The Ghost in Search of Help
Late at night in home after a hard day’s work, a doctor hears a knocking on the door. He finds a young girl in threadbare clothing begging him to help her sick mother. The doctor, despite being tired, grabs his equipment and follows the girl to a shabby tenement apartment. He finds the mother who is seriously ill and is able to treat her. When he mentions the daughter who had led him there, who had disappeared at the entrance of the building, she becomes shocked. She says, “My daughter died a month ago,” and points to the girl’s clothes hanging in the closet that she had been wearing which were still damp from the storm.
This story is often attached to Dr. Silas Weir, a well-known physician from Philadelphia. Evidence shows that it was perhaps Dr. Weir himself who had spread the story, as a deliberate hoax. Other versions refer to anonymous doctors in unspecified times.
(Source: Brunvand, Jan H. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. 2001.)
