Montgomery County KyArchives News.....The Ghosts of Three Men. June 28, 1892
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Linda Blum-Barton http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000645 April 1, 2006, 9:54 pm

The Weekly Constitution, Atlanta, Ga. June 28, 1892
Mt. Sterling, Ky., June 21. -- The suicide of Mr. George McCormick, well known 
in southern Georgia, was a great shock to his friends.

On last Wednesday night he concealed himself in a blacksmith shop not far from 
his residence and waited for his brother-in-law, Dr. J. B. Spratt, to pass.  
This he did about 11 o'clock at night, when McCormick fired at him.  Dr. Spratt 
at once dismounted and went just across the road to a neighbor's house and 
asked for a shotgun and proceeded to investigate who had been trying to kill 
him; but in the meantime McCormick had gone off, evidently thinking he had done 
his work, for he went to his brother, Alex McCormick's house, where he told the 
family he had killed Dr. Spratt.  Early the next morning he started to go home, 
but went only so far as the barn, and there placed the gun to his forehead and 
sent a load of buckshot into his brain.  George McCormick was a whole-souled, 
generous man, who loved his friends and was always willing to spend and to be 
spent for them.  He had no better friend than his brother-in-law and next door 
neighbor, Dr. Spratt, who, during the years of ill health, has done all that 
one man could do for another.  Mr. McCormick was buried at Camargo Friday by 
the Masonic fraternity.

There is an incident that we have learned in connection with the suicide that 
seems to throw some light on the circumstances and points to the fact that his 
mind has long been unhinged.  During the war McCormick was  a member of Price's 
command, and becoming detached, he was captured by three guerrillas, who 
forthwith proceeded to hang him in the most approved style.  Just as they had 
succeeded in adjusting the noose to their satisfaction and were about to 
complete their work up rode seven confederates, who released McCormick and 
forthwith proceeded to hang the late hangmen.

McCormick has told some of his intimate friends that from that day on he could 
see those three men hanging to the trees and swaying in the wind.  He had two 
trees cut down in his yard some time since because he said he could not go out 
at night without seeing those men hanging there.

For the last month he has discarded his cane and carried a gun around with him 
in its stead; still his family were used to his vagaries and did not think much 
of a serious nature wrong with him.

The above we learn from a near relative to whom he had often related the 
circumstances of the hanging.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/montgomery/newspapers/theghost425gnw.txt

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