(St Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 6, 1887)

[The last man in the world to be accused of a belief in the supernatural would be your go-ahead, hard-headed American “drummer” or traveling-man.  Yet here is a plain tale of how not one but two of the western fraternity saw a genuine ghost in broad daylight a few years ago.—­ED.]

JACKSON, MO., October 6.  At a place on the Turnpike road, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, is what is familiarly known as Spooks’ Hollow.  The place is situated fours miles from the Cape and is awfully dismal looking where the road curves gracefully around a high bluff.

Two drummers, representing a single leading wholesale house of St. Louis, were recently making the drive from Jackson to the Cape, when their attention was suddenly attracted at the Spooks’ Hollow by a white and airy object which arose in its peculiar form so as to be plainly visible and then maneuvered in every imaginable manner, finally taking a zigzag wayward journey through the low dismal-looking surroundings, disappearing suddenly into the mysterious region from whence it came.

More than one incident of dreadful experience has been related of this gloomy abode, and the place is looked upon by the midnight tourist and the lonesome citizen on his nocturnal travels as an unpleasant spot, isolated from the beautiful country which surrounds it.

DR. FUNK SEES THE SPIRIT OF BEECHER

(New York Herald, April 4, 1903)

While he will not admit that he is a believer in spiritualism, the Rev. Dr. Isaac Funk, head of the publishing house of Funk & Wagnalls, is so impressed with manifestations he has received from the spirit of Henry Ward Beecher that he has laid the entire matter before the Boston Society for Psychical Research, and is anxiously awaiting a solution or explanation of what appears to him, after twenty-five years’ study of the subject, the most remarkable test of the merit of the claims of spiritualists that has ever come within his observation.

Although he has resorted to every means within his power to discover any fraud that may have been practiced upon him, he has been unable to explain away not only messages to him from the great minister, but the actual appearance to him of Mr. Beecher in the flesh.

Dr. Funk and Mr. Beecher were intimate friends, and it would be difficult to practice deception as to Mr. Beecher’s appearance.  When the apparition appeared to Dr. Funk at a seance a short time ago Dr. Funk was less than three feet distant from it, and had plenty of opportunity to detect a fraud if it was being perpetrated, he believes.

“Every feature stood out distinctly,” Dr. Funk said yesterday, in describing his experience, “even to the hair and eyes, the color of the skin and the expression of the mouth.[1] lines of the body, but it was still light enough to make the face plainly visible.  I had a short conversation with the embodied spirit, and then it appeared to sink to the floor and fade away.”