10/08/2026
A young girl in Pascagoula lays asleep in her bed. She stirs awake in the middle of the night. Still sleepy, it takes her a moment to feel it, the breeze moving across her face. Suddenly her eyes come fully open. She turns to find her window open. “But that’s not possible,” she thinks to herself. She knows it was closed when she went to bed. Was she next? Would she be the next victim? With a growing terror in her chest, she bolts from her bed to find the nearest mirror and the truth it would reveal.
As we enter October, we enter spooky season. For this month’s history tidbit, I bring you a story from Mississippi history. It has mystery, true crime, and not a little terror.
In June of 1942, while the world waged war, a different terror walked the streets of Pascagoula, MS at night. It was known as “The Phantom Barber.” The story started on Monday the first of June. That night at Our Lady of Victories Convent three young girls and a nun were asleep in a room. One of the girls, ten-year-old Mary Evelyn Briggs, awoke to find a strange man standing over her bed with her hair in one hand and scissors in the other. The man stepped back and put his finger to his lips, but Mary Evelyn called for Sister Camille. The intruder then leaped out the window and disappeared into the night. As the other girls in the room awoke from the commotion, it was discovered that Mary Evelyn and seven-year-old Edna Marie Haydel had had chunks of their hair cut out.
The next incident occurred on the following Saturday, June 6. That night around 10:30 PM, Mrs. Henshaw heard a noise coming from the room of Carol Peattie, a young girl she was helping watch while the girl’s mother was away. Mrs. Henshaw turned the lights on in the hallway and the noise stopped. She convinced herself it must be nothing at first, but then around 10:45 she awoke the girl’s father and went into the room. There they discovered sandy footprints and that the girl’s hair had been cut.
More attempts followed. Monday, June 8, at the home of R. J. Anderson, his wife and 12-year-old daughter were waiting up late for Mr. Anderson to return from work. He was the head of the engineering planning department at Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation, a vital business in war time. Around 11:30, Mrs. Anderson heard a noise. At first, she dismissed it, but it didn’t stop and only grew louder. Soon she realized it was the sound of someone trying to force open a window. She took the hand of her daughter, and they ran into the front yard just as Mr. Anderson was returning home. Anderson and a neighbor investigated. No person was found, but the screen around one of the windows had been cut and pulled away from the window. Two more homes that night reported attempted break-ins and more reported seeing a suspicious individual travelling through backyards. As the week progressed, each night someone reported an attempted break-in.
Then came the attack of Saturday June 13. A young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Heidelberg lay sleeping soundly in their bed. Mrs. Heidelberg was awakened when a man swung a metal pipe into her face. She rolled and received the next blow over her shoulders. Mr. Heidelberg awoke. He brought up his arm for protection and it received a blow from the pipe. The next two blows connected with Mr. Heidelberg’s head and he lost consciousness. The intruder then struck Mrs. Heidelberg several times before leaving through the window. Mr. Heidelberg’s wallet lay on the nightstand, untouched. Mr. Heidelberg was also an employee of Ingalls.
Moving from cutting hair to a vicious assault was quite an escalation. Pascagoula didn’t know if it was the phantom barber or someone else. They were not even sure if the phantom barber was just one man. The level of concern in Pascagoula continued to rise. Families began nailing windows shut and making sure doors were locked. The night shift work crews at the shipyards saw men absent from work who decided to stay home with their families. Parents slept in their children’s rooms.
On the night of Sunday, June 21, the barber struck again. But this time the target was not a child. Around midnight, Mrs. R. E. Taylor awoke to discover she had been a victim of the barber. She believed that chloroform or some other such substance had been used on her. The screen of the window nearest her bed had been cut open.
And then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. One night rolled into another and there were no more midnight trims.
In August, news broke that the police had made an arrest back on the ninth of July. They had arrested William A. Dolan, 57, in connection to the attack on the Heidelbergs and held him in out of town jails while they continued their investigation. Dolan, a native of New York, had studied MIT, Harvard, and in Heidelberg, Germany and was a chemist by trade. A man named Atwood had come forward. He had owed Dolan a favor which Dolan cashed in by having Atwood drive him to a discrete location in a clump of bushes. Dolan instructed Atwood to stay in the truck and be ready to go because Dolan “might get in some trouble.” When Atwood informed police where the truck had been parked, police realized it was the same location that bloodhounds had led them to from the Heidelburg home and where the dogs had lost the trail. Police claimed other evidence was found linking Dolan to the phantom barber. As the investigation went on, other witnesses came forward expressing that Dolan was a N**i sympathizer. Police concluded that Dolan had tried to spread fear in an attempt to sabotage production efforts at the local shipyard.
But what was the evidence that linked Dolan to the phantom barber? Another man had come to the police. Somehow he knew that there was a batch of human hair hidden behind Dolan’s house. The police retrieved the hair, sent it out for testing, and at the time that charges were filed, at least one strand had been identified as belonging to Carol Peattie by chemists in New Orleans.
Dolan was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to ten years in Parchman. Case closed…or is it? Dolan had become a person of interest in the case because Mr. Heidelberg’s father was a local judge who had fined Dolan $100 for trespassing. Dolan also had a criminal record. Some believed he was a convenient target for the police during a time of heightened fear and pressure. Dolan continued to maintain his innocence. His wife and his lawyer continued to work on his behalf. Eventually the governor with members of the press traveled to Parchman where Dolan was given a lie detector test. Dolan passed. Governor Wright suspended Dolan’s sentence stating that he did so not on the strength of the lie detector test but because he had “become convinced that there was some doubt as to the guilt of the man.”
So now I ask you. Who was the phantom barber? Was it Dolan? Or, was Dolan a convenient scapegoat by a police force under pressure? And, if it wasn’t Dolan, then who was it? Just be careful, and if you take your children down to the coast, make sure their windows are closed tight each night.
