The Body Under the Lilac Bush

​By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​In August 1900, it was reported that a mansion known as the Page House was haunted by a white lady. For over a hundred years it was a famous inn in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. 

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Illustration of the White Lady's ghost (Source - The Inter Ocean c.1900)

The Page House as it was known for over a century, faced Main Street. It was a stone structure with unusual pyramidal chimneys.

Spiritualism never flourished in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and most people dismissed stories of ghosts. But all this changed when the occupants of Page House, a one-time stone tavern styled in colonial architecture became the scene of a ghostly visitation.

Samuel Page the first proprietor of the inn described that one stormy night in 1814, a mysterious couple arrived. They traveled in a chaise with outriders, and they appeared to be people of wealth.  They ate their supper in the front room on the second floor, which overlooked the big garden. 

The next morning the innkeeper found they had disappeared without paying for the food or the room. Without a register, they was nothing to indicate their identity. Nothing more was known of the woman, but hidden under the lilac bushes by the front room, the body of a man who had been stabbed in the heart was found. Nothing could be found to identify him. The mystery of his murderer remained unsolved. 

Eventually the public room was converted into two homes, and in 1900 one of them was occupied by Amanda Kerr who lived with her brother and daughter. William Rowen, with his wife, three children and his brother lived in the other.

Starting that summer both families found that someone had dug up the garden, overturning the boardwalk and cutting up the lawn.

The most disturbance was around the old lilac bushes. But it was the strange noises in the house that brought the most fright to the families.

One day John Grindell, Amanda Kerr's brother was lying on a couch on the back porch. It was dusk when he heard steps on the board walk. This was followed by the howls of a strangling dog. Then Amanda Kerr shrieked from her porch, "Look! Look!"

Up the boardwalk came a tall, slender figure of a woman with a shroud folded over her face. Her head was bowed as if she was searching for something on the ground. Every few steps she stopped to feel the ground with her foot, and other times stopped and searched the grass with her hands.

Amanda Kerr fled into her home, but her screams had brought both families out, where they stood in panic stricken silence before the strange figure.

Grindell asked, "What do you want here?"

The ghostly figure didn't answer, but made a sound like a piercing sob that caused everyone to shudder.

The ghost retraced its steps down the boardwalk all the time pointing at the ground.

Grindell asked again, "In the name of God, speak and tell me what you want."

This time the ghost answered, "Help me find the body of my husband. I killed him up there in that room, and his body I threw down here in the garden. Come with me to seek the body."

The ghost continued, crossed the lawn and stopped by the lilac bushes.

The sound of something falling into a pool caused the ghost to disappear.

Near the old Page House is a spring where the skeleton of a man was found a few months before. He was buried 20 feet deep, and none could explain its presence there since this had never been a cemetery. Dr. Atkinson examined the remains, and declared the bones were buried many years before, and did belong to a man. Now it's believed the murdered man killed many ears ago was the skeleton.

Nothing more is known about the ghostly visitation, and if they stopped after that night, or if the guilty lady drove the inhabitants out of their home. 

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