Strange Times 122: She Saw the Ghost

Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. Rather than plug my book, which is great and which you should all buy, I’d like to point you all toward Negative Space, the forthcoming memoir by my friend and colleague Lilly Dancyger, which will be released exactly one hundred years after the news described in today’s issue of Strange Times. Lilly is an exceptional writer and you owe it to yourself to preorder her book today!

Today we have a woman haunted, a fire escaped, and an assemblyman ambushed. Blame it on the movies on…

May 2, 1921

• At Carnegie Hall, Senator Clayton A. Lusk decries the “well-organized” American anarchist movement, which seeks to destroy the nation’s government using “force and violence,” and whose principles are “being taught [to] children in public schools.”

• D.W. Griffith’s six-year-old motion picture, “The Birth of a Nation,” is revived for a week at the Capitol Theatre, prompting the Times critic to praise its “triumphant achievement” while lamenting its “garbled and prejudice-feeding” source material.

• Puzzled by the wild family of the Ramapo Mountains, whose patriarch claims to have forgotten all of his children’s names, locals respond by giving them food, clothes, and a $5 fine for not sending their children to school.

• The Weather: Overcast today and tomorrow; continued cold; fresh north winds.

The most unbelievable part of this story is that the mediums consulted by the grieving widow were honest enough not to fake a seance.

TRENTON, N.J., May 1.—Ghostly manifestations at the home of Mrs. John Koch, at 419 Ferry Street, have ceased since the widow moved, a little over a week ago, into a new house at 192 Lamberton Street, but she insists that she had seen the ghost of her husband, who killed himself after wounding a fellow worker in a garage about two weeks ago.

Mrs. Koch says she saw the ghost twice at the Ferry Street house. He appeared much in earnest, she said, and apparently wanted to speak to her, but spiritualists whom she consulted were unable to open up communication.

Mrs. Koch spent a week at the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane, but left the institution when her nerves, which had been upset by the ghostly visits, had become normal.

At last, a productive use for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” This is as good a spot as any to bang the drum for one of my pet theories, which is that Francis Scott Key’s national dirge should be replaced with “The Alphabet Song,” which has the triple advantage of being short, educational, and extremely popular with children.

The successful use of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as an exit march was the feature of a fire at 10 o’clock last night in B.F. Kahn’s Union Square Theatre, formerly a Keith house, while a thousand persons were witnessing the vaudeville performance which replaces the week-day burlesque on Sunday nights.

All the wartime training in receiving the national anthem in motionless, rigid attention was forgotten after Manager Samuel Raymond had announced there was a small blaze in the balcony and had assured the audience if they would “walk, not run,” to the nearest exits they would emerge safely. The orchestra swung from the dance music accompanying the current song-and-dance act into the anthem, and every one grabbed a hat and hurried out without any signs of panic or excitement.

A fireman detailed to the theatre discovered the blaze under the balcony floor, and, with apparatus which responded to a single alarm, it was extinguished with such slight damage that the theatre will be open today.

A number of those who had attended the abbreviated performance clamored later at the box office for rain checks, but were told the management regretted its inability to make up to them for the curtailed program.

There’s something in this news article you would absolutely never see in 2021. Not the fear-mongering about children’s entertainment, nor the othering of an immigrant—those are timeless features of American journalism. But today you would never hear a 62-year-old man referred to as “elderly.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I., May 1.—William H. Thayer, age 62, representative in the General Assembly from Bristol, was shot and seriously wounded in the farm-yard of his home on Metacom Avenue, Bristol, tonight by Joseph Reposo, a 15-year-old Portuguese boy. Mr. Thayer was brought here to the Rhode Island Hospital where it was stated he probably would recover.

The lad was arrested while playing with boys and girls of his age late tonight. He is said to have told the police that he must have been crazy when he fired and that he had seen many shootings in the “movies” which were greatly to his liking. He said he had never had any trouble with Mr. Thayer.

Mr. Thayer was walking across the yard of his home when Reposo approached him. Reposo is said to have asked Mr. Thayer if he had any hens or eggs to sell. When Mr. Thayer replied that he had none to sell the boy started to walk away, but turned within six feet, whisked out a revolver and fired one shot, hitting Mr. Thayer in the neck.

Alexander G. Fales of Bristol, who was in the Thayer home, rushed out and found Mr. Thayer on the ground. He was just in time to see the boy run away.

Reposo led the police to a stone wall on another farm, and there pointed out the spot where he had hidden the revolver.