Quincy, Illiniois – Sixteen-year-old Charles Ashmore stepped outside one cold November evening in 1878 to fetch water from the well. Strangely, he never returned. Fearing for his safety, his father and sister went searching for him with a lantern. Thanks to the thin layer of freshly fallen snow, they were able to follow his footprints. However, the trail went completely cold roughly halfway to the well: the prints had ceased entirely, without a single sign of a struggle, jumping, or sliding. They hurried to the well to see if he had fallen in, but there was no way he could have, seeing as it had been covered in ice so solid that it had to have been there for several hours.
The two returned home, dumbfounded by the disappearance. His mother paced back and forth from the house to the well, seeking answers and clues that were nowhere to be found. On the fourth day of patrolling the area, she heard Charles’ voice calling out to her, coming from different directions as she stood by the well. “Charlie, where are you? Tell us how to get to you,” she would call to his incredibly clear voice, though he couldn’t be seen. She never received an answer.
This went on for months, with family and neighbors both hearing his voice. Over time, Charles’ calls grew fainter and seemed to be from a greater distance away in an unidentifiable direction. By mid-summer, he was entirely inaudible.
Charles Ashmore’s disappearance remains a mystery to this day, almost a century and a half later. Is it possible that he became trapped within a different dimension of time and space?
Sources
Barry, Sheila Anne. “World’s Most Spine-Tingling True Ghost Stories.”
