{"id":5206,"date":"2013-11-06T16:46:08","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T16:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=5206"},"modified":"2023-01-04T11:15:52","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T16:15:52","slug":"news-of-the-weird-wacky-just-plain-bizarre-family-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/news-of-the-weird-wacky-just-plain-bizarre-family-stories.html","title":{"rendered":"News of the Weird & Wacky: Just Plain Bizarre Family Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: In this article, Scott Phillips searches through old newspapers to find some truly weird, bizarre\u2014and sometimes funny\u2014family stories. Scott is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past\u00ae genealogy services.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

If your family is at all like my family and the family of my wife, you have your share of funny and weird stories. As a matter of fact, just the other day my wife and I were having a good laugh over one of these family stories when she said \u201cgood thing the newspapers never got a hold of that story.\u201d It was then that I decided it would be interesting to take a look at \u201cNews of the Weird & Wacky\u201d family stories that did<\/em> make their way into the newspapers of GenealogyBank.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An Unintentionally Incestuous Marriage<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first news article I found definitely falls into the \u201cweird\u201d category. I\u2019d actually say it graduates to \u201cextremely weird\u201d! It\u2019s the story about a wedded couple in England that was published in a 1926 Georgia newspaper. The headline says it all: \u201cBrother Marries Sister.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Brother<\/a>
Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, Georgia), 8 August 1926, section D page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While truly bizarre, this old newspaper article does give some interesting facts regarding how the family was broken up and then, much later, these siblings \u201cfound each other,\u201d fell in love and got married\u2014without knowing they were brother and sister! But no matter what the circumstances, the \u201cweird\u201d factor is way too high for me on this one.<\/p>\n

Murder Victim\u2019s Twin Drives Murderer Insane<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then another newspaper headline grabbed my attention. Published in a 1909 Ohio newspaper, it states simply: \u201cDriven Insane by Twin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Driven<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 18 May 1909, page 7<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now I have heard (and witnessed with my daughter-in-law and her twin sister) that twins can do some very special things, but drive someone insane? I think not! Then I read the article and discovered this amazingly weird story of an uncle who killed his nephew. This heinous crime went unsolved until the uncle happened upon his victim\u2019s twin walking down the street\u2014upon seeing him and believing it to be the ghost of his victim, the murderer confessed to his crime and promptly went insane. Now this one is just plain weird for sure.<\/p>\n

Heroic Ghost Saves Entire Family <\/strong><\/p>\n

By now I was in the mood for something a bit more cheerfully weird. I continued searching the newspaper archives and quickly came across an old article published in an 1893 New Mexico newspaper titled \u201cSaved by a Ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Savced<\/a>
New Mexican (Santa Fe, New Mexico), 25 October 1893, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This was a ghost story with a decidedly nice twist in that the ghost in question came to the rescue of an entire family up in St. Lawrence County, New York. Although I usually conjure up images of ghosts as veiled in wispy white, this ghost is described as \u201ca tall, heavily built man clad in furs to his chin, his fur cap pulled down over his ears, his head bowed, with both hands outstretched\u2026\u201d You really must read this story since, after all, the author says: \u201cThis story is a true one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laughed to Death?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I continued searching, there was no way I could hold back my smile at the headline of the next article, \u201cMay Have Laughed to Death,\u201d which was published in an 1899 Connecticut newspaper.<\/p>\n

\"May<\/a>
New Haven Register (New Haven, Connecticut), 11 September 1899, page 5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I read this article with a bit of skepticism, but there it was in black and white: \u201cHe [William Gandy] is subject to uncontrollable fits of laughter, and if his attention is not directed in some other channel by friends he may have laughed himself to death, his nervous system having become exhausted. He has been known to laugh for an hour or two at a time before the fit could be broken up.\u201d There is no conclusion in the historical newspaper article of what happened to the unfortunate Mr. Gandy, but I must admit to thinking that death by laughter is certainly more than just a bit weird.<\/p>\n

Animals to the Rescue!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moving along I was struck by the headline \u201cSaved by Animals\u201d from a 1900 Mississippi newspaper. The second headline heralded \u201cInstances in Which They Have Been Known to Avert Serious Accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Saved<\/a>
Daily Herald (Biloxi, Mississippi), 10 August 1900, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now the only \u201cserious accident\u201d averted for me by animals (a great many Labrador retrievers over the years) was that they never allowed any food to remain on the floor for more than a nanosecond, sparing me any slips. This newspaper article, however, describes a dog saving a baby from an open window, a whole family saved by a cat, rats saving a ship, a parrot saving a family from a flood, and more astonishing tales including a fellow saved by his\u2026now this is weird\u2026pet bear.<\/p>\n

Quadruple Rainbow Sighting<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then I found an article from a 1905 Maryland newspaper titled \u201cA Quadruple Rainbow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Baltimore American (Baltimore, Maryland), 25 December 1905, page 9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The article reported that a quadruple rainbow was sighted in Mons, Belgium. This 1900s news article caught my eye since I really love rainbows. I have seen my share of single rainbows and even a few lovely doubles (the best double I ever saw was out on the Great Plains just west of Lemmon, South Dakota), but I have never seen a triple and certainly never a quadruple rainbow. This rainbow weirdness made me click over to Google and see what the all-mighty search engine had to say about this seeming impossibility. It turns out that triple rainbows are a rarity and quadruples are almost unheard of! I noted that on 10 October 2011 the Mail<\/em> in the United Kingdom reported \u201cthe world\u2019s only photograph\u201d of a quadruple rainbow, but the photo only shows two rainbows. Now that is just plain weird all by itself!<\/p>\n

Well, I am off now. It is starting to rain and I am hoping for my shot at fame with my camera and a quadruple rainbow I can call my own. Have you or anyone in your family ever seen a triple or quadruple rainbow? If you have, I\u2019d love to know!<\/p>\n

And if you have a weird family story of your own you\u2019d like to share, please tell us in the comments section; thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Scott Phillips searches through old newspapers to find some truly weird, bizarre\u2014and sometimes funny\u2014family stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[2465,5546,5604],"class_list":["post-5206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-family-stories","tag-ghost-stories","tag-william-gandy"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5206"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88713,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5206\/revisions\/88713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}