The empty lot at 315 Mulberry Street where George Dale's house once stood.

It was tonight—right now, 10:30pm—but 104 years ago, 1922, on the corner of Mulberry and Gilbert in Muncie, Indiana. It was late, well dark by then, and George and his son George Jr, 18 at the time, were making their way back home after a night in the billiard room at the Delaware Hotel, just a few blocks further south on Mulberry.

They were steps away from home when it happened.

It was dark and quiet, early spring, still cold but you could tell it would change soon.

Everything would change soon.

The quiet was pierced by two cars—Buicks, solid and black and loud—which stopped suddenly. That in and of itself was surprising. Sure, you saw cars in Muncie now that the roads had started to be bricked, but two stopping short like this and both full of men—six by some count, a dozen by others—men who were yelling from the moment the breaks shrieked? George had to have known from that very moment that there was going to be trouble.

There was trouble.

Men piled out of one of the Buicks, every one of them wearing black hoods over their faces, yelling at George and his son: "Stick up your hands!"

George Dale didn’t think. Some people say he never thinks. But tonight he didn’t have to. He was nearly home, with his son. How dare they? He grabbed at the gun shoved in his gut and wrestled it away from one of the masked bastards. He fired. Someone went down.

It wasn’t him.

It was chaos from there. Dale was hit, first with a fist and then with a blackjack. Blood exploded from his ear. He went down, his whole head ringing. The thugs turned to his son and pistol whipped him—he went down too (George Jr would carry a scar on his forehead for the rest of his life). The attackers dragged the member of their gang who had been shot into their waiting car, and drove off into the darkness. George claims he killed the motherfucker.

And then the night was quiet.

Things wouldn't stay quiet for long.

That night changed everything for George Dale, the editor of the Muncie Post-Democrat, a tall, rail-thin man with a face like a clenched fist. Up to that point, he was taking on all comers in the pages of his newspaper: corrupt politicians, rum runners, cops on the take, you name it, he was out for them. But after that night things were different.

"The Post-Democrat wishes to serve notice, here and now, to those who hope to intimidate us into servile fear of reprisals, that they have picked the wrong bird. The rule of the blackjack, the automatic, the black mask and the dark lantern, never works.”

There were so many people that George Dale hated, but after that night, those masked bastards—the Ku Klux Klan—shot to the top of the list.

It is tonight—not right now, but a few hours ago—2026, on the corner of Mulberry and Gilbert in Muncie Indiana, and the sun is setting. The clouds in the west glow in blues and yellows and oranges. There are two children—eight years old, nine maybe—rollerblading unsteadily in the empty parking lot that sits almost precisely where George Dale's house once stood. They laugh as they wobble across the lot, a sister and a brother most likely, calling out to each other.

I'm here in Muncie to do research for my book about George Dale, I HATE THOSE MASKED BASTARDS. I've spent the day buried in archives and talking with historians. But I am here this week specifically for this moment, for March 24th, as the sun falls on Mulberry street.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe that the stories that history tells us are nearly the same thing. It's all shadows and echoes and blurry lines, all porous barriers that divide then from now. That's why I wanted to be here on this corner tonight as day turned into night.

This corner, tonight, changed George Dale's life. It set in motion a series of events that would see him fight against impossible odds, against the Klan and the entire power structure of Muncie (really one and the same), largely alone, and win.

I wanted to be here, tonight, to feel that pivotal moment in physical space, even if it meant standing in front of an empty lot.

There are empty lots all over George's old neighborhood, which clearly had its best days some time ago. Tonight the air is thick with the distinct, acrid smell of burning garbage, but I walked a few blocks and never found the source. Just around the corner from Mulberry on North, two old timers sit on their front porch surrounded by mounds of what looks like trash to me but clearly means something to them. They eye me suspiciously as I walk past. Next to them is another empty lot.

I circle back around the block as the sun sinks lower in the sky. The children are arguing now, one stands in front of the 60s-era low-slung office building that loiters at the corner of Mulberry and Gilbert, the other stands on the far edge of the parking lot, where the cement ends and the grass begins. 104 years ago, he would probably be standing in George's living room.

"Come back!" she yells, clearly tired of whatever game he is playing.

"You can't see me" he yells back. "I'm invisible"

The boy turns in the space that used to be George Dale's house, filled with his wife and too many children, a house that they would move away from shortly, one in a series of moves that seem to have been driven by his struggle to stay afloat as the onslaught of lawsuits brought against him by Klansmen tapped his already-shaky finances. But at the time 104 years ago, that house on Mulberry street was home, and George and his son were just steps away from it when everything changed for them forever.

The cars screech, the thugs pile out, the gun, the shot, the beating. The men leave as fast as they arrived and then there's just blood and pain and questions, so many questions. Some will get answered, others never will, even now, 104 years later, even now.

"Come back!" the girl yells again.

"I can't," the boy calls back, "I've disappeared."