When the Ghost Screams(12)
Alma had helped to establish the Maryland chapter of the Kappa Delta Sorority on campus. It’s only natural that she has an attachment to the place, say some girls who have resided there. She is a friendly spirit, and most residents enjoy the novelty of living in a haunted house.
When an item is mysteriously misplaced, Alma is playfully scolded. The creaking floors, the sudden chills, and the darting shadows are all attributed to her.
And maybe it was Alma who invited some old friends over for a party one summer day when the sorority house was closed. Witnesses swore they saw girls in white dresses dancing on the porch when the house was deserted.
If the theory that spirits can take the form of themselves at any age is true, than Alma may have been among the frolicking girls. She could have materialized as she was in an innocent time, when she, too, was a student with stars in her eyes. While her fate was nothing to celebrate, there was nothing to stop her from celebrating the past.
Big Moose Murder
Ever since she was a little girl, Lynda Lee Macken was fascinated by the subject of ghosts. “But I never ever wanted to see one,” said the Forked River, New Jersey, author who admitted that the idea terrified her.
By the time she had reached thirty without a single sighting, she figured that she would never see a ghost. And she certainly was not looking for one on the dark night she unwittingly visited a murder site and a ghost found her.
The leading cause of death for pregnant women is not a medical ailment. It is not childbirth, and it is not an accident. It is murder, usually committed by the victim’s boyfriend or husband.
When Grace Brown found herself unwed and with child, it was a disgraceful situation. In today’s American culture, folks barely blink an eye when an unwed woman gives birth. But Grace became pregnant in 1906, when women didn’t vote, didn’t wear slacks, and certainly did not have babies before marriage without causing a stir.
Men in that era may have felt even more trapped by an unwanted pregnancy than they do today. Chances are, quite a few of them got away with murder. Chester Gillette was not one of them.
Chester Gillette met Grace Brown at his uncle’s skirt factory in Cortland, New York. It was 1905, and he found himself attracted to the pretty farm girl. The coworkers dated on the sly, and before long she had unwelcome news for him. She was carrying his baby.
Did he promise to marry her?
The letters she sent him, pleading with him to be true to his word, indicated that he had. We can only imagine the hope she felt when it looked as if they were going to be wed, and together boarded a train headed for the Adirondacks, the pristine mountainous region in northern New York. As the rolling green hills flashed past the windows, did Grace and Chester talk about the future, perhaps discussing names for the baby?
The soft rumble of the train in motion must have had a relaxing effect, and Grace likely daydreamed about her future throughout the trip. By winter, she would have a sweet baby in her arms, and the handsome husband by her side would adore their child.
Grace was not privy to the thoughts in Chester’s head. While she contemplated her new life, he was planning her death.
They stayed at the Glenmore Hotel on Big Moose Lake, and Chester suggested they rent a rowboat. Grace could not swim, but she had her fiancé to protect her. The romantic scenario sounds like something in a Monet painting. The lazy summer afternoon. The deep lake, reflecting shades of green. Chester, his muscles flexing with each pull of the oars, and Grace, her delicate fingers trailing in the water.
No one knows the exact moment when the tranquil scene changed, but by evening, the lifeless body of Grace was resting on the bottom of the lake, her long hair waving with each ripple. Soon after the body was discovered, Chester was fingered as a suspect.
The joyful winter that Grace had imagined would never arrive. Instead, November saw the beginning of the murder trial for the man she had loved. It was a feeding frenzy for reporters, who flocked to the courtroom for the scandalous details the public waited to hear. Chester swore that he had not killed Grace. It was suicide, he insisted. The troubled woman had leapt from the boat and intentionally drowned herself.
But the smoking gun in this case was a bloody tennis racket, found hidden in the shrubs beside the lake. Prosecutors maintained that Chester had struck his unsuspecting victim on the head before dumping her in the water. A jury found Chester Gillette guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. He was strapped to the death chair and electrocuted on March 30, 1908.
The murder inspired books and movies, including the book and film An American Tragedy and the movie A Place in the Sun.
If Lynda Lee Macken had ever seen the old movies, she did not connect them with the wilderness retreat to which she and her best friend, Bridgett, had traveled. They had chosen Big Moose Lake, because it was the area where a favorite author had built a cabin.