A Stalker in Sturgis
As a researcher, I spend hours combing through local and national newspapers.
I come across the funny, absurd and just plain strange articles. This one from 1913 intrigued me because it ran once a week for three weeks in the Sturgis Journal then stopped.
“Sturgis Has Real Mystery On Hand” and “Bafflin’ Mystery” the headlines read.
They reported that a person, dressed all in black, was stalking through Sturgis streets and neighborhoods. The police called him a “Maniac” stalking and peeping at young women at night.
Miss Fern Wagner saw the person lurking around her house a week before she was followed home by the same person. She said he as wearing “A long black robe buttoned down the front, a veil over the head and fastened around the neck with a wide black band, black gloves and a wide band ring on the finger of the left hand.”
Other witnesses described him as “moving noiselessly about in black rubber sole shoes.” One said he jumped into a black car that seemed to be following him.
This went on for several week until the last article said that police were alerted when a group of men followed this person on S. Fourth Street. They said the man who got away from them, but not before they got a good look at his face. He was someone they easily recognized. The newspaper later said, “As to the identity of the ‘Bafflin’’ one, the officers do not state, or rather desired the editor to refrain from stating, his identity for reasons that appear sufficient.”
It makes me wonder if he was from a prominent Sturgis family, so the story just conveniently disappeared. Bafflin’!
Rachel Boland is a dedicated volunteer archivist and researcher at the Sturgis Historical Museum
