I write about the writer and folklorist Henry Wharton Shoemaker every October. He lived in Clinton County.
During his work, Shoemaker talked to many people in the area about old stories and legends and then wrote them down in his books. He made sure that a lot of legend would be around in the future.
I like Shoemaker’s work when I need a ghost story, and I read one of his stories every October. There are many scary and interesting stories to pick from. The Screaming Skull is one of the best.
This story comes from his book “Black Forest Souvenirs,” which came out in 1914.
It is said to have happened along the Coudersport Pike in southern Potter County, close to the border with Clinton County. It was said to have started with a local thief named Mark McCoy in the 1850s.
In his first job, McCoy robbed a Williamsport businessman who owned land in northern Clinton County. He held the man up at gunpoint while wearing a mask. The victim got to Jersey Shore to talk to the cops, but McCoy was nowhere to be found.
McCoy stole and robbed people as he went through Lycoming, Clinton, and Potter Counties. He met a young woman living with her grandparents along the Coudersport Pike and fell in love with her. She let him stay with them.
He would sometimes visit her and say he was a local businessman. Afterward, he would steal from people, living a secret double life. Until he robbed a man on his way to Williamsport one day and shot him dead.
That made things worse, and McCoy knew he had to get away. He asked the girl to run away with him, but she said no. It turned out she was not in love with him; she was with someone else, and she would never leave him.
McCoy was sad, so he went to a tree behind an empty house in the woods and hung himself. Soon after, a group of people from Jersey Shore found him there. They decided to kill him and bury him right next to the tree.
At the end of that year, a hunter showed up with his dogs and moved into the house. The hunter liked McCoy’s skull so much that he hung it on the door of his house. The dogs dug it up.
At night, there was a terrible scream that woke the hunter and his dogs up. The skull hit him in the head when he went outside to see what was going on. Even though he hid it again, the dogs found it again, and the next night the screams could be heard again.
The hunter left the house. Over the next year, many travelers, hunters, and fishers stopped at the cabin. The piercing screams from the skull woke them up and scared them all. No one could stay in the house for more than one night.
A family from up the street finally came down, found the head, and buried it with the rest of the body. After that, the screaming stopped.
Shoemaker wrote, “And to this day, even though the grave is well known, no more has been heard of the Screaming Skull.”
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