Click Here to Return To Milestones Vol 7 No 4
There is probably not a man or woman in
Beaver County who cannot remember when the very word "graveyard"
conjured in his mind as a youth, visions of a white apparition
flitting eerily from stone to stone, or with fellow spirits holding
gay carnival atop the rounded mounds of earth.
For civilized as we may be, this particular
district has "enjoyed" its share of ghosts. There was
for instance, the headless maiden whose appearances were wont
to strike abject fear into the hearts of all who saw her.
Beaver County's first ghosts, perhaps, were
those in which the Indians steadfastly believed. His story tells
us that Conrad Weisner in the latter part of the 18th century
attended a ghost dance along the Little Beaver. There he saw the
Indians of both sexes, weirdly attired in white robes, prancing
round and round a huge campfire, hopeful of establishing communion
with departed spirits.
In 1793 a family by the name of McCaskey,
it is said, settled near Cannelton. The father of the household,
a Whig, had been killed in South Carolina and the family driven
by the Tories into exile. In a lonely hollow where three ravines
met, the McCaskeys settled. They cleared the land and built a
substantial log cabin. Sparsely settled as was this section of
the country then, one of the daughters Barbara by name had two
suitors. One lived just across the border line in Ohio, the other
was a Pennsylvanian. Young, attractive women in those pioneer
days were few, and as a result the youths were bitter rivals.
One night Barbara disappeared from her bed.
Her absence was not noticed until sun-up, next morning when she
was called to aid in her share of the chores. Her rude cot was
found empty. Later, her body was discovered in the dense woodland,
the head missing. Her head was never found. Her remains however
were laid to rest in a little plot of ground near the cabin. The
strange murder news spread to the country-side settlements. There
was much conjecture as to who had killed her and why, But the
mystery was never solved.
Exactly one year frorm the night she was
slain, folk ore tells us, a man with a four-horse team was driving
past the McCaskey farm. As his vehicle neared the cabin, he told
cronies afterward, the vision of a headless woman appeared. The
apparition floated through the air, sprang on the back of his
off-wheel horse and shied the team. The driver himself was paralyzed
with fright, and all he could do was clutch the reins, while beads
of perspiration burst out on his forehead. The ghost, the unfortunate
fellow related, rode on the back of the galloping horse for a
half dozen yards, then in a glow of bright light disappeared in
the surrounding woodland.
All the way home the terror stricken team
galloped and although the night was cold, when the farmer unhitched
them from the traces he is said to have found the animals lathering
with sweat.
Never again did he pass that eery spot at
night, and during the day, it is said, when his business took
him down the McCaskey lane, the horses were wont to side-step
nervously and to toss their heads as though wary of some unseen
danger.
Barbara's sister, when she grew into young
womanhood, married and with her husband settled across the line
in Eastern Ohio. When she died, while still in the prime of life,
her passing is said to have so harassed the bereft husband, that
he had erected above her burial spot an elaborate headstone in
the belief that she would no more return to earth to haunt him.
Her death occurred in 1846, and her sister's untimely end came
many years before.
When Greersburg Academy was opened in what
is now Darlington, about the year 1800, it was the popular belief
that the school would educate away such belief in ghosts as existed
among the simple-minded country folks.
One aged lady of 97, a Mrs. Cory by name, is rumored to have said soon after the establishment of the school that "the ghosts are getting thin." She marked their passing with a tone of regret in her voice as though she seemed to find the belief in the specters, unworldly as it might be, comforting and indicative of a future life.
Before concrete highways stretched ribbon-like across the country, and automobiles replaced the one horse shay, the smaller grave-yards were places to be regarded by night as spooky haunts to be near. Many of such burial plots, although surrounded by cultivated fields were themselves mazes of briar, overgrown with unkempt grass, and it needed little imagination to picture a phantom stalking over the markers.
In the countryside beyond Darlington there was told from one generation to another, for many years, the story of a ghost, manacled with chains and wrapped in an Indian blanket. The spook was generally supposed to frequent one of the lonesome farm houses, and the place finally rotted away from the disuse because no family would take the chances of residing in such a dwelling.
At one time, a number of years ago, persons who occupied the old brick houses which once were the dwellings of the Economites in Ambridge, said the places were "haunted". Unless the new occupants were persons of a religious nature, it was said, the spirits of the departed Rappists came back to pound on the walls and disturb the sleep of the sinful. These old houses, sturdy of construction, are still occupied by a modern generation that scoffs at any reported nocturnal wanderings.
A famous haunted house used to stand on the "Knob" road in New Sewickley Township. The ramshackle frame dwelling, it was said, was the scene of a murder, and whether such was of the case or not, people avoided it as though it were a smallpox pest house. It stood in thickly wooded section about two miles from Sunflower. When the state highway improved the road, a construction camp was located in the very shadow of the giant trees. None of the robust workmen ever saw any specters flitting about.
A few years ago this dwelling was torn down.
Beaver County's ghosts indeed have gotten "thin" they've almost disappeared, and tales of bloody goblins, white-robed skeletons, and phantom figures remain only on the printed pages of books. Only in the very loneliest sections of the country where the sound of an automobile horn has not yet drowned out the hoot of the woodland owl, are there any spooky ravines or ramshackle houses where scary boys might concoct such apparitions.