Photograph courtesy of The History Press
A dragon boat that vomited smoke, a man who fell out of a plane and disappeared into thin air, a doctor who robbed graves… Mary Collins Barile cobwebbed through old, brittle newspapers, sepia-inked diaries, and 90-year-olds’ foggy childhood memories to weave her new book, Forgotten Tales of Missouri.
Who’s the boldest character?
Calamity Jane. She turned to prostitution—there weren’t a lot of ways for a woman to survive—and she created a lot of her own myths. She dressed in men’s clothing, in women’s clothing, she drank… She did whatever she had to do.
Wasn’t Wild Bill Hickok the love of her life?
That’s the myth. There is a question as to whether he had any affection for her whatsoever. She did act as a nurse to the prospectors in the mining camps—she didn’t cut and run. She dressed in men’s clothing, in women’s clothing, she drank… She did whatever she had to do.
Who resonated most?
Mark Twain’s mom. She was a wonderful mimic, very funny, able to convey to her son a great deal of the humor of life—and the hope. Samuel and his brother bet they could make their mother feel sorry for Satan himself. Sure enough, she said, “If anyone deserves our prayers, it’s Satan.”
Which of these stories was on the edge of disappearing?
The skeleton in the boat—the murdered young woman. At the time it was a news story with gothic overtones. But for us, with forensics, we know how easily they could have tracked down the killer.
Where did you find “The Long Black Veil,” about the Southern widow who refused to mourn Lincoln’s assassination and hung herself instead?
That came out of a collection by the Missouri Daughters of the Confederacy. They didn’t publish it right away, because they weren’t sure how it would be accepted.
Any surprises?
The story of the witch in Victoria, Mo. I’m from the Northeast, and it was interesting to see the different response here. People may have complained about Queen Bevis casting a spell on them, but she wasn’t being hanged or burned at the stake. Witchcraft was alive and well in Missouri well into the 20th century.
Your previous book was The Haunted Boonslick: Ghosts, Ghouls and Monsters of Missouri’s Heartland. Do you believe in ghosts?
I’m not quite sure you can wander through a house with a little box and it’ll you a ghost is there, but I’ve experienced enough that I very much believe in another world after this one or congruent with this one. One of the stories in Forgotten Tales is about Patience Worth [a 17th-century spirit channeled by a Pearl Curran, a St. Louis housewife]. It’s been explained as Pearl’s subconscious, but when we read the stories of people who listened to her dictate or took her dictation… I was unable to find the daughter Patience supposedly instructed Pearl to adopt, but she could easily still be alive. How does a person go through life knowing they were adopted by a ghost?
