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| Newspaper depiction of the Nauvoo ghost |
Today, the Illinois city of Nauvoo has a population of just over a thousand but, during the 19th century, the city of Nauvoo had a population of over 12,000-- roughly the same as Chicago at the time. Nauvoo figures prominently in Mormon history; In 1839, Mormons bought the tiny village of Commerce and, in April 1840, it was renamed Nauvoo by Joseph Smith. After Smith's death in 1844, violence forced most of the city's Mormon inhabitants to leave Illinois. Led by Brigham Young, the exodus led the Mormons to Utah.
In 1888, a remarkable ghost sighting took place in Nauvoo, when a frightening phantom with no eyes and mouth, spouting rays of glowing light through the holes in his face, appeared to two boys and a prominent Nauvoo attorney. The ghost displayed a deep gash in his side and moaned something about the Danites- the shadowy Mormon secret society which served as a bloodthirsty vigilante group during the 1838 Mormon War.
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| The LDS Temple in Nauvoo |
Here is the complete account of the Nauvoo haunting, as it appeared in the August 18, 1894, edition of the Wichita Daily Eagle:
Lawyer George A. Ritter and two little boys of Nauvoo, Ill., saw a frightful apparition in a secluded and rather picturesque spot near that town as they were on the point of driving some cows home. Ritter had been told by some of his neighbors that a peculiar apparition was seen in his pasture by passers at a late hour, but he ridiculed the idea. It remained for him to have a practical optical illusustration of the spook, for such as it has proven to be.
As Ritter entered the field he saw something white lying, or, rather, crouching, upon the ground, and at first thought it was a cow. He called to the supposed animal to get along, and instead of a cow arising to her feet a figure, dressed in long, white, flowing robes, arose slowly from the ground and stretched out its arms. The ghost was that of a man about forty years old, but the most horrible part of his appearance was in the face. The man had absolutely no eyes nor nose, only holes in the head through which gleamed a sort of sulphurous light. The form was arrayed in a shroud, yet it was white as snow. Long matted locks of hair hung down around the spook's shoulders almost to its waist. The arms were long and bony and the man's, or spook's, hands resembled more those of a beast or a great bird of prey, for they were hooked and falconlike.
As the creature rose, says the Chicago Times, the boys have a yell and fled, and Ritter says he was not feeling well himself just about that time. He did summon courage enough to speak to the ghost, and as he did so the ghost shook its head in a most mournful manner and pulled aside its white robe exposing a horrible gash in the right side, the wound evidently made by a bowie knife. The ghost kept its lips moving and the expression upon its eyeless and noseless features was simply dreadful. Ritter thinks he heard the spook hiss or moan the word "Danites!" "Danites!" or "Whittlers"; he cannot remember exactly, but the words were something like that.
It is now believed that this spook, which remained in sight some ten minutes, was at the time an anti-Mormon who in an early day paid a visit to Nauvo, and, his presence becoming objectionable, he was "whittled out of town". This, as stated, is said to be the belief of some old citizens. Ritter has no idea what the ghost is and does not give this theory. It is said that people not liked in Nauvoo in an early day were whittled out of town by a committee of three men, who would walk up to the objectionable visitor and begin whittling on a stick with a long, sharp bowie knife. Each stroke of the keen blades would come closer and closer to the breast of the visitor and he would be compelled to step backward quickly to avoid being struck by the blades. In this manner he was followed to the edge of town, as alleged, until he "caught on" to the fact that he was not wanted.
But no one is ever known to have been thus mistreated by the Mormons, and it believed that the "whittlers" were a gang of desperadoes, who, finding that a visitor had no money to lose, would get him out of the way. Nauvoo was a big city in those early days. But it is also thought that this spook might be that of an early settler who had been stabbed by one of the whittlers and had called on the famous Danite band of Nauvoo to help him. The call of "Danites, Danites, the whittlers!" would indicate that the spook was calling the attention of the Danite band to the whittlers in order that the former might save him. Of course, there is a good deal of speculation as to the appearance and origin of this ghost. Ritter says it is no creation of fancy whatever. He is not a believer in spooks and spirits, and is not anxious to have his name used freely in this connection unless his position upon the subject can be thoroughly explained. It was a most horrible apparition, and a band of men have been selected to watch for the reappearance of the spook and, if possible, to capture it.