HGB Ep. 553 - The Hanford Bastille

Moment in Oddity - Mummified Clown (Suggested by: Savannah Marchione)

Throughout the centuries mummies have been discovered after having been mummified by environmental circumstances. However, there has also been a long history of humans mummifying their deceased for various reasons. One such mummified body is that of Achile Chatouilleu who was a circus performer that died in 1912. His clown character that he portrayed was known as "The French Tickler". Prior to his death, he told his family that he wished to be buried in his clown costume, specifically, his Shriners parade costume which he wore in the first Shriners parade. Achile's body was embalmed with arsenic and mercury. Due to that toxic combination, his body was sealed in a glass coffin which kept his body preserved, at least until June of 2022. You see, Achile had become a rental of property of sorts. The California Institute of Abnormal Arts had rented the clowns' mummified remains for many years but sadly, the location that displayed various oddities, hosted underground bands and performance artists, permanently closed on June 19, 2022. We were unable to find where Achile's body is now, however it is said that his family lives on a ranch near Yosemite National Park so he may be in residence there located in his glass coffin, looking forward to his next adventure. This may sound crass, but clown carrion, circulating entertainment venues for cash, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Lake Nyos Explodes

In the month of August, on the 21st in 1986, Lake Nyos exploded. In all of recorded history, there have only been two exploding killer lakes and they were both in the country of Cameroon. The first occurred in 1984 at Lake Monoun which killed 37 people. The second occurred at Lake Nyos in 1986 and was more deadly. This was a limnic eruption. Also notoriously known as a 'lake overturn'. This is a unique type of natural disaster where dissolved carbon dioxide suddenly explodes from deep lake waters creating a gas cloud that asphyxiates wildlife, livestock and humans. Over three thousand animals and 1,746 villagers were killed during this event. So what exactly is an exploding killer lake? Basically, these are lakes that were formed from a hydrovolcanic eruption that created a crater in the lakes. Carbon dioxide builds up within this crater over time, just like the CO2 in a soda bottle. The water serves as a type of cap keeping the CO2 locked down, but sometimes something happens that causes that cap effect to shift. It could be an earthquake or even a monsoon-like rainstorm. In the case of Lake Nyos, it appears that a simple landslide broke the surface and released a giant cloud of carbon dioxide. It exploded upward and stripped the air of oxygen. This could have happened again but scientists discovered a way to hopefully prevent this type of disaster in the future. In 2001, French scientists installed the first degassing tube to slowly release the carbon dioxide from the lake. This is similar in theory to the burper pipes used at city dumps to release any built up methane or carbon dioxide. Two additional pipes were installed in 2011 and by 2019 it was determined that a single degassing tube would be sufficient to keep the lake explosion free.

The Hanford Bastille

The Bastille is a former jail that dates back to the Wild West and ran as a jail for nearly 70 years. The building has had many iterations after it closed as a jail. This was an art gallery, a restaurant, a bar and a nightclub. Today, it stands empty and in need of major renovations. This may or may not please the current residents of the building, the ghosts. For years, ghost stories have been told about the building. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Hanford Bastille.

The Tachi Yokuts were the first to reside in the area that would become Hanford. Immigrants came and farmed the land and the settlement grew, especially after the Southern Pacific Railroad laid tracks. James Madison Hanford was the auditor for the railroad company and the town was named for him.  Most of the labor for the railroad were Chinese immigrants. James Hanford sold lots in the town and the growth continued until fires devastated Hanford in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Hanford was incorporated on August 12, 1891 to facilitate fire protection and the town became the county seat for Kings County. Growth resumed with lots of building. The only opera house between Los Angeles and San Francisco was here and a Civic Auditorium was built. Thriving towns usually find themselves dealing with crime and Kings County needed an official jail. The Bastille would become that and it resembles a small castle, so clearly it was meant to be as imposing as a smaller sized jail could be. The Bastille served as Kings County’s jail and sheriff’s office starting in 1897.

The McDougall Brothers of San Francisco designed the Bastille and it was considered state-of-the-art for the time. Frank Sharples’ Exeter Granite Company was awarded the construction contract. Something didn't bode well for the jail during construction. An associate of Sharples became disgruntled and he shot Sharples in the neck. Sharples managed to survive. The structure was hewn from solid pieces of granite that weighed around 2-tons each. The outside was overlaid with red brick and was said to be so strong that no jail break was possible. Jail cells were made from steel and there was a capacity of up to 60 inmates. The general population was kept on the first floor, while inmates thought to be insane were kept on the second floor. That only lasted for a brief period of time and then women and children were kept on the second floor. So all ages and genders were in the Bastille. A jail matron was introduced to the jail in 1917. Her name was Louise Gerrebrands and she was actually the wife of the sheriff. She was paid 25 cents per hour.  

For those first couple of decades, the Bastille was well maintained under the Gerrebrands. Then Sheriff Charles Gerrebrand retired in 1920 and things went downhill for the jail. By 1922, a jail that was meant for 60 inmates, had 260 inmates and conditions became horrible, especially for females who were incarcerated. Several of them were assaulted by both male inmates and guards. Children were abused. Several grand juries convened to try to decide what to do to improve the jail. An addition with more cells was suggested after one, but this never came to fruition. Another ordered improvements to the sanitary conditions. And again, nothing came of this. There were at least three suicides at the jail that we'll talk about later. Another inmate who tried to off himself was John Brown. Sheriff William Buckner unlocked the door to Brown's cell and Brown made a mad dash towards the steel bars of his cell and knocked himself silly, gashing his head open to the skull. A physician stitched him up and then he was strapped to a cot to keep him from doing any more self-harm. Another horrifying incident here at the jail took place in April of 1962. A Hanford laborer named John Holloman was serving a six -day sentence for public intoxication when his delirium tremens from alcohol detox got the best of him and he slashed at his throat and the inside of his arm with a razor blade. He fortunately survived and would be the last suicide attempt before the jail closed two years later. 

The Bastille was closed in 1964, but it wouldn't sit empty for long. The jail's next iteration would be as The Bastille Gallery, which was Kings County's Museum of Art. It took six months to clean up the jail and to keep costs down, the walls were covered in burlap. The gallery would remain for a decade. The City of Hanford took over the property and they thought the best move forward was to demolish the building, but thankful, many residents were dismayed and formed a committee to fight any kind of demolition. This committee sought out the help of an entrepreneur who was good and saving historic structures and turning them into new businesses. In 1977, the first restaurant and bar moved into the space. Randy Shaw is the building Superintendent. The city owns the building, but nothing is being done with it at this time because it has deteriorated so bad. Renovations would take at least a million dollars and the city council recently rejected a plan to fund those renovations here in 2024.

People claim to see faces looking out of the windows and flickering light as if it is coming from candles or lantern lights. Visitors claim to have been touched on the first floor. Shadow figures were often seen in solitary confinement. An apparition of a woman in 1920s period clothing has been seen walking on the staircase. This is more than likely not the most well known female apparition at the Bastille. That would be Mary, which legends claim was an inmate who hanged herself in the upstairs portion of the jail. A Mary Fincher had been an inmate at the jail and she did die in the jail, but it was from a heart attack. There are at least three suicides in the jail that were documented. Ben Halermann hanged himself in 1940. He was proprietor of the Brunswick Barber Shop in Corcoran and had been booked for drunkenness. He used twine wrapped around a bar above his head in the cell. An inmate named John J. Alves had been arrested for the murder of his wife and child and he attempted suicide by slicing his arm with a barber's razor. He was unsuccessful that time, but later did manage to kill himself on June 15, 1937 by hanging. He wasn't quite dead yet when they cut him down, but he died later at the hospital. The sheriff's department has the razor on display with other jail artifacts. 

Another inmate who committed suicide was named Frank McMurty. A newspaper article claimed that he had been seen 20 minutes before he was found hanging. Frank's ghost is said to be at the Bastille and he was seen quickly after he died. A newspaper article reads, "Two persons who are occupying the cell in which Frank McMurty committed suicide, at the county jail, created a great deal of excitement there last night. They both claim that McMurty's ghost put in an appearance, and it was as natural as life. When Jailer Morse, who was awakened by their screams, got down to the cell and turned on the light, they were both scared white, and begged to be removed."

Betsy Lewis wrote in The Hanford Sentinel in 1982, "An unsuspecting cocktail waitress ventured up the back stairs in the dark after closing time to find some spare staples. Something resembling a haggard woman in a jail smock was sitting by the windowsill. And it moved. ‘I heard this shriek,’ recalls Jimmy Jimenez, La Bastille’s bartender and manager. ‘I thought somebody had grabbed her. But then she just flew down those stairs a minute later.’ Within seconds another waitress, who had gone to investigate, also was making tracks out the front door. Jimenez grabbed a knife and took a look for himself…but ‘it’ had gone."

Local business owner Jessica Szalai told the Hanford Sentinel in 2021, "We ate and I kept looking up to the second floor balcony. One of the servers whispered in my ear, 'Do you see it?' I was so focused on the balcony I didn’t look at the waitress I just said, 'I don’t know why I keep looking up.' I looked up and I saw a dark shadow like a silhouette of a man standing next to the rail, I was startled. The figure turned and walked right into a brick wall." This is a spot where a prisoner is believed to have hanged himself.

A cook at the Bastille was washing dishes at a sink when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She turned and saw what she described as "kind of foggy." She couldn't see a mouth or neck, but she could see dark gray hair and two dark holes for eyes. The thing then slithered under a table. Another person described seeing Mary as gliding up a spiral staircase. Mary was in a long gown that went up her neck and was from the turn-of-the-century. By 1992, the ghost of Mary had become well known throughout the area. Seances were conducted, but without any results.

The Fresno Flyer interviewed Kaitlyn Lusk in 2022 who was the Recreational Coordinator for the Hanford Civic Center at the time. She said, "I absolutely will not come in here after dark. And I NEVER go upstairs; I just can’t do it." Lusk went on to share a time when she and a co-worker were giving a group of school chidren a tour of the Bastille. The children had just left the building and the co-worker was in a back room near the cell block when Lusk heard her screaming. Lusk ran back to the room and found her co-worker pale and shaking and the co-worker said that she felt someone she couldn't see, grab her around the neck. There was no one but the to women in the jail at the time. Lusk also told the magazine, "I’ve heard some things, like strange noises coming from upstairs when there’s nobody up there. We do have a lot of homeless people who come onto the grounds, so the first thought is that maybe someone broke in looking for a place to sleep. But, then we go to investigate and there’s nobody there."

Ghost Hunters investigated in 2023 for their episode "Dead Man Walking." It was very cool, they had Chandler Riggs of "The Walking Dead" fame join them. Victor Rosa was a former restaurant manager and he told the TAPS team that often he would have opening of closing employees claim to see something. For example, they would be downstairs cleaning and they would look up and see someone watching them from above when they were the only person in the building. Others would claim to feel as though something unseen were standing next to them. The superintendent Shaw told Jason and Steve that a bartender looked over his shoulder one night and up on the second level he saw a guard dressed in a 1920s era uniform standing there. He looked away and then thought about what he had just seen and that it wasn't possible that it was a real person and he looked back and the guard was gone.

During the investigation the heard disembodied steps on the stairs and they also heard dragging noises. They brought alcohol and cigarettes for trigger objects. They caught a voice saying something when they emptied out the Bastille. Later, with the sound amplified, the voice said, "I think they're gone." They may have debunked people seeing Mary looking out a window because part of the chandelier shows up in one of the windows and could look like a head. Steve and Tango heard disembodied footsteps made with boots in a room on the first level. Both of them later felt as though something were behind them. Tango was tapped on his back. Steve almost said, "Excuse me" when he backed up because it felt like an actual person. There was a really loud audible sound that sounded like a cupboard door closing. That was their first night of investigating.

For the second night, the Sheriff's office loaned them the razor that John Alves had attempted suicide with to use as a trigger object. They caught some really loud disembodied steps when they asked if Frank McMurty were with them. There were loud knocks captured and then there was this really loud metallic sound, which the team thought could be a big piece of metal that looked like it had been on a dust covered bench and was now on the floor. While they were talking about this, they heard a child make some kind of giggling sound that they got on the recorder. Perhaps the child was the one who dropped the piece of metal? When they tested the metal piece for the sound, it was the exact same sound. And then...the episode went off the rails because Jason brought in his daughter Satori. She and her boyfriend do this hand holding thing and go through the ABCs like table tipping. They got the letters ORVI, so I'm thinking the name is going to be Orville, but she just stops and goes, oh your fist name is Orvie? Who has ever heard of that name? Then they ask about the last name and get CL and the boyfriend goes, oh, Clyde? How do you stop after two letters? Then they asked if it was an inmate - no, then if it was someone who worked there and they got responses that led them to believe it was a sheriff. Sure enough, Jason Googles Orvie Clyde and he's in the 1940 census. Reddit called this fakery and we completely agree. Apparently this sheriff was looking for his pen and somehow they figure out to look behind a baseboard and there's an old fountain pen. We want to believe, but it just was so fake. If it wasn't, they need to hire a new video editor.

Kings County Courthouse

Right across from the Bastille is the Old Kings County Courthouse. The Kings County Courthouse was built in 1896 and designed by John Haggerty and W.H. Wilcox in the Classical Revival style. There was an expansion in 1914 and it ran as a courthouse until 1976. It was remodeled in the 1980s and now houses offices, shops and restaurants. Every year it hosts a haunted house attraction for Halloween and that is fitting as people claim that something unseen lurks here, flashing on and off lights and locking and unlocking doors.

Hanford Fox Theater

William Fox had been born in Hungary in 1879 and his family immigrated to America shortly thereafter. His family was poor and William started work early to support his family by selling candy in Central park. He also worked as a newsie. Fox started his own company in 1900 and soon turned his interest to buying theaters and eventually building them too. In 1915, he founded the Fox film Corporation and in the 1920s, he founded the Fox West Coast Theaters chain. And if you're wondering, yes, 20th Century Fox gets the Fox name from him, as does Fox News, Fox Sports and the Fox Corporation. William Fox built the Hanford Fox Theater in 1929 and it was designed as an atmospheric theater, which most of our listeners are probably familiar with. These are the theaters that tried to give the impression of being outside under a night sky with twinkling stars and a crescent moon. The rest of the decor imitated a Spanish courtyard and Greco-Roman columns supported the proscenium. The large fire-proof screen at the Hanford Theater depicts a Spanish village with cypress trees and several buildings with terra cotta roofs. The exterior is designed in a mission style with a glorious tower offset from the center. The theater was set-up for stage shows with vaudeville providing entertainment before films. Interestingly, Fox thought that the moving picture flicks were a passing fad. 

The Hanford Theater wasn't doing well after television came onto the scene and it was slated to become a cheap shoe box theater or XXX palace, but it was saved by a man named J. Daniel Humason in 1979. He was a historic preservationist and he enlisted his family to help him save the theater. They renovated it and reopened it in 1982 with 889 seats downstairs and 142 seats in the balcony, which was nicknamed the Cabaret. There are live entertainers and the occasional movie and silent film. Humason has said that he hasn't experienced any kind of ghostly activity, but the custodial staff have told him that see the apparition of an old, frail woman sitting in the balcony in seat A33. Humason finds this strange because the only death at the theater was a male projectionist in the 1940s. There is also something strange going on with a prop. Humason said, "There is something going on with this prop that was left behind - a cane that keeps moving around and being found in different places. One time it was hanging from the light fixtures, which are 20 feet high. It's most likely someone playing tricks."

Fatte Albert's Pizza Co.

Just a couple of blocks away from the Bastille is Fatte Albert's Pizza Co., which is located at 110 E. Seventh Street. The owner, Wendy Gonzales, told The Hanford Sentinel that her employees were afraid to go down into the basement and that she herself had experienced creepy things. The paper shares, "Gonzales said that one evening she was visiting with one of her friends and five of her fellow employees were working in the kitchen, when suddenly the front door of the restaurant opened and slammed shut. Footsteps could be heard across the restaurant floor, then the door to the basement opened and slammed shut and pizza boxes flew off the counter. 'There was no wind that night, and our doors cannot ‘slam' shut, because they have an apparatus that forces them to close slowly,' she said. 'When it happened, both my friend and I said ‘What in the world was that?'"

Irwin Street Inn & Restaurant

The Irwin Street Inn & Restaurant is located at 522 North Irwin Street. A family by the name of Wright built the original main house in the 1890s. In 1980, preservationist Max Walden bought the house and renovated it. Walden wasn't satisfied with just that house. He purchased several other nearby buildings, so that there were eventually four buildings in the compound. The main building was always two-story, but the other three were one-story, so they were all raised up so that the "first floors" became the "second floors." All buildings were decorated with Victorian furniture and had a stained-glass window in each room and the bathrooms featured pull-chain toilets, sinks on pedestals and claw-foot tubs. The rooms have been updated again with modern amenities like showers, televisions and WiFi. Celebrities performing at the Fox Theater like to stay here and events can be hosted like weddings and banquets.

The restaurant was owned by Frank Garcia in 2010. He had claimed that he never really experienced anything, but that people through the years claimed that there were three ghosts on the property. Guests claimed to see full-bodied apparitions in the dining area and on the second floor. Garcia said, "There was one time where we were getting strange calls from Room 101 that sounded like someone speaking in tongues. The problem was, no one was in that room; we knew that for sure." Other things that have happened include sheets getting moved around, windows being slammed shut and lamps switching themselves on and off.

The city of Hanford has some very cool historic buildings in its downtown area and a few Victorian homes. Tourists say it's a nice place to visit, especially if you are seeking ghosts. Are the Bastille and these other locations in Hanford haunted? That is for you to decide!
 

HGB Ep. 552 - Haunted Abbeville, South Carolina

Moment in Oddity - Swallowing Gum

As children, many of us were told, don't swallow watermelon seeds or a watermelon plant will grow inside your tummy. Or this one, don't swallow gum or it will ball up in your stomach and never be digested, or at minimum the gum would take seven years to digest. Now, gum has several ingredients that are digested easily. There are sweeteners and other flavoring ingredients and softeners like vegetable oil added so that the piece of gum doesn't get rock hard after the first few minutes. However, there are some ingredients that are not digestible. At one time, the base of chewing gum was sourced from the sapodilla tree which was not able to be digested by the human body. After WWII, the demand for gum increased to the point that the sapodilla trees' sustainability was unable to keep up with the production. The gum base evolution began with combining polymers that were both synthetic and natural. While it is still true that our bodies cannot break down the base of gum, our bodies ARE able to pass the undigestible portion, similar to how we pass corn kernels. And that fact reminds me of the game, 'First Corn'. If you know you know. Our bodies are capable of amazing feats, but the thought of having a huge, undigestible ball of gum stuck in our gut, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Davy Crockett Born

In the month of August, on the 17th, in 1786, Davy Crockett was born. Known by the nickname, "King of the Wild Frontier", Davy, or David as he preferred to be called, was born near Limestone, Tennessee. Growing up he became known as a great hunter and storyteller, an American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. After being elected to Congress in 1827, he came up against President Andrew Jackson where he passionately opposed many of the President's policies, most notably, the Indian Removal Act. This hostility towards Jackson's policies caused Crockett's defeat in the election of 1831. He was re-elected in 1833 and then lost again in 1835. This motivated his subsequent exit to the Mexican state of Tejas, later to become Texas. In January of 1836, Davy joined the Texas Revolution and died at the Battle of the Alamo in March of that year at the age of 49. To this day, it is yet undetermined whether Crockett died in battle or was executed after surrendering, due to varying eye witness accounts.

Haunted Abbeville, South Carolina

The town of Abbeville in South Carolina is near the Georgia state line and hosted the last war council for Jefferson Davis. The Confederacy died in this town. The tree-lined square hosts many historic buildings and the town itself is filled with Victorian and Gothic styled homes. This all makes Abbeville seem like a quiet little town. But underneath that southern charm are ghost stories. Many buildings here are said to be haunted. Join us for the history and hauntings of the town of Abbeville, South Carolina.

A group of French Huguenots settled Abbeville (a bee vl) in 1758. The site was originally named John de la Howe for one of those Huguenots, but eventually John suggested the name Abbeville after his hometown in France. Revolutionary War hero General Andrew Pickens called Abbeville home and he owned a lot of property here including a fresh-water spring known as the Big Spring. Pickens donated the spring to the people of Abbeville to use as their primary water source. The town was incorporated in 1840. This town would become the birthplace and deathbed of the Confederacy. Secession Hill was the gathering place for secessionists and they met there on November 22, 1860 to make their plan to leave the Union. A month later, South Carolina seceded. When the war ended, Confederate President Jefferson Davis stopped at his friend Armistead Burt's home in Abbeville for a night. This was May 2, 1865 and in the parlor of the Burt-Stark Mansion, he held his last official cabinet meeting and dissolved the Confederate government. The tallest building in South Carolina is here, the Prysmian Copper Wire Tower. There are many historic buildings here and a few of them are reputedly haunted. That's probably why they host a ghost tour in the town during October. Here are a few of those places.

Abbeville Welcome Center

We should probably start with the town's welcome center, which is located at 100 Court Square. This building had housed the State of South Carolina Bank and its special because it is one of the few historic buildings to have survived fires that occurred in the 1870s. This is the starting point for the walking tours of the city and also is the home for the Greater Abbeville Chamber of Commerce. The Old Bank Building was built in 1865 and designed by S. Henry James. The lobby has a series of paintings done by artist Wilbur Kurtz in 1922. These paintings feature a hundred years of Abbeville's history from Gen. Andrew Pickens to Jefferson Davis' Last War Council Meeting. Nations Bank donated the building and paintings to the city in 1996. One ghost story connected to this building features the spirit of a young boy who likes to chase staff in the hallways, but he is usually seen as an apparition outside the building, staring down the street. A former volunteer at the Chamber of Commerce said of a ghost in the building, "He’s an older man, and we can hear him whistling all the time. A medium visited us one day several years ago and described the man as an older white man around sixty or seventy years old. She said he was wearing blue jean overalls and a white short-sleeved t-shirt. Each time he was seen, he was apparently sweeping or mopping the floor of the bank, so we were okay with that." - LaNelle, Marjorie. The Apparitions of Abbeville (The History & Mystery of the South Carolina Lakelands Book 2) (p. 98). Palmetto Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Abbeville County Museum

Our next location here is one of our favorite kinds of places to investigate and that is an old county jail. Today, this is the Abbeville County Museum and is located at 215 Poplar Street. The building was constructed between 1830 and 1850, making it the oldest building in town, and functioned as the jail until 1948. Rather than having half the jail house the criminals and the other half housing the warden and his family, this old jail kept prisoners on the second and third floors and the ground floor was reserved for the warden and his family. The top floor usually had the worst offenders and it is believed hangings took place up there. It really was the perfect place for them as the roof is crossed by thick wooden beams that easily could've had ropes thrown over them. After being the jail, it served as the county morgue for awhile and then was the Abbeville American Legion and dance hall. That was mainly in the 1960s. The building became the Abbeville County Museum in 1976. Staff members have heard disembodied footsteps. Mary Baskin Hutchinson was an Abbeville historian and she shared a story about a tour she gave to a medium. She took the medium up to the third floor and he separated from the group and went over to the corner and had what she described as "an animated conversation with nothing." The medium returned to the group and he told Mary that there was a spirit here of a black man and that he wanted to talk to Mary because he was afraid they were trying to put him out. The spirit identified himself as Earl Miller and said he was 28-years-old and that he had been there at the jail since 1905. So Mary talked to him and told him that he was welcome to stay and help watch over the museum, but she requested that he stay up on the third floor.

Bernibrooks Inn

Bernibrooks Inn is located at 200 W. Pinckney Street. This started off as the home William Brooks built for his daughter Maggie Whitfield Brooks in 1860. This was constructed in the Colonial Revival design and is a really large house and this was because he hoped Maggie would have a large family. Maggie had different desires and she never married or had children. She transformed the house into a boarding house for traveling railroad workers. Maggie lived in the house until her death at the age of eighty-seven. The house passed into other hands and it was not maintained. An elderly couple named Nichols were told they had to leave the house because it became unlivable. A family named Parnell purchased the house and just left it in its sad state. The Berni family bought it in 1993 and they renovated the house. The renovations took a long time, so they didn't open the Bernibrooks Inn until 2003. It seems that it closed in 2016, so you can't stay here any longer. The haunting experiences started happening when the Berni's started renovating the house. It is believed that Maggie haunts her former home. The first thing that happened is that they found a penny at the top of the stairway. This isn't necessarily weird, but pennies started showing up everywhere. Some of the pennies were found outside too. Not sure the specifics of pennies in this case, but a book written about the ghosts in Abbeville has a whole chapter with a very elaborate story about a Confederate soldier who stayed at the boarding house and Maggie would say to him, "Penny for your thoughts?" and he would respond that he didn't like pennies because they had Lincoln on them and then they would laugh. It was a cute story, but uh...Lincoln wasn't on the penny until 1909.

John A. Harris House

The John A. Harris House is located at 200 South Main Street. This site was originally owned by former Governor Patrick Noble who governed in the 1840s. He built his summer home here. That house was demolished and John A. Harris built his home here in 1896, which was designed by Atlanta firm Bruce & Morgan. That firm had also designed Tillman Hall at Clemson University. John Harris was the former president of Abbeville Mills. These included the Abbeville Furniture Co. manufacturing plant and The Abbeville Cotton Mill, which was the first mill in Abbeville. His home was built in the Victorian style with a wide wrap around veranda and portico supported by slender columns. The house stayed in the family for many years. John's grandson Grant Harris had a friend named Debra come to visit him. When she entered the house, she told Grant she just had the weirdest sensation. When she was coming up the front steps, she felt a presence walk past her and there was an icy chill to this feeling. Grant told her that it was probably his grandfather John as this type of thing happened often. The house was put up for sale and we're not sure who owns it now, but it is in need of a lot of love. 

The General's House  

The General's House is also known as the McGowan-Barksdale-Bundy House and is located at 211 North Main Street. The nickname refers to two former owners who were generals, Confederate Brigadier General Samuel McGowan and World War II General William E. Barksdale. McGowan is the man who had the house built in 1888 over the foundation of his prior home that had burned down. He had moved to Abbeville in 1841 and purchased a Gothic Revival home from a widow, which burned in 1887. Atlanta architect G.L. Norman designed the house in the Queen Anne Victorian style and features towers and turrets. A beautiful unique feature in the interior of the house is a multicolored interior window with a cross over a landing on the stairwell and the sun shines through it perfectly. There is a root cellar and a basement that has eight rooms. The main floor has four rooms, a library, kitchen/dining area, large living hall and a parlor. A grand staircase leads up to the second floor which has a central hall and four bedrooms off the hall. The attic is on the third floor. The last owner was J.D. Bundy and he deeded the house to the Abbeville County Historical Society in 1989. The house is today a museum focused on military history that has added three servant cabins to the property and a train caboose.

An anonymous journalist visited the house with a photographer friend and they got a tour from an elderly caretaker. When they got up to the second floor, the journalist heard an audible cough. The journalist mentioned to the caretaker who was taking them through the house that they probably shouldn't disturb the person on this floor. The caretaker asked the journalist what she was talking about because they were the only people in the house. Then she heard the coughing again. Marjorie LaNelle writes in her book "The Apparitions of Abbeville: The History and Mystery of the South Carolina Lakelands" what happened next, "'See?' I said loudly and insistently. 'There IS somebody up here!' I hurried to the front room where the door was open. 'It's coming from in here!' As I looked into the room, I saw the bed was neatly made and the room was tidy. It had a bed and a chest of drawers alongside a desk and chair. But there was no one in the room - at least no one that the human eye could apparently see! 'That there's the room where William McGowan died,' said George as he pointed to the room with his walking cane. 'He was General McGowan's son,' he added. 'Died of pneumonia,' said George. 'He was only thirty-nine years old.'" People claim to see the ghost of William McGowan looking out the upstairs round window. The scent of cherry tobacco has been smelled. And that phantom cough has been heard by other people as well.

Trinity Episcopal Church

Trinity Episcopal Church is located at 200 Church St. The church started in 1842 in a clapboard building. In 1858, it as decided that the congregation needed a fine building for their services and they hired architect George E. Walker from Columbia to design the church. He found inspiration in the Gothic cathedrals in Europe and it shows. This is a beautiful church with a tall front column with a soaring spire topped with a cross. The cornerstone was laid on June 27, 1859 and the church was built from handmade bricks. The interior features handmade woodwork. The really glorious part of this church though are the 19th century American stained glass windows. The father of stained glass painting in America, William Gibson, designed the chancel window that is entitled "Suffer the Little Children." Another window is from the 20th century and was crafted by J&R Lamb Studios and depicts the Holy Family. There are interesting legends connected to the church. One legend claims that the chancel window was intended for a Northern congregation, but couldn't get through a Union blockade of Charleston during the Civil War and so the church adapted it to their church. There is nothing to support this and is thought to have been specifically crafted for the church. The church has a bell that was gifted to the church by a member named J. Foster Marshall who was a colonel that died in the Battle of Second Manassas. During the war, a Confederate officer saw the bell and thought it would be handy to melt it down and make a cannon, but thankfully the bell wasn't made from the right kind of metal, so it was saved.

There was a woman visiting the town with her daughter and they were walking down the street towards the Trinity Episcopal Church when all of a sudden the young girl broke away from her mother and ran towards the church and then she went inside. Her mother caught up to her and found her in the vestibule talking to something the mother couldn't see. Her daughter came over to her very excited and proclaimed, "Mother, I want you to meet my new friend Elizabeth. She wants us to help her." The mother saw no one, so she ushered her daughter out of the church. But the daughter was set on helping Elizabeth, so the mother visited the church several times with her daughter over the next couple of weeks and eventually she too could see Elizabeth. Elizabeth told the mother her problem and there was an attempt to cross her over, but it didn't work because the spirit of Elizabeth is still seen and felt in the church. People see a woman sitting in the front pew, wearing an old-fashioned dress. The sounds of disembodied weeping are heard as well. If the spirit is approached, it vanishes. The Elizabeth in this story is thought to be Elizabeth Marshall. Her husband Drew joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War and Elizabeth would come to the church everyday with the couples son and sit in the front pew and pray for the safety of her husband. Unfortunately, Drew was killed at the Battle of Second Manassas in 1862. For some reason, Elizabeth was accused of being an informant and so her son was killed in retaliation. She tried to attack the soldiers who did this and it is thought she was then murdered herself.

The Belmont Inn

The Belmont Inn is a classic hotel featuring modern amenities and a restaurant and bar that was originally known as the Eureka Hotel, which was built in 1903 for $30,000. The first floor was open to salesmen selling their wares and served mostly people traveling on the railroad. Regular patrons were also vaudeville entertainers who would perform at the Abbeville Opera House. Fanny Brice became a regular. She was comedian who created The Baby Snooks Show and the 1968 film "Funny Girl" is loosely based on her life story. Brice started in burlesque, joined the Ziegfeld Follies, performed multiple times on Broadway and recorded several records for Victor and Columbia Records. The Eureka Hotel became the Belmont Inn in 1920 and ran as that until 1950, when the inn became a semi-residential home for the elderly. That lasted until the 1970s and then it closed for several years. In 1984, it was restored and reopened as a hotel with 25 rooms. It closed again for a while and passed through a few hands and is today owned by Jim Petty and his wife Susan Botts and Susan is happy to tell people that her establishment is haunted. The claim is that this is the second most haunted hotel in South Carolina.

The inn is said to be haunted by a former bellhop named Abraham who worked with the original opening crew. He likes to walk up and down the hallways and jiggle the doorknobs. People have seen him still in his bellhop uniform and a few guests have claimed that Abraham jumped into bed with them to suggle. The website Drugstore Divas stayed at the inn and wrote, "I was laying in bed in The Belmont Inn in Abbeville, SC and heard noise outside in the hallway. Instead of immediately thinking it was other guests, I thought it was Abraham, the bellhop. The dead bellhop. Who haunts the hotel. So when I heard footsteps in the hallway, my first thought wasn’t other guests walking back to their rooms after a night out on court square. My first thought was Abraham must be checking the doorknobs." There are other spirits here as well. One of these ghosts carries over from the opera house where she was performing, but she took ill and returned to the Belmont Inn where she was staying and she died in her room. A woman in a black Victorian era dress with a lace veil over her face and black gloves has been seen on several occasions near the registration desk. One person who saw her said that this spirit passed right by her and disappeared into the wall and that this ghost appeared to be floating before that. The guest who saw her wasn't afraid, just surprised. She is thought to be completely residual. Rooms 5 and 12 are said to be the most active if you book this hotel.

Another spirit likes to hang out on the stairs. Marjorie shares this story in her book that she was told by a couple who stayed at the hotel, "On a late evening in December, I attended a year-end awards ceremony for my place of employment that was held in the dining room on the second floor of the Belmont Inn. My husband and I entered the hotel through the side door on the basement level and took the elevator to the main floor. The bartender directed us to the elevator and stairs and said the choice was ours as to which one we would like to utilize. He then stated that there would be directional signs to point the way once we reached the second/main floor. We chose to utilize the elevator. Once we reached the next level and stepped off of the elevator, I noticed a tall, well-dressed lady wearing a long, baby-blue Victorian dress. One could tell that it was tailor-made, as it fit her hourglass figure perfectly. She was also wearing a rather large, matching, wide-brimmed hat that tied around her chin. Lace gloves covered her hands, and she was holding a closed white parasol. She simply stood at the foot of the staircase as if looking frantically for something. As we passed by, she turned and seemed to look straight through my husband and me as if we were not even there. The look on her face was that of panic and sadness. She then turned her head to the right as if to look up to toward the top of the grand staircase, one step at a time. It was apparent that she had lost something very valuable. I uttered a friendly Southern, “Hey, how are you?” and we continued walking toward our destination. My husband gave me the strangest look, and he asked me who I was talking to. “That reenactor at the stairs,” I answered, and he gave me yet another strange look, but he didn’t ask any more questions as we followed the directional signs and finally reached our destination. The incident puzzled me during our dinner engagement, and my husband insisted I was seeing things, because he hadn’t witnessed any such lady. I couldn’t help but wonder if she ever found what she was looking for, but I hope she did. Over and over in my mind, I wondered about what I had seen. I just summed it up as a reenactor or actress who was about to head to the neighboring opera house for her performance in a play. That must be what it was, I continued to try to convince myself. After dinner, I excused myself for a restroom break before we headed home. At that time, I met one of the concierges of the establishment. When I asked him about it, he explained to me that there is a ghost story in the hotel about a lady who lost her most valuable necklace and still, even in the afterlife, searches for it. “She has been seen here a lot.” He giggled. “I haven’t seen her, but a lot of people say they have! She’s usually right around the grand staircase,” he concluded." 

Abbeville Opera House

And since we mentioned the Abbeville Opera House, we should feature this location next. The theater is located at 100 Court Square #102. The Abbeville Opera House was designed by architect William Augustus Edwards and opened in 1904. This was part of a government complex that included a courthouse. The building is three stories and made from red brick with brick sunburst around the keystones and the parapet has raised central portion. The interior theater has three levels: orchestra section, balcony and upper gallery. There are box seats on each corner and large Corinthian columns flank the theater from orchestra floor to ceiling. The stage area is 7,500 square feet and there are twelve dressing rooms. While updates have been made to the lighting, the old system is still here for historical interest. The first restoration of the theater came in 1968 and brought the seating up to 420. Everything was changed to red upholstery on seats, red carpeting and red velvet curtains with gold trim.

The theater wasn't officially dedicated until 1908, but the first production took place back in 1904 and this was "The Clansman." Other plays put on here included "The Great Divide" and "Ben HUr" with real horses in the production. Vaudeville was in its heyday and Abbeville was a popular stop off for traveling companies. Theater greats like Jimmy Durante and Fanny Brice played here as did the Ziegfield Follies. The place was so popular that the Southern Railroad ran special trains to accommodate the hundreds of people who came to Abbeville for the plays. Speeches were hosted here as well with one of the most famous being by William Jennings Bryan. The theater eventually became the home of the Abbeville Community Theater. Today, the theater hosts plays and music concerts by tribute bands and other musical performances.

David Eller was an Abbeville Tour Guide and he shared about the ghosts at the opera house. The first one to take up residence is believed to be a construction worker who died during the construction in 1904. He fell to his death from the top of the theater into the parking lot. He likes to bang pipes and hang out in the dressing rooms and he is blamed for making props disappear. The second is the young woman who had been staying at the Belmont Inn. She was touring with a company from New York to Atlanta and they had a stop over in Abbeville. This actress inhabits the house side of the theater and she has a special seat in the third balcony. They leave a light on for her - which is more than likely the traditional ghost light of all theaters - and leave her chair in its place and empty. If they move the chair, her spirit becomes quite angry and bad things happen during the production. People have claimed to see her apparition out of the corner of their eye. (That chair that they leave open is an original chair and the only one not updated into the cushy comfy chairs that now are part of the seating arrangement.

Abbeville seems like it should just be a quaint little southern town, full of charm and areas for peaceful ruminations. But clearly, its reputation as one of the most haunted towns in South Carolina seems to have some support. Are these buildings in Abbeville haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 551 - USS The Sullivans

Moment in Oddity - Father of the Marathon (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

There was a Japanese man by the name of Shizo Kanakuri. He was known as the "father of the marathon" in Japan. The event was the Olympics and the year was 1912. It tooks weeks for Shizo to arrive at the starting line in Stockholm, Sweden. Shizo was the first Japanese athlete to qualify for an Olympics and he was proud to represent his country. The day of his event, Stockholm was experiencing a heat wave and during the marathon, racers were dropping out at every mile. Of 68 starters, only 34 marathoners would cross the finish line. At about two thirds of the way through the marathon, Shizo Kanakuri suddenly disappeared. He never let officials know that he was quitting the race and nobody knew where he vanished to. He was considered a missing person in Sweden for decades. Apparently Shizo found himself at a farm along the marathon route where a family fed him, gave him clothing and offered a place to sleep. Although the runner was safe, the race organizers had no idea where Shizo disappeared to. Eventually over the years, urban legends were created around the Japanese marathoner, with people saying he had been running around Sweden for years looking for the finish line. In reality he continued to run races once home in Japan and went into education where he worked to introduce as many people as possible to athletics. Later, in 1967, Swedish officials organized a return trip for Kanakuri so that he may finish his marathon from 1912. A ceremony was held for Shizo and the event was widely covered by the Swedish media. When Shizo Kanakuri finally crossed the finish line, his time was noted at 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds, securing a position for the slowest marathon ever completed and that certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Klondike Gold Rush

In the month of August, on the 16th in 1896, gold was discovered in Alaska, sparking the Great Klondike Gold Rush. Also known as the Yukon Gold Rush, the discovery by Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie prompted a mass departure of eager prospectors from their homesteads to the Canadian Yukon Territory and Alaska. The promise of riches emboldened 100,000 people to leave their current lives and commence the long and treacherous migration, seeking the valuable mineral. Unfortunately only half of those who began the journey actually arrived at their destination. Although the gold rush was good for the region's economy, it had an adverse effect on the environment and the native people of the Yukon and Alaskan territories. Loss of native wildlife, deforestation and water contamination were widespread. The native people were exposed to diseases from the prospectors and their hunting and fishing grounds were ruined as well. Those who completed the harsh journey also found that the riches were grossly exaggerated and many people immediately returned from whence they came. The Klondike Gold Rush slowed to a trickle by the end of 1898 and many were left destitute.

USS The Sullivans (Suggested by: Erica Merhoff)

USS The Sullivans is berthed now at the Buffalo Naval and Servicemen's Park in New York. We learned a lot about USS The Sullivans when we toured the USS Yorktown in June 2024. It's a very different name for a ship and that's because it was named for five brothers who all died aboard the same ship when it was sunk by a Japanese submarine during World War II. Those brothers just may be haunting their namesake. Or maybe there are other spirits here. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of USS The Sullivans.

The loss of a child is devastating. Some historical stories that we share on this podcast are quite painful because in previous centuries, it wasn't out of the ordinary for a family to lose multiple children, especially before they made it to adulthood. Losing five grown sons all at once would be an immense pain that none of us could begin to comprehend. The Sullivan clan had an ancient stronghold in West Cork, Ireland. The first Sullivans emigrated to America in 1849. Thomas Sullivan would come down through that line and marry Alleta Abel in Waterloo, Iowa in 1914. They bought a house at 98 Adams Street in Waterloo and started the building of their large Irish-Catholic family. Over the next 17 years, they had seven children, five boys and two girls. The boys were George, Francis or Frank, Joseph, Madison or Matt and Albert and the girls were Genevieve and Kathleen. Kathleen died when she was just five months old from pneumonia.

The Sullivans had an idyllic life, even during the Depression. Thomas Sullivan never lost his job and he taught his boys to hunt and fish. The brothers loved to play baseball and football in a vacant lot by their house. After George and Frank graduated from high school, they decided to join the Navy because jobs were pretty scarce in Waterloo. They served their time and returned home in 1941 and got jobs in the Rath Meat Packing plant. Their brother Albert had married a woman named Katherine Mary and they had a son. When George and Frank had joined the Navy, they convinced their friend Bill Ball to join up too. Ball stayed in the Navy and he was stationed on the USS Arizona that was parked at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, bringing America into World War II. Ten Nakajima B5N2 Kate torpedo bombers attacked the Arizona and scored four direct hits with one of them causing an explosion in the magazines at the forward part of the ship. In total, 1,177 men were killed on the USS Arizona and one of them was Bill Ball. The wreck of the Arizona remains at Pearl Harbor as a memorial. We would be remiss if we didn't mention that this memorial is said to be haunted. Visitors and staff have reported strange sounds that include disembodied whispers, disembodied footsteps and the sounds of distant explosions. An Australian family shared a photo in 2011 after their visit that seemed to show a young and sad face in the shimmering oil above the wreckage.

When the brothers heard that their friend Ball had been killed at Pearl Harbor, they were inspired to sign up to fight in World War II. George said, "Well, I guess our minds are made up, aren’t they fellows? And, when we go in, we want to go in together. If the worst comes to the worst, why we’ll all have gone down together." George and Frank had already been in the Navy, so the five brothers agreed to join the Navy and they requested to all be stationed on the same ship. The Waterloo Iowa Courier featured the brothers in a story because it was big news for their town. Letting five brothers serve together was out of the norm because the Navy had been crafting a policy prohibiting such a practice. But the Navy agreed and stationed the Sullivans on the USS Juneau, which was the first US ship to be camouflage-painted.

The USS Juneau was an Atlanta-class light cruiser that had been launched in October of 1941. She headed into the Pacific theater on August 22, 1942 and had her first major action in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942. Juneau helped repel four Japanese attacks. Her next fight would be the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. The Juneau shot down six Japanese torpedo bombers early. The main part of the battle took place in the evening when it was pitch dark and the Juneau was struck on her port side by a torpedo. She began to list, but she was able to maintain a speed of 13 knots and started heading toward Espiritu Santo for repairs. Another ship named the San Francisco accompanied the Juneau as it needed repairs too. Along the way, a Japanese submarine  shot two torpedoes towards the San Francisco, with both missing. Unfortunately, one of them found the Juneau and hit the same spot she had been hit before and an explosion rocked the cruiser immediately and she sank below the water in just 20 seconds after breaking in two. The date was November 13, 1942.

There wasn't just the San Francisco with the Juneau. Another ship named the Helena was also traveling in the group. The commanders of both ships thought that no one had survived the attack on the Juneau, so they quickly left. But 100 sailors had survived and they had to fend for themselves for eight days in the open ocean before they were rescued. At the time of rescue, only 10 men were still alive. The rest had sucuumbed to the elements and shark attacks. There are different stories as to what happened to the brothers. The most probable scenario seems to be that three of the Sullivan brothers went down with the ship immediately. Another brother was wounded and managed to make it to the surface, but died shortly thereafter from his wounds. George made it to the surface and into a raft, but after days of no food or water, he seems to have become disoriented and jumped out of the raft into the water and was grabbed by a shark.

It would take weeks before the Sullivan parents were told the fates of their sons. A survivor who was friends with George wrote the Sullivans to tell them, "I am afraid all hope is gone for your boys. I don’t know whether a letter of this sort helps you or hurts. But it’s the truth. I saw it." But there was nothing official from the Navy, so Alleta wrote the Navy, "I am writing you in regards to a rumor going around that my five sons were killed in action in November. I hated to bother you, but it has worried me so that I wanted to know if it was true. So please tell me. It has worried me so." The Sullivans got their answer on January 11, 1943 when a knock came on their door and they opened it to see Lt. Commander Truman Jones standing there. He said he had some news about their boys. Thomas inquired, “Which one?” “I’m sorry,” was the response. “All five.” Now Lt. Commander Jones could only tell them that all five were missing in action, but he added that they were presumed dead.

President Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Sullivans and in part he said, "I want you to know the entire nation shares your sorrow. I send you my deepest sympathy in your hour of trial and pray that in Almighty God you will find the comfort and help that only He can bring." In no time, five gold stars were hanging in the window of the Sullivan family and Alleta was called "the champion Gold Star Mother." She had become the Mrs. Bixby of World War II. Mrs. Bixby had lost five sons during the Civil War. No one would blame the Sullivans for curling up into balls and giving up, but they did the opposite. They were invited to Washington DC and met with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Vice President Henry A. Wallace. The Navy then asked them to tour defense plants to inspire the workers. Tom and Alleta also spoke at 235 bond rallies and they appreciated the distraction as Alleta said that the trips kept her from thinking. Their campaign was very successful in selling war bonds. And then there was Genevieve. She had gone from having five brothers to an only child. She enlisted in the Navy. It was a PR bonanza for the Navy.

In 1944, the film "The Fighting Sullivans" debuted featuring a mix of truth and fiction. The war ended and the celebrity died down and the Sullivans returned to a quiet life, no doubt wondering what their house might have been like if it had been filled with all their children and possible grandchildren. Tom passed away in March of 1965 and Alleta passed in April 1972. Streets and parks were named for the boys and Waterloo honored them with The Five Sullivan Brothers Conventions Center and the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum. And in April 1943, Alleta christened USS The Sullivans, named for her sons. It was the first US ship ever named for more than one person.

The largest and most important class of US Destroyers was the Fletcher-class. The USS The Sullivans was one of these class and was laid down in October 1942 at the San Francisco Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. Originally, it was going to be named the Putnam, but after the Sullivans were killed, it was decided to name the destroyer Sullivan. Then President Roosevelt changed the name to The Sullivans to make sure that all the brothers were honored. The ship launched on February 6, 1943 and was commissioned on September 30, 1943. It measured 376 feet and could carry 310 sailors. She did a brief shakedown and headed for Pearl Harbor in December of 1943. In January, she left with Task Group 58.2, which was headed to the Marshall Islands. Her first major battle was the Battle of Kwajalein. The Sullivans main responsibility was covering various Task Groups. She helped beat off Japanese air attacks and helped with the attack on the island of Ponape. The Sullivans participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea on June 19, 1944. In July, she joined Bombardment Unit One in attacking airfields and shore batteries on Iwo Jima.

The USS Houston was hit hard in October 0f 1944 and The Sullivans rescued 118 of the sailors and cared for that ship's wounded until they were transferred to another ship. The Sullivans had a lucky shamrock painted on her funnel and it really seemed that this was a lucky ship. She took no hits and when Typhoon Cobra swept through Manila, damaging several ships and sinking three destroyers, The Sullivans came through with no damage. In 1945, she helped support the invasion of Okinawa. She continued her service until June of 1945. The Sullivans was decommissioned at San Diego on January 10, 1946 after being overhauled and placed in the Pacific Reserve Fleet.

The Sullivans was reactivated for the Korean War in 1951. The destroyer carried on screening activities, plane guard duty, bombarded shore targets, supported United Nations ground troops and interdicted enemy supply lines. The Sullivans was ordered home in early 1953. During the summer of 1953, she did a tour of duty with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. In 1958, she supported the landings of Marines in Beirut. The Sullivans joined the carrier Lake Champlain in Florida for the splash down of Commander Alan Shepard's Mercury space capsule in 1961. In 1962, she took part in the naval blockade of Cuba after it was discovered that the Soviet Union placed missiles there. The Sullivans was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1965 and remained in reserve until the 1970s. She was donated to the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park in Buffalo, New York in 1977 and she now serves as a memorial and museum.

In her time, the destroyer earned nine battle stars during World War II and two battle stars for Korean War service. She's had a rough go of it lately. In 2021, she began taking on water and listing and she was sitting lower in the water and lost electrical power in April 2022. A serious hull breach had happened at this time and the damage to the interior was considerable. She had repairs and reopened in August 2022 and then efforts were made to winterize the destroyer. Later this year, 2024, it is hoped to drydock USS The Sullivans in Erie or Cleveland, but a lot of money is needed to tow the ship and do the repairs. Because of damage, the lower decks are closed to visitors.

Tales of strange occurrences on the destroyer date all the way back to 1969. People have reported that the lights flicker on and off by themselves and that electrical equipment is sometimes found turned on and no one knows how that happened. This includes radios that turn on by themselves and many times, a strange static broadcasts from the radios. And speaking of sounds, the blips of a radar are heard in various places of the ship, not necessarily where the radar is located. There are those who claim that all five Sullivan brothers haunt their namesake, but the most prevalent claim is that eldest brother George is here, seeking to find his brothers. A photo on the destroyer that features the five brothers usually reveals a mist over the face of George when a picture is snapped of it. A shadowy figure is seen on several decks and is thought to be George. One encounter that a security guard had with this figure was terrifying. The guard came face to face with a horrifying spirit he described as a disembodied torso with a burned and disfigured face. He later identified George as being the spirit he saw when presented with a memorial picture of the Sullivans. He then quit shortly thereafter as the experience shook him so much. In regards to all the brothers, witnesses have claimed to see five luminous figures in passages on the ship. 

Ghost Hunters Extraordinaire investigated the destroyer in 2016. They asked if the Sullivans were there and they heard what they thought was shuffling of a feet and they asked if they could do that again. The Mel Meter dropped suddenly from 64 degrees to 54 degrees. One of their cameras turned off the recording and then turned it back on without assistance. Investigators have all found the mess area to be the most active area of the ship and that makes sense since this was used as a makeshift hospital when rescuing sailors from other ships. On one occasion, the power turned off on the destroyer and a couple employees went to try to lead guests off the darkened ship. An employee heard noises coming from down a hallway that lead to the room with the control panels. She saw a glow coming from the room and assumed that a guest either had a flashlight or a glowstick. She called out and no one responded to her. She looked in the room and saw that the glow was coming from a radar scanner panel that was fully functional. There was no one in the room and the radar wasn't thought to work anymore. The employee ran out to get another employee and when they returned, they found the room completely dark.

Ghost Hunters investigated The Sullivans in 2014 on their episode "Phantom Fleet." The whole team was inside a room when Jason jumped because there was a loud crash that reverberated down the hall. They decided to see if they could figure what caused the sound. They found that a hatch that had been opened was now slammed shut. There was no one else on the ship and the hatch is obviously heavy, so they couldn't explain how this happened.

Reporter Stacey Frey visited the destroyer in October of 2000 for WKBW Buffalo's Good Morning Western New York. She was joined by Staff Duty Officer Ed Kirkwood who shared personal experiences he has had. He once was on a lunch break and a couple came into the ship store to buy some post cards. It was winter and so everything was shut down except the store. They wandered over to the USS The Sullivans and found a man who was an admiral was aboard the ship and he gave them a tour, showing them the boiler room and the engine room. In the boiler room, he explained to them that a fire had broken out and one of the sailors got injured. Later, the couple was talking to Kirkwood and he was stumped because he had never heard the story before. He asked a couple of docents about it and they said that no one had gotten injured on the ship in that way. On top of that, there was no one on the destroyer to give tours. Remember, it was shut down for the winter. So who gave that couple a tour and what accident was he referring to? Could it have been part of what happened on the USS Juneau? Was this one of the Sullivan brothers? None of them had been the rank of admiral. Kirkwood also told Frey that he likes to hum to himself when he is locking up to help with his nerves because he is a little bit afraid of the ship. He sometimes hears a humming join him and he has heard sounds of disembodied voices yelling in response to him when he yells down a hatch to make sure the place is empty. He has locked hatches and returned to find them unlocked. Another strange thing that happened to him is that his watch jumped inexplicably to military time. A visitor to the ship told him that the same thing happened to her husband's watch when they toured the ship.

Did the brothers Sullivan help to protect the USS The Sullivans or was it just really a lucky ship that never received any damage or experienced any accidents? It seems very possible for sailors to leave a bit of themselves behind after spending a long time on what they call a "tin can." Are the strange occurrences here just connected to the energy of the sailors who served onboard? Is the USS The Sullivans haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 550 - Bellaire Demon House

Moment in Oddity - Motorcycle Sidecar Ambulance (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

During WWI there was a most unique form of ambulance utilized by the British, French and Americans. During the war, smaller and lighter ambulances were needed during the heat of battles. Four wheeled versions of ambulances were large, heavy, bumpy and prone to getting stuck on uneven and muddy terrain. It was determined that motorcycles using a sidecar for the injured was the most conducive option to supply the need. Prior to the war, one of the first motorcycle sidecar ambulances was used on Redondo Beach in California back in 1915. They were found to be very efficient for getting drowning victims across the sand to transport to local medical facilities. Even an animal hospital in London used this style of ambulance for transporting animals as early as 1912. However, motorcycle ambulances really became widely used due to the war. Although there were various suppliers during WWI, the Indian Motorcycle Company was the most widely used contractor followed by Harley Davidson. These motorcycles had reliable motors and were lightweight. Of course, the motorcycle ambulances did not offer a very smooth ride, but it was determined that their ability to get injured soldiers to medical care so quickly, really increased the rate of survival for victims. Some of the sidecar ambulances had double decker stretchers attached while others looked a little more similar to a traditional sidecar. Our favorite photo is of a motorcycle ambulance whose sidecar looks very much like a coffin, however I would imagine taking a ride in THAT one would be most disconcerting although it did look like the most safe option. One thing we are sure of, riding in a motorcycle sidecar ambulance must have been odd.

This Month in History - Voting Rights Act

In the month of August, on the 6th, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by Lyndon B Johnson. This piece of federal legislation was established to prevent racial discrimination in the voting process. The act was intended to reinforce the voting rights already protected by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. There are many provisions listed in the act. Section 2 prohibits state and local governments from denying the right of any citizen to vote based on their race or color. Another section mandates that jurisdictions containing large populations of people who speak a different language be provided with bilingual ballots and other election materials. Section 5 disallows any jurisdiction from implementing changes that affect voting without acquiring approval from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C., to ensure the changes do not affect protected minorities. It has been stated by the U.S. Department of Justice, that the Voting Rights Act is thought to be the most efficacious piece of civil rights legislation ever administered in the United States.

Bellaire Demon House

The Bellaire House has a big reputation and is located in southeastern Ohio in the city for which it is named. The Heatherington family built the house, lived here and died here and are said to haunt it now. But this isn't just the Bellaire Haunted House. People refer to this as the Bellaire Demon House. The house is said to be plagued with lots of ghostly and demonic activity. Possibly because it sits on a ley line or maybe because a coal mine blew up nearby killing 42 men. Or maybe somebody just opened a bunch of portals. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Bellaire Demon House!

Mound Builders were the first to live in the area of Bellaire, Ohio and they were followed by the Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo. Two men named John Rodefer and Jacob Davis purchased several acres of land to set up a village in 1834 and they named it Bell Air after Davis' former home in Maryland. Captain John Fink started early mining operations in Bellaire. A man named John Heatherington immigrated to Bellaire from England in 1829 and he was soon followed by his four sons, John Jr., Jacob, Ralph and Edward. They worked a mine in the hill south of McMahon's Creek and the local farmers really complained about it because it was a very loud process. Then the farmers realized it was bringing money and people to the area, so they decided losing the morning sleep wasn't so bad after all. The Heatherington family were not only good at mining, they were musically inclined as well. After a long day in the mines, they would bring out their clarinet, drum, fife and other instruments and play folk songs. As we said, John had a son named Jacob. Jake had been born in England in 1814 and immigrated to Ohio to join his parents in 1830. In 1837, Jake rented a coal-bank from Capt. John Fink after buying  eight acres of land on credit. He would build his fortune on this start and despite not really being able to read or write, he eventually owned nearly all of the coal mines in the Ohio Valley and grew his 8 acres of land to 800 acres. 

Jake had a mule that he named Jack that helped him build his coal mining business. The two worked the initial coal-bank by themselves and a great affection grew between man and mule. Jacob built his mansion in 1847 with the help of a Jack. This point in history was famously commemorated in the nursery rhyme "This is the House that Jack Built." This is a rhyme that starts with one verse that adds a verse and continues to built up to 11 refrains with this being the final stanza, "This is the farmer sowing his corn, That kept the cock that crow'd in the morn, That waked the priest all shaven and shorn, That married the man all tatter'd and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milk'd the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in the house that Jack built." It is said that Jacob led Jack the Mule through the house after it was done to show him what it was like. We're not sure what the house looked like when originally built, but today The house is surrounded by a wraparound porch. The first floor has a foyer with piano, living room, kitchen, bathroom and large room that has been nicknamed the Seance Room. Upstairs there is the Emily Davis Room, Edwin Heatherington Room, bathroom, old study leading up to the attic and the Altar Room.

The house was said to have been built over one of Jacob's mines, Coal Mine #1, that had exploded and caught fire and been abandoned. Finding a good history on the house and the family works about as well as finding a good history on the Conjuring House. And that's the problem with these locations. Lots of legends and mystical stuff, but not many verifiable facts. And that's what we like around here, facts. It was said the house was also built on a ley line near some sacred Shawnee Native American burial caves. We couldn't find a marriage date, but Jacob eventually married a woman named Eliza Armstrong who was said to be a beautiful young woman. Legend claims that she saw a falling star one day and decided to find out where it had fallen and this led her to Bellaire where she found Jacob. Another story claims that she came to Bellaire and worked in a bar and that's how she met Jacob. Whatever the case, the couple married and had ten children with eight of them surviving to adulthood. The Heatheringtons and the Davis family, who were cofounders of Bellaire, were abolitionists and they worked together with a local reverend to help runaway slaves.

Jacob lived to be 90 and died in 1904. Eliza had died before him in 1896. A beautiful sculpted monument was placed over her grave featuring a woman seated holding a book, looking down and Jacob said he commissioned this because people had always looked down on her, so now she could look down on people. Jacob's middle son, Alexander, inherited the coal-mining empire, but he didn't keep it because he seems to have gotten some form of mental illness and ended up in the Athens Asylum for the Insane in Athens, Ohio. Records from the asylum indicate that Alexander may have had epilepsy and had partial paralysis of one side of his body. After he was committed, his daughter Lyde took over the coal business. Lyde had also inherited the house, so she lived there with her younger brother who was named Edwin. The siblings seemed to be close and Edwin was very upset when Lyde died in the house in the dining room. He wanted to try to contact her again after she had died.

Edwin set out to study the occult and he brought some mediums in the house to conduct seances. Psychics came from all over the country to see if they could help Edwin contact Lyde. Through these seances, it is thought that a portal was opened in the house and there are even claims that multiple portals were open. Other members of the Heatherington family finally managed to kick Edwin out of the house and they sold the house. Edwin died in 1962 at the age of 75. We're not sure of ownership of the house after that point until around 2008. The current owner of the house, Kristin Lee, wrote the book "Paranormal Confessions" True Stories of Hauntings, Possession and Horror from the Bellaire House" in 2021. She began her journey towards the house with the destruction of her home in Quincy, Ohio after Hurricanes Frances and Ivan. A FEMA grant helped her to relocate herself, her two sons and their dog Bella to Bellaire where she found the Bellaire House being sold under foreclosure. The price and size of the house was perfect. When Kristin saw it for herself, she was taken with its beauty and charm. She truly felt it was a dream to now own the house, but soon she would see it as a nightmare.

The haunting for her family started very simply with disembodied footsteps. While we usually just breeze over these accounts of footsteps coming from something unseen because they happen at nearly every haunted location, it seems that these places that we have covered like the Witch House all start out with these basic disembodied steps. Like the spirits are quietly introducing themselves to disarm residents before unleashing more intense experiences. Kristin heard the steps coming from above her head when she was on the second floor. It sounded like someone was walking in the attic. She was the only one in the house. The steps stopped and she tried to convince herself it was just the creaking of an old house, but then the steps started up again.

Shortly after that, Kristin was sleeping on a couch in the living room when she was startled awake. It took her a minute to orient herself and then she realized that a figure was sitting at the end of the couch. This was a transparent man that she started calling The Gray Man because he looked as though he had stepped out of a black and white photo. She screamed this first time that she saw him. The Gray Man stood up and walked into the foyer and disappeared. Objects would be regularly moved around and things would go missing. Most of the activity in the house is on the second floor, so Kristin became scared of the second floor. She eventually moved most of their belongings, especially their clothes, to the first floor. The Altar Room, as it is known today, became their little sanctuary as Kristin felt it was the safest room in the house and she had cast protection spells and circles around it. She figured she would let the spirits in the house have the second floor and try to coexist, but that didn't work out. Kristin spent a night in the Edwin Heatherington Room with her dog Bella. She awakened to see a terrifying entity. It appeared as a static electric black rain cloud in the room and caused the whole room to fill electrified. Kristin felt something force her backward and then it held her down while Bella started going crazy, running around the room barking. Then something picked Bella up and threw her backward. Kristin and Bella ran from the room and Kristin knew then that her family had to leave the house because now the spirits were attacking them. So she moved out. The year was 2009.

Kristin left the house abandoned for a while, but local code enforcement told her that she needed to come back and take care of the house. At this point, Kristin had moved to Massachusetts, but she couldn't afford to completely lose the property and she started renting it out. No renters stayed very long. One year was the most any renter managed. The renters reported lots of strange activity and one family had a chandelier fall that almost hit someone in the head. Another renter reported a full-on physical assault. Then there were no more renters, so Kristin needed to come up with another idea. She decided to open the house up to paranormal investigators. And it seems that investigators have communicated with Lyde Heatherington, Edwin Heatherington and several other entities that include the Gray Man and a child ghost who had belonged to a servant and it is thought the child fell from the attic and the ghost of a young girl identified as Emily Davis who wears a white dress. Kristin has not only watched as Emily opened the door to her office and entered, but then watched as she went up to the attic. Kristin also had Emily come through a Spirit Box and say, "Hi Kristin." Kristin asked what her name was and got "Emily" and then after a minute "Davis." Emily Davis apparently drowned in the nearby Ohio River.

Edwin likes to be made a part of the seances that are conducted in the house and Kristin tells people to leave an empty chair at the table for Edwin. One group decided they didn't want to do that and they put a doll in the chair. Kristin shares what happened next in her book, "Edwin quickly made his displeasure known. The chandelier in the foyer started blinking, as if he were telling us that this is his house and these are his rules! He wanted his seat back immediately. I walked into the Seance Room and asked the ladies again to leave a chair open for Edwin. When they refused a second time, a lightbulb in the chandelier exploded! The group finally removed the doll from the chair and let Edwin have his seat. After that, all was well, although Edwin held a grudge against the group and warned me to stay away from them. I was happy to oblige."

The house has been featured on a variety of paranormal shows. Paranormal investigator John Zaffis says of the Bellaire House, "After spending a few nights at the Bellaire House and experiencing the spirits within its walls, I can say it's very haunted and still has a few secrets to share." Exorcist Bishop James Long said of the house, "I can tell you that Bellaire House is one of the most active haunted locations that I have ever investigated." Bishop Long has conducted a cleansing of the house. When he did his initial walk-through, he definitely sensed an evil presence. He turned on a recorder and got the following EVPs: Bishop, leave, demon, dark. Kristin claimed that the black cloud entity was a demon and that it was expelled from the house in 2015 when Bishop long came. At yet, something still remains supposedly. The entity that is in the attic is considered to be malevolent and seems to have control over the other spirits in the house. For this reason, people are told not to trust Emily if she comes through because the entity likes to use her to get information or to fool people. No one is sure that Emily really is a child spirit and there definitely seems to be proof that nefarious energies in a haunted location have used the appearance of a child spirit to fool investigators. 

Kristin shared this story in her book with an interaction that happened with Emily when Kristin was still living at the house with her two boys, "When I was still living at Bellaire House, some neighborhood kids came over to play video games with my son. You can only imagine my shock and horror when I saw them climbing out onto the roof through a bedroom window. I quickly nipped that plan in the bud. After I closed and locked the window, I asked them what had ever given them the idea to climb out onto the roof. They told me that a little girl in a white dress had told them to go onto the roof and play. After I sent the children home, I confronted Emily to find out if this story were true. The entity didn't like it when I refused to abandon my line of questioning. When challenged, Emily behaves like a bratty child who isn't getting her own way, or like a slippery snake slithering deeper into the underworld energies. In a spiritual battle, she becomes sinister, cold, and dead, and shows no mercy. Unlike typical malign entities, Emily feeds on sadness rather than fear in order to stay charged. I've personally found that the energy level of anyone engaging with her is very low."   

Jim Backus is a paranormal investigator that joined Kristin and several guests for a special Valentine's Day seance. He sat on the back porch with Kristin for a bit before the festivities began and he couldn't get over the feeling that something was watching them from the nearby woods. Kristin suggested it could be a coyote, but Jim felt it was human-sized. He remarked that he thought it could be either a French soldier or a Native American spirit. Both were possibilities as some of the French and Indian War took place in this area. The group later got lots of activity with REM Pods going off and on when asked. A girl who was part of the group named Allison, had her shoe pulled off by something they couldn't see.

During another investigation in the house, a group was down in the basement when they heard the cracking of a whip. Several investigators then felt a gust of air go past them and another investigator cried out that something felt like it whipped her leg. Kristin definitely emphasizes how dark the force is in the house and that it feeds off of anger, fear and sadness. So this makes us ask, why would you allow people into a house that could be so dangerous? And this is what causes our skeptical minds to doubt some of these stories. When something is over the top, it's just hard to believe. We read a newspaper article from the Akron Beacon Journal written in 2021 by Hana Khalyleh. She and her group spent the night in the house and were able to sleep peacefully and didn't collect any evidence. She admits in the article that despite investigating several haunted locations that she has never experienced anything paranormal and doesn't think that ghosts are real. Is that why nothing happened? Are investigations really mostly about what people take in with them?

But there have been hundreds of teams that have visited the house and gotten plenty of evidence. There are claims that some spirits have been crossed over, which is something neither of us believe anyone can do, but if that were the case, why don't the portals close here and why don't the spirits leave? This is never explained as more and more extravagant stories about the house are told. Kristin has claimed that people have contacted entities called The Star People and the Secrets of Ormus Earthbound spirits. Maybe this poor house has just had too many people coming through, opening things up without closing anything. Maybe Bellaire House has become a way station for spirits on their journey. We probably will never know. Is Bellaire House haunted? That is for you to decide.

HGB Ep. 549 - Morris-Jumel Mansion

Moment in Oddity - The Death of John Shaw

There is a location in Arizona called Canyon Diablo which is about 20 miles from Winslow. It is a ghost town in Coconino County Arizona. One would assume the canyon received that name for all sorts of dark reasons and there are many. However one really stands out. John Shaw was a bit of a scoundrel and his story is one that isn't just a legend retold. After 1am on April 8th in 1905 the Wigwam Saloon in Winslow was still busy with patrons drinking their fill. Of course there were card and dice games taking place amongst the gamblers of the time. John Shaw and his buddy William Evans entered and ordered some libations but soon their attention was drawn to a dice table where monies were laid down for bets. The young men in their early 20's drew their guns, probably imagining they would easily make off with their spoils. They took the gamblers for $200 and escaped into the night. Quickly the law caught up with Shaw and Evans and the ensuing gunfight resulted in John Shaw being killed. Shaw was buried in a plain pine box near where he died in Canyon Diablo. Word traveled quickly and 15 Arizona cattle herdsmen were appalled that Shaw never got to enjoy that last drink. The cattlemen located where Shaw was buried, dug him up, and gave him that last drink of whiskey. When Shaw was disinterred, he had a peaceful smile on his face and his eyes were open. The cattlemen propped him up, poured a shot of whiskey down his throat and took a few photos that can be found online today. Immediately after that, John Shaw was promptly reinterred, prayers were said and the whole historical set of circumstances certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Operation Warsaw Rising Begins

In the month of August, on the 1st in 1944, operation Warsaw Uprising began. Also known as the August Uprising, this was a large WWII operation by the Polish underground resistance to free Warsaw from German occupation. The timing was coordinated with the nationwide Operation Tempest which was begun during the Soviet Lublin-Brest Offensive. The goal of the Polish was to drive the Germans out of Warsaw to help the allied powers of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States in defeating Germany. In addition, the political goal of the Polish Underground State was to liberate Poland's capital and establish Polish sovereignty prior to the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation being able to obtain authority. There were many casualties during the Warsaw Uprising. 16,000 members of the resistance were killed and an additional 150 to 200 thousand Polish civilians died, mainly during mass executions. It was later shown in declassified documents that Joseph Stalin tactically stopped his forces from moving in on Warsaw in hopes of exhausting the Polish Home Army. Stalin's goal was to turn Poland into an aligned state with the Soviet Union. Scholars indicate that the two month window of the Warsaw Uprising signaled the start of the Cold War.

Morris Jumel Mansion (Suggested by: Selena Smyth) 

The Morris-Jumel Mansion is located in Upper Manhattan in New York City and has stood for over 250 years. This was not only a home for a British Colonel, but also a wealthy American socialite who was the richest woman in America at the time. Today, it is a museum that is reputedly haunted by several spirits, the most prominent one being that socialite. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Morris-Jumel Mansion.

Roger Morris was a Colonel in the British army before the events of the American Revolution began. He fought alongside George Washington during the French and Indian War under the command of General Edward Braddock. The Colonel was wounded during Braddock's Defeat, a shocking loss for the British side. Morris married a woman named Mary Philipse in 1758 who owned a large plot of land along the Hudson River. Morris retired in 1764 and decided it was time to build a large estate for himself and his family and he chose a spot between the Hudson and Harlem Rivers in northern Manhattan. This 150 acre piece of land was called Lenapehoking, which meant it was ancestral homeland to the Lenape people. Morris used a variety of people to built the mansion from indentured servants to free black people to the enslaved.

The mansion was two-and-a-half stories tall and built from brick that was encased in a rusticated, white, wooden exterior in the Georgian country style. The front featured a full portico with four two-story Doric columns supporting a pediment. The main house was rectangular with a hip roof and there was a two-story oblongated octagonal wing added to the rear of the house. There were two chimneys in the main house and a third in the octagonal wing. The interior was also styled in the Georgian way with a wide central hall with a parlor and library on one side and a dining room on the other side of the first floor. The second floor had the bedrooms and the third floor had guest bedrooms. The kitchen and servants' quarters were in the cellar. The octagonal wing had a salon on the first floor and a three room suite on the second floor. The mansion had a carriage house and long driveway to the west of the house that was sold off and built over with row houses starting in 1890 and continuing until 1902.

The family lived at the estate from 1765 to 1775 and then the American Revolution started. Morris was a Loyalist and he left for England after moving his family to his wife's family seat in Yonkers. Morris returned in 1777 to New York when it was under control of Britain and he served as provincial colonel until 1783 and then he took his family to England after the British lost the war. So they never returned to their estate after leaving it in 1775. The mansion became a temporary headquarters for George Washington for around a month in 1776 after the Morris family left. The location was perfect as a lookout because one could see for several miles out over Manhattan. Washington used the second story of the octagonal wing as his office. On the seedy side of things, rumors claimed that Mary Morris and George Washington might have had some kind of romantic attraction and that is why he knew about the house. The Battle of Harlem Heights took place nearby on September 16, 1776. When the British took back New York, the mansion became a headquarters for British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton. By 1779, the Morris Mansion was one of the estates confiscated by the Commissioners of Forfeiture and eventually auctioned off.

Over the next thirty years, various people owned the mansion, using it as a residence and then it became a tavern called Calumet Hall. In 1810, Stephen and Eliza Jumel bought the house and they lived in it intermittently until the late 1830s and then after that, the house became a main residence for Eliza Jumel until her death in 1865. The Jumels decided to restore and refurbish the house and they changed it to Federal and French Empire styling, which took the double door entrance off the front of the house and replaced it with a single door framed by two Adam-like sidelights. The salon received an Empire chimney piece and brass grates. Stephen Jumel was a wealthy French merchant who had come from a family of successful merchants. He set off for Haiti where he built a large coffee plantation, but he was forced to flee to America because of the slave insurrection in 1790. This became known as the Haitian Revolution and was inspired by several factors including how brutal the slave system was in the French colony that was known as Saint Dominique at the time and the revolutions in America and France. The slaves were victorious and named their home Haiti and they lived free while slavery still existed throughout the world.

Stephen Jumel made his way to New York and got involved in the wine business. He also took on a mistress named Betsey Bowen, whom everyone called Eliza. She had come from the family of a sailor and indentured servant. Much of her youth was spent bouncing between brothels where her mother worked to workhouses when her mother was in jail. Eventually, Eliza was indentured to a sea captain and his family when her father died in 1786. She was eleven at the time. Her mother remarried and Eliza and her two siblings moved in with the couple and lived in various places in New England and then they traveled down to North Carolina where Eliza's mother and step-father and older brother all died from Yellow Fever in 1798. Eliza was 24 at the time and she moved to New York and changed her name to Eliza Brown. She found work as a domestic servant and then she met Stephen Jumel and her life would completely change forever. Jumel married her in 1804 and the couple bought the Morris House six years later. For some reason, Eliza wasn't readily accepted into the New York high society and the couple went back to France in 1815.

The Jumels liked to tell people that they were close to Josephine Bonaparte and had received several items owned by Napoleon because they had been given them by the family. Most historians believe they bought the Bonaparte pieces at auction in Paris. While the couple seemed to really love each other, Eliza left Stephen in Paris in 1816 and returned to New York. It seems that Stephen wasn't doing well in business and Eliza was going to handle things. Their French holdings faltered, but in New York, Eliza took control of the Jumel holdings and the financial side of things flourished. She became the epitome of the "girl boss" and went after dishonest business acquaintances of her husband and recoup much of their fortune. This made her quite unpopular in New York. Eliza and Stephen traveled throughout Europe together and Eliza amassed quite a European art collection and brought much of it to America, making it the largest such collection in the US at the time.

The year 1832 brought illness to Stephen and he ended up dying of pneumonia at the age of 67. Eliza didn't grieve long. She was married to Aaron Burr a little over a year later in the front parlor of the mansion. Yes, THAT Aaron Burr. There was nearly a 20-year age difference with Burr being 78 at the time. Eliza thought the marriage would bring her stature, but instead it brought her angst. Burr helped himself to quite a bit of the fortune that the Jumels had amassed. So, that marriage lasted four months and she kicked him to the curb. She had stopped the bleeding and Burr wasn't able to do much with the substantial real estate holdings the Jumels had. The divorce between the couple was finalized September 14, 1836 and then Burr died...literally THAT day. And get this. Guess who her divorce lawyer was? None other than Alexander Hamilton, Jr. 

Eliza continued her extensive traveling and often took her two adopted grandchildren with her. She unfortunately started showing signs of dementia and people started watching as her behavior got more eccentric. She may have even become a target of mockery at this point, which is sad considering that she came from abject poverty and helped manage and amass a great fortune that made her the richest woman in New York at the time. She died in 1865 at the age of 90. An interesting side note is that Anne Northup, who was a well known chef and also the wife of kidnapped and enslaved black musician Solomon Northup who wrote "Twelve Years a Slave," worked at the mansion for two years. She lived there with her three children as well.

Upon her death, the mansion went to her sister Eliza Chase's children, which didn't go over well with their brother William Chase. He had been left out of the will and he sued and the court battles escalated all the way to the Supreme Court. This was a well publicized battle that lasted for 17 years and eventually the Chases sold the house in 1887. French photographer and filmmaker Louis Augustin Le Prince bought the mansion in 1889 and moved into it with his family. He planned to debut the first moving motion picture at the mansion in 1890, but before that could happen, the filmmaker and the movie disappeared. For good. Neither was ever found. Apparently, Le Prince had visited his recently widowed brother in Dijon and he was coming back through Paris and Liverpool before heading on to New York and that is when he went missing. Most people have never heard of this man and credit Thomas Edison with the first motion picture, but the Le Prince was the real Father of Film. Nat Segnit wrote in Harper's Bazaar in 2022, "On the morning of October 14, 1888, Louis Le Prince set up a heavy wooden box in the garden of his father-in-law’s small manor house on the outskirts of Leeds. The box was made of Honduran mahogany, burnished to a soft sheen, and stood on splayed applewood legs with iron fixtures. Le Prince turned the brass crank and began filming. The surviving footage is so mundane that it takes a mental adjustment to recall that for its early viewers it would have been nothing short of a miracle: the world’s first motion picture." Several members of his family appeared in this footage and they would live in the mansion for awhile, but left when they gave up on finding Le Prince. But Louis' wife Lizzie believed she knew exactly what happened. Eight months after her husband disappeared. Thomas Edison presented his Kinetoscope to the world and it was a clear infringement on her husband's machine. And even though she didn't need more proof, she later was on a boat returning to Manhattan from New Jersey when she spotted Edison talking to her husband's patent advisor, attorney William Dameron Guthrie. At that moment she was sure that Edison had had her husband killed.

The next occupants of the house were General Ferdinand Earle and his family. They lived there from 1894 to 1903 and they called the mansion Earle Cliff. When the General died, his wife Lillie sold the house to the City of New York with the promise that it would be preserved as a historic site and this saved it from demolition. The city of New York gave it to the Washington Headquarters Association of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Restoration work was done in 1907, 1945 and 1975 and the house was placed on the historic register in 1966. The museum and grounds can be visited. Some of the Empire furniture in the museum was owned by Eliza Jumel and Napoleon. The Napoleon pieces include a set of gilt Heraldic wings, a suite of chairs, and a sleigh bed with swan motifs. Roger Morris Park is all that is left of the original 150 acres that the Morrises had owned. It includes a sunken garden designed by Helen Elise Bullard in 1934 and features a stone retaining wall and stone paths that lead up to the mansion. The mansion is a museum that offers a variety of arts and cultural events and is open for self-guided tours and paranormal historical investigations. There are also virtual tours and walking tours of the neighborhood. *Fun Fact: Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote some songs for the musical "Hamilton" while sitting in a chair at the mansion.* 

There are thought to be several spirits here. Eliza Jumel is the most prominent and people claim that her two former husbands like to quarrel with each other in the basement. A fourth spirit presents as a drunken Hessian soldier who likes to hang out on the staircase where he may have died and a maid jumped out of a window and now haunts the place. Eliza herself had claimed the mansion was haunted when she lived there. Madeline Mungo, who is the Public Programs and Visitor Services Manager at the mansion, told ABC7 NY in 2023, "Things are always happening that are unexplained. Hearing things, sometimes whispers, we get a lot of footsteps, shadows, things breaking." Mungo also talked about a story that dated to the 1960s where some school children were visiting the mansion and they got rowdy outside. They were quickly quieted down when a woman came out onto the second story balcony and yelled at the kids. One of the teachers with the children asked the docent who was giving them the tour, who the woman on the second story balcony had been. The docent frowned. "We're the only people here," she answered. She also went on to say that the mansion was locked until they entered. The docent clarified that the teacher said that a woman had come out onto the balcony and then she remarked that it was impossible as the balcony could no longer hold any weight. The group entered a room with a portrait of Eliza Jumel and the children said that this is the woman who yelled at them. The docent said that was also impossible as Eliza had died 100 years earlier.

Hans Holzer read the story in a newspaper and he came to the mansion to investigate. The show "The Holzer Files" opened up his case on the mansion and investigated what he described as a dark and mysterious presence that he had tried to help move on. The medium who joined Holzer went into a trance and said, "They buried me alive." When Holzer asked where this person had been buried, the medium said several times, "I don't know" and then "All I know, I was cold." This was a seance in 1964 and the show went with the idea that Eliza had killed Stephen. Hans also communicated with Eliza Jumel. She claimed to be the lady of the house, said "This is my house" and "I'll stay here." Hans put the house on the map as a haunted location and he claimed to have moved Stephen on from the house. Cindy Kaza picked up on a maid in the house when she went through her initial walk through. She saw a candle and feathers and thought that there was some spell work done in the house. They picked up on some disembodied footsteps and they heard an audible cough in the basement. A staff member told Dave Schrader that he had come down the stairs one day and saw a woman in a period dress out of the corner of his eye and when he looked in that direction, the figure had disappeared. A woman who had visited that house several times told Dave that one day she was exiting a bedroom and she got a growl right next to her face. Then she was pushed in the middle of her back. Dominicans in the neighborhood feel the house is cursed and they've tried to bless it with Santaria. On a second day of investigations, they got activity on all three floors. There was an audible female voice that was picked up on camera. One whole wall looked blue on the FLIR camera. The temperature gauge showed blue for cold. Cindy thinks another medium came into the house after Holzer and opened the place up so it is a free-for-all in there. An EVP said, "Get out." The show made the place seem extraordinarily scary, but how much of it was just show?

Boroughs of the Dead investigated in July of 2016 and reported on its website that they heard footsteps coming from the second floor when no one was up there. The K2 lit up by the room where Eliza and Aaron Burr married each other. Carol Ward was the Executive Director of the mansion at the time and the website wrote, "Carol had noted in previous investigations that when there are a lot of men present they get very little activity in Eliza’s bedroom. Carol wanted to split the group so only women would investigate Eliza’s bedroom and then they would switch to all men. Interesting the K2 wires and EMF pumps were extremely active in Eliza’s bedroom as a group of women huddled around her bed asking Eliza questions such as “Do you consider yourself a feminist?” “Are you happy to see so many people visiting this room?” When the group switched places and it was all men, they detected no activity in Eliza’s bedroom."

Carol was with a staff member at another time and they were in the gift shop and distinctly heard the scraping of table legs down in the basement. They thought they were the only people in the mansion, so they ran to the basement door and found it locked. They went downstairs and searched everywhere and found no one. They had no idea what made the noise. Paranormal investigator Vincent Carbone told the CBS Sunday Morning Show producer in 2019, "I haven't seen much, but I have heard disembodied voices, footsteps. I've heard objects moving. Other staff members have seen things; they have heard things as well...About two years ago we were recording in this room [Aaron Burr's], and about a week after the investigation the team lead sent us this clip and said, 'Hey, guys, we got something in Burr's room and I don't know what it is.'" Carbone played the video clip and said, "Notice none of us react to it, because we didn't hear it. But also notice that it's so loud that it has an echo, much like our voices in the room at that same time." It's a hard EVP to make out. Some people think it was saying "He doesn't love you" while others thought it said "They're gonna laugh at you."

There are centuries of history at the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Some people believe it is cursed while others think that nothing strange is happening there. Based on reports of many personal experiences, it does seem that something strange is going on here. Is the Morris-Jumel Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!