Press And Daily Dakotaian

A STARTLING GHOST STORY.
The Materialized Spirits of Illiterate Defuncts Swarming Upon a Yankton County School Section.
Regular Correspondence.
Welchtown, Dak., Dec. 20, 1881—Our usually quiet community has recently become greatly excited by the reappearance of the ghost of 1880. It will be remembered by the readers of your paper that in the early part of the summer of 1880, school district No. 47 was haunted by the nightly appearance of something which many persons believed to be a ghost. Its appearance as then described by those who saw it was truly frightful and alarming. Its form was that of an old man bowed with the accumulated weight of years. His dress was similar to those worn during the dark ages. His long hair of a reddish gray color floated on the breeze and his mutterings and groanings struck terror to the heart of the listener.

The ghost now appearing nightly is identical in appearance with the description above given, with this addition. He now appears mounted on a horse of whitish color and is attended by four smaller ghosts. Two of these smaller ghosts bear a strange resemblance to ghost in chief. These four minor ghosts are evidently subordinate to the principal ghost and do his bidding with promptness and dispatch.

Precisely at the hour of midnight the ghost in chief makes his appearance on the school house grounds. He then utters a series of unearthly groanings, after which the four minor ghosts may be seen approaching from different directions. The four minor ghosts take positions on the four corners of the school-house grounds with the ghost in chief in the center. The mutterings and groanings are then commenced by the principal ghost which are repeated and re-repeated by each of the subordinate ghosts. This exercise, as described by eye witnesses, is said to continue full thirty minutes, during which time the school house and grounds seem lighted with an unearthly and non-diffusive light and a strong odor of sulphur permeates the air to a great distance around. The mutterings become fainter and more indistinct, the lights become dim and finally all disappears in thin air.
B.

The language of the spirits seems to be a conglomerated mass of jargon of various languages and tongues. Occasionally a few words of broken English may be heard: "Golden schools," "high taxes," "let every man educate his own children," "down with the county superintendency," "no female teachers for our public schools," "down with school district school officers," "Ob, for the time when public schools were unknown, when midnight darkness reigned in every human soul. Let those golden days return; let them return. Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness where public schools do never come;" are some of the mutterings of these midnight visitants.

Now can it be possible that the withered soul of some old heathen who lived in the ages of darkness has become so troubled on account of the educational progress and advancement of our times as to cause him to leave the dark domain of hades, visit our earth accompanied by his comrades in darkness and make night hideous by his howlings about public school buildings, or is it that his satanic majesty knowing that the success of our system of general education will be the essential downfall of his kingdom of darkness, has taken a new departure and sent his emissaries to do his works of darkness and hatred to mankind, or is it that some dwarfed, selfish human soul which yet lingers in its house of clay, and who is as incapable of comprehending or appreciating the importance of education as a Digger Indian is to comprehend a demonstration of the binominal theorem, has become so affected by the efforts that are being made to support a good school in his district that his sleep has taken the form of somnambulism and unconsciously rises from his bed at the hour of midnight wends his solitary way to the school house grounds, where he meets his fellows, who are his co-equals in every respect, and there together they breathe their groanings on the air of midnight? Each of these solutions of the phenomenon has its advocates. In the meantime we will keep you advised in regard to future developments.

Very truly yours,
VERITAS.