All-American boy Chuck Palmer may have had guilty knowledge of a cruel death. (1922 yearbook)
The school president himself, Walter Dill Scott, had his character called into question when it was implied that he had known more about Leighton’s disappearance than he’d admitted. His detractors questioned why fifteen students had allegedly been mysteriously expelled immediately after the young man vanished.
In the end, a grand jury concluded that Leighton had indeed died by the hands of others.
News of a promising lead appeared in the July 17, 1923, issue of the Indianapolis Daily Star when a witness claimed that he had watched a group of men lower Leighton beneath the pier. The case, the paper said, may soon reopen. An archive search produced no more accounts of the case, and Leighton Mount’s name dropped from the news.
The ivy on the old buildings grew thicker, the trees towered higher, alumni lived out their lives, and Leighton Mount was forgotten. The guilty walked free.
Some of the guilty must have felt remorse as they lived out their lives, the secret a prickly bur in their sides as they tried to forget. If still alive, the culprits would be near one hundred years old. Perhaps one with guilty knowledge told someone. And maybe that someone was a son or daughter who will now come forward with the information—especially when they learn that Leighton may still be in pain.
Most of those who loved Leighton are dead. Does he know that? Or is he stuck in the nightmare of a September morning in 1921? Is he still trying to escape his terrifying, watery grave where he was so callously abandoned until his last breath was replaced by cold lake water, and the skin floated from his bones?
Imagine, the terrorized spirit, trying to make his way back to campus. Imagine it, and you will very likely come up with an image that is much like the apparition seen near campus.
They call him “Seaweed Charlie.”
Chicago ghost researcher Richard Crowe is well aware of the specter seen near the Evanston campus. Despite his grasp of Chicago history and the fact that he is related to the prosecutor who handled the fatal hazing case, the murder of Leighton Mount was buried so deeply that even Crowe hadn’t heard of it. Yet he had known about “Seaweed Charlie” for years.
The tortured spirit is seen both crawling and walking from the water by Sheridan Road, near the Lake Street Pier where Leighton met his fate. Witnessed by many over the decades, the description does not vary, said Richard Crowe. One encounter occurred on a summer night in 1993, he told me. “Two girls, Lisa Becker and Jenny Trisko, were driving south along Sheridan Road around midnight,” he said. “Suddenly they noticed the car in front of them swerving, as if to avoid something in the road.”
Students enjoy playing in the lake, ignoring the dark secrets beneath the surface. (1922 yearbook)
There in the middle of the street was a man wearing a heavy trench coat. He had come from the direction of the lake.
“It was too nice [outside] to be wearing a coat,” Lisa told Richard. Jenny said that the man was tall and thin and glowing. The ethereal being emanated an eerie light as he lumbered across the road. The girls had never heard of the Sheridan Road ghost, and when they excitedly described their encounter to friends, they learned that the mother of Jenny’s boyfriend had seen the specter at the same spot ten years earlier.
When Richard Crowe speculated on the identity of the ghost, he had several ideas, including the theory that the ghost belonged to an instructor from the Glenview Naval Air Station who crashed his plane in the lake in May 1951.
My research confirmed the plane crash, along with details about two rescuers who drowned while trying to retrieve the pilot’s body. They were on the lake just off campus when their boat capsized.
According to Richard, some who have seen the Sheridan Road ghost say that he is dripping with seaweed.
The Evanston, Illinois, campus, shown here in a vintage postcard, is lovely but filled with ghosts who carry dark secrets. (author’s collection)
Are any of these men “Seaweed Charlie?”
Maybe. But what about the fact that the ghost is encountered around midnight, the same time that Leighton suffered his fate? Weigh the terror that was surely suffered by each lake victim, and Leighton wins the dismal contest.
Bound for hours beneath the pier in icy darkness, he was alone with his own tormented thoughts. What did he think of in his last moments? Did he think of Doris and how he would never again see her lovely smile? Did he imagine the grief his parents would feel if he let the lake take him?
Discovered dead and blue, he was further insulted by the cover-up. If there was ever a candidate for a spirit to remain earthbound, Leighton is it.
If you should travel along Sheridan Road, say a prayer for Leighton Mount as you pass the Lake Street Pier. If you should see the wet and glowing ghost, do not be afraid. It is probably just Leighton, a naïve young man in love with a girl named Doris.