THE SALT LAKE HERALD — MARCH 30, 1889
A MEDICAL STUDENT’S STRANGE ADVENTURE
No less a man than Samuel Johnson believed in ghosts—believed in them implicitly, some of his biographers relate. Many eminent men believe in them. Few of them pretend to explain why they believe in them. They just do it, that’s all.
About six years ago there was studying at a noted eastern medical university an extremely bright and promising young fellow from Tennessee. He was distinguished among his fellows for his absolute fearlessness. Many a ghastly joke have they put up on him to shake him from his pinnacle of courage, but he remained undaunted. They resolved to give him a mighty test. They dared him to sit alone through the night in the dissecting room in the presence of a corpse. He accepted the challenge.
The dissecting room was a long, narrow chamber with a door at each end, with several suggestive tables in the middle and ranging shelves of surgical instruments on the walls.
Into this room was brought the body of a man who had committed suicide a couple of days before. The body was laid on a slab at one end of the room. At the other end was a table, with a student’s lamp in the center and covered with books. Two loaded revolvers were laid on the table side by side. The student had placed them there as a precautionary measure. But the men who were testing his nerve took the bullets out of the revolvers and replaced them with blank
