Stories would go viral through the newspapers in a time long before the internet or even chain letters. Here is an account of someplace known as the death farm. The stories go that anyone who lives on this farm will die. In some accounts, the place is haunted. In other accounts, it is cursed. The article below, from 1912, declares the death farm to be nothing more than hogwash.
“Death Farm” is a Joke
Carlyle, Ill., July 18. — People here are laughing at the Chicago trust newspapers and their ‘death farm’ stories.
The Ackerman ‘death farm’ is 40 miles from Mount Vernon and ten miles northeast of Carlyle, and it has not been ‘death farming’ to any great extent lately..
The Chicago trust newspapers today had Joseph Ackerman die suddenly on the farm and called him ‘the latest of ten victims.’
No such person as Joseph Ackerman was ever heard of here.
The Chicago trust newspapers reported that two sisters, the last of the Ackermans, fled from the farm today.
There is just one Ackerman sister — Delia. She has been with relatives, far from the ‘death farm,’ for months.
The farm itself is deserted. The last Ackerman to live there was John, 44 years old. He died a natural death two weeks ago.
Old residents say the ‘death farm’ stories afflict the Chicago newspapers as regularly as the measles or crooked politics.
The farm first became known as the ‘death farm’ about 25 years ago. At that time a family of five, whose names have been forgotten hereabouts, died on it.
In 1906 Godfrey Palm, his wife and daughter, died on the farm within a few months of each other. The latest death was that of John Ackerman.
The people here are glad to read in the Chicago trust newspapers that many chemists and doctors are ‘investigating’ the farm. No one here has seen them.
Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). July 18, 1912.
