These stories were published in the fall 2019 edition of Upper Delaware Magazine. 

Eel got your tongue?

From the Wayne County Herald, October 22, 1882

"Ezra S. Coon came near losing his life while catching eels from the shore of a pond near Pleasant Mount, Pa., last Wednesday. He and Samuel Brown were fishing some distance from one another, and while Brown was baiting his hook he saw Coon struggling on the ground as though in a fit. He ran to his companion, and found that he was being choked to death by an eel that had gone clear down his throat six or seven inches. Brown grabbed the eel, but it was so slippery he couldn’t hold it, and he got his hands full of sand, seized it again, and tugged away until he pulled it out. The eel weighed seven pounds.

When Coon came to he said that the eel coiled itself around his right arm while he was taking the hook from its mouth, and that when he went to bite it on the head to kill it, as he had done to hundreds of eels before, it gave a lunge and drove its head so far down his throat that he became helpless at once."

One lucky kid

The Honesdale Citizen, May 4, 1893

"Norman, the 2 year old son of Wm. Jarskouw, of White Mills, had a narrow escape from death last Saturday. Just as a coal train, in charge of Conductor Kelly, and on its way to Honesdale, was passing above the station, the little toddler attempted to cross the track. He was struck by some portion of the engine, and knocked to one side of the track. The train was stopped as quickly as possible, and a search was commenced for the supposed to be corpse. Judge of the surprise of the trainmen when the little one was found alive, and with but a slight cut on the back of his head. This is the second time he has been struck by a locomotive. Evidently that boy was not born to be killed on a railroad."