This story appeared in a number of newspapers in the spring of 1884:

A GENUINE OHIO GHOST.

A thousand people surround the graveyard in Miamisburg town, near Dayton, Ohio, every night, to witness the antics of what appears to be a genuine ghost. There is no doubt about the existence of the apparition. Mayor Marshall, revenue collector, and hundreds of prominent citizens all testify to having seen it. Last night several hundred people armed with clubs and guns, assaulted the spectre, which, appears to be a woman in white. Clubs, bullets and shot tore the air in which the misty figure floated without disconcerting it in the least.

The people of the town turned out en masse yesterday and began exhuming bodies in the graveyard to get at her ghostship. The remains of the Buss family, composed of three people have already been exhumed. The town is visited daily by hundreds of strangers and none are disappointed, as the apparition is always on duty promptly at 9 o’clock. The strange figure was at once recognized by the inhabitants of the town as a young lady supposed to have been murdered several years ago. Her attitude while drifting among the graves is one of deep thought, with head inclined forward and hands clasped behind.

Though I have been unable to find any information so far about the young lady mentioned, I did find it interesting that the townspeople felt it necessary to exhume bodies in the graveyard in order to combat the ghost.

The former Victorian mansion of a well-known industrialist of Staten Island is in the news again as the trial gets underway for a mob-style murder that occurred on the premises, but the mansion already had a reputation for being haunted.

The old house on Arthur Kill Road, known as the Kresicher mansion sits up on a hill overlooking a town that used to be known as Kreischerville. Balthasar Kresicher, the head of the family, made his fortune making fire-bricks and his sons continued the business after his death in 1886. Two mansions were built originally, but only one has survived. The other one burned and was demolished years ago. Tales have been told for years about the mansion - the scratching sounds heard in closets have been attributed to children who were supposedly locked in as punishment for bad behavior, doors slam unexpectedly and the widow of Edward Kreischer (Balthasar’s son who shot himself in his office in 1894) is rumored to haunt the house.

In more recent days, however, the house became a crime scene when Joseph Young convinced Robert McKelvey to come to the property. Young apparently stabbed, strangled and then drowned his victim and then chopped the body into bits and tossed it into the furnace. Young received money from a reputed mob connection and the trial for the murder is currently underway.

Isaac Yomtovian, a developer who purchased the property about ten years ago, has had plans to convert the property in to a housing center for senior citizens, but has been unable to secure funding for the project so far. Hmmm… wonder why.

Having grown up in the Baltimore area and being a fan of the writings of Edgar All Poe, I've been fascinated for years by the story of the mystery visitor who leaves roses and a bottle of cognac at his grave every year on January 19th, the anniversary of his birthday. Though Sam Porpora, the former church historian who was instrumental in the preservation efforts at Westminster Presbyterian Church, stepped forward and claimed to be the mystery toaster, his claim was rather thoroughly debunked later. Porpora claimed that he and his tour guides at the church drummed up the idea in the 70's as a way to create more interest in the poet's grave, but Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe Museum, says that the tradition actually started many years earlier and notes that a newspaper article from 1950 makes mention of the nocturnal visitor.

Some stories are just plain hard to explain, such as this one, from West Virginia:

Charleston Gazette, WV. 5/14/1976

It was discovered July 1, 1975, by Glenn Pierce, the aging caretaker of Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown. The sod was pushed up about eight inches, leaving a dark hole on one side. Pierce hesitantly focused the beam of a flashlight inside, then jumped back at the sight of a concrete vault with a broken lid about six feet down.

Pierce's superiors were inclined to put it down as vandalism, but when Morgantown police could find no shovel marks or any other signs of tampering, the discovery took on new dimensions. It was obvious the ground had been pushed up from the inside. A gas company inspector could find no evidence of methane or sewer gas.

A funeral director suggested gas from a decaying body might be the answer. Looking at the grave marker standing at an angle a few feet away, however, seemed to dispel this. It indicated the occupant was 3-year-old Harry Spitz, who had died in 1912. His body would have been too small and it was long past the time of gaseous decay.

Morgantown Police Chief Bennie Palmer and Lt. William Hughes looked on while diggers hauled up the vault and casket. The concrete vault came out in seven pieces. The wooden casket was intact. The cloth covering the lid was rotting but there was no signs of mildew or dampness. The stem of a flower and a metal name plate lay undisturbed in a small indentation in the lid.

Suspecting a clue might be inside the casket itself, Pierce unlatched the lid and cautiously opened it with a shovel.

Inside was the surprisingly well-preserved body of a child. His long, blond hair glowed in the noonday sun.

"He was almost as perfect as the day they put him there," Pierce remarked.

On his chest was a flower stem and a metal piece with the inscription "Our Darling" At the feet was a black and white teddy bear.

Monongalia County records indicate the child died of cholera. Dr. Otis Fansler, pathologist and head of the morgue at University Medical Center, wondered if anerobic organisms had survived and possibly infected the onlookers.

Fansler took skin samples from the hands, throat and nose of the body and turned them into cultures. He found them to be sterile. The same day the body and casket were placed in a new vault and returned to the ground.

After geologists discounted earth displacement, Mrs. Marion Stone, secretary-treasurer of Oak Grove Cemetery Assn., declared, "I think it was an act of God."

News of the phenomenon brought out droves of curious passersby, who negotiated the narrow cemetery road to stare at the grave.

Fundamentalists opened Bibles to Thessalonians 4:16-17 and proclaimed the explanation: "For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meeet the Lrod in the air."

A woman psychic from Pittsburgh, Pa., declared a love bond existed between the child and his mother and that his ove had burst from the grave and rushed to his mother. The 91-year-old mother still lives in a nursing hone at Terra Alta, Preston.
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Harry's father, Henry, was born in Holland, and his mother, Desiree, was born in Belgium. The family appeared on the 1920 US Census in Morgantown, WV.