SOME TALES: Potter County is home to some oddities, and we’d like to share some with you.

Here’s one about a giant skeleton. In December 1886, W.H. Scoville, of Andrew’s settlement, discovered a mound in Ellisburg. In exploring, it was found to contain parts of a skeleton of a man measuring between 7 and 8 feet tall. A large birch tree grew on top of the mound, and around it were hemlocks 2 and two-and-a-half feet in diameter.

Then there’s Cyrus Turner and Thunder Mountain.

According to “Forbidden Land — Strange Events in the Black Forest” by Robert Lyman, Cyrus Turner lived in a giant hollow sycamore tree that was situated near a bubbling spring. It was located east of the mouth of the Card Creek at the base of Thunder Mountain.

Native Americans were said to hold this area sacred because they believed that an angry god lived there; actually, the thunderous noise was the rumbling of the escaping gases from the spring. Cyrus lived for many years in the comforts of the tree.  

It is said that he even kept an occasional guest. And, apparently Cyrus had been married seven or eight times before inhabiting the giant sycamore.

EVERY COUNTY: Pat Dodds is traveling the country — “from the comfort of my home in Seattle.”

The Washington state resident keeps a travel blog, EveryCounty.org, where she virtually tours the nation, one county at a time.

Pat published her entry about McKean County on June 14, and, by the time of this writing, she will have published or be getting ready to publish her next “trip,” an eastward journey into Potter County.

In Pennsylvania, McKean was her fourth county, as she entered in Erie County and “traveled” through Crawford and Warren before entering McKean. This is her ninth state, and she publishes about one entry a week.