The Headless Cow of Johnstown/The Headless Pigs of Adamstown

 The Headless Cow of Johnstown/The Headless Pigs of Adamstown

By Cole Herrold

Spectral animal cases are perhaps my favorite type of paranormal encounters. They to me are much more interesting than the common human ghost report. Ghosts are in general are a historian's forte as when one delves into ghost lore it deals more with the history of the location that the ghost is said to roam and the history of the believed identity of the apparition witnessed. A lot of this is very interesting and ofttimes depressing or romantic. When it comes to ghost animals there usually is an underlying tragedy that calls into play the reason of why they are earthbound much like their human spirit counterparts yet often they tend to behave or appear in forms more bizarre than just the dislocated spiritual form of say a dog or cat. One of the most common forms is typically that of a headless animal. Often these can be linked to accidents or direct death of the animal via slaughterhouse or as in the case of entities like Black Shuck evidence of their supernatural origin. One such case which comes from my home state of Pennsylvania, and which is a mere hour away from my home is a strange apparition of a ghost cow that is both headless but is still seen with a head nearby.

The best way to describe this apparition is the bovine equivalent of “Nearly Headless Nick” of Harry Potter fame except that unlike Nick whose head is basically still attached this paranormal entity’s head is reported to fly through the air disconnected from its spectral body. This spectral cow was first reported in literature through a newspaper article entitled “Ghost of a Cow with Severed Head-The Frightful Spook that has Alarmed Residents of Cambria County PA- Fearful Noises Issue From Its Throat” With a Second title reading “Terrifying Ghost Cow seen near Johnstown, PA. With head separated from the body the apparition cavorts over the country with greenish fire shining from its eyes and mouth”. While this may sound like the call of a carny barker trying to pull would-be customers into some old obscure freak show tent this was indeed the titles published in the August 9, 1896 edition of The World newspaper along which the paper created a magnificent rendition of the spectral steer.

The paper stated that the sightings were cataloged by an Elmer Person an editor of the Pennsylvania Grit claimed to be a paper run through Williamsport, Pa. A city not too far from both myself as well as Johnstown. Person claimed that he had spoken to several witnesses in the area of Johnstown who all claimed to witness the ghost cow running as fast as a train from the abandoned slaughterhouse that had seemingly taken its life. The apparition is described to follow a particular fence and stone wall and upon reaching a specific spot it will turn around and head back into the slaughterhouse. The area of which is known as Climber’s Hill.  The description of the ghost is always the same according to Person who states that the ghost seems to hover along the course of the fence or above the stone wall and that its head which is dislocated from the body floats above the ground away from the torso on its own accord. The ghost apparently releases several haunting bellows which both come from the mouth and the body of the ghost as its throat is still slightly attached to the torso. The severed floating head of the ghost also is claimed to release a greenish fire from its mouth and eyes and the severed portion of the cow's neck and torso. He claimed that the area was avoided by many including even the bold attempt of curiosity by children, he even quoted a man who said that during the day the cow was something of a joke yet at night it was a haunting reality that few would want to experience. This elderly man who offered this advice claimed that even he had witnessed the apparition and will not venture into the area during the night.

Headless Animals in Pennsylvania especially those of the barnyard variety are fairly common in Pennsylvania. One case I had stumbled upon which unfortunately had barely any information for its own entry was the headless pigs of Adamstown, Pennsylvania, yet I am captivated by it enough to make it essentially a two-for-one article. The legend states that the Adamstown Abattoir was exceedingly successful and that it led to the deaths of countless pigs who were extremely large in stature. The reason for these pigs getting larger was that the farmyard in which the abattoir and home of the pigs was located was buttressed up against Echtenanch distillery. The grain remains from the distillery viewed as waste was dumped into the nearby barnyard and in doing so became a meal for the pigs. These pigs grew and fattened to an incredible size and of course, gave the slaughterhouse plenty of business. So many hogs were slaughtered that the town almost became blotted by the death and the result was that these now headless swine are reported to litter the streets of the town. They allegedly are reported regularly by locals as they traverse around Adamstown.

Headless Ghosts have always been in the realm of folklore and many could easily peg these entities into just that corner. Yet one must understand that there needs to be a reason for the folktale or folklore to exist be it the dark history of a location that involves some need for a vengeful ghost or a romantic end to the tale. Animals unfortunately do not seem to fit this category. One would be hard-pressed to find a need to express a haunting by farm animals outside of one's creative outlet or some propaganda unless the haunting actually occurred. Which, while it may seem cruel the vegetarian propaganda in Pennsylvania as native is something that practically was nonexistent until recently so the need to express animals as something other than food in the 1800s and early 1900s was unheard of. If this was to say something to show the horrors of the food processing industry it truly would be well beyond its time. I’m of the opinion based on this that if these stories are folklore or hoaxes they are simply creative stories to be different from the countless human ghost stories that exist. Or that what was described was exactly what people were reporting. For me, there are no other options. People do not mistake a cow ghost whose head goes flying along with its body unless someone sees a cow with a piece of black fabric in-between its head and assumes its headless which is possible but truly idiotic or exaggerated than in the telling. This of course only applies to the Johnstown Ghost Cow.

The Adamstown Ghost Pigs are a totally different story as there can only be two true possibilities outside of one of the most complex hoaxes I ever heard. Either this account is pure folklore to tell of the horror of mass pig slaughter or some way of commemorating history or that people really did report headless swine. The option of a hoax of that magnitude seems to the point of impossibility for if someone was to put countless pigs into some sort of harness to give the appearance of headlessness it would require more than one person and that there would need to be pig wranglers and all sorts of other accouterments that would be listed in some of our greatest hoaxes and not a case that we are still debating and talking about today.

One thing I find interesting as I grow older is the lack of animal ghosts. The only animal ghost cases I seem to come across anymore are those of cats and dogs. Yet back in the day farm animals and wild animal ghosts are incredibly common. It was normal to come across ghost apes such as the Serial Killer Orangutan of La Rue Croissant (see entry for more info), or the semi-plucked Ghost Chicken of Highgate or the Phantom Bear of The Tower of London, or even Gef the mongoose though he seems to be more complicated than any of these apparitions. So, I have to ask where have all the ghost animals gone? Is it that with such more positive movements like veganism and vegetarianism or more humanistic zoos that it put the need for these spectral species to rest. I doubt it since one can argue with industrialization we are finding more ways to process animals and at times in ways that some would consider it a holocaust. Its from this that I wonder if there was something in the human essence or the world’s structure that allowed such apparitions to exist. Is it that we created these entities from some suppressed guilt, or that the apparitions were showing that they were just as sentient as us which lead to the whole movements we see now and therefore a lack of need to manifest their spectral forms or is it something that the earth put forth herself as a way of showing how extreme and cruel to our fellow co-dwellers we are? With these possibilities I’m unsure yet it’s interesting that as I searched I could find no further encounters as those. These hauntings winded down farther than what we're used to. Ghosts do have a habit of seemingly abandoning their haunts or their behavior over the years loses their potency. Perhaps with animals, this is lessened or whatever meaning their hauntings were meant to convey was understood and therefore the hauntings need not happen anymore. This is all speculation for a field that has less of an understanding than say cryptozoology or ufology and I say that as there is no noticeable hard science outside of maybe chemistry or physics behind but none of which can truly explain hauntings or ghosts in an academic peer-reviewed research sense.

Ghost animal cases are clearly a mixture of a lot of phenomena and philosophies. Many will point to folklore and many will point out that the existence of animal ghosts will be evidence that we all have souls and that there is electrical and chemical existence of life after death even in species we view as inferior. Others will view this as some earth-oriented or human-oriented phenomena created by our own or by some higher intelligence. My thoughts are the following life and death are the only truths of life. It makes sense that once things die be that for a little or a long while that they remain. This can be either through memory or stories. Sometimes this is enough. At other times we may need to push beyond and if your something so removed from what is dominant you’ll find all sorts of ways to do so and not necessarily to convey some sort of message. Some will call these psychic impressions entities that do not “exist’ but are recorded in the environment. What though if there was something in-between that something that is trying to reach out through where it once was in life but only able to re-enact what it previously did. This seems to be the case in many hauntings as they venture between intelligent types and recordings. Yet again this is mere speculation and that we have no true idea as to why such phenomena occur.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Spectral Bovine (Johnstown Ghost Cow) / Spectral Swine (Adamstown Ghost Pigs)

Location: Johnstown, Cambria County, Pennsylvania/ Adamstown, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Sighted: 1896/ undated sighting reports

Works Cited:

The World (New York, New York) August 9, 1896

Pennsylvania Dutch County Ghosts Legends and Lore By Charles J. Adams III