I know I blogged yesterday that I don't know what draws me to cemeteries and the paranormal but, likewise, I am not sure what draws me to Hannibal, Missouri. I guess Mark Twain has always been an idol of mine since I love to write and I am a smart-ass like he was. It was a simpler time and Hannibal is a town sort of caught in a time-warp.
I told you that I would blog about Mark Twain Cave today.
The way I enticed Sparky to go to Hannibal with me was with the idea of the cave tour. What thirteen-year-old boy doesn't want to go spelunking? We had a great time before the cave but he said the cave was his favorite part. When Mark Twain was a boy (probably about Sparky's age) he and his friends would go exploring in the cave. It wasn't called Mark Twain cave the since Mark Twain wasn't even called Mark Twain then. I know you probably know this but he was Sam Clemens then (Samuel Langhorn Clemens). The cave was discovered by a man named Jack Simms who was chasing a panther (probably an Oswego Panther) in 1819 and the cave was known as Simms' Cave until the 1840's when a wealthy surgeon from St. Louis named Joseph Nash McDowell bought the land that included the cave and the cave became known as McDowell Cave. McDowell's daughter died of pneumonia in 1849 and Dr. McDowell, who had always thought that the cave's constant 55 degree temperature and darkness would serve to preserve organic items, thought to experiment with this theory on his daughter. He built a copper cylinder lined with glass, filled it with an alcohol mixture, and placed his daughter in the cylinder suspended from the ceiling in the cave. Of course, boys like young Sam Clemens explored the cave regularly and happened upon the body and it soon became a regular attraction to the boys of Hannibal who wanted to grab the girl by the hair and pull her out of the cylinder to gaze at her corpse. Once word got out to the townspeople that there was a corpse in the cave McDowell was disgraced in town and removed his daughter's body and buried her in St. Louis. There are legends of the cave being haunted, of course. A tour guide in the 1990's saw a girl dressed in an "old-fashioned dress and cape" who he thought
was a lost tourist. He tried to speak to her but she turned and walked away toward McDowell's room. She reportedly disappeared through a wall in the cave like a mist. The cave is amazing. It has an authenticated autograph of Jesse James (the old-west outlaw not the jerk who screwed over Sandy Bullock) who used it as a hide-out from time-to-time. There are stories that there is treasure throughout the hills that Jesse buried there. It's odd that if it were a hideout he'd have a sign there but I guess it was dark. The cave became known as Mark Twain Cave after the story of Tom Sawyer. Quite a bit of the book is written about and in the cave. While we were there we saw one bat hanging from the ceiling and we saw two separate bats flying around; that just adds to the creepiness. Alright, I think that will do it for Hannibal. I wasn't trying to make these last couple of days a history lesson but I guess it was. I obviously love this town and the stories of the MIDDLEwest. Tomorrow I will get back to my usual blogging. I have a whole bunch of stuff like getting ready for the Matt In The Middle Seance! Have a Terrific Tu Tu Tuesday. The next time I blog you I will once again be de-palsmatized...ecto-plasmatized. TTTT...MITM!
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