The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 18, 1901, Page 1

cT! | i A nighe, he theater with I live on the third ched by a wind- rom the main 8 floor. The y much, e ve wb the jan- s on the same our shoes at the rear of this one a ps sounded quite bare boards. They nearer. Whoever carried a stick, for tap-tapping on the ed the corner, t I saw Captain live in the o died several sed to it was the cap- He was stick was the ed on it in for he old and came closer I could features clearly. p ar out him seemed to have m in them. got about half wway he seemed to sce hped in front r a moment, Ik rapidly g around the cor- I before, but tly. I am as e that I sa crman.” atement was made to Coroner, my- witnesses, in tunda building, e office of the t 9 o'clock on the lyv, by Alexander flding, soutl:- ry and Washington s of great importance, moment the Brit Pickersgill, at Ala- were aware of th »n, when the Con- announced, we of awe and won- Norman nce the city R atorium appe: It is obvious that statement after the t would ha ry. The apparition n t down 1wrely as a red imagination, or ttempt on his part to gain SEN.DESsAaIX PREDIT TS HIs But Norman is not an imaginative: young man, nor has he any craving for notoriety. He is simply a n, honest, hard-working young fellow, and the look his face shows the truth of Whether the specter not is a question upon and believer in occuit- take sides. but &t any rate there that Norman is sure he saw it. he his own really ative. existed or the skepti s no dout Was it a wraith or warning apparitien come to announce the death of some one connected with the building? Such things belong to the realms of traditional lore; primitive folk all over ine world have be- lieved in them for ages. The Scotch Highlanders have a firmly d super- h wra or g 1 DPar- appears to friends at a distar i forewarns m of the event. But the peculiarity ‘of case is that it was not the double ‘of Consul Pickersgill which appeared: it was his old-time frien Captain Waterman, who came with the ghostly message. Now Captain Wateyman was an aged mariner, who had for many years occu- pied a room in this gloomy old building. In his latter days he had fallen into ne circums s and eked out a precar livelihood as a pedc or agent kindly hearted Consul Pickersgill sym thized with the poor old fellow and muny a time help him out of a tight place. Did late captain, with occult vision, approach of his benefactor’s death ave his resting place on the other side to give what warning he could of the sad event? If this had happened in the s we showld not have been sur- but in modern, up-to-date, bust- highly civilized San Francisco it is quite a t stor: Dr. Leland, the Coron: is a clear- headed mec n, whose praetice has given him much experience of the pi liarities of the human mind. *I quite he- lieve,” he says, Norman believes he saw the vision or apparition, or what- ever it w But does not amount to saying that it had really a tangible psychical ence. I should put it down as a case of hallucination, probably due to overwrought nerves. All the same, if I really believed 1 had seen such an ap- parition nothing would induce me to con- tinue living the building.” And Coroner Leland is right, for it cer- tainly is an uncanny old structure, where 4 man of sensitive nerves might readily imagine all kinds of blood-curdling things. It is one of the few early time large of- fice buildings, dating back from-the '50's, left in San Francisco. With the huge Montgomery block, but a short distance away. it stands as an enduring monument to the enterprise of the pioneers of that golden era.’ Unlike most of the other buildings of that time, it has never been modernized—it l'as er even been fitted with an elevator. Viewed from the light of the present day the interior plan of the structure is somewhat peculiar. It is only three stories in beight, and a wide stafr- way leads from the entrance on Battery street to the second floor, where there is a large, lofty hall. Behind this is a great room, originally designed for the Mer- chants’ Exchange. Later on, in 1861, when Sacramento was flooded out, it was used by the California Legislature as a State Capitol, and afterward it became the meeting place of the Federal Supreme Court. On this floor, in the front, is the large office of the British consulate, where the late W. Clayton Pickersgill spent all his working hours and did so much valuable service to his countrymen. In view of Norman's statement it be- comes important to consider the interior plan of the structure. Two narrow wind- ing stairways lead from this hall to the third floor, opening into passages which run the lengthsof the building. At the rear a transverse passage connects these, o that it is possible for anybody starting from one stairway to walk right around the interior and come down at the other end of the hall. Now, admitting the real- ity of Norman's ghostly visitant, we must ask ourselves what he was doing in the building at that time of night. Judging from the direction in which the apparition approached it seems probable that he had been to the consulate and had ascended the stairway at the right-hand end of the hall, while Norman used the one on the left. ‘ahen the captain must have made his way around the passages, geeking, doubtiess from sheer force of habit, the room in which his live body dwelt so long. All this, of course, is mere Bupposition; any man is at perfect liberty to disbelieve it. But the death of Consul Pickersgill so socn afterward supplies a reasonable motive for this astral vi and we may well suppose that his obje tive point was the consulate, which, of course, he found locked at that hour of the night. An old print in the “Annals of San Francisco,” published in 1854, shows the building with a great dome, or rotunda, towering above the roof, hence the name by which it is still known. An earth- quake, however, played havoc with this excrescence, and it was uever rebuilt. v “ GOOD -BY¥E Lo RO |NELSOMN PREPARES HIM3ELF TOoR / 3 ALEXANDER NORMAN SEER PoRTER 1Y iy Ime property came into the possession of the late Thomas Jennings some twenty years ago and is still managed by his ex- ecutors. Despite the gloomyv and forbid- ding abPpearance of the interior it is a busy center, particularly for shipping peo- ple. The place is popularly known as Limejuice ~ Corner, because so many British sailors congregate there for ‘the purpose of attending the shipping office at their consulate. The Italian Consul also has his headquarters there, and the great hall, once a courtroom, IS now used as a school for navigation. The pilots are also to be found in a large corner room, and below are the offices of numerous custom- * house brokers, who find the situation most convenient for thelr business. Altogether the lower floor is a bustling, Interesting place, but the upper story is almost un- ¥ tenanted.. Beyond a few permanent resi- dents no one ever visits these dark, na row pagsages. Wrapped in gloomy soli- tude, the walls hide in silence their tale of fifty years of a bustling city’s life. Who knows the many strange and weird events which have happened in this mas- sive old structure? One feels as one walks through the dimly lighted halls that the air is heavy with old and long-forgotten associations. The place has, if I may use the term, a creepy feel, and it is quite in accord with the fitness of things that a ghost should appear there. There are plenty of instances on record ‘where death has been predicted in similar ghostly ways. These are either authen- tic or are believed to be, and many of them concern the great men and women of history, while there is probably at oErATH S THE &ROST OF least one such story in the private knowl- edge of each one.of us. The ghost of Mary that was sald to walk in the tower last Christmas is the mest recent striking instance of a death premonition. A watchman in the tower of London heard the footsteps of the sad Mary, the Mary who is sai® to walk al- ways on the Christmas eve before the death of England’'s ruler. The watch- man's story was told immediately, and the death of Victorla followed within a few weeks.. Here was an instance like that of the British Consul and Captain Waterman: not the wraith of the one about to die, but of another, gave the ‘warning. A remarkable instance concerned ths death of General Custer at the massacre of Little Big Horn. He felt the approach of death himself; he must have known us well as if he had been told that he was going to his death on that herrible day. Those who knew him well and were with him said afterward that he was a changed man; he had been accustomed to be ar- bitrary, dogmatic, asking no advice and giving no confidence. On the day when he and his command reached the borders of the territory where the Indians were he became what in a man of his caliber seemed almost panic-stricken. He ap- ¢ CUsT 18 1901. Pesled iamely to his ofMicers for assistance in planning the campaign, begging their advices on every point. One of the men remarked at the time In an aside, “Cus- ter must be going to dis, he acts so - Stranger yet was the story of his little daughter. Miles and miles away from him though she was, she ran to the house at what afterward proved to be the time of his death and eried that the Indians were killing papa and he was calling for help. The child was nervously prostrated and could not be coaxed out of her fright or out of the firm belief that she had heatd her papa calling for heln » General Lytle, the soldier-poet, predict- ed ‘his own d \ and at a £ 1 his side during the ¥ might be cared for. Suc e been fre- quent g soldiers. ¢ Dessaix’s premonition on the eve of the battle of Marengo was another in poin He had always been a b man and Had won his greatest laurels in Egypt. ht in any con’s Vapo g will happen to me to- g - e I fought n't know more. arr ing his affairs & calm e were on a death bed. He orde me of his staff »n the morrow. ttle had been going when Dessalx was orter tells of three such instances which he saw durlng the can war. aptain Drum and First Lieutenant amin of his baitery both feit the same convictien that they were to die at the siege of the City of Mexico. They toid Porter and > cheering words that he could s in any way affected thefr belief. “Don’t borrow trouble,” he urged them, but to no avail. And their fore- warnigg proved only too tr was not long before the fi the try wounded them bot an infan- ly. m Lieutenant Gannt was another officer in the same ge W predicted his own death. “Good-by 'orter; [ shall never see you again,” he said, and truly. Lord Nelson preparec the eve of Trafalgar. papers, adding a codic day of the battle he & uniform, remarking to t who object= ed to'the target that his insignia made: “In honor I have won them; in honor I will die in them.” In modern history of war is the instance of Hamilton Fish Jr., sergeant of a,com~ pany of Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Be- fore the advance on Santiago de Cuba he told a group of friends that he would be Kkilled in the first fight. J. F. ROSE-SOLEX, 5 to die on nged all his his will. On the ed in his s He a