Killing The Mountain Spirit

1874

In illustration of the excessive superstition of the California Indians, a writer in a Sacramento paper relates the following story:

"Two years ago, 'Whistler,' a noted hunter and brave warrior, of the Klamaths, was on the sacred mountain, at the head of Sprague River (a tributary of Williamson's River, and the one referred to so often as the latter stream), when, in the dusk of the evening, he saw a large mule deer, and at once fired, bringing it to the ground.

"In going to cut its throat he was horror-stricken at what he saw before him. There was a deer, a male, weighing over 300 pounds, whose horns were to him a mystery. From one side of the head grew a single spike, ten or twelve inches in length; while from the other side grew a stump horn, with seven short prongs. He had never seen or heard of the like before, and his superstition got the better of him.

"His health for a long time had been bad, and this and the excitement of having, as he supposed, killed the spirit of the mountains, threw him into convulsions. He bled at the mouth and nose, and laid there helpless for hours. At last he managed to crawl to the camp of his party at the foot of the hill, where he told his story and went into a trance. His party were terribly alarmed, and one rode to the agency and told O. C. Applegate that Whistler was dead. Applegate had his coffin made, and it was set out to dry.

"The next morning news came by another rumor that Whistler was alive. It happened the Indian doctor was along with the party, and when Whistler went into a trance he did likewise and kept him company, and brought him back with him, as he expressed it."

A Lady's Long Trance: A Spasm, A Comatose State

1878

A Lady's Long Trance

The Des Moines (Iowa) Register of a recent issue, says: Yesterday evening there stopped at the Given House Mr. and Mrs. Shadle, of Guthrie county, accompanied by some attendants. They are escorting to Mount Pleasant Mrs. Shadle, who has been in an almost continual trance ever since last June.

Some time last March, without any premonitory symptoms, the lady became insane, wild at first, and finally violent. She was visiting a sister near her own residence. Soon after her arrival there she began to talk strangely, and a few days later was raving with insanity, and at times very violent. On the 12th of June Mrs. Shadle had a spasm, from which she passed off into a comatose state, which continued without intermission until October 1, when she awakened and conversed, although incoherently. The next day she again fell asleep and has not since been awake.

She is fed by forcing her mouth open and placing the food inside. Her respiration is regular, but a little more frequent than that of most people of her age, which is twenty-nine. She has one child, a boy of four years. The first evidence of wakefulness she has exhibited since the 2nd of October was the day before yesterday, when she was carried from her home to a vehicle to be transferred to the cars. The little boy climbed into the wagon and placing his arms about his mother's neck, kissed her. Tears immediately rolled from the closed eyes, but they remained closed, and there was no other sign of waking. She is to be taken to the asylum for the insane at Fort Madison.


Ingenious Pickpockets

Lucy H. Hooper says that the Parisian pickpocket has invented a special mode of theft. The thief enters the omnibus, chooses his seat beside some well-dressed and apparently affluent person, and remains motionless and apparently absorbed in his reflections. But between his finger and thumb he holds a very small grain of shot attached to a black silk thread of extreme fineness and strength. When his next neighbor opens his or her pocket-book to pay the fare, the thief adroitly throws his grain of shot into the pocket-book, retailing the end of the silk thread in his hand. The pocket-book is closed and replaced in the owner's pocket, grain of shot and all. The thief profits by some extraordinary jolt of the vehicle to fall against his neighbor, and in that moment he draws in the silk thread and gains possession of his prize.

Her Body Turning Slowly Into Bone

1920

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- Mrs. Levi Shroyer, 27, presents to the medical world one of the most baffling cases in history. Experts, the world over, have studied her malady without being able to help her.

The woman's body, from her jaws to her hips, slowly is ossifying. It is feared ossification soon will reach the heart, causing death.

The strange affliction sized Mrs. Shroyer in 1916, shortly after an operation.

Mrs. Shroyer was brought here from the South to take chiropractic treatments.

While under treatment at one time she lapsed into a state of coma. Her heart stopped bearing for five minutes and afterward, she declared, she experienced the feeling of entering another world and having been in the arms of her late husband.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.