A Pennsylvania filmmaker revived a mystery surrounding a head found in Shamokin, a town in the Pennsylvania coal region, for a new generation. Matt Spade unveiled his latest documentary about the case that spans more than a century on Saturday, Sept. 14.
In 1904, a decapitated body found in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, was buried after police declared it a murder. However, after burial, someone found a head, but locals didn’t bury it. Instead, they took it to a funeral home in Shamokin where staff embalmed it. The funeral home put it on display in the hopes that someone would identify the victim.
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Hundreds of people reportedly viewed the head of the murdered man. However to this day, no one has determined the identity of the homicide victim. The head remained with the funeral home until 1976. Then, it was put on display at the Anthracite Heritage Center and eventually became dubbed “The Shamokin Head.”
Two judges reportedly saw the exhibit at the museum, and the display allegedly disturbed them. That viewing eventually lead to a court order in 1977 that required the town to bury the head in an undisclosed location in Northumberland County.
However, as the legal battle played out, the museum claimed it lost the head for several weeks. That’s where this new documentary directed by Spade and narrated by Chet Davis comes in. It is titled: “The Shamokin Head: A Chet Davis Story.”
Davis, a 24-year-old art teacher at the time, said during the fall of 1976, then-Mayor Harold Thomas asked him to put the head in his care and make a model replica of it before the town buried it.
“It was my second-year teaching at the Shamokin High School,” Davis said in the documentary. “One day, Harold Thomas walks in carrying a midsize box, and then Harold said, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ And looking right at me is the head, and I had never seen a decapitated head before.”
“I’d like to tell my story and clear up the mystery of what happened to the Shamokin Head,” Davis added.
The head, alongside Davis, reportedly made its way into bars, the passenger seat and trunk of his Chevy Chevelle, and in a box in the back sink of his art room.
Spade and Davis hope the 20-minute film dispels myths about the head. It addresses allegations like a cult taking the head and other folklore by revealing the “true oddity of it all.”
The documentary’s first screening took place on Saturday, Sept. 14, but Spade said he plans to share it on his Shamokin History YouTube Channel.
