There is, among the older settlements north and east of Pittsburgh, a class of stories which sensible men ordinarily dismiss as the natural offspring of isolation, excessive winter weather, and the habitual exaggeration of country people.
These tales persist nevertheless.
They cling to the valleys the way mist clings to the hillsides.
One hears them in fragments beside potbellied stoves, in the back corners of feed stores, in hunting camps after midnight, and occasionally from old women who lower their voices without altogether realizing they have done so.
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Certain ridges are avoided.
Certain hollows are said to “carry sound wrong.”
There are roads where livestock refuse to pass after dark.
And in the deeper Pennsylvania country, where the fog settles low and stubborn among the hills, there remain whispers of a people once known as - though never openly discussed - the Shim-O-Mites.
I first encountered mention of them during the winter of 1856 while traveling through the western counties in the company of a circuit preacher of a melancholic disposition and uncommon education, the Reverend Andrew Kaczmarek.
The Reverend was not, by temperament, a fanciful man.
Indeed, he possessed the particular severity often found in those who have spent too much of their lives among books of theology and too little among ordinary amusements. He neither drank to excess, nor gambled, nor displayed any enthusiasm whatsoever for the rustic entertainments that commonly enliven travel through the backcountry.
He was, however, a man susceptible to curiosity.
And curiosity, in certain corners of Pennsylvania, has undone better men.
The matter first arose one rainy evening near Stewartstown, at a roadside tavern frequented principally by teamsters, trappers, and those varieties of laborers whose boots permanently retain the clay of mountain roads.
The establishment itself leaned noticeably eastward, whether from age, poor construction, or theological objection to standing upright, I cannot say.
A coal fire smoldered in the stove.
Rain battered the shutters.
Several men sat in uneasy silence while an elderly fiddler sawed halfheartedly at an instrument that had plainly suffered both weather and whiskey.
It was there an old drover, having overheard Reverend Kaczmarek inquire about certain abandoned settlements in the northern valleys, abruptly ceased chewing, crossed himself in a manner not entirely consistent with his stated Presbyterian convictions, and remarked:
“Ain’t abandoned.”
The Reverend, naturally, requested clarification.
The old man spat into the sawdust.
“They’re still there,” he said. “Just farther back.”
No one at the table laughed.
This, more than the statement itself, appeared to affect the Reverend.
For country men may indulge ghost stories freely enough, but they nearly always do so with grins, nudges, and invitations for another round.
Here there was none of that.
Only silence.
At length another fellow - broad-shouldered, red-bearded, smelling strongly of wet wool and cider - muttered:
“Sound carries a might queer up there.”
The fiddler stopped playing.
Though no word had been spoken to him directly, he lowered his instrument and stared fixedly into the stove fire as if unwilling to look elsewhere.
The Reverend later confessed to me that this moment unsettled him more than any tale which followed.
For the atmosphere of the room changed subtly thereafter.
Conversation resumed, certainly.
Men drank.
Pipes were lit.
Yet beneath the ordinary noises of the tavern there lingered a peculiar restraint, as though everyone present had collectively approached the edge of some subject best left untouched.
The Reverend, possessing precisely the kind of mind least capable of leaving such matters alone, began making inquiries the following morning.
Within a fortnight he had acquired three contradictory stories, two drunken warnings, a fragment of Dutch folk tradition, and the name Shim-O-Mites.
He recorded the word phonetically at first.
Later, in one of several letters prepared for a Dr. Elias Whitcomb - none of which appear ever to have been mailed - he observed the possible resemblance to the ancient tribal name Simeon.
Whether this similarity represented genuine lineage, coincidence, or merely the tendency of educated men to discover patterns where none exist, I shall not pretend to determine.
The Reverend himself, however, became increasingly persuaded that the matter concealed something older than local superstition.
And from that persuasion proceeded all the unfortunate events which followed.
Business concerns involving Charles Spang and a Mr. Herron occasioned my return to Pittsburgh, Allegheny City, and Stewartstown in the summer of 1858. Having previously enjoyed my time in Stewartstown, I returned hoping to enjoy more conversation with Rev. Kaczmarek.
I was informed by a number of locals that he had mysteriously vanished the previous year, leaving behind his few meager possessions, books, notes, and some unsent correspondence. The local Hotelier, a Mr. Nauman, had held on to the possessions, storing them in the cellar, in case anyone ever came to claim them. I offered to relieve him of this burden, and placed them in storage at Mr. Spang's mill on Bridge Street until further notice.
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