ByGone Muncie: The Ghost of Selma Pike
Before society turned cruel, housing insecure 19th century Hoosiers could seek assistance from county governments. In Delaware County, commissioners in 1851 purchased several acres of land in Liberty Township to establish the Delaware County Alms House, a working farm providing shelter for those with no place to go.
Known by many names, but most often as the Delaware County Infirmary and colloquially as the Poor Farm, impoverished locals, orphans, residents with severe mental illness, elderly without support, and homeless people could find refuge at the Infirmary. County historian Thomas Helm wrote in 1881 that they were “supplied with the necessaries of life and shielded from the inclemencies of weather, and otherwise treated according to the dictates of a common humanity.”
The county closed the facility in the 1980s. Today the site is home to Willowbend Living Center and the Delaware County Highway Engineer. The Infirmary was situated halfway between Muncie and Selma, just north of what is now East Jackson/SR 32, but known around 1900 as Selma Pike.
On the morning of July 22, 1896, the Muncie Daily Herald printed a “strange and very mysterious ghost story” about an ice hauler from Selma who glimpsed an apparition under the Infirmary’s giant hickory tree. “Yesterday morning, just before daylight,” the Daily wrote, “the young Selma resident started to this city after a load of ice. When he neared the big tree he discovered the body of a man on the ground beneath the spreading branches.” Spooked, the Selmarian took off west toward the Magic City, “lashing his horses into a wild run.” On his return trip, “nothing unusual was apparent about the tree.” The spirit had dissipated from whence it came.
Residents of Liberty Township and many Munsonians were on edge that July after the strange death of Joseph Landers. His corpse was found stone-dead in the middle of Selma Pike just before dawn on July 8 by a farm hand named George Wilson. The Muncie Morning News wrote that the face was “besmeared with blood and clots of red fluid matted the hair. His clothes were covered with dust and blood and the sight was surely a ghastly one.” The left ear and most of the scalp was missing. The bruised body was covered in deep lacerations.
Wilson ran to the nearby Meeker Dairy Farm for help. A runner was sent to call the cops in Boycetown, Muncie’s gas-boom era east-end suburb. Though the body wasn’t in city limits, the MPD dispatched patrolman George Ball (no relation to the glass bros) with county coroner Joseph Bowers in tow. The two met up with sheriff William Sherry at the scene.
“J. L.” was sewn on the body's blood-stained, tattered jacket. They found $3 in the pockets, along with an unloaded .32 caliber revolver, tobacco, and a note with the County Infirmary’s insignia. Ball and Sherry walked up the pike toward the Infirmary, while Bowers carted the mangled corpse back to R. Meeks and Sons mortuary in Muncie.
No one at Meeks recognized the ruined body. The morticians made the corpse “presentable” and laid it “on a stretcher for the public to view.” This seems bizarre today, but was probably the only practical solution at the time for identification. The News reported “hundreds of people gazed on the body and it was identified by several as that of Joseph Landers.”
Back at the Infirmary, Ball and Sherry discovered a puddle of gore under the hickory tree and “a trail of blood leading to a fence a few feet distant.” The only other evidence was a blue Infirmary coat with “Jesse Brown” embroidered on the tag.
About the time Landers’ corpse was put on display, an “old bay horse attached to a rattle trap of an open wagon, which was covered in blood, was found in an alley near Grant and Beacon streets” in Muncie. Patrolman James Cole found clothing, cooking utensils, a bucket of cheese and potatoes, and a terrified dog with “a deep cut under one eye” in the wagon. Everything, “including the dog was identified as the property of Landers.”
A stonemason by trade, Joe Landers had moved to Muncie in the mid-1880s to work on the ornate third Delaware County courthouse. The newspapers describe him as about 50 and ill-tempered with a dark beard. He owned a plot of land off Wheeling Pike, though he found himself destitute after the Panic of 1893. The Herald reported later that he was counterfeiting half-dollars in the Hodge Block to make ends meet. At some point, he moved into the Infirmary and became friends with a 76-year-old man named Jesse Brown.
Three weeks prior, Brown and Landers had left the Infirmary to peddle miracle salve across east-central Indiana, “purported to cure rheumatism and a hundred other diseases.” The duo were in Muncie the day before Landers’ death and spent a leisurely afternoon in Heekin Park, “sitting on a log smoking their pipes.”After an argument about provisions, Landers abandoned Brown and headed back toward the Infirmary. He was last seen buying tobacco at Schull’s Grocery in Selma.
The MPD arrested Brown at his nephew’s house a few blocks from where the horse was found. Old man Brown, who was partially deaf and without a single tooth in his head, proclaimed innocence when questioned and offered a solid alibi. In his prime, Brown had run the livery at Jo Davis House and was well known about town. Like Landers, he was homeless and living at the Infirmary in 1896. The cops held him for a few weeks on a specious charge, but found no solid evidence and let him go.
Sheriff Sherry and MPD chief William Fortner still believed Landers was murdered. Patrolman William McIlvaine had a different theory. He posited that the stonemason had some sort of medical emergency, coughing up blood against the Infirmary’s tree and fence. “Knowing that he was in a serious condition he got into his wagon and started to Muncie.” At some point, Landers fell off and was trampled to death under the horse and wheels. Plausible, but McIlvaine’s supposition didn’t take into account the wounded dog.
The cause of Landers’ death was never determined. He was buried in a pauper’s grave at Beech Grove Cemetery and the county auctioned off his belongings, securing only $4.35.
Little wonder Joe Landers haunted Selma Pike. Perhaps his spirit lingers still, for ‘ghosts’ exist anywhere in the minds of the living when uncertainty combines with strong emotions, like guilt. For the way we treat the least among us will reverberate down through the ages.
Chris Flook is Delaware County Historical Society’s newsletter editor and a Senior Lecturer of Media at Ball State University.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: ByGone Muncie: The Ghost of Selma Pike
