The Ghosts of Evil Past
Created | Updated May 5, 2019
The Ghosts of Evil Past
Editor's Note: This is a ghost story. It's also a history story. Chances are good you've never heard of the Paxton Boys and what they did, even if you studied Advanced Placement US History, but Ben Franklin knew about the terrible massacre. Pennsylvania, too, has been one of the dark places of the earth. This story comes from South Mountain Sketches: Folk Tales and Legends Collected in the Mountains of Southern Pennsylvania by Henry W Shoemaker, 1920. It's a good tale.
Conestoga
WHEN old Pastor Simon Rostraver, of Slaney Church, at Farmersmith, near the head of Path
Valley, was left a widower, one of his daughters from Letterkenny, who had lost her husband some years before, and whose children were grown, came to live with him. She was a devoted companion and attendant, never leaving him, except once a year at Christmas time, when she would return to Letterkenny and visit about among her children and grandchildren for the two weeks between Christmas and the first week of the New Year. She always urged her aged father to come along, as did his numerous descendants, but he preferred his familiar associations in the
bleak old manse where he had lived for so many years, to all the holiday festivities which his kindred might offer. He had moved to Path Valley soon after being ordained into the ministry, nearly sixty years before, first settling near Fort Loudon, and gradually moving with the congregations as the upper part of the valley was opened, until in his old age he received the least desirable charge of all at Farmersmith, where he felt that he would round out his days.
[Two pages are missing from the book. We'll pick up the story from here.]
He once told of the massacres of the friendly Conestoga Indians at their camp near Lancaster1, and in Lancaster Work House, yet minimized the part he had played, either from modesty or changed convictions. Yet it was on record how this then young graduate of the Log College, in clerical attire, had shot down the Chief of the Conestogas, the one able-bodied Indian in the entire aggregation of victims, while he was trying to protect the women and children, and how John Penn2, hearing of it, had placed a price on his scalp. He had hidden in the Tuscarora and Kittochtinny Mountains for many months, until finally powerful friends had softened the wrath of the unstable Penn, and he had been allowed to resume his churchly calling, provided he never returned to Paxtang. Even when the Penns had vanished he never came back, so in that respect he was the most punished member of the bloodthirsty band of so-called "Paxton Boys.''
The weather was very severe, but despite this the young great-granddaughter accompanied a sleighing party to Horse Valley, where sliding on a mill pond of the Conodogwinet was indulged in, and the young people built a fire to warm themselves. In some unaccountable manner Jodie's clothing caught fire and she was severely burned about the body. A local doctor helped her all he could. She was then hurried back to Farmersmith. Several doctors attended her, saying that if she withstood the shock she would survive the burning.
The old pastor, being nearly ninety years of age, was considerably upset by this dreadful accident; especially there was no way to get a quick message to her parents, so with the aid of his old servant, Maggie Gleim, attempted to care for and nurse the girl until someone would be going to Letterkenny. The night before Jodie had' gone to Horse Valley he had sat up with her in his library, telling more of the episodes of his early life, and his mind was filled with memories of the stirring days along the Blue Mountains in the Eighteenth Century, of his youth in '55,
and his strong manhood in '63.
Now, as night came on and his favorite descendant lay suffering, he informed his servant that he would sit up with her, that he was a very poor sleeper, and it would leave Maggie fresher to do her work the next morning. The old maid-of-all-work gladly consented, and the aged man took up his vigil beside the young girl's bedside. The girl lay in a large yellow walnut bedstead in the spare room, a great, square, high-ceilinged apartment, with an open fireplace, on the front of the mantel of which was carved an inscription in the Gaelic language:
Far'm beil na laoich a dh' – fhalbh o shean,
An cadal trom gun dol le ceol3
However, in common with most men of the Rev. Simon Rostraver's persuasion, he detested everything that savored of the native Irish, always emphasizin his Scotch or English origin. The old pastor was, however, one of the earliest students of the Gaelic tongue in the entire United States, but it was the Gaelic of Scotland, and not of the Emerald Isle, that interested him, he said. As he sat by the bedside, the huge room lit by a single rush light on the night table, and the glow from the backlog in the fireplace, he noted the flushed, feverish condition of the girl's face, how restless she was, and how unnatural she seemed when he tried to converse with her. She appeared to have great difficulty in breathing, and tossed from side to side of the bed, every move adding to her misery, yet was fully conscious of her surroundings. When she would lie quiet or seem to. doze, the old man, in order to divert his mind, would hearken back in his thoughts to the pioneer days at Paxtang, where he played' so stirring a part – they could not have been altogether pleasant memories, but he was worried lest the young girl die, so far away from her parents, and any change of thought was refreshing.
He recalled the recent visit of the young hunter, Johnny Kilgore, who always brought him a deer for Christmas; how the boy who lived to be the most noted Nimrod in Horse and Path Valleys had described seeing seven Indians packing eastward over the Tri-Mountain Road, how they had stopped at Betty Bell's spring for mead and ginger cakes, almost frightening that good woman out of her wits. Who could those Indians have been, and where were they going to – east. His old resentment against all redmen boiled up in him, and he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as he thought of the atrocities supposed to have been committed by them on the land-grabbing white savages. He soon found that to think of Indians was as unpleasant as to reason over the burned girl's condition; he could not fly from his ugly train of thought. Outside
the wind was beating a weird, terrible tattoo against the house, and a loose board in the chimney flapped back and forth, making a sound which, if he had not known what it was, he could have mistaken for a ghost. He didn't believe in ghosts, in dreams and tokens…
[Next is a passage about a time when Rostraver was young. A 'ghost' had turned out to be some flapping leaves of paper that had been used to cover a broken window, which made him skeptical about ghosts.]
"There are no ghosts," thought the old man as he gazed from the floor to the sleeping form of his great-granddaughter, or listened to the banshee-like wailing of the wind, or the slow, leisurely ticking of the old Irish clock in the hallway below. "I am as convinced of that as any Sadducee of old."
As he listened to the clock, the tick-tock seemed to grow louder. "That cannot be the clock," he muttered. "It's someone walking below stairs, and coming this way." The door leading from the sick room was kept open so that the servant who slept in a nearby room could readily hear any summons.
As the old man listened he could hear footsteps coming up the staircase, soft foot-falls, like some one in stocking feet. At the same time the injured girl awoke and raised' herself up a little, rubbing her eyes. Nearer and nearer came the footsteps. "Can it be old Maggie walking in her sleep?" conjured the churchman.
Nearer and nearer the footsteps came; the visitor must be on the landing, and only a few paces from the door. Rostraver, who had been sitting with his back to the door, facing the bed, turned about, and to his dismay saw standing in the doorway the stalwart form of an Indian chief in full regalia, Tenessedaga of the Conoys.
The sick girl also saw the apparition, but was too dazed by her painful condition to make an outcry. The old clergyman was too amazed at first to speak. The Indian stood there at "parade rest," leaning on the barrel of his long rifle, and looking steadfastly at the old man. Rostraver was seated in an awkward position for. defense, yet for several moments he could not bring himself to move. Then he turned about and sprang to his feet, his long, gaunt figure spreading weird shadows on the walls, as bold and belligerent as of yore. The wind was howling dreadfully, and the board in the chimney was pounding faster and faster; the old man, with both fists tightly clenched, and trembling with rage, spoke at the top of his voice to be heard above the gale:
"What do you mean by coming here at this hour of the night, leering like a Ninnihammer. If you are God, you will not hurt us; if you are the devil, go to hell; if you are a man, I'll break your head!" These words uttered, he raised his long arm and shook his bony fist at the midnight intruder. But the Indian remained in the doorway imperturbable. The unseemly episode brought the suffering girl back to complete consciousness.
"What does that Indian want, grandfather?" she said, as she tugged at one of the tails of the old man's broadcloth coat.
"I'll soon find out, if he doesn't answer." said the clergyman, breaking loose and striding towards the fireplace. There were no sticks in the wood-box, and the logs in the fireplace were almost coals, so laying hold of one of the iron fire-dogs by its head he swung it in the air and hurled it across the room at the immobile redman. The fire-dog struck the floor with a heavy thud, the Indian gave the old man a look which seemed to go through his very vitals, then turned on his heel and slowly passed along the hall and up the stairs leading to the attic.
Meanwhile Maggie Gleim, aroused by the thud, rushed into the room. "Who was that man I passed in the hall?" she fairly screamed.
Old Rostraver was very calm; he was never cooler when a fugitive with a price on his head or under fire in the fiercest battles of the Revolution. "We will see," he said. "You stay here with Jodie, while I go upstairs to investigate.'' Maggie had brought her candle with her, which the old man took from her hands, and, unarmed as he was, he started for the gloomy attic. He looked into every nook and corner, behind every pile of timbers, or musty books, or old furniture, and
even inside of the big oaken chests, but no one was to be seen, and there was no way out except through the trap-door leading to the roof. Yet the old man would not be convinced that he had seen a ghost, for he lingered and poked' about in the attic until the old Irish clock sent its single echo upstairs, "one o'clock." Baffled, but admitting nothing, he returned to his great-granddaughter's sick room.
"Was it an Indian?" said the girl.
"Was it a ghost?" said Maggie Gleim.
"I don't know what it was," replied Rostraver ; "possibly neither. It will take some time to determine."
The serving-woman had replaced the fire-dog, and soon retired to her own room, and the aged clergyman resumed his vigil by Jodie's bedside. The wind beat a terrific fury about the eaves, and the loose board, like a guilty heart, hammered incessantly in the chimney. "Woo, woo, woo, joh-hoh, joh-hoh, joh-hoh," now seemed its maddening refrain, the very words and tone of the war cry of Conestogas and Conoys.
Reverend Simon Rostraver bowed his hoary head. Before him arose the picture of the shrieking, pleading Indian women and children, running hither and thither with the sturdy Paxton boys beating out their brains with the butts of their rifles, a memory which his soul could not blot out, the chieftain he had shot down in cold blood when he tried to protect the weak and the aged, it was all too terrible, and his sixty years of preaching of the Gospel of Forgiveness seemed like a
drop of water in a sea of blood, his ocean of iniquity.
Just as his thoughts were at their most melancholy level, the big brass knocker on the front door began to pound violently. Before the old man could decide what to do, Maggie Gleim was in the hall with a rush-light4, hurrying to the door. From the head of the stairs the old man could hear the voices of his daughter and the mother of the sick girl. They ran up the stairs, almost tripping over their long, fur-tipped wraps. Poor Jodie rose up in bed, clapping her hands at the sight of them. "We all had such a strange dream last night," the new arrivals chorused. "An Indian chief in full regalia came to our bedsides and told us that Jodie was seriously sick, and to go home at once. When we awoke, no one was to be seen. We
started away this morning, but the roads were so drifted with snow, and the horses so weak, we were stalled six or seven times. As it is, the team is now stuck in a drift two miles down the road. We positively could not wait, so left father and Black George to get them out, and plowed our way through to get here."
Rev. Simon Rostraver stood eyeing the women, candle in hand, in breathless amazement, as did the old serving-woman. "That Indian has been here tonight," firmly said the old man. "I thought he meant us evil, so 1 fired one of the andirons at him, and followed him to the garret, resolved to choke him and throw him out of the house."
"Then you weren't dreaming when you saw him?" said Jodie's mother, excitedly.
"I saw him," said the sick girl.
"And I, too, saw him," said old Maggie Gleim.
"Who do you think he could have been, father?" said the burned girl's mother.
"I know very well who he was. I can never forget that face from the Work House at Lancaster when I shot him down when he sought to stand between me and some women I was knocking the brains out of. It all goes to prove what I have been preaching these sixty years, that there is only love and forgiveness when once we are released from the bonds of the flesh."
