'Ghost' Haunts Grafton's Consolidated Manufacturing Company

It’s time for another Throwback Thursday vintage newspaper article!  Today’s selection comes from the February 22, 1916 edition of The Daily Telegram, a newspaper based in Clarksburg, WV.  The article mentions that for some time, the Consolidated Manufacturing Company in nearby Grafton had been the site of a haunting.  However, one brave watchman confronted the ‘ghost’ and found it was none other than a former employee of the plant who had been stealing items, including a typewriter, from his former place of employment.  The story has a happy ending, though, as the ghost wasn’t prosecuted, but instead was simply allowed to return the stolen items!

I absolutely love these old ghost stories that remind us that not everything is what it seems!  I’m glad the company regained its stolen property and that the ghostly thief, probably someone fairly down on his luck, was spared a prison sentence in lieu of doing the right thing.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a whole lot about the Consolidated Manufacturing Company.  From a website devoted to Carr China, it appears that the Consolidated Manufacturing Company of Grafton was built along the Tygart River around 1913, but would go bankrupt in 1916. Later that year, it would become known as ‘the pottery,’ or the home for Carr China until its closure in 1952.  The building caught on fire in July of 1966, and its burned out remains quickly became a haven for vandals and vagrants.  It was eventually torn down, taking its ‘haunted’ past with it to the grave.