Some Scary Stuff

Ritchie-Crawford House in Camden

Fear set up shop in Camden one particular spring. Mrs. Maud Crawford, prominent attorney and friend of my grandmother, disappeared and was later presumed dead in March of 1957.

The adults whispered and  I checked under my bed and inside my closet for years. My grandmother kept looking for Mrs. Maud in the audience of the Lawrence Welk Show.

How could Mrs. Maud be in the audience listening to champagne music when she was cut into pieces and buried in the Safeway parking lot, or thrown down a dirty, abandoned well. All speculation, of course. To a child, it was the stuff of nightmares. Though everyone associated with the crime is long dead, legends and lore linger. My age group was at a vulnerable age and most of us acknowledge that the disappearance and stories of what happened to Mrs. Maud scared us "spitless."

Some scary stuff was going on in Camden and it was my first real-life encounter with a world where bad things could and did happen to good people.

The House on Harrison Street acknowledges the time frame and the fear the disappearance held for a child. It notes the Ritchie connection to the house on Greening Street, the one from which Mrs.Maud disappeared, the one that was built by and long occupied by Walter P Ritchie. His family enjoyed the grandeur of that house until the fallout from the Great Depression landed on this branch of the family, also.
The House on Harrison Street does not dig up old bones, though it does rattle a few skeletons.

The House on Harrison Street will be available at the Camden Daffodil Festival on Friday and Saturday, March 11- 12, 2016.
I'll be at the Great Hall at UMC (Harrison/Jefferson Streets) and will be at the Ramsey House and the Gordon House some, also.
Friday evening 6-8 PM, I'm hosting a drop-by at the Holiday Inn.
The cost of the 8 x 10 size paperback of is $20. The 208 page saga contains a full bibliography, end notes by chapter, and an index.
A CD to accompany the book is available. It contains more pictures. Cost of the CD is $10.