The Ghost of John Brown

Today many people believe that John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 was a fanatic’s folly, a failed attempt to free the slaves. Even John Brown’s friends at the time felt the raid was doomed to fail. 

After the raid, the South saw him as a treasonous madman, and murderer who threatened their way of life. The North saw him as an impractical martyr who had fought for a righteous cause. He didn't live to see that his "folly" placed America on a different course.

John Brown was a passionate abolitionist who disagreed with the United States government policy at a time when the U.S. was walking a tightrope in an effort to accommodate both slavery and expansion. 

Brown regarded the humanity of Africans a given; it was the humanity of the white race that was in question. Brown felt that war was the only way to get rid of slavery.

So in October of 1859 he confidently raided the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in order to inspire other wavering abolitionists in the area and to embolden and arm the slaves in the area to rebel and fight with him—this did not happen. 

His small band of 16 white men, 3 black men, 1 black slave, and 1 fugitive slave initially succeeded. But by the fourth day their efforts left them wounded, captured and dying. His hopes of others joining his “war” dashed, Brown watched as two of his sons died.

Colonel Robert E. Lee’s Marines and Harpers Ferry townsfolk prevailed in the end. John Brown was tried and found guilty of treason against the commonwealth of Virginia and was hanged on December 2^nd. 

On the day he was executed Brown wrote his last prophecy, which said, “I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood.”

Historians agree today that John Brown’s raid was the true beginning of the Civil War. 

He was the first white man to use violence in an attempt to end slavery. His effort scared the south, which led them to prepare for a northern invasion. His raid escalated tensions and revealed the deep division that existed between the North and South.

Harper's Ferry was still a part of Virginia when the Civil War began in 1861. But when Virginia seceded and joined the Confederacy the residents in Harpers Ferry were not pleased. This led to the formation of a new state, West Virginia, which immediately joined the Union. 

During the war Harper's Ferry changed hands several times. It was here, in my own family, that a brother I am descended from, fought for the Union against his own brother, who was a Confederate soldier.

Many of the ghosts at Harpers Ferry today are related to the Civil War-era. 

John Browns’ tall, thin ghost is seen at the site of his raid, sometimes accompanied by a large black dog. They have been seen vanishing through a closed firehouse door. 

Through the years, a man who resembles John Brown has been seen walking about town during the day. Locals and tourists alike have taken his photograph; they have even posed with him for photos, only to have no image of him show up in these pictures.

Haunted West Point

The United States Military Academy at West Point is located in New York State in Orange County. It dates back to the Revolutionary War when both the colonists and the British realized the importance of its location. 

George Washington early on realized the strategic advantage of the high plateau on the west bank of the Hudson River. 

Thaddeus Kosciuszko designed the fortifications in 1778, and Washington set up his headquarters at West Point in 1779. The Continental soldiers built the forts, redoubts, and batteries that are a part of West Point’s landscape today.

These early soldiers struggled for their lives and independence at the Battle of Fort Clinton and Montgomery near West Point.

Future generations of soldiers learned the art of war at the point. Most have taken this knowledge, as officers, with them to the many battlefields Americans have fought upon. 

Each class of cadets endures four grueling years at West Point, in their efforts to become leaders. In its history, many of its cadets, have returned to teach future cadet classes, others have given their lives for their country, so their final resting place is at the Academy.

West Point is rich in traditional and emotional history. Because of this it is not surprising that it hosts more than just cadets. 

The Thayer House, one of the oldest structures at West Point, is very active. 

Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, lived in this house while he acted as the Superintendent in charge of the Academy from 1813 to 1833. In 1973, a psychic determined that this house is “infested” with ghosts.

Unexplained things occur in this residence regularly. Maids have found that the bed in the Thayer master bedroom, often after being made in the morning, is disheveled when they return to the room. 

Loud knocks on doors and walls are common, as well as the slamming of doors and other noises throughout the house. Overnight guests, often find their personal items have been scattered throughout the house.

Chills, shadows, and wet spots are also common. One spirit rocks unseen in a rocking chair in one of the bedrooms. 

A lively ghost named Molly, who once was Thayer’s maid, also haunts the house. Her bed in the basement always looks slept in.

In the 1920s, another house on Professor’s Row had so much activity that a priest was called in to exorcise the spirit. It was said this ghost terrorized two servant girls, to the point that they ran out of the house, half-dressed and screaming, in the middle of the night.

One of the more recent hauntings happened in October of 1972. Four cadets that were all housed in room 4714, of the 47the Division barracks, saw an apparition of a soldier dressed in a 1830s cavalry uniform. 

The ghost appeared “luminous and shimmering, sporting a handlebar-mustache and carrying a musket rifle.” 

This ghost was seen materializing out of the wall and a closet in the room. 

On another occasion, a spirit form rose up out of the middle of the floor. A cadet while showering, saw his bathrobe swinging on its hook, and suddenly he was shocked by cold water.

Lorraine Warren was called in to consult on this activity.

Two upperclassmen were sent to stay in the room with the plebes (freshman). They both felt an unnatural coldness engulf the room. One of them saw the ghost, but it promptly receded into the wall. 

Later the men who had seen the ghost identified it from a print found at the point. 

The hauntings continued until mid-November of 1972, at which point the commanding officer, had all the furniture removed from the room, and declared it off-limits to the living. 

This apartment is close to the point's graveyard. It is also near a site where a fatal fire once burned down an officer’s house. Some point to these two facts as to why it is haunted.

Another sighting was witnessed by a visitor who saw an entity near the entrance to the grounds of the Academy. It appeared to be a black man in a turn-or-the-century uniform. 

The witness sensed the man was extremely agitated and angry. His uniform was stripped of all medals. 

When further research was done, it was discovered that this man had been court-marshaled but then exonerated by a military court. It appears he cannot forgive or forget this incident. He roams the grounds of West Point, still venting his anger.

The Defiant Knight Company

“We stood firm to the union when secession swept like an avalanche over the state. For this course alone we have been treated as savages instead of freemen by the rebel authorities.”

--Newton Knight (petition to Governor William Sharkey, July 15, 1865)

Soon after Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in November of 1860, Mississippi, led by slave-owning planters, seceded from the Union in January of 1861. 

However, not everyone who lived in Mississippi agreed with this decision. In fact, some Mississippians’ viewed the rebellious Confederate government as the invading body. This is the story of Newton Knight and his opposition to the Civil War.

Newton Knight was born in Jones County, Mississippi in 1837 when the landscape was still dominated by virgin longleaf pines stood, and wolves and panthers still roamed the land. 

In 1858 he married Serena Turner and moved to Jasper County to set up a homestead where they grew corn and sweet potatoes, and raised hogs and cattle. Newt worked hard and tilled the land himself. According to his family, Newt was a loving father who never drank or cursed.

When Mississippi seceded from the union most of the people in Jones County, Mississippi were poor farmers who did not own slaves. They did not care about their states right to maintain the institution of slavery. In fact, Jones County had the smallest number of slaves in the state.

Mississippi swept up in war fever didn’t take kindly to any southerner who opposed the war. Those who did were labeled cowards and traitors. In fact, during this time anyone who refused to join the Confederate Army knew the penalty was death. So many Mississippians joined against their will. 

Newt Knight reluctantly enlisted in the Confederate Army in the fall of 1861 but soon after he was furloughed so he could return home to see his father, who was dying.

In May of 1862, Newt enlisted as a private with his friends and neighbors into Company F of the Seventh Battalion, Mississippi infantry in Jasper County. They joined together so they could avoid a draft that would have sent them to serve with strangers. Years later Newt stated he only agreed to serve as an orderly so he could care for the sick and wounded.

During this time the Confederate Congress passed the infamous “Twenty-Negro Law,” which exempted planters who owned twenty or more slaves from having to fight. This law basically made sure that a rich man’s war was to be fought by poor men. 

Newt hearing that the Confederate cavalry had taken his families’ horses went AWOL in November of 1862. He made the 200-mile journey back to Jones County—managing to avoid capture by the Confederate patrollers who searched the roads for deserters.

Once home, Newt was shocked to find most of the farms in ruin. The war had taken all the local men—so there was no one to tend the crops, etc. The women of Jones, Jasper, and Smith counties were all struggling to feed their children. 

Things were made worse by the “tax-in-kind” system the Confederates had put in place, which allowed tax collectors to take what they wanted for the Confederate armies. Most of the animals and food stores and even the cloth the women used to make clothes for their children had been claimed. This left all these families to suffer.

“If something is not done by the legislature to open the corn cribs that are now closed against the widow and orphan, and the soldier's destitute families I know that we are undone. Men cannot be expected to fight for the Government that permits their wives and children to starve.”

         --A neighboring planter in Smith County warned Governor John J. Pettus

In May of 1863, the Seventh Battalion rushed into the Battle of Vicksburg. When Newt refused to go back into the Confederate Army, he was arrested and imprisoned. The Confederates tortured him and destroyed everything he owned—leaving his family destitute. 

Vicksburg was a six-week siege, which trapped the Confederate soldiers in a nightmare. After the Confederate’s defeat at Vicksburg, in July of 1863, many soldiers deserted. One soldier who walked home to Jones County after this battle found his wife dead. She had given what little food there was to their children and starved to death.

In August of 1863, the Confederates sent Major Amos McLemore to round up the deserters. Newt organized a company of men, approximately 125, from Jones, Jasper, Covington, and Smith counties to defend themselves against the Confederates. 

This group became known as the Knight Company. Newt, a tall, powerful man, who was known for his imposing presence, was elected captain. He was an expert with his double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun, and he proved to be a skilled and resourceful guerrilla war captain.

To avoid capture, the Knight men would disappear into swamp hideouts, called “Devil’s Den” and “Panther Creek.” They communicated with each other by blowing signals into hollow cattle horns. Sympathetic locals both white and black aided the Knight Company.  One slave woman by the name of Rachel supplied Newt with food and useful information.

Major Amos McLemore was shot and killed in the home of Amos Deason in Ellisville, Mississippi. Most felt it was Newt Knight who pulled the trigger. 

A storm raged outside as McLemore collapsed, his blood seeped into the pine floor in front of the fireplace, and no matter how much scrubbing was done by Eleanor Deason it would reappear every time it rained, or the wind howled. 

After many years of seeing the blood, descendants of the Deason family finally covered the wooden floor with new flooring. This covered up the bloodstain, but it can still be seen under the house where the blood came through the floor onto the rafters.

Today, the Deason house is said to still be haunted. On the anniversary of the murder each year the front door of the house bursts open without cause. The house was given in 1991 to the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

They began restoring the house, so it could be opened to the public—several members of the DAR confessed that they were too uncomfortable to stay in the home alone, day or night.

As for the Knight Company men, their fate was not kind. 

The Confederate authorities embarrassed by the defiance of Knights’ men determined to stamp them out. Most were caught, some were mauled by Confederate hound dogs unleashed to flush them out, others were hung, their bodies left dangling from the trees as a warning to others. In the end, many were returned to their Confederate units. But the authorities never caught Newt Knight.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, Mississippi was occupied by Federal troops. They called Captain Newt Knight into service as commissioner in charge of distributing thousands of pounds of food to the sick and starving people in Jones County. Newt was also sent to rescue several black children who were still being held in slavery in Smith County.

In 1875 Newt returned to his farm in Jasper County, he brought with him his wartime ally, Rachel, now a former slave. His wife Serena left, and he married Rachel. She bore him several children. 

Newton died in 1890, at the age of 85. Under the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 whites and blacks could not be buried in the same cemetery. Defiant to the end Newt requested he be buried in a simple pine box on a high ridge, next to Rachel who had died in 1889, overlooking his old farmstead. 

The inscription on his tombstone reads, “He Lived for Others.”

The Ghost of the "Birdman of Alcatraz”

Robert Stroud’s life story was first told in a book in 1955 and then in a movie starring Burt Lancaster in 1962 both entitled "Birdman of Alcatraz." Both portrayed his life story while he served time for murder first at Leavenworth and then later at Alcatraz. 

Both portrayed him as a ‘kindly’ reformed prisoner who spent years studying bird diseases and how to cure them. But as usual, this Hollywood glossy version reflected only small parts of the real truth.

Robert Stroud was far from a ‘model’ prisoner.

In 1909 Stroud shot and killed a man in Juneau, Alaska. Stroud pimped for a prostitute who was cheated by a “john.” This “john” had paid her $2.00 instead of the expected $10.00. 

Stroud angry, because he didn’t get his usual cut, went to this man’s residence and shot him five times and then took his wallet. He was tried and convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to serve twelve years at McNeil Island prison in Washington State.

Two years later at McNeil Island, he stabbed a fellow inmate for being a ‘snitch.’ He was tried for assault and six months were tacked on to his sentence. 

During this time he also viciously attacked a prison hospital orderly. This man had reported him for using intimidation and threats in an attempt to procure narcotics. 

In 1912 he was transferred to the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas—due partially to his ceaseless threats to other inmates.

Robert Stroud

At Leavenworth, in the spring of 1916 Stroud refused to give a guard his “number’’ which was a minor infraction. The next day a long-awaited visit with his brother was canceled because of this infraction. 

Stroud during the noon meal that same day in the prison mess hall asked this guard if he had reported him. When the guard refused to respond, Stroud pulled out a concealed knife and stabbed and killed him in front of hundreds of other inmates.

For this crime, he was convicted of first-degree murder. He was to be hanged in 1918. But his mother who had moved to Kansas to be close to him desperately pleaded for his life. In 1920 President Woodrow Wilson commuted his death sentence to life in prison. 

The Leavenworth warden because of Stroud’s unpredictable and violent outbursts ordered that he be permanently placed in a segregation unit.

Stroud was an enigma because he had an IQ of 134, but he ate with his fingers, hunched over like an animal. His horrible personal hygiene presented a problem for fellow inmates and prison officials alike. 

It wasn’t until 1934 that he was formally diagnosed as a psychopath. 

While at Leavenworth, he found an injured sparrow in the yard; he took it back to his cell and nursed it back to health. This started his interest in birds. This interest was his one and only redeeming feature.

The warden at Leavenworth used Stroud’s interest in birds to present a model of  “progressive rehabilitation” to the public. Shroud played along because he had found a way to raise some money for his mother who was fighting for his release. 

Over the next years, he raised over 300 canaries, which he sold to visitors at the prison. Stroud’s scientific observations of the canaries he kept did later benefit the research on the canary species. He wrote two books on this subject. He also made a contribution to avian pathology. All of this endeared him to people in the field. 

In contrast to this, he allowed his birds to fly freely in his cell, which resulted in quite a mess, which he never cleaned up. 

The massive correspondence he began to receive also became a burden for the prison for each letter coming in and going out had to be screened. A full-time secretary had to be hired just for this purpose.

Prison officials finally fed up with Stroud’s bird business tried to shut him down. 

He had Delle Mae Jones, a bird researcher in Indiana, which he had corresponded with alert the newspapers and start a petition drive. A 50,000-signature petition was sent to the President. This worked for the prison even gave Stroud an adjourning cell for his birds and his research. 

Jones became so close to Stroud; she moved to Kansas and formed a business in 1931 with him where they sold his bird medicines under the name “Stroud’s Specific." It was widely debated at the time if these remedies were actually useful.

In 1933 Stroud discovered that there were plans to move him to Alcatraz, he knew he would no longer be permitted to keep birds. 

Stroud, however, discovered a Kansas law that forbade the transfer of prisoners if they were married in Kansas. He arranged to marry Delle Mae Jones by proxy, which infuriated the prison officials, who would not let him correspond with his new wife.

The first irony here was Stroud was a violent prisoner —this is one reason that the prison officials kept him from the general prison population. 

The second irony was Stroud lost his business and birds when it was discovered that some of the equipment he had requested for his lab he had used to build a homemade alcohol still.

The third irony is his mother didn’t like Delle—she believed all women were bad for her son. Where once she had been a strong advocate for him, helping with legal battles, etc., she now argued against her son’s application for parole, in fact, she became a significant obstacle in his attempts to be released. She moved away from Leavenworth and had no further contact with him.

Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz in December of 1942. When he was transferred, this note was placed upon the warden’s notebook page with his mug shot. Reason for transfer:

“In view of this man’s homicidal traits and impulsivity dangerous tendencies, he cannot be released in the general population…they feel that it would be possible to confine this man safely at Alcatraz…also wishes to call attention to need for eliminating the unsanitary condition…from this man’s bird breeding activities here…Recommend transfer to Alcatraz.”

At Alcatraz, Stroud spent six years in segregation where he did have some contact with other prisoners, but as things worsened he was placed in solitary confinement in an isolated area of the hospital wing for the last eleven years, he was at Alcatraz. 

This double cell had no toilet, so Stroud used a bedpan. 

One priest who visited the prison stated he went out of his way to avoid being seen as he passed Stroud’s prison door—even going as far as to duck down. He said if Stroud spotted him, he would endlessly babble on and on.

Stroud having access to the prison library began studying law. He petitioned the government stating that his lengthy prison term amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.” 

Another contrast—Stroud was a fan of child pornography. He received many letters from people who were fans of his bird knowledge. Some of these fans were children. Prison officials confiscated a few letters from Stroud in response to these children that contained suggestive remarks. 

In 1959, Stroud in poor health was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. In 1963 he died at the age of 73, the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

To this day Alcatraz, a very haunted place has one cell that is more active than all the rest—this is the double cell that Stroud lived in for eleven years in solitary confinement. Full-body apparitions are spotted in this area.

So Robert Stroud was a cold-blooded killer, but the general public because of the book and film "Birdman of Alcatraz” had a totally different view of him. 

I remember seeing this film as a child myself and thinking how cruel it was they never released him. The public, in general, felt the same because, after the release of this film, which Burt Lancaster won an Oscar for best actor, many people protested for the release of Robert Stroud.

One fellow prison inmate who heard about the public outcry for Stroud’s release stated: “They want Burt Lancaster to be set free not Robert Stroud.”