for them a reminder and a symbol, and I have borne the reason so long within me that only now have I resolved to tell it. Do you recall the finding of young Clark beside the river, years ago? He had been shot through the head. The man who killed him did so by accident, for he was a bosom friend; yet he could never bring himself to confess the fact, for he dreaded the blame of his townsmen, the anguish of the dead man's parents, the hate of his betrothed. It was believed that the killing was a murder, and that some roving Indian had done it. After years of conscience-darkened life, in which the face of his dead friend often arose accusingly before him, the unhappy wretch vowed that he would never again look his fellows openly in the face: he would pay a penalty and conceal his shame. Then it was that I put a veil between myself and the world."

Joseph Moody passed away and, as he wished, the veil still hid his face in the coffin, but the clergyman who had raised it for a moment to compose his features, found there a serenity and a beauty that were majestic.

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Family offered haunted flat but they would rather be homeless

A family got the shock of their lives this week – after finding out the rented house they had just been offered is supposedly haunted.

Jaime McCargow and his mum Alison Woollan were set to move into the pad before they found out about its spooky history in Thursday’s Daily Record.

They have been homeless for more than a year after losing their house after Jaime’s sister Kirsty, 15, died from swine flu in 2009.

Initially they were delighted to be offered the smart two-bedroom flat in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow – until they read Ashley Summers’s spooky claims.

Part-time waiter Jaime, 20, said: “We couldn’t believe it when we found out about the flat being haunted.
ashley summers haunted house Image 1

“I don’t really get worked up about many things but I can’t believe the housing association are trying to be so sly.

“They obviously knew there was something up but I think they were going to try and move us in before we found out.

“If you are on a homeless waiting list for a house, you can’t actually knock back any property which is offered to you, but my mum has spoken to the council and they are going to try and find us something else in the near future.”

Ashley, 26, was forced out of the flat after unexplained events including ghostly noises and seeing objects flying across the room when no one else was there.

The care worker faces a 100per cent hike in her rent just to get away from the flat she believes is haunted by a mischievous spirit. - dailyrecord

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El Paso's Haunted Roads

El Paso certainly has no shortage of ghost stories. I wonder what it is about being desert-dwellers that makes us so death-obsessed. In any case, did you know that vengeful apparitions aren't confined to spooky attics and basements? Some modern-day ghosts aren't cool with waiting to terrorize impudent teenagers in abandoned houses, and choose to haunt where the people are: our roadways.

Transmountain Road is said to host to bizarre occurrences involving the spirit of an old monk and his donkey. This ghoul and his equine companion are believed to walk along the road at night, protecting the Lost Padre Mine (said to be a gold mine hidden in the Franklin Mountains by Spanish missionaries) causing car wrecks and generally deterring thieves.

Between Clint and Fabens on Alameda Avenue there is a short street with the misleading name Leisure Lane. This intersection is the home of specter with a particularly gruesome back-story. Some believe that at one point, a tormented pastor, guided by voices that he perceived as divine, butchered his wife and two children, severed their heads (which were never recovered) and proceeded to dispose of the bodies in a nearby water tower (?!), capping it all off by hanging himself. Their former home is said to still stand, but this (former) man of the cloth (or should I say sheet?) doesn't stay at home all night; he's out on Alameda, mixing it up, jumping onto car hoods and terrifying unsuspecting commuters.

Perhaps the best-known "haunted" street in El Paso is Gravity Hill. It's on a stretch of Thunderbird Drive that, as the story goes, is the site of a violent car wreck where a mother and four small children were tragically killed. If you put your car in neutral heading towards Mesa between Twin Hills and Singing Hills, you will roll "up" the hill, pushed along by the eight arms of those poor, little ghosts. Thankfully, there is an explanation for this. A "gravity" or "magnetic" hill is an optical illusion. These occur in mountainous areas and appear to be hills that vehicles can "roll up." Don't be embarrassed if you've been tricked by your friends into believing your car can defy one of the most basic laws of everything - the illusion is pretty convincing. - elpasoinc

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The Catskill Witch

When the Dutch gave the name of Katzbergs to the mountains west of the Hudson, by reason of the wild-cats and panthers that ranged there, they obliterated the beautiful Indian Ontiora, "mountains of the sky." In one tradition of the red men these hills were bones of a monster that fed on human beings until the Great Spirit turned it into stone as it was floundering toward the ocean to bathe. The two lakes near the summit were its eyes. These peaks were the home of an Indian witch, who adjusted the weather for the Hudson Valley with the certainty of a signal service bureau. It was she who let out the day and night in blessed alternation, holding back the one when the other was at large, for fear of conflict. Old moons she cut into stars as soon as she had hung new ones in the sky, and she was often seen perched on Round Top and North Mountain, spinning clouds and flinging them to the winds. Woe betide the valley residents if they showed irreverence, for then the clouds were black and heavy, and through them she poured floods of rain and launched the lightnings, causing disastrous freshets in the streams and blasting the wigwams of the mockers. In a frolic humor she would take the form of a bear or deer and lead the Indian hunters anything but a merry dance, exposing them to tire and peril, and vanishing or assuming some terrible shape when they had overtaken her. Sometimes she would lead them to the cloves and would leap into the air with a mocking "Ho, ho!" just as they stopped with a shudder at the brink of an abyss. Garden Rock was a spot where she was often found, and at its foot a lake once spread. This was held in such awe that an Indian would never wittingly pursue his quarry there; but once a hunter lost his way and emerged from the forest at the edge of the pond. Seeing a number of gourds in crotches of the trees he took one, but fearing the spirit he turned to leave so quickly that he stumbled and it fell. As it broke, a spring welled from it in such volume that the unhappy man was gulfed in its waters, swept to the edge of Kaaterskill clove and dashed on the rocks two hundred and sixty feet below. Nor did the water ever cease to run, and in these times the stream born of the witch's revenge is known as Catskill Creek.

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