When Snow-Men Attack

The Civil War was raging across America, pitting brother against brother in the bloodiest conflict in American history. The year was approximately 1864, and an unnamed man was looking out of his window in disdain at the heavy snow falling upon the densely-wooded mountains that surrounded the broad valley which played host to the small town of Benton in Pennsylvania's Columbia County. The weather may have been the world warning him not to do what he had been planning to, but he would not be dissuaded. You see, he had been having an affair with the wife of a man who had been enlisted to fight in the war. His love lived in a secluded mountaintop cabin, and he would brave blizzard and bloodshed to reach her. However, what he would encounter as he trekked up that infernal peak would leave anyone questioning their reality - and would ultimately cost him his life...

Ice Cold 

The young man hitched his wagon and commenced the long journey up the winding mountain paths into his lover's sweet embrace. As he moved through the swirling white, he saw that he was slowly approaching an old lumber camp. Just to the side of the road was what he initially took to be a massive shard of ice rising up out of the ground. Riding up to it, he soon realised that this was no ordinary ice shard. Rather, it was a man - or at least something shaped like one. It was 'alabaster white' and appeared to be 'formed from snow' with a beard of icy spikes adorning its face, shining in the cold moonless night. 

The witness continued to draw closer to the strange apparition, perhaps thinking that his eyes were deceiving him - but he didn't have the time to do any more thinking after that before the creature suddenly started moving, leaping from its frozen position and into the back of the man's wagon. It wrapped its freezing arms around his neck and started slashing at his neck with its icicle claws. After no small fight, the man managed to repel his preternatural attacker, but the damage had already been done.

Bleeding profusely, and obviously on his way to death, the terrified traveller managed to stumble his way to the door of his lover's cabin. She let him in, and he collapsed to the floor shortly after he entered the building. For the next three days, he was entirely bedridden - often going into fits in which he would desperately try to fight off attackers only he could see. When those terrible days had elapsed, he finally died - his features left contorted 'in paroxysms of fear'. An undertaker was called up from the town at the bottom of the mountain to carry his body down for burial - and as this undertaker progressed down through the snowy wilderness, he passed by a certain lumber camp. He didn't see the creature, but he did apparently catch sight of some extraordinarily large footprints...

That's Snow Ghost!

Or is it? This story is nearly unique among the annals of Fortean literature, which is why I just felt utterly compelled to cover it. However, I'm not sure just how true it is. It was first reported in the December 2015 issue of The Curious Fortean magazine, in which it was attributed to Henry Wharton Shoemaker, an American folklorist from around the time. This actually puts us in a much better position to assume the potential veracity of such a tale. Shoemaker was actually the co-founder of the Pennsylvania Folklore Society, but has also apparently been accused of fabricating some of his tales. So it seems as if this story resides squarely in the grey area between fact and fiction, as with all good ghost stories...

Wondrous Wraith of Willow Creek

Willow Creek is nestled just two miles from Brooksville, Kentucky. According to a report made in the Atlanta Daily Constitution on the 4th of November, 1868 - a 'wonderful phenomenon' made its presence known here, much to the hysterical excitement of the local residents.

A Sulfurous Centaur

'Fire Centaur' by JupiterWaits on DeviantArt

It was October 10th of 1868 when an unnamed 'prominent tobacco merchant' was confronted by the outlandish apparition in question. He lived in Brooksville, and was returning home along a darkened country road in the southern portion of Bracken County after a long day buying up tobacco crops. Running late and thus presumably in quite a rush, his swift course was suddenly halted when he beheld 'a most frightful object' stood in the middle of the road before him. He described it as walking upright and reaching a height of 6ft, and as having a 'very pale' face like that of a man - with flames licking down over its shoulders like a hellish mockery of human hair. Its eyes were 'of sulfurous blue' and appeared to be constantly changing in size, one moment being as large as tin cups and the next being almost nonexistent.
Its 'deadly pale' arms once again resembled those of a human, and in one hand it carried a torch while in the other it held a sword of roughly 4ft in length. Its lower half was that of a horse with 'well proportioned' legs tipped with equine hooves. In place of a tail, it had a 3ft-long mass of flames - and its breath was also described as 'a solid sheet of fire, which vibrated with the heaving of its breast, like the pendulum of a clock'. The fiery fiend - apparently the most frightful thing that the witness had ever seen - walked off to the side of the road and vanished into the darkness.
Immediately motivated to give chase to the weird wonder, the witness put spurs to his horse and galloped towards the area to which he had seen the entity disappear. Roughly 200 yards later he had reached the summit of the hill - but had not yet managed to apprehend the infernal apparition. However, as soon as he looked back in the direction he had come, he caught sight of the creature 'in the same spot where he had first beheld it'. Presumably somewhat peeved and utterly bewildered at this point, the merchant stopped his horse to observe the anomalous happening. The creature, perhaps upon realising that it was being watched, crossed over to the left side of the road whereupon it scaled a fence and commenced running at full tilt towards the witness.
Horrified, he beat a hasty retreat from the apparition and made a beeline towards the nearest town - where he told some of the citizens about what he had seen. Presumably all eager to track down a bona fide monster, said citizens almost immediately formed a mob and 'started out to see the strange visitant'. When they got to the location at which the creature had been observed - some of them were able to clearly see the entity while it seemed completely invisible to others. The creature was seen on the fence, running rapidly backwards and forwards. It passed the witnesses at a distance of 'a quarter of a mile'. I do not pretend to know what this latter segment of the description means - I have no idea as to what the entity's movements were supposed to be at this point...
At about 23:00pm, the monstrous creature vanished and was not to be seen again that night. However, since then it would apparently manifest every night at the same time - being 'on hand' like clockwork. Nervous excitement was said to be mounting in the little Bracken County community as of the source's publication. It is, sadly, unclear what became of the spectre due to the event still being ongoing when the source was written.

Source
'Humanoid Encounters' by Albert Rosales