Willow Leaves October 25

Halloween Set to Spook Plans have been laid all over Willow Mills for a variety of spooky events on Halloween. This year promises to be a real trick or treat. Local merchants announced that all Main Street shops will be open until 7:00 p.m. for trick or treaters. This is a great way for parents to take out the little ones for a fun and save foray. The Haunted Grange will open at 6:30 and will entertain young and old alike until 10:00. This year the Grange has added sensory experiences that will tease fingers, eyes, ears, nose and tongue. Responding to calls from parents, the Grange will not feature severed limbs or chainsaw attacks this year. The Baptist Church Youth Fellowship will sponsor an All Saints Eve Party beginning at 5:00 until 9:00. Attendees, ages 5-12 are encouraged to come costumed as their favorite Bible character to participate in fun, food, games, and a brief devotional. “We are determined to reclaim this Devil’s Holiday for the Lord,” said Youth Leader Myron Holmes of the event. Of course many homes will have treats and all residents of this township and their guests are invited to trick or treat any hom in the community. Outlying farms will not be expecting trick or treaters except in those instances where the grandkids come out. We remind you to respect the wishes of those who do not wish to participate. If there is no porch light on, do not ring the doorbell.

A Ghost Story

Every town has its ghost stories and with a cemetery in the middle of town, Willow Mills is no exception. And no, this time I’m not talking about the ghost of Tecumseh on the Devil’s Backbone, or the periodic resurfacing of the story of how the ghost of Albert Bailey’s prize bull still rampages down Main Street when the nights turn cold and the winds begin to howl. This ghost story has its origins in a very real tragedy that occurred out here about a hundred years ago.

At that time the town was a booming center of prairie commerce with a railroad station and a new grain elevator. The old wooden buildings along Main Street were being replaced one at a time with new brick buildings after the lesson learned from the fire at Grissom Mill. Board walkways elevated pedestrians above the muck of the main streets. And every shop was a specialty. In the height of the 1890s, one of the shops that was fashionable was Lucille’s Millinery, “Fine hats for ladies of every station.”

Lucille Engle was a lady with “a reputation,” and most of it revolved around her eye for fashion and her fine hats. A little of it revolved around her single status and involvement in business. That involvement often led her to gatherings where men were plentiful and on yearly buying trips to New York City, where, God knows, anything might happen.

In the case of Lucille Engle, dashing young Brian O’Brien happened. He courted Lucille by long distance from New York City after one of her buying trips, and when it appeared that his affections might be returned, he followed her to Willow Mills. In Willow Mills, Brian O’Brien stuck out like a beacon on a hill. He was six feet tall, red-haired, and cut a dashing figure in his frockcoat and top hat. All Willow Mills was atwitter when he hung his shingle above Lucille’s shop and opened his attorney’s practice “Specializing in Wills, Deeds, and Disposition of Assets.”

Lucille was resident in Agatha Adams’ Boarding house and Brian took a room in the new brick hotel. Brian accompanied Lucille to church on Sundays. Brian sat politely in the sitting room at Agatha Adams’. Brian dealt with the bankers and drovers, the farmers and shopkeepers. But mostly, Brian courted Lucille. By winter of 1899, the couple had announced their engagement with the nuptials scheduled for New Year’s day at the turn of the Twentieth Century. It was more romance than Willow Mills had ever seen.

It was thought to be most romantic that Brian rented a horse and sleigh to take Lucille to her mother’s house in Columbia City for Christmas. Several friends and associates gathered to see them off on Christmas Eve morning at Agatha Adams’. Lucile was dressed in an exotic fur that Brian had just given her for Christmas and Poinsettia red hat with a lace veil and matching muffler and gloves. Brian was dressed in a huge raccoon-skin coat and gloves with his ever-present top hat perched on his head. They looked like a Currier and Ives print as the rode out of town on that trip. Little did anyone know that it was a trip from which they would never return.

No one knows what happened to the couple, or how it happened that at midnight on Christmas Eve their horse arrived back at the stable covered in mud with a broken harness and the traces dragging behind. They mounted a search and found the sleigh just east of South Whitley, frozen in a backwater of the river. There was no trace of either Brian or Lucille.

Their bodies never did surface, nor is anyone sure if it was an accident or if there was foul play. But that spring of 1900 when the ice broke, Charles Hart was out at the ice house and happened to notice a bright red object caught on the dam. He got a long pole and dislodged it to find that it was Lucille’s Poinsettia-red hat and veil. Folks didn’t know quite what to do, so they held a little memorial service for Lucille and Brian and buried the hat in an unmarked grave in the Lutheran Cemetery.

Now it is said that in the darkest part of winter, in the still middle of the night, you can sometimes see a glimmer of white on white as Lucille glides around the cemetery looking for her lost hat. You might, if you are not one of those in bed waiting for Santa Claus on a Christmas Eve, happen to see her yourself.