Phantom Frightens South Williamsport, 1899 [& Allison's Grave]

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 [Bogart] 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.  

As for Allison...

"According to the records, in June 1964, Edna Audrey [Boagart] Allison left Williamsport on a commercial airline flight to Phoenix, Ariz. From there, she traveled to Aspen, Col., where she boarded a Cessna 310 on Sunday, June 28, for a flight to Dallas, a stopover before her final destination in the Bahamas where she was scheduled to attend a business conference in Nassau .

Piloting the light twin-engine plane was William Evans, 38, of McAllen, Texas. In addition to Edna, the other passengers were Ed Gorman, 38, of Dallas, and Gus Theoklis, 29, of Los Angeles. When the plane failed to arrive in Dallas, the Colorado Civil Air Patrol searched the mountainous area near Aspen, but the plane could not be located. The search for the plane was made difficult due to heavy thunderstorms and high winds.

The plane was finally discovered  in October , by some hunters, on  a remote mountain  9 miles northeast of Aspen. Edna and the three other occupants were found, still buckled into their seats. The sheriff leading the recovery efforts stated that it appeared the plane had “plunged straight down into the mountainside.” 

Due to the badly decomposed condition of Edna’s body, her remains were cremated and returned to her family members: a brother, Howard Bogert, who also lived in Mosquito Valley, and her son, who was then an Army private assigned to Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

 Edna Allison’s ashes were spread at Mosquito Valley Cemetery where a small gravestone marked her memory"  That small stone was repeatedly vandalized, and has been replaced with a larger stone reading simply "Allison".

Although the "Allison's Grave" Story is nonsense, there IS an interesting story in the Williamsport Sun Gazette, March 1962, about Edna's brother in law, David Allison,  being bitten by a she-wolf in Rome.