Evil Eye Witch in Chicago

Printed Saturday the 12th of October 1901 in the Washington Bee out of Washington D.C. 

CHICAGO HAS A WITCH.

Thomas Kelly Discovers a Woman with and Evil Eye and Is Arrested for Stoning Her.

The curse of Salem is on Chicago: According to Thomas Kelly, the same old witchcraft that used to cause the good Puritans of the colonial town to lie awake nights is exercised by a woman who is his near neighbor.

“Her vengeance is awful,” Kelly said to a Chicago American reparter. “Her curse is the curse of Satan. Only recently she had a quarrel with Mrs. Cohen, another of my neighbors.  Mrs. Cohen won and the witch put a curse upon her.

“First Cohen’s horse died. That was a few days after the curse was pronounce. Cohen was almost helpless without the horse. Then Mrs. Cohen became ill. There was grief in the house. No work for the man and the wife sick. To cap all Cohen became paralyzed in one side.”

This Chicago witch was acquired the city’s commercial spirit. The curse did not last forever. Mrs. Cohen finally became well. Then, according to Kelly, she offered the witch $10 to remove the curse. But the witch demanded $30.

Kelly’s blood boiled. He determined to punish the witch for her witchcraft. He made himself a martyr for the ills of the Cohnes. He could not throw the witch into a pond, bound to sink or swim. He could not burn her at the stake, according to the most approved custom. So he decided to stone her. This was a course almost as well sanctioned by precedent as burning.

The woman of uncanny powers was in the house when Kelly went to stone her, so he threw the stones through the windows. She had him arrested, and he was taken before Justice Sabath, where the story came out. 

Saturday Spotting - Ice Box Saloon

Published in May 1908 in the Grand Forks Daily Herald out of Grand Forks, ND

CHICAGO HAS THE

 SMALLEST SALOON

  Smallest Saloon In World Is Abandoned

 Ice Box and Is Doing a 

Rushing Business.

Chicago, May 5 – “Hey,” said Adolph, the melancholy bartender, yesterday afternoon, “don’t sit in that corner of the saloon or she’ll tip over.”

The fat man moved nearer the center of the ice box, called a saloon by courtesy, which is located at West Lake and Halsted streets.

The “saloon” had teetered considerably when he was in the corner, but when he moved to the center it righted itself and everything was secure again.

Chicago’s unique saloon, an abandoned ice box, was doing a rushing business Adolph Block, the man who owns the “ice box,” the smallest saloon in the world, was not present. Adolph was down town trying to “square” the building department. However, his bartender, Adolph Bindar, was on duty and he was willing to tell his tale of woe.

“You see this saloon,” said Adolph, waving his hand in one grand sweep in such a manner that it swept over the bar, free lunch counter and beer keg, all of which stood in different corners of the room. “It is beholden to us,” said a Teutonic customer as he blowe the foam of his beer out the front window. “We made it out of an ice box and are staying here until they build a building on this corner,” resumed Adolph, ignoring the interruption. “The first day of June I bet we have a place where the free lunch won’t get in you hip pockets when you are standing at the bar.”

“It’s a good thing the sun ain’t shining. If it streamed in here there wouldn’t be room for all of us,” said the fat man.

Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” shouted Adolph, the melancholy.

“A building inspector,” was the hoarse response.

“Wait until I put one of the customers out so you can come in,” said Adolph, an on a straw vote the fat man was forced to go out reluctantly into the rain.

However, after much maneuvering, the building inspector found that he could not get in unless he took off his star. Then he was able to get into the barroom.

“In 25 hours you have got to tear this thing down. It is a violation of the building laws,” said the building inspector. His voice filled the room and several men threw out the free lunch in order to give more breathing space.

This left some room for conversation.

“How’s business?” asked the building inspector, with an expansive smile which struck the bartender a glancing in the face.

“The license is about $3.50 a day and the receipts $2.50. The boss made an agreement that I could have half the profits I owe myself money,” said Adolph.

The inspector took another drink and the “ice box” became actually stuffy.

“Good-bye. You hear my warning,” he said.

Leaving no room for a reply, he departed.

Now it happens that Peter Batzen, former building commissioner of Chicago, is putting up the new building where the “ice box” will soon have roomy quarters. Mr. Bartzen told the bartender that the building was all right last night and that it should not be torn down.

At 7 o’clock Adolph closed up shop. He took his bottle of whiskey, bottle of gin, license and best box of cigars, and started for his home. There is no lock on the door of the little saloon and Adolph fears burglars more than the building department.

Ghost Detector from Society for Physical Research

As many of you know “ghost hunters,” “spirit investigators” and “spook hunters” have been around for many years. Little did I know that there was a society out of London focused heading most of these investigations. This article was found on GenealgoyBank.com and was from the Trenton Evening Times paper out of Trenton, New Jersey and appeared in November of 1906. There are many names mentioned in this article and some might surprise you. 

“SPOOK” HUNTERS

WELL PAID WORKERS

They Verify Ghost Stories and

 Run Down Visitors from

Spiritland

Chicago, Ill. Nov. 23. –Surely one of the most unusual businesses is that of a ghost detector. There are hundreds of them scattered thoughtout the world. There are a few in Chicago and all of them, both in this country and abroad, work under the direction and for the power and glory of an association in England that is backed by some of the most conservative and best known scientists and thinkers in the United Kingdom.

A ghost detector is an investigator for the Society for Physical Research, which was founded in London in 1882. The society, which already has published twenty-on  octavo volumes of proceedings, in addition to bales and bales of records of investigations made by the ghost detectors, has had as its presidents men like the Rt. Hon. O.J. Balfour, late Prime Minister of England; Professor William James, the noted psychologist of Harvard University, and brother of the mystical Henry James; Sir William Crookes, of Crookes tube fame and Professor Henry Sidgwick, a philosopher, whose book, “The Method of Ethics,” is a standard.

Now, these men are not to be fooled by the ordinary or garden variety of ghost story. A ghost story has to be well ballasted and well buttressed to receive credence at their hands, and it is to sift the wheat from the chaff, to throw the bad ghost stories into the discard and place the real, genuine ones in the best possible light that there is in existence a class of workers whose work deals not with men of flesh and blood and has little to do with material tangible things.

LARGE SUMS EXPENDED

It is the business of these investigators to run down every case of apparition,  ghost walking, presentiment, materialization, ghost photographs, telepathy and the like that they hear of. Expenses is no object. Each investigation costs money, but influenced by a sincere desire to get to the bottom of every story of the other world and it knows that such inquiries cost money.  One of the men who has contributed liberally to the work of the society is Andrew Lang, the champion two-handed author of the world who writes as much in England as the Rev. Cyrus Townsend Brady does in this country.

Every time that the officials of the Society for Physical Research hear of any extraordinary ghost story or other story that has to do with the supernatural they dispatch an investigator –a ghost detector – to the scene. It is difficult to deceive this personage. He has read about all there is to read of ghost lore. He enjoys the personal acquaintance of many persons who have seen ghosts or who have thought that they have seen them. He knows mediums, trance artists, materialists, hypnotists and other artists in spiritualism and its kindred pursuits, and what he doesn’t know about the inhabitants of the spirit would isn’t worth knowing.

He investigates. It doesn’t make any difference how long it takes him. Neither time nor money is considered when the cause of truth is at stake. He stays on the ground until he has gathered every bit of available evidence, until he has interviewed everybody who by any chance might know anything about the case.

Then he prepares a long written report full of signed statements and circumstantial detail, and this he mails back to London. It is gone over by other experts and if there is anything in it worthy of preservation in the archives of the society it is filed away along with the reports made by the hundreds of other investigators.