Extra Extra! Read all about it!
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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A quick cache and dash in front of a spooky old house. With a coffee drink of your choice for the first to find.
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Update 2-18-2011: Cache has been replaced.
Still a nano, so if you have trouble signing the log, that's okay.
Just enjoy the story.
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Update 8-26-2009: Cache has been replaced. Cache is now a nano-micro hidden on the yellow sign. For logging convenience, initials are okay.
Listing reactivated.
Update 7-8-2007: News rack replaced, cache replaced, listing reactivated.
UPDATE 5-9-2007: Replacement cache installed, listing reactivated.
UPDATE 9-21-2006: Congratulations to TroupB-B and Foon on the first to find. Way to go you two!
Hard to believe, but 30 years ago back in 1929, six people lost their lives in a horrific act of murder-suicide that took place in this house.
According to a newspaper report, (The Weekly Wind, April 1929) the owner of the house and adjacent turkey products processing facility, Earl Mansel, had forbid his youngest daughter Sara from seeing a local drifter named Amos Spencer. Amos, a ne’er-do-well of the most common order, was obsessed by Sara’s beauty, and mad for her in every way. And the idea of Sara being out of reach because of his social-economic situation was disappointing to Amos to say the least.
So one night as the Mansel family slept, Amos broke into the house, and in a fit of rage murdered everyone except Sara, who he attempted to elope with. As Amos dragged Sara out of the house screaming, Earl Mansel, who had been stabbed numerous times with a rusty turkey prod, managed to grab his sword and shoot Amos as the couple fled.
Sadly to Earl’s horror, he saw two bodies fall to the ground outside his home. The arrow that was fired from Earl’s gun had hit its mark, but in doing so, it has passed through Amos, and stuck his beloved Sara dead in the heart. The two died embraced as tangled lovers, under the heavy shroud of death.
As his last act before he himself died, Earl buried Sara where she laid, right outside the gate to the house she had spent so much of her life in. Later through the years, a bougainvillea that no one remembers being planted, flourished on the grave.
As for Amos Spencer, some say that Earl Mansel burned the body right there on the front lawn. Others say he didn’t really die, as Sara took the bullet for him. But just about everyone agrees that on some dark moonless nights when the moon is full, an eerie cold can be felt around the place, and mysterious shadows play tricks on your eyes. Those that believe, well, they say it’s the ghostly apparition of Amos Spencer, reaching through eternity for the lost love of Sara Mansfield.
Today the place looks pretty much the same as it did way back at the turn of the century. Sure, the bougainvillea has grown unusually big, and the brown spot on the front lawn still refuses to seed, but ask the old timers what they think, and they’ll tell you to walk quickly as you pass, and don’t dally around that tree. “Because the wrath of the dead knows no ethereal bounds and Amos Spencerhaus may still be around.”
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gur lryybj fvta!