The Cloak Man of Clifton Heights

Since I turned up the first reference to the Cloak Man (from the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger) a few days ago, I've been looking around for more information on the entity. Some articles in the Chester Times shed a bit more light on it. The first one, which was published in that newspaper on September 25, 1916, has a first paragraph largely identical to the Philadelphia story I first turned up, but then goes on to reveal much more information than that piece did.

A mysterious stranger, man or woman, wearing a long black cloak and a black hood over the head, has caused much excitement in the borough the past few evenings and not a few women as well as some men have become thoroughly frightened by this mysterious creature, now called a "cloak man." The excitement ran high on Saturday night when the appearance of the cloak man who stopped several young couples on Walnut street, near Fairview avenue, caused the gathering of several young men in a few minutes. Headed by Chief of Police McGowan and Officer Kelly, they started in search for the stranger.

On Saturday night [November 23] shortly before 11 o'clock, Joseph Austin, of Berkley avenue, was accompanying a young woman to her home. While walking on Walnut street, near Fairview avenue, a tall person, wearing a long black cloak and a hood, stepped in front of Austin and the young woman. He pushed his long hands into the young man's face and muttered something inaudible. Austin's hair raised his hat, while the young lady was badly frightened by the sudden appearance of the cloaked person, who did not harm the couple, but turned swiftly and fled.

Austin, after accompanying the young woman to her home, returned to Baltimore avenue, where he informed Chief McGowan. The news spread quickly and in less than ten minutes several hundred men started a hunt for the cloak man, but he was not found. Several young men did locate a cloaked person in a small orchard on Walnut street and Fairview avenue but the mysterious one dashed out of the place and soon disappeared.

Just what the object of the cloak man is no one seems to know and it will require some police work to capture the stranger at the earliest possible moment. Many years ago a cloak man annoyed young girls in the borough and it required several weeks to capture him. Finally the late J.M. Lungen, then officer of the borough, caught the man, whose name was Stillwagon.

I'm engaged in an attempt to discover more about the previous cloak man mentioned, but have thus far been unsuccessful. At any rate, the tale continued in the papers the next day -- and it begins to display some of those pesky genderbending tendencies I've discussed before.

The cloak man is still alive and doing business in the borough. On Sunday night [November 24] he succeeded in eluding the police, despite the fact that Chief of Police McGowan disguised himself. When the police would be in one section of the borough looking for the cloak man, the mysterious fellow who, on Sunday night was dressed in woman's attire, with a long black cloak, would be in some other part of the town. In fact he was playing hide and seek with the police and others who were looking for him.

Some persons are of the impression that he is a man who is anxious to catch his erring wife. If this be the case, the offended husband is taking a wrong method of catching the other man, because there are many young men who have made up their mind to make the cloak man a victim for the undertaker, if attacked.

On Sunday night lovers did not promenade on the usually quiet or dark streets, but Baltimore and Springfield avenues were the boulevards of lovers' walks. The appearances of the cloak man has also driven every "kiddy" in the town off the street after dark and all they talk about is the cloak man.

Finally, on November 29, a final notice appeared. After this, the cloak man disappeared as mysteriously as he, she, or it, appeared.

Johnnie Get your Gun [what an amazingly random headline]

The "cloak man" is still strolling about the borough every evening and despite the best efforts of Chief McGowan and other persons who have been keeping a sharp look-out for the cloak man, he has not been captured. Ladies and children will not travel at night unless escorted by their husbands, fathers or beaus. The "cloak man" has been seen by men every night, but only at a distance, because it is now believed that the fellow is a little afraid of the men, hence it is that he keeps a good distance from the police.

The Cloak Man of Clifton Heights, Jack the Terror, and a giant snake

From the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger (Sept. 26, 1916):

A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER, man or woman, wearing a long black cloak and black hood, has caused much excitement in Clifton Heights the past few evenings, and not a few women as well as some or all of the men have become thoroughly frightened by this mysterious creature, now called a "cloak man."

From the Pittsburgh Dispatch (Aug. 25, 1889):

JACK THE TERROR.
A Man Disguised in Woman's Clothes Scares Southside Ladies.

A mysterious creature is prowling around the Twenty-fifth ward. Last evening he went in women's attire to the home of John Scheck, as foreman of the Republic Iron Works, on Sarah street, and told Mr. Scheck he was wanted at the mill. He went immediately. As soon as he had gone this tall masquerader entered his home and scared Mrs. Scheck.

When Mr. Scheck returned from the mill he notified the police, but the man in woman's clothes could not be found.

The same evening he frightened the wife of Harry Brooks, living next door to Scheck's. The men in the neighborhood threaten to harm him if they lay hands on him.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (referenced below) had a similar propensity towards genderbending, sometimes seen as a man, sometimes as a woman, and sometimes as a man in woman's clothing. The Cloak Woman also displayed similar traits.

The method in which he/she gained entry to the Scheck's is, to me, extremely reminiscent of Spring-Heel Jack's appearance at the door of Jane Alsop under a pretence of having caught Spring-Heel Jack. "For God's sake, bring a light!"

And from the Scranton Tribune (May 13, 1897):

AN EIGHTEEN-FOOT SNAKE.
Westmoreland County Man Beholds a Strange Creature.

Greensburg, May 12. - Last evening as Thomas McQuaide, a young farmer residing near Delmont, was riding along by the Burnt Cabin district, his horse took fright at something in the bushes. He turned to see what the object was, and was almost paralyzed to behold a monster snake, which was at least 18 feet in length, and thicker than a man's leg at the ankle. Mr. McQuaide had hard work to control the horse, which nearly threw him off. He rode hastily away for assistance to kill the reptile, but when the snake shunters reached the spot the snake was gone. They searched and beat the bushes but could find nothing.

Daniel G. McQuaide, father of the young man, thinks the monster is the same one he saw several years ago in about the same place. A number of persons of Delmont have formed themselves into a committee to hunt for the snake, which, if discovered, will be captured alive and placed on exhibition.

Do we have here a westward-ranging representative of the same species as the Broad Top Snake to the west in Huntingdon and Bedford Counties?

The Cloak Woman...and the Cloak Man

A bizarre figure known as the Cloak Woman haunted the town of Schuylkill Haven, in Schuylkill County, back in 1911. The Call of Allentown reported on February 11 and 18 about the mysterious figure which followed some women to their homes. The figure was itself followed on Haven Street, where several men said that it wore women's clothing and a red tam o'shanter cap. When seen next, by several young girls, the mysterious Cloak Woman wore goggles of some type and a long shawl. Then, in the Prospect Hill area of town, multiple Cloak Women were seen.

In a bizarre twist, Tony Rossi, sexton of St. Ambrose Church saw a masked, dark-cloaked figure loitering in his churchyard. After lying in wait the next evening, Rossi attacked the figure. When cornered, it turned out to be a man, who claimed that he was disguising himself in order to spy on his wife.

By some bizarre coincidence, at around the same time, during the years of the early twentieth century, the streets of Manheim here in Lancaster County were being haunted by the Cloak Man. This was a mysterious figure - clad all in a billowing cloak - who would approach women walking through Bull Alley (present-day Ferdinand Street). Who exactly he was remained a mystery, and the Cloak Man faded away in the years that followed. The figures of the Cloak Man and Cloak Woman are both similar to the Woman in Black, a female form, replete with luminous eyes, which haunted the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton metropolitan area some fifteen years before.

These black-clad mystery figures seem to have been an integral part of the era, from the pulp hero The Shadow to the Mad Gasser of Mattoon and beyond.

The Imp of Clark Alley

January of 1880 saw the appearance of one of the most bizarre phantoms I know of in West Clark Alley in York, on the block between Beaver and George Streets.

Sometimes he comes in the form of a man and puts on the airs of a horse-thief; then, again, he struts along in the shape of a huge demijohn on two legs, and not infrequently like a rolling beer barrel, tapped at both ends. The horse-thief shape is never interfered with but the other two forms are chased up and down the alley, but, like the will-o-the-wisp, are never captured.

A few days later, a search party comprised of what were apparently Victorian ghost hunters sought the apparition, which had this time appeared as a young boy selling newspapers. It promptly vanished in a puff of smoke, or perhaps in a puff of logic like God confronted by the existence of the Babelfish, but left behind a scrap of paper covered in unintelligible characters.

Sometime later the pooka of York appeared to a woman on King Street in the shape of a tall woman dressed in black (the appearance of such black and white female spirits is certainly a favored appearance for ghosts).

Another haunting on South Court Alley was also attributed to the mutable spirit. In this case, however, the haunt was purely auditory. And possibly none too mysterious, either, as a stable was plagued by the sound of some demonic entity throwing hay around! Oh, the horror!

I haven't ever heard of a phantom appearing as a dancing bottle of liquor or as a beer barrel!

Return of the masks (oh my God!); and some words on Springheeled Jack

Apologies to Mark Morrison, wherever you are, for referencing your late 90s R&B hit 'Return of the Mack' in the title of this post. Seriously, try singing the post title in that song in place of the chorus. Well, it sounds OK in my head, anyway.

Anyway, I'm back. I know, I've said that before but I think I mean it this time. As you can see, I've changed the look and layout of the blog to reflect a change in direction. I'm going to try to relay those supernatural goodies here in Pennsylvania that aren't cryptozoological or monster-ish and aren't going to make it into my book. But which are nevertheless nifty. I might also mention the stuff from surrounding states that is once again not monster-ish.

Also, I had received word from noted Springheeled Jack researcher Theo Paijmans that there aren't really any primary sources on the 1905 attack on Julia McGlone in Philadelphia attributed to a Jack-type apparition. I'll be altering my write-up for the book accordingly.

Weird creatures of Maryland

"A Field Guide to the Monsters and Mystery Animals of Maryland", a Strange Magazine article by Mark Chorvinsky and Mark Opsasnick, gives a listing of many strange creature, the majority of which were one-off sightings. Some of these are given below:

Another Odenton Humanoid: Odenton in Anne Arundel County was home to a famous sighting of the Patuxent Swamp Monster in 1968, but on May 27, 1989 two children playing at a home on Brietwert Avenue saw a creature in the clearing behind the home. It was 3-4 feet tall, with a white stripe on one leg of its dark brown furred body.

Boaman: The Prince George's County News (October 27, 1971) gave an account of this creature. The half-human, half-serpent was reportedly seen slithering around alongside the Lanham-Severn Road near the Lanham Inn. This area is south-west of Lanham-Seabrook. A legend was given that a young girl was "chewed up" by the Boaman. The area of the Lanham Inn is extremely urbanized and near a railroad track.

Buggerman: The boundaries of Charles County are patrolled by a creature known as the Buggerman. It is said that he prevents local children from crossing the boundaries of the county. He is variously described as a ghost, or more interestingly as a great hair-covered black man.

Catoctin Mountain Imps: A "troop of horned and cloven demons marked all over with spots like a leopard" were seen in this South Mountain ridge by a resident of Frederick in 1883. The rather stylish demons haven't been seen since.

Cabbage Head Man: Butch Dory claimed to have seen a humanoid entity emerge from a lake on 54th Street in College Park. Dory and his friends reportedly shot at the creature to no avail.

Cow People: A number of cow-folk have been reported over the years, the first being a Victorian-era tale from Dorchester County of a wildman who ate marsh grass and suckled from cows. A bipedal cow-creature was seen near Bel Air in February 1978, and a cow woman was reported from Charles County in the 1970s. this one, though, turned out to be a hunchbacked man.

Eggheads: These creatures were seen by Dan Long in October 1973 near Westover (Somerset County). Long was in the Pocomoke Forest with some friends when he claimed that he saw a number of glowing white humanoids with large egg-shaped heads near the Perdue Farms facility. However, the entire account must be called into serious doubt as Long admits he was drinking in the woods.

Goblin Damned: These ill-described "questionable shapes" were seen several times on the railroad bridge spanning Big Seneca Creek near Clopper (Montgomery County).

Jabberwok: Not to be confused with the Jabowak described below, this reptilian humanoid was seen across Frederick County from Creagerstown to Thurmont in the 1880s.

Jabowak: This tall and horrible-faced animal prowled McMurray Street in Frederick in 1870. At one point, a dog was shot and killed as the culprit.
Posted by A

The naked phantom of Manheim

Der Nockisher Mon, or The Naked Man, is an apparition supposedly haunting the neighborhood of Buchtown south of Manheim, Lancaster County. It was seen by Mary Ann Litzenberger sometime around the beginning of the 1900s. As Litzenberger said:

To my astonishment as I gazed across the field nearby, I saw the ghost of a stark-naked man rise up from a fence corner and slowly walk across the field, not looking right or left, but having a worried look on his face.

"I yelled with all my might to my sisters, saying in Dutch, 'A nockisher mon! Don't you see him?' But they insisted they didn't see anything of the kind.

After talking with a neighbor, Litzenberger went on:

She informed me that there really was such a spook, that she had seen it too, at different times. She explained that there had been a dispute about the correct line of the property, and the ghost of the farmer-owner verified it by stepping it off where it should be.

Why the ghost was naked, we may never know! Perhaps it was not a ghost, but a free-roaming spirit manifestation like the other "wild men" throughout history.

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part V: Undead mountain lions

Shoemaker recounts several tales of various superstitions held about the mountain lion, including several of animated taxidermy mounts. The stories of the animated cougars seem to be unique to Snyder County and environs.

In Centerville (Snyder County), in 1864, a hunter killed a mountain lion and mounted it on the roof of his home. The lion's mate is supposed to have leapt upon the roof and knocked the mount to the ground, scooping it up and carrying it into the forests of Jack's Mountain, where the mounted cougar is supposed to have returned to life. A similar tale originates from Troxelville, again in Snyder County. Here, the skin of a mountain lion left mounted in an attic is reputed to have been encountered, still mounted, stalking the forests of the White Mountains.

The body of a mountain lion killed by Lewis Dorman on Shreiner Mountain on Christmas Eve, 1868 as well was reputed to leave its case at a New Berlin museum on Halloween and to hunt mice! The panther's body is now kept at Albright College.

The Senecas (an Iroquoian tribe living around what is now Warren County) believed that the souls of tyrants and unfaithful queens passed into the bodies of panthers, and for this reason the cougar was hunted. The early German settlers believed that cougars glowed at night, and that their eyes flashed green fire.

The ghosts of college mascots

In 1857, Pierson and Andy Lytle brought a Kentucky mule named Coaly into Pennsylvania to be part of a team of pack mules working on excavation and construction of the Penn State campus in State College. When the mule died in 1893, his remains were displayed in the Old Main building he helped construct. If this seems morbid, remember that the University College in London displays the preserved remains of philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

Over the years, the remains of the mule now known as "Old" Coaly were moved several times. When a fire damaged Old Main in the early 1900s, Old Coaly's body was moved into the basement of the Watts Hall dormitory. In the 1960s, he was displayed in the Agricultural Building, and his skeleton is now in the HUB Robeson Building.

But apparently, Old Coaly's spirit doesn't know of his resting place - or perhaps his stubborn mulish nature just keeps him bound to where he was. The braying of the mule is still heard in the hallways outside of his resting place in the basement of Watts Hall, and occasionally his form is seen standing in the corridor.

The Penn State campus in McKeesport is also home to an animal apparition, this time of a large sixteen-point stag named Duke. The stag is long dead, but a sixteen-point buck is still seen roaming around campus.

The Phantom of O'Donnell Heights

In July of 1951, the east Baltimore district of O'Donnell Heights was prowled by a phantom. The black-robed, black-capped figure made his forays from a graveyard, jumping six-foot fences topped with barbed wire and leaping off of roofs in the manner of the British phantom Spring Heeled Jack, all without leaving a single track or trace. And for the two-week period the ghostly prowler patrolled the streets, late-night music was heard emanating from the graveyard's chapel.

The figure was reported to lurk underneath cars, calling out to young girls, beseeching them to "Come closer, my dear." He also apparently broke into old women's houses, and several people claimed that they heard him running on rooftops. Men armed with clubs, guns, and knives patrolled the streets, attempting to run down the phantom. At one point, they gave chase and the leaping phantom vanished in the graveyard. This was the last he was to be seen. By August, he had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared.

According to an article on Maryland ghost stories appearing in the Baltimore City Paper, there were instances in which rooftop pipes and German Shepherd dogs were mistaken for the Phantom. There were also numerous instances which saw teenagers causing trouble and blaming it on the Phantom. By August, when the Phantom vanished, the police had begun arresting teenagers trespassing in the graveyard.

Whether the Phantom of O'Donnell Heights was a true Spring-Heel manifestation, a product of mass hysteria, or a real-life criminal given supernatural attributes may never be known.

As a reporter for the Baltimore Sun said on those hot nights during the Cold War,

The question of the prowler of O'Donnell Heights however, continued to be not one of phantoms, but of real people reacting to (and possibly creating) the unknown with their imaginations.

The Black Dog of Warfieldsburg

According to Ann W. Whitney and Caroline C. Bullock in Folk-Lore from Maryland, in 1887 two men on horseback were near Warfieldsburg's Ore Mine Bridge, in Carroll County, saw a large black dog on the other side of a fence. The dog passed through the fence, crossed the road, passed through a fence on the other side, and disappeared from view. Whitney and Bullock record that one of the men was amazed at the dog's size - apparently, the fact that it passed through two fences wasn't worthy of his mention.

They also record that a man was told that he could see a phantom dog if he stood underneath a tree near a bridge for an hour. He did so, and sure enough, the dog appeared. He stated that the dog then followed him for a little way. This is similar to the British black dogs, which often follow travellers. Another sighting which bears a parallel to British lore was one by a man driving a wagon down the road, who said that he saw the phantasmal dog dragging a chain. Barghest of the Yorkshire Moors is reputed to engage in just such a chain-dragging activity. This is also a feature of Cadejo of Central American lore, a black hound with hooved feet.

The black dog of Warfieldsburg can supposedly only be seen by an individual once. A cracking whip near the dog will make it vanish. This theory was unsuccessfully tested in the 1920s by one witness, whose whip passed right throught the dog.

The sadly deceased Mark Chorvinsky has recorded a sighting of a phantom hound near Warfieldsburg in 1975 ("Phantom Dogs in Maryland", Strange Magazine 19). Several people driving along the road heard a thud as the car impacted a large black dog. Some of the witnesses distinctly felt the creature underneath the wheels. Yet when the car stopped, the passengers "were amazed to see the dog standing on its huge paws. The beast bared its teeth, showing an ugly red mouth, then vanished as suddenly as it had appeared."

Of nightmares, ghosts, UFOs, and pythons

Over on the CFZ blog, Neil Arnold has an interesting post on some sort of ophidian nightmare. The story's pretty neat, and not altogether unlike the experiences that take place in a hypnagogic or hypnapompic state with the crushing sensations. Sure, there are differences (for instance, Neil reports the ability to move) and I find it very interesting that while Neil's girlfriend didn't see the apparition, she experienced the same phenomenon.

In the past, I've done a lot of thinking on these hallucinatory states and how they may account for a lot of the stranger creature sightings out there. For those who aren't familiar with the terms, they refer to a type of hallucination that is sometimes experienced either when falling asleep (hypnagogic) or immediately upon waking (hypnapompic). These nearly always occur in conjunction with sleep paralysis, where a person's mind and body don't "sync up" in their states of wakefulness which results in an inability of the muscles to move although the surroundings can be perceived normally. This state of neither sleep nor wakefulness results in imagery from dreams being seen in normal surroundings. Through means not necessarily explained, the hallucinations can occur in conjunction with sensory phenomena, such as a feeling of being pricked by needles. Obviously, some researchers have connected this phenomena with many of the ghost sightings and UFO abduction stories out there.

I myself have had experiences at least twice with similar states. Once, in about 1995, I awoke quite late at night to find myself unable to move, with a black silhouette of a man, his arms held rigidly at his sides, standing in a corner of my bedroom. After a few moments, he vanished. On another occasion, as I lay waking up, I distinctly felt someone sit on my bed and place their arms on my shoulders.

This phenomena, I can vouch, is indeed very disturbing and frightening.

These states aren't fully understood. Personally, I would not at all doubt there could be variants of the phenomena where the individual is fully mobile. Likewise, given the physical sensations sometimes associated with the hallucinations, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that through some psychosomatic mechanism the marks associated could manifest on the body.

Perhaps these hallucinatory states don't even necessarily occur with sleep, perhaps it's possible to have them during waking hours, as well. To bring this to a more Fortean context, perhaps through some unknown mechanism the hallucinations can manifest physically and lead others to have experiences with an image ripped from someone else's dream.

Who knows?

Springheeled Jack in Philly

In May, 1905, a cleaning woman named Julia McGlone was leaving her workplace early one morning when a figure leapt down and assaulted her. The shadowy attacker left her with scratches all over her face and neck. McGlone screamed for a policeman who rushed to her aid. The policeman pulled a gun on the attacker, who "blew blue flames" into his face and leapt up a flight of stairs in a single bound, making his escape. This was only one of a series of attacks perpetrated by a tall, thin man in shining metallic clothing.

The descriptions of the Philadelphia prowler in 1905 tally up admirably well with the reports of a similarly-dressed and highly agile attacker in London, England who was recorded from as far back as 1837. He had a similar propensity for dazzling his victims with a bluish flame and making his escape before capture. The prowler was known as Springheeled Jack, and predated by half a century reports of another Jack stalking the London streets.