With all the hype about Friday the 13th in the past 400 years, many other dates much more worthy of recognition seem to have been forgotten. Well, no more. I am writing today to tell the true tale of Sunday the 15th and why it should be respected and feared more than its two-day-earlier counterpart.
It begins, as most epic stories do, on Saturday, March 7, 1846. Samson Edwardton Dorsey, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, receives a letter at his work address from a distant, never-before-heard-of cousin named Julianne Matheson. This 84-year-old sprightly woman wrote to inform him that a large sum of money is waiting for him in the almost-barren town of Gander, Maine. She had never married nor had children, and Samson was the only relative to whom she could imagine passing on their family's large gold fortune.
As anyone would, Samson set out immediately for Gander. He arrived four days after receiving the old woman's letter. Unfortunately for him, it turned out to be four days too late.
When he approached the door of Ms. Matheson's mansion, he was too giddy with excitement to notice the bloody footprints stamped on the wooden porch. When he knocked, he was too eager to wait for an answer and barged inside. There he found, seated in a wicker chair next to a worn fireplace, the body of Julianne Matheson. Lying next to her was a bloodied candlestick.
Samson was furious. Ms. Matheson made him travel all this way for what he expected would be millions in golden treasure, only to turn up dead when he arrived to claim it! After gathering his thoughts, he traveled to the sheriff's office to report the crime.
After scanning the house once, the detectives got a relatively clear picture of what went down. Ms. Matheson didn't have many friends and never connected with any family members, so when she decided to leave her fortune to a cousin she'd never met, her one confidant, friend, and most importantly, housekeeper, was furious.
Furious enough to kill (and subsequently to run off with the gold).
Now, Gander's criminal justice was a little underfunded at the time, and honestly, no one really cared all too much about the old she-hermit. Samson, however, was going to get his money if it killed him.
He searched high and low for the malicious maid, knowing she had at least a clue of where the treasure might be. But here's the thing about this treasure: it can drive you insane. Sadly, that's exactly what it did to poor Samson. He murdered maid after maid searching for his prize, until Sunday, March 15 rolled around. It just so happens that the day he found his cousin's maid was the day the police found him.
In 1846, gold that was confiscated during criminal trials was distributed among all the banks of the state of the crime. This could sound like a good thing, but any object that can be associated with so much death and betrayal must hold within it a curse, and the gold of this story is no exception.
So what happened to the gold, you ask? Well, you see, the owner of the regional bank of Gander, Maine cut a deal with the owner of the local jewelry store. The bank owner needed a beautiful engagement ring for his future fiance (sidebar: she said no), so he sold the gold to the jeweler in exchange for a discount. So the jeweler, unaware of the gold's grisly origins, made beautiful necklaces, bracelets, rings, and other golden things that people are into.
So now, every Sunday the 15th, in honor of the death of Ms. Matheson's maid, all those in possession of any gold jewelry are .008% more likely to die a violent death. And if you are one of those unlucky few, you now know who to blame.
And yeah, my friend Colin Rockwood and I came up with this story so none of it is true and you have nothing to worry about.
