It was a typical morning at the Reed family home in August 1891 when the oldest son, twenty-five-year-old Charles J. Reed, walked into the house. The family house in Xenia was not very large, containing two bedrooms, the dining room / kitchen area, and one sitting room. The family was gathered around the table eating breakfast when Charles entered. He had walked just a few steps past the table when he suddenly collapsed. He fell to the floor in a heap and never woke up.

Immediately, the father sent a boy to fetch a doctor while the remaining family members carried Charles’s body into the bedroom and laid him on the bed. Efforts to resuscitate him failed and he was positioned and covered with a sheet until the doctor could arrive.

The doctor walked into the home within twenty minutes of the collapse. He noticed that the door to the bedroom was closed and the entire family was sitting in the room outside it. When he noticed the arrival of the doctor, the father jumped up to open the bedroom door for him. The doctor walked into the bedroom with the grieving members of Charles’s family (mother, father, two sisters) close behind. He noticed the rigid outlines of the body under the sheet and a cloth over the face. Through the cloth, the doctor could see facial features and the profile of Charles’s face.

When the doctor approached and lifted the cloth from the corpse’s face, he was stunned to see nothing under the cloth. He quickly pulled the sheet away from the body and saw only empty space. Despite having seen the outline of a body through the cloth, there was nothing on the bed. Stunned, the family members and doctor simply looked from one another to the bed, speechless. It took a moment for the three ladies present to react, swooning onto the floor. While the doctor attended to the ladies, the father stood in a dumbfounded state, muttering incoherently and staring unseeing into the distance.

Once the ladies were brought back to consciousness, the doctor walked to the only window in the room and studied it. The window was locked from the inside and had clearly not been opened for a while. Since there was no body, no coroner’s inquest was held. An investigation into the disappearance was made but no answers have ever been found. Charles J. Reed was dead and gone

Read this and other tales of the weird in Dayton Ghosts & Legends, available through Amazon and major book retailers. Autographed copies available directly from the author on SaraKaushal.com