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Editor's note: This is the second in a series of ghost tales written by local historian Lou Bernard. The series will continue daily through Halloween, Oct. 31.
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By LOU BERNARD
For The Express
Let's take a drive.
Let's start by getting into McElhattan. I don't care where you're coming from; for purposes of this column, it doesn't matter. Turn the corner at Henry Wharton Shoemaker's old place, and it will have you going east on Pine Mountain Road. Go down that way about a mile. Pass the municipal building. Just past there, take a right, heading roughly south.
You are now on Clinton County's most haunted stretch of road.
It's called the Pine-Loganton Road.
It runs for miles through Wayne, Crawford and Greene townships. And from what I can see, there seem to be more folklore stories and legends about that stretch of road than any other in the county. A lot of this information I got from Shoemaker's books, or from Homer Rosenberger's "Mountain Folks." Both of them had some great old legends about that area.
On the north end is the "Churchyard Ghost." The Stamm Cemetery was built by Jacob Stamm in 1874, and a church built nearby. The church no longer stands, but according to legend, it was haunted by the ghost of a man who hung himself from an oak tree nearby. Is the cemetery still haunted? Who knows?
You know how people say "When pigs fly"? On the Pine-Loganton Road, that's a common occurrence. Not far down the road, on the west side, is a field that was once known as home to a herd of pigs that both flew and disappeared. Both Henry Shoemaker and historian Homer Rosenberger told this story, recounting reports of flying pigs from 1894. (As far as weird creatures go, Bigfoot has also been sighted along that stretch.)
One of the local favorites is not far past that. If you happen to see furniture that moves, you are probably on the Pine-Loganton Road. According to the legend, in 1879 a young servant girl was murdered by a rejected suitor. Since then young men walking the road have encountered a cupboard that dances in the moonlight. This is the girl's spirit, trying to mark the place where she was killed. Exactly why she should choose to take the form of a cupboard isn't known, though chances are it's not made by Ikea.
According to Henry Shoemaker's 1912 book "More Pennsylvania Mountain Stories," there was once a house along that road that was haunted. A man named Billy Anderson was rejected by the girl he loved and then inherited a house that he lived in, alone, for the rest of his life. He was found, eventually, dead in his bed, still clutching her picture. It was said that on a dark night, you could still see the ghost, attired in a white suit, walking his garden and waiting for his lost love to arrive.
As you cross over into Crawford Township, you'll pass the Mount Zion Cemetery, a pleasant little place in the woods. Also thought to be haunted, at least according to some legends. A man named Robert Godfrey was said to have been buried there and still haunting the place. (It is worth noting that there is no record of a Robert Godfrey buried there, and the guy who reported this confessed that he was spooked by a piece of old newspaper blowing in the wind, but you know how these stories go.)
As you come out the other end of the road and approach Loganton, you will pass by Sulphur Spring on the left. This is a spring with a very strong sulphur taste to the water, and there's probably some geological reason for that, but I do not write a geology column. There was a legend of a young Native American man who fell in love with a girl as they watched a comet together, but her father murdered him on that spot. The comet, however, turned him into a sort of reptile monster, and that turned the water to sulphur. This is actually a neat old legend and a more complicated story than I'm letting on here, so sometime soon I'll have to get around to giving this one its own column.
For more of these stories, Homer Rosenberger's book has a whole section about them. In fact, "Mountain Folks" contains a little map of the road, with the locations of some of these old legends marked off. Just in case you'd like to take a drive down there, looking for ghosts.
Just don't do it in the dark.
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Lou Bernard is a Lock Haven resident with a keen interest in the history of this area. He is adult services coordinator at Ross Library and may be reached at ross13@rosslibrary.org or 570-748-3321.