Kansas City Ghosts

It may be trae that conscience makes cowards of us all, but with the ignorant and superstitions conscience is not a circumstance when compared to a vivid , imagiuation. The. greatest coward on e&rth is the person who sees in every dark shadow, in each deserted house and around every dismal building the restless spirit of some departed sinner whose crimes will not allow him to enter heaven, who is doomed to wander around this earth until Gabriel 's trampet is sounded, who must hover near the sceuo of his former misdeeds antil the last day. The place by popular consent most adapted to ghost waaderings aud the place most fruitful in the production of the boiia fide ai-ticle is natnraily the graveyard The drearier, gloomier and more "rnournf nl the aspect of the graveyard the more ghosts. But the real believer in spooks and spirits does not deern it necessary to go among the tombs and graves of the dead to find a spirit. Ghosts are numerous. They can be f ound in all sections of the country. There is not a village nor a deserted country house nor a raitraad bridge but has its ghost. But the ghosts are not all confiuod to the country by any means. There have been severul in Kansas City that have gained extensivo uotoriety on account of their mauy visitations, and the narts of the city in which they nre wont to disport themselves aro still j pyed with suspicion and looked npon t askance by the inhabitants of Bolvidere j s Hollow, Hick's Hollow and other f tions of the city thickly settled by the descendants of Hain. ' The oldest, the original ghost that is i most vividly in the memory of the j perstitious and is most of ten the topic i of grewsome whispers among the people j mentioned, walked the levee between i Main street and Broadway 12 years aga j Oue winter's night, the story goes, a man was lying in wait for an enemy on the levee. In hls hand he clntched a ponderous donblo baiTeled shotgun loaded with nails and slugs. He saw a man walking down the levee. In the dim, flickering light he thought he recognized his enemy. He raised his gun, fired and hnrried away. The next day he read in the papers that his brother's body had been found on the levee, horribly mangled and torn. The murderer winced, bnt kept his secret. Then the dead brother's ghost bcgan towalk. Every night, at tho same liour of the shooting, it could be seen on the levee. Each time it wonld walk straight to the spot where the body had fallen. Then the ghost wonld f all, go throngh a death struggle and disappear. It kept this np for years, and there are those who say it does it still. The second healthy, well developed ghost disported itself in the mins of the old Santa Fe Stage Coach company's office at Second and Main streets in 1886. So generally known did it become that of ten large crowds would congrégate and await the appearance of the nocturnal visitor. Early one evening a young map who wished to investígate a little wont into the ruins. Wlien he emerged from them an hour later, he found a large crowd standing on the oppusite side of the street, near the jail, watching for ghosts. Some one in the crowd, thinking that the young man had been playing ghost, threw a brick at the investigator, striking him on the head. He feil senseless with a gaping wound in his head. The Santa Fe ghost has not been 6een sinca In 1887 there was a, story afloat that at 12 o'clock each night a ghostly cable train glided down the incline between Walnut and Main streets and disaijpeared int space. In the grip car, gniding the train, was the ghost ot a gripman who had died a short time bef ore, after having been insaue for some, time, the result of grief over the f act that hiS train had run down and killed a pedestrian. Urowds congregated at the jnnotion nightly to see the strange sight. For the most part they went away disappointed, although there was plenty who declared they had seen "it. " Auother story, in whioh a ghost was oever seen, bnt whioh smaeked strougly of spooks, was the Conway morder on East Eighteenth street, between üak ;md Loenst, in 1885. Mrs. Conway, a yoong woman, and her little girl were beaten to death with a coupling pin. The nrarderer or muvderers were never caught. Suspicion pointed tcrward two men, but there was uo evidenoe. Both of them afterward died hoiriblo deaths - one of the glanders and the ot'.erof cáncer, T!ie ghost of the victima never walked openly, but that section of the city was given a wide berth by the trae believers for many months afterward. Last, bnt not least, were the ghosts of Clark and Jones, the men hungfor miirdering Mme. Wright in 1893. These ghosts inaterialized in the jails, one at Independence and one in Kansas City. The scare lasted for some weeks, :md the negro prisoners were thrown int o a state of terror by any strange sounds One night, when the jail was in a state of comparativo quiet, a dranken prisoner, who had just been brotight in, had an attack of "jimjams. " By some strange coincidence he was placed in the cell once oceupied by Clark, and the prisoners soon located the groaning oí the nnfortunate man. The negroes, not lmowing that the cell was occupied, supposed that the noise was made by a departed spirit, and all started to howling with the "ghost. " The effect was sornething that can be imagined better than it can be described. Since the Clark ghost left the jail Kansas City has been bereft of spirits, and Belvidere Hollow is breathiuü more easily than it has for