Dr. Lowry was found dead in bed in the middle of summer with the heat going in his house. There were rumors that his heirs had him murdered, but the official cause of death was declared a stroke.

The next part is pretty gruesome. The undertaker who received Lowry's body was still angry at him for refusing to pay for a custom-made coffin he'd ordered for his wife two years earlier. As revenge, the undertaker broke Lowry's legs and folded them up to help him fit into the coffin he had refused to pay for. The lid still wouldn't close over his fat stomach, so the undertaker cut him open, scooped out his internal organs, and sewed him up again. The doctor was buried in Woodland Cemetery.

When the authorities later exhumed Lowry to check for signs of poison, they found his abdomen empty. The undertaker admitted what he had done and showed the police to the place where he had buried the organs, but by that time they were so rotten that nothing could be determined.

Today Lowry haunts the Briggs Public Library in Ironton, supposedly searching for his lost body parts. He is also seen in Woodland Cemetery, sometimes walking with his mother. Click here to see my section on Ironton's Woodland Cemetery and its various hauntings.