The Albino Woman

There is frost on the grass. There is orange in the forest. There is pumpkin spice in the air. All signs of late October. Halloween just ahead.  It’s the perfect time for a ghost story or maybe just a “ghost” story.  This is a true story based on a time in my childhood where the Lehigh Valley was transfixed by events occurring in the small canal town of Walnutport, just across the Lehigh River from my beloved Slatington.

Here was the Morning Call headline on an October day in 1963:  Thing Seekers Jam Walnutport!.

What was the “thing” that was jamming seekers into Walnutport! It was an albino woman! Yes, an albino woman. I know there are albino women in the world, but this was no ordinary albino woman. Reports were that she only appeared at night and in only one location, the canal towpath.  Other reports were that she could run at speeds of up to eighty miles per hour and that she would eerily smile at people driving by in cars, as she passed them, along Canal Street!  The Woman in White…that’s some scary stuff right there.

But was it true? Of course not!  But enough people believed in her, and came out to see her, that one night fire trucks could not get to a barn fire on Canal Street because of the throngs of thing seekers. The barn burned to the ground.  The hysteria of the albino woman also burned to the ground, in that it died out after cooler heads prevailed. The general consensus is that some parents told their kids this story in order to keep them off the canal at night.  The story got legs and ran right into the Morning Call newsroom.

How do these legends and myths get started and why do some continue for generations?  Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. Champy. The Abominable Snowman. Ghosts, vampires, and werewolves (werewolf? there wolf. A little shout out to my favorite comedy movie Young Frankenstein). I think it is because we all like to be a little scared. We like to think that maybe life isn’t all figured out and there is some mystery out there.  Logical minds would say that is ridiculous. I will confess that I am still a believer in bigfoot in the Great Northwest. That may come from flying over that area so often and seeing the vast areas of nothingness! It may also come from my desire to think that there is a little mystery out there. In Oregon, if not in Walnutport.

The Albino Woman did make one more appearance in the 1990s. She appeared on a boat on the canal during one of the first Walnutport Canal Festivals. She didn’t run 80 miles per hour. I know that for a fact because this Woman in White was my best friend Christy Haydt’s wife, Vicki. I know she can’t run that fast!

I am looking out the window and see that the frost has left the grass.  Time to get outdoors and go for a hike. I hope I don’t run into the Yeti of Trexler Nature Preserve!  Wish me luck and safety, please.