Birth of abolitionist John Brown
John Brown was a prominent leader in the American abolitionist movement in the decades preceding the Civil War
Born on 9th May 1800, Brown rose to national prominence in the 1850s for his radical abolitionism.
Brown was captured, tried, and eXecuted by the Commonwealth of Virginia, for a raid and incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry in 1859.
It’s said that the ghost of John Brown still haunts Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.
This was the scene of his attempted takeover of the federal arsenal there, in 1859.
Tall, gaunt and with piercing eyes, John Brown launched his raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia on the night of 16 October 1859.
The plan was for Brown and his gang of anti slavery guerrillas to storm the town, seize its federal arsenal, distribute weapons to the enslaved, and lead what Brown hoped would become the largest slave insurrection in American history.
A spectacularly poorly designed plan, the raid failed almost as soon as it started.
At Harpers Ferry, Brown quickly seized the federal arsenal, the armory, and the engine house and then gathered up hostages from the village.
After that, things started to spiral out of control.
The first man killed was the town’s baggage master, a free black man.
The first of Brown’s men to fall, was a former slave who hoped that Brown could liberate his wife and children, still being held in the south.
Someone in the crowd cut off this poor man’s ears, as souvenirs.
Not only did Brown fail to free a single slave, but most of his men died in a shootout at the arsenal, including two of his sons.
John Bown was taken alive, and charged with inciting a rebellion against the state.
Brown was hanged, a little more than two months later, on 2nd December 1859.
Today, along the streets of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a strange, gaunt, white-haired man walks along with a small black dog at his side.
The tourists who come to the town, notice him and remark on his eerie resemblance to the man that made this town famous, John Brown.
In fact, the resemblance is so uncanny, that many will ask this man if they can take his photograph.
Little do they know, that when they get their film developed, no man will appear in their photograph…..
The man walks down the street, to the door of the fire engine house, where he abruptly vanishes.
Such are the encounters with the ghost of John Brown.
But John Brown’s ghost is not the only spirit to linger in Harpers Ferry… there are other ghosts here too, like that of one of Brown’s murdered men, who was mutilated by townsfolk and left to die with the hogs.
There is also a haunted church, which was hit by a mortar round during the Civil War.
This building is haunted by a priest, who has been seen disappearing into the walls, and also the sound of a baby crying, can be heard on the front steps…..
