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By all
accounts, G.W. Davis was a solid citizen
in life, but in death, he was apparently
as solid as they come.
Back in 1900, the Beaumont railroad
mechanic’s kidneys failed and he died at
age 46. He was temporarily buried in
Magnolia Cemetery while the family
hunted for a permanent grave.
Three months later, when they dug him
up, they found his corpse had
mysteriously turned hard as stone. His
own son described petrified dad as being
“as solid as marble.”
In the next few weeks, Davis’ widow
rebuffed several cash offers for her
husband’s rocky remains, including one
for $4,000 – that’s more than $93,000
today. Then she had a brainstorm: If her
husband’s stone-faced carcass was so
valuable, why not just bring him home
where she could keep an eye on her
investment?
But when the family dug him up again, he
was gone. Maybe his hardened body was
snatched … or maybe he just felt he was
being taken for granite.
And in 2007, he’s apparently still gone.
The disappearance of the late G.W. Davis
is just one of about 300 odd stories
literally ripped from the headlines of
Texas newspapers between 1860 and 1910
by Chad Lewis, author of the new book, “Hidden
Headlines of Texas.”
Among the Southeast Texas stories retold
in the book is the tale of “Baby Jim”
Simmons, a 750-pound Beaumont man who
might have been the world’s biggest man
in 1907. As the genial Simmons traveled
with a huckster circus promoter, gawkers
were allowed to come aboard the train
(for a small fee) to see a morbidly
obese man that a Dallas reporter
coarsely labeled “the mastodon” and “the
monster.”
In all, Lewis reprints four stories with
Southeast Texas roots, including the
news of a mysterious 1902 oil gusher
near Beaumont that nobody could explain,
and an outbreak of bizarre coincidences
on one day in 1897 Orange.
But those are tame stories compared to
historic reports of a 40-foot tapeworm
uncoiled from a Hillsboro toddler’s
innards; the Denison “cemetery” where
only the amputated legs, fingers and
hands of injured railroaders were
buried; and the San Antonio locksmith
who built his own iron coffin … then
grew too fat to fit in it.
Quirkiness comes easy for Lewis. The
Wisconsin ghost-hunter has written a
series of travel guides for ghost buffs
and hosts a radio and TV program called
“The Unexplained.”
“Hidden
Headlines” is broken into several
chapters, such as “Medical Anomalies,”
“Peculiar People,” and “Bizarre Deaths.”
It’s filled with verbatim newspaper
stories about people rising from the
dead, various freaks and mutants,
extraordinary discoveries, and sundry
hauntings.
“I have simply presented them to you
exactly the way you would have read them
on the day they were printed,” Lewis
says.
He warns his readers that he doesn’t
necessarily believe all the actually
published stories he collected, mostly
from the Dallas Morning News, but they
reflect century-old rhythms and
sensibilities.
“These Texas stories will provide you a
glimpse of the state in its simpler,
slower-paced, much weirder past,” Lewis
writes.
And, oh, if you also happen to get a
glimpse of well-preserved G.W. Davis
around Beaumont, tell him we’re still
looking for him.
Originally published in the
Beaumont Enterprise 8/10/2007
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