Neurotic Women Have Queer Mania
The astonishing fraud perpetrated by Evelyn Lyons of Escanaba, Michigan, who, with the aid of a hot water bottle, fooled the doctors into believing that she had a fever of 118 degrees, is not without precedent. She was the victim of an odd mania that often seizes abnormal women who crave wide notoriety. Doctors and psychologists have long been acquainted with this strange caprice of neurotic women, but it is rarely that one maintains the fake illness for as long a time as did Miss Lyons, who set the nation’s medical fraternity in a tempest of learned discussion before her sham was discovered.
This erratic desire to be an object of curiosity often takes other forms, as in the case of Mary Ellen MacDonald of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, who, in order to attract attention, turned herself into a “spook.” By starting mysterious fires around her home, walking stealthily through the farmhouse at night and slapping the faces of sleeping persons, rapping on the walls and so forth, she contrived to spread a feeling of dread throughout the countryside. The superstitious country folk were sure that the house was haunted, and as Miss MacDonald carried her hoax still further—sending weird radio messages, tying knots in the tails of cows, attiring herself in ghostly gowns and fleeing across the moonlit fields—the fear of disembodied spirits spread rapidly, and the uncanny “manifestations” became a matter of nation-wide discussion.
Spiritualists, mediums, and others journeyed to Antigonish, and, after watching the unearthly “phenomena,” were unanimously agreed that a spirit, or spirits, had returned to haunt the community.
Then Dr. Walter Prince of the Psychical Research Society went there, investigated the “ghost” more thoroughly, and traced all the terrifying happenings to Mary Ellen MacDonald.
Meanwhile, however, Miss MacDonald—like Miss Lyons, the “fever girl”—had gratified her craving for notoriety.
HAMILTON CRAIGIE Spins Another Yarn in His Inimitable Style