Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — A Window Ghost. [ARTICLE]

A Window Ghost.

What would be your sensations if you were to close your eyes in . sleep at night, with nothing unusual about the house, and open them in the morning to the ocular fact of a strange, ghostly face in your, window? You rub your eyes while you still lie in bed, and intently examine the features, which appear to be sternly bent upon you. They are quiet, ghostly and solemn. The glassed eyes do not blink. You are finally satisfied that it is no optical illusion, and your wonder increases. You begin to tremble a little, and your heart flutters, the premonitory symptoms of a scare. You get up and go to the window. The sunrise is glittering on the dripping trees. There has been a thunder-storm during the night, and-you remember some remarks it made at the time. The face is still there in the window, large as life and almost as natural, but it has no-correspond-ing body: It is just the picture of a face set in the glass or suspended in the air near the window. You cannot tell exactly which. You step outside and observe that the picture now appears to be back a few inches from the glass, inside the room. You also notice evidences of that end of your house having been played with by lightning. You are more mystified than ever. You return to the face. You examine the glass by passing your hand over it. It is not rifted or roughened. It is cold and smooth, yet it seems to be animated by a spirit. Y'ou cannot make it out ana resolve to wait and watch if anybody else sees it. You begin to be not quite sure that bolt of lightning during the night has not driven you out of the body. Maybe you are gazing at your own ghost in the window, trying to look you out of countenance and convince you that you were struck dead during the night. You feel very much alive, but want your senses corroborated. If that flash of lightning has thus photographed your face, or the face of anybody else, you want to know* it. The town is astir. You will soon have the proof. The pass-ers-by see you, and your friends speak to you. They also see the k ghostly face in the window. It is, therefore, a fact, with which you are entirely disconnected. The w onder has increased. If an illusion it is a delusion to all eyes. How did it come there to look in and out of that window with everlasting solemnity, like Poe’s Raven perching on the bust of Pallas just within the chamber door, to. roost there forever more? Sensations and thoughts like these were lately those of a citizen of Carrington, Mo. He has just such a ghost in his window, palpable to everybody’s sight, and it will not away! It came there as described above. There was a thunder-storm—a bolt of lightning; the face was seen in the window in the morning, and there seemed to be some mysterious connection between the lightning and the picture. At any rate that is the only shadow of a theory advanced to account for the marvelous appearance. The strange phenomona was noticed in the local papers, and thousands of people flocked to see the window ghost. They all saw it, too, and “still the wonder grew.” Some believed it to be a real ghost—others turned away and sneered; “a vain imagination;” but the fact is, all saw it, and anybody who feels an interest can see it for themselves. It is evidently connected with the window-glass itself, for when the whole section of sash is removed to another place the haunting face goes with it. The window’ therefore holds the secret, and the appearance is not caused by or subject to reflection. The owner of the house and the window and ghost, if it be one, has been offered various sums for the window, but he is unwilling to sell it. A letter written to us on the subject states that a man, representing a St. Louis firm, offered as high as SIOO for this strange specimen of photography for the purpose of exhibiting it in this city. That good round sum for a few panes of common window glass was no object to the owner.—St. Louis Republican.