History & local legend
In the Tulpehocken Valley of western Berks County, a farmer was suspected of enlarging his property by moving the boundary stones between his land and his neighbors’ fields. His dishonesty became the basis of a ghost story published by folklorist W. J. Hoffman in 1889.
After the farmer died, people began seeing a light travel between the corners of his farm at dusk. When one watcher approached, he found the dead man carrying a stone. The figure repeatedly asked in Pennsylvania Dutch where he should put it.
More neighbors gathered until someone finally supplied the obvious answer: put it back where he had taken it from. The stone fell, and the apparition disappeared.
Sources
- W. J. Hoffman, Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans, Part II, Journal of American Folk-Lore 2 (1889), p. 33, complete Tulpehocken account
- Berks History Center, The Palatine Migration, settlement and scope of the Tulpehocken region
- Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Tulpehocken Path marker, inscription and surveyed coordinates via the Historical Marker Database
- Library of Congress, Lawrence Fagan and H. F. Bridgens, 1860 landowner map of Berks County
