Far down the road, just beside the glimmering monuments of the old graveyard, he saw an apparition.  It was that of a man with a long white beard sweeping over his breast.  The figure appeared to be eight feet in height and in one hand it carried a club, such as the brains of the old man had been beaten out with ten years before.  Slowly raising one arm the ghost with a majestic sweep beckoned French to come ahead.  He was too startled to do anything except try to restrain the prancing horses, which were straining at the harness in attempts to break away and run.  A cold sweat started out all over the body of the farmer as he realized that he was at last looking at a ghost, and then the sound of his wife’s voice came to him begging him to return the way they had come and escape the doom which seemed impending.  French was still too much scared and excited to control the horses, and as he gazed steadfastly at the fearful white object in the road it slowly began to move toward the wagon.  The club was now raised to its shoulder, as a soldier carries a rifle, and it seemed to move forward without touching the ground, like a winged thing.

Then the farmer recovered his faculties and, whirling his team around, he lashed the horses into a run and began the trip to the house of the friend he had just left.  When they arrived there both the man and his wife were almost fainting from fright.

The next man to see the ghost was Milton Moon.  He had the reputation for being not only a man of intelligence but one without fear.  His experience was much the same as that of the Frenches and it brought about several investigations by parties of citizens.  In each case they saw and were convinced of the actual presence of the ghost without being able to discover any satisfactory explanation.

SOME FAMOUS GHOSTS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITOL

(Philadelphia Press, Oct. 2, 1898)

The Capitol at Washington is probably the most thoroughly haunted building in the world.

Not less than fifteen well-authenticated ghosts infest it, and some of them are of a more than ordinarily alarming character.

What particularly inspires this last remark is the fact that the Demon Cat is said to have made its appearance again, after many years of absence.  This is a truly horrific apparition, and no viewless specter such as the invisible grimalkin that even now trips people up on the stairs of the old mansion which President Madison and his wife, Dolly, occupied, at the corner of Eighteenth Street and New York Avenue, after the White House was burned by the British.  That, indeed, is altogether another story; but the feline spook of the Capitol possesses attributes much more remarkable, inasmuch as it has the appearance of an ordinary pussy when first seen, and presently swells up to the size of an elephant before the eyes of the terrified observer.

The Demon Cat, in whose regard testimony of the utmost seeming authenticity was put on record thirty-five years ago, has been missing since 1862.  One of the watchmen on duty in the building shot at it then, and it disappeared.  Since then, until now, nothing more has been heard of it, though one or two of the older policemen of the Capitol force still speak of the spectral animal in awed whispers.