Dancing on the Grave

You guessed it another spooky find on GenealogyBank.com and it reminds me of a saying I’ve heard in many movies. I’m sure many of you have heard someone in a movie say something about dancing on a dead man’s grave but who would have thought it would be a ghost. “SAW A GHOST” appeared in the Jackson Citizen Patriot paper out of Jackson, MI in May of 1900. 

 SAW A GHOST

In a Cemetery That Danced on Dead

 Men’s Graves.

To those that are inclined to scoff at the residents near Mapledale cemetery, at New Haven, Conn., because they are excited over a ghost that dances nightly over new-made graves the point is made that the believers have seen the wraith while the unbelievers have not.

For three dark nights many persons have gathered at the cemetery gates, and ghost, being a “well-bred and considerate spectra has not disappointed them. It has walked regularly and danced with its usual grace.

Any one who does not believe in ghosts should talk to John Bertram and George E. Backmailer. They laughed at the suggestion of disembodied spirits promenading in the cemetery or anywhere else, and the suggestion that a ghost would dance they declared was manifestly absurd. The young men announced that they would clear up the ghost mystery and placed themselves on guard in the cemetery, thereby winning many compliments for their pluck until the ghost appeared. Then the two brave young men took to their heels and never stopped running until they were exhausted.

They said that nothing would persuade them to enter the cemetery again at night so long as the weird spiritualists were among those on guard. They also saw the ghost. They explained it by saying that it was a spirit seeking some one it had wronged in life.

It has not been determined whether it is a man ghost or a woman ghost, but it is properly attired, according to all traditions, in a long, flowing robe of white. It violates one of the rules for ghosts, however, in that it makes its appearance before midnight. It was about 11 o’clock Thursday when it suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and after floating about for half an hour melted into thin air in the most approved fashion.

From the stories of those who have seen it, the ghost appears to be most capricious in its movements, having fixity of purpose. Sometimes it moves slowly, and then it darts along. Occasionally it stops. At times it hops from mound to mound and when it finds a new-made grave executes a curious, slow and dignified dance.