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GHOST OF AVIATOR HOVERS BY HANGAR
Attendants Swear to Seeing Spirit of Beachey
Appear in Plane.
Los Angeles. April 17.---Visions of a ghostly aviator
hovering in a phantom plane around the hangar used by
the late Lincoln Beachey, who plunged to his death at
the Panama-Pacific exposition, have thrown residents of
Bay Farm Island into a panic, according to Harry Young,
tender of the bridge connecting the island with the
mainland. William Alviso, a vegetable grower on the
island, is authority for the latest report of the "ghost,"
about which stories have been whispered by the market
gardeners for several weeks. Alviso told Young he had
seen the ghostly flyer on two successive nights, and would
cross the bridge with his produce no more in the dark.
"Before I saw the ghost I felt a terrible chill," said
Alviso, according to Young, "It was an unnatural chill, I
had been drinking wine and that warmed me up so there was no
excuse for me to feel cold.
"I was about half way across the bridge when the ghost
flew up to me in his airplane. I could see him
clearly, even his face. In the second that passed
before he flew, as I thought in collision with my wagon." |
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"Instead of colliding with me, he flew right through me, the
horse and the wagon. It was an awful feeling. I could
see him flying away after he had flown through me."
"I tried to laugh myself into believing I had imagined this
thing. But the next night I was watching for it. It was
no imagination. The ghost repeated his performance. I
will stay away from the bridge after dark. There is evil in
that deserted old hangar."
The hangar, after Beachey's death, was removed from the
exposition grounds and towed to the island. Then Earl Cooper,
the aviator, who had bought it, decided he didn't want it.
Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, New York - April 7
1922
RIDING against the
east,
A veering, steady shadow
Purrs the motor-call
Of the man-bird
Ready with the death-laughter
In his throat
And in his heart always
The love of the big blue beyond.
Carl Sandburg, To Beachey (1912)
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