Here are some interesting ghostly tales from a former Vincennes resident. Thank you very much for your stories, June!
Subject: ghost stories Your web page put me in shock! I just couldn't believe it. I come from
Vincennes. Was born there in 1937. I have had supernatural events happen to
me all my life. My nephew by marriage just asked me the other day to put
the
stories he had heard from me when he was little on paper. He was always so
fascinated by them and never forgot them. I am in the process of doing that
now.
My mother also had psycic ability, and she was born there. These
experiences we have had will fill a book. I always thought it came from
the
Indian blood in our family. Now I think maybe it has something to do with
that particular area. Wish someone would investigate this phenominia.
Please
let me hear from you on this strange circumstance. - June
GRANDMA INTERVENED
This is not about the place of Vincennes as much as it is about the people who lived there. But then, after all, it is the people themselves who haunt a place.
My Grandmother was a native of Vincennes. I was born in her house on Church Street in 1937. Gram's house was on one end of Church Street and the Basilica at the other. She was a very strong determined woman and though she has been gone many years her spirit lives on, and she was active many years after her death.
I was three years old when Gram died giving birth there at Good Samaritan Hospital. Three months later I came down with an eye infection. I was taken to Riley Hospital in Indianapolis, where Doctors told my mother there was no cure. The bacteria was eating the eyeballs. This was before the advent of penicillin. All she could do was wash them out with coric acid every 15 minutes around the clock. He offered no hope. The most she could hope for, he said, was that I would have partial vision in one eye.
The worry and constant work were too much for her and after three days and nights of continuous care she was exhausted. She then decided she would take my life rather than see me go through life blind. It would be a mercy killing. The courts would not blame her, she was sure. But first she had to sleep.
She awoke hours later hearing a humming coming from the foot of the bed. There before her stood her mother.
"Don't kill her, she'll be all right," Gram said.
Moma looked down at me sleeping beside her. My eyes were sealed shut, just the thing the Doctor had wanted her to avoid, by the constant washing. She grabbed a washrag and basin and swabbed at my eyes. They opened and looked at her. They followed the movement of the rag.
"My God you can see," she shouted.
My eyes for many years were such a pale blue, they were almost white. But over the years they darkened to a more normal shade. There was no permanent damage and years later I became a negative retoucher, a job requiring excellent vision.
A VISIT FROM GRAM
There was another time when Gram came to visit. My daughter, Helen, was six at the time. She awoke one morning to hear a thumping noise and humming. When she turned her head in the direction of the noise she saw a woman thumping a hair brush up and down on the dresser. The woman then came very close and put her face inches from my daughter. She was smiling broadly and gold glistened in her mouth. Helen ran screaming into the kitchen where my mother sat with her morning coffee. She related to her what she had seen and about the gold tooth. Moma was able to tell her who it was. Gram had a gold tooth. Apparently she just wanted to see her grandaughter.
Over the years other family members have seen her. She is always humming when she appears, and has warned of many bad events as well as the good that has come our way.
There are other events which I know of that took place in Dugger, a small town near Sullivan, Ind. These events are verified by newspaper accounts.
A HAUNTED HOUSE
My Grandfather worked the mines there in Dugger back in 1920. He was murdered in 1922 by a man named Henry Miller. The murderer hid out after his crime, but was eventually caught and served 8 years in prision. The irony is that the house in which Miller lived had been occupied by another murderer twenty years prior to the murder of Grandpa.
Ten year later yet another murder took place in that location and again the murderer lived in the same house occupied by the other two murderers.
That house harbored evil, as though hatred clung to the walls themselves.
After his release from prison, Henry Miller was found dead along a road. He had been drinking and fallen. He drowned in 3 inches of water. A quirky accident. Or was it?
AN UNEXPLAINED RESCUE
Some years ago I visited Dugger along with my husband, daughter, niece and mother. We had been driving around looking for the place where Grandpa had been shot. Then we stopped at the location where they had lived, marked now only by a lilac bush which had stood outside a bedroom window.
There were strip mines everywhere you looked. A ghost town with an errie forboding. I felt an unknown fear creep through me. Looking around I saw that my daughter and niece were nowhere to be seen. The girls were teenagers and full of mischief, and we had already warned them to be careful of the mines which were unmarked and in unsuspected places. We all yelled for them, but got no response.
It was at least ten minutes before they came bounding over a small hill. My niece was doubled in laughter, but my daughter looked like a thunder cloud. They related to us that they had been climbing a hill when suddenly my daughter had lost her footing and began to slide down toward the dark mine below.
She screamed at Cheryl, who was climbing ahead of her laughing and enjoying herself. Cheryl inched back down toward her and grabbed her hand. At that point they both began a descent down the hill toward the dark pit below.
Helen was frantic and praying, when suddenly her hand brushed against a small twig standing alone in the parched barren soil devoid of all vegetation. She held to it until they both regained their footing, and were able to get back on solid ground. Helen was mystified by what had happened. She knew full well that small twig could not possibly hold the weight of two teenagers and prevent them from sliding to their certain death. Something or someone had stopped their desecent. But what or Who?
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 21:17:15 -0500
From: "snowblossom"
To: rking@indian.vinu.edu