Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1878 — Ghosts in Washington. [ARTICLE]

Ghosts in Washington.

Haunted houses are plentiful in Washington. There is a domicile in Four-and-a-half street, where, in the evening twilight, before the gas is lighted,‘'a newspaper is heard to rattle in an alcove designed for a bed. Investigation of the apartment develops the fact that there is no person there to rattle the paper. The doubter may suggest rats, but the solemn assurance is given that there is no paper there to be rattled, nor any possible thing that could resemble the noise of folding a newspaper—no paper of any kind that could be rattled or folded. Of course people will be found to scoff at the ghost of a newspaper, but perhaps, if told of the inexplicable death of a lady, the wife of a literary man, in that house some years ago, they might change their opinion. There is another haunted house on New Jersey avenue, which no tenant can be got to occupy. An effort has been made for some time to get up a party of bold spirits to sit up in it all night, which I was invited to join, but declined, because lam not one of that kind. The New Jersey avenue ghost is known to hold some sort of relationship to a gentleman and lady who lived there several years ago. One day it was given out that she had gone to New York, and, shortly afterward, he picked up his car-pet-bag and went away, since which time neither of them has ever been seen. Now, at 11 o’clock at night, a carriage is heard, but not seen, to drive up; the bell rings without any visible cause, t|ie door is heard to open and close, and after that the most pitiful sounds, as of a, female voice begging for mercy and crying out that she was not prepared to die, are heard, but there is no pity. He murders her again every night. If these things are not so, why does the house remain vacant, although some most intelligent people have tried to live in it ? —Pittsburgh Dispatch. The old .and reliable piano manufacturers, George Steck & Co., of New York, have taken a sensible view of the hard times by offering to the public, for the present, their pianos at prices in accordance with these times. Considering that the Steck pianos have the enviable reputation of being the best and most durable instruments made, a good many being in need of such an addition to a comfortable home will not be slow in availing themselves of the rare chance to procure an absolutely reliable piauo for near the same price they would have to pay in getting a so-called cheap class instrument with a fictitious and doubtful name.