The haunted belfry.....

Do you believe in a lucky, or perhaps and unlucky number? Joshua Cobb's number was

3.  But  why a 3? Most of us are born with a number attached to us in some manner.

The story below is number 10, in Tales Unleashed.

The Haunted Belfry

The church near Berkley Creek, Pennsylvania has been closed many years ago. It’s pastor who had been loved by all, had been dismissed by the elders after engaging in an affair with a woman on the church’s finance committee.

And so it was that the church sat idle, entangled by the yearly growth of weeds and invasive vines which choked at it’s very shingles, decade after decade. The glorious Sunday morning worships which echoed the organ and choir sounds down the hollow were now silenced, replaced by the calls of wayward crows looking to roost. An occasional passerby walking on the dirt road out front would stop, give pause and try to imagine the building when it was king of the hill. It was now indeed a lonely place. The building had witnessed the baptisms, marriages and funerals of hundreds of it’s followers…..but now only silence, except for the occasional thrice ringing of the church bell. It was not a regular alarm in the tower….it only happened about three times a year, and it was usually on the third of the month, and it was always at 3:00 a.m., when all men and beasts within it’s range were nestled into their beds.

A bit unsettling to say the least, especially for neighbors who lived within the half mile separated only by the tall pines and sugar maples which buffeted the sound.

It had been rumored for years that the church was haunted…haunted by it’s organist Joshua P. Cobb, an elderly man in his 70’s who had played and maintained the pump organ for over sixty years. Joshua had met an untimely death in the church while practicing for a recital late in the fall of 1940. The custodian who discovered Joshua was stunned to find him face down, heading down the set of steps which numbered twelve. But Joshua had only made it part way down, his foot breaking thru the old board on step number three, his foot still lodged there… his body dangling down the remaining steps causing his demise.

The number three was Joshua’s number indeed.

Church records showed that he had been born on March 3^rd, 1873, and was one of three children.

So when that bell tolls three times at that ghastly hour, people think little of it….. they know that Joshua is still there, kind of a perpetual caretaker. But on that 3:00 a.m. ringing, people have a tendency to pull the covers up a little tighter and hope for early daylight.