WALLACE COUNTY
WALLACE COUNTY
A KANSAS TRAGEDY IS RE-ENACTED NIGHTLY BY GHOSTS
A Weird Story Comes from Turtle Creek, in Wallace County--The Baptist Sunday School Broken Up By Fighting Spooks
Some weeks ago the Baptist Sunday School, Turtle Creek, Kan., was flourishing, with an attendance of about twenty-five.
Its night meetings were interesting, and to the young people of Wallace county it took the place of other forms of amusement. At the present time the little frame building used as a place of worship is deserted.
It is haunted, and by the liveliest kind of a spook. It was seen by the assembled school. There are a dozen adults who will swear to the vividness and hair-raising realism of the spook, but there is not one of them who could be induced to tempt fate by again entering the haunted house.
Last New Year's night the school assembled to watch the old year out and the new year in. The watch party was a gay one. Every girl on Turtle Creek who could contribute anything eatable had something in the hold-out, and the evening passed merrilly. As the midnight hour approached someone suggested that the lights be lowered and the death of the old year be celebrated in the semi-gloom. It was done. With just enough light to throw a flickering shadow on the wall, the members of the watch gayly grouped around, and, in a state of subdued giggle, waited for the midnight bell.
The hour was tolled by the school house bell, but before the sound of the last stroke had died away and before any one had thought of turning up the light a thrilling scene was enacted.
A scream as of one in mortal pain was heard, and then in the half shadow near the raised elevation, at the end of which served as a pulpit on Sunday, the startled members of the watch party saw two figures struggling. Round the open space they fought, apparently fighting for the mastery. So sharp was the contest, and so startling, that not a member of the party found a word to say. The fight continued. Finally what seemed the large figure pressed one knee upon the other's breast, a gleam of steel was seen to descend, and with a gurgling groan that thrilled the awe-stricken auditors the under figure fell heavily backward. The other, with a cry of exultation, pulled the dripping, gory blade from the other's breast and waved it aloft, turning threateningly toward the party huddled around the stove, but the spell was broken and the watch party stampeded. Panic-stricken, they broke for the door. Benches were thrown down, clothes were torn and bruises were freely taken as the made haste to get away from the scene of horror.
Not a soul would return until daylight, then a posse visited the school house. There were no traces of the crime which the party of the night before had witnessed. Everything was in order except the benches, which had been overturned in the flight from the building.
But too many persons of undoubted veracity had seen the gory struggle. An attempt is being made to discover the meaning of the midnight struggle.
It is recalled that five years ago two strangers came to Sharon Springs and opened a night school on Turtle Creek. Nothing was known of them. For a time their school flourished. Suddenly they disappeared. It is believed that the midnight scene in the Turtle Creek school house is the key to the whole mystery.
But whatever the cause the Baptist Sunday school will meet no more in the school
house.
(Kalamazoo Gazette ~ March 5, 1892)
DAY SPENT AT SHARON SPRINGS
Mr. Roosevelt Goes to Church and Rides Horseback--Is Given a Young Badger
President Roosevelt attended the Methodist church at Sharon Springs, Kan., yesterday, and listened to a most instructive sermon by a Presbyterian minister, Rev. William Carter of Kansas City who went there for that purpose. A number of pastors from the neighborhood also participated. A pleasing incident occurred as the services began. Two little girls were standing in the aisle near the president's pew, and as soon as the president saw them he drew them into his pew, and during the singing the three shared the same hymn book. At the conclusion of the service the president shook hands with a large number of people. In the afternoon he went for a long horseback ride, accompanied by Senators Burton and Long and President Butler of Columbia college.
Senator Warren of Wyoming and Civil Service Commissioner Foulke joined the president yesterday. Sharon Springs is full of strangers, who went there to see the president, some of them riding 50 miles for that purpose. A Sharon Springs admirer of the president presented to him yesterday a two-week-old badger. The little animal is as friendly as can be, and will be taken home to Washington to join the growing menagerie of the Roosevelt children.
Everything is in readiness for the reception of President Roosevelt at Denver
this morning. Two and a half hours will be spent there, and during that time the president will deliver an address
at the state capitol, and will be escorted through the principal business and residence section and view the city
park. The streets through which the president will travel have been lavishly decorated. Thousands of persons from
all over the state are in the city to see the president, and the outpouring today will be very great. The president
will cross the eastern border of Colorado before daylight, and will make his first stop at Hugo, to be the guest
of the Lincoln county cowmen for breakfast. There he will be joined by Gov. Peabody and a committee of Denver citizens,
who will extend an informal welcome to the state. Mayor Wright has proclaimed Monday a holiday. A feature of the
day will be the gathering of school children at City park.
(Springfield Republican ~ May 4, 1903)
'BOTTOM FALLS OUT OF EARTH' AND YAWNING CRATER RESULTS, MYSTIFYING KANSAS RESIDENTS
SHARON SPRINGS, KAN., March 13---A crater, formed suddenly in the bed of the Smoky River, near here Wednesday, continued to enlarge all night, and Thursday the ground is still sinking, although its motion had slowed up somewhat. A hole slightly over 300 feet in diameter has formed in the river bed since Wednesday morning. Its depth is not known, as it is partly filled with water that rushed in when the crater began forming, but some estimates run as high as 500 feet.
The cause of the phenomenon remains a mystery, although many theories had been advanced. Word was received from Lawrence that R. C. Moore, State Geologist, attributed it to underground caverns left when a stratum of limestone had been dissolved. This, it was pointed out, however, does not explain the peculiar odor of sulphur that many have noticed around the crater. One theory that has been advanced is that it is an old volcano showing signs of life. The State Geologist is expected here Friday.
When first seen the depression was about fifty feet across and of unknown depth. Since then it has grown steadily. A low, rumbling noise and a cloud of dust appearing over the spot gave the first indication that something had happened.
"The bottom just fell out of the earth" was the way one man who lived near by described it. "The first we knew about it was when a dense cloud of smoke was seen over the locality. Apparently, the occurrence was local in nature, as there was no earthquake."
Level prairie land surrounds the places where the phenomenon occurred. There are
no mines or oil or gas wells in this locality to which the occurrences could be attributed.
(Dallas Morning News ~ March 12, 1926)
Father and Son Hanged Near Sharon Springs for a Brutal Murder
SHARON SPRINGS, KAS., May 10---Last Thursday, Charles Corley, son-in-law of William McKinley, a farmer living below here, was killed with a garden hoe, while asleep, by Fred McKinley, aged 17. The boy swore, when arrested, that his father and his older brother had forced him to commit the crime because Corley had refused to pay $2.00 for the privilege of marrying Miss McKinley, as he had agreed to do.
The two men were arrested Monday and arraigned in court here. They pleaded not guilty, but the boy renewed his confession.
Monday night a mob of farmers came here, took the old man and the older son to
a railroad bridge west of town and hanged them both. The boy escaped because he was under guard at the hotel.
(Kansas City Star ~ May 10, 1894)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah---Kansas officers assumed custody of two teenagers today, heading them back to the hamlet of Sharon Springs to face trial for one of seven robbery-killings.
The youths, George R. York, 18, Jacksonville, Fla., and James D. Latham, 19, Mauriceville, Tex., waived extradition late yesterday on a warrant accusing them of killing Otto Ziegler, 62, a railway roadmaster, near Wallace, Kan.
The teenagers, both AWOL from an Army disciplinary unit at Fort Hood, Tex., have admitted a series of seven killings in five states. Officials of Utah and other states agreed at a conference to let Kansas take custody.
Both, and York especially, had expressed a preference for Florida, which wants them for the May 29 slayings of two Valdosta, Ga., women near Jacksonville---Althea Ottavio, 43, and Patricia Anne Hewit, 25.
They also are wanted in Illinois, where two were killed June 8; Albert E. Reed, 25, Litchfield, Ill., and Martin Drenovac, 69, a Granite City service station operator.
Colorado wants them for the June 10 slaying of Rachel Marian Moyer, 18, near Craig.
Tennessee wants them for the June 7 killing of John A. Whitaker, 71, a railroad porter, at Tollahoma.
(Trenton Evening Times ~ June 14, 1961)
University Men Find Skeleton 48 Feet Long in Cliffs Near Sharon Springs
TOPEKA, Aug. 10 -- Prof. L. L. Dyche, state fish and game warden and curator of the big zoological museum at the Kansas University, heard good news today when he was notified that a skeleton of a saurian that will measure at least forty-eight feet long was being dug out of the chalk cliffs near Sharon Springs. Prof. H. T. Martin, assistant in paleontology at the university, and students are doing the work and they expect to have the big skeleton out and mounted before school begins next month.
The university owns several big saurian skeletons, but this one is believed to
be larger than any other the university has. Also it is said to be the most perfect that has been found in the
chalk cliffs of Western Kansas. These cliffs in the western part of the state seem to have been a sort of graveyard
for these reptiles, birds, bats and fishes. The university expedition this year promises to be the most successful
the university has sent out in years, as the specimens being dug out this year are in better shape and more complete
than any recent excavations have discovered.
(Kansas City Star ~ August 10, 1911 ~ Submitted by Lori DeWinkler)
The discovery of a gigantic extinct sea turtle found near Fort Wallace, in western Kansas, first observed the large bony shields projecting from a bluff near Butt Creek. They were carefully taken out and brought to Philadelphia, where the restoration was made. The fore flippers alone were nearly five feet long, while its expause from one extended flipper to an other was about seventeen feet. The question may arise, how did the sea turtle become buried in a bluff in the state of Kansas? A natural supposition would be that Kansas is the bed of a former ocean, and so it is. Ages ago, in what is called by geologists, the Cretaceous Period, that part of the world was the bed of a great sea, in which the great turtle swam together with other monsters of curious shape and appearance. Gradually the crust of the earth was raised, the water fell back or became enclosed, and left the inhabitants of the Cretaceous sea high and dry, to be covered by the earth and preserved for us to study ages afterward.
The shores of this ancient ocean are easily found and followed by geologists.
Its extent has been traced on our western plains by the bleaching and disintegrating remains that have been found,
upon and beneath the surface.
(Black Range, New Mexico ~ April 23, 1886 ~ Submitted by Lori DeWinkler)
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