Tim Prasil's Blog

Retelling a Case of Injustice from the 1720s

“The Tile-Burner and His Family” is a part of the series Crowe called her “Tales of Continental Jurisprudence.” I’m very tempted to move these pieces to a separate list, since they aren’t technically works of fiction. These days, we’d probably called them “true crime,” though Crowe’s focus is on how the legal system handled—or truly mishandled—each crime.

“Tile-Burner” retells a case already chronicled in one of a series of pamphlets. That series had been written by François Gayot de Pitaval and titled Causes célèbres et intéressantes avec les jugemens qui les ont decidées (“Famous and Interesting Cases, with the Judgments that Decided Them”). Translated, one passage from a 1738 pamphlet reads:

Joseph Vallet’s tile works—where the tiles were crafted with greater skill than anywhere else—aroused the jealousy of other tile-makers and sparked in Frillet [the district Attorney-General] a desire to possess the establishment, and to acquire it at a bargain price. It has been alleged that this ulterior motive was the driving force behind the persecution Frillet inflicted upon Joseph Vallet, as well as the plot he hatched to bring about the downfall of an innocent man. He leveled two specific charges against Joseph Vallet and his family: he accused Joseph Vallet of having murdered Antoine Duplex, and he accused both him and his family of having taken the life of Joseph Sevos—both of whom were inhabitants of the parish of Priay, in the region of Bresse.

I have no evidence that Gayot de Pitaval served as Crowe’s direct source, though his pamphlets certainly would have suited her “Continental Jurisprudence” project well. She translated a couple of books from German to English, so it’s not impossible her French was also proficient. Regardless, in “Tile-Burner,” she uses the same names for the setting and the main players as Gayot de Pitaval. Well, Antoine Duplex becomes Antoine Dupler.

A Cheater’s Guide to “Tile-Burner”

The tale takes many twists and turns. Feel free to skip this next bit, but this might help a reader through the sequence of events:

A man named Frillet served as Attorney General in the district of Pont de l’Ain, France. He wanted Joseph Vallet’s successful brick and tile burning business for himself.In 1705, Antoine Dupler, Vallet’s neighbor, died suspiciously while in the tile-burner’s company. Despite appearances, Frillet was unable to find the smoking gun to incriminate Vallet. The covetous Attorney General ground his teeth.In 1724, two shady characters named Joseph Sevos and Antoine Pin were seen in Frillet’s company. Soon afterward, Sevos went missing, and Pin promptly enlisted as a soldier. Frillet jumped on the situation and accused Vallet of having murdered Sevos. If Pin had done it, he’d have made himself scarce instead of remaining traceable.A man named Vaudan offered testimony:He averred that, on the night of the 19th of February, having been to Mastalion, he was returning by Vallet's house, about three hours before daylight, when he heard a great noise, and clearly distinguished the words, 'Help! help! I will confess everything! Forgive me this once, and spare my life!' Whereupon a voice, which he knew to be Joseph Vallet's, answered, 'We want no more confessing; you must die!'Boom! Frillet had what he needed to have Vallet and his whole family arrested. So he did. But was Vaudan reliable?Not everyone was convinced. The Vallets seemed like good folks, so Pin was summoned and also put behind bars. He claimed he had witnessed Vallet commit the murder! So we can trust Vaudan’s testimony? Things look bad for the Vallets.Hold on, hold on! Blood was found at Sevos’s house, suggesting that his murder had occurred there and that Pin might well be both a murderer and a great big fibber. And by the way, there was new evidence that Vallet wasn’t even at home on the night he was supposed to have killed Sevos there! Come on, higher authorities, step in!After some hemming and hawing, the higher authorities did step in. They decided to punish both the Vallets and Pin! This was enough to make the latter confess. He and the missing-and-presumed-murdered man had visited Vallet that night, but afterward, Pin went to Sevos’s home and killed him there for “about forty dollars in silver.” Pin says he hid the body out back under a pile of manure. He was executed.But wait! Uh oh! No body was found out back under the pile of manure! (Did I mention things get complicated?) Was Vaudan’s version of what had happened closer to the truth, or is something else afoot?Well, all I’ll say is: there’s another surprise or two coming—and things work out fairly nicely.Crowe as Crime Writer

Crowe’s interest in crime shows itself in short stories such as “A Traveller’s Tale,” in novels such as Adventures of Susan Hopley: or, Circumstantial Evidences, and in these non-fiction pieces. She wasn’t the first to pen true crime, though, and her “Tales of Continental Jurisprudence” are among several early examples of this genre. Carrie-Edmund Laben offers an excellent history of the many branches of true crime, prose to podcasts, in “The Unchanging Nature of True Crime: From the 1700s to Contemporary Podcasts.” Citing Gayot de Pitaval as a precedent, Laben looks closely at Alexandre Dumas’ “massive Celebrated Crimes series, published in eight volumes in 1839-40,” and glances at the Newgate Calendar. These both predate Crowe’s “Tales” and quite likely served as her inspiration.

And until I figure out how to treat them, I’ll continue to include these works with the short fiction of Catherine Crowe. Because they’re cool.

Before Houdini Squinted at Séances

Walter F. Brooke was the stage and pen name of F. W. Hanscombe (?-1909). He was primarily an actor, but he became associated with a very successful magic act, and at some point, he began investigating—and regularly debunking—sites alleged to be haunted. In this regard, he put a unique spin on the practice of magicians who applied their knowledge of trickery to defrauding Spiritualist mediums. And this practice was established well before Harry Houdini joined the gang of showbiz sceptics.

For years, Brooke shared the spotlight with John Maskelyne and George Cooke, who had achieved fame in England as illusionists in the late-1800s. “Messrs. Maskelyne & Cooke” started out as Cheltenham tradesmen who dabbled in magic tricks during their spare time. When the Davenport Brothers came to town at least implying to have powers over supernatural forces, the Brit duo went to work unmasking the Yank duo. Maskelyne and Cooke reproduced the wonders they had seen in the Davenports’ performance, assuring the audience that there was nothing otherworldly involved. It launched their new careers. (There’s more information on Maskelyne & Cooke here, here, and here.)

This promotion for a Halloween performance by Messrs. Maskelyne & Cooke appeared in the October 30, 1888, issue of the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser. Brooke’s name is included among the “artistes” at the bottom.

It’s easy to assume that Brooke was inspired by Maskelyne and Cooke to redirect professional debunking away from séances and toward spooks. After all, one could make a name for oneself. One might even make a few quid in the process.

“Putting a Stop to All Seemingly Unaccountable Shrieks”

A very curious circular was reprinted in the December 14, 1892, issue of the Pall Mall Gazette:

In a follow-up interview published on the 19th, Pall Mall readers were informed that Brooke already had experience with pulling the sheets off suspected ghosts. Having traced mysterious sounds to a stowaway pig in a ship’s hold and to a disconsolate cat with its head caught in a lobster tin—and to creaky floorboards and to leaky gutters—Brooke claims to “have never been beaten.” This isn’t to say his job has always been an easy one:

One house I visited bore a very bad name. Unearthly shrieks as of a woman while being ill-treated had been heard by the neighbours, as well as by the late occupants. I stayed in the house by myself one evening, but failed to hear anything out of the common, until a lady, a few minutes before twelve, gave me a taste of her quality. I heard her as I was sitting in the kitchen, and then in the room above; I went into the garden—she was there; I went into the street—she was there. I know she was there, because I heard her. I examined the house thoroughly, but without success, until my efforts were rewarded after a couple hours of searching, and I traced her voice to the roof. I went for it with a ladder and brought it down under my arm—the chimney-pot cowl was rusty and knocked out of shape by the sweep's brush, and the wind caused these unmusical sounds.

Not long after this interview, Brooke was sharing his not-a-ghost stories in pamphlet form. I haven’t found any of these texts available online, but one has the smirk-worthy title “Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts: Who, Why, When, Where, and What They Are.” Another is titled “Ghosts in the Solid,” and the National Library of Australia offers to make a digital copy of it. (Sadly, the cost is beyond of my budget. My birthday’s coming up, should anyone be feeling generous.)

This mention of Brooke’s “Ghosts in the Solid” appeared in the November 23, 1893, issue of The Herald (Glasgow ed.).“The Only One in the World”

In The Sign of Four (1890), Mr. Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson: “I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.” The great detective quickly clarifies that he means the “only unofficial consulting detective.” By 1907, Brooke was given a dash of Holmes when an interviewer for The Daily Mirror described him as “a professional ghost-killer—the only one in the world.” The piece reveals that, while Brooke had left Messrs. Maskelyne & Cooke, he was still following in Holmes’s footsteps by probing mysteries and deducing their natural causes.

This interview illustrates how Brooke handles a specific case: an allegedly haunted house in Brighton. As the reporter accompanies his subject, dubbing him the “Bogey King,” around the residence, they find that strange phenomena can be attributed to birds, floorboards, and the wind. And a nearby lunatic asylum. And railway tracks close enough that the whistles of passing trains and reflected light from fireboxes explain reports of sobbing and of a weird creature.

Along the way, Brooke shares a couple of anecdotes from earlier cases. He also says with a sigh:

If there is a ghost here I want to shake hands with it. I have been looking for a real, authentic spook for more than sixteen years. But I am afraid I shall never, never see one.

I’m not sure how much weight to grant this, but I find it interesting that Brooke’s main motive might not have been to disprove the reality of ghosts. Rather, he might have devoted a decade-and-a-half to paranormal investigation because he wanted the very opposite.

To Shake Hands with a Ghost

About three years after the Daily Mirror interview appeared, Brooke passed away. Back in 1899, an article had described him as “suffering from a severe throat trouble which incapacitates him from work” and announced “a benefit matinée” being given to support him financially. The importance of this didn’t click with me until I came upon Brooke’s 1909 obituary. There, I discovered that he “had been ill for some time” and another benefit had been arranged, this time to support those he left behind. I can’t be sure, but it’s possible Brooke was seriously ill for about the last ten years of his life.

An obituary from the December 21, 1909, issue of The West Kent Argus.

Ghost hunting during the Victorian and Edwardian eras involved hours of waiting patiently, usually well into the night, for something to happen at a site reputed to be haunted. With this in mind, I can’t help but ask: since Brooke was ailing towards the end of his life, did he find these long evenings preferable to the physical demands of performing onstage? Furthermore, if he were contemplating his own death and the possibility of an afterlife, did that make him just a little more eager to shake hands with a ghost?

As with all of the inductees in the Hall of Fame, I find the lives of the ghost hunters at least as intriguing as what their investigations reveal about ghosts.

Explanations Natural and Paranormal

Ghost lights are fairly common among railroad hauntings, and one of the most famous has been witnessed along the abandoned tracks near Gurdon, Arkansas. There are a couple of natural explanations for the phenomenon: it might be swamp gas, or it might be something called the “piezoelectric effect.” The latter is explained in a short piece about the Gurdon ghost light at Atlas Obscura: “Piezoelectricity is generated by materials such as certain ceramics and crystals, which when bent or squeezed generate electricity and sparks.” One might suppose a study testing this possibility would have been conducted, but if so, I haven’t found anything about it. Show me the squished crystals!

There are also a few backstories explaining the light as paranormal, and two of these certainly make the case a railroad haunting. The first involves a man who was beheaded by a train, and the second concerns a railroad worker who murdered his foreman. I searched online archives to see what I could see regarding both.

A Crossing Casualty in Search of His Head

Perhaps the best account of the headless ghost explanation is found in Melissa Calley’s “Ghost Lights,” a short article in An Arkansas Folklore Sourcebook (1992). Specifying the haunted site as Sandy Crossing, Calley transcribes the tale told by a Gurdon resident (and presumably her relative, given the surname). Once upon a time, there was a man who “got run over at that crossing there one time, and it cut off his head.” Locals of the time never found the victim’s head, so they buried what they could. Afterwards, there were reports “that his ghost comes back looking for his head,” and the mysterious light is a lantern used in the search.

I wasn’t able to find any newspaper articles about a train-related beheading in the area. The closest I found was a 1949 report about a man who died on the tracks near Gurdon after having “fallen asleep on the railroad track,” which I have a hunch was a kind way of saying he committed suicide. Suicide often stirs up reports of ghostly activity, but this tragedy feels a bit too late to account for the lore surrounding the Gurdon Light—especially if the phenomenon began in the early 1930s, a point I’ll return to in a moment. Forgive my unkind way of saying it, but my efforts to trace this explanation for the haunting led to a dead end.

This illustration comes from a different railroad haunting, one in Indiana. You can see the illustration here, and read about that railroad haunting here.A Murder on the Tracks

The online Encyclopedia of Arkansas offers this rendition of the second paranormal explanation:

Many trace the Gurdon Light legend to a murder that took place near the railroad tracks in December 1931. William McClain, a foreman with the Missouri-Pacific railroad, was involved in an argument with one of his employees, Louis McBride, regarding how many days McBride was being allowed to work. During the Depression, the company did not have the option of giving McBride more hours on the job. McBride became very angry, hit McClain on the head with a shovel, and beat him to death with a railroad spike maul or a spike hammer. The Gurdon Light was first sighted shortly after this murder, and many have come to believe that the light is actually McClain’s ghostly lantern glowing.

Now, that’s enough detail—a date, a motive, names of both murderer and murdered—to assume there would have been newspaper coverage! First, I made sure the Missouri-Pacific was among the many railroad companies connecting in Gurdon, which had served as a transportation hub. While I couldn’t find anything about the murder at the newspaper archives of either the Library of Congress or Google, Jennifer Jones provides a useful image of an Arkansas Gazette article at her The Dead History site. Also, I have no reason to doubt the quotations of the Southern Standard provided in this anonymous document titled “The Gurdon Light.”

I do worry, though, about one claim made in that document: “Shortly after that time, area residents began to see the light nearby.” I found this said elsewhere, too, but never with any evidence to substantiate it. I gave it a go myself, but as yet I haven’t found anything to put a date to the first observations of the ghost light. Sightings certainly might have begun in the early 1930s, but I would be grateful for assistance in confirming this.

Visiting the Haunting Today

A post at the Arkansas State Archives places the haunting “along the path of the old railroad track about four miles north of Gurdon and about two miles away from Interstate 30.” Comments at the Roadside America site provide more details and warn of the dangers involved. Please be very careful if you decide to investigate.

Gurdon is a small town, but it’s roughly halfway between two cities that have their share of haunted sites: Little Rock and Shreveport. If you plan a ghost-hunting tour that includes the Gurdon Light, please let us know about your experiences in the comments section below.

Discover more “Railroad Hauntings You Can Still Visit” at the page for
After the End of the Line: Railroad Hauntings in Literature and Lore.

A Once-a-Year Manifestation

I reserve the right to tweak things here and there—and, of course, to add more information if it becomes available—but I’d say the Lincoln Funeral Ghost Train TARDIS is ready to be boarded. TARDIS, in this case, stands for Trusted Archival Resource Documents in Sequence, and unlike my earlier TARDIS pages, this one has two major parts.

The 1865 section looks closely at the original train that carried Abraham Lincoln’s body from Washington, DC, through Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana to the assassinated President’s final resting place in Illinois. Thousands and quite likely millions gathered to pay their respects as the funeral train rolled by or, in some cases, stopped so that the casket could be visited in a capital building or similar public place.

Now, if we consider a “residual haunting” to be an ethereal imprint of a traumatic event that gets replayed over and over, the Lincoln funeral train qualifies times ten due to that outpouring of grief. And, sure enough, the Lincoln funeral train was afterward observed again, though in the form of a supernatural reenactment. It’s said to be an anniversary ghost, reappearing at about the same time of the year. Think of it as an annual variation on the haunted battlefield of Gettysburg traveling across seven states.

This photograph shows “the Lincoln Funeral Train, taken as it passed through Chicago on May 2, 1865,” according to an article in the February, 1941, issue of Baltimore & Ohio Magazine.

For that reason, I devote the first section of the chronology to a daily timetable of the original trip, striving to narrow down times to the minute whenever possible. My hope is that paranormal investigators will use these details as a guide to determine if the ghost train still runs its yearly route. I also did my best to show when the train was traveling at night, since that’s when the ghost train was reported to be witnessed and that’s when ghost hunters typically devote their free time to investigation.

The second section starts at 1872 with the earliest report of the ghost train. This is where we see the manifestation described as appearing once a year and at night. The witness in the first article says the ghost train comes “[r]egularly in the month of April about midnight” while an 1879 report says it’s “on that night [of the 1865 trip], every year, … during a certain hour (that varies in different subdivisions of the road).” Needless to say, ghost hunters will have to decide on their own schedules.

Speaking of Investigating Specific Locations…

This TARDIS is part of my Railroad Hauntings You Can Still Visit project. All of the individual posts there end with an invitation to ghost hunters to investigate the area under discussion and to share their experience, be it productive or disappointing, in the comments section. I extend the same invitation here. I hope this post, not the TARDIS page, acts as a gathering place for any and all who have held a spectral stakeout this coming late April or early May.

However, since the 1865 funeral train traveled along more than 1,650 miles of track, there’s no single location I can recommend. Just as investigators will have to make their own schedules, I hope they’ll do their own deeper research into the specific spot they’re investigating. Here are a few points to consider:

While we can trust that the actual 1860s tracks have been replaced at some point, does the route still run in about the same place? Old railroad right-of-ways have a habit of staying put, even if they’re converted from, say, rails to trails. But there are exceptions.All of the states the 1865 train crossed introduced Daylight Savings Time in 1918, and DST now applies for the late-April and early May dates it ran. One should subtract an hour to match the times stated on the TARDIS. Even so, it’s doubtful the times I found in newspapers are 100% reliable. Give the ghost train ample time. Bring snacks. Have train-related songs on your playlist.Some of the descriptions of the ghost train include skeleton passengers, eerie music coming from the train cars, and an unsettling fog preceding the manifestation. Prepare to be scared on the chance this thing is real.Finally, remember that those witnesses who first encountered the ghost train did so with nothing more than their own senses. In other words, ghost hunting gadgetry is very optional.

You can visit The Lincoln Funeral Ghost Train TARDIS here. If it inspires you to go looking, I look forward to reading what you experienced.

Discover more
“Railroad Hauntings You Can Still Visit”
at the page for
After the End of the Line: Railroad Hauntings in Literature and Lore.

Curated Crime Movies Main PageKEMPTON: I'll give them the painting. They'll put it on exhibition, charge the public to see the Duke, and give me the proceeds. Bingo!
JACKIE: How much would an exhibition raise?
KEMPTON: £30,000? £50,000? Who knows? The painting's not been out of the news, has it? I'll be able to pay for God knows how many TV licenses.
JACKIE: You're not really going to use it all on telly licenses!
KEMPTON: Why not?
JACKIE: Just saying, who couldn't make use of a couple of grand?
KEMPTON: You think Robin Hood took a rake-off?At Large

This is factual. In 1965, Kempton Bunton stood trial for stealing Francisco Goya’s painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery. The 61-year-old pensioner of very modest means had confessed to the crime, after trying to ransom it in exchange for £140,000 being allocated to cover pensioners’ television license fees. That amount was the same as the painting’s valuation at the time of its theft.

After all, Bunton was holding a stolen masterpiece for ransom, but he wasn’t out to cheat anyone.

The Duke is a 2020 biopic following the events. Based on what I’ve read, it follows those events pretty closely, including the ones that became public many years after the theft and the trial.

Jim Broadbent stars as the bighearted and chatty Kempton Bunton, and Helen Mirren plays his distraught and laconic wife, Dorothy. It was directed by Roger Mitchell, perhaps best known for Notting Hill, the rom-com of three years earlier.

Funny and enchanting, The Duke has a 97% critics’ score at Rotten Tomatoes.

Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren as the Buntons, an unassuming married couple one might not expect to become enmeshed in the theft of an art masterpiece.Arresting Features

Much of the humor in The Duke grows from the fact that the characters and plot are, well, fact. However, that humor never overtakes the film’s depiction of these characters’ humanity. As their backstory is revealed, we learn the Buntons suffered the loss of a daughter in a bicycle accident, and repressed grief prompts tensions in the marriage. Guilt for the death also begins to explain Kempton’s drive to serve the Greater Good. I suspect this level of depth is what attracted actors of Broadbent and Mirren’s status to the project.

KEMPTON: You've never let me talk about it.
DOROTHY: Grief is private.
KEMPTON: I bought her that bike. If I got her anything else, she'd still be alive.
DOROTHY: Well, she isn't.

Need I say that their performances are admirable and engaging? While I’ve seen Broadbent in somewhat comparable roles, I can’t say I recall seeing Mirren portray a dowdy, working-class housewife before. And their fine work is reflected by the entire cast.

The film also gives viewers, even those far removed from the time and place, a good sense of life in 1960s Newcastle, England. Most of Mitchell’s cinematic storytelling doesn’t draw attention to itself, allowing the audience to become absorbed into realism. However, on occasion, he borrows an eye-catching transition involving—well, I don’t know what to call it other than moving split-screens reminiscent of groovy movies from that decade. It’s a style choice that enhances the period feel without sacrificing the narrative substance.

Some of the film’s most amusing moments come when Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent) presents his court testimony.In Cahoots

Interestingly, Bunton’s legal defense loudly echoes the one used to exonerate the title characters in Henry A. Hering’s The Complete Crimes of the Burglars’ Club, one of the volumes in the Curated Crime Collection. Once upon a time, British law held that, to qualify as theft, the intention must be to keep the article in question, not to merely borrow it. They steal from the rich to give back to the rich (while hopefully that first part relieves a bit of their boredom).

In other words, the members of the Burglars’ Club don’t share the same motive as Robin Hood. Bunton is a different species of scoundrel, too, one who is more in keeping with Robin of Loxley.

In that Bunton hopes the missing masterpiece can be used to help the economically disadvantaged, The Duke better reflects the con man who repeatedly preys on the title character of Grant Allen’s An African Millionaire. (This composite novel is combined with Allen’s daring “The Curate of Churnside” in a single CCC volume). Sure enough, Grant’s master criminal, known as Colonel Clay, has no particular desire to giveth to the downtrodden. Instead, Clay is determined to taketh away from a millionaire whose business practices, while technically legal, are often far from ethical. In other words, Clay prefigures Bunton in using crime to combat a questionable if not corrupt legal system, and for this reason, Grant’s playful tales are as satisfying to read as The Duke is to watch.

Curated Crime Movies Main Page

One of the features of our time—as of all times, each of which is new in its generation—is the character of its crimes.

— Catherine Crowe, “A Tale of Modern Germany”

In the preface of her collection Light and Darkness; Or, The Mysteries of Life (1850), Catherine Crowe says she hopes the works contained therein “will not be found unworthy; especially the Tales of Continental Jurisprudence; such as ‘The Tile Burner and [H]is Family,’ ‘The Story of the Priest of St. Quentin,’ ‘The Bride’s Journey,’ &c, &c.” This suggests she saw herself having written a series of pieces unified in the setting of mainland Europe and in the subject of the legal handling of crime.

“A Tale of Modern Germany” (1846), which is retitled “The Morning Visitor” in Light and Darkness, certainly fits this series. It opens with a bit of expository discourse, something like the opening paragraphs about the analytic mental facility in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). Crowe, however, discusses how—from an English perspective—”continental criminal records…read like the annals of a previous century. We think we perceive also a state of morals somewhat in arrear of the stage we have reached, and certainly some curious and very defective forms of law.” Hardly immune to Anglocentrism, Crowe writes:

How thoroughly foreign and strange to us was the history of Madame Lafarge! How unlike ours were the modes and habits of life it disclosed, and how vividly one felt that it was the tale of another land! So of the Priest Riembauer, noticed in a late number of the "Edinburgh Review," who murdered the woman he had outraged; the details of whose crime were as foreign to us as the language he spoke.

In other words, Crowe is making Continental crime something tantalizingly exotic while prompting English readers to feel confident in, if not smug about, their nation’s superior legal system—and perhaps its more civilized crimes.

The story itself is about a real-life murderer named Johann Georg Tinius (1764-1846), and an interesting case it is. Tinius was a priest and an avid book buyer. It is speculated that this bibliophilia spurred him to commit a series of robberies. Two of these ended in murder in 1812 and 1813. However, due to legal futzing and finagling, Tinius was not convicted until 1823. Only then did he begin to serve a 12-year sentence. That was his sentence for double murder. Committed with a hammer! Hmm, maybe Crowe is right about the foreign feeling of German jurisprudence in the early nineteenth century.

As far as I can tell, Crowe narrates the case with historical accuracy, and this raises a key question: is this a work of fiction? In that preface to Light and Darkness, Crowe refers to the contents as “tales” and “stories,” but this one might easily be deemed a historical essay, a journalistic report, a biographical sketch, or possibly some early type of creative non-fiction. Ever intrigued by the parallels between Crowe and Poe, I’m tempted to compare it to the latter’s next C. Auguste Dupin detective story, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842-1843). Here, Poe fictionalizes the real case of Mary Roger’s murder, exporting it to France, changing names, and having Dupin arrive at a solution to an otherwise unsolved crime. Crowe doesn’t name the culprit until well into “A Tale of Modern Germany,” giving it a structure not unlike a mystery. However, her solution to the murders is the one originally determined by German officials instead of anything more speculative. Its comparison to Poe’s piece of history-made-fiction, then, is too weak to settle the matter.

Upon diving deeper into these “Tales of Continental Jurisprudence,” I might go ahead and remove this from my bibliography of Crowe’s short fiction. Better yet, maybe I’ll move it to its own section for her series about these criminal cases.

I have a few TARDIS pages here and there at BromBonesBooks.com. The acronym stands for Trusted Archival Research Documents in Sequence, and these are chronologies exploring various topics. My latest involves a railroad haunting known as the Lincoln Funeral Ghost Train, named for an elaborate 1865 train trip carrying the body of Abraham Lincoln from Washington DC, where he was assassinated, to Springfield, Illinois, where he was laid to rest. The route was far from direct, crossing seven states. And it was far from quick, taking twelve days. This was so as many people as possible—well, as many northerners as possible—could pay their last respects to the beloved President.

This engine, named the Nashville, hauled the cars comprising the Lincoln Funeral Train.

In the early 1870s, a ghostly reenactment of the railroad journey was reported in newspapers across the United States and the United Kingdom. Now, though, skeletons rode onboard, a multitude of ethereal Union soldiers floated behind the train, and watches and clocks stopped as the phantom cars passed. Additional sightings or, at least, creative variations on the original tale slowly popped up in publications afterward.

I’ve been hesitant to research this case because of its breadth—does the ghost train manifest anywhere along the route of some 1,650 miles? I can give specifics about the route the original, physical train traveled—but is it wise to suggest the ghost train continues to appear along any of these tracks (assuming the phenomena and the rails themselves remain)? On the plus side, this is an old-fashioned anniversary ghost, meaning it materializes on the same month and day as the journey it echoes. While it’s tough to pinpoint where to investigate the haunting, at least we have a pretty good idea of when to do so.

Despite the complications, it strikes me that my Railroad Hauntings You Can Still Visit project would be lacking without a look at this famous case. For that reason, I’ve started a TARDIS page, a timetable charting its history. It’s still in the early stages, but you can see what I have so far here.

—Tim

A Rocky Mountain Haunting

Until now, all but the one of the U.S. railroad hauntings I’ve discussed in this series are located east of the Mississippi River. I guess that makes sense: a denser population means more railroads and more newspapers. And more ghosts.

But here’s one set in a train tunnel in the Rocky Mountains, roughly fifteen miles east of Bozeman, Montana. Construction of a tunnel for the Northern Pacific Railroad took place between 1882 and 1884, and a report that it might be haunted appeared in April of 1885. Unlike some of the cases I’ve researched, news of this one doesn’t seem to have traveled very far, not even beyond what was then the Montana Territory. The earliest article I’ve found was in The Bozeman Weekly Chronicle, and this was reprinted in the Helena Weekly Herald about a week later. A week after that, it was summarized in The Billings Herald.

Here’s that first report in the Chronicle:

The explanation used to debunk the haunting strikes me as shaky. Attributing the guiding ghostly light—perceived on a regular basis by multiple people—to mere imagination seems perfunctory. This curt explanation might give one the impression that it is itself lacking in imagination or is a product thereof. Furthermore, while “singular noises” is a vague phrase, the witnesses were “section and other men in the vicinity of the tunnel,” people who would presumably be familiar with the structure’s sounds. I doubt it would require an engineer to deem the noises something perfectly ordinary, if they were such.

No, I maintain that there was something occurring at Bozeman Tunnel beyond fantasy and falling stones.

A Ghost Named Gus?

Though it doesn’t substantiate anything paranormal, the article provides an enticing clue to the mystery when it says “a man was killed at the tunnel when it was being built.” I had to dig fairly deep to uncover evidence to clarify this detail (though not so deep, you can run a train through the hole left behind).

In March of 1883, a premature blast was said to have killed one man, but no name is given. In August of that year, a report that the collapse of a platform had killed a dozen men proved to be an exaggeration: six men were injured and no one died in the incident. And in November, a man named “Pat Keating” and “Gus Keating” in two spots on the very same page of the Chronicle is identified as a fatality of a cave-in.

Elsewhere on this page of the November 21, 1883, issue of Bozeman Weekly Chronicle, this victim of the tunnel appears as Pat Keating, not Gus.

It seems, then, that at least two men—the unnamed victim of a blast and Mr. Keating—lost their lives during construction of the tunnel. However, this is as much a backstory for a ghost as it is inducement for interpreting weird sounds and a moving light to be of spectral origin.

Visiting the Site Today

In the 1940s, a new tunnel was built a bit to the north to accommodate wider trains. This parallel tunnel is now part of the BNSF Railway and, therefore, should be strictly avoided by any paranormal investigators curious about the site. I’m not able to learn how accessible the old tunnel’s east and west entrances are or if the tunnel itself remains open. It is an old, old tunnel, and personally, I’d be much more anxious about all the natural dangers inside it than anything supernatural that might still be there. Luckily, the 1885 report suggests any lingering phenomena probably can be observed outside the tunnel and hopefully from a considerable distance.

That said, the old tunnel is easy to find with the western entrance, near West End, being just south of where Bozeman Hill Road and Beacon Hill Road meet. The east entrance is at a place called Muir, named for James Muir, the contractor who purchased Mr. Keating’s coffin.

“Rocky Cañon, Near the Bozeman Tunnel, Montana,” drawn by Charles Graham, appears in the June 14, 1884, issue of Harper’s Weekly.

Paul Walters offers a thorough, well-written history of the Bozeman Pass and the Northern Pacific Railroad’s presence there. The pictures he provides are great, and since the tunnel is in a fairly remote place, maybe ghost hunters or train buffs will be perfectly content to scroll down his essay instead of visiting the location in person. Just the same, comments from anyone who has looked into the matter would be warmly appreciated.

Discover more “Railroad Hauntings You Can Still Visit” at the page for
After the End of the Line: Railroad Hauntings in Literature and Lore.

Curated Crime Movies Main PageWILLIE: Are you talking about actually doing this or what?
JOE: Yeah. Actually doing this.
WILLIE: Do you hear what you're saying?
JOE: Look, let me tell you something, Willie. I gotta look back and say that my life was okay. I got my share of everything but money. And the guys who went out for that, some of them got it today, but they put too much time in getting it. Whatever—that's history. Right now, here we are, and I ain't complaining. But things would be a hell of a lot easier if we had a little extra cash.At Large

I went into Going in Style (1979), written and directed by Martin Brest, thinking it was a comedy. Given that the premise is three retired guys try to rob a bank—and given that the three guys are played by George Burns and Art Carney, both well remembered for their comedic performances, along with acting expert Lee Strasburg—I went so far as to assume it was probably a broad comedy.

I was pleased to find out I was dead wrong.

Yes, there are many funny moments sprinkled throughout Going in Style, but it’s also a portrait of three men on limited income, struggling to find some kind of thrill and some kind of financial cushion as they near their final rest. In other words, at times, this film is a moody and meditative piece less about wacky old codgers trying to get away with a major crime and more about elderly gentlemen seeking an alternative to quietly waiting until death alleviates their boredom.

This is Brest’s directorial debut, and he went on to helm Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Midnight Run (1988), Scent of a Woman (1992), and Meet Joe Black (1998). It has a critics’ score of 82% at Rotten Tomatoes. (A remake was made in 2017, but its critics’ score is painfully lower, so low I couldn’t be bothered.)

Joe (George Burns), Al (Art Carney), and Willie (Lee Strasburg) are tired of their usual routine: sitting on a bench, watching life go by.Arresting Features

Going in Style asks an important question: prior to committing armed robbery, especially when robbing a very nice bank, should one shave? It’s a question that’s both absurd and perfectly reasonable, and the scene in which the three men discuss it doesn’t follow the standard setup-punchline-setup-punchline rhythm found in many comedies. That holds true for most of the humor: it’s a juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary that prompts laughs.

A good example of the film’s quirky humor is the scene in which the soon-to-be armed robbers must determine which bullets fit which pistols they’ve discreetly borrowed for the caper.

Along with the moments of comedy, there are moments of quiet desperation. For instance, Willie is given a moonlit monolog about being haunted by a terrible mistake he made raising his son long, long ago. Joe has a touching and tearful moment, gazing at old pictures and suffering one of the worst humiliations of old age. (I doubt that critic Bobby Rivers is alone when he says Burns gives “the best performance of his film career.”) And while the robbery brings the old men an afternoon of euphoria, sometimes euphoria isn’t doctor-recommended for those of a certain age.

JOE: You know, for the first time in fifteen years, I feel like I need a vacation. Why don't we take some of that money and go to Hawaii or Miami—someplace nice like that?
AL: Hmm. Yeah?
JOE: Yeah, why the hell not? Let's go out to Las Vegas. Always had to be a two-dollar bettor. Now, I could do some real gambling, and you can get some rest.
AL: Sounds good to me. How do we get there?
JOE: I don't know. Plane, I guess.
AL: I never been on a plane before.
JOE: Neither have I. So what? We're only young once.

On the other hand, two elements of the film struck me as being out-of-place. First, Michael Small’s music score features old-timey, Dixieland Jazz-ish interludes. Was this designed to give the film a lighter, more comic tone? It feels at odds with and too consistent for the film’s range of narrative moods. Second, there’s a Las Vegas craps table scene that goes on longer than need be. The joke is that Joe and Al are trying to splurge a bit with the spoils of their crime, yet they somehow manage to increase their ill-gotten capital. That’s potentially a nice touch. But, as such, it’s too much for a touch.

A box of memories reminds Joe of the personal riches he’s lost.In Cahoots

There’s a curious kinship between Brest’s Going in Style and Henry A. Hering’s The Complete Crimes of the Burglars’ Club, one of volumes in the Curated Crime Collection. Like the film’s trio of bank robbers, the book’s club members are men who ache for an escape from day-to-day doldrums. Both the movie and the eighteen interwoven short stories are spiced with dashes of humor. In the first of Hering’s tales, for instance, the robber stumbles upon his victim and learns he’s suffering from something far, far worse than the theft of a box of his fancy cigars. As an act of sympathy, the robber kindly offers his sorrowful “mark” one of those very same cigars.

Despite these shared motives to commit crime and moments of humor, members of the Burglars’ Club don’t need what they steal nearly as much as Joe, Al, and Willie do. While the latter refuse to return the stolen money, Burglars’ Club rules stipulate that all stolen articles be promptly restored to their owners. Brest’s criminal characters are of a decidedly different class/income bracket from Hering’s thrill-hungry aristocrats, and the age difference matters, too. Yet in a curious way, the book’s thieves have more to lose: along with lofty reputations, more years left to live mean more years behind bars. These differences make those similarities between the movie and the book all the more intriguing.

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Curated Crime Movies Main PageBOWIE: Look.
KEECHIE: What is it?
BOWIE: It's the Mississippi. We're almost there.
KEECHIE: It's a big river, isn't it?
BOWIE: It's the biggest. Someday, I'd like to see some this country we go traveling through.
KEECHIE: By daylight you mean? That'd be nice.At Large

If your image of 1940s cinema is dominated by the light, fanciful movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers—or maybe Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn—1948’s They Live by Night might come as a surprise. It’s directed by Nicolas Ray, who’s probably better remembered for Rebel Without a Cause (1955), starring James Dean. Ray gave the earlier film, his directorial debut, the dark edge of film noir coupled with a “plight of the downtrodden” strain found in, say, On the Waterfront (1954) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). In this sense, They Live by Night might be seen as a transitional work, taking a big step away from glitsy escapism and toward gritty realism.

The story concerns young Arthur Bowers, a.k.a. Bowie, a.k.a. Bowie the Kid, who is introduced escaping from prison with two other convicts. Bowie, who was just 16-years-old when he was convicted of murder, intends to hire a lawyer to have his sentence overturned. In other words, he’s motivated to join his fellow escapees in a bank robbery. And his fellow escapees, both considerably older than Bowie, are motivated to keep him around as a member of their gang. The problem is Bowie has met and fallen for Keechie, the niece of one of the convicts. Bowie and Keechie are both products of broken homes, and they share a desire to find a better life. A better life together. A better life beyond the relentless pursuit of law enforcement.

Playing Bowie is Farley Granger, who also appears in Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951), both directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Cathy O’Donnell plays Keechie, and she also has roles in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Ben-Hur (1959), both directed by William Wyler. Here, though, she pushes hard against the Hollywood tradition of a glamorous leading lady.

Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) and Bowie (Farley Granger) face a bleak future as lovers on the run from the law.Arresting FeaturesKEECHIE: I don't know much about kissing. You're gonna have to show me.
BOWIE: I don't know too much about it myself. We'll learn to together.

On the one hand, They Live by Night gives us a romance vaguely along the lines Astaire & Rogers or Grant & Hepburn or even Bogart & Bacall. But in this case, the couple’s happiness is continually blocked by Bowie’s entanglement in crime. Some of the pair’s dialog feels a bit artificial, if not clunky, at times. Yet this is curiously well-balanced with that cynical realism that, while rooted in film noir, is also moving toward films-to-come.

In addition, there are times when the dialog is pretty hard-hitting. For instance, as a Christmas carol plays in the background, Bowie returns to find the cottage where the couple has been laying low is flooded.

BOWIE [Angry]: You said you weren't here when the pipes bust. Where were you? I asked you where you were!
KEECHIE: Seeing a doctor.
BOWIE: About what!
KEECHIE: The baby we're gonna have.
BOWIE: Well, that's just fine! That's all I need!
KEECHIE: You don't see me knitting anything, do you?

Wait. Did Keechie just imply she’s not planning to keep… Oh. Oh my. Well, can’t say as I’ve ever heard that addressed in a 1940s movie! (Spoiler: later, she tells Bowie that she is going to keep the baby.)

Bowie, Chicamaw (Howard da Silva), and T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen) driving on a downward spiral.

Along with the couple’s rocky relationship, They Live by Night offers side characters with significant flaws and internal conflicts. Keechie’s father is a drunk. Chicamaw, one of the escaped convicts, seems more interested in making headlines by committing crimes than in remaining unidentified. Mattie, the other convict’s sister-in-law, must make a decision that will haunt her long afterward. There’s some nice characterization here.

There’s also some very interesting cinematic storytelling. Ray and his Director of Photography, George E. Diskant, employ some of the very first helicopter shots in film history along with ample location shooting and striking lighting and composition. With an eye on these secondary characters and artistic flourishes, I found myself more engaged the second time I watched the film, and the combination of these strengths explain why They Live by Night has a critics’ score of 96% at Rotten Tomatoes.

Bowie and Keechie share a rare moment of fireside peace in this example of the film’s innovative cinematography.In Cahoots

If you find They Live by Night to your taste, you might consider reading Josiah Flynt’s The Rise of Ruderick Clowd and Miriam Michelson’s In the Bishop’s Carriage, offered together as a “partners in crime” volume in the Curated Crime Collection. Flynt’s novel shares the film’s rough-hewn realism and cast of downtrodden characters. Michelson’s story opens with a romance burdened by a man caught in a cycle of crime, though her heroine eventually succeeds in finding a way to, essentially, “live by day.” Of course, the three works are very different in some ways, but they all explore how a criminal life is a product of environment, of thrill seeking, and of poor choices.

Learn more about all of the selections found in the Curated Crime Collection by clicking here.

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