Spirit Warns of Attack

Another article found while searching on GenealogyBank.com that appeared in the Patriot out of Harrisburg, PA on the 3^rd of August in 1917. We have all heard of the evil behind the Ouija boards but it seems these ladies have a different story about a message they received. Mrs. Martha Place and her daughter, who lived in Evansville, Indiana, received a warning about some neighbors, the Moxley’s. 

Get a Ghost as Body Guard;

Spirit Warns of Attack

Evansville, Ind. Aug 2 – HIRE A GHOST TO WARN YOU OF DANGER AND GUARD YOU FROM INJUAY!

  A spirit protector, speaking through the Ouija board, warned two Evansville women against a man’s attack. The intruder lay three feet away, under their bed, and listened to the alarm message he was powerless to prevent.

  THE EVANSVILLE GHOST EXPECTS TO PROVE HIS EXISTENCE IN COURT OF LAW.  He will not remain a creature of hearsay, to be believed in or scoffed at according skeptical about the reality of the spirit world.

  And all Evansville asked this:

“What kind of a witness will a ghost make when the Ouija board puts in its first recorded appearance in court?”

  Mrs. Martha Place and her daughter Margaret, 811 John street, lonely took up their Ouija board – to find they were not as much alone as they had thought.

“Look out for Nat and Barb” spelled the board.

  A breeze blew back the curtains of the bedroom where the women sat. “It’s a little cooler,” said Mrs. Place to her daughter.

The curtains, as they billowed in, touched the bed beneath which lay the man. He held him break as he heard the ghost messenger warn the two women against him.

  “Is this Henry? Mrs. Place asked the board.

  “Yes!” Look out for Nat and Barb!” repeated the board.

  Henry is a son of Mrs. Place, electrocuted 10 years ago.

  “I have told you before, Henry”, said Mrs. Place, shaking a reproving finger at the tripod which had spelled out the warning message by darting from one letter of the alphabet to another, “no to talk that way about the Moxleys.” Nathaniel and Barbara Moxley living across the street, were the “Nat and Barb”, of the ghostly warning.

  The board would say nothing further, except repetitions of its ghostly alarm.

  The two women put the board away and went to bed.

  Mrs. Place heard a noise, like a scratching on the matting under the bed. It was the cat, she and her daughter thought.

Again Mrs. Place heard the noise. It was not the cat. She leaped form the bed ran into the kitchen for a match. There was the sound of a body falling.

  “I ran back toward the bedroom,” Mrs. Place told the police later. “A man dashed past me through the kitchen into the garden. I followed. It was Nathaniel Moxley.

  “We found paper on the floor. He must have dropped it crawling from beneath the bed. It was a summons to Nathaniel Moxley to appear in court as witness in a divorce case. We gave it to the police. They arrested him.

  “When everything was quiet we took out the Ouija board again.

  “I told you to look out for Nat and Barb.” Henry spelled. And there the man was under the bed within reach, while we were warned.

  Nathaniel Moxley has been bound over to the grand jury.

  If the Ouija board is asked to be exhibited in the grand jury room a new era in court procedure will be ushered in.

  The cross examination of a ghost is a judicial novelty.