October 31, 1934
Miss Elizabeth Kelly, Head of Boys and Girls’ Department at Library, Gives Vivid Story Of Three Goblins Reported Here
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When Halloween ghosts and goblins fly through the air tonight they will be in competition with three home town, all the year round, ghosts.
There’s a ghost in the hill back of El Paso, another one in Juarez, and a third in Ysleta. So avers Miss Elizabeth Kelly, head of the boys and girls’ department of the public library.
Miss Kelly hasn’t investigated personally the existence of the wraiths, but she has the stories straight from her best friends and from relatives and persons who swear they know.
The trio of supernatural troublemakers are women. One of them is known as the old Indian witch of Mt. Franklin, and prospectors and treasure hunters are her pet peeve. She never bothers picnickers and hikers.
Plagues Prospectors
Let a prospector or treasure hunter venture around at night, however, and woe is sure to follow. Plagued by the witch they fall down and break a leg or lose their way and suffer from thirst.
She’s taking vengeance, so the story goes, upon the modern successors to a band of Spaniards who killed her and stole her silver mine on Mt. Franklin years ago.
One by one she led members of the band to death. On a dark night a boy was watching outside while the survivors worked the mine. He saw an old woman climb to the top of the hill above the entrance. Suddenly she stamped her foot, the mine caved in, and that was the end of the Spaniards.
Guards Treasure
The second ghost haunts a house at Ysleta where treasure reputedly lies buried. She’s an unpleasant ghost with vicious eyes, Miss Kelly says.
Those staring eyes paralyze treasure hunters whose thirst for gold overcomes their fear – and the treasure remains intact.
Less lucky has been the third of these ghosts, who flit about in Juarez.
For years the white – dressed phantom kept herself in the corner of a certain house, weeping and wailing all night. Families moved in – and moved right out again. But one brave man, who fought with Pancho Villa, decided he could take it. When the weeping began that night he accosted the white figure.
Had No Face
She raised her head. He stood petrified and his hair tried for new altitude records. The thing had no face!
The soldier left quicker than his bravery, left Juarez altogether, they say. But the next family to move in paid no attention to the weeping. They dug up a pot of square Spanish gold pieces buried in the ground beneath the corner in which the ghost wept nightly.
The house never again has been haunted. Miss Kelly will tell you, but they say that the ghost still wanders about Juarez, especially on rainy nights, still weeping.
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