A ghostly tale for Halloween

[Michie]

Years ago when I was still in high school I read a collection of ghost stories called "Haunted Heartland." Most of them weren't a bit scary and were presented in the dry businesslike fashion of a folklorist who is merely collecting materials for a dissertation, but one tale stuck with me. It was the story of Fr. Louis Lesches, a priest assigned to St. Mary's College in Minnesota, who tried to kill his superior, Bishop Patrick Hefron. The bishop was saying Mass in the seminary chapel one morning when he turned around and saw Fr. Lesches standing behind him. To the bishop's surprise, the priest was wearing a Prince Albert suit instead of his cassock or clericals. To add to this surprise the bishop quickly realized that the priest was packing heat. Fr. Lesches fired a gun three times, hitting the bishop twice.

At that time Fr. Lesches was already the number one problem child of the diocese. Although he was said to be brilliant and had done well in the academic part of his seminary studies, he was judged to be overly emotional, and insubordinate. He'd failed at all of his parish assignments and now the concerned and probably a bit exasperated bishop had recalled him to St. Mary's to keep a close eye on him. Fr. Lesches became convinced that the bishop was persecuting him.

Bishop Heffron's vestments, orneriness, and his great physical shape probably saved his life. Instead of dropping dead, hiding in the pews, or swooning, he yelled at his now panicked attacker and chased him out of the chapel. Fr. Lesches was later captured by the police and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.

Continued below.

A ghostly tale for Halloween

A Catholic woman's notes on the passing scene

dymphnaroad.blogspot.com

 

[Wolseley]

If that's the same book I'm thinking of, I have a copy of it as well. There's a story in there about the "Remus Death Car", which I heard about on numerous occasions from the time I was just a little kid. Supposedly it was a brand-new car, and the guy who bought it drove it out to a deer camp somewhere in the woods, and then died in the car for some reason. He wasn't found until late the next summer, and you can imagine what the inside of the car smelled like with that corpse decaying away inside of it.

It was bought by a used-car dealer in Remus (Michigan), who took the seats and upholstery out of it and installed new; he tried to get the smell out, because it was a brand-new car, after all, and in very good shape. But nobody would own the car for long, because the smell of the corpse had sunk right into the metal in the interior of the car. One guy that bought it had to drive around with all the windows down and the heat off in the middle of winter, because the smell was so bad.

The story mentioned that the car was owned for a while by a young black man named Art Cross, but he didn't keep it very long either. If I recall correctly, the story said they eventually had to junk the brand-new car, because the smell of death inside it was just too much to handle. Now, I heard this story decades before I ever acquired the book; my dad told it to me when I was no more than maybe 8, 9 years old; and Dad grew up in Remus, so he certainly ought to know. On top of that, I also knew Art Cross personally; he was the bus boss for the public school I went to as a child. He was an older man in his 60s by that time, but I'm pretty sure it was the same guy.

 

[RileyG]

Thanks for sharing!