A Real Ghost, They Say - Phantom Frightens South Williamsport, 1899

Allison's Grave, Duboistown

"People living in South Williamsport are greatly agitated by a strange apparition which appears nightly - that of a headless woman dressed in long flowing robes"

According to the legend of Allison's Grave,  told in Weird Pennsylvania by Matt Lake, a World War II nurse from Duboistown was decapitated when her plane was shot down.  Her remains were sent home to be buried at a cemetery along Mosquito Valley Road.

The above newspaper article about the apparition,  however, is from an 1899 Bloomsburg newspaper - written 40 years before World War II began.  If  the headless apparition was Allison, she began her haunting before she was born.  Edna Allison, in truth, died in a plane crash in 1964, long after the end of the War.  And she had not been decapitated.

"Superstitious people believe the ghost is that of an unknown woman whose skeleton was found on the mountains back of Duboistown.  many are afraid to venture out after nightfall." reads the 1899 article. 

It appears to have been not uncommon in this area for people to dress up and "spook" for fun, and that is most likely what happened in 1899.