PASCAGOULA, Miss. (WLOX) - Leading up to Halloween, you probably hear a lot of ghost stories or scary tales.
In Pascagoula, the legend of the “Phantom Barber” still hasn’t fully been explained more than 80 years after it happened.
Jay Higginbotham’s historical book “Pascagoula; Singing River City” published in 1967 described the mysterious incident from 1942:
Out of the shadows, a hand reached forward and grabbed one of the girls, then a pair of scissors flashed in the darkness and snipped a long and full lock of one of the girl’s hair.
“This was a scary time around here,” Pascagoula resident Liz Ford said.
It was 1942 during the heightened tensions of World War II. Although lifelong Pascagoula resident Richard Lucas wasn’t born yet, he’s always heard about the story.
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“They used to tell me about it that it was a really scary two or three weeks in Pascagoula, the “Phantom Barber” was real,” Lucas said.
The phantom barber first struck at the old convent on the Our Lady of Victories campus.
During the middle of the night, a man broke in and cut the hair off a pair of girls while they were sleeping. Just a few days later, another girl in town awoke to find some of her hair missing and a cut in the screen window.
“This gentleman came into their abode and cut off hair, and slipped off into the darkness,” Lucas said.
Liz Ford was in kindergarten when the “Phantom Barber” was on the loose. It hit close to her home since all three girls with missing hair were blondes.
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“I have a sister that is very blonde, and my parents were very apprehensive,” Ford said. “They didn’t talk a lot to disturb the kids, they wanted to keep everything happy, but at the same time this is something you couldn’t help but overhear.”
Following the mysterious haircuts, a young couple was violently attacked in their home on Pascagoula Street.
Investigators connected the attack with the phantom barber and arrested German-educated chemist William Dolan after finding human hair on his property. Many speculated he may have been involved in the war effort for Germany.
Although he denied cutting the girl’s hair, he was convicted of attempted murder for attacking the couple and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was released early and moved to Hancock County after getting out of prison.
What happens to him after that is a mystery.
“As the wording of the history goes, he mysteriously disappeared from Bay St. Louis after he got out of jail,” Lucas said. “There’s still so many questions left, that people’s imaginations could run wild, where is he now.”
The imagination has now led to a new and creative chapter of the story.
“The comic book medium is the perfect medium to tell these types of folklore stories in a way that’s vibrant and alive,” Steven Butler, comic book artist said.
Steven and his daughter Lily Butler from Lucedale have teamed with other comic professionals around the state to put their own spin on some of the legendary tales from the Magnolia State in the soon-to-be-released “Mississippi Macabre” comic book.
“Our version of the Phantom Barber is a fictionalized account. It’s told in a short horror story type of way,” Butler said. “There were only a few articles I could find online about it. I used everything I could find about it and incorporated it into our story while embellishing it of course because that’s what we do.”
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“I love bringing attention to the stories we have down here because I love the culture down here,” Lily Butler said. “There’s not a whole lot that’s published or known for younger people like me. I really think it’s important to bring attention to that and keep these stories alive.”
The story of the Phantom Barber lives on, even though the final chapter may always be up for interpretation.
“Was it really the guy that got sent off to Parchman, if not who was it, what happened to him, is there a relative of his still around? It unfortunately or fortunately has that nice mystique to the story about who the Phantom Barber really was,” Lucas said.
“It’s another Pascagoula legend to go with many more,” Ford said.
The Mississippi Macabre comic book will be featured at Scare Con on Saturday in Vicksburg and as part of an event at 3 Alarm Comics in St. Martin on November 16.
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