More Duffy's Cut

Hey, I know my spook lovin' buds on H&H are avid followers of the ghosts of Duffy's Cut and its whole sordid story. Here's a CNN update on Doc Watson's merry band of historians trying to set things right: "Grandfather's Ghost Story Leads To Mysterious Mass Grave" By Meghan Rafferty.

Duffy's Cut...The Story Continues

"There's a saying that under every mile of track there's an Irishman..."

Many H&H readers have asked us about the progress of the Duffy's Cut project, and we've found a new report on how it's coming along.

The Duffy's Cut saga hopefully heads towards a conclusion as an Immaculata University team, led by Frank and William Watson, tries to find the remains of Irish RR laborers who died - some by cholera, others by murder - who helped build a PRR line through Chester County in the 1830's. The local lore says that their restless spirits still roam the track.

For the original 2008 H&H story, click here.

For the Duffy Cut web site, click here.

For a BBC article on the affair, click here.

Duffy's Cut - Near Closure?

Duffy's Cut
Hey, you may remember that we ran a couple of articles on Duffy's Cut, where the ghosties of Irish railroad laborers were spooking the living in search of a proper burial.

Well, after years of often frustrating work, Doctors Bill and Frank Watson of Immaculata University may have finally found their bones, buried in an eastern PA hillside. Here's the discovery, as reported by the BBC.

The Duffy's Cut Project has been archived by the gang, and here's the tale to date, as told on their web site.

St. Patrick would be proud of the work the good docs and their team have done. They hope eventually to ID some of the remains, send them back to the Old Sod for burial, and put their souls to rest at long last.

Duffy's Cut Update

H&H has had a couple of folk ask us about the status of the Duffy's Cut project, since it seems to have stalled out last August. We went straight to the horse's mouth, Immaculata U's expert Dr. William Watson, one of the authors of The Ghosts of Duffy's Cut, to find out what's going on with the dig, and he was kind enough to respond by e-mail:

Hello Ron — thanks very much for the note, and for posting the information on your web site.

Up to now, we have been able to procure the necessary science (GPR, magnetometry, etc) only by specialists donating an afternoon or a day or two. Last summer, we had a geoscientist from UPenn named Dr. Tim Bechtel out at the site for a week, and we were close to locating the mass grave, but when he left due to work constraints, we were unable to proceed.

We have continued to find personal items from the men at the site, like utensils, buttons, and clay pipe fragments.

We have not been able to secure any funding to pay for the continual assistance of the scientific specialists until now. This summer, we received 2 grants from Immaculata University to pay for further GPR and other scientific testing at the site, and we hope that this fall will be productive.

We are eagerly awaiting the word from Dr. Bechtel on his return.

Thanks!

Dr. William Watson

He dropped us another line Tuesday:

Ron -

By coincidence, as I was driving home yesterday, Tim Bechtel’s office called to confirm that he will be out on Friday to help us out. We’ll keep our fingers crossed. He seems confident.

Cordially,

Bill

So it looks like the Duffy's Cut Project is back on track. Maybe we can finally point those restless Irish spirits towards the light.

Duffy's Cut

Culvert at Duffy's Cut from Duffy's Cut Project

Sure and begorra, what would St. Paddy's Day be without a spook or two from the Old Sod? Today's tale takes us to Malvern in Chester County and the unfortunate souls of Duffy's Cut.

In 1832, 57 Irish immigrant gandy dancers and laborers from Donegal, working in the Land of Opportunity for only six weeks, succumbed to cholera - or worse - while laboring on Duffy's Cut. The epidemic claimed 900 lives in the Delaware Valley before it subsided and caused widespread panic in the area.

The Irish, being thought of as job-thieving immigrants, and Catholic to boot, were left to their own devices by the citizens, receiving what little aid the Sisters of Charity from Philadelphia and the village blacksmith could provide to them. There was no cure at the time - either you fought it off or you died.

The death rate for the dreaded disease at that time was somewhere around 65%. It was 100% for the Irishmen. Some suspect that the workers that survived were murdered by area vigilantes, and others thrown in their graves while in a coma, not yet dead, to keep the feared disease from spreading.

They were buried in a mass grave along with some of the nuns who died trying to save them by the smitty. The prejudice of the times was so great that the sisters that survived couldn't even hire a coach back home. They had to walk back to Philadelphia. The relatives of the dead men in Ireland were never notified of their deaths by the railroad.

For many years, the area was shunned by the locals who were frightened off by the alleged glowing apparitions of the dead Irish workers. One old timer said their ghosts were "...green and blue fire." Spooks were reported dancing in the nearby woods. The owners of homes recently built around the area have said that spirits peer into their windows.

The supposed plot of their mass grave was fenced off by a group of old railroaders who knew of the legend, and they maintained it as best they could. But researchers looking over old files now believe that the graveyard was in a different location. Even worse, they think that ever since the 1880s a train line has rumbled over their final resting place.

An Immaculata University professor, Dr. William Watson, who's doing research on Duffy's Cut believes he and a friend saw three of the fiery Irish spirits on the campus lawn. It was on Ember night, when the ghosts of the dead are supposed to roam the earth according to Irish lore. In another sighting, the restless Irishmen caused a bit of havoc in the college library during an exhibit of Duffy's Cut relics.

The professor says that the spirits aren't trying to scare anyone, but reaching out for help to get their bones properly buried after almost two centuries in an unmarked mass grave. As you may imagine, he's trying, through an ongoing effort called The Duffy's Cut Project, looking for the truth and closure.

The story's told in The Ghosts of Duffy's Cut by William Watson, J. Francis Watson, John Ahtes and Earl Schandelmeier.