December 29— "Wolf killed on a railroad line!"
It was at Cumwinton, which is near Carlisle, about thirty miles from Hexham. The body was found on a railroad line— "Magnificent specimen of male gray wolf— total length five feet— measurement from foot to top of shoulder, thirty inches."
Captain Bains, of Shotley Bridge, went immediately to Cumwinton. He looked at the body of the wolf. He said that it was not his wolf.
There was doubt in the newspapers. Everybody is supposed to know his own wolf, but when one's wolf has made material for a host of damage suits, one's recognitions may be dimmed.
This body of a wolf was found, and killings of sheep stopped.
But Capt. Bains’ denial that the wolf was his wolf was accepted by the Hexham Wolf Committee. Data were with him. He had reported the escape of his wolf, and the description was on record in the Shotley Bridge police station. Capt. Bains’ wolf was, in October, no "magnificent" full-grown specimen, but a cub, four and a half months old. Though nobody had paid any attention to this circumstance, it had been pointed out, in the Hexham Herald, October 15.
The wolf of Cumwinton was not identified, according to my reading of the data. Nobody told of an escape of a grown wolf, though the news of this wolf's death was published throughout England. The animal may have come from somewhere far from England. Photographs of the wolf were sold, as picture postal cards. People flocked to Cumwinton. Men in the show business offered to buy the body, but the decision of the railroad company was that the body had not been identified, and belonged to the company. The head was preserved, and was sent to the central office, in Derby.
But what became of the Shotley Bridge wolf?
All that can be said is that it disappeared.
The mystery begins with this statement:
That, in October, 1904, a wolf, belonging to Capt. Bains, of Shotley Bridge, escaped, and that about the same time began a slaughtering of sheep, but that Capt. Bains’ wolf had nothing to do with the slaughter.
Or the statement is that there was killing of sheep, in Northumberland, and that then came news of the escape of a wolf, by which the killing of a few sheep might be explained—
But that then there were devourings, which could not be attributed to a wolf-cub.
The wolf-cub disappeared, and there appeared another wolf, this one of a size and strength to which the devourings could be attributed.
Somewhere there was science.
If it had not been for Capt. Bains’ prompt investigation, the reported differences between these two animals would have been overlooked, or disbelieved, and the story would be simply that a wolf had escaped from Shotley Bridge, had ravaged, and had been killed at Cumwinton. But Capt. Bains did investigate, and his statement that the wolf of Cumwinton was not his wolf was accepted. So then, instead of a satisfactory explanation, there was a new mystery. Where did the wolf of Cumwinton come from?
There is something that is acting to kill off mysteries. Perhaps always, and perhaps not always, it can be understood in common place terms. If luminous things that move like flying birds are attracting attention, a Mr. Cannell appears, and says that he has found a luminous owl. In the newspapers, about the middle of February, appeared a story that Capt. Alexander Thompson, of Tacoma, Washington— and I have looked this up, learning that a Capt. Alexander Thompson did live in Tacoma, about the year 1905— was walking along a street in Derby, when he glanced in a taxidermist's window, and there saw the supposed wolf's head. He recognized it, not as the head of a wolf, but the head of a malmoot, an Alaskan sleigh dog, half wolf and half dog. This animal, with other malmoots, had been taken to Liverpool, for exhibition, and had escaped in a street in Liverpool. Though I have not been able to find out the date, I have learned that there was such an exhibition, in Liverpool. No date was mentioned by Capt. Thompson. The owners of the malmoot had said nothing, and rather than to advertise, had put up with the loss, because of their fear that there would be damages for sheep-killing. Not in the streets of Liverpool, presumably. No support for this commonplace-ending followed. Nothing more upon the subject is findable in Liverpool newspapers.
Liverpool is 120 miles from Hexham.
It is a story of an animal that escaped in Liverpool, and, leaving no trail of slaughtering behind it, went to a distant part of England, exactly to a place where a young wolf was at large, and there slaughtered like a wolf.
I prefer to think that the animal of Cumwinton was not a malmoot.
Derby Mercury, February 22— that the animal had been identified as a wolf, by Mr. A. S. Hutchinson, taxidermist to the Manchester Museum of Natural History. Liverpool Echo, December 31— that the animal had been identified as a wolf, by a representative of Bostock and Wombell's Circus, who had traveled from Edinburgh to see the body.
Killing of poultry, and the body of an otter on the railroad line— and the killing of poultry stopped.
Or that there may be occult things, beings and events, and that also there may be something of the nature of an occult police force, which operates to divert human suspicions, and to supply explanations that are good enough for whatever, somewhat of the nature of minds, human beings have— or that, if there be occult mischief-makers and occult ravagers, they may be of a world also of other beings that are acting to check them, and to explain them, not benevolently, but to divert suspicion from themselves, because they, too, may be exploiting life upon this earth, but in ways more subtle, and in orderly, or organized fashion.
We have noticed, in investigating obscure, or occult, phenomena, or alleged phenomena, that sometimes in matters that are now widely supposed to be rank superstitions, orthodox scientists are not so uncompromising in their oppositions, as are those who have not investigated. In the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1894, is an account of a case of "spontaneous combustion of human bodies." The account is by Dr. Adrian Hava, not as observed by him, but as reported by his father. In Science, 10-100, is quoted a paper that was read by Dr. B. H. Hartwell, of Ayer, Mass., before the Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society. It was Dr. Hartwell's statement that, upon May 12, 1890, while driving through a forest, near Ayer, he had been called, and, going into the wood, saw, in a clearing, the crouched form of a woman. Fire which was not from clothing, was consuming the shoulders, both sides of the abdomen, and both legs. See Dr. Dixon Mann's Forensic Medicine (edition of 1922), p. 216. Here, cases are told of and are accepted as veritable— such as the case of a woman, consumed so by fire that on the floor of her room there was only a pile of calcined bones left of her. The fire, if in an ordinary sense it was fire, must have been of the intensity of a furnace: but a table cloth, only three feet from the pile of cinders, was unscorched. There are other such records.
I think that our data relate, not to "spontaneous combustion of human bodies," but to things, or beings, that, with a flaming process, consume men and women, but, like werewolves, or alleged werewolves, mostly pick out women. Occurrences of this winter of 1904-5 again. Early in February, in London, a woman, who was sitting asleep, before a fire in a grate, awoke, finding herself flaming. A commonplace explanation would seem to be sufficient: nevertheless it is a story of "mysterious burns," as worded in Lloyd's Weekly News, February 5. A coroner had expressed an inability to understand. In commenting upon the case, the corner had said that a cinder might have shot from the grate, igniting this woman's clothes, but that she had been sitting, facing the fire, and that the burns were on her back.
Upon the morning of February 26th (Hampshire Advertiser, March 4) at Butlock Heath, near Southampton, neighbors of an old couple, named Kiley, heard a scratching sound. They entered the house, and found it in flames, inside. Kiley was found, burned to death, on the floor. Mrs. Kiley, burned to death, was sitting in a chair, in the same room, "badly charred, but recognizable."
A table was overturned, and a broken lamp was on the floor.
So there seems to be an obvious explanation. But, at the inquest, it was said that an examination of this lamp showed that it could not have caused the fire. The verdict was: "Accidental death, but by what means, they (the jury) were unable to determine."
Both bodies had been fully dressed, "judging by fragments of clothes." This indicates that the Kileys had been burned before their time for going to bed. Hours later, the house was in flames. At the inquest, the mystery was that two persons, neither of whom had cried for help, presumably not asleep in an ordinary sense, should have been burned to death in a fire that did not manifest as a general fire, until hours later.
Something had overturned a table. A lamp was broken.
Again the phenomenon of scene-shifting—
Soon after the killing of poultry ceased, near Newcastle, there were uncanny occurrences upon Binbrook Farm, near Great Grimsby. There is an account, in the Jour. S. P. R., 12-138, by the Rev. A. C. Custance, of Binbrook Rectory. There was no confession, this time, but this time the girl in the case— the young housemaid again— was in no condition to be dragged to a police station. It will not be easy to think that it was trickery by the girl in this case. The story is that objects were thrown about rooms: that three times, near "a not very good, or big, fire," things burst into flames, and that finally a servant girl was burned, or was attacked by something that burned her. In the Liverpool Echo, January 25, is published a letter from a school teacher of Bin-brook, in which it is said that a blanket had been found burning in a room in which there was no fireplace. According to the report by Col. Taylor, to the S. P. R., the first manifestations occurred upon the 31st of December.
Something was killing chickens, in the farm yard, and in the henhouse. All were killed in the same way. A vampirish way? Their throats were torn.
I go to a newspaper for an account of phenomena, at Binbrook. The writer was so far from prejudice in favor of occult phenomena, that he began by saying: "Superstition dies hard." In theLouth and North Lincolnshire News, January 28, he tells of objects that unaccountably fell from shelves in the farmhouse, and of mysterious transportations of objects, "according to allegations." “A story that greatly dismays the unsophisticated is that of the servant girl, who, while sweeping the floor, was badly burned on the back. This is how the farmer relates it: ‘Our servant girl, whom we had taken from the workhouse, and who had neither kin nor friend in the world that she knows of, was sweeping the kitchen. There was a very small fire in the grate: there was a guard there, so that no one can come within two feet or more of the fire, and she was at the other end of the room, and had not been near. I suddenly came into the kitchen, and there she was, sweeping away, while the back of her dress was afire. She looked around, as I shouted, and, seeing the flames, rushed through the door. She tripped, and I smothered the fire out with wet sacks. But she was terribly burned, and she is at the Louth Hospital, now, in terrible pain.’
“This last sentence is very true. Yesterday our representative called at the hospital, and was informed that the girl was burnt extensively on the back, and lies in a critical condition. She adheres to the belief that she was in the middle of the room, when her clothes ignited.”
A great deal, in trying to understand this occurrence, depends upon what will be thought of the unseen killing of chickens—
"Out of 250 fowls, Mr. White says that he has only 24 left. They have all been killed in the same weird way. The skin around the neck, from the head to the breast, has been pulled off, and the windpipe drawn from its place and snapped. The fowl house has been watched night and day, and, whenever examined, four or five birds would be found dead."
In London, a woman sat asleep, near a grate, and something, as if taking advantage of this means of commonplace explanation, burned her, behind her. Perhaps a being, of incendiary appetite, had crept up behind her, but I had no data upon which so to speculate. But, if we accept that, at Binbrook Farm, something was. savagely killing chickens, we accept that whatever we mean by a being was there. It seems that, in the little time taken by the farmer to put out the fire of the burning girl, she could not have been badly scorched. Then the suggestion is that, unknown to her, something behind her was burning her, and that she was unconscious of her own scorching flesh. All the stories are notable for absence of outcry, or seeming unconsciousness of victims that something was consuming them.
The town of Market Rasen is near Binbrook Farm. The address of the clergyman who reported, to the S. P. R., the fires and the slaughterings of chickens, upon the farm, is "Binbrook Rectory, Market Rasen." Upon January 16th, as told in the Louth and North Lincolnshire News, January 21, there was, in a chicken house,. at Market Rasen, a fire in which 57 chickens were consumed. Perhaps a fire in a chicken house is not much of a circumstance to record, but I note that it is said that how this fire started could not be found out.
The girl of Binbrook Farm was taken to the Louth Hospital. In Lloyd's Weekly News, February 5, there is an account of "mysterious burns." It is the case of Ashton Clodd, a man aged 75, who, the week before, had died in the Louth Hospital. It is said that he had fallen into a grate, while putting coals in it, and that, for some reason, probably because of his rheumatism, had been unable to rise, and had been fatally burned. But a witness at the inquest is quoted: "If there was a fire in the fireplace, it was very little."
All around every place that we have noted, the revival was simmering, seething, or raging. In Leeds, women, who said that they were directed by visions, stood in the streets, stopping cars, trying to compel passengers to join them. A man in Tunbridge Wells, taking an exhortation literally, chopped his right hand off. "Holy dancers" appeared in London. At Driffield, someone led a procession every night, trundling his coffin ahead of him. And all this in England. And, in England, it is very much the custom to call attention to freaks and extravagances in other parts of the world, or more particularly in one other part of the world, as if only there occurred all the freaks and extravagances. Riots broke out in Liverpool, where the revivalists, with a mediaeval enthusiasm, attacked Catholics. The Liverpool City Council censured "certain so-called religious meetings, which create danger to life and property." Also at South-end, there were processions of shouters, from which rushed missionaries to slug Catholics, and to sling bricks at houses in which lived Catholics. In the Liverpool Echo, February 6, is quoted a magistrate, who said to a complainant, who, because of differences in a general doctrine of loving one's neighbors, had been assaulted: "When you see one of these processions, you should run away, as you would from a mad bull."
