A Pennsylvania home has had a stoic face peering down from an attic window for more than a century. The stories as to why it’s there could almost number the decades that it’s been there catching the eyes of passers-by.
Some in the town of New Texas call it just a head in a window. Others relate the story of a widow, or mother, waiting for her husband or child to return from the Civil War. Others say it was put in the window by a slave owner to tell his workers that he was always watching. Or was it a woman who was wronged by her husband and she made a death mask to torment her spouse?
But an investigation, if you could call it that, by the local newspaper found out the face in the window, no matter how storied the tales are, has a mundane origin.
According to Lancaster Online, no matter what has been repeated in the small town, the head is a phrenologist model that was used to teach students of Henry Carter. Carter owned the home in the late 1800s.
He died in 1896 and his daughter apparently found the head when she was going through his belongings. She put the head in the window just to see people's reactions, Lancaster Online reported.
But there still could be more to the now non-mysterious head.
There are legends that if anyone removes it from its century-old position, it will bring bad luck.
Current owners John and Angeline Stowe believe in that legend. At least Angeline does now.
Angeline told Lancaster Online that she replaced the head with a nicer one that she bought from a cosmetology store. Shortly later, a newly-built retaining wall that surrounded the property collapsed onto the highway.
The original head was put back in its spot and has not been moved or replaced since.
"It doesn't scare me," Angeline told reporters at Lancaster Online. "It's almost like it's watching over us."
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