It goes without saying that the human body is an amazing thing. A living machine that is fully capable of becoming stronger and faster than anyone could ever imagine. New skills and abilities are both learned and mastered on a daily basis as it undertakes its decades-long journey from the cradle to the grave. It has the means to climb the highest mountains and dive to the lowest depths. It can create life, create art, and create memories. It can do whatever it wants. Simply put, the human body, for lack of a better description, is like something straight out of a sci-fi film.

If an author were to write about a type of alien living on another world located lightyears away which had the ability to replicate its cells over the course of its life, shed and regrow skin every day, hibernate for hours every night, transfer its blood into another member of its species to help heal them, fix its own bones after sustaining damage, and create understandable sounds by moving an eight muscled tentacle which it keeps hidden within its skull, some people would view it as nothing more than an imaginative creation that works well on paper, but would probably transfer poorly onto the screen if they ever made a movie about it. The creature sounds absolutely ridiculous when its abilities are described in such detail, but when they are encountered and witnessed every day, the ridiculousness fades away and the outlandish becomes mundane. The reason for that mundaneness is because we are that creature, that alien is us. If an actual alien civilization were to come across just one of our kind without warning, we would more than likely be viewed as a horrible, disgusting monster and they would either try to capture or kill us. We are all around strange and unusual and the only reason it doesn’t seem weird to us is that we all have the same abilities and messed up skills. We are used to it.

But sometimes, someone comes along with an ability that nobody else has. A skill that separates them from the herd and places them into a category all their own. An unwanted talent that makes our already weird body even weirder, and makes those around them view them as “different.” Sometimes that capability is learned, sometimes that power is discovered accidentally, and sometimes, one has no choice in the matter and must suffer painfully through the body’s personal decision to do something new. Unfortunately, for the main character in the following story, that’s the category she unwillingly found herself in over 150 years ago.

The story, which we get from a relatively short three-paragraph article in the Chicago Daily Tribune from February 21, 1863, begins with a base location of Kenosha, Wisconsin. For those who are unaware, Kenosha is a city located on Lake Michigan roughly 12 miles north of the Illinois border, 40 miles south of Milwaukee, and 70 miles east of Janesville, WI. The area, which was originally a small village known as Pike Creek, was settled in 1835, changed its name to Southport in 1837, and would be fully incorporated and renamed Kenosha in 1850. The area was known as a major Great Lakes shipping port in the early 19th century, and as a result, attracted a large influx of German, Polish, and Irish immigrants who helped shape Kenosha into what it is today.

Now, while we could continue on with the rich history lesson surrounding Kenosha’s transformation into the fourth-largest city in all of Wisconsin, we will cut it short and leave it as a bare-bones rundown. The reason for this is because while the story somewhat establishes Kenosha as the starting point of this strange incident, it is not actually the place where it first happened. In all actuality, the only reason why Kenosha was chosen as the starting point of this story is because the unfortunate character who this happened too, was related to someone who lived in Kenosha at the time and even briefly made an appearance in the city while this saga was unfolding. And since the major paper in that area at the time, the Kenosha Telegraph, first reported on the occurrence (which was later picked up and reshared by the Tribune), they were able to lay claim and link the event back to the city itself. Think of it as a journalistic way of saying, “finders keepers, this one is ours now.”

As with most newspaper articles of the time, specifically, those that dealt with the strange and unusual, the cast of characters involved within were rarely named, and this particular story is no different. We have no idea who these people were and where they actually resided. All we know is that they were located somewhere in Wisconsin and more than likely not far from their relatives in Kenosha. What we are able to gather though is that the strange eye incident directly affected an unnamed 10 or 11-year-old girl who was described only as being both pretty and intelligent. Not sure why those two specific pieces of information were vital to this particular story, but the 19th-century reporter who wrote this up felt them both necessary for the reader to know. Moving on.

The story claims that one day, completely out of the blue and without any warning, the young unnamed girl began to complain of having something in her right eye. Not being plagued with any major concern as, let’s face it, this happens all the time to people, the unnamed mother gently checked her daughter's eye and, just as she was expecting to see, found a small piece of organic matter resting on the sclera (the white part of the eye). With a steady hand, the mother lightly picked the object off her daughter’s eye and ended the young girl’s discomfort. With the problem taken care of the girl continued on with her daily activities while the mother took a look at the object. Appearing to be nothing more than a small piece of a black locust leaf, the woman quickly discarded the object and thought nothing more of the matter as she assumed the situation was done and other with. Little did she know though that the situation was just beginning.

Not long after the starting incident, the young girl came to her mother in discomfort yet again. Just as before, she told her mother that she had something in her right eye that was causing her great irritation. Thinking that she may have somehow overlooked something during her first impromptu examination, the unnamed woman once again looked at her daughter’s eye in search of the object which was causing irritation. After looking for only a moment, the perplexed mother spotted yet again another piece of locust leaf resting upon her daughter’s eye. With the same gentle hand as before, the woman removed the piece of leaf and disposed of it yet again. When complete, the concerned matriarch asked her child how the objects came to find themselves upon her eye, but the young girl was unable to provide an answer. It was as if they simply appeared out of thin air.

Concerned that her daughter was getting into some mischief that she was embarrassed to talk about, the mother kept a close watch on the girl, periodically checking to make sure she was not putting herself into any situation which would allow for painful miniature objects to make their way into her eyes. Attentively she watched, and just as her daughter had said, she had not been getting into anything she wasn’t supposed to. Yet still, objects kept finding themselves upon her right eye, and even more strange, they began to change. What first started out as small pieces of locust leaf soon became noticeable pieces of wood, portions of burrs, little bits of hazelnut, and even “wads of tow” (a small, untwisted bundle of fibers such as hemp). While at first the mother could think of various reasons as to why her daughter might encounter such objects, the quickness in which they changed and the utter randomness in their type simply left her confused and scratching her head.

Flabbergasted at what was occurring upon her daughter’s peeper, and under the assumption that nobody would believe her when she told them, the woman began to hold onto every object that was removed from the eye. Eventually, such a collection was amassed, that neighbors from around the area began to show up and watch as new pieces of organic material were removed from the young girl’s right eye on a daily basis. Sometimes the object was found sitting gently upon the sclera and was easily picked off, while other times the object seemed to be poking out of the eye itself and needed to be removed with the assistance of 19th-century tweezers. This constant removal of objects from the girl’s eyeball continued on steadily for several weeks before finally reaching its apex when it is said that in one day alone, over one hundred and sixty-six individual objects were pulled out of the girl’s eye. After this, the mother and daughter traveled to Kenosha where a doctor was called in to assist in helping remove the objects and relieve the girl of her orbital irritations, as well as try to figure out exactly what was happening.

When Dr. Gridley first met the unnamed mother-daughter duo and was brought up to speed on what was occurring in and around the young girl’s right eye, he obviously assumed that the child was doing it to herself. While he was not exactly sure why she would be doing this, outside of a cry for attention in some bizarre way, he set out trying to figure out how she was doing it. Dr. Gridley originally assumed she was covertly placing the objects both on and in her eye through quick sleight of hand movements while nobody was watching. While at times this could prove to be difficult, it was not outside the realm of possibility. When he presented this possible explanation to the girl’s mother, she adamantly denied such claims and simply told the doctor to see for himself. Reluctantly Dr. Gridley did just that, and it wasn’t long before he himself was at a loss as to what was happening to this child.

With an assistant at his side and crammed inside a room full of the girl’s family members, Dr. Gridley took part in removing various pieces of pine sticks and wood splinters. Each piece was recorded as being a full half-inch in length, and each proved to quite painful to remove. Interestingly enough though, as with all the other objects removed from the daughter’s right eye, while they caused great irritation and even pain at the time of their appearance, after their removal, there were zero side effects. Within minutes of extraction, the girl would be back to her normal self and if one hadn’t seen an object physically being removed with their own eyes, one would believe that there was nothing wrong with the girl at all. The entire event, from the first announcement of pain in the eye to the final pull to remove the object proved to be nothing but one big mystery. Nobody could figure out where these objects were coming from, why it was happening to this young girl, and why they were only affecting the right eye.

The article goes on to state that Dr. Gridley continued to assist the mother and daughter for quite some time, and over the course of his assistance, it is said that he removed enough objects to fill a normal-sized teacup. The objects, which ranged in size from a few millimeters to nearly an inch, were always organic and never confined themselves to one specific type. One moment the object could be plant-based and the next it could be wood. The next instance could be organic fibers and the next might jump back to plant. There was no rhyme or reason for any of it that anybody could figure out. They simply appeared repeatedly and had to be removed repeatedly. Everyone, including the well-respected doctor, was mystified.

And that is all we know about this strange story. It would be nice if we were able to wrap this whole thing up neatly and provide an ending to the whole thing, but as was the case with most stories such as this back in the day, the paper fails to provide any sort of resolution or follow up. The actual article itself simply ends after the following line, “At times the removal of these substances is a painful operation for the child, but most generally they are taken out without much pain, and the eye soon assumes its normal coloration.” Done. That’s it. Nothing more to read. We don’t know what happened with the young girl, we don’t know if the mother-daughter duo returned home with a “cure,” and we don’t know if Dr. Gridley was ever able to come up with an official diagnosis. The story simply ended and officially joined the ranks among the other strange Wisconsin incidents that people still talk about to this day.

Now it goes without saying that a large majority of those who read this story will chalk it up to nothing more than a young girl sticking things in her eyes and yanking the chains of those around her for some sort of attention. It could have been because she was simply bored, it could have been due to an unknown mental illness, and it could have even been a well-thought-out scheme perpetrated by both the mother and daughter with the hopes of making money off the whole thing. We just don’t know because we don’t know all the facts. Typically, one of the scenarios mentioned above seems to be how events such as these ended, usually by an investigator uncovering the deception and causing the whole thing to fall apart. And while it’s super easy to immediately toss all your eggs into that basket, it might be wise to hold onto just a few of those eggs for the time being.

You see, it is widely known in the Fortean community that many paranormal/supernatural events throughout history often have a period of time during their cycle where objects seem to just appear or manifest out of nowhere. Whether that be unexplained stones just suddenly falling out of the sky and plaguing a farmer and his family for weeks on end, or strange fires that erupt from nothing in the middle of a family’s living room while they are simply spending a quiet evening inside. There are countless “documented” tales that revolve around people experiencing situations just like this young girl did, albeit in a different way. Hell, don’t even get us started on those stories where people are overwhelmed by unexplained goo appearing out of nowhere and dripping from every nook and cranny within their home. The file on these strange events is so deep and vast that it does help lend credence to the story of the young girl and her eye. But it must be said that just because there are other stories out there that help sell this one, it doesn’t make it (or the others) true. Always remember, one of the most dangerous things you can do when dealing with a mystery is trying to solve it by using another one.

At the end of the day, the story of the Wisconsin girl and her irritated eye remains unexplained. It could be true or it could be fake, all simply depends on what you want to believe. And while some may view that outcome as a disappointment, others get enjoyment from simply knowing that another tale of mystery and wonder has been added to the rich backlog of weird stories for people to talk about. Because let’s face it, the best outcome for this entire story is for it to remain unsolved simply so all us weird people have something to talk about with other weird people while at parties. Thank you unnamed irritated eye girl, thank you.

-The Pine Barrens Institute

Image Credit: American Academy of Ophthalmology

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