Dr. Beckes and Tom Emison saw a ghost walking the streets of Vincennes, according to the July 4, 1890 Commercial.

It was the great uncle of the present Dr. Isaac K. Beckes, Dr. Lyman Marshall Beckes, and the present Tom Emison's great-great-great-grandfather's brother's grandson, Thomas Harper Emison.

(Dr. Isaac K. Beckes is president of Vincennes University. Thomas Emison is a Vincennes attorney.)

They were attending a party at Miss Pearl Henderson's home, at 526 Scott, on the evening of June 30.

"It was growing late," said the story. "Some were seated on the veranda, others were laughing gayly in the yard, and all were endeavoring to find the cool spot of this June weather, if it has a cool spot at all.

"All at once James L. Harris observed a most horrid and unearthly thing white as a ghost and big as a mountain, unlike anything in this world or the next, and while his hair began to stand on end, a nursery prayer began to assume form and shape in his mind.

"'Look there!' said Dr. L.M. Beckes with a graveyard voice, at the same time rising to his feet.

"'What is it?' asked Tom Emison.

The unearthly white object walked deliberately along the street and paused at the gate. It looked most frightful in the dark.

"'Who'll see what it is?' asked some one as the young ladies fled to the house with screams on their lips.

"'I'll see what it is,' said Tom Emison as he marched bravely down to the gate. But he was not supported by the reserve force.

"The ghost caught Tom in its iron grip and his teeth chattered like he had just gotten out of an ice chest, and at the same time he backed gracefully out of the grip of the fierce monster of the bottomless pit.

"Some one suggested to give it a dose of water, and at once in the excitement a bucketful of the cooling liquid was dashed on Dr. Beckes, and he looked like a man who had just crawled out of the river. More water was brought and more of the party got wet, no one knowing just what he was doing in the midst of the intense excitement.

"All at once the ghost disappeared. Uncle Jim McClure knows more about the ghost, we venture to say, than anybody else." James S. McClure, at 518 Scott, was the next-door neighbor, and, it seems, something of a practical joker.

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EMAIL: rking@indian.vinu.edu