EERIE EVENINGS IN SCOTDALE
Walking tour offers history with a scary twist
Alittle walking and a whole lot of imagination will satisfy thrill-seekers as well as history buffs when they hear true-life accounts of the “Fire Fiend,” “Self Butcher” and “Moonshine Feud” that happened in the Westmoreland County borough of Scottdale.
Called “Shadows of Scottdale,” and hosted by that town’s Historical Society, this Halloween season fundraiser is a series of walking tours on Oct. 12, 18 and 26 on the actual streets where documented tragedies — some of them still unsolved — occurred.
“The stories are bizarre and tragic more than scary and ghostlike,” society board member Kimberly Fox said. Ms. Fox leads tours while she wears a somber black ensemble with ankle boots as would have been used by women in the late Victorian (1837-1901) and Edwardian eras (through 1914), when some of the tragedies occurred.
The first tour was held Oct. 5 in the downtown of the 4,200-person borough, which is about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
All tours begin at the Geyer Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m., except for the Oct. 18 tour, which starts at 10:30 p.m. and is followed by a live performance of the iconic “Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the theater.
The Oct. 18 cost jumps to $20 for tour and show.
Planners note that because of the violent nature of some of the stories, the tour is open to those 13 and older.
All of the highlighted incidents occurred before 1940 and were taken from local newspaper archives.
“I did that so there would be no one alive who was directly impacted by any of this,” planner Aaron Hollis said.
The borough resident and historical society board member wore a top hat and tails to help guide the first tour, which drew 50 people.
Without spoiling the stories’ denouements, one of the nine is an account of a dozen arson fires that occurred in downtown office buildings from 1911-12.
The home of the Beck family on Market Street also caught fire regularly at that time, leading Mrs. Beck to believe someone was trying to kill her.
At one point, she claimed someone threw acid in her face while she was in her backyard outhouse.
But a subsequent investigation led police to suspect that Mrs. Beck harmed herself and set the fires. Will her trial uncover the truth? The answer comes during the tour.
In 1902, Frank Moon was
drinking in the now-defunct Scottdale House Hotel bar when another patron suddenly shot him, then calmly departed. The shooter was never identified. But it was later determined that Moon’s job made him a prime target of local moonshiners.
The “Self Butcher” is an account of a Prussian immigrant who moved to Scottdale in the 1890s, promising to bring his wife and children once he landed a job. But a week later, the man slashed his arms and legs with a razor blade and killed himself in a rooming house on Market Street.
“Man Butchers Himself,” declared a local newspaper headline.
But what was his motive? Tourgoers will find out.
With some stories, Mr. Hollis already knew a little background and searched for details with borough resident Tracey Prather at the Connellsville Daily Courier. They also researched newspaper stories on microfilm at local libraries.
Family relics and local legends provided some story postscripts, as in the case of the May 1937 dynamite explosion in a building on Pittsburgh Street that was owned by the defunct Loucks Hardware. Careless gun play by a group of teenagers resulted in bullets puncturing the building and setting off a huge explosion with deadly ramifications.
Mr. Hollis said he found one of the .22 rifles from the tragedy, which still works and is owned by one of the boys’ uncles.
In 1900, Charles Coughenour was injured in a train accident and taken to a doctor’s office on Market Street. His leg was amputated, and he was sent home. Within a day or two, he died from shock.
According to Mr. Coughenour’s greatgrandson Jonathan Fox, husband of Kimberly Fox, the leg remains buried in the backyard of the doctor’s office.
What happened to Mr. Coughenour’s son, Charlie, six years later — well, that is the stuff small-town legends are made of, and the story is recounted during the tour.
All proceeds benefit the historical society. The Oct. 18 tour also benefits the Geyer center.
Volunteer Alexandria Lacombe, wearing an 1860s-era dress and carrying an old-fashioned lantern, trailed the tour groups so that no one lost their way in the dark.
The Scottdale woman observed that many of the tourgoers were teens, which pleased Mr. Hollis.
“It is our first event that brought out the younger crowd,’’ he said. “It is packaging history in a way that is interesting to people usually not interested in history.’’
For tickets, visit scottdalehistoricalsociety.com. Tickets, cash only, also are accepted the day of the tours.