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Jacob Ransom Disappears from Crib — Withered Old Crone Denies Accusations
May 17, 1890
Robert and Rosemarie Ransom woke last night to the sound of their newborn son screaming.
The young couple ran to their son’s room to find him vanished from his crib. His window hung wide open to the cold night air outside.
“I know I closed that window,” Rosemarie claimed through tears.
Frantic search efforts turned up no evidence of either the boy’s whereabouts or the identity of his abductor. However, suspicions immediately turned to Esmeralda Romanoff, the withered old crone living in a bog shack at the end of Wicker Road.
Romanoff claimed to know nothing of Jacob’s existence and flatly denied claims that she’d been seen cackling wildly atop a flying broom.
“I care not what the old crone say,” Jacob senior told the Slocum’s Hollow Gazette. “I know it was her that took my dear, dear son. We found a witch doll made of swamp grass underneath his bed.”
The Slocum’s Hollow Gazette tried to reach Ms. Romanoff for comment, but she only stood in her upstairs window looking balefully down upon us and calling for plagues and fire.
“Something needs to be done about that old crone,” Jacob senior said. “That’s three children gone now.”
