2 Chapter 2: The Spirit of Glassboro, Part 2

Each night, parents stayed home to protect their children the best they could.

A Nor'easter blew in ferociously in early January and the remaining residents of Glassboro found themselves sheltered close to home, buried in snow and a hard, long freeze.The factory shut down and to their relief and gratitude, children stopped disappearing.

Some of the Whitney and Stanger families moved to New York City and Charleston.Thomas Whitney and Jeramiah Stanger's families were the last to live along Glen Lake, in large white, three-story manors across the street from one another.To find another source of income, they sold most of the surrounding land to farmers who planted crops of onion and asparagus.

Thomas and Gayle Whitney refused to leave their home, desperate and hopeful that one day their lost boys would return to them.The factory was sold to Riley Carpenter who instead of producing bottles and window glass, produced jars for whiskey and rye.

Many of the residents fled Glassboro but the few that remained, believed the harsh winter killed the creature that terrorized them, unable to survive in the freezing temperature.

The Whitney family died in their home a few years later.After sitting vacant for three years, one of the farmers purchased the home, moving his wife, two daughters and three sons into the stately old manor.

The Stanger's left their home and moved to Charleston to be near their children and never returned.

Since the winter of 1968, there had only been a few rumblings of sightings of the creature.The Glassboro History Museum displayed a wooden shutter with four long marks stretched across the grain.Some people say it was a fake, carvings made by a knife or a pitchfork to frighten children, done to keep them in line at night to guard against mischief and pranks.

Eventually, the homes in the town's Carpenter and Bowman neighborhoods were razed to make way for an extension of Glassboro State College.

As more and more construction on the new college continued, pieces of broken glass were unearthed around the site, often piercing the boots of workers.Farmers around Glen Lake also found bits of glass mixed among the growing asparagus and onion.Before pouring the foundation of a new wing at the college, workers unearthed teeth, at first paying no attention to them, thinking they were remains of animals.

With the growth of the school and thanks to an urban renewal project to revamp the main street area, Glassboro flourished.The farmers around Glen Lake were forced out to neighboring towns and new homes popped up close to the old great manors.

Residents still find glass in their yards to this day, and occasionally find teeth.Could they be the teeth from the missing children or teeth from an animal long rotted away? Faint cries in the woods near Glen Lake late at night are often heard.The sound much like that of a wounded puppy or heartbroken cat, fill the sky on warm, summer evenings.Some ignore the cries and believe the noise is likely from a loud neighbor across the way but those residents who survived, those residents that know the teeth they find are the teeth of children, know better.

They know the Spirit of Glassboro has not truly gone away.It waits, somewhere in the dark, to return and feast on a new generation of children.

Dell Fisher, Part 1

It was the perfect day for a drive.Dell Fisher cruised down the long highway in his '89 Ford cab pick-up truck.The sun had just begun to peak over the horizon and its golden rays illuminated the barren forest that hugged the narrow two-lane road.The morning frost melted and dripped off the body of the faded cream-colored car, disappearing as each drop took flight above the pavement.

Dell adjusted the front windshield defogger on his dashboard and then settled back, deep into his seat.He felt surprised that his hands were not too sweaty inside his leather gloves.He had the gloves for almost as long as he had his Ford.The leather cracked and bits of camel-colored stuffing snuck out between some of the fingertips.They were his favorite gloves.For a moment, Dell took his eyes off the highway and stared at his gloves as he squeezed the steering wheel and flexed his fingers.Good gloves, he thought.These gloves were with him when he shot the large buck last November from his secret tree post near his cabin in the woods.It was unseasonably cold that day, much like today.He knew he would have lost his fingers to frostbite waiting for that buck to cross his path if it hadn't been for these gloves.Good gloves, he thought again.

He looked up into the rear-view mirror and noticed the highway was still empty, not a car in sight.It was, after all, about 6:30am Thanksgiving morning and most of the travelers along Highway 43 had reached their final destinations the night before.Most people would be asleep after a long day in heavy traffic and only a handful would be waking up to begin preparing for the holiday dinner.Growing up in Martin Falls, Dell knew that this stretch of road was mainly traveled by locals and only around the holidays did it see its fair share of traffic; the residents of Martin Falls sharing this shortcut from the interstate with their loved ones.

Dell adjusted the rear-view mirror and tilted it to get a good look at the back seat.His wife Miriam was bundled up across the seat and she hadn't moved.He cleared his throat and aimed the mirror back on the road behind him.Still empty.

He could hardly believe that it had been a year already since he shot that Buck, the years flying by faster and faster ever since he turned sixty.He and his wife had been together off and on for about thirty years.She was his second wife.His first wife Lucy had been his high school sweetheart and they had a son together, Patrick.Once Patrick went away to college, Dell learned that his wife was having an affair with one of the hands on their farm and shortly after that, she and her lover disappeared.