The Hanging of Lewis Holder

Lewis Holder was an outlaw.  After hearing the news from Judge Isaac Parker that he was going to die on the gallows, Lewis left forth a piteous scream then collapsed to the floor, paralyzed with fear.  There was an immediate concern that Holder had died from fright, but the defendant was still very much alive.  Holder, who had been convicted of murdering his partner George Bickford in the San Bois Mountains in Oklahoma on December 28, 1891, vowed that he would return to Fort Smith in spirit form and would haunt Judge Parker and the jury men if he were indeed hanged.  No one paid much attention to the desperate warnings of a condemned man.  Holder was executed as scheduled on Nov. 2, 1894.  About one month later, jailer George Lawson was startled by a moaning sound coming from the direction of the jail yard gallows.  Upon further examination, a thoroughly inebriated man was found lying prone on the wooden gallows.