A. D. Karstetter, painstaking local historian, tells us that there was no more noteworthy spot in the annals of mountainous Pennsylvania than the old Washington Inn at Logansville. Built after the fashion of an ancient English hostelry, with its inn-yard surrounded by sheds and horse stables, it presented a most picturesque appearance to discerning travelers. The passage of time had obliteratedobliterated it, long before the great fire on June 24, 1918, swept the town, removing even the landmarks which would have showed where the old-time inn was situated.

Many are the tales, grave or gay, clustered about its memory, far more, says Mr. Karstetter, than were connected with the Logan Hotel, run by the Coles, which was erected at a much later day, just when the old coaching days were passing out, and the new era coming in. All of the history that grew up about the Washington Inn ante-dated the Civil War, while that of the Logan Hotel was of the period of that war and later. This gives one a good mental picture of the type of legend interwoven with the annals of the ancient Washington Inn.

A winter rain had set in, just at dusk, as the great lumbering five-horse coach (three wheelers and two leaders) from Hightown entered the straggling outkirts of Logansville. The post boy on the boot blew his long horn vociferously, waking the echoes up Summer Creek, then back again, clear to the “Grandfather Pine” at Chadwick’s Gap.

A whimsical old German, who worked at Jacob Eilert’s pottery, picked up his old tin horn that he used to blow as a boy when wolves or Indians were about, and answered the clarion in cracked, uncertain notes. Lights glimmered in cabin windows, and many a tallow dip, fat lamp or rushlight was held aloft to get a good view of the coach as it swirled along through the mud, and its crowded company. Everybody was standing up, buttoning their coats and gathering together their luggage, as the big, clumsy vehicle checked up under the swinging sign, on which was painted the well-loved features of the Father of His Country.

The old landlord, his wife and the hostlers and stable boys and household help were outside to assist the travelers to alight and show them into the comfortable glow of the lobby.

“When do you start out in the morning?” all were asking of the rosy-cheeked driver, although the hour for continuing the journey west from Logansville was printed in big letters on the rate card at the posting office at Hightown, as “Sharp, 6.00 A. M.”

In the candle-lit lobby, by a blazing fire of maple logs, the travelers surveyed one another, the landlord and their surroundings. They were an even dozen in number, nine men and three women. Some of the men were hunters and had their Lancaster rifles with them; the others commercial travelers. The women were also engaged in business pursuits.

The stage was the sole means of penetrating into the back country, and the canals and the Pennsylvania Central Railroad (now known as the Main Line) the only methods of crossing the Keystone State in those early days.

A good supper was served–hickory smoked ham and eggs, hot cakes and native grown maple syrup, and plentiful libations of original Murray “Sugar Valley” whiskey, which put the huntsmen and the drummers in capital humor. After the meal they brought out their pipes and sat in groups about the fire in the great, low-ceilinged room. The three women, who were middle-aged and of stolid appearance, sat together, talking in undertones.

All at once, when the fire suddenly spluttered up, one of the drummers, a big, black-bearded fellow, said loudly enough so that all could hear–he was evidently trying to make the conversation general–"In the mountains they say that it’s a sign of a storm when the fire jumps up like that."

“And I guess we’re having it,” said another of the travelers, a little man with gray side whiskers, dryly.

Then, as wide shadows fell across the floor, another of the men, a hunter, ventured the remark: “Do you believe in ghosts?”

There was a pause, as if no one wanted to take up such a very personal topic before strangers. It was in the days when the Fox sisters were electrifying all of Pennsylvania, including the celebrated Dr. Elisha Kane, with their mediumship, so that it was as popular a topic then as now, in the days of Sir Oliver Lodge and Mrs. Herbine.

At length one of the men, also a hunter, from Berks County, broke the silence by asking if any one present had heard the story of the Levan ghost of Oley Township, in Berks; if not, he would tell it. None had ever heard it, so he told of the young Levan girl who had lost her father, to whom she was particularly attached.

One evening, while milking, she was seized with a very strong feeling that her father was near, which feeling kept up for a week, growing stronger daily. At last one evening she went into her room–the house was built all on one floor–and she saw her father, as natural as life, seated on an old chest that had come from France, for the Levans were Huguenot refugees.

The girl did not seem to be afraid to see her father, about whom a light seemed to radiate, and they conversed some time together, mostly on religious topics. Her mother and sisters, who were in another room, heard her talking, and the voice which sounded like that of the departed, and came to the door, which was ajar.

“Who are you talking to?” the mother inquired.

“To father–he is here; come in and see him,” replied the girl, calmly.

The family was afraid to enter, remaining outside until the conversation had finished and the ghost vanished. When the girl rejoined them, the side of her face that had been turned to her father was slightly scorched or reddened, as if she had been close to a fire. And that tenderness of skin remained as long as she lived.

While other versions of the story have appeared, this is the way it was told that stormy night in the Washington Inn in the long ago.

The ice having been broken, one of the women spoke up, saying that the part of the story which told of the girl’s face being burned by the aura from the ghost interested her most, that over in the Nittany Valley there was a case in the old Carroll family of a woman who had an only child which she loved to distraction, but which unfortunately died. The mother took on terribly, and during the night when she was sitting up with the little corpse, besought it to prove to her that the dead lived, if only for just one minute.

In the midst of her weeping and wailing, and romping about the cold, dimly-lit room, the dead child rose up in its little pine box and motioned its sorrowing mother to come to it. The woman ran to the coffin and the little one touched her forehead with its finger, which burned her like a red-hot poker. Then it sank back with a gasp and a groan, and was dead again. Ever afterwards there was a sore, tender spot on the woman’s forehead where the corpse had touched it.

Then another of the women told how she had been selling Bibles in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and one of the wheels of her carriage became dished from the bad roads. She had tried to put up with a mountaineer who would not take her in, and gave her the choice of sleeping in the barn with the team and the driver, or to occupy a room in a deserted Negro “quarters” across the road.

All night long she had been annoyed by her candles being blown out and the door blowing open, though she locked it time and again.

It was a commonplace sort of a ghost story, and one of the hunters yawned at its conclusion. The evening’s reminiscences might have ended then and there if the third woman traveler, the youngest and sturdiest of the lot, who thus far had been the quietest, turned to the landlord, who sat smoking in the settle, with a couple of his guests, asking him if he remembered the Big Calf.

“What do you know about the Big Calf?” he said, quizzically, looking at the woman in order to see if he could recognize her.

“I know as much as you do, I reckon,” she said. “I lived in this town for a year learning millinery with Emilie Knecht.” “said the landlord.

“I surely am,” responded the woman, “and I knew you well, Jakey Kleckner, in those days.” “said the boniface, sitting up very straight.

“Long years ago,” began the business woman, "when this public house was first opened, the landlord’s cow gave birth to an unusual calf. At six weeks it was as big as most heifers of six months, and it was handsome and intelligent, a brown-gray color–‘Brown Swiss’ they called the breed. All the drovers and cattle buyers in the mountains wanted that calf for a show, and her fame spread all over the ‘five counties.’

"There were two buyers from out about Greensburg that came in all the ways to get her, but the price was too steep. They hung around all day, drinking with the landlord in the tap room, and though he took too much in this drunken bout, kept enough of his wits with him to refuse to lower the price one shilling. The next morning he had to go away on important business, and in the afternoon the drovers returned, telling the landlord’s wife that they had met her husband on the road, and he had consented to accept a lower figure.

"The woman replied that while she was sorry her ‘man’ had shown such weakness to change his mind so quickly, when on leaving he had told her that he had been sickened by the importunities of the two strangers the day before, yet she claimed, the calf as hers and it would not leave the premises for any price, and except over her dead body. She prized it especially since she had also raised the mother, which had recently been killed by a wandering panther.

"The men departed in an ugly mood. When the boniface returned in the evening he was indignant at what his wife told him; he had not met the drovers on the road, and if he had, the calf was not for sale.

"Shortly after his arrival a German Gypsy, one of the Einsicks, appeared in the inn-yard with a big she-bear, a brown one, which he took about the mountains to dance and amuse the crowds at public houses, fairs and political meetings. The stables were full, but after some arguing the landlord consented to let the bear occupy the box stall where he kept the Big Calf, which he removed to the smoke house.

"During the night, which was very dark, the covetous drovers returned, and, not knowing of the Big Calf’s changed quarters, one of them went into steal it. In the darkness the bear seized him and hugged him almost to death. His companion, vexed at his slowness in fetching out the Big Calf, called to him, and he made known his predicament.

"There was no way to free the captive but to begin clubbing the bear, which set up such a loud growling that it aroused the owner and the landlord, who ran out with pistols, just in time to see the two would-be cattle thieves decamping from the inn-yard. They both fired after them, but the scoundrels got off scot free. They never returned.

"The Big Calf grew into a very handsome cow, and was the pride of the mountain community. It was always brought in from pasture at night and milked, lest it share its mother’s fate and be pulled down by a Pennsylvania lion.

"One evening, while the landlord’s only daughter, a very pretty, graceful girl, was driving the cow home, she was joined by a handsome, dark-complexioned young man, mounted on a superb black horse. He accompanied her to the stables, where he watched her milk, and then put up for the night at the inn. Next day he became very sick, and several doctors were called in, who bled him, but could not diagnose his ailment.

"Meanwhile he proposed marriage to the landlord’s daughter, who nursed him, pretending that he was a young man of quality from Pittsburg, which flattered the innkeeper and his daughter mightily.

"All this while he was trying to learn if the landlord kept any large sum of money in the house. It was not long until the girl confided to him that her father had gone into debt buying a farm in Nippenose Bottom, as he wanted to retire from the tavern business. It was there where he was when the two dishonest drovers from Greensburg had returned and tried to euchre his wife out of the Big Calf.

"Satisfied that there was no booty in the house, the fellow rose one morning before daybreak, dressed quietly, although the girl was in the room, wrote a note to her which he left on the clothes press, and made his escape. The wording of the letter ran about as follows:

“‘Dearest Love:–I am sorry to have left without saying goodbye, but my intentions were not sincere, for while I admired your beauty and good sense, which none can deny, I was only here to find out where your father kept his money. But since he has none, and has gone into debt, I need remain no longer. I thank you for all the information you gave me, and for your kind attentions. Gratefully yours, David Lewis.’

“The poor girl had been one of the dupes of the celebrated ‘Lewis the Robber,’ or some one impersonating him, as he had many alter egos, some more daring than himself, and understudies. If half the stories told of his exploits were true, he would have had to be a hundred years old to do them, and get to so many places.

"At any rate, the pretty girl was frightfully cut up by her misfortune, and took to the bed lately vacated by ‘Lewis.’ She had told all of her friends that she was to marry in a fortnight, and go to live in a big house on Grant’s Hill, Pittsburg, and it was all terrible and humiliating. Rather than let the real story get out, the girl’s parents connived with her to say that word had been brought that the young gentleman, while riding near Standing Stone Town, had been thrown from his horse and killed. Hence when the girl was able to reappear, she was dressed in black, as if in mourning for her dashing sweetheart.

"The first time she came out of doors she went for a walk alone just about dusk, so that not many people would be abroad, towards the lower part of the village. She was never seen or heard of again. There was no stream or pool big enough for her to drown herself in; a panther could hardly have dragged her off and not left signs of a struggle; she might have fallen in a cave or sink, it is true. At all events, it seemed as if the earth had swallowed her up. Perhaps Lewis, or whoever he was, came back after her.

"When I came to Logansville to learn millinery with Emilie Knecht, I lived in her house over the store, just across the way from this hotel; the building was burned down afterwards. How such a gifted milliner came to settle off here in the mountains I could never tell, but I suppose mountain ladies must have nice hats just like those in the valleys.

"We became good friends, and very confidential, though at that time she was over thirty years of age and I was at least a dozen years younger. She would never tell where she came from, except that it was down country, and there seemed to be something on her mind which weighed on her terribly. Though I think she was the loveliest looking woman I have ever seen, she cared absolutely nothing for the men. As she believed in ghosts, and so did I, we compared experiences.

"I told her of a ghostly episode which left a deep impression on my childish nature, which happened when I was six years old. My father worked in the mines, and was on ‘night shift.’ Mother locked the doors and we all went to bed. Mother’s room adjoined mine and my sister’s. After we were in bed for some time, but not yet asleep, a man–he seemed to be black–came to the door which led from mother’s room to ours, and smiled at us. He drew back, re-appeared and smiled again, or rather grinned, showing his white teeth; it was a peculiar smile.

"I wanted to call mother, but sister, who was eight, said I must not speak, I must keep very still.

"Next morning we asked father what time he came home, and he said ‘not until morning.’ We told our experience, but father and mother seemed to think we had only imagined it.

"But two persons do not imagine the same thing at the same time. Besides, we were not afraid. I have often wondered what it was. My sister died shortly after that. Could it have been a ‘warning,’ I wonder?

"The pretty milliner’s story was even more startling and unusual. She declared that her grandmother’s ghost had come to her bedside every night since she was a small child. She said that she never feared it, but took it as a matter of course. I think that these nightly visitations took a whole lot out of her. I can see her yet running down the steep, narrow stairs in the mornings to the shop where I was working–I was always an early riser–her face looking as if it had been whitewashed, more so perhaps because her hair and eyes were so dark.

"She was often nervous and irritable, and I laid it all to the vital force which the ghost must be drawing out of her to materialize, but she said it was only her liver which made her so dauncy. I begged her to let me sleep with her, that I did not think that the ghost would come if I was present, and if it did it could draw on some of my vitality, as I was a big, strong, hearty girl. She would not let me sleep with her, saying that she had gotten used to the ghost.

"One evening Miss Knecht and I were invited to a chicken and waffle supper at the home of old Mrs. Eilert, wife of the potter, whose house was the last one in town. In those days there was quite a distance not built up between the potter’s home and the rest of the village. The holidays were approaching, and we were getting ready for the Christmas trade, consequently stayed later in the shop than we had expected.

"As I said before, Mrs. Eilert lived at the extreme end of town. When we were a few squares from home we noticed a woman dressed in mourning who seemed to be following us, or at least going in our direction. She was an entire stranger to us, and we wondered where she could be going; so each house we came to I would look back to see whether she entered. When we were half a square from where we were going, we passed a house which stood back pretty far from the road. There was considerable ground to the place, and a high board fence all around. After we passed the gate I turned, as before, to see whether this woman would enter. She did not. I watched her until she was past the gate quite a ways. I turned and told my companion she had not entered, and immediately turned to look at her again, and she was gone!

"Where could she have gone in those few seconds in which I was not looking at her? Everywhere there was open space–nowhere for her to hide. Had she jumped the fence she could not have gotten out of sight in those few seconds. I have often wondered since what it was.

"When we reached the Eilert home I noticed that Miss Knecht was in a highly unstrung condition, more so than I had ever seen her before. We told the story, and the old potter smiled grimly, saying: ‘You surely have seen the ghost of the landlord’s daughter who disappeared, all dressed in black, after being jilted by the robber.’

"Emilie shook her pretty dark curls, muttering that she feared it was something worse. She was afraid to go home that night, and we spent the night with our friends; yet she would not remain unless given a room by herself. In the morning she was in a most despondent mood; she had not seen her grandmother–what could it mean?

"The woman in black must have been her ‘familiar’ leaving her, warning her to that effect, and not the ghost of the landlord’s daughter after all, she maintained. I tried to reassure her that she would see her grandmother once she was in her own room, but next morning brought the tidings that the faithful spirit was again absent. This continued for a week, my friend becoming more nervous and despondent.

"One morning she did not come downstairs, so at eight o’clock I went up after her, to see if she were ill. The bed was empty, and had not been slept in. I searched the house and found her lying dead on a miserable cot in the cellar–beautiful in death–which an elderly Dutchman sometimes occupied, when cutting wood and taking care of the garden for us. She had drunk a potion of arsenic that she had bought some months before to poison rats which infested the cellar, but her lovely face was not marked.

“I left town shortly afterwards, and have never been back until tonight.”

The burly commercial traveler who had started the general conversation stroked his long black beard.

"I guess it is time for all of us to retire. I don’t think we need to ask this lady again, ’Do you believe in ghosts?‘"