In June 1980, thirty-eight year old Robert
Davidson was zipping down I- 74 in Acton, Indiana on his motorcycle when a
severe storm rolled in. Rain fell hard and fast, and for him,
painfully, since his body was unprotected from the stinging barrage.
He had to pull over, and so he stopped along the roadside. He'd no sooner
put his foot on the ground when he was jolted by lighting--200,000 volts of
electricity struck him. He fell to the ground. Dead. Smoke poured from
the area where the bolt had struck him, and his shoes had been blown off from the blast.
A witness called for help and in minutes an ambulance arrived at the scene, and
the paramedics, among them Randy Neibert, Kimberly Cobb, and Marylou Shafer,
fought their way through the crowd that had quickly gathered around the fallen man.
The paramedics did their best to revive Davidson, but all the while they thought
it hopeless, because he had no heart beat. In an interview on
Unsolved Mysteries, Kimberly said: "He had no pulse...he should have been dead."
Then something strange happened. All of the sudden, the
ambulance completely lost power. The paramedics were baffled, because
even the back up battery was lifeless. At the same time, some of the onlookers
felt chills from head to toe as if some great form of energy was touching
them.
But things would get stranger still.
Out of the blue, a mysterious woman started yelling in the crowd, "I must
touch him! Let me touch him!" Her long black hair flowing about
her, she tried to approach the paramedics but was restrained by a police
officer. She wore a plain black dress and shoes, typical of the styles
from the Victorian times. There was a silver cross around her neck and a
bible in her hand. Again and again she insisted: "I must touch him!
I can save his life."
Still unable to get a pulse, the paramedics thought that
they had nothing to lose, and so they decided to let the woman do as she
asked.
She knelt beside the man and put her left hand on his chest
while she recited the 23rd Psalm, repeatedly striking the ground with the bible
as she did so.
Then she stood and spoke passionately in what some would later say was
tongues as she held the bible to the sky.
While he watched her, Randy noticed something odd. Though the rain still
poured, the woman wasn't getting wet. When she was finished with her
prayers, she turned toward him with a knowing smile, and then she rejoined the
crowd where she vanished.
With her departure, all power immediately returned to the
ambulance and, even more amazingly, Robert Davidson suddenly had a heartbeat.
Oddly, some of the witnesses at the scene, including two of the paramedics,
would later say that they never saw the mysterious woman in black.
Marylou Shafer, one of the paramedics who had seen the woman was shocked by these statements. In
an interview, she said: "There is no doubt in my mind. She was there."
They rushed Davidson to the emergency room and the attending
physician wasn't optimistic about the man's prognosis. He thought that Davidson would remain
in a coma and would soon die. Two months later, however, Davidson woke up,
wondering what he was doing in the hospital. He had no memory of the
woman in black or of the injury. To the doctor's surprise, Davidson made a full
and miraculous recovery. He was talking, walking, and ready to resume
his life.
So who was the woman in black? An angel? The ghost of
a woman who had lived during the Victorian times?
There are a few clues and many a theory.
Near
the area where Davidson had his accident sits a large vacant meadow where
the Acton Campground, a 19th Century Methodist spiritual retreat, had been
located. From 1859 to 1905, the area had commanded a large gathering of
people who'd come together to worship God through hymns and prayers.
Some believe that the mysterious woman is the ghost
of one of the Campground followers--perhaps a spiritual teacher or minister.
Other's believe that she was a divine spirit sent from heaven to save the
man's life and/or perhaps to instill faith. If this is so then she took a
human form. Angels are known to take many forms. Sometimes they
even appears as animals.
While researching this mystery, I came across a site called
Project X where the author swears that the woman in black is the spirit of a
Cherokee Indian. That's doubtful because the
Cherokee didn't occupy Indiana. They were located in the deep Southern
States and were sent to Oklahoma in what has become known as the trail of
tears. Indiana was simply too far north. The author states that an
old Cherokee woman lived in the area--but that's rare, and it doesn't prove
that the woman in black was Cherokee.
It's possible that she could have been Native American, as some witnesses
believe that she spoke in Native American and not in "tongues" and she
supposedly had a "Native American look." However, some European people,
especially from the Mediterranean area, can have a similar look to Native
Americans. Don't believe it? Look at my picture. All of my
life people have sworn that I'm a Native American. And my grandfather
with his jet black hair, high cheekbones, and dark skin and eyes looked like a
full-blooded native American but, alas, he was French.
And finally, this woman wasn't dressed like a Native American--though it's
true that Native Americans who were retained in camps and schooled by European
Americans were often forced to wear the white man's clothes and adopt the
white man's ways, I doubt that that would be something she'd desire in the
afterlife unless, of course, she'd been reared by a European American family.
So I'm skeptical about this Native American aspect.
The author of the site also claims to have encountered this woman before the
incident involving Davidson, but again, I'm skeptical about this being the
woman in black, because the ghostly woman he saw was dressed in Native
American garb and not in a long black dress. Ghosts usually present wearing
the same clothes--often their burial clothes.
In
addition, there's a black dress in an Acton Museum from the original Acton
Campground (see the picture at the right) and some swear that it's the same
dress that the woman in black wore; however, these types of black dresses were
so common in the Victorian era that it would be difficult if not impossible to
draw that conclusion. Look on Ebay or Ruby Lane, you'll see several just
like it. Such black dresses were typically worn for mourning, and it was
acceptable to wear silver religious pieces of jewelry during the mourning
period. So I would say that this lady was in mourning for a lost
husband when she died. In addition, this dress dates to about 1890 to 1900, which
is probably around the time the lady died.
Some believe she could have been a teacher at a little school house (where the
museum is located). This is certainly a possibility.
Perhaps, in the future, Marie St. Claire can investigate this case and unravel
the mystery of the woman in black as, whoever she is, we'd all like to know
more about her.
-The End-
Author's Notes:
If you'd like to learn more about this
case, check out Unsolved Mysteries Ghost Edition, which is available at
Amazon.com.
