Tuesday, June 18, 2024

The Historical Town Known As Lititz, PA Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a Lancaster Newspaper article about the town of Lititz, Pennsylvania which is to the North of the city of Lancaster.  Seems that a gentleman by the name of Cory Van Brookhoven, who is President of the Lititz Historical Society, has self-published "Mysterious Lititz: Ghosts, True Crime, UFOs, and More."  The following will give you an idea as to what the book covers.  The first involves a rowdy club that caused a "riot."  On October 31, 1908, intoxicated members of Lancaster's Fourth Ward Republican Marching Band traveled to Lititz to attend a Republican rally at the Lititz Springs Hotel.  Following the Halloween Parade that night, a 15-year-old Lititz boy threw some kernels of corn at the Fourth Warders, who proceeded to knock the boy off his feet.  Another resident rushed to the boy's defense and was, in turn, knocked down and badly beaten.  John M. Pfautz, chief burgess of Lititz arrived and asked the fourth Ward gang to leave.  Instead of going home, the visitors broke the nose of one resident, dragged another along the pavement and threatened several observers with lit torches.  Meanwhile, the men turned over a huckster's stand and a kettle of oyster soup.  Someone hurled a rock through the window of a hardware store.  Burgess Pfautz went home and returned with his revolver and several deputies.  The gang of Fourth Warders rushed toward Pfautz, who fired his gun into the air.  Several Lititz citizens then charged the Lancaster contingent, who fled through Lititz Springs Park.  Some of the culprits got away, but Fautz and his deputies pursued others as far as Kissell Hill.  They captured these men and took them to the Lititz lockup.  The 1908 "Lititz riot" was officially over.  The second story represents the "haunted" section of the book.  After Lititz teacher Abraham Reinke Beck retired in 1895, he served as archivist for the Lititz Moravian Church.  One evening, while he and his brother, Julius Augustus Beck, were reading an early diary in the archives room of the Moravian Brothers' house, the quiet suddenly was interrupted by a loud sound.  A French horn, resting securely on a shelf, "flew" into the air and crashed to the floor.  Abraham Beck said he had no scientific explanation for this phenomenon.  "The musical instrument was firmly on the shelf," Van Brookhoven explains, "and there was nobody else in the entire building at the time."  Like any book of this nature, all of the entries do not make as great an impact as Lancaster's riot squad and the flying French horn, but there are more than sufficient unsettling stories here to warrant calling Lititz, if not the most "mysterious" town in the country (as opposed to the "coolest"), certainly a place with it's share of weird stories.  Perhaps you might like to read a bit more of the stories so contact Cory Van Brookhoven for a copy of the book.  Tell him LDub suggested they buy his book!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.      

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