Philadelphia, 1922: ghosts roam a gloomy downtown house.

What the paper reported

A big brick house at Tenth and Bainbridge had been empty for most of fifty years, and three generations of neighbors swore it was haunted. Two night visitors watched a dog refuse the stairs, then put out their light and saw a glowing line, twisted like the figure 4, slowly appear on the wall.

Exhibit A · Transcription

Hist! Ghosts Roam About Gloomy Downtown House

Neighbors of Old Residence at Tenth and Bainbridge Streets Tell of Strange Noises and Mysterious Figures

At Tenth and Bainbridge streets, on the southwest corner, stands a large brick house, four stories high. One only casually acquainted with this neighborhood could hardly pass without remarking and remembering it, although there seems at first glance little that is different from hundreds of other downtown houses.

It is an old house, as houses go in Philadelphia, but not so old by from fifty to seventy years as many other houses thereabouts. Nor is it in any sense picturesque. Despite a certain desperate ornateness and despite the warm color of the neighborhood, now a foreign quarter, it is dull, bleak and ugly. Except for two intervals the house has been untenanted for upward of fifty years.

This house is said to be haunted. The legend has persisted throughout three generations in a rapidly changing locality. At night it is given a wide berth by the credulous and even the skeptical are sometimes persuaded to a swifter pace when they cross the pavement outside.

Later in the same article (right-hand column)

Glowing Lines on Wall. Slowly there had appeared on the wall a glowing line twisted into the shape of something like the figure 4. One of the men stepped in front of this glowing sign, thinking it might be the reflection of light that had crept in from the outside. The figure remained. Then he closed his hand over the place on the wall. There was no light on his hand, bt when he removed it the full line of the figure returned. When the light was flashed the figure vanished. When the light was put out it came back—slowly. This occurred at a half-hour after midnight.

Transcribed from the page image, spelling and punctuation as printed; line-end hyphens joined. Checked word by word against the Library of Congress’s OCR text (see the verification record). “bt” is a misprint in the original.

Newspaper

Evening Public Ledger

Published in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Headline

Hist! Ghosts Roam About Gloomy Downtown House

Date

March 11, 1922

Page

5

Permalink

www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045211/1922-03-11/ed-1/?sp=5

Source

Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Public domain (published 1922).