HGB Ep. 591 - Haunted Sault Ste. Marie

Moment in Oddity - The Effigy of Sarah Hare

There is a most unique effigy that can be found inside the Hare Chapel of Stow Bardolph's Church of the Holy Trinity in the United Kingdom. The effigy is a bust made of wax in the likeness of a 55 year old spinster. She died in 1744 from blood poisoning after pricking her finger on a needle. Her name was Sarah Hare. Her will that was dated August of 1743 stated: 'I desire to have my face and hands made in wax with a piece of crimson satin thrown like a garment in a picture, hair upon my head and put in a case of Mahogany with a glass before and fix’d up so near the place were my corps lyes as it can be with my name and time of Death.' It is believed that Sarah's effigy is dressed in her own clothes and that perhaps the brown curls upon her head are from one of the wigs that she owned. It is unknown whether her replica was created pre or post mortem. Did Sarah Hare have a premonition of her death? It was said that her early demise was punishment for sewing on Sundays which was her habit. Her disturbingly life-like wax effigy is the only one of its kind in England except for those located at Westminster Abbey which certainly makes this unusual bust odd. 

This Month in History - The Birth of George Richard Strauss

In the month of June, on the 11th, in 1864, composer George Richard Strauss was born in Munich, Germany. Richard was a musical child prodigy. His father Franz was a principal French horn player and was renowned for his talent. Franz began Richard's musical education at a young age. Richard began learning the piano at age four and the youngster began to compose his own musical pieces at the mere age of six. Richard may have studied musical theory and composition formally, but it was his father's love of the works of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert that heavily influenced his musical developement. Franz provided his son with advice, comments and constructive criticism. His father also featured Richard's compositions in performances by the Wilde Gung'l, an amateur orchestra Franz conducted from 1875-1896. When Strauss traveled to Berlin, he learned the art of conducting by observing Hans von Bülow during his orchestral rehearsals. Although Strauss is known for many operas and tone poems, his most widely known operas include Salome, Elektra, and Der Rosenkavalier, and his tone poems titled Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration and An Alpine Symphony. George Richard Strauss's accomplishments are too numerous to detail here. The talented German composer and conductor continued creating new pieces all the way up until a year prior to his death in 1949 at the age of 85.

Haunted Sault Ste. Marie (Soo)

Locals call it "The Soo." Sault Ste. Marie is the name of two cities that sit across the St. Mary's River from each other. One in Michigan and one in Ontario, Canada. For Michigan, this is its oldest city and was established by the French in 1671. The Upper Peninsula almost seems to be in a different world when it comes to the state of Michigan as it is separated from the mainland of the state by not only water, but also the island of Mackinac. The paranormal is strong here. For 16 years, the Michigan ParaCon was held in the Soo and the hosts of that continue to run paranormal events there. That's because there are several haunted locations here. Join us for the history and hauntings of Sault Ste. Marie!

The Upper Peninsula was home for centuries to a variety of indigenous groups. These included the Dakota, Lakota and Nakoda Sioux, also known as the Seven Council Fires. The Ojibwe migrated from the East Coast into the area starting in the 1300s and they pushed out the Sioux. The rapids of St. Mary's River inspired them to call what would become the Soo, Baawitigong, which means "at the cascading rapids." The first Europeans to settle would be the French and they changed the name to Saulteaux (soul toe), which means "rapids" in French, which developed into Saults de Sainte-Marie. (souls de sont marie) The first major structure was a Jesuit mission founded by French missionaries Claude Dablon and Jacques Marquette in 1668. That makes this city one of the oldest in the country. It IS the oldest permanent European settlement in Michigan. In 1671, French officials conducted an elaborate ceremony that proclaimed France's appropriation of the territory around Lake Superior in the name of King Louis XIV. They invited a bunch of tribes to witness this. We're sure they were thrilled. 

The fur trade would take hold in the 18th century through the British-owned North West Company. The most influential European settlers at that time were the Johnstons. John Johnston was a Scots-Irish immigrant from Belfast who came to the Upper Peninsula to fur trade. He arrived in 1790 and after a while, his men abandoned him, so a prominent Ojibwe chief took him in. While there, Johnston noticed the chief had a beautiful daughter. He wanted to marry her, but the chief knew that these European men would abandon their native wives, so he told him to come back the next spring and then he could marry her. So Johnston did just that. Her name was - oh boy, clutch your pearls everybody as we try to pronounce this - Ozhaguscodaywayquay. (Oz hag us coe day way quay) Later she was baptized and took on the Anglicized name Susan Johnston. History would remember her as the Woman of the Green Prairie. The family would gain prominence with all parties in the area including Native Americans, First Nations, and Europeans from both Canada and the United States. The couple would go on to have eight children who learned fluent Ojibwe, English and French. 

Later, the Soo would come under British colonial rule. After the War of 1812, a US–UK Joint Boundary Commission came together to figure out what would be Canadian and what would be American using St. Mary's River. Through this, the United States banned Canadian traders from America. That kind of separation lasted through to the end of the 19th century when American and Canadian communities in Sault Ste. Marie were each incorporated as independent municipalities. The US built Fort Brady in 1822 to help protect the locks. In 1866, this old fort was abandoned and a new one was built upland and completed in 1893. During World War II, the fort was used to train troops in cold weather battle. After the war, the fort became surplus so it was sold to the Michigan College of Mining and Technology. In 1966, Fort Brady became the site of the Lake Superior State College of Michigan Technological University. Today, it's known as Lake Superior State University.

The locks have become a tourist attraction, but also serve a very important purpose. The falls of the river became a choke point for trade through shipping. Ships would have to be portaged around the rapids to get to Lake Superior. This was a long process, so then it was decided to just take the cargo itself around the rapids. So a ship would be unloaded, cargo portaged and loaded back onto another ship. Then it was decided to build a lock. This first American lock was called the State Lock and it opened in 1855. That lock has been expanded over the years and is known as the Soo Locks. The locks move nearly 86 million tons of cargo every year and allow freighters to travel between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes. The Canadian side built their own passage way in 1895, the Sault Ste. Marie Canal. The locks at this canal were the first in the world to run on their own power station. The Canadian Pacific Railway came through the city to help bypass the locks as well around 1888. The Canadian Sault Ste. Marie incorporated as a village in 1871. The Michigan side incorporated as a village in 1879. The two cities would join forces during World War II to protect the locks from Nazi attacks. 

The twin cities not only share a history, but they share a haunting reputation. Here are some of the haunted locations on the Michigan side of things:

The Second Childhood & Adults Too Shop

This was a thrift shop that was located at 221 W. Portage Avenue, but is permanently closed now. Portage Avenue got its name from the need for an overland portage around the rapids and is part of the Sault Ste Marie Historic Commercial District, which contains a total of 150 buildings. These are buildings with Italianate, Late Victorian, Richardsonian Romanesque and Commercial Brick styles. This is from the National Register of Historic Places Application, "Sault Ste. Marie was a roaring frontier river
town catering to crowds of sailors, laborers, Indians, and tourists looking for exciting times, and cheap liquor flowed like water. Then in August of 1886, following a hot, dry spell, fire broke out in a pile of wood chips next to a bakery and quickly spread through the wooden structures. When the conflagration was finally put out, most of Water Street lay in charred ruins. Merchants rebuilt, though some relocated to Portage and Ashmun Streets. Exactly a decade later, in August 1896, a gasoline stove in a restaurant blew up. Within hours, the flames, fanned by gale force winds, raced down Water Street consuming nearly every structure on the south side, over- half the businesses in town. That finished Water Street-as the City's commercial center and the businesses moved to Portage and Ashmun Streets. At this point, a narrow thoroughfare known as Plank Alley formerly ran south to Portage Avenue. Lined with saloons and paved with two inch planks, sixteen feet long, it comprised the main route to Water Street in the early days." So that's how Portage Street became a prime spot and clearly fire was an issue in the heart of the city. The original structure that is now the thrift shop is believed to have been built by a sea captain and his family ran a store out of it. That captain's spirit is said to haunt the place and his disembodied footsteps have been heard often on an upper floor. There was a doll dressed as a Christmas caroler that got moved to different locations in the store overnight. 

Palace Saloon

The Palace Saloon is a three-story stone building located at 200 W. Portage Avenue and serves up Mexican and American cuisine. The building was built in 1903 and was originally The Brunswick Hotel. The name came from the bar that was installed. Apparently Brunswick was a company that made pool tables and bars and this was brought in by the railroad. This was a speakeasy during Prohibition. A man named Sam was the first owner to start the Palace Saloon and it passed through his family.This restaurant has activity throughout the building from the basement to the top floor. A full-bodied apparition of a man in black who has a wide brimmed hat has been seen sitting in one of the booths, #3, many times. A lady with a big hat in 1920s attire is seen sitting with him sometimes. Employees said that contractors working in the basement ended up leaving because footsteps walking above them when no one was in the building were so unnerving they couldn't take it. A waitress was so scared when she was there one night and heard lots of footsteps that she actually called the police to come because she thought someone had broken in. And people have been touched on their back. An employee was really spooked after something he couldn't see brushed past him on the stairs. Some people believe that the owner Sam is a spirit here. 

The Hotel Ojibway 

The Hotel Ojibway is said to be the finest building in the city and has stood here since 1927. The hotel sits overlooking the Soo Locks. The hotel originally had and Egyptian architectural style and decor and was a luxury hotel offering the finest in amenities at the time with a barber shop and beauty shop. It opened with a grand gala on New Year's Eve in 1927. The pollen-free air blowing in over Lake Superior brought hay fever sufferers looking for relief. In 1947, a couple who managed the hotel, Leon and Beatrice Deglman, bought the hotel. Leon eventually passed and Beatrice took over managing by herself until her death. Famous people like boxers Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis have stayed here as well as President George H.W. Bush in 1992. Today, the hotel is run by Wyndham and features over 100 guest rooms. There seems to be several spirits here. One of them is the spirit of a tall man wearing a top hat. Guests and employees have reported seeing this full-bodied apparition wandering through the lobby area. He is always very well dressed and some people think he is Leon. The most haunted location is Room 616 and guests see and hear a woman in this room. People believe that this is Beatrice. Other activity includes doors opening on their own and housekeeping gets some help. Rooms are sometimes made up when the maid arrives to turn over the room after a check-out. Guests report their suitcases unpacking themselves. Michigan Paranormal Soul Tribe investigated in 2022 and they said, "During our short Estes Method session at the Ojibway Hotel, we believed we were speaking with a male and female couple. While trying to ask questions about who they were, the man tried to silence the woman by talking over her multiple times."

Antlers Restaurant

The Antlers Bar & Restaurant is located at 804 E. Portage Avenue and is kind of an odd looking building. It looks like it is tall enough to be two stories, but there are only windows at the bottom of the building on the front. On the side of the building there are what look to be windows on the second level, but they are all closed up. It looks as though an addition was added to the other side at some point and this is just one level. The outside is covered in stone. The interior gives a log cabin vibe and has 200 mounted animals. The original name of this location was The Bucket of Blood Saloon and it was built in 1903. During Prohibition, this became a speakeasy and brothel hidden behind the front of an innocent little ice cream parlor. The owners were arrested when the police realized that a lot more money was being made than what an ice cream shop would be pulling for revenue. The history of the restaurant goes back more than four generations. Owners include Tony Rogers, Jack Brulle, Al Lelievere, the Kinneys - who were two cops from Detroit and are the ones to accumulate most of the taxidermy - the Cunninghams and finally the Szabo family who still owns it today. There are thought to be two spirits here who are female. They are not named, but one is believed to have been a lady of the evening who may have been murdered here and the other was either a bartender or waitress. The activity usually involves electronic devices that turn on and off by themselves, like the televisions, and one night the jukebox turned itself on and started playing "The Star Spangled Banner" after the place had shut down for the evening. The spirits also open and close doors, cause the lights to flicker, and sometimes even push unsuspecting visitors on the stairs. A & E featured this location on an episode of "My Ghost Stories" in 2012.

The Satisfied Frog Pub 

The Satisfied Frog was located at 209 W. Portage Avenue, but is permanently closed now. It looks like that happened in March 2025. We're not sure what it is today. The building was built in 1897. Reported activity here includes nickels turning up on a formerly vacant bar. The most well-known spirit here is of a little girl. She has been heard and seen and likes to hang out towards the back of the building. A picture taken several years ago featured a picture of a young woman who had a gnarled, disembodied hand gripping her shoulder, but there was no other woman in the picture. Nobody knows where this hand came from.  

Museum Ship Valley Camp

The Museum Ship Valley Camp is located in the downtown area. The Valley Camp is an actual 550-foot long freighter that worked for 50 years before being parked in the marina and reopened as a museum.  The ship was built in 1917 and never had anything happen aboard it that would lead to haunting activity, but it does have several artifacts on board that could lead to activity. Two lifeboats from the tragic sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald are featured in a display at the museum. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship to sink in Lake Superior. Gordon Lightfoot wrote and composed the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in 1976. Verse 4 goes: 
"When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said
"Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
And Verse 5:
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters   

The bulk carrier got its start when the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin contracted with Great Lakes Engineering Works to make the ship. The keel was laid on August 7, 1957. The name Edmund Fitzgerald comes from the President of Northwestern Mutual at the time. The ship had three central cargo holds and the interior was said to be fairly luxurious with deep pile carpeting, tiled bathrooms, drapes over the portholes, and leather swivel chairs in the guest lounge. Passengers had two guest staterooms to choose from. Even the crew quarters were nicer than most ships with air conditioning and a large galley and fully stocked pantry. The pilothouse was outfitted with "state-of-the-art nautical equipment and a beautiful map room." On the day before the sinking, November 9, 1975, the Fitzgerald was carrying a full cargo of taconite ore pellets. She embarked from Superior, Wisconsin and was heading to a steel mill near Detroit. A severe storm blew up the next day with near-hurricane-force winds. This caused larged waves that reached as much as 35 feet high. The Fitzgerald began to sink a little after 7pm near the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and she sent out the message, "I have a bad list, lost both radars. And am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I've ever been in." This didn't include a distress signal. The Captain of the Fitzgerald, Ernest M. McSorley, sent one last message that read, "We are holding our own." But they were not. All 29 crew members perished. No bodies would ever be recovered and the cause of the sinking was never known. Those who have studied the wreck have reasoned that maybe she was just swamped too much or ran aground on a shoal or a combination of things. Many new regulations were put in place after the sinking. 

Visitors and investigators have reported hearing coughing sounds and have seen shadowy figures along the decks of the Valley Camp at night. Maranda Crawford, the Sault Historic Sites Office Manager, recalled in an article by UP Matters, "One time I was up in one of the coal passer’s bedrooms and it was before we were open for the season, we were cleaning the room and stuff, and one of the lights was blinking. So, I unscrewed it and set it on the bed and not touching anything on the bed, it lit up and went out and I have never been back in the room since." Tim Ellis of the Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society told the Course of Horror Blog, "Over the years we have had the chance to investigate the Valley Camp and during those times witnessed a number of weird and unexplainable things.  We have witnessed what are known as shadow figures twice on the ship.  Once in the theater room walking back and forth, and the other in the galley area where the workers would have eaten their meals.  It was standing in the doorway and then gone as fast as we saw it.  One member had a piece of coal thrown at him in the coal room area, when no one was behind him that could have thrown it.  But our biggest catch there was the Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) we captured.  Two of our people were down in the coal room area asking questions and doing an audio recording.  On playback you hear a cough in the background and you hear one of our guys say….”Did you hear that?  Some just Coughed.”  Then the other person says, “or it sounded like someone coughing.”  And just as she is saying that, we captured a male voice saying right over the top of her words, 'I am coughing.'" 

Haunted House 

Jade wrote about a home that she lived at located at 408 Dillion Street, "I no longer live in the home but after moving out all of my family slowly started to let out strange things that happened to us while we stayed there. My brother had the most experiences, one where he was even carried downstairs in the night by something he could not see. He also saw what he thought to be a soldier in the basement while he was sleeping and heard his name being called out from the basement multiple times. I myself never saw anything but I always had the feeling of being followed or watched when I was in the basement or in the kitchen (specifically if the door to the basement was open) We also since moving in had seen lights flicker and dim for no reason and experienced it still until the day we left. I have heard from many friends and people I knew that the house is indeed haunted and is known to be. I have never been able to find any history on what could possibly be residing in the home and as I no longer live there i can not find an investigator to help. But if there is any information about this house that would be helpful my family and I would very much appreciate it."

Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario has its haunted locations as well. Paranormal Survivor shared a story in Episode 3 of Season 2 about a psychic who used a Ouija board in her home with a group of friends and unleashed nightly shadow figures and one of her friends started speaking in a strange tongue. She even claimed that spirits dueled on her lawn. The psychic told "The Sault Star" that it was the scariest experience of her life. There are haunted locations here too. 

Windsor Park Hotel in Ontario

The Windsor Hotel on Queen Street was built in 1895 by the architects Findlay and Foulis. The hotel was expanded in 1919 and again in 1931. That addition raised the hotel to nine stories and made this the tallest building in the city until 1974. This was a luxury hotel until bankruptcy shuddered its doors in 1996. Dr. Lou Lukenda bought the building and opened it as the Windsor Park Retirement Residence. In 2010, Algoma University bought the building to use as a student residence, which they had to sell for a bargain in 2015 because of declining enrollment and a tight budget. This next owner restored the building to be used as senior residences again. An anonymous woman wrote, "About nine year's ago a friend of mine and her mom were working there as maids. They got me, my sister and my mom jobs there as maid's. I was told about the hotel's history my first day working there, but like most people, didn't believe it at first. As part of the job, we had to push large metal stands full of sheets and towels and cleaning stuff. My first day on the job, I was told about the second and fourth floor of this hotel. The second floor had one large suite called the Victoria Room that was used for large meetings. It was said that a young woman was killed in there and that her spirit never left. I was told that no matter how hard the hotel tried to rent that floor out, no one would stay on it. The 4th floor was famous for a ghost everyone called Joe. I was told shortly after the hotel was built that he had stayed on the 4th floor and died from a gas leak in his room. I was also told you could tell when he was nearby because you would be able to smell heavy cigar smoke and hear whistling whether it was on the floor or in the room or in the elevator. Once again I didn't believe it. My first shift I had to clean the fourth floor. There were only four rooms on that floor and not one guest in any of them. In all the time that I worked there, I had cleaned the room where Joe died. I had experienced the heavy cigar smoke, the whistling and once I couldn't get the door to open even though it was not locked and there were no other people on that floor. When I finally got ready to leave, I was told everyone that worked there went thought the same thing I had. And that it was very rare when someone agreed to take a room on the 4th floor. The elevator also sometimes has a mind of its own and goes to the 4th and 5th floors on its own. A security guard who worked here in 2015 when the building served as an Algoma University residence, claimed that the fifth floor gave him the feeling that an eerie presence was there at times and he even said that a CCTV camera caught a flash of a fast-moving incandescent person.

The Algonquin Hotel

The Algonquin Hotel is located at 864 Queen Street East and was built in 1888 by local politician and businessman William H. Plummer. This is the only large hotel from the Victorian era that survives in the city. The hotel stands four-stories and the architecture features a central tower with a conical roof and was designed by architect J.B. Sweatts. This is a smaller hotel with only nine rooms. Ghost lore connected to the hotel claimed that a young man died in a fire on the third floor and that his spirit still wanders the building, mainly the basement. He sometimes appears on the top floor as well. Pilar Fiser, who has worked at the Algonquin since 2009, told the Penticton Herald in 2024 that she had "an unexplainable incident that occurred while the bar was closed due to COVID. Around 3 a.m., the alarm — designed to trigger only when something significant activates it — rang out. Upon checking, she found that all the doors to the bar were securely locked and there was no one inside, prompting her to review the security footage. The footage revealed something white moving back and forth in the bar. 'It was like a – I don’t know how to describe it – almost like a hollow,' said Fiser. 'It was nothing from outside, no light coming in through the windows.'" Fiser also said that she sometimes feels a presence in the basement and she thinks that it is a lost soul, but a good one. 

Sault Ste. Marie Canal

The Sault Ste Marie Canal we mentioned earlier was designated a National Historic Site in 1987 and this includes all the buildings that go with the canal, many of which were constructed from red sandstone excavated during the construction of the canal. In 1897, the Superintendent’s Residence was built. Also added was the powerhouse, the Administration Building, the Canalmen’s Shelter and Stores Building. The website Northern Ontario Travel reports about the canal, "The Superintendent’s Residence and Administration Building are both known as a hub of paranormal activity. The ghost of a young girl, in a frilly dress and with a cute-as-a-button smile, has been seen within both. Sometimes she giggles and disappears, other times she is a silent witness to a world that is no longer her own. Some have reported hearing a crying child, the sound so despondent that it rends the heart. Ghost hunters and lovers of the paranormal can visit, if they dare."  

An anonymous person shared, "A place where I lived from age 5-6 was on Wallace Terrace here in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. We lived in the upstairs apartment, which had a long stair case on the back roof that lead to the ground and one inside the apartment that lead to the front door and one small apartment downstairs. My mother used to tell me I would tell her of people in the closet crying. Later she said she had heard that a man had killed his two small children in my closet and then killed himself in there. I had lived in this place again many years later and I moved out not too long after moving back in. This place has now been turned into four apartment all in the same house.

The twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie harbor history and quite possibly some spirits. Is Sault Ste. Marie haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 590 - Lake Lanier

Moment in Oddity - Coffin Hideaway Inspires Profession

Recently I came across an old newspaper article about a man named Tom Williams who grew up in a little town in Vermont. He describes how he came to be an undertaker as his profession. As a child, Tom lived next door to an odd older gentleman by the name of Wilson. Wilson was a cabinet maker by trade and he had some unconventional thoughts about death and burial for the times. His skills in woodworking were something to be admired. The craftsmanship and care he put into his work were stunning. Wilson had said that when his time came, he was not about to go into the earth in a misfit coffin that was poorly made. So Tom's neighbor created a gorgeous coffin of mahogany, with solid silver plates and handles for his personal use. Wilson's coffin was stored in his barn. A location where Tom and his friends would often play hide-and-seek around. One day Tom thought that the coffin which was so nicely furnished, would be a fantastic hiding place. The interior was so plush and comfortable and certainly none of the other boys would think to look within it. Tom would hide in Wilson's coffin many times and actually fell asleep in it once for several hours. Tom loved that coffin and his experience with it as a child is what led him into the undertaker business. When Wilson passed away, Tom prepared his quirky neighbor's body and buried him in the coffin in which Tom used to sleep. There are many strange and unusual places where kids hide while playing hide-and-seek, but choosing to hide in a coffin and subsequently falling asleep, certainly is odd. 

This Month in History - Train Crash in Bangladesh

In the month of June, on the 4th in 1972, an express train crashed in Jessore (JOSH-or-ee), Bangladesh. The Deputy Commissioner of Jessore reported that 10 coaches were destroyed by the impact and many others were thrown from the tracks. In the terrifying accident, at least 76 people were killed and more than 500 were injured. The train was loaded far beyond capacity which was not uncommon in Bangladesh. The express train was traveling from Khulna, a southern port town, when the train-station operator threw a switch to the wrong track as it was passing by the station. With no safeguards in place to avoid such an error, devastatingly, the passenger train slammed full speed into a freight train that was stopped at the station. Not only were passengers killed and injured, but also many people who were standing on the platform. Sheik Mujibur Rahman (RAYh-man), the Prime Minister at the time, ordered emergency relief measures and sent officials for an inquiry. 

Lake Lanier (Suggested by a bunch of listeners)

Lake Lanier in Georgia is an extremely popular recreational area. This is a man-made lake that was created when the Buford Dam was built in 1956 and covers 50,000 acres. Many lakes across America have been fashioned in this way without causing hauntings. That's not true for Lake Lanier. What is it that makes this lake so haunted? Was it the destruction of the black community of Oscarville? Could it be the handful of cemeteries that were supposedly relocated before Lake Lanier was filled? On this episode, we are joined by the hosts of the Spirits Uncorked Podcast, Elizabeth Grimes and her sister Erica. This duo also started Lanier Ghost Tours and they are here to talk the history and hauntings of Lake Lanier! 

One of the sunken towns under the waters of Lake Lanier is Oscarville. Oscarville got its start during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. A large number of former slaves came to the area to start farms and it was very prosperous. There were over 1,000 residents and many owned or rented farms. Others were tradesmen. Atlanta had a race riot in 1906 and these tensions boiled over to Oscarville, which was north of Atlanta. In 1912, a series of racial conflicts erupted in the town. The first was the Ellen Grice Incident. Ellen was a 22-year-old woman who accused two black men of attempted rape. Five black men were arrested and it was thought that perhaps Ellen was in a relationship with one of the men and that it had been discovered and she was covering her tracks by lying about the attempted rape. Why five men were arrested when she said there were two is beyond us. 

Several days later, an eighteen-year-old white woman named Mae Crow was found raped and unresponsive in the woods outside Oscarville. She was in a coma for two weeks before finally passing from the head trauma she had suffered. A confession was coerced out of 16-year-old black male named Ernest Knox. Four other black residents were arrested as accomplices. One of them was Rob Edwards who was shot by a white vigilante group of 2,000 who broke into the jail. They dragged his body to the town square and hung him from a noose. Ernest Knox and another man named Oscar Daniels were found guilty and sentenced to hang. This was illegal at the time, so the judge ordered that the hangings take place behind a blind. The blind was burned down the night before, but the hangings went forward with 8,000 people watching. It was believed that none of these people were responsible for what happened to Mae Crow. 

Then came the night riders who were white vigilantes that attacked black communities in Forsyth County. Oscarville was fire bombed several times and many of its residents died during these night rides. By the end of 1912, many of the black residents of these communities in Forsyth County had left. 98% of Oscarville's black community had left. A very sad statistic is that the expulsions of blacks in North Georgia were the most successful in the nation. Eventually the land that made up Oscarville was sold over time to the government and in 1950 the remains of the town were flooded. 

The Buford Dam was built in 1956 to dam the waters of the Chattahoochee River to form Lake Lanier, which was named for Confederate veteran and poet Sidney Lanier. Twenty cemeteries had to be relocated and 250 families were displaced as 50,000 acres of farmland was destroyed. The lake itself covers 38,000 acres. Construction was stunted several times as funds ran dry and the mayor of Atlanta had to keep returning to Washington, D.C. to pressure for more funds to ensure a water supply for residents of Atlanta. Through the years, the lake has saved the Chattahoochee from drying up during droughts. There have been ongoing fights over water rights, but the creation of lake Lanier seems to have more positives than negatives. Unless one looks at the deaths. There have been at least 500 of them. It's easy for people to get caught in the sunken buildings and other debris. These deaths, along with the destruction of twenty cemeteries has led to hauntings. 

There is the Curse of Brown's Bridge: The "Curse of Browns Bridge" refers to a series of tragic accidents and paranormal incidents reported near Browns Bridge on Lake Lanier, according to Atlanta Ghost Tours. The story centers around two young women, Delia Parker Young and Susie Roberts, who disappeared after a car crash on the bridge in 1958. Subsequent deaths and unexplained occurrences have fueled the belief that the area is haunted, with stories of apparitions, sudden car trouble, and eerie presences.

The Lady of the Lake: It is believed that Delia Young appears as a full-bodied apparition in a blue dress near the lake. 

Spirits of unrecovered bodies from drownings and unmoved bodies from the cemeteries.  

Lydia Rose 003 wrote on Reddit in 2018, " One night while I was swimming in the lake, my aunt uncle and dad up on the camp site, I started to swim to the inner part of the lake, the park where all the rotting buildings are and cars underwater. I was playing by myself when I felt a pull. Something was tugging my leg, it wasn’t a seaweed like plant that grew there, it felt like a hand. Two to be exact, I started to scream and struggle to stay on top, I was too far out for anyone to hear me. I was only 7 but my swimming was pretty strong for a seven year old. I started trying to kick the thing that was underneath me trying no no avail. I gave up. I let it take me under water. I started to drown, when I felt something pull my arms and pull me up I was back to shore somehow and I started to cough and looked up at the man. He looked like a kindly African American person. He wore a hat with no shirt on and swimming trunks. The only problem, my family and I where the only ones camping since it was a Sunday night and I didn’t have school the next day. I thanked the man me coughed up the water. He said it was no problem and started to walk to the camp site. I followed him and asked my dad and uncle who where making hot dogs on the grill, 'that man saved my life' i told them and they looked at me like I had two heads. 'Lydia, what man?' My dad asked confused and I stopped. 'The man that just saved my life and walked up to the camp site he was.' I looked and he was gone. I told them what happened and they looked spooked. My skin was still cold from the water and oxygen or lack thereof." 

To join Lanier Ghost Tours: https://lanierghosttours.com/ 

Check out the Spirits Uncorked: Under the Water Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5c4IIEYI2WWmHWZPSv6pvr?si=2876580191634691 

 

HGB Ep. 589 - The Elke Sommer Haunting

Moment in Oddity - The Black Banquet

As taphophiles, if Diane and I were invited to a meal at someone's home and our place setting was decorated as a tombstone, we would love the ambiance that our host had created. However, far before our current day, back in 89 A.D. Roman Emperor Domitian hosted a banquet. This event is known to history as the Roman 'Feast of Death' or 'Black Banquet'. The soiree was macabre and the guests at the party were senators. It was held in a black themed banquet hall. The walls and ceiling were painted black, the dishes were black and topped with funerary cuisine of the time, slaves dressed as apparitions brought the various courses of the meal to the guests, and each attendee had a headstone inscribed with their name. During the meal, Emperor Domitian spoke about death and slaughter. The Emperor's goal was to instill fear in the senators, exerting power and control over his guests who thought they may possibly be executed at any moment. Clearly he delighted in the mental torture of his banquet guests. The senators likely spent the entire night wondering if they would be summoned for their execution. Instead, the next morning Domitian sent messengers to notify the guests that their personal gravestones were made of solid silver and that the gravestones and slave boys were a gift. The timing of the 'Black Banquet' occurred during a period when Domitian's reign was marred by political instability and paranoia, hence why he felt the need to intimidate the senators. We all know that tomorrow isn't promised and this Roman "Memento Mori" style of banquet certainly served as a reminder to the guests that it is important to enjoy life because we all must die. But the extent that Emperor Domitian went to for that extra flair and intimidation, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Melitta Bentz Passes (Suggested by: Ruth Dempsey)

In the month of June, on the 29th, in 1950, Melitta Bentz passed away. Melitta was a German inventor and entrepreneur. Kelly is particularly thankful for the invention she is so widely known for, the paper coffee filter. From a young age, Melitta noticed practical problems and easily came up with solutions. In 1908, when Melitta was married with three children, she solved a problem that made her name famous, even today. At the start of the 20th century, coffee was being brewed by percolators which would oftentimes, over-extract the coffee grinds giving the resulting beverage a bitter taste. Cloth filters were already used in the process of making coffee, however they were challenging to use and clean. Melitta pondered what could be used to produce a better tasting cup of coffee by an easier method. In 1908, she removed a sheet of blotting paper from one of her children's notebooks and with a perforated brass pot, she created the first paper coffee filter. Her results offered a cleaner, better tasting cup of coffee and her design was patented on July 8th, 1908. Melitta and husband Hugo Bentz realized the commercial potential of her invention. They began the manufacturing of her coffee filters in their home, but quickly graduated to factory production. Her invention is still in use today having undergone few changes. Melitta Company remains a world leader in brewing equipment, coffee filters, and sustainable coffee operations.

***???And FUN FACT, listener and Executive Producer, Jacquelyn passes a Melitta Coffee plant in southern New Jersey while traveling on I-295.

The Elke Sommer Haunting

Benedict Canyon. What isn't haunted about this place? Actress Elke Sommer and her husband at the time, Joe Hyams, moved into their Benedict Canyon Drive mansion in 1964. Not long after they unpacked their boxes, they became aware of strange things happening in the house. Some were subtle, but others woke them up in the middle of the night. The couple tried cleansing the house, but ended up running from the home after a mysterious fire erupted. They never lived in the house again. Join us for the story of the Elke Sommer haunting. 

Let's set the stage here for our haunting with our two main players, Elke Sommer and Joe Hyams.

Elke Sommer is a German actress known mainly for her movies from the 1960s and 1970s. She was born during World War II in 1940 and her family was evacuated from Berlin to Niederndorf. Her father was a Lutheran minister and died when she was fourteen. Elke had attended a preparatory school for university and really struggled with her studies. She asked her mother if she could drop out in 1957 and her mother agreed. Elke set off for London to work as an au pair. She attended an English language institute three times a week. Sommer would eventually be able to speak seven languages. The following year she went to Italy for holiday and was spotted by film director Vittorio De Sica when she competed in a beauty contest. Her surname had been Schletz and she was encouraged to change it and she decided on Sommer. 

It didn't take long for Sommer to achieve sex symbol status and she emigrated to Hollywood where her popularity as a pin-up girl exploded, particularly after she posed for Playboy. She would make two appearances in the magazine, first in September 1964 and the other in December 1967. Sommer was blond and beautiful with high cheekbones and her acting career would be prolific with over 99 movies under her belt by the time she retired in 2010. She starred as the leading lady in movies with Paul Newman, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, James Garner. Dick Van Dyke, Peter Sellers and Sharon Tate. Sommer even won a Golden Globe in 1964 as Most Promising Newcomer Actress for the film "The Prize." Some listeners may remember her from Hollywood Squares. She appeared on the game show many times between 1971 and 1980. A little fun fact was that in 1984, a bitter feud started between her and Zsa Zsa Gabor, which ended in 1993 with a multimillion-dollar libel suit in which Gabor had to pay Sommer $3.3-million in damages  for defamation.

Joe Hyams was born in 1923 in Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University, but didn't finish because World War II erupted and he enlisted with the Marines. He fought in the South Pacific and received both a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star Medal. After the war, he went to New York University and earned both a bachelor's and master's. The New York Herald Tribune hired him as a journalist in 1951. A stroke of luck got him an interview with Humphrey Bogart. He was given a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel by his editor as a reward for a really great article. As he lounged at the pool, he struck up a conversation with a man near him who turned out to be Bogart's press agent. The agent brought Hyams into the room where Bogart was and Bogart asked what he wanted to drink. When Hyams asked for a Coke, Bogart got pissed and said, "I don't trust any bastard who doesn't drink, especially a pipe-smoking newspaperman or a man who has more hair than I have." Now Hyams must have been a guy with a lot of confidence because he picked up his notebook and headed for the door as he told Bogart, "I don't drink and I certainly have more hair on my head than you do." Bogart told Hyams to wait a minute and invited him to lunch and gave him the interview because he was so impressed with his candor. Hyams was on a roll and within a week, he had interviewed Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy. The Tribune was so happy they decided to keep Hyams in Hollywood and that became his specialty. He worked as a syndicated columnist from 1951 to 1964. Hyams became a powerhouse in the entertainment industry becoming someone that filmmakers relied upon and many movie stars became friends with him. The long-lasting friendship he had with Clint Eastwood was legendary. Studio heads referred to him as "The Dean of Publicity." Films that he worked on included East of Eden, My Fair Lady, Bonnie and Clyde, Blazing Saddles, The Exorcist, A Star Is Born, Woodstock, Chariots of Fire, JFK, Unforgiven, Eyes Wide Shut and Mystic River. All of these are amazing films and three of them won Best Picture Oscars.

In November of 1964, Joe Hyams and Elke Sommer married. She was his third wife and he was 17 years her senior. The couple would eventually divorce after seventeen years of marriage and Joe would refer to them as the best years of his life. They were a good match as they were both deeply immersed in the scene of Hollywood. And they were about to be deeply immersed in the world of the paranormal. They decided to buy a home at 2644 Benedict Canyon Drive in North Beverly Hills. The same Benedict Canyon where the Manson Murders took place and where the Paul Bern-Jean Harlow House is located. Both of those locations were haunted. Now we have a third haunted location. It didn't take long for Joe and Elke to realize that their home was being shared with spirits. Hyams wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled "Haunted" published in the July 2, 1966 issue detailing their experiences. 

So at this point, Joe and Elke haven't seen anything, just this guest at the house. Hyams explains in the article that he is a man of facts, not given to this type of fantasy. And his wife Elke fears nothing. She once killed a rattlesnake in their backyard with gardening shears. Two weeks after moving in, they were about to have their reason and fearlessness challenged when Elke's mother comes to stay. Hyams writes:

So the couple are trying to explain these strange things with reason. Even though two guests have now seen the same strange man in the house, it surely must just be someone outside of the house. Which to us would be pretty troubling. We'd opt for a ghost frankly, rather than a prowler. The couple are also trying to blame the ghostly party sounds on outdoor noises like trees. How do trees make party noises? The real test is about to come because Joe is left alone at the house for a few weeks while Elke went to Yugoslavia to make a film. Hyams felt like he was never alone during that time, as though something were always watching him. And then he started finding the window in the bedroom downstairs always unlocked and wide open in the morning after he made sure everything was locked up tight. He also heard the front door open and close twice at night. But he always found it locked. 

At this point, Hyams decides to put the house under some surveillance. He picked up some electronic detection equipment and three miniature radio transmitters. He also got three portable FM radios and plugged a tape recorder into each. He placed a radio by the driveway entrance, another at the front door and a third on the bar in the dining room. And since the chairs where making noises, he used chalk to outline where they were on the floor. That night, sure enough, the mic on the bar picked up the noises of chairs moving. Joe picked up a .38 caliber pistol he had and he crept downstairs to catch the intruder. He flips on the switch and aims his gun and...nothing. The room is empty. And even weirder, the chairs were still within their marks. Here's what he wrote about what happened next, "Upstairs, later, I listened to the tape recording. The noises had stopped when I went downstairs. The sound of the switch snapping on, and even my nervous cough, had come through clearly - and so had the sound of chairs being moved after I left the room again." 

Joe was unnerved enough that he invited a friend, Gordon Mueller, to come stay with him and there was no activity during that time. Then Joe headed to Yugoslavia to meet up with Elka and left Gordon at the couples house and let's just say, Gordon was NOT alone. He felt that the house was really creepy and he stayed in the downstairs bedroom with the window that opened on its own. And the window opened on its own. Gordon moved to the couple's bedroom since it had a lock on the door. A private detective kept an eye on the house and found doors and windows open even though Gordon had locked it up tight before leaving. Joe and Elke returned and the noises in the dining room continued, which stopped bothering them because it was such a regular occurrence. They left the house again for a trip and Joe stopped by to get the mail and their pool man, Marvin Chandler was there. Marvin asked Joe if someone was staying at the house and when Joe said "no" he told him, "That's what I thought. But last Tuesday afternoon I saw a man in the dining room - a big man about six feet tall, heavy-built, with a white shirt and black tie. When I went to the door to ask him when you were coming back, he disappeared - just seemed to evaporate in front of my eyes." 

Despite all of this, Joe still didn't believe that what was happening in the house was paranormal. He knew there had to be an explanation. When a friend suggested that someone might be squatting in the house somewhere, Joe got the original blueprints for the house to see if there were any secret rooms. Nope. He had termite inspectors get under the house and see if there were any openings, Nope. Joe checked the attic for himself. Nothing. And thus began a time of soliciting the services of several mediums. Several claimed to see spirits in the house. One was supposedly a young woman who had died in Europe from a lung illness. Why she would be here, who knows. Another clairvoyant claimed a European man who had a mustache and was heavy-set liked to hang out in the dining room. And another medium who worked with the LAPD to find missing people said she saw a sloppy man who was in his 50s that had been a doctor and died of a heart attack. This was backed up by a visit from Spiritualist Brenda Crenshaw. She went into the dining room and said, "I see a man above average height, about 58 years of age, a doctor who died of a chest or heart condition outside the country." These last two really hit home for Joe because he was in the process of writing a book about a doctor and they hadn't been able to finish because the doctor died. The mediums had said that the ghost claimed to have unfinished business with the man of the house.

The American Society for Psychical Research suggested that Elke and Joe hold some seances. They held five of them. Joe was unimpressed and felt that they got no information. So he asked the couple who had owned the house before him and Elke if they had experienced anything strange and they had heard the noises in the house. Particularly disembodied footsteps in the dining room. Once when this happened, it scared the woman so much that she called for a taxi. She told Joe, "I locked myself in the upstairs bedroom and called a taxi. A short time later it arrived and stopped in the driveway by the front door. I kept waiting for the taxi driver to ring the bell, but he didn't, so I shouted to him from the bedroom window. When he answered, I ran down the stairs., got into the car and asked the driver why he had not rung the bell. The driver told me he saw a man standing by the door and assumed he was the fare. The man had vanished when I shouted from the window."

Elke was pretty scared after all this, so Joe agreed to have the house exorcised. The clairvoyant who conducted the cleansing commanded the spirit to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. She then told the couple that the spirit left. At the time that Joe wrote this article in 1966, the couple had no intention of moving. Elke concluded that the spirit was her father. Joe finished this article with, "The night after the exorcism, I locked the downstairs doors, checked all the windows carefully, and went to bed anticipating a quiet night. Just as i was falling asleep. Elke nudged me and said, 'Listen.' I sat up in bed and listened. The dining room chairs were moving again."

Joe Hyams wrote another article for the June 3, 1967 Saturday Evening Post. The couple had now been in the house three years and they had left. Joe titled the article "The Day I Gave Up The Ghost." The reason they left was a mysterious fire that started in the dining room. Joe wrote:

 

Interestingly, one of the mediums had told the couple that she had a vision of a fire starting in the dining room and she told Joe to up their fire insurance. He regretted not taking her advice. The fire was so hot that it melted their silverware. The reason the ghost may have set the fire? The couple had been told that making the place unfamiliar by redecorating might chase the ghost away. Maybe they just pissed it off. They had also been talking about moving, which may have displeased the ghost as well. The fire was almost completely contained to the dining room, despite wall-to-wall carpeting and lots of draperies.

Despite the fact that the ghost seemed to have knocked on the bedroom door to alert Elke and Joe about the fire, Elke insisted they move because something in the house, she thought, had tried to burn them alive. Interestingly, Joe maintained in the second article that he and Elke still didn't really believe in ghosts. The house was bought and resold seventeen times in the next few years and is privately owned today. Through the years, numerous people had witnessed strange events at the house. Many people would claim to get such a weird feeling from the house that they wouldn't even enter the house. Joe and Elke eventually divorced and Joe died in 2008. Elke is still alive and living in Los Angeles. She's in her 80s.

A photographer named Allan Grant came to the house after the fire to take some pictures for Joe's article. He was a skeptic when he arrived, but he was a believer by the time he left. He said, "Something happened that spooked me. On one roll of film that I shot in a particular room where they first spotted the ghost there were about four or five frames of film that were progressively fogged down to the end of the frame, giving it a ghost-like appearance, especially (of) Joe Hyams, who was in the shot. When that was processed and I took a look at it, I thought, there’s no way that would happen…in the center of a roll…something else had happened that I couldn’t explain and I’ve spent years as a photographer and that had never happened to me before….Something did happen in that house." Grant reasoned that a sticky shutter or sticky diaphragm could cause some of the issues, but with some of the pictures, both of those things would've had to have happened and he said that would be "quite a coincidence."

In the end, Joe and Elke had 36 sensitives and mediums come through the house and while none could agree on who the spirits were, they all had the same conclusion. The house was haunted. Was the haunting of Elke Sommer real? That is for you to decide!

Photo: Angelo Frontoni, portrait of Elke Sommer and Joe Hyams at their home in Benedict Canyon

HGB Ep. 588 - Beattie Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Odd Orchids

At History Goes Bump, we love nothing more than to be outside gardening. Any listeners that I am personal friends with have seen my posts of my various orchids in bloom. Recently I saw an article discussing two very unique looking orchids. The white egret orchid and the naked man orchid. The white egret orchid is found in China, Japan, Korea and Russia. Its delicate petals really do resemble a white egret in mid-flight. The blooms are said to represent purity and freedom with their ethereal fringed petals that sway in the wind. The plant grows naturally in grassy wetlands, upland bogs and seepage slopes. This exquisitely beautiful plant can be purchased online through many orchid growers. And of course, my other mention was the naked man orchid. Yes, that is indeed one of its common names. This species of orchid is also known as the Italian orchid and is native to the Mediterranean Basin. The flowers themselves grow atop a thick stem and are densely gathered, similar in appearance to a Lily of the Nile flowering stalk. In Italy, these orchids are believed to promote virility. The individual flowers do actually look like naked people. They are generally colored with variations of pink and purple, with pure white specimens being quite rare. The reason why the common name for this orchid is naked man and not naked woman is due to a certain, ahem, way that the flower's petals are arranged. These orchids are also available online and we encourage our listeners to look them both up, if nothing more than for a chuckle. Nature can produce some stunning varieties of flowers, but orchids that closely resemble feathered white egrets and another looking like a crowd of naked men, certainly are odd.

This Month in History - Battle of Hamburger Hill

In the month of May, on the 11th, in 1969, the Battle of "Hamburger Hill" began during the Vietnam War. U.S. troops were attempting to seize Dong Ap Bia Mountain. This battle endured multiple attempts to scale the mountain over a ten day period and led to many bloody hand-to-hand combats with the North Vietnamese. The mountain was called Hill 937 by US forces and was part of Operation Apache Snow with the objective of driving the North Vietnamese forces from the A Sau (Ah Shaw) Valley. The battle was especially brutal with major losses on both sides. The U.S. suffered 72 killed and over 372 wounded while the North Vietnamese were said to have had an estimated 630 soldiers killed. The U.S. captured Hill 937 but later abandoned it on June 5th. The North Vietnamese re-occupied Hamburger Hill a month later. This battle and abandonment of the target, brought about questions regarding the purpose and costs of the battle. The outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives was aggravated by photographs published in Life magazine of U.S. soldiers killed during the battle. It fueled anti-war sentiments regarding criticism of the high casualty rate and perceived lack of strategic clarity during the Vietnam War. Despite the criticism, many soldiers and military leaders disagreed and Army General Melvin Zais stated, “Those people are acting like this was a catastrophe for the U.S. troops. This was a tremendous, gallant victory.”

Beattie Mansion (Suggested by: Sarah Crom)

The Beattie Mansion in St. Joseph, Missouri has stood for more than 170 years. This began as a home for the Beatties and later became a home for unwed women and orphans and then an assisted living facility that occasionally served the addicted and people with mental health issues. The current owner wanted to open a boutique hotel, but he had trouble keeping help. Something was scaring them all off. Once he started having his own unexplained experiences, he knew he needed to open up the house to investigators. There has been no shortage of activity for these investigators. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Beattie Mansion! 

St. Joseph, Missouri is where Jesse James supposedly died. The city was founded on the Missouri River by Joseph Robidoux (Robe ee do) and the city is named for him and the biblical St. Joseph. This was a frontier town that leaned toward the wild side and thus became a launch point for people heading for the Wild West. Thus the nickname "Gateway to the West" was given to it. Not only did the railroad end here until western routes were built, but the Pony Express also ended here. St. Joseph was officially incorporated in 1843. In 1854, Armstrong and Eliza Beattie built their mansion in St. Joseph on Main Street. It would be called the "House on the Hill." Armstrong Beattie was born in 1811 in Virginia. When he was ten, his family moved to Howard County, Missouri. His father died shortly thereafter and he found work as a hat maker in Columbia, Missouri. Eliza Snoddy came into his life in 1841 and the couple married. They would have no children, but would eventually took under their wing several nieces and nephews. The Beatties moved to Hunstville, Missouri and Armstrong worked as a merchant for ten years. In 1852, the Beatties arrived in St. Joseph and Armstrong set his sights on the banking industry. The only banking offered in the town was out of the back of John Corby's general store. And all that really consisted of was a metal safe. So Armstrong was going to become St. Joseph's first full-time banker. He opened his bank in a storeroom under the City Hotel and ran the following advertisement in the St. Joseph Gazette on January 28, 1853: "A. BEATTIE, Banker and Dealer in Exchange, St. Joseph, Missouri, 'Buys and sells exchanges on all the Eastern, Western, and Southern cities and sells on San Francisco, California in sums to suit. Collections made on all the principal cities of the Union and proceeds to promptly remitted for at current rates of exchange. Land warrants bought and sold. Office on Jule Street in the City Hotel Building.'" The banking business flourished and Beattie was able to build his own bank building on Second Street. In 1872, he moved to the west side of Third Street into a building which had been the United States Express Company. So the old Pony Express building that is today the St. Joseph Historical Society. In 1854, the Beatties built their mansion. The house was two-stories with a flat roof and built from red brick. There was a veranda on both levels in the front. The interior was typical with bedrooms on the second floor and the first floor having a parlor, dining room and other community spaces. The basement had the kitchen and a dumb waiter was used to bring up food.

Eliza had a sister named Margaret Snoddy who married a man named Robert Wilson in 1826. The couple would have two sons, John and James, and a daughter named Mary Ann. Margaret died in 1837 at the age of 29. Little Mary Ann was taken to Armstrong and Eliza and they raised her as their own. In 1855, she married a man named Rufus L. McDonald and they had seven children. Mary Ann's brother James came to St. Joseph when he reached adulthood and Armstrong brought him into partnership in the bank. On his side of the family, Armstrong had a nephew named Thomas Weakley and he brought him into the bank too. Not only did he work with banking, but Armstrong got involved in politics and he served on the City Council from 1855 to 1856 and then he was voted in as mayor six times: 1857, 1858, 1860, 1866, 1876 and 1878. Armstrong was thought of very highly and the newspaper said of him in 1878, "No man has exercised a greater influence upon the character of business stability, integrity and progress of our city than Mr. Beattie. We are all greatly indebted to him. He has made his way in the world by unswerving integrity, energy, industry, and business capacity. No man is more widely or favorably known among the bankers of the West." 

Not long after that, Armstrong would contract cholera. It was the third time in his life that he was stricken with the illness and this final time would kill him. He died on July 26,1878 and was buried in Mount Mora Cemetery. His funeral was attended by many city and county officials and business leaders. The Globe wrote of Armstrong after his death in 1878, "Ex-Mayor Beattie, of St. Joseph, died this morning, after a short illness.  Mr. Beattie was one of the oldest as well as one of the most generally respected citizens of our sister city, and perhaps did as much as any other man to give St. Joseph her present commercial importance.  He was at the head of the oldest and most substantial bank in the city, and it can be said of him that he has been of great use to his fellow men, his community, and to himself." Now the story told about Armstrong and his will is that he left only the house to Eliza, but no money to upkeep the house or her in general and that he gave his money to nieces and nephews. This story seems to be told to lend credence to Eliza haunting the place because it was all she owned. We found his will that was dated August 30, 1875 and presented to court July 29, 1878. And the beginning of it reads, "I, Armstrong Beattie of sound and disposing mind do make and ordain this my last will and testament hereby revoking all other wills heretofore made. 1st I desire and request my executor to pay all my just debts. 2nd I give bequeath and devise to my wife Eliza J. Beattie my household and kitchen furniture, and one half of all my estate personal real and mixed, absolutely, of which I may die possessed and seized. 3rd In the event that my said wife shall depart this life before I do, I give bequeath and devise to the brother, nephews and nieces and sister of my said wife to wit" and it goes on to name them all and then continues with divisions of the rest of the estate. So it sounds to us like Eliza got the house and half of everything else after debts were paid.

Eliza didn't have the house for long as she died two years after Armstrong. The family sold the mansion to the Ladies Union Benevolent Association (LUBA) and they refurbished it and opened the "Home for the Friendless." This was a place for all of the discards of the city from the homeless to prostitutes to widows to orphans. The first month it was open, eighteen people moved in. St. Joseph apparently was full of brothels, eighty of them, so several of those residents were sex workers who had children out of wedlock. The mansion became a refuge for them. A death occurred in the house in 1892. This was four-year-old Mabel Iden. A big change came for the house in 1895. The house was converted into the Memorial Home for the Aged and another wing was added to the house. It ran as a home for the elderly for 100 years and then residents were moved to a more modern facility. The Beattie Mansion was then used as a group home for the mentally ill and substance abuse addicts. That shut down and the house sat empty for awhile and then in 2005, the mansion was bought by Michael Burkart who had dreams of renovating it into a bed and breakfast.

Renovations didn't go according to plan because of all the supernatural activity that took place in the house, so it is in pretty rough shape. Tools would go missing or get moved. Construction crews kept getting run off because of the level of weird stuff and (owner) finally gave up on trying to make the place a bed and breakfast. The mansion hosts every kind of haunting activity. There are two pianos in the house that get played by ghosts. Child ghosts like to run up and down the stairs and even swing on the chandeliers and this has been caught on SLS cameras. There are disembodied footsteps, dragging sounds and slamming doors. There are creepers here and that is what they call them. These are entities that move along the ceilings and up and down the corners of rooms. Shadow figures and full-body apparitions are seen. Most importantly, this place has a haunted potty chair. Yep, you heard that right. This is a wooden chair that has a square cut out of it and was apparently used as a portable toilet. The manager and main guide is psychic Mary Ann Podrasky. Podrasky has said, "We have footsteps, whistling, my name is called, we’ve heard piano music played. I’ve heard singing right in this area, which I attribute to Eliza. My husband’s been locked in the basement before. I thought it was hilarious."

It is believed that at least a hundred people have passed in the mansion over the years. The main spirits thought to be here include Armstrong and Eliza Beattie. Eliza seems to hang out mostly on the second floor and is a constant presence. A child spirit named Mabel Iden also hangs out in a bedroom on the second floor. The kitchen hosts quite a bit of strange stuff. The most haunted area is, of course, the basement. There is an unhappy spirit in the basement who people call either Charles or Walt. He likes to taunt visitors and has been heard laughing and walking the hallways. Some people think he is just a grumpy former caretaker who is seen looking dirty because he was usually taking care of the boiler.

The paranormal group Afterlife Sessions investigated in 2018. The group were in the kitchen doing a Spirit Box session. They asked if the spirits had good memories of the kitchen and "I did not" was the answer. They asked if the butler was there and "almost done" was the response. They got a whiff of perfume while doing the session. In the basement, they tried an experiment with a teddy bear on one end of a hallway that had a Mel Meter just a little bit in front of it, then an area with sprinkled baby powder and then another device that could light up. They did get that device to light up, but no ghost seemed to run through the series they had set up. They were trying to get the children down there to walk though the powder to get to the bear. One of the investigator's last names was Biddle and that came through the Spirit Box. They brought the teddy bear upstairs and placed it in a seat with the light-up device in front of it and asked if the spirit would touch the bear. The Spirit Box said "no" and then "I ain't dead," but then the light did go on.

Marcia Davis and the Midwest Ghost Hunters investigated in 2019. They used the Portal for a Spirit Box session. Earlier in the evening, Marcia had found a quarter on the basement floor and she put it in her pocket. They got "coin" to come though the Portal and then when they asked if the spirit needed money, "I do" came through. And then WHOA!!!, the Portal said, "Marcia pinched it." When they asked why the spirit needed money, they got "broke." The next morning, Marcia got caught up on the basement door knob and had opened it, without realizing she had done that and the investigators thought the door had opened on its own. So they start doing a Portal session after that and asked if the spirit opened the door and the Portal answered "Marcia." They captured a whistle on one their cameras. On another camera they got this weird light anomaly that we found to be pretty interesting in the way it moved. It seemed to go along the hall and then disappeared into the floor just as the investigators come into the space. They caught an EVP saying, "Get inspired."

Michaela Miller-Stout wrote for Medium in 2021 about a visit she made to the house, "Two of my friends volunteered to join me at the Beattie Mansion for photos. Almost immediately upon setting foot in the house with Podrasky, events began to take place. There was no shortage of disembodied voices and breathing, doors opening and closing, feelings of being touched, camera malfunctions, footsteps and seeing figures watching curiously from down the hall. After the short hour and a half we spent in the mansion, we could safely say this was one of the most active places any of us had ever been to. After our visit, even Podrasky admitted, 'They showed off for you three.'" They captured an EVP saying "go" twice. (EVP says go) 

Jason of Cemetery Road on YouTube investigated in September of 2022 and he got a cold chill near a stairway in the newer section that has a lot of activity near it. He also thought he heard someone coming down the stairs and he asked if anyone was there and there was nothing. This was as he was doing an initial walk through of the house. During the investigation that night, they caught an audible "hi" on the camera and they heard it at the time as well. There were the sounds of hard shoes on a hard floor. Jason had his son with him and they decided to do a dowsing rod session in Room 19. Someone indicated they were in the room and said that they passed away in the room and that they were a man. The spirit said they took their own life. It also indicated that both the Beatties were in the house. When Jason asked if it was okay for them to be there, there was no response. Then he asked if they wanted them to leave and it said "yes" so they left the room. But what if it meant the house in general? They did dowsing rods in another room and were speaking to an elderly person who liked having them there. This was a really tame investigation.

Amy from Amy's Crypt investigated the mansion in 2022. One of the main things that happened is that they placed a Para4ce Music Box on the bed in the room where Mabel hangs out. Amy asked Mabel to get the music box to go off and it went off for an extended period of time. Her boyfriend Jarrad was down in the basement by himself with the Ghost Tube App and he asked, "How do you feel about me being in this room right now and it responded "insulted." Later it said "there was a moron" and Jarrad wondered if it was calling him a moron. A cat ball on the bed went off a little later. They had a relatively quiet investigation.

Sue Poshusta of Short Bus Paranormal Investigators told KCTV5 about an experience she had in the house in 2024. She had a music box across the room from her and she invited the children to come in and play. The music box started playing like crazy. She asked them to stop playing the music box and suddenly, the right side of her body turned to ice. So it was as if the children came running over to her.

We get the feeling that the hauntings at the mansion are more subtle. And we've heard that the spirits embrace a more calm investigating technique. But just because ghosts are a little more shy and quiet about being around, doesn't mean they aren't haunting a place. Is the Beattie Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 587 - McCune Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Discovery of the Endurance

Shipwrecks can be a fascinating place to explore for divers. They can become amazing reefs, teaming with sea life creating their own unique ecosystem. But when a shipwreck occurs in the coldest ocean region of the world, the effects of time can sometimes surprise you. In February of 2022, a large-scale international scientific expedition set out from Cape Town, Africa. The journey would take the scientists to Antarctica in pursuit of finding the Endurance. The Endurance was a three masted barkentine ship owned by Sir Ernest Shackleton. The vessel was built for navigating through 'pack ice' conditions and was to be used from 1914-1917. The journey that Shackleton sought to accomplish was to travel across Antarctica from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans. In 1915, the Endurance became trapped in ice and was ultimately crushed in the Weddell Sea. Despite the tragedy of losing the ship, all 28 crew members survived. One hundred and seven years later, scientists set out to locate the wreckage. Underwater robots, helicopters and advanced technology were used. At the time of the sinking, the ship's captain, Frank Worsley, used a sextant and a theodolite to identify the spot where the ship went down and the captain recorded it in his journal. This provided the scientists a good starting point to focus their search. When the wreckage of the Endurance was found the ship was in amazing condition. The vessel was found upright and not buried or overturned as expected and the ship was well preserved. The name 'Endurance' was still legible on many parts of the ship including the stern, railings, steering wheel, ropes and some of the ship's original supplies. Although some sea life had called the wreckage of the Endurance home, the fact that it was found, so well preserved, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The First Kentucky Derby

In the month of May, on the 17th, in 1875, the first Kentucky Derby was held at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. At the time, the racing location was known as the Louisville Jockey Club. The inaugural event took place in front of an estimated 10,000 spectators. The distance run was 1.5 miles and the field of 15 horses consisted of 3 year olds. Of the 15 jockeys, 13 were African American and the winning jockey was Oliver Lewis. His mount, a three year old chestnut colt named Aristides, was trained by future Hall of Famer, Ansel Williamson. Aristides' portion of the $3,050 purse was $2,850 with $200 going to the second place winner, Volcano. The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continuously held horse race in the United States. It became the third race added to what is now known as the Triple Crown. The order of the races are as follows: The Kentucky Derby is the first race, with the Preakness Stakes being run 2 weeks later and finally the Belmont Stakes 3 weeks after that. The Kentucky Derby has become a celebrated American tradition, known for its rich history, exciting races, outrageous hats, and of course, its signature drink, the Mint Julep.

McCune Mansion (Suggested by: Derrick Hughes) 

The McCune Mansion sits perched atop a hill on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. This splendid Victorian is unique both outside and inside. The interior features exotic materials from around the world. The home has not only been privately owned, but served as a dance studio, art gallery, office space and now wedding venue. And what would a Victorian mansion be without some ghosts stories? Join us as we share the history and hauntings of the McCune Mansion.

Mormon pioneers founded Salt Lake City in 1847. The religious group was seeking religious freedom and Brigham Young found that for them in the West. The city would serve as territorial capitol and then the state capital of Utah. But long before that the Shoshone, Goshute, Ute and Paiute set up their seasonal camps in the valley near the Great Salt Lake that the Goshute called Pi'a-pa, meaning "big water." The land was never considered owned by any indigenous groups, so none of them received anything when settlers arrived. About a year before the Mormons pioneers arrived, the Donner Party passed through the valley. Those first years weren't easy for the Latter Day Saints, but things got far better with the California Gold Rush. Many people came to the town on their way to seeking their fortunes. Here in Salt Lake City they bought farm goods and livestock, along with clothing and supplies. The city would later experience tensions between the LDS and the United States government and non-LDS residents. Those would ease in the early 1900s, but the Great Depression and World Wars would also take a toll. After the wars, Salt Lake City grew rapidly. Today, the city is not only the capitol of a major religion, but a successful secular metropolis. 

Alfred W. McCune was born in 1849 in Calcutta, India at the British Fort William. His father was a member of the British Army and he and his wife would have seven sons and one daughter all born at the Fort. Unfortunately, three of the boys and their daughter would all die as children. In 1851, the McCunes invited two sailors to a church meeting in their home and by the time the sailors left, the McCune family had converted from Plymouth Brethren Christians to Mormonism. After that, Alfred's parents became Mormon missionaries. The McCunes emigrated to New York City in 1857. The family then proceeded to Chicago via train and then by wagon to Salt Lake City. McCune's father added two more wives to the family and had another 15 children.

Alfred was a hard worker and started as a stock herder and then moved on to being a laborer for the Union Pacific Railroad. It was through the railroad that Alfred began to build his wealth. As the Utah Southern Railroad was building a rail line through the southern part of Utah, Alfred supplied the workers with provisions. He partnered with two other men and they built the Utah Southern Railroad Extension and they founded a general store in the town of Milton. By 1881, McCune had also opened a huge cattle and horse ranch in southern Utah. In 1872, he married Elizabeth Claridge whose family had emigrated to the US in 1853. The couple would have nine children. McCune's interest in the railroads and general stores extended into Montana and Oregon and the family moved to Montana in 1885. In 1888, they moved to Salt Lake City and McCune purchased interest in the streetcar system. Under his guidance, the streetcar went from mule-drawn to electric. But he wasn't done there. Eventually he took over the Salt Lake Herald and the became a part-owner of the Utah Power Company. His expertise in the railroad would lead him to building railroads and mines in Peru through the latter part of his life with partners like J.P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst and Frederick Vanderbilt. So this was a really successful man who came from very humble beginnings.

In 1900, the McCunes decided to build their mansion. The McCunes wanted their house up on a hill so they had a view of the city and the LDS Temple. Both Alfred and Elizabeth had diverse tastes and they had toured Britain, so when it came to designing a home they wanted to explore a variety of styles. They sent the architect they had chosen, S.C. Dallas, on a two year tour of America and Europe to study different techniques. In the end, the design was Gothic Revival with East Asian influence and the exterior was Shingle Style. The exterior was made from Red Butte Canyon Sandstone and featured a conical turret and oval portico. And they spared no expense with the interior of the house. Material was brought in from literally everywhere in the world. There was mahogany from San Domingo, red roof tiles from the Netherlands, oak from England, onyx from Utah and a rare white-grained mahogany from South Africa. An enormous broad mirror wall was transported from Germany and other walls were covered in Russian Leather, moiré (mwah) silks and French tapestries. The fireplaces were made from Nubian marble.

When the house was finished the following year - at a cost of $1 million - it had running water, 21 rooms and three floors. The first floor had an octagonal reception room with embossed figures on the ceiling, a large dining room, a sitting room, a main hall with an exquisite fireplace and mantle, tea room and drawing room. There was also a hidden room under the grand staircase where musicians would play music for parties. The second floor had bedrooms and a glorious central hall with stairs leading up to what is today a board room. The third floor's two ballrooms are something to behold with their marble columns and plush round sofas, arched openings, painted ceilings and gold colored accents everywhere. There are huge mirrors, balconies and alcoves. Several types of woods were used. A German craftsman spent 8 months making the furnishings from an artificial marble. The third floor also has what is called a "Hunting Room" that was styled in English Renaissance and based on Haddon Hall in England. The walls have woodland and hunting scenes painted on them. 

The mansion was perfectly designed for parties and the McCunes loved to host them. Elizabeth enjoyed entertaining friends. Alfred would have political allies come to the house for meetings in the dining room. Special occasions were observed, particularly holidays. The couple raised their family for the twenty years they lived in the house and then they decided to move further West, all the way to Los Angeles. Rather than sell their dream home, they decided to donate it to the LDS Church. The Church accepted the gift and planned to give it to the church president, Heber J. Grant, to use as a personal residence. Grant wasn't crazy about the idea because the place was just too ornate for him. The cleaning alone - lol! The Chruch decided to open the LDS School of Music in the mansion. The name changed in 1924 to the McCune School of Music and Art. The school offered junior college-level courses in music and dance and was accredited by the the National Association of Schools of Music. The administration of the school decided to expand and refocus in 1942 and the music school became a preparatory school for junior high and high school students. Brigham Young University absorbed the school as a branch in 1952. The problem with that is that BYU couldn't get it accredited, so the University let it go. By 1957, the school had been closed by the Church Board of Education. 

The LDS Church held onto the house until 1972 when they sold it and it reopened as Virginia Tanner Modern Dance School. Virginia Tanner was known as America's Children's Dance Teacher. Her parents started her in ballet early, but she didn't like the formal dance. She was a free spirit and her father encouraged her freestyle dance. Her mother made her black bloomers, so that her movement was free. Virginia studied dance with many famous teachers and she taught for Doris Humphrey in New York. When she returned home to Salt Lake City in the 1940s, she directed the dance department at the McCune School of Music and Art. She organized the Children's Dance Theater in 1949. Tanner became well known and was invited to conduct workshops on children's dance throughout the country and in the 1970s, the National Endowment for the Arts asked her to direct a pilot program for children's dance in school districts in five states. Tanner had a rare gift for teaching and inspiring children with dance. She passed away in 1979. At the school in the mansion, the girls wore white Ginny dresses, which basically were like the dress Wendy from Peter Pan wore. The skirt flowed making them perfect for dance.

Through all of this, the house wasn't refurbished and it was deteriorating. The school moved out in the 1990s and Philip McCarthey bought it in 1999. He was a shareholder of the Kearns-Tribune Corp., which published The Salt Lake Tribune. McCarthey got several family members to partner with him and they set to renovating the mansion. They had plans to open a wedding and reception venue and they did just that in 2001 and that is what it remains today. A carriage house on the property had been designed by architect Henry Monheim and built for Judge R. N. Baskin in 1872 to go with his mansion. Baskin's mansion was razed when the McCune's built their mansion. It was remodeled in 1926 and used as a Mormon meeting house. It was refurbished with the mansion by McCarthey.

Ghost stories have been told about the house ever since the McCune family moved out. That room under the stairs that once hosted music orchestration still has the sounds of musical instruments coming from it on occasion. And there are people who claimed that shortly after the music school moved in, music was heard coming from the house in general at times when classes weren't in session and no one was in the mansion. Furniture moves around on its own as do other objects. The lights turn on and off on their own. Doors unlock themselves and disembodied voices are heard. It is believed that there are two specific spirits here. The first belongs to Alfred McCune. He is seen as a full-bodied apparition wearing a long black coat and sometimes a cape. It seems strange that Alfred would come back to a house that the family had left in 1920, but maybe he just was really attached to it.

The other spirit belongs to a young girl and no one is sure who she is. We checked the death records on the McCune's three daughters and they all lived into adulthood with all of them passing in the 1960s. The little girl is said to resemble a portrait hanging in the house, which makes us wonder if she is attached to the portrait. Mirrors are really her thing and this house is full of them. People have claimed to see her walking in and out of a mirror in the western part of the mansion. Her full-bodied apparition has joined a few weddings and she is seen laughing and dancing. And she has appeared in a couple of wedding photos. A little ghost bomb if you will. Her footprints have also been seen in several rooms. They will just start or end in the middle of the room.

An interesting story was told by the McCarthey family. They were celebrating Christmas in the mansion shortly after they bought it. This was the first time that Christmas had been celebrated in the house since the McCunes moved out in 1920. Somebody from the McCune family might have been excited about this because the ballroom lights kept popping on and off. The McCartheys called an electrician in a few days later because they figured something was wrong with the wiring. The electrician found nothing wrong and he told the family that there was a light switch two floors down and maybe someone had been playing with it. The problem was that the family had no idea about the switch.

McCarthey told KSL.com that during renovations, an electrician told him that he saw something in an enormous German mirror that is in the Drawing Room. "He was just getting ready to make sure that the electricity was OK, when a little girl came out of the mirror wearing white. She came out of the mirror, she looked to her left, looked to her right, decided everything was OK, and went back in the mirror. That electrician never came back here to work again." The Salt Lake Tribune also interviewed Phil and he told them that several times, he has turned off the lights and locked the house up tight and then gotten in his car, looked at the house one last time and then saw that the lights were on again. He also has sometimes been driving away from the mansion and watched the lights turn on and off in several rooms from the rearview mirror. One of his sons told him that he saw a calm, non-threatening man dressed in a black cape appear, the man watched him and then disappeared.

Story from "The Ghostly Tales of Salt Lake City" by Laurie Allen, Cassie Ashton, Nanette Guest-Watts and Kristen Clay. A woman lived across the street at the Kensington and one night she was outside on her balcony, talking to a friend on the phone and she saw a man on the stairs who started walking down the stairs and about halfway down, he just disappeared. She wouldn't go out on her balcony after that. A person on the ghost tour was taking pictures of the house and in one of the pictures in a second floor window on the left, there is a figure. No one was in the mansion at the time.    

On the last episode we talked about Masons. Well, Joseph Smith had a great interest in Masonic knowledge and it is said that the early Mormon pioneers followed the 42nd Parallel in the US to get to Utah. There are those who believe this is a ley line. On top of that, it is said that Brigham Young laid out Salt Lake City along ley lines. The Great Salt Lake is said to be a vortex. We don't know if any of that is true, but the McCune Mansion in Utah certainly seems to have some strange things going on inside of it. Is the McCune Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 586 - Houghton Mansion and the Masons

Moment in Oddity - Indiana Bell building rotation (Suggested by: Duey Oxberger)

The Indiana Bell building was constructed in 1907 and stands at 240 N Meridian St, Indianapolis, Indiana. By 1929, Indiana Bell company determined that they required a larger building to accommodate their business needs. At the beginning, the company thought they would just demolish their current building and build a new one. However, after hiring Vonnegut, Bohn and Muller Architects for the demolition and rebuild of the structure, the architects told Indiana Bell that the building itself did not need a demo job, just a rotate job. If the building was rotated 90 degrees and shifted 100 feet west, the company would end up with the extra space they desired to build on an addition. As reported in different newspaper articles, the rotation launched on October 14, 1930. During the 31 day process, there were rollers, T5-ton jacks and 18 men involved. Amazingly, business as usual continued within the building while the 11,000 ton structure was in the process of rotation. The rotation rate was calculated at 15 inches per hour. This rate meant that the employees working within could not even feel the movement of the building. At the end of the process, the architectural team was able to place the building within one-sixty-fourth of an inch from the original calculated location! We are always amazed at stories where buildings are picked up and moved to a different location. But to move an eight story, 11,000 ton building while employees continued to work within, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Astor Place Riot

In the month of May, on the 10th in 1849, angry crowds rioted outside of Astor Place Opera House in lower Manhattan, New York. British actor William Charles Macready and American actor Edwin Forrest were to perform "Macbeth" inside the opera house. Both were well known Shakespearean actors and a conflict had developed between the two of them. Three days before the riot, Forrest's supporters had bought hundreds of tickets for seats in the theater. Most of the audience were working class New Yorkers. The protestors had brought objects like rotten eggs, potatoes, apples, lemons, shoes and bottles filled with stinky liquids. The protestors began with hissing and booing during Macready's performance and then began hurling the objects at the stage. Some of the theater goers even ripped up their seats. The riot was fueled by anti-British sentiment, especially with the Irish immigrants who faced discrimination and viewed Macready as a symbol of British dominance and the upper class. On May 10th, police were concerned about the level of man-power they had available if a more serious riot occurred. The state's Seventh Regiment were assembled in Washington Square Park, as well as mounted troops, light artillery and hussars, to a total of 350 men along with the 100 police officers outside the theater alone. By the time the play opened at 7:30 p.m., 10,000 people filled the streets surrounding the theater. The rioters broke theater windows and attempted to set fire to the building. By the end of the riot, between 22 and 31 people were killed and 259 were injured including both civilians, police and militia. The Astor Place Riot is also known as the Shakespeare Riot. It is reported that prior to the riot, New York had not known so much gunfire and death since the Revolutionary War.

Houghton Mansion and the Masons (Suggested by: Nicole Cardarelli)

The Houghton Mansion in North Adams, Massachusetts was named for the family that commissioned its construction. Their biography is ripe for ghost stories with a tragic car accident leading to further deaths from broken hearts and suicides. The house then spent nearly a century hosting a chapter of the Masonic Order. The Masons have always carried an air of mystery around their organization with rumors of bizarre rituals, sacrifices and hidden knowledge. Many former Masonic temples and centers pop up on haunted lists and we have featured a few. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Houghton Mansion.

North Adams, Massachusetts was settled by Europeans in 1745, during King George's War, when Fort Massachusetts was built along the Hoosac River. That fort would be burned during the Siege of Fort Massachusetts in 1746 when 21 militiamen were no match for a French and Indian battalion numbering 1,000. The Fort was later rebuilt and then refortified for the French and Indian War in 1754. After that, it fell into disrepair. The North Adams Women's Club raised funds to reconstruct the Fort and was reopened as a memorial in 1933 that could be toured. That shut down in the 1960s and the Fort was demolished. A commemorative plaque with a reconstructed chimney are all that remains. The town of North Adams was named for Samuel Adams and became a mill town since water power could be generated from the confluence of the Hoosic River and various manufacturing was the main industry. Everything from clothing to marble to ironworks to cabinets were produced. In the mid 1800s, Arnold Print Works became one of the world's leading manufacturers of printed textiles and this company was started by Albert Charles Houghton (Hoe-ton), or A.C. as most people called him.

A.C. Houghton was born in 1844 in Vermont. A.C. was a driven man from an early age and founded the Houghton Chemical Works of Stamford before he was 21-years-old. He also got involved in real estate and started amassing a small fortune. Cordelia Smith of Stamford became his wife in 1866 and they would have five daughters: Laura, Florence, Susan, Alice and Mary. In 1868, A.C. opened the Parker Mill in North Adams and he would move the family there in 1870. In 1881, he became the president of the Arnold Print Works. And he even dipped his toes into beer when he took over the A.J. Houghton Brewing Company out of Boston when his father, A.J. Houghton died in 1892. There were 31 breweries in Boston at the time. The Stony Brook area had 24 alone and only one of them is still active today. Many of the buildings are gone too, but the A.J. Houghton one is still there at the corner of Station and Halleck Streets. The brewery specialized in Vienna Lager and also made Pavonia Lager Beer, Vienna Old Time Lager and Rockland Ale. That shut down in 1918 due to Prohibition. Houghton became director of the Boston & Albany Railroad in 1895. In 1896, A.C. became the first mayor of North Adams and he served two, one year terms.

It was after this that A.C. decided to build his third home in North Adams. This would be his most extravagant house and was designed in the Neo-Classical Revival style. The outer clapboards are thinner at the base to make the house appear taller. It stood three stories and had a roof of Spanish tile. Behind the house, a formal garden was planted. There was a large horse barn on the property as well. In 1900, A.C. and his wife Cordelia moved in with their 23-year-old daughter Mary who had decided not to marry and planned to just care for A.C. whose health was failing. At this point, Florence, Susan and Alice had all married and were raising their own families. Laura had died in infancy. 

Cars were all the rage by 1914 and the Houghtons decided to buy their first automobile. This was a seven passenger Pierce-Arrow touring car. There was just one problem. The Houghtons had no idea how to drive a car. They decided to send the man who had been the keeper of their horses and carriages to go learn how to drive the car. His name was John Widders and he had also been a family friend. Now he was their official chauffeur. A.C. decided to travel to Bennington, Vermont and he told Mary that she could bring a friend. She asked her childhood friend Sybil Hutton to join her and Sybil's husband Robert came along. The group set out in the Pierce Arrow for the pleasure drive with Widders at the wheel. This drive would be anything but pleasurable. 

First, the road they were driving along was under repair. This was a road designed for carriages, not cars. The road was very narrow, so two cars could barely fit when passing. As Widders made his way up the gentle grade of Oak Hill Road, he saw a team of horses parked ahead on the right side of the road. He passed them on the left, but there wasn't enough road there and the tires on the left side of the car left the road, causing the car to tilt off the road. They had been heading uphill and so the car rolled down the embankment and rolled three times before coming to a stop. Mary was still in the car, but everyone else had been thrown from the car. This was a car with no roof, so you can imagine that if Mary was still in the car, that wasn't a good thing. She was mortally injured, but still alive. She was taken to North Adams Hospital where she passed away later that day. Sybil Hutton had been killed instantly with the first roll. Dr. Hutton, A.C. and Widders all walked away from the accident with minor injuries.  

Widders was riddled with guilt and the following morning, he was found dead in the cellar of the horse barn with a bullet in his head. He had apparently taken his own life with a horse pistol. The investigator for the State of Vermont exonerated Widders and said that the soft shoulder of the road was to blame. But that mattered little since Widders was no longer alive. The family had him buried in their family plot at South View Cemetery, so they didn't blame him either. A.C. Houghton would die 10 days after the accident. Some say that it was from injuries caused by the accident, but others claim he died from a broken heart. He was 70 years old. 

Cordelia Houghton remained in the house until her death four years later in 1918. By this point, Florence had moved into the house with her husband, William Gallup, to care for her mother. The couple remained in the house until 1926 and they sold it to the local Masonic order, which is today the Lafayette-Greylock Freemasons. This was formed from a merger of two lodges with the original dating back to 1847. The Masons would remain in the house for 90 years. They pulled out the formal garden and constructed their lodge building on the spot. 

Freemasonry claims to go back to the Middle Ages, but the oldest document referencing the Masons is the Regius Poem from 1390. The First Grand Lodge of England formed in 1717 from four lodges. The fraternity spread throughout Europe and then came over to the American Colonies. Many of the Founding Fathers were Freemasons. Forty-four signers of the Declaration of Independence belonged to the Fraternal Order. President George Washington laid the cornerstone for the U.S. Capitol on September 18, 1793 and paintings about the moment feature him wearing his Masonic apron during the ceremony. He placed an inscribed silver plate under the cornerstone and to this day, nobody can figure out where the cornerstone is located. Metal detectors have been unable to find that metal plate. Our Supreme Court was shaped by Chief Justice John Marshall, also a Mason. The goal of Freemasonry is to spread the ideals of the Enlightenment and contribute to social improvement. They founded orphanages and homes for widows and the elderly. We've talked about several here on the podcast. And while they have done many good things, there are those that claim there is a dark side to Freemasonry.

Now much of what we are going to share here is based on conspiracy theories and such, but its extremely intriguing and we find some of it compelling. Many members of the Freemasons and Eastern Star join for the camaraderie and business dealings. Most probably don't know the ancient origins of their rituals and maybe think its all just a fun little aside. Few reach the upper echelons of membership and probably are never taught some of the darker things. Now there really may be nothing to any of this, but let's be honest, if you have secret handshakes and hide your rituals and membership is by "invite only," you are asking for scrutiny. Anyone who has been inside these old Masonic Lodges has probably gotten a weird feeling because of the symbology all around them from the black and white checkerboard floors to carved chairs and sculptures of ancient deities and the head dude is called the Worshipful Master. The weirdest temple is in DC. The Masonic Lodge in DC is called the House of the Temple and was inspired by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus - so yeah, a tomb. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The interior has black statues representing Egyptian figures made from black marble. That marble came from Lake Champlain and took 15 years to find. They are all carved from that one piece and the carving was done inside the temple. Greek figures adorn the lamps and chandeliers.

Freemasonry communicates secretly through symbolism. Washington, D.C. was laid out specifically according to Mason design. From overhead, one can see the pentagram that Masons have as one of their symbols. The square and compass are other symbols laid out in the street plans and such for D.C. The most obvious symbol is the Washington Monument. We all know that it is meant to be a giant phallic symbol. It measures 66,635 inches tall and 6,660 inches long at the base. And what does that phallic symbol need to be complete? A womb, right? That would be the domed Capitol Building. In ancient mythology and the mystery religions of Egypt, placing this phallus and womb in this way was like setting up an energy generator and this was to draw up the seed of Osiris from the Underworld. For those that don't know the Egyptian myth behind this, Osiris and Isis were brother and sister and also became husband and wife. They also had a brother named Set who was jealous of Osiris and he killed him one day so that he could be king. Set cut Osiris' body into 13 pieces and scattered them. Isis was devastated and managed to collect 12 pieces, but she never found his phallus. She had great magical powers and brought Osiris back to life. She fashioned him a phallus from a magical obelisk and soon becomes pregnant. After this, Osiris descended to the underworld and he is lord of that domain. their son Horus then became king of Egypt. Another location where you can find this design is St. Peter's Square. There's a giant obelisk and then St. Peter's Basilica as the womb. 

Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and the father of empiricism. He was a part of the scientific revolution and he wrote a book titled "New Atlantis" about a utopian island. Bacon believed that America was the New Atlantis. He was influential to some of the Founders. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "[Francis] Bacon, [John] Locke and [Isaac] Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of these superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral Sciences." Thomas Jefferson was also the man who suggested that the Capitol should resemble the Roman Pantheon, which was a circular domed rotunda dedicated to all pagan gods. Some believe that Bacon was the father of Freemasonry in America.

Masonic lodges offer three masonic degrees and these are Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and Master Mason. Most Masons fall into those degrees, but there are masonic bodies that offer higher degrees to Master Masons, all the way up to the 33rd degree. That's what Shriners are - 33rd degree Masons. Their main ritual reflects on this character named Hiram Abiff, which Masons claim was the chief architect of King Solomon's Temple. The Bible does mention a master craftsman named Hiram in 1 Kings 7:13-14 and he cast the bronze furnishings and ornate decorations for the temple. The King of Tyre sent building materials for the temple and his name was also Hiram, but it isn't believed by Masons that this was Hiram Abiff. The Masonic ritual reenacts his murder at the hands of three fellowcraft masons. He is ambushed while leaving and tied up. The three demand to know the secrets of a master mason and he refuses to tell them. Each one asks and then strikes him with a mason's tool. The first two hits injure him and the last kills him. His body is hidden under a pile of rubble temporarily and then the assailants retrieve it at night and take it outside the city of Jerusalem and bury it in a shallow grave. Hiram's body is found later by other masons and given a proper burial. King Solomon declares that the secret word of a master mason is now lost, so he replaces it with another secret word. And that is the main secret the upper echelon of Masons are keeping. 

Other rituals conducted by the Masons are to raise Osiris, who was called Apollo by the Greeks. Ancient myths believe that Apollo will be raised again and indwell a man and take his place leading a new Golden Age. And just to really add something to this, you know the missions to the moon were called Apollo and then a number. Buzz Aldrin is a Mason and he carried a special deputation with him that was intended to establish territorial jurisdiction on the moon for the Grand Lodge of Texas. Oh and in the Bible, in Revelation 9:11 is says, "They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon."

I was checking out this particular orders Facebook page and just a couple posts down was this:

Umm, why are they using the image from the movie poster for The Exorcist for whatever this is?

The Masons couldn't upkeep the house after 90 years and in 2017, sold to hotel developer Benjamin Svenson for $160,000. The Houghton House today is still privately owned and no longer open for tours or investigations, which is a real bummer. The house still looks much like it did when the Houghtons lived there. Siding covers the clapboard now and the Spanish tile roof was replaced with asphalt. Its also said to be the most haunted place in North Adams. Masons, visitors and investigators all have reported hearing the disembodied voices of a man and a lady thought to be Mr. and Mrs. Houghton. Shadow figures were also seen many times. And Mary Houghton’s former room was always a place that made people feel an overwhelming sense of sorrow. There also is the spirit of a young girl in the basement who is thought to go back to a house that was on the property before the Houghton Mansion. The mansion was built on the basement and foundation from that previous house. The young girl is seen walking across the basement and fading into the walls. The lockers in the Mason's locker room would open and close on their own.

There are those who believe that the activities of the Masons may have conjured entities in the house as well and it DOES seem that most Masonic buildings have some kind of haunting going on inside. Same for the Odd Fellows. Could it be their use of real human bones in rituals, particularly in the past? Talk about causing unrest! Queenofdan on Reddit said, "I slept over at that place a good dozen or so times, and every time is different! We’ve had moments that were so dramatic we would run to each other like toddlers and huddle, and other times not much happened except we’d spook ourselves with anticipation. But that place is definitely spooky." Another group caught an EVP of who they thought was Widders saying, "I have a heavy heart."

Hometown Ghost Stories are Dave and Rob and they investigated in 2014 and they decided to try out the claim that a certain door will close when A.C. is asked to do it. The first time they asked, the door closed immediately. The second time they asked, it didn't close and then they said, "Let's do a countdown to three and on three, close the door" and sure enough, the door closed on three. Rob was in Mary's bedroom by himself when he heard a massive bang that startled him so much that he jumped to his feet and knocked over an end table. He tried to see what in the room could've made the sound and he couldn't find anything. Dave tried an experiment where he knocked on a wooden altar in the middle of a room and asked something to knock in return  and something did. He tried it again with the same result. When they reviewed the footage, they noticed they captured a shadow figure moving left to right when the knocking sounds were made. Rob was investigating Widder's bedroom later and wasn't really getting anything and then all of a sudden there was a drastic drop in temperature in the room and Robe could hear footsteps moving up the hall and then he heard a door slam. He thought maybe it was Dave, but when he radioed him, he found out that Dave was out in his car in the parking lot.

Ghost Adventures hit the Houghton Mansion early on with it being their second episode of Season 1. On the episode, a member of the Masons told Zak that he was in the mansion one day, standing near the side entrance hall when he heard the side-entrance door open and close and then there were footsteps. He assumed someone had come in and he looked and saw snowy footprints on the ground in the hallway leading away from the door. There was no snow on the ground, so this wasn't surprising. What was surprising is that the footsteps just stopped abruptly and there was no one else in the house that he could find. The crew were shown a wall that was made from rock taken from the Hoosac Tunnel. This was a tunnel that stretched nearly five miles and was constructed from 1851 to 1875. Two hundred men lost their lives during the construction and people started calling it "The Bloody Pit." There are those that think these stones are cursed because they came from the Bloody Pit, particularly with the tragedy that befell the Houghtons. A former president here, Josh Mantello, told Zak that members would use audio recorders in the house to see if they could catch anything and that in Mary Houghton's former room they caught screams and someone yelling "Get out!" Mantello also said he saw a full-bodied apparition on the third floor, standing in a doorway at night. They also captured a picture of a ghostly face in a third-floor window. In the basement, Mantello and others have been tapped on the shoulder by something they couldn't see. During the investigation, they capture a wispy human-shaped shadow bolt from the left side of the hall to the right side and they hear an audible yell from a woman. They also hear footsteps in Mary's room. They hear the sounds of doors shutting while in the Masonic Temple. They capture an EVP of a man saying "Ran for help." Could this have been John Witters?

The Central New Hampshire Paranormal Society and Boston Paranormal Investigators investigated the mansion in 2014. They share on the BPI blog, "The session in the bedroom was interrupted by Eric Perry who took David out of the room for a minute. David came back in and informed us that there was an incredible amount of activity in the basement and that they eventually had to leave as several of the group members just sighted a full body apparition of a little girl." So the rest of the group heads to the basement and they didn't see the apparition but, "We were asking several questions about the little girl entity and when we played back a set of three questions. We heard an audible ‘yes’ when we asked if she like animals." And they continue, "After another short break we headed to the Ball Room. A large room that was directly below the Masonic Temple and an addition attached to the backside of the property. The site for the addition sat on what was once Mary Houghton’s garden and we could have told you that in retrospect because the room smelled of flowers. You can imagine the excitement from the group when we walked into this grand room and all smelled the same sweet scent...After another break it was time to head to the third floor. This is where the servants quarters were located including the room of John Widders, the Chauffeur who in his guilt shot himself in a barn formally on the property. We spent about 20 Minutes in his bedroom...The Freemason guides indicated that although his presence was felt around the house, it came and went periodically. During our time in the room, one of the investigators meters constantly went off, but other than that it was pretty quiet. That is, until we moved over to the next room. We started asking for anything/anyone to give us a sign, specifically for John Widders. Several of us took photos which led to one of the more interesting ones of the night. The photo of the potential shadow person or black mass that can be seen in the anomalies section of the report. After this point, a spirit box that was on and had been left by the other group started getting active. Immediately we all turned toward the box and were startled by what could not be mistaken for anything other than ‘Get Out’. We confirmed this with one another before we heard it again. As we started to get uneasy it took a third time for us to pack up and immediate leave the floor. We did not want to be where we were not welcome."

Irene Loewenson wrote in The Williams Record in October of 2019, "Williamstown resident James 'Cricket' Wondoloski, [estimates] that he has spent the night in the purportedly haunted North Adams mansion 13 times. Wondoloski would stay in the mansion with a group of friends who were also interested in ghost-hunting. On his first overnight, he and his friends saw a lantern-like light float up the stairs and heard creaking but did not see anyone walking. Then, the light went out. 'We all freaked out,' he said. 'And then we were quiet and we could hear footsteps right above our heads… We went up, and there was nobody there...It was quite fun to go...Sometimes a lot of things happened. Sometimes nothing happened.' On more eventful nights, he has felt a 40-degree gust of air in the middle of summer, heard a girlish giggle and been scratched on the back of his neck, he said. His friend reported feeling a tug on his ponytail." 

The Houghton family endured a tragedy no family should ever have to experience. Is the pain from the car accident somehow locked into the house, trapping those connected to the accident? And what about the Masons? Were they just interacting with the former owners or did they conjure some entities themselves? Is the Houghton mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!