Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1889 — A Ghost Tolled the Bells. [ARTICLE]

A Ghost Tolled the Bells.

the earthquake shook it down, the old guard house or police station was just across the street, in front of the church. Every night for years an old policeman, who had grown old and decrepit in the service of his country and lastly of his city, kept watch at the door. He had leen many strange sights, and he ah* trays said that the strangest he bad tver seen was the dead man ringing! the chimes from the belfry of old St. Michael’s. He had seen the shrouded figure, time and again, climb up to the bells, and, not touching the ropes, which had been pulled so often by living hands, swing the heavy iron tongues against the sides of the bells and clash out a fearfpl melody which thrilled while it horrified the listener. He would tell yon 1 , if you cared to listen to .his story, how the ghost; had been for in its normal e*ate it had been murdered bytho thrust of an Italian stiletto in Elliot street. The spfrit was “to walk the earth,” “revisit the glimpses of the moon.” ring the old chimes, and do other horrible things, until the murderer was captured. . A few minutes before midnight tbs old watchman would see this spectral -chimer enter the church doors, forgetting to open them, swiftly and in a ghostly way glide up the steps of the winding stair, pause under the bells by the ropes where Gladsden rings them, pass swiftly on without touching them, climb on into the gloomy belfry and stop beneath th© open mouths of the bells. They yawned down upon it, as if striving to swallow up the restless spirit. Suddenly, as if the inspiration had come, the shrouded hand wonld move silently and rapidly from iron tongue, and the wild eidntch music would swell the air.—Atlanta Journal.