The Daily Gazette

OLD JACKSON'S GHOST
From the Easton (Md.) Star.
In a tenement house on the estate of
Mr. George Shanahan, near Royal
Oak, there lived an old white man and
his wife named Jackson. On a different
part of the estate in another tenement
house, lived Jack Skinner. Jack belonged to Mr. Shanahan, but his wife
and children were free-born. Jack had
a daughter named Nannie, after her
mother. It was the delight of this girl
to make mouths at and mock and torment old Jackson, always taking good
care not to let the old man get hold of
her. It made him so mad he swore that
when he died he would come back and
haunt her. The war between them was
kept up for several years, until Jackson's
death. Some time afterwards, while
the girl was sitting in her father's house.
all of a sudden there came down the
chimney a chunk of fire, that fell and
scattered over the floor, the coals hitting
the girl. After that the house, when
the girl would be in it, would be pelted
with chunks of wood, clods of earth,
brickbats, oyster shells, etc., and no one
could see from whence they came, as
no one on the premises was visible except the family and they could find out
nothing about it. They all believed and
declared it was old Jackson's ghost. The
circumstance created the greatest excitement throughout the neighborhood,
and, indeed, throughout the county, for
persons came from a long distance to
witness the phenomenon.
We once
heard a gentleman of unquestioned veracity say that he went there determined to unravel the mystery if possible.—
He took the girl alone out in the middle
of a field, and to his astonishment, she
was pelted there with clods and sticks by
some invisible agency, which he could
never understand as it was impossible
for any one to be in collusion with her.—
The mystery never was explained and
the throwing and tormenting of the girl
continued, until some of her relations
came from Baltimore and took her with
them to the city, when no further disturbance occurred.
If it was old Mr.
Jackson's ghost, it seemed to have been
satisfied with driving her off the farm.—
It is our recollection that the girl never
was hurt by any of the missiles hurled at
her. If out of doors, she generally saw
them coming before they hit and dodged
them; if in the house, they would strike
the hearth, the walls or some article of
furniture, without hitting her. It was
not a malicious ghost, but simply appeared to be full of deviltry; it was unceasing in its persecutions until it succeeded
in driving her off the premises. There
was an old woman in the neighborhood
named Katie Coburn, who had the reputation of being a witch, and some
thought she was at the bottom of the
devilment, but she lived some distance
away, across a creek, and it is not likely
that she could have had anything to do
with it. The general belief at the time
was that it was old Mr. Jackson's ghost
inflicting on the girl just punishment for
her impudence to him in his lifetime.