The Mccook Tribune

A CLANKING GHOST.

Awful Experience of a Chicago Man In a Missouri Hotel.

"The most disagreeable experience it my travels," said the man from Chicago, "was when I awakened in the middle of the night in a Missouri hotel and heard a chain clank in my room. I don't know whether it is the association of a clanking chain that makes the sound so dismal or the mere fact of being awakened by a noise that shows the presence of something living, but I don't know of a more unpleasant awakening.

"I sat up in bed, but could see nothing, for the room was as dark as a pocket, and my heart thumped with suspense as I heard that weird clank, clank, clank, accompanied by a strange shuffling noise that was quite as mysterious and baffling. I reached under my pillow and drew out my—"

"Revolver?" suggested the man who finishes everybody's sentences.

"Naw, my whisky flask. I took a pull that would have made my wife give me a temperance lecture if she could have seen me"—

"No, no, the clanking ghost."

"Well, I fell off to sleep after awhile, and when I got up in the morning and investigated, I found out what it was."

"A maniac?"

"No: I was the only maniac. It was curled up under my bed, chain and all, and it turned out to be a pet coon that the hotel people owned and which had escaped from its quarters and found its way to my room. But I wouldn't put in another night like that for a farm and wood lot!"—St. Louis Republic.