In what may be the earliest recorded ghostly encounter in the Irish Hills, Mrs. Secor relates a strange incident that began with workmen digging a cistern near the Powers’ home. The body of a Native American child was found “perfectly preserved in tanbark. When the air struck the body it fell apart and was soon nothing but dust.” One wonders how many decades the body had been buried before it was uncovered in this fragile state. Mrs. Secore said that a Potawatomi squaw, who claimed to be the mother of the child, visited the Powers home soon afterward and made a great ado over the exhumation of the seemingly ancient, now-disintegrated body.

Could this have been the spirit of the child’s mother, no longer at rest? Or do Potawatomi bodies buried in tanbark turn to dust in the moist Irish Hills soil within a very short period of time?