Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf Read Free

piece was a large square of material with red and white stripes. In the white stripes was some type of floral screen print, and more of the dark blotches and stains were visible,” Francis said. “The last piece was a long strip of heavy white material that had some sort of tie on one end. This piece had the largest stains of all the pieces, but their regularity on the piece seemed to suggest that the stains occurred after the item was folded into a smaller square.”
    Francis sent photos of the dress pieces to Linda White, owner of Linda White Antique Clothing in Upton, Massachusetts. White has been in business for almost 30 years, and her area of expertise is period clothing ranging from the 1830s to the 1970s.
    White’s belief was that the pinafore, sized for a child or young woman, was sewn on a sewing machine and was almost certainly from the Victorian era.
    “The pinafore was in very good condition,” Francis said. “A detailed report written by the Boston and Albany Railroad said that Mary was killed instantly after ignoring a flag man and running in front of the engine. If she had been wearing a pinafore at the time of her death, chances are incredibly remote that it would have made it through the ordeal so well-preserved.”
    White also said that the skirt itself could not have belonged to a young girl of 10, because the waist measured approximately 30 inches.
    “She could also find no evidence of a waistband, and it appeared that the top section of the dress had been cut off to convert it into a crude skirt,” Francis said. “And a close-up of the hooks that held the waist together revealed that the hooks and eyes were from the 1940s.”
    Francis, intrigued by White’s analysis, eventually was able to bring her the actual remnants of the dress. White confirmed the original observations she made based on the pictures, but she was unable to identify the other pieces. However, she believes the grapes and swirls printed on the striped piece of fabric date it to the Art Nouveau period of the early 1900s, and that it is likely a remnant of a tablecloth.
    “So we have two identifiable pieces, both from varying eras and belonging to two different women of different ages, and though we aren’t sure just who the pieces belonged to, we can be almost 100 percent sure that they didn’t belong to Mary Smith,” Francis said.
    If not Smith, then whom did these scraps of clothing with apparent blood stains actually belong to? Francis said they could have belonged to any number of people who stayed there during the many decades that the house offered lodging, including those traveling the rails, transient workers spending time in the area, and even prostitutes, although there is no concrete evidence to support that.
    “There is reference to a ‘cow yard’ during John Stone’s ownership, which is an old American euphemism for a brothel,” Francis said. “Other than that, we have no concrete evidence to support the claim, other than the location of the hotel and its transient clientele offering a wonderful opportunity for any women who wanted to make some money in that capacity.”
    Although the actual owner of the dress may never be determined, it appears the garment has a spirit attached to it, nevertheless. It may not be Mary Smith, but whoever the ghost is, she clearly doesn’t want her clothing removed from its final resting place in the attic of Stone’s Public House.

Never a Bride
    Just about every girl dreams of someday being a bride, of having that special wedding where she can be joined in matrimony to the man she loves.
    But what happens when an overbearing father forbids his daughter to marry that man and ruins her perfect day? At the Baker Mansion in Altoona, Pennsylvania, it caused the wedding dress picked out for that ill-fated occasion to take on a life of its own.
    Prominent local businessman Elias Baker owned the mansion at the time. According to legend, Baker’s daughter, Anna, sought to