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Antes Fort & Creek Ghosts
Antes Creek
It all started with King Wi-daagh, a chief of the Andaste Indians. His ghost is said to haunt the area of the Nippenose Valley in the vicinity of Antes Creek. He haunts the area, in part, to protest the bad deal he made when selling land in his territory to emissaries of William Penn for only a few trinkets in September 1700. A large column from the Pennsylvania State Capitol was placed in tribute to King Wi-daagh at the homestead known as "Lochabar" along the banks of Antes Creek. An inscription on the column commemorates the treaty. Visitors to this area, especially in the autumn, can see a ghostly mist coming off the emerald green waters of Wi-daugh's Spring giving a very ominous and spooky sense to the place.
Also in the Antes Fort area are reports of haunted houses. Col. Henry Antes, who founded Antes Fort, is blamed for this. It is alleged that near the end of the Revolutionary War, Antes engaged in an early form of biological warfare against the Indians of the area. He and other white settlers were having disputes with Indians and to end the dispute, Antes is supposed to have purchased the blankets of several people who had died of smallpox in the Harrisburg area. He then "donated" these infected blankets to some of the local Indians. Many people caught the disease and died, and when a local Indian chief found out about Antes' alleged atrocity he was outraged and vowed revenge on Antes and those around him. This revenge is supposed to have taken the form of the haunting of houses in the Antes Fort area, according to an Oct. 29, 1988 Sun-Gazette article.
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