Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1916 — Oyster Bay Has “Spook” That Shoots and Smokes [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Oyster Bay Has “Spook” That Shoots and Smokes

OYSTER BAY, L.J. —A woman “spook,” who dresses all in black, smokes cigars and shoots a revolver, has Oyster Bay, L. L, in-the grip of a bad, scare. She appears only after nightfall and is credited with chasing children

co their homes, following unescorted women and men, and disappearing, seemingly into thin air, wheh pursued by a posse of 100 men and the village police force, Constable John Thompson. The woman of mystery has been busy and women and children are afraid to venture out of their homes. Children playing in the woods that skirt Northwood, the country home of Mortimer L Schiff, were first chased by the "spook.” Their stories

were laughed at until Tearl Corey of Baylis Hill, an abstemious carpenter, ran in terror when he saw the woman, attired in deep black and with a cigar sticking out of her mouth at a rakish angle, walking toward him. As he ran he says he heard a hoarse laugh and the sound of a revolver shot and a bullet whistled near his head. His sister-in-law, Mrs. Victor L. Corey, whose husband is also a carpenter, saw the woman, and she says many others have been terrorized. A posse was formed. Armed with clubs and sticks it patrolled the roads in the neighborhood of Berry hill, which is the favorite haunt of the “spook.” Half the posse, it is said, remembered pressing engagements elsewhere when three revolver shots resounded from the depths of the woods, each accompanied by a hair-raising laugh. One theory is that the “spook” is an escaped male lunatic. Others believe it is simply a practical joker.