Ghosts: How They Live, Move, and Have Their Being
Excerpted from the 1881 History of Marshall County
By Daniel McDonald
By modern standards, early Marshall County Historian Daniel McDonald (1833-1916) was a man of contradictions. A believer in Spiritualism with a deep confidence in seances, he didn’t have any patience with those who believed in “witches, goblins, ghosts and haunted houses.” The following article appears in his 1881 History of Marshall County. Although he doesn’t explicitly say so until later in the article, he definitely gives the impression that he thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. It is lightly edited for length and clarity.
“Many of the “newcomers” of the early days brought with them stories of witches, goblins, ghosts and haunted houses, and believed that supernatural spooks were accustomed to roam abroad at the bewitching hour of night when graveyards are supposed to yawn. That there are plenty of ghosts, in the minds of many, does not admit of a doubt. Hundreds of people have seen them and are able to describe them even to the texture of their hair and the color of their eyes.
“None of these supernatural beings, however, have ever been seen in the daytime. They invariably cavort around at night and are generally found by timid people along some lonely path in the woods, in a graveyard or in some deserted house or barn where some awful tragedy was supposed to have occurred. These spooks have never been known to cause anyone bodily injury. In fact, no one has ever approached near enough to lay violent hands upon them, had they felt so inclined. Upon first sight of a ghost, one’s hair is inclined to stand erect on his cranium, and his courage oozes out of the ends of his fingers. His natural inclination is to get out of the way as rapidly as the nature of the case will admit and allow these midnight disturbers of late travelers to have things all their own way.
“Ghosts are not all alike by any means. In fact, no two have ever been seen whose description is the same. They are almost invariably enrobed in a white sheet and float around buildings, glide along roads and vanish away without any perceptible effort, and dissolve into thin air in the most unaccountable sort of way. Some of them ride great white horses, carrying immense flashing swords, and out of their mouths streams of fire and smoke have been seen to issue like the belching forth of a miniature volcano. Sometimes they ride through the air on great chariots, and sometimes they fly about with wings like sprites from Fairy Land. They never talk – that is – hardly ever. Sometimes low, guttural sounds have been heard to issue from where ghosts were supposed to be, but on examination and full investigation, no definite conclusion could be reached.
“So far as is known, ghosts live entirely without eating, at least they have never been known to eat anything. They don’t use tobacco either; at any rate they have never been seen smoking a pipe or cigar. They are presumed to not wear clothes, but they usually have modesty enough about them to cover their nudity with a clean white sheet. Just exactly what they are, and what in the name of the Old Nick they prowl around for, no one, however well posted in ghostology, has ever yet been able to tell.
“People who believe in ghosts, however, assert that they are the departed spirits of dead persons who had committed some awful crime while living. In some of the places where ghosts are supposed to hover about, it has been conjectured that vast treasure might have been stolen and buried, and these ghosts are the guardian angels, so to speak, sent to protect the valuables from being discovered and carried away.
“Of course, all this ghost business, in this enlightened day and age, is the merest nonsense, and no one endowed with a grain of common sense believes there is such a thing as a ghost, or that the spirits of dead men ever return to this mundane sphere after they have “shuffled off this mortal coil.”
“All of the preceding has been written simply for the purpose of enabling the writer to speak of a building that is said to have been, in days gone by, a favorite resort for all sorts of spooks and goblins and ghosts, albeit it has long since ceased to attract attention as having been haunted.
“On the place then owned by Charles Ousterhaut, one mile south of Plymouth (just south of Oakhill Cemetery), some thirty and five years ago, there was a barn in which, according to tradition, a man hanged himself with a rope fastened to one of the rafters. Whether this story is true or not cannot be definitely stated, owing to the lack of reliable data. But that is neither here nor there for the present purpose. The story got abroad that the ghost of the dead man had taken up its abode in and about the barn, and numerous passers that way late of nights averred in the most positive manner that the place was haunted, and that his ghost or some unknown apparition answering the same purpose, had been frequently seen flitting around the corners, peeping over the comb of the building, and cutting up all sorts of ghostly didos (mischievous tricks or pranks).
“Many were the stories that timid men and boys told of the remarkable sights that they had there seen with their own eyes, and for many years almost everyone passing that way looked upon the building and surroundings with “fear and trembling.”
“Of course, there were no ghosts there, but the disordered imagination of timid men, women and children, based on the story of a man who had met an untimely end there, was sufficient to produce any quantity of unearthly creatures, and so it took the name of the ‘haunted barn.’”
Marshall County history is full of the tales of the supernatural. We’re open Tuesday – Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to find other spine-tingling stories from the past.
