Ghostly Night Frolic

In researching articles, I came across this not from Maine, thank the gods, but from a New England State. 1911 would have been beyond belief, this day and age, would have seen the militia called out. A misspent youth.


GHOSTLY NIGHT FROLIC

SOCIAL ELITE DANCE OVER GRAVES OF ANCESTORS

Lanterns Are Hung From Monuments While Orchestra is
Perched on Tombstones.

Hagerstown, Md., Sept. 8. Dancing over the graves of their ancestors to the faint glimmer of lanterns hung from monuments and to the music of an orchestra seated on tombstones, the social elite of Big Pool a town near here, gave an amazing ball in a cemetery there at night. So shocked are the more staid inhabitants of Big Pool that they sent a delegation to Justice E. B. Hartle of Hagerstown to ascertain if the participants in the gruesome function could into be arrested and put into jail. Several prominent citizens arranged this ghostly frolic. All the belles and beaux of the village were present.

The orchestra was seated upon mounds under which reposed the bones of the community's venerated dead. Lanterns hung from the tops of the taller monuments, casting feeble gleams upon the moss grown stones. The dance started at nine o'clock when most of the Big Pool had gone to bed. Round dances held sway until about 11 o'clock when the hilarity reached its height and the guests began to execute all the old time figures. The leader of the orchestra perched himself on the highest mound to be found and until one o'clock when the party broke up awakened the hills with his screeching violin and "calls."

The joy eventually became so unconfined that several residents were roused from their beds. Dressing hastily they crept to points of vantage behind tombstones in the rear of the cemetery and watched the proceedings to the end. These folks, it developed later, prepared the list of names which was exhibited before Judge Hartle.