HGB Ep. 538 - The Haunting of Carl Jung

Moment in Oddity - Hodges Meteorite

Star gazing is a pastime that many people enjoy, especially during meteor showers when the skies can put on quite the show! Back in November of 1954 there was a woman by the name of Ann Hodges who had decided to take a little nap in her (si luh kaa guh) Sylacauga, Alabama home. She was fast asleep when a nine pound meteorite came crashing through her ceiling, proceeded to bounce off a radio and then hit her body. A photograph of her painful looking injury was shared in Time magazine. The space rock was named 'Hodges meteorite' for her, and while the meteorite brought her fame, the event did not bring her good fortune. Ann ended up in a legal battle with her landlady due to the landlady believing the meteorite should belong to her, as the owner of the home. Sadly with all the stress entailed in the court process, Ann Hodges' mental and physical health began to decline. She and her husband separated, and she passed away from kidney failure in a nursing home at the young age of 52. Although there have been other meteorites that have made their way to earth, Ann's story of being physically hit by a space rock has become one of the most well documented tales. So the next time you're gazing towards the heavens being tantalized by the light show, you really don't need to be concerned about being hit by one of the meteorites. Because the likelihood of that happening, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - First Flush Toilet Patent

In the month of May, on the 19th, in 1775, the first flush toilet was patented. Alexander Cumming was a Scottish watchmaker, organ builder and inventor. Many would say that his greatest innovation was the S-shaped pipe, also known as a U-bowl trap, which was located below the toilet bowl. This created a seal to prevent sewer gas from seeping up and out of a toilet. Although Alexander did not invent the first flush toilet, his patented design was a significant improvement on the original model. At the time of Cumming's toilet patent, houses were not furnished with indoor plumbing or running water. In addition, there were no sewers for the flushed waste to flow into. Earth closets remained the most prevalent form of waste removal until the second half of the 19th century. Despite his ambitious invention, it took nearly one hundred years for the new style of toilet to catch on. Once established as a modern water closet, his style of toilet was still being used all the way into the early 20th century.  

The Haunting of Carl Jung (Yoong)

Carl Jung was a world renowned psychoanalyst and although he was a man of science, he embraced the unusual readily. Not only did Jung develop the theory of synchronicity, but he was a big fan of the occult and studied the ways that mythology affected people's psyches. On top of that, he wasn't shy about sharing experiences he had at a haunted cottage in England. On this episode, we will explore the life and haunting of Carl Jung.

This episode is going to be a little more cerebral. There can be no doubt that psychology and the paranormal go hand-in-hand. Obviously, some mental illnesses can manifest hallucinations like audible voices and visions of monsters. Science has actually studied the connection of trauma to paranormal happenings. H.J. Irwin published a paper in February 1994 entitled "Childhood trauma and the origins of paranormal belief: a constructive replication." Interestingly. he found that "compared to 89 control participants, a sample of 32 adults who were children of alcoholics had stronger beliefs in witchcraft, superstitions, and precognition." Carl Jung's work is fascinating for the paranormal enthusiast because he explored all the various parameters of supernatural occurrences like synchronicity and precognition and even coined terms for many of them. But first, let's work our way through the biographical part of Carl Jung, separate from his work. 

Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland. He grew up as the only child of a Protestant clergyman. It was a lonely life and he was without his mother from an early age due to her struggle with mental illness. She was checked into a psychiatric hospital when Jung was only three. His father would have a crisis of faith as he got older. Jung decided to go to the University of Basel, rather than follow his father into the clergy, and he studied a variety of sciences before he decided medicine would be his route. These other studies would most certainly influence his later work. After graduating, he went on to the University of Zurich for another two years to get his M.D. While he attended this University, he worked at Burgholzli Asylum and developed theories around certain words, emotions and sexual connections with patients. Not surprisingly, he gravitated towards Sigmund Freud and his work.

Jung would meet Freud and work with the man for five years, starting in 1907. There was a big conflict with Freud though. Freud wanted to make Jung his heir apparent, but the men had different ideas and Jung saw himself as a young colleague to Freud, not a student. And as Jung had these complex dreams that Freud couldn't understand, the two men would quarrel. Jung also drifted away from the idea that sexuality was the foundation of neurosis. The friendship would end and Freud would alienated Jung from his collegues and others in the community. This was all good as it drove Jung deeper into his own work and he developed analytical psychology. He traveled the world and studied various culture and held professorships at both the University of Basel and the Federal Polytechnical in Zurich.

In 1903, Jung married Emma Rauschenbach and they would have five children. Emma passed away in 1955. Carl Jung started to have serious health issues in March of 1961. In May he had a slight stroke that affected his ability to speak and while he had no other impairments, he began to tell people that he was dying. He had another slight stroke about two weeks later and this would leave him in bed until his death on June 6, 1961 at the age of 85. He had received several awards and honors in his lifetime. Jung wrote a lot and 18 volumes make up his Collected Works. Throughout these works, Jung put forward the idea that a person needed to find their true self and that this could be accomplished through studying there own dreams and imaginations. Jung called this individuation. 

Long after his death, in 2009, The Red Book was published. The Red Book, or Liber Novus as it is officially known, was Jung's Magnum Opus and he described it as a "record of his confrontations with the unconscious." This was written from 1914 to 1930 and contains Jung's own color illustrations, and accounts of his fantasies, dreams and induced hallucinations. Jung was a strong believer in duality. He once said, "Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness." Jung's analyst is much of where the Myers-Briggs Personality Test gets its foundation. Jung was the one who realized that people could be either extroverts or introverts or some variation of those. 

We are huge fans of synchronicity and so we appreciate Carl Jung for bringing this hypothesis to the masses. Jung defined synchronicity as "an acausal connecting principle, whereby internal, psychological events are linked to external world events by meaningful coincidences rather than causal chains." One well known example he used to explain the theory featured a patient who told him that they had dreamed that someone gave them a piece of gold jewelry that looked like a scarab beetle. At the same time that the patient was relating this dream, Jung saw a rose-chafer beetle outside the window and he let it in and handed it to the patient with them both mesmerized by what just happened. Jung first put the term synchronicity out to the world in 1930 and he formed much of his hypothesis from philosophical points of Chinese Taoism. At this same time, Jung was working on his Dream Analysis Seminars, which would continue through the 1930s.

Jung was fascinated with dreams and spent years presenting his theories on dream interpretation. What some people may not know is that he had a very personal reason for becoming enamored with dreams. He himself seemed to have prophetic visions and dreams starting back in 1896. When Jung started having his visions, he thought he was becoming schizophrenic. That wasn't a term yet, but that best describes what Jung thought and these were really the core people he worked with, those with deep psyche issues. His mother had asked him to go visit a friend of hers named Frau Rauschenbach and it was during this  visit that he caught a glimpse of a young woman named Emma Rauschenbach. Although the interaction was very brief, Jung knew that she was going to be his wife even though she was only 14 at the time and the daughter of a rich man, while Jung was a poor medical student. Seven years later, Jung was doing much better financially and he sought out Emma and courted her, marrying her in 1903. Jung wrote of his mother's death in his autobiography Memories, Dream, Reflections, "I was in a dense, gloomy forest; fantastic, gigantic boulders lay about among huge jungle-like trees. It was a heroic, primeval landscape. Suddenly I heard a piercing whistle that seemed to resound through the whole universe. My knees shook. Then there were crashings in the underbrush, and a gigantic wolfhound with a fearful, gaping maw burst forth. At the sight of it, the blood froze in my veins. It tore past me, and I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded it to carry away a human soul. I awoke in deadly terror." The next morning, he learned of her death.

Another example of his intuition came right before World War I broke out. He had one vision and three dreams that convinced him that Europe's future would be filled with blood. His vision occurred in 1913 and he wrote, "I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood. This vision lasted about an hour…. Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized. An inner voice spoke. 'Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.'" The three dreams followed in 1914 and he saw Europe covered in ice with all the vegetation dead. Visions continued for him throughout his life, all the way up to his deathbed when he gave a final vision.

As we said earlier, Jung's father was a pastor and Jung referred to himself as Christian. Jung met two what we'll call characters in his deep unconscious called Elijah and Salome. Elijah was the Old Testament prophet, so a precursor to the Messiah and Salome was thought to be the one who murdered the Messiah before Christ came. Think of this way. Elijah was like John the Baptist and Salome was the one who asked for his head. In the Red Book, this symbolizes Jung moving from intellectual that he is comfortable with (Elijah) to the esoteric that scares him (Salome) and him realizing that they are both a part of him. Jung wrote on pg. 264 in The Red Book of Salome, "Salome loves me, do I love her? I hear wild music, tambourine, a sultry moonlit night, the bloody-staring head of the holy one - fear seizes me." Jung delved into these characters in his Black Books as well.

While alchemy mainly dealt with transforming ore into gold, Jung saw something else in alchemy and he combined this with occult mysticism. He felt it could pertain to personal rebirth, especially after trauma. And he embraced the symbolism of alchemy and thought that those same symbols appeared in the psyche of his patients. This helped Jung to embrace the purpose of spirituality in psychic health as well. He put his thoughts and theories into volume 12 of The Collected Works of C.G. Jung in 1944. The main premise to this functioning is that Jung believed in a Collective Unconscious. He not only coined the term, but defined it. This collective incorporated archetypes and ancient primal symbols, which he defined as things like the Tree of Life, The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man and the Shadow. This was in stark contrast to Freud's personal unconscious. Jung believed his theory was proven in the fact that cultures from around the world that had no contact with each other would come up with similar themes in their myths. Now, of course, we could argue that these cultures have different names for the exact same experiences. For example, the world-wide flood. We've heard many different cultural stories with different names for characters, but the exact same premise. While Jung would say they have similar themes because the unconscious would all understand one man building a big boat, some of us might say there really was just one man who built a boat, he just was called by a different name in different cultures. What say you? Interpreting these alchemical symbols also helped Jung in his dream analysis.

Jung wrote a letter to one of his students who was dying named Kristine Mann in 1945. In this letter, he revealed a near death experience he had that convinced him that life goes on after death. Jung fell on some ice and broke his foot and had a heart attack in the hospital in 1944. He wrote, "...I was free, completely free and whole, as I never felt before. I found myself 15,000 km from the earth and I saw it as an immense globe resplendent in an inexpressibly beautiful blue light. I was on a point exactly above the southern end of India, which shone in a bluish silvery light with Ceylon like a shimmering opal in the deep blue sea. I was in the universe, where there was a big solitary rock containing a temple. I saw its entrance illuminated by a thousand small flames of coconut oil. I knew I was to enter the temple and I would reach full knowledge. But at this moment a messenger from the world (which by then was a very insignificant corner of the universe) arrived and said that I was not allowed to depart and at this moment the whole vision collapsed completely. But from then on for three weeks I slept, and was wakeful each night in the universe and experienced the complete vision. Not I was united with somebody or something – it was united, it was the hierosgamos, the mystic Agnus. It was a silent invisible festival permeated by an incomparable, indescribable feeling of eternal bliss, such as I never could have imagined as being within reach of human experience. Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return. As a matter of fact, during the first month after my first vision I suffered from black depressions because I felt that I was recovering. It was like dying. I did not want to live and to return to this fragmentary, restricted, narrow, almost mechanical life, where you were subject to the laws of gravity and cohesion, imprisoned in a system of three dimensions and whirled along with other bodies in the turbulent stream of time. There was fullness, meaning fulfillment, eternal movement (not movement in time)."

Jung was interested in Parapsychology and corresponded with J.B. Rhine from 1934 to 1954. He also studied I Ching for a summer in the 1920s and Jung wrote of astrology to Freud, "My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find clues to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up...I dare say that one day we shall find in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens. For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words, libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment." Jung used birthcharts to augment his psychiatric therapy. 

And while we wouldn't declare that Jung believed unequivocally in ghosts, he knew that science couldn't explain all phenomenon. Particularly after his own experiences. In the summer of 1920, Carl Jung was in England to give a series of lectures and his host arranged for him to spend his weekends at a cottage in the country. It was here that Jung experienced ghost activity and he shared this in a book edited by paranormal researcher Fanny Moser in 1950 titled "Hauntings. False Belief or True?" Jung wrote, "The first night, tired from the strenuous work of the week, I slept well. We spent the next day walking and talking. That evening, feeling rather tired, I went to bed at 11 o’clock, but did not get beyond the point of drowsing. I only fell into a kind of torpor, which was unpleasant because I felt I was unable to move. Also it seemed to me that the air had become stuffy, and that there was an indefinable, nasty smell in the room. I thought I had forgotten to open the windows. Finally, in spite of my torpor, I was driven to light a candle: both windows were open, and a night wind blew softly through the room, filling it with the flowery scents of high summer. There was no trace of the bad smell. I remained half awake in my peculiar condition, until I glimpsed the first pale light of dawn through the east window. At this moment the torpor dropped away from me like magic, and I fell into a deep sleep from which I awoke only towards nine o’clock. On Sunday evening I mentioned in passing to Dr. X that I had slept remarkably badly the night before. He recommended me to drink a bottle of beer, which I did. But when I went to bed the same thing happened: I could not get beyond the point of drowsing. Both windows were open. The air was fresh to begin with, but after about half an hour it seemed to turn bad; it became stale and fuggy, and finally somehow repulsive. It was hard to identify the smell, despite my efforts to establish its nature. The only thing that came into my head was that there was something sickly about it. I pursued this clue through all the memories of smells that a man can collect in eight years of work at a psychiatric clinic. Suddenly I hit on the memory of an old woman who was suffering from an open carcinoma. This was quite unmistakably the same sickly smell I had so often noticed in her room. As a psychologist, I wondered what might be the cause of this peculiar olfactory hallucination. But I was unable to discover any convincing connection between it and my present state of consciousness. I only felt very uncomfortable because my torpor seemed to paralyze me. In the end I could not think any more, and fell into a torpid doze. Suddenly I heard the noise of water dripping. “Didn’t I turn off the tap properly?” I thought. “But of course, there’s no running water in the room—so it’s obviously raining—yet today was so fine.” Meanwhile the dripping went on regularly, one drop every two seconds. I imagined a little pool of water to the left of my bed, near the chest of drawers. “Then the roof must leak,” I thought. Finally, with a heroic effort, so it seemed to me, I lit the candle and went over to the chest of drawers. There was no water on the floor, and no damp spot on the plaster ceiling. Only then did I look out of the window: it was a clear, starry night. The dripping still continued. I could make out a place on the floor, about eighteen inches from the chest of drawers, where the sound came from. I could have touched it with my hand. All at once the dripping stopped and did not come back. Towards three o’clock, at the first light of dawn, I fell into a deep sleep. No—I have heard death-watch beetles. The ticking noise they make is sharper. This was a duller sound, exactly what would be made by drops of water falling from the ceiling. I was annoyed with myself, and not exactly refreshed by this weekend. But I said nothing to Dr. X. The next weekend, after a busy and eventful week, I did not think at all about my previous experience. Yet hardly had I been in bed for half an hour than everything was there as before: the torpor, the repulsive smell, the dripping. And this time there was something else: something brushed along the walls, the furniture creaked now here and now there, there were rustlings in the corners. A strange restlessness was in the air. I thought it was the wind, lit the candle and went to shut the windows. But the night was still, there was no breath of wind. So long as the light was on, the air was fresh and no noise could be heard. But the moment I blew out the candle, the torpor slowly returned, the air became fuggy, and the creakings and rustlings began again. I thought I must have noises in my ear, but at three o’clock in the morning they stopped as promptly as before. The next evening I tried my luck again with a bottle of beer. I had always slept well in London and could not imagine what could give me insomnia in this quiet and peaceful spot. During the night the same phenomena were repeated, but in intensified form. The thought now occurred to me that they must be parapsychological. I knew that problems of which people are unconscious can give rise to exteriorization phenomena, because constellated unconscious contents often have a tendency to manifest themselves outwardly somehow or other. But I knew the problems of the present occupants of the house very well, and could discover nothing that would account for the exteriorizations. The next day I asked the others how they had slept. They all said they had slept wonderfully. The third night it was even worse. There were loud knocking noises, and I had the impression that an animal, about the size of a dog, was rushing round the room in a panic. As usual, the hubbub stopped abruptly with the first streak of light in the east. The phenomena grew still more intense during the following weekend. The rustling became a fearful racket, like the roaring of a storm. Sounds of knocking came also from outside in the form of dull blows, as though somebody were banging on the brick walls with a muffled hammer. Several times I had to assure myself that there was no storm, and that nobody was banging on the walls from outside. The next weekend, the fourth, I cautiously suggested to my host that the house might be haunted, and that this would explain the surprisingly low rent. Naturally he laughed at me, although he was as much at a loss as I about my insomnia. It had also struck me how quickly the two girls [whom ‘Dr. X’ had engaged as housekeepers] cleared away after dinner every evening, and always left the house long before sundown. By eight o’clock there was no girl to be seen. I jokingly remarked to the girl who did the cooking that she must be afraid of us if she had herself fetched every evening by her friend and was then in such a hurry to get home. She laughed and said that she wasn’t at all afraid of the gentlemen, but that nothing would induce her to stay a moment in this house alone, and certainly not after sunset. “What’s the matter with it?” I asked. “Why, it’s haunted, didn’t you know? That’s the reason why it was going so cheap. Nobody’s ever stuck it here.” It had been like that as long as she could remember. But I could get nothing out of her about the origin of the rumor. Her friend emphatically confirmed everything she had said. As I was a guest, I naturally couldn’t make further inquiries in the village. My host was skeptical, but he was willing to give the house a thorough looking over. We found nothing remarkable until we came to the attic. There, between the two wings of the house, we discovered a dividing wall, and in it a comparatively new door, about half an inch thick, with a heavy lock and two huge bolts, that shut off our wing from the unoccupied part. The girls did not know of the existence of this door. It presented something of a puzzle because the two wings communicated with one another both on the ground floor and on the first floor. There were no rooms in the attic to be shut off, and no signs of use. The purpose of the door seemed inexplicable. The fifth weekend was so unbearable that I asked my host to give me another room. This is what had happened: it was a beautiful moonlight night, with no wind; in the room there were rustlings, creakings, and hangings; from outside, blows rained on the walls. I had the feeling there was something near me, and opened my eyes. There, beside me on the pillow, I saw the head of an old woman, and the right eye, wide open, glared at me. The left half of the face was missing below the eye. The sight of it was so sudden and unexpected that I leapt out of bed with one bound, lit the candle, and spent the rest of the night in an armchair. The next day I moved into the adjoining room, where I slept splendidly and was no longer disturbed during this or the following weekend. I told my host that I was convinced the house was haunted, but he dismissed this explanation with smiling skepticism. His attitude, understandable though it was, annoyed me somewhat, for I had to admit that my health had suffered under these experiences. I felt unnaturally fatigued, as I had never felt before. I therefore challenged Dr. X to try sleeping in the haunted room himself. He agreed to this, and gave me his word that he would send me an honest report of his observations. He would go to the house alone and spend the weekend there so as to give me a “fair chance.” Next morning I left. Ten days later I had a letter from Dr. X. He had spent the weekend alone in the cottage. In the evening it was very quiet, and he thought it was not absolutely necessary to go up to the first floor. The ghost, after all, could manifest itself anywhere in the house, if there was one. So he set up his camp bed in the conservatory, and as the cottage really was rather lonely, he took a loaded shotgun to bed with him. Everything was deathly still. He did not feel altogether at ease, but nevertheless almost succeeded in falling asleep after a time. Suddenly it seemed to him that he heard footsteps in the corridor. He immediately struck a light and flung open the door, but there was nothing to be seen. He went back grumpily to bed, thinking I had been a fool. But it was not long before he again heard footsteps, and to his discomfiture he discovered that the door lacked a key. He rammed a chair against the door, with its back under the lock, and returned to bed. Soon afterwards he again heard footsteps, which stopped just in front of the door; the chair creaked, as though somebody was pushing against the door from the other side. He then set up his bed in the garden, and there he slept very well. The next night he again put his bed in the garden, but at one o’clock it started to rain, so he shoved the head of the bed under the eaves of the conservatory and covered the foot with a waterproof blanket. In this way he slept peacefully. But nothing in the world would induce him to sleep again in the conservatory. He had now given up the cottage. A little later I heard from Dr. X that the owner had had the cottage pulled down, since it was unsaleable and scared away all tenants. Unfortunately I no longer have the original report, but its contents are stamped indelibly on my mind. It gave me considerable satisfaction after my colleague had laughed so loudly at my fear of ghosts."

Diane found this interesting interview with Professor Richard Noll who wrote The Jung Cult. A man named Ivan Tyrrell is interviewing him and Noll says, "So these folks were following a charismatic leader who claimed some sort of contact with transcendent reality, which is really what the collective unconscious is. He came up with that term in 1916, but was playing around with it before then. He sometimes called it “the spirit world” or “the land of the dead”, and, when he talks about “the collective unconscious” he is really getting back to his spiritualist roots. Jungians still keep saying to me: “You're wrong, you don't understand psychological reality”. But if you read Jung, it's pretty clear what his beliefs were. He was saying that gods ruled the collective unconscious. I'm simply saying that Jung was using, or rather hiding behind, psychological jargon to reintroduce the Hellenistic cosmos. 

Tyrrell: What do Jungians themselves say about this? Presumably their argument might be along the lines that these gods and spiritual forces are symbolic of psychological states. Is that the kind of argument you hear from them? Noll: Well, yes, that's always it. They say that I don't understand what Jung was talking about - that his cosmology was just a metaphor for psychological reality and not that he's actually talking about gods. But if you really read Jung, he is. He certainly did believe in gods communicating with humans, spirits and the spirit world, reincarnation and all of that stuff. Of course, it is primarily those Jungian analysts who are trying to present the ideas as respectable and scientific who get upset when you point this out. Everyday Jungians – they know what he is talking about – and it's the cultish beliefs that they are attracted to. For them he was talking about some other reality."

What do we make of Jung's visions and dreams. Was something psychic going on here? Was he possibly crossing into other dimensions, kind of like on an Ayahuasca trip? Was Carl Jung haunted? That is for you to decide!

Show Notes:

Irwin HJ. Childhood trauma and the origins of paranormal belief: a constructive replication. Psychol Rep. 1994 Feb;74(1):107-11. doi: 10.2466/pr0.1994.74.1.107. PMID: 8153198.

HGB Ep. 537 - Old Slater Mill and Tavern on Main

 Moment in Oddity - Chachapoya Mummies

In the cloud forests of northern Peru, over one thousand years ago, the Chachapoya people existed. Known as the 'Warriors of the Clouds', the hilltop ruins of Kuelap have been said to rival those of Machu Picchu. Much of the information we have on the Chachapoyan society has been gleaned from archaeological remains located at their funerary sites. In 1997, a Chachapoyan necropolis located on limestone cliffs, overlooking Laguna de los Condores, was discovered. This location was actually overtaken by the Incas when they conquered the Chachapoyan people. There are mausoleum type houses that were built into the rockface, sarcophagi with human faces and all seem to exude the strong independent culture of the people. According to bio-anthropologist Dr. Sonia Guillen, "These mummies are very significant because they are the first to show us how the Incas prepared their dead in the royal way. They cured the skin to preserve it and made it into leather and they extracted the organs through the anus" Their bodies were wrapped in cloths and surrounded with artifacts and offerings. According to Dr. Guillen, "The Inca revered their royal dead because they were still very much part of the world of the living", and "The royal mummies participated in meetings and still held property and made decisions". Keeping the Royals around for meetings and such after death as mummies, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Smallpox Vaccine

In the month of May, on the 17th, in 1749, Dr. Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. At the age of 5 little Edward was orphaned and went to live with his older brother. From a young age Jenner was obsessed with with science and nature. By the age of 13 he apprenticed with a country surgeon and began his journey into the medical field. According to historical records, it was at this first apprenticeship that he heard a dairymaid remark, "I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face". In 1764, Jenner started an apprenticeship with George Harwicke where he honed his knowledge of medical and surgical practices. From there he continued to feed his inquisitive nature studying under John Hunter of St. George's Hospital in London. He made various contributions to the medical field and natural science but it was the study of smallpox that gained him the most recognition. Over the years, Jenner had heard the dairymaid's statement reiterated. Always the same, that after suffering from cowpox, dairymaids were immune to smallpox. Jenner surmised that cowpox may be able to be transmitted to another person as a method of intentional protection. In May of 1796, Jenner collected matter from an infected dairymaid's lesion to inoculate an 8 year old boy. Shortly after, the child developed a mild fever and discomfort, later losing his appetite however, ten days later the boy felt fine. In July, Dr. Edward Jenner inoculated the same boy with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. The boy never developed smallpox and Jenner determined that the child was thus protected from the virus. For some years his discovery was rejected at which point Edward published a pamphlet regarding his findings. The Latin word for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia; Jenner decided to call this new procedure 'vaccination'. The death rate from smallpox plunged due to his vaccination and Jenner received worldwide recognition and many honors due to his discovery.

Old Slater Mill (Suggested by: Laura Frye) and Tavern on the Main

America's industrial past lends itself to ghost stories. No one can doubt that working in industrial mills was a dangerous enterprise. These mills employed whole families, including children starting at six-years-old. Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island covers five acres in the Blackstone River Valley and is credited with being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America. There are three buildings on the property and all of them are reputedly haunted. The Blackstone Valley has several haunted locations and we'll also explore Tavern on the Main. Join us for the history and hauntings of Old Slater Mill and Tavern on the Main!

The Blackstone River Valley of Rhode Island was formed over millions of years through volcanic and glacier activity. Paleo indigenous people were the first to live on the land starting around 12,000 years ago. The valley is named for William Blackstone who arrived in 1635. He helped to found Boston before moving on to Rhode Island. The corridor stretches from Providence, Rhode Island to Worcester, Massachusetts with the river serving as a floating highway. The Blackstone Canal would later facilitate the moving of goods and enable the area to thrive with mill activity.

Pawtucket is Algonquian for "river fall" or "at the falls." The first European settler was Englishmen Joseph Jenckes Jr. He had immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1647 when he was 19 years old, following his father who had come over to America several years before. Joseph learned his father's trade of iron smelting. In the 1660s, Joseph moved to the Colony of Rhode Island and he eventually bought land on both sides of the Pawtuxet River. He erected a sawmill in 1669. In 1671, he purchased land at Pawtucket Falls and built a forge and sawmill and the village of Pawtucket sprang up from there. Joseph built a forge that was destroyed in 1676 during King Philip's War. The forge was rebuilt and Pawtucket drew many ironmongers and the economy became very industrialized. Samuel Slater built his waterpowered cotton mill in Pawtucket in 1793, the first successful one in North America.

Samuel Slater was born in Derbyshire, England in 1768 and became an apprentice for a local owner of a cotton mill when he was very young. His father had died and he was indentured to work at the mill. Slater worked his way through the mill until he was the superintendent. At that position, he was able to study the inner workings of the mill. The man who had designed the mill machines was Richard Arkwright. Arkwright was a pioneer in using water power to drive machines. He developed the spinning frame, which was originally used to spin thread and yarn from wool and cotton. The same framework was used with water to make the water frame. Arkwright also developed a rotary carding engine that converted raw cotton to cotton lap before spinning.

This kind of technology launched the industrial revolution and Britain was very protective of the information. British law forbade workers in the textile industry to share this information, especially with America and these workers were not allowed to leave the country. That didn't stop Slater. Slater emigrated to the United States in 1789 with the details of Arkwright's machines in his head. He was only 25-years-old at the time. Slater started over in New York City. The echoes of "Slater the Traitor" from the town where he grew up probably made it across the pond, but it didn't matter to Slater. In 1789, he heard that a mill in Rhode Island owned by William Almy, Smith Brown and Moses Brown had bought a 32-spindle frame based on the Arkwright pattern and they were having trouble operating it. He offered his services and in 1790, Slater was in Pawtucket signing a contract with Almy & Brown. Slater built new machinery and water frames and in 1793, Slater and Brown opened their first factory in Pawtucket. All the workers were trained to be skilled mechanics by Slater. 

The system he developed was called the Rhode Island System. This brought whole families into the factory. The first employees were 7 to 12 year-old children. A new kind of family life was developed in the villages with towns growing up around the factories. Basically, an early form of company town. The company provided housing, stores and schools. A unique culture sprang up in the Blackstone Valley as immigrants came in successive waves from Poland, Italy, Portugal, Latin America, Canada and Ireland. A new textile mill was built in 1793 and became very profitable after Eli Whitney developed the cotton gin the following year. Samuel married Hannah Wilkinson in 1791 and the couple would have 10 children. Four of those children died in infancy. Hannah herself died after the final child was born in 1812 from complications from childbirth. She actually was the first woman in America to be granted a patent and this is because she invented two-ply thread. Slater remarried to Esther Parkinson in 1817.

Back to the industrial side of things, by 1798 Slater was moving on from Rhode Island, forming a company with his father-in-law Oziel Wilkinson and opening up mills in New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Slater & Company would become one of the leading manufacturing companies in the United States. Factory strikes would come in the 1820s and this would continue a long struggle for rights for factory workers. Slater died at the age of 66 in 1835. He owned 13 mills at the time and was worth over a million dollars and President Andrew Jackson called Samuel Slater "The Father of American Industry." His original mill in Pawtucket became part of the Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park. That site is the Old Slater Mill National Historic Landmark. This Saturday, on May 11th, 2024, the landmark is holding a commemoration of the 1824 strike. Two hundred years ago, this would be America's first industrial worker's strike. 

Regardless of where one stands on the benefit of unions today, they definitely had a necessary place in the 1800s. Working conditions were awful in many industrial factories. Winters offered freezing buildings that would be sweltering in the summer. Workers as young as seven worked from dawn to dusk, some making as little as a dollar a week. The cotton industry had just endured the Panic of 1819 and the Tariff of 1824 and mill owners were seeking ways to keep costs low while increasing production. In Pawtucket, the decision was made to add an extra hour to the work day and cut pay by 25%. We can imagine that this wouldn't go over well. An hour more of work and a quarter of one's pay cut?! It would be the women to take a stand. On May 26, 1824, one hundred women walked out of the mills and refused to work. This forced the mills to shut down. Other textile workers joined them over the following week. They didn't just sit outside the mills. They went to the mill owners' homes and shouted about wanting their wages restored. On June 1st, an incendiary device was thrown into the Walcott's Mill and a fire resulted. The owners had enough and asked the strikers to send a some of their number to negotiate. Unfortunately, no written record was made of the results, but workers were back in the mills by June 3rd. While very little is known about this moment in history, it revealed that laborers were not powerless. Unions would eventually take over doing the negotiating, which for a time was a huge step back because women weren't allowed to join unions early on. Go figure, the ladies started this, but were later excluded.

Slater's Mill is hard to miss. It is a large yellow building. The original building built in 1793 was six windows wide and 2.5 stories tall. Through the years, it was expanded six times. Water power was used to spin cotton here until 1895. The Old Slater Mill Association was formed in 1921 and it saved the Old Slater Mill from demolition. They restored the mill to its 1835 appearance and over the next 100 years, the association expanded the site to include the 1810 Wilkinson Mill, the 1758 Sylvanus Brown House, Hodgson-Rotary Park, and Slater Mill Park. In 2021, the Old Slater Mill National Historic Landmark was accepted by the U.S. Government to formalize the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park. And just this year, 2024, Slater Mill Park was acquired by the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency for use as a riverfront municipal park. The site is open seasonally for touring. Regardless of season, it is closed Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

David Wilkinson was an inventor and machinist who basically became Samuel Slater's right-hand-man. One of his best inventions was the screw cutting lathe, which standardized the cutting of screw threads so just one type of screw could be used on everything when making machines. he also developed steam powered machines for textile production, so that a nearby water source wasn't necessary and eventually he developed power looms. The 1810 Wilkinson Mill was the first mill in Rhode Island to have a steam engine as backup power and the building was made from rubble stone to help prevent fires. This mill is much bigger than the Slater Mill. Pawtucket blacksmith Oziel Wilkinson, David's father, built the mill with the construction of machines taking place on the first floor and textile milling on the two upper floors.

Sylvanus Brown was a skilled woodworker who made full-scale wooden models of patterns of Slater's machinery. He helped Slater to produce mechanized textile machinery and he built water-powered mills. He lived in the Sylvanus Brown House, which was built in 1758, from 1784 to 1824. His wife Ruth would have woven cloth at home for the families use and even for sale before the power loom was invented. The interior still has a loom and spinning wheels from the early 1800s. The house itself looks like a little red barn. It was moved to this location in the 1960s from a location two miles away.

All of the buildings on the property are believed to be haunted. People have claimed to not only feel cold spots, but to be enveloped in them and get a tingling experience as though they are being hugged. Usually at the height of a child. Child ghosts are the ones most often seen and they are usually barefoot because the children worked barefoot. The apparition of Samuel Slater has been seen walking around his old mill. The ghost of a small boy and a shadow person are sometimes seen in the Wilkinson Mill. A small face is sometimes seen in a window at the Sylvanus Brown House. The giggling of a little girl has been heard audibly in the house.

Paranormal investigator and author Joni Mayhan ran the Haunted New Harmony Ghost Walks in Indiana and she shared her experiences at Old Slater Mill on a blog post. In the Old Slater Mill she "detected several ghosts in the building. I felt them lingering at the edges of the room, casually watching us. It almost reminded me of going to the zoo, but in this instance, we were the captive occupants being observed, instead of the other way around. It made for an interesting experience...During our tour, one of the women asked if the little boy was still there. Apparently, she took a tour years ago and saw a small boy run across the second floor. He appeared as real as a live boy. She didn’t think much of it until she realized there weren’t any children on the tour. The staff searched for the illusive boy but never found him. Had she seen a ghost? It’s highly probable. The disembodied voices of children have been heard time and time again at the mill.

Joni volunteered to try giving one of the child ghosts a hug and she wrote, "At first, I was focused on the people surrounding me, watching me foolishly hug the air, but as I relaxed, I began to feel something else. The air inside my arms grew cooler, and I began getting the sensation of pressure. I had my mouth open to tell them that I was indeed feeling something when someone put a K2 meter near me, which immediately began flashing." Joni wrote of the Sylvanus Brown House, "Being the smallest building on the property, it was the also the most fascinating for my friend Sandy and me. We immediately felt the presence of several ghostly inhabitants. While we both felt there was a male and a female entity, Sandy also thought there was a female child in residence. Little did we know how accurate we were. Investigators over the years have determined that the property is haunted by a woman, a man, and a girl, reportedly named Becca."

Demonologist Keith Johnson and his brother Carl have lead ghost hunts at the property for years. Keith told The Rhode Show that he was once climbing the stairs in the mill with heavy work boots on when he heard an audible female voice say, "Quiet!" Carl would host seances in the mill and they would get audible voices and things would move around. The brothers feel that there are both good and bad spirits on the property. They've had many interactions with children and the water wheel is a hotspot. Sometimes boys were asked to get up on the wheels to get them moving and there would be accidents and there was definitely at least one death. Carl said that voices have interrupted their daytime tours with screams, giggles or saying, "Hello." The most amazing thing that Carl ever witnessed was a heavy metal spike being propelled by an invisible force from a blacksmith anvil across the room. Antique crutches also once flew out of a corner at a guest.

Laura who had suggested this location shared the following personal experiences, "I grew up in Pawtucket and my first job at was an assistant summer day camp counselor. One day I was in the upstairs in the yellow building and there was a young girl 7 or 8 who I thought should have been outside with the group. That day we were making a soup outside over the fire. So I went to investigate to be sure she wasn't playing with any of the old doll houses or toys that had been shelved in that building before placed on display in the museum. I walked around a corner and toward the shelves that went straight down to the wall with no other exit. When I saw her by a doll house I went to tell her she needed to be downstairs and before I could speak she wasn't there. I don't really have great words to explain it but it happened and I don't have an explanation. I also stayed on after the summer program to assist others who were moving from a card catalog system to accession files.  I went in one afternoon and by the stairs in the wheel house I heard a short scream. I then listened again and heard running steps and a booming voice and a cry of a boy or young man. It was not long before I just didn't feel comfortable there anymore. I had also been a young teen girl who didn't want to be bothered with such tedious work at the time. So I suppose it was a combination of both."

The Blackstone River Valley has several other haunts and another one is The Tavern on Main, which is located at 1157 Putnam Pike in Chepachet. This could be the most haunted restaurant in Rhode Island. Chepachet means "where rivers meet." The Pequot (pee kwaat) and Nipmuc were the first indigenous people here. Settlers came and eventually this would become a place for the fiercly independent who wanted freedom and supported the Patriot cause during the American Revolution. The Dorr Rebellion took place in the town from 1841-1842. A small rural elite had control of the state government and many residents felt disenfranchised. Only landowners were allowed to vote. Thomas Wislon Dorr led the rebellion, which established a parallel government and wrote a new constitution they called the People's Constitution. This changed election rules, so that white men who had lived in the state for at least a year could vote. Dorr had wanted to include black men, but he was overruled. These parallel state governments both held elections in 1824 and this lead to two men being voted in as Governor of Rhode Island: Thomas Dorr and Samuel Ward King. The People's Constitution beat out a new constitution written by the original state legislature and King vowed to not allow that to stand and declared martial law because he knew the people would revolt. Most militiamen, however, supported Dorr because he got them voting rights. Unfortunately, Dorr's army lost when their cannon wouldn't fire and they retreated. Dorr fled to New York, but returned shortly thereafter with more armed support and they gathered in Chepachet. No fight ensued as Dorr knew he would be defeated, so he disbanded his forces. Dorr had lost the ultimate rebellion, but it forced the hand of the state legislature to make changes.

The Tavern on Main was originally a colonial home built in the 18th century. The interior had a large center fireplace with hand hewn native chestnut and oak lumber for posts and beams as the main structure. The home was later converted into a stagecoach stop and inn opened in 1799 as Cyrus Cooke Tavern. During Dorr's Rebellion, it was known as Sprague's Tavern, named for the owner, Jedediah Sprague. As Dorr's forces were hightailing it out of the village, King's forces were coming and they knew Sprague's Tavern had been a place harboring the rebels, so a couple bullets were fired through the door and a man named Horace Bardeen was hit in the thigh. Sprague jumped outside to calm everything down and save his patrons and so he invited the troops inside. And they helped themselves, much to his dismay. They consumed 37 gallons of Brandy, 29 gallons of West India Rum, 34 flasks of liquor, dozens of bottles of old Madeira and Sherry, 12 dozen bottles of Champagne, 2 dozen bottles of cider, 820 bushels of oats, 17 tons of hay, 50 bushels of corn, 16 bushels of meal, and a quarter ton of straw were consumed. Jedediah Sprague never was paid for anything. 

Over the years, the tavern has seen many incarnations. The building was a forlorn apartment building for awhile and the a billiard parlor, followed by a pub and then a restaurant named Stagecoach Tavern. There are claims that Lovecraft would stop in for a drink anytime he was in Northern Rhode Island. The Tavern on Main opened in 2006 under chef David Lumnah and his wife Kristen who lease it. the current owner is Elias Sleiman. The tavern was recently given a facelift in 2022 to make it look more historically accurate. Lumnah wasn't a believer in ghosts until he started working at the Tavern on Main.

There are said to be at least five ghosts here. Jedidiah Sprague seems to still be looking for repayment in the afterlife. Thomas Dorr might also be haunting the tavern as this was kind of his last stand in the Dorr Rebellion. There is also a female ghost that for years was called Elizabeth until paranormal investigator and author Thomas D’Agostino captured a female voice on EVP saying, "My name is Alice." She has been seen sitting in the back booth. The ghost of a little boy likes to hang out near the ladies’ room or near the oven. The final ghost seems to be attached to the "King’s Chair."

Chestnut Hill Road takes travelers two miles from Chepchet to Glocester (Glawstir) and this is where the Dark Swamp is located and legend claims that it is haunted by a creature called "It." Albert Hicks was one of the first people to claim he encountered the creature. He was actually a pirate looking for buried treasure at night with a group of men in the 1840s. They smelled the creature before they even saw it. They described it as having flaming eyes and clamshells for skin and it made a hideous noise as it breathed fire. They threw down their shovels and ran. In 1896, a man named Neil Hopkins ran into the creature on a road and he ran with the thing chasing him for awhile. A couple people disappeared in the Dark Swamp and this was blamed on the creature. In November of 1923, H.P. Lovecraft and his friend named Eddy got off the stagecoach in West Glocester, had dinner and then set out for the Dark Swamp in what Lovecraft wrote was "a quest of the grotesque and the terrible search for Dark Swamp, in southwestern Rhode Island, of which Eddy had heard sinister whispers amongst the rustics. They whisper that it is very remote and very strange and that no one has ever been completely through it because of the treacherous and unfathomable potholes, and the ancient trees whose thick boles grow so closely together that passage is difficult and darkness omnipresent." Old timers told Lovecraft many stories of seeing It. The story "Color Out of Space" is thought to have been inspired by Dark Swamp.

Are these two locations in Rhode Island's Blackstone River Valley harboring more than just history? Could there be spirits milling about? And what about the Dark Swamp? Was there a creature there called It? Are these places haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 536 - Artisan Hotel Investigation and Haunted Deland

Moment in Oddity - Bouncing Cannonballs (Suggested by Suzanne Silk)

Many people have had the experience of skipping rocks across a body of water. Finding just the right smooth stone is the key to success. That concept was used at the Bateria de San Antonio, also called the Spanish Water Battery of Fort Barrancas in Pensacola, Florida. Back during the American Revolution the British controlled Pensacola, Florida and had built a fort atop some hills overlooking the bay. Its purpose was to keep enemy ships from entering the body of water. In 1781, a Spanish fleet came up against the fort and quickly overtook the British, suffering very little damage from their gun fire. The fort itself was of strong fortification, however its location upon the hill made its fire power inadequate for proper protection. The Spanish added to the fort's design by creating a masonry water battery closer to the water level of the bay. The new structure was of semi-circular construction, allowing an expanded field of coverage for their artilleries. The most fascinating part of this complex was that due to its near sea level location, it allowed for cannonballs to be skipped across the surface of the bay. Thus allowing cannonballs to travel greater distances before making contact with their intended target. The fort is the third oldest in Florida with only Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas in St. Augustine being older. Currently, Fort Barrancas only offers exterior, self-guided-tours available on the National Park Services mobile app until May. Skipping cannonballs along a bay's surface to be able to reach their intended target, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Decoration Day

In the month of May, on the 5th, in 1868, the first Decoration Day was observed. It was three years after the end of the Civil War and the Grand Army of the Republic designated the day for decorating the graves of the war dead with flowers. Later, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that the date should be moved to May 30th. The first large observance took place at Arlington National Cemetery. Several Washington officials conducted the ceremonies, including Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant and, then Congressman, James Garfield. Garfield set a standard at this inaugural address by explaining what Decoration Day was all about and why it should be commemorated. Once the speeches were finished, children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery. They laid flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns. The name “Memorial Day” became more commonplace after World War II, but the federal government didn't officially adopt that name until 1967. Later, in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. The change went into effect in 1971.

Artisan Investigation and Haunted Deland

There is over 400 years of history connected to Volusia County in Florida, including Native American residency, Spanish exploration, French colonization and British settlement. Deland is a city in Volusia County, just a short drive from the Spiritualist camp of Cassadaga. We spent a night at the Artisan Hotel, a boutique hotel in the historic downtown. We did a little investigating and visited some of the paranormal hotspots in town. On this episode, we are going to share what we found about the history and haunts of Deland, Florida! 

The Native Americans who settled what would become Deland left behind oyster mounds and shards of pottery - you know, their version of trash. They knew peace for a long time because it was hard for settlers to reach this area. Only steamboats traveling up the St. Johns River could get here. Steamboat Captain John Rich was the first to settle what was known as Persimmon Hollow for years because of all the wild persimmon trees growing in the vicinity. He arrived in 1874 and built a simple cracker house. Rich had been to Florida before. He had come with his regiment, the 144th New York Infantry, because all of the men were sick with typhoid and they needed to recuperate. When he returned to live, he brought his wife Clara and they eventually had the first child born in Deland. The first religious service in the town was at their house.

Henry Addison Deland was a baking soda magnate from New York and he arrived in 1876 and he thought the area would be great for citrus and tourism. It seems Deland had a case of Orange Fever. That's what they called this fervor that overtook some people who purchased land in Florida. It wasn't that way for him at first though. His brother-in-law brought him down because he had purchased land near a place called Orange City. Deland had no use for dry sand and thick underbrush, but when they got to the rolling hills and towering pines near Orange City, Deland fell in love with the prospects of what he could build here and declared that the area was like the West. I can certainly attest that he couldn't be comparing Florida to Colorado! He founded a town in 1876 and the few residents voted to name it for him. Deland brought many workers from New York to clear the land and lay out streets. The town of Deland would be a special place because of the man who founded it. he felt that this was his time to give back for all that he had been given and he wanted Deland to be a community based on culture and education. Deland was the first city in Florida to have electricity.

In 1877, Deland built a public school for the town. A freeze in 1885 wiped out the orange crop and basically wiped out Deland himself, so he headed back to New York and handed over the school to his friend John B. Stetson. Yes, the guy who created the Stetson hat. The school eventually became Stetson University, named for him. The sports teams are known as the Hatters...we'd like to go with Mad Hatters, but they probably wouldn't appreciate that. Deland was officially incorporated in 1882 and is the county seat of Volusia County. The first courthouse was built in 1888 out of wood on land donated by Henry Deland. The historic Volusia County Courthouse was built in 1929 in the Gothic, Neo-Classical style with a wonderful cupola that features a four-sided clock tower and colossal porticos with fluted Corinthian columns. The interior features stained-glass in the dome and columns with ornately carved capitals. Other buildings have been added to the complex over the years and there is a memorial garden and long fountain pool across the street where the modern courthouse is now located. The newer Volusia County Courthouse is where Aileen Wuornos was tried and convicted and sentenced to death in 1992.

Our first official stop on our adventure through Deland was The Haunted Antique Shop, which unfortunately closed recently as the landlord died and the woman who ran the shop, Corrine Kenner, couldn't buy it herself with all the work that needed to be done. It's a bummer because this was a really cool place! The shop was inside a Craftsman bungalow that was built in 1920 for James and Lucinda DeWalt. There was a building boom in Florida after the First World War and the DeWalts were a part of that. James was a chauffeur and worked shuttling people back and forth in Deland and nearby cities. Lucinda liked to sit in a rocking chair by the fire and work on needlepoint as she waited for James to come home. The shop had a rocker that was built in the 1970s that Corrine dubbed Lucinda's Chair because it would occasionally rock on its own. That chair sat by the fireplace and the front register area. The interior was like walking into your grandmother's parlor, only this one was filled with various curiosities and creepy mannequins. Corrine is a certified Tarot Master and astrologer and we liked her immediately. The shop had an antique register we oohed and ahhed about and then we did the little tour that was offered. The shop has the typical haunting activity of doors opening and closing on their own, lights turning off and on without assistance and there are disembodied footsteps and voices that come from rooms that are empty. A mirror on the top of a cabinet had what looked to be the impression of a woman's face. It was weird.

The house wasn't huge with two bedrooms to the left of the front room, a hallway that leads into a dining room and then a kitchen area behind that filled with vintage kitchen wares. It is believed that there are five spirits in the shop. These are James and Lucinda, James and Rossie Hearne who lived in the house later and Annette Dennis who also lived in the house. James DeWalts disembodied voice has been heard often in the pantry. Corrine and her daughters both experienced that describing it as a deep, baritone calm voice. We had some stuff happen while we were there. Our EMF had a little action, but only hit red a couple times briefly. Corrine came out to tell us that a little wooden soldier apported. (Apported Soldier) Now, of course, we weren't in the room so we can't completely vouch for it, but Corrine seemed like she honestly was shocked that it happened. The most haunted object in the shop was a very little doll called Charlie. We put a video up on Instagram of the Cabinet of Curiosities that had many strange things inside. (Cabinet of curiosities)

There are two little dolls in the cabinet that are a groom and bride and they are named for James and Rossie Hearne and quite possibly, they might be inhabited by their spirits. Corrine would sometimes find the dolls facing away from each other when she would come into the shop in the morning. She would usually leave them with the groom putting his arm around the bride. How they moved, she didn't know. The cabinet certainly has a heavy feeling about it when it is open. When we went into the dining room, we found a little fun wheel of fate that you could spin and the K2 Started going crazy near it. We debunked that there was anything electrical around it and later we went over to see if we would get any spikes and we didn't. Kelly spun the wheel and got "watch your back." A little unnerving. It really was a cute little shop and definitely had energy. Its next evolution will be as a Montessori school. Wonder if any of the kids there will notice anything strange?

We mentioned John Stetson earlier. He brought his wife Elizabeth and their three sons to spend winters in Deland. He not only donated a million dollars to the school that would take his name, he built an ice-making factory, power plant and a packing plant. Stetson had been born in 1830 in New Jersey and learned the hat trade because that was his father's profession. Stetson became ill with TB and headed West to Colorado. In his travels he saw Mexican Vaqueros with 10-gallon sombreros and he decided to make a similar hat that was waterproof. The hat worked so well that cowboys could give their horses water from them. The first one he made was bought off him quickly by a cowboy who saw the value in a wide brim that offered protection from sun and rain. People started calling it "The Boss of the Plains." Stetson settled in Philadelphia in 1865 and became incredibly successful in the hat business, opening several factories. He came to Deland in 1885 and spent 20 winters there. The Stetsons built a magnificent mansion that still stands today. Stetson died in the mansion at the age of 75 in 1906 from a stroke. Elizabeth closed up the mansion after that and it sat abandoned for many years with just a caretaker.

We drove by to have a look, but it is only open to the public at select times like the holiday season. The mansion describes itself as the "only Gilded Age mansion, and the largest, grandest, most innovative home ever built in Florida before 1900." It is very eclectic for sure. Architect George T. Pearson designed it as a blend of Gothic, Tudor, Moorish and Polynesian. This three-story house is huge, but apparently only half the size of what Stetson really wanted. Mrs. Stetson is the one who got the plans reduced to just under 10,000 square feet. This was one of the first homes in Florida to have electricity and Edison himself supervised the installation as he was friends with the Stetsons. The interior featured a variety of complicated carvings, a stunning grand staircase, Tiffany stained glass, a glass wall imported from a French chateau, 16 patterns of the nation's most rare and intricate parquet wood floors and 10,000 panes of original leaded glass windows. There are gardens and gazebos and fountains around the property. An 800 square foot Polynesian-styled building was built next to the house as the kitchen. After the house was expanded to include a kitchen, the building became a private school for the Stetson children. The house hosted the likes of the Astors, the Vanderbilts, Henry Flagler, the Carnegies and PresidentGrover Cleveland. The house is currently owned by J.T. Thompson and Michael Solari who purchased it in 2005. There are those who claim that John Stetson haunts his former home. Much of the activity comes from a middle room on the second floor. A woman staying there claims that she was kissed by someone she couldn't see. Another visitor saw an apparition of a servant wearing garb from the 19th century. People hear music from another era outside where concerts were held in the yard. One might even see the spirit of Stetson's unique pet: an alligator named Beauregard. It was kept in a pit behind the house.

Stetson University is one of the oldest privately funded universities in Florida. It was originally named Deland Academy when it was established in 1883. The campus stretches over 175 acres and several of the buildings on campus are said to be haunted. Deland Hall is known as the "Grand Old Lady" and was built in the late nineteenth century in the French Second Empire style. It has a gorgeous tower at the front of it with the very distinctive roof. One female student claimed that she was sitting in a couch in the hall studying when the grandfather clock near hear struck three times and then she heard very loud footsteps near her. She looked up and around but there was nobody around. She left and later told a professor about the odd experience and he looked at her strangely and told her that the grandfather clock didn't work and hadn't chimed in years. Elizabeth Hall was named for Stetson's wife Elizabeth and was designed after Independence Hall in Philadelphia. This started as the College of Natural Sciences. Several different departments are housed there now, along with faculty offices. The south end of the building has Lee Chapel. This is a 100-year old performance hall having been built in 1897. It is named after a former president and features a 1961 Beckerath Organ made in Hamburg, Germany that has 2,548 pipes.

Chaudoin Hall features disembodied footsteps and strange noises and screaming down the hallways. Cameron Chavannes wrote of the haunts on campus in a Medium article in 2013 named "The Ghost of Deland." She said, "I was in Chaudoin last year and I did experience hearing noises and loud screams at the end of the hallway. The history of Chaudoin Hall and the experiences of my friends and I all point toward possible paranormal activity. My favorite haunted place on campus is Elizabeth Hall, and the ghost of Elizabeth who haunts it. I think every Stetson student has heard of this particular ghost. Some of my friends have experienced paranormal events going on in Elizabeth Hall while they were studying for finals a couple of years ago. One night, my friend Danny was studying in Elizabeth and he heard noises from the bathroom. He heard the bathroom door open, but did not see anyone come out. The noises become louder even though no one was around and he eventually packed up his stuff and walked back to his dorm. He has never been back to study at Elizabeth Hall, and to this day, he still will not go back to the building." And she didn't say what dorm she lived in but she also shared, "A couple of months ago, I had come back from class and went into my dorm room. I said hi to my roommate, but she was not in the room, so I assumed she was in the bathroom. I heard her say hello back only for her to walk into the room from the front door a couple of seconds later. I was completely shocked."

Hulley Tower is a unique part of the campus and despite the fact that the tower part no longer exists, it still has something about it that makes it strange on a university campus. This is a mausoleum. One of the presidents of Stetson University was Dr. Lincoln Hulley. He served from 1904 until 1934, so he left a mark on the place. During his tenure, he helped to fund the building of the Hulley Tower in 1934. This rose to 116 feet and featured rough cast bells that ranged in size from 575 to 3,000 pounds. Before the tower could be finished, Hulley died and he was buried on the first floor. His wife, Eloise Mayham Hulley, died 25 years later and was buried next to him. The eleven bell carillon were named for Eloise as the Eloise Chimes. Stories on campus maintain that the Hulleys like to take ghostly walks and they usually have a small dog with them. The couple are usually seen arm-in-arm walking near their mausoleum, but sometimes they venture across campus. Nearby residents also have experiences. One of these residents was walking near an establishment that had housed the Holiday House Restaurant when he saw a couple walking their little white dog and he approached them to see if he could pet the dog. As he got closer, he noticed that their clothing was of another era, so he thought perhaps they were on their way to a costume party. And then the couple just wasn't there anymore. People who have investigated outside the tower have picked up the distinct smell of flowers even though there were no flowers around.

The DaVinci Design Studio is located at 117 W. Howry Avenue. This has been home to a variety of businesses over the years including Trilogy Coffee, Buddha Bowl, a hot dog stand, CBD store and an antique shop. There are thought to be three ghosts here. One is a little girl. Another is named Hiram who had lived in a back room of the house and he is a mean spirit. A woman named Tifany had worked there and she heard his raspy disembodied breathing and one day she was up on a ladder painting and she turned around to see a man standing there with glasses and a bald head and he disappeared. The third ghost is named Evelyn and it is thought that she was Hiram's cousin and she took care of him. The lights flicker on their own often in the house.

The Masonic Building at 142 S. Woodland Boulevard was built in 1925 by William Carpenter and was known as the St. John's Masonic Lodge #7. The lower floor had a lobby, fireplace and five stores. The second floor contained parlors and a large banquet room. The third floor had the lodge rooms where rituals were conducted. The main meeting room was obscured from onlookers. People who have worked in the building claim to have heard disembodied chanting and they have seen a figure wearing a cloak. No businesses have been successful on the second floor. 

The Putnam Hotel started as the Grove House in 1880 and was built by Henry Deland. It changed its name to Putnam House for Arthur Putnam who bought it in 1885. In 1888 it changed to the Putnam Inn. This was a wooden structure that burned to the ground in 1921. The newly built concrete hotel opened in 1923 designed by architect William Carpenter in the Mediterranean Revival style. (Fun Fact: Carpenter designed Hotel Cassadaga too.) It had a great run as a hotel offering luxury, but eventually it became more of a night spot for drinking in the bar, which later expanded into a rock music venue and then a few other incarnations before it finally closed in 2011. It was demolished in 2023. One legend behind the haunts that were here is about a couple renting a room. The female was an actress and she was starring in a play and she went off to do that while her husband stayed at the hotel. Later, he saw a man embrace his wife and give her flowers and he got really jealous and the two argued later at the hotel and were told they would have to leave if they didn't quiet down. The next day, the actress went to do her play while her husband went and bought a gun. He again saw her being embraced and getting flowers and he confronted her when she got back to the hotel and pulled the gun. She tried to grab the gun, it went off and it killed her. He then turned the gun on himself. The man who had been visiting her at the play turned out to be her long lost brother. Even though the hotel was torn down in 2023, people still claim to hear a man and woman screaming and two gunshots when they pass the site. The sixth floor had a poltergeist spirit and there was a burning wood and flesh smell that probably carries over from a 1917 fire in the hotel. Much of the hauntings here were thought to be residual. And this is crazy, Tifany shared a video of the hotel being torn down and the SLS app on her phone showed a figure standing at the chainlink fence and it looked like it was trying to shake the fence in anger.

The Athens Theater was once the centerpiece of downtown Deland. The theater was designed by Murray S. King in the Italian Renaissance style and features some weird decor. There are these gargoyle grotesques and what looks like the medical symbol all across the top. The theater opened its doors on January 6, 1922 with a four-act comic play, a silent movie, a melodrama and four vaudeville acts, with legend claiming that W.C. Fields was one of those acts. Silent movies were accompanied by a Wurlitzer pipe organ. When talkies started, the theater transitioned to movie house. For a time it became a dinner theater and closed in the 1990s. It sat vacant for twenty years and then community leaders decided to renovate and reopen it, which they did in 2009. Like all other historic theaters, this one has some haunts. A former stagehand walks the catwalks and apparitions of past performers are seen in the dressing rooms. Two specific spirits are brother and sister, Isaac and Maria. They were from the Athens family and passed away when they were children in the livery that had been where the theater now stands. Theater employees always make sure to say hi to them when they come in. Maria is seen wearing a simple dress and ribbons in her hair. The entire production of a play once heard the children singing along in the wings. The two mainly hang out in the box seats on the left-hand side of the building. And they do like to run up and down the stairs.

Edwin Barnhill built the Deland Hotel in 1927 with his wife Jeanette. The interiors were luxurious for the time and each room had a bathroom. Kind of. Each room had a sink and then two rooms shared a bathroom. There were forty fairly small rooms to help make the place more affordable. An open-air bus would carry guests to the beach. Just four years after opening, Jeanette passed away. Edwin was declared insane a year later. People claimed that the spirit of Jeanette had driven him crazy. The two didn't have a good relationship and spent much of their time having scream fights. Edwin complained that Jeanette was hounding him after death about his drinking and spending. The hotel became the Landmark Hotel for awhile. The building was bought by Chryst and John Soety in 1996 and they renovated it to eight suites and renamed it the Artisan Inn. They leased to another company in 2011 and it eventually fell behind on payments so the Soetys decided to sell in February 2013. The Artisan sat vacant and stayed that way until the following year when it reopened as the Artisan Downtown under the ownership of Sara and Hina Patel. There were eight boutique-style suites on the second floor and an Indian-European fusion restaurant downstairs, along with a bar. Today, the hotel has fourteen rooms and the restaurant is now CHICAS Cuban Cafe and the food was amazing!

We loved our room and we decided to do a little investigating before we went down for dinner. Edwin and Jeanette are thought to haunt the premises, especially on the second floor where their room had been. Edwin also likes to hang out in the basement. There is the spirit of a young girl named Sara Elizabeth and she likes to tug on sleeves. Disembodied footsteps and whistling is heard in empty rooms. Dishes fly off counters and shelves in the kitchen. Legend claims that a prostitute was strangled in the hotel, although we haven't found proof for that. Some think that she haunts the hotel. Diane turned on the Ghost Tube App and we immediately got trapped and then we were told we were talking to someone who was young, which struck Diane as weird because she was just about to ask the age of the spirit. Kelly got out her dousing rods and we immediately got interaction. We got confirmation that we were talking to a child. We talked about the bear we brought with us and the dousing rods pointed that direction. We also had set up the flashlight experiment near the bear and the flashlight came on and then it turned off at our request. (Artisan Flashlight) Kelly confirmed we had multiple spirits with the dousing rods and the flashlight came on again and the Ghost Tube App said "where am I?" We continued to dial into how many spirits were with us. (Artisan Three) So we not only had Diane's head saying 3, but the flashlight turned on for three and the dousing rods confirmed it.

(Estes Session 1 Artisan) Our first Estes Session immediately started with "callate," which is basically, "shut up" in Spanish. Diane wasn't sure that the music she referred to as Cuban was really Cuban music, but it's interesting that Kelly was talking about the music from the Cuban restaurant downstairs. Diane had taken off the headphones when that last part came through. We really can't make it out. Here it is again. (End Estes Session 1)

We conducted a second Estes Session and got the following interactions. (Estes Session 2 Artisan) Although the voice doesn't sound like a child, we definitely got a "yes" to the question about whether we had a child with us. There was flirting with "hey baby" and we got some Spanish. It was cool to get "habla" when Kelly was talking about speaking one at a time. 

We went for dinner and returned for some more investigating and our room was completely dead - lol! The lounge downstairs had ramped up with music and frivolity and we figured the spirits were bored with us old ladies.We slept through the night without any issues. The next morning we hit C's Country Diner at 413 S. Woodland Blvd and it was excellent. As you can see, Deland is a fun day trip and even overnighter. Are these locations haunted? That is for you to decide!