BURNHAM — Prominent local historian Forest Fisher entertained members of Mifflin County Chapter of Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees at the chapter’s Oct. 2 meeting. Fisher, a PASR member himself, presented dramatic accounts of several events from Mifflin County history in the style of old-time radio’s “Theater of the Mind.” The segments were taken from the history-themed radio series, “History Is Our Story,” which aired on local station WIEZ from 2015 to 2017.

In the episode titled “The Beast of Bixler Gap,” Fisher explained that Bixler Gap, nestled in the historic Lewistown Narrows, is one of the deepest gorges through which the Juniata River flows. There lived, in the late 17th Century, a Mrs. Bixler who was skilled in pow-wowing, a practice involving faith healing, herbalism and the black arts, including that of shape-shifting. One day her son Jacob, while tending the family cow, was viciously attacked by a large black cat. In self defense he struck out at the cat and cut off its ear. Later in the day he found his mother in her bed, bloody and bandaged and missing an ear. For this transgression she, as the mother, cursed him into the form of half man, half wolf and condemned him to roam the near-by hills for eternity.

In another episode, “as the story goes,” says Fisher, a bottomless pool in the Juniata River about a mile and a half up-river from Lewistown, became known as Cotter’s Hole. According to the centuries’-old legend, a fur trader by the name of Judas Cotter, a thieving, murderous villain, so terrorized and antagonized the local inhabitants that they finally ambushed him one day, bludgeoned him to death and threw him into the river. His watery grave has been evermore haunted by his skeleton.

In yet another tale, the remains of Revolutionary War General “Mad Anthony” Wayne were being transported by wagon from Erie, where he had died and been buried for 10 years, to their final resting place at his home in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Some of the bones reputedly had bounced out of the wagon and were scattered along the old rough road which ran close to what is now old Rte. 322. According to local lore, in the Church Hill Cemetery at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the hoofbeats of the General’s horse can be heard in the gloom as he rides through the night searching for his lost body parts.

Stories can be heard online by accessing the Mifflin County Historical Society’s Facebook page or by entering the following link: https://soundcloud.com/mc-historian/spirits-among-us.