History & local legend
Elmhurst, the Thaw family’s Tudor-style summer house near Cresson, acquired a vanishing-hitchhiker story before Al and Linda Lewis discussed it with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2001. In the tale, a crying girl in a long white dress waits beside Route 22 and asks a driver to take her to Elmhurst. As the car approaches the gate, she disappears.
A separate story concerns a woman seen in mirrors inside the house and identified as Evelyn Nesbit, the model and actress who married Harry Thaw and sometimes stayed there. The roadside passenger was not identified as Nesbit.
Linda Lewis did have three certain images of the famous visitor: etchings she had bought in an Atlantic City antique shop and displayed above the dining-room breakfront.
