Ghosts of the PA Wilds: A Haunted Publication in the Dark Skies
- by Lou Bernard
- October 31, 2024
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If you’re looking for interesting haunted stories in the Dark Skies landscape of the Pennsylvania Wilds, you should look at the books of Robert Lyman. In the early 1970s, he wrote two books about legends mostly in Potter County: Forbidden Land and Amazing Indeed. Both of them contain multiple chapters with ghosts, UFOs, ancient curses, and other interesting legends.
And, evidently, one of the books seems to have been haunted during publication.
Admittedly this is unusual, even for hauntings. I’ve been writing about ghosts since 2008 and I’ve never had one haunt the actual article.
Forbidden Land was published in 1971, and then Lyman followed up in 1973 with Amazing Indeed. In the second book, a chapter called “Poltergeist In The Print Shop” tells the
story of what happened while publishing the first one.
The books were published by Leader Publishing, and set on a perforated tape at the Enterprise, the local newspaper. The computer they were using was known to be the most reliable one in the place, and it was to justify and space the print and then photograph it onto a special film. During the first attempt, the lines and spacing were a mess. No matter how the staff adjusted it, the spacing wouldn’t come out right.
“On and on it went,” the book says, “until finally that mechanical contraption decided to cooperate. (By the way, with all adjustments made, it ended up with the same settings originally made.)”
The operator then thought everything was finally working out, and put the tape in the computer to develop it. And then it printed out in gibberish understood by nobody. “The darned fool thing decided to make up its own stories in the computer language,” said the book.
Next they began to print from the film, and the thing wouldn’t stop. No matter how many times the stop button was pushed, it continued to spit out the film until the machine was shut down. At this point, kicking it was coming to seem like a workable option.
And it wasn’t over yet.
“Once more the computer pulled one of its practical jokes,” said the book, “which turned out to be a little scary if anything.”
The chapter they were printing was called “Ghost In Jail,” which told the story of Ralph Brassmire, who haunted the jail where he was executed. (The book refers to him as “Brassmire,” but records show the name was actually “Crossmire,” which may be another way the ghost slipped an error into publication.)
The staff came in to begin the printing. And, without any prompting, the printing began itself. The computer came on, and began printing all by itself. There was a flash of light and a ticking sound, and the two staffers who saw it both said, “Did you see that?”
“It was rather spooky to say the least,” the chapter read.
It happened twice more during the publication, but never again, and never on another book. At least ten witnesses saw these things happen, and more odd workplace-related weird stuff that couldn’t be explained. “There were many other perplexities too numerous to mention,” the book says.
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Well. I opened this article by commenting that one of my pieces had never itself been haunted, but just now, as I wrote this, my screen shut off and this stuff came up on it.
I decided to leave it as evidence. It could be that the ghost attacking Lyman’s book now took a shot at haunting my article. And you readers are the first to see it.
