Weird Western Maryland

  A local newspaper published this account of an 1897 Halloween party at the Woman’s College of Frederick: Hallowe’en was celebrated in fine style by a phantom party in the college Hall. About eight o’clock a ghostly procession could be seen wending its wayl through the corridors to the Hall where lanterns of pumpkins, ears of corn, autumn leaves, and the skeleton of Mr. Smith, made the scene one to be remembered. After a march in which sixty girls joined[,] each carrying long tin horns filling the air with soft sweet strains, dancing was indulged in until the lights were suddenly turned on and you were requested to unmask, then began the fun. Fortunes were told and bright futures prophesied for all, corn and flour were freely used, which cou’d be easily told from the looks of the chapel the next morning. Refreshments were served later in the evening, and at eleven o’clock the crowd dispersed after having spent a most delightful evening. Thanks are due to the kind friends w...

  Claims that giant skeletons from prehistory had been dug up and delivered to scientific institutions are not hard to unearth in 19 th -century U.S. newspapers. Such tall tales were popular in part because they underscored White prejudices that Native Americans were an exotic inhuman species, their extermination worthy of no more human sympathy that, say, the fate of the passenger pigeon; and because believers in a literal, inerrant Bible could claim these ancient behemoths as evidence for the multiple Old Testament references to giants, most famously the demigods of Genesis 6:4: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (KJV via BibleGateway.com) Sometimes, however, the bones of long-dead people of unusual heights (anomalously tall or short) are indeed found – unsurprisingly, given the remarkable, everyda...