HGB Ep. 595 - Queen Anne Hotel

Moment in Oddity - Smooth Head Blobfish

There are many strange looking creatures that lurk in the depths of our oceans. Some, presumably even yet to be discovered. There is one very peculiar fish that was discovered in 2003 that is found deep in the sea off of the southeastern coast of Australia. It is known as the smooth-head blobfish. Its neighborhood ranges from 2,000 to 3,900 feet deep and its looks are like that saying, 'a face that only a mother could love'. Strangely, it resembles a gelatinous faced old man with a very large nose. The unique creatures do not have a swim bladder and their body density is slightly lower than water which allows them to float above the sea floor. They also do not have a full skeleton which also lends to their blob like appearance, especially when brought to the surface. Its head makes up 40 percent of its body mass. They are usually found around one foot in length and it is said that they can live up to 130 years. Although we enjoy the creepy at History Goes Bump, please only search images for this creature if you dare. You have been warned. We don't know if the smooth-head blobfish would win the ugliest fish in the world title, but it certainly is odd. 

This Month in History - World's Largest Floating Dock (Suggested by: Duey Oxberger)

In the month of July, on the 4th, in 1869, the world's largest floating dry dock began the longest spanse of its voyage from Porto Santo, Portugal to Bermuda. The Royal Navy stationed in Bermuda needed the dry dock for repairing its ships, but Bermuda's bedrock consisted of too much porous sandstone which prevented the building of a dry dock on site.  The structure was built in England and then began its incredible journey to Bermuda. In our modern era, the dry dock resembled a giant half pipe, like a skateboarder's dream, courtesy of Tony Hawk. The method of delivering the giant iron structure was a feat in and of itself. When the dry dock departed Porto Santo it was towed by iron warships HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince. It was guided by the wooden paddle frigate, HMS Terrible from behind. The U shaped dry dock itself had its own sail hoisted in the middle of the structure to assist in its own propulsion. A portion of the voyage took the structure through The Narrows at Ireland Island where threats of damage by reefs were high. The dry dock was carefully maneuvered by the Terrible with gunboats HMS Vixen and HMS Viper lashed to each quarter of the structure. On July 31st 1869, the largest floating dry dock of the time was secured in its final resting place of its journey. It served the Royal Navy in Bermuda for over three decades before being retired in 1906. 

Queen Anne Hotel

The Queen Anne Hotel in San Francisco has been a fixture of the Pacific Heights neighborhood for more than 100 years. As the name reveals, this is an old Victorian styled house - a big one! Before it was the boutique hotel it is today, it was a school for girls run by headmistress Mary Lake. Mary loved the place and seems to have returned in the afterlife. She is one of the reasons many feel that this is the most haunted hotel in San Francisco. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Queen Anne Hotel. 

The Ohlone People were believed to have arrived in the area somewhere around 500 AD and they were here for thousands of years. They were still there when the Spanish arrived. They faced slavery and death. The Spanish founded San Francisco in 1776 and they named it Yerba Buena, after a plant that was growing in abundance in the area. The common name for this plant is Oregon Tea. Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1821 and that was it for the Spanish. The Ohlone continued to stay in San Francisco after the Spanish left. The city would be renamed San Francisco in 1846, after Saint Francis of Assisi. American settlers started coming out to California and the Gold Rush that ran between 1848 to 1855 caused a boom for San Francisco. And by boom, we mean 800 residents to 50,000. An earthquake and fire in 1906 hit the city hard, killing 3,000 people and destroying 80% of the city. The city rebuilt and is today one of the most populous cities in California. The World Fair in 1915 showcased the city's progress and prosperity. The Golden Gate Bridge was completed in 1937. Beatniks came and the counterculture made San Francisco its capitol. Today, the city is successful in business and has several haunted locations, with Alcatraz probably being the most popular and haunted, but the Queen Anne Hotel is said to be the most haunted hotel in the city. 

The hotel started out as a girls’ boarding school and was built in 1890. The money for the endeavor came from Senator James G. Fair. This man has been described as "one of the great villains of Wild West Lore." To give the listeners an idea of how people felt about this guy, everyone called him "Slippery Jim." Fair had been born in Ireland in 1831 and emigrated to America in 1843, landing in Illinois. When the Gold Rush began, he headed for Nevada - to another haunted city we have covered in the past, Virginia City. There he found success working as a mine superintendent and eventually, in 1869, was running the Bonanza Firm at the Comstock Lode silver rush. The Bonanza Firm was a partnership Fair started with three other men and they hit a massive silver vein they dubbed the "Big Bonanza." The men themselves were called the Bonanza Kings and this strike made them incredibly rich. They used some of their profits to found the Bank of Nevada in San Francisco. Fair himself branched out into the railroad and established the South Pacific Coast Railroad in 1876. This railway committed to laying down track from Newark, California through San Francisco Bay  to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Fair would move to San Francisco in 1887 after he served in the US Senate from 1881 to 1887. He died in 1894.

So the listeners are probably asking, what caused this guy to have such a bad reputation? Well, like many politicians, he used his vast wealth of $50 million to get himself a seat in the Senate. Early in his mining career, in 1857, Fair was sued along with two other men for infringing on another mining company's claim. What Fair and his buddies had done was to get a shareholder of the other company to claim he was working as an agent of a young black woman and he sold the land to Fair's group as a double deal. They used this woman because blacks couldn't testify in court. The group still lost and had to give up the claim, but they only had to pay the court costs and then give the plaintiffs $1 out of the $100,000 they were seeking. But it revealed that Fair was willing to do things in an underhanded way. He was absolutely ruthless and disliked by most people. 

His nickname of "Slippery Jim" was inspired by his bad credit and came about in 1861 when he was at Angels Mining Camp. He was often heavily in debt at the camp and suppliers would check with his bank before extending him credit. His growing list of unpaid bills had them calling him slippery. Another story about him goes back to his management days in the mines. A group of miners were taking a break and he walked up to them and asked for a light. There was no smoking allowed underground, but since this was their supervisor, the miners assumed that it was okay with him if they smoked. After all, he WAS smoking. So they enjoyed a smoke break with him. Later in the day, they were all handed dismissals for breaking the rules, signed by Fair himself. Not only did Fair treat his employees poorly, he was an absolute rat to his wife, Theresa Rooney.

The couple had met before Fair had made his money and he was just a young miner. She was the daughter of Carson Hill boarding house owners Thomas and Alice Rooney. Fair married Theresa in 1861. He was described as “devilishly charming” and his charm went out to more than just Theresa. He was a notorious womanizer and this got worse when he was in D.C. serving as a Senator. Theresa had had enough at that point and filed for divorce from San Francisco in 1883. And this erupted into a nationwide scandal. The papers carried all the treacherous details. Theresa’s attorney tracked down two women who claimed to have affairs with Fair, a San Francisco brothel owner and a lady of the evening. She won the largest divorce settlement in the country's history at that time. She was awarded $4.25 million, the mansion on Pine and Jones and custody of their three young children.

It was after the divorce that Fair seems to have taken up with a woman named Mary Lake, who would be the headmistress for the boarding school that becomes the Queen Anne Hotel. So now the listeners understand how this man came to finance the all-girls school. Mary was born in Little Falls, N.Y., in 1849 to Helen and Delos Lake. The family decided to move across the country to San Francisco when Mary was still a toddler. Delos opened up a law practice and became very wealthy, building a mansion and sending Mary to the best schools. She focused on teaching and her early career focused on grammar schools in the city. Eventually, Mary desired to open her own place, so in 1889, she started the Lake Seminary and while this was a really nice private boarding school for girls, she wanted something more lavish. Enter James Fair and the construction of a gorgeous Queen Anne styled building at the corner of Sutter and Octavia in 1890. The building had 31 private bedrooms, a dining room and library. The exterior featured large bay windows and elaborate ornamentation. And the paint style that it still has today was described as the painted lady style. Around 100 girls attended the school.

Now remember how Fair’s divorce made all the newspapers? Well, this little affair was the talk of the town as well. The San Francisco Chronicle ran the headline “CUPID AND MR. FAIR” on October 30, 1891. The article revealed, “The pupils in Miss Lake’s establishment at 1534 Sutter Street have whispered it back and forth and giggled, smiled, simpered and laughed outright for a fortnight. What made it all the more interesting was the story that Miss Lake had been absent from her school for a time and that Mr. Fair had not been seen on Montgomery Street in eight days.” Fair and Lake both denied the rumors and Mary claimed that her enemies had made up these lies to drag her name through the mud. She said that she had only seen the Senator a handful of times. When the rumors went further and claimed that the two had secretly married, Fair went on to point out that Lake was a woman of great esteem, but that she certainly wasn’t his wife. And maybe rumors of a love affair were just that, but one has to wonder why former Senator Fair would want to finance a boarding school for a few rich girls. Some claim that maybe Fair was friends with Delos Lake who was now a judge and so he did it as a favor to him. And some records show that Lake paid rent to Fair at $400 a month.

For six years, the school ran successfully, but the Panic of 1896 swept across the nation after silver reserves dropped in value and the economic downturn shuttered the school. Everything had to go, so Mary sold everything with a heavy heart. The ten pianos that had filled the home with music were the toughest to let go. The whole affair broke her heart and perhaps that is why she died eight years later at the age of 55. She literally died on her 55th birthday, while living at her half-sister’s house in Montclair, New Jersey. After her death, the local paper wrote, “She was possessed of a keen wit and a warm, magnetic personality which endeared her to the hearts of all who had the good fortune to know her intimately. Though her pupils during all the years of her teaching were counted by the hundreds, she never forgot one.” It continued with talk of the library at the school, “Mary’s school library [was} different. There [were] all the usual, high-brow classics from Hawthorne, Moliere and Bulwer-Lytton. And, mixed in, romance novels from Jane Austen, tales of growing up from Louisa May Alcott and the many adventures of Alice in Wonderland. For who has not loved to linger in fairylands and wonderful Aladdin scenes, and wander in the realms of fancy? And Miss Lake thoroughly believes in the cultivation of the imagination of children.”

James Fair, as we said, had already passed two years before the Panic, but the building remained in the Fair estate, so whoever was in charge of the estate at the time decided to rent the place and the first taker was the Cosmos Club, which was a men’s club for the rich and powerful in San Francisco. This was formed in 1881 and incorporated in 1883 and had 215 members. Some claim that this was a secret society of sorts, but it certainly was one of the “Old Money” clubs. A Medium article says of the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., “Members [had to have] made noteworthy contributions to the arts, sciences, or public service, thereby fostering a community of intellectual discourse and enlightenment.” Decorum and discretion were expected and there were initiation ceremonies passed down through the generations. It’s a bunch of rich men who can do whatever they want and swear each other to secrecy, so one can only imagine how very different this was from the young girls who had inhabited it before.

The house fell into disrepair as it changed hands until it was purchased by the Queen Anne Hotel Company and renovated and reopened as the Queen Anne Hotel in the 1980s. The hotel features a variety of room styles, event space and runs more like a bed and breakfast with a complimentary deluxe continental breakfast. The lobby is like a time capsule. One really feels as though they have stepped back into the Victorian era with this large sitting room filled with antique furniture, sparkling chandeliers, floor-to-ceiling formal drapes, a piano and a fireplace. Afternoons feature tea and sherry in the Parlor and Library. The Parlor Room also has a painting of Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who was a prominent San Francisco socialite in the day. She had been fascinated with firefighters from a young age and became a patron of the volunteer firefighters of the city. Coit also was a benefactor of the Coit Tower, which is a well known structure that she built to beautify the city. Some of the rooms feature canopy beds and all rooms have period pieces along with contemporary amenities.

It truly is amazing that this beautiful building has not only weathered time, but also the earthquake and fire. Could it be that it was protected by someone unseen? Mary Lake loved the school. This had been her dream. She died in 1904 and people claim her spirit returned to the building, so she quite possibly was here when the tragedies struck San Francisco. Claims are that she haunts Room 410 the most, but there are enough stories about the entire hotel that one can imagine that she wanders around and there seems to be residual energy from the girls left behind. EVPs have captured the giggling of little girls. People claim to feel cold spots in the hallways. Strange reflections show up in the mirrors in the hotel. Staff and guests have seen the full-bodied apparition of Mary dressed in period clothing. Others describe the appearance of a mist. Bags seem to unpack themselves at time and Mary is credited with that. Room 410 is said to be the most haunted room in the hotel. The hauntings are referred to as “friendly.” A guest staying in Room 410 awoke one morning and was stunned to find himself on the floor with his bedding neatly tucked around him.

People also claim that the spirit of the Voodoo Queen of San Francisco, Mary Ellen Pleasant, might be here as well because she once lived across the street. Pleasant was probably the most powerful black woman during the Gold Rush in San Francisco. She had inherited a large sum of money from her first husband after he died and set off from New England to California in 1852. We should mention that her husband was abusive and he just may have been poisoned and before Pleasant arrived in New England, she had been in New Orleans where she learned voodoo from Marie Laveau. Mary Ellen invested her money in services for the miners after she got to San Francisco, like laundries and boardinghouses. Pleasant donated a lot of her money to the black community, from churches to the black press. She took a case all the way to the Supreme Court when she was denied service by a street car and won. Pleasant was an ardent abolitionist and her headstone states “A friend of John Brown.”  She built a mansion with her business partner Thomas Bell and lived there with him and his wife and children, acting the part of domestic servant even though she partially owned the place. The mansion was dubbed the House of Mystery and rumors claimed there were tunnels running beneath it. She eventually lost much of her wealth, which was somewhere over $1 million, and was said to wander around outside the former Bell Mansion until her death. 

The former home site now hosts the Landmark Apartments and Healing Arts Center. Before that, this was the Greens’ Eye Hospital that was founded by brothers, Drs. Aaron S. and Lewis D. Green. They had emigrated to San Francisco from Latvia to intern with Stanford Hospitals in 1906. They were inventors of various corneal treatments and pioneers in eye surgery. They built the two-story hospital in 1928. There are claims that there are hauntings here. Possibly from the hospital, but also maybe from Pleasant’s time here. People claim her spirit wanders around the Queen Anne Hotel and the nearby eucalyptus trees that she planted. The San Francisco News ran this story on October 14, 1935 about Pleasant, whom people called Mammy, "For 25 years during the past [nineteenth] century she tyrannized the somber and inscrutable Bell mansion, with its fringe of eucalyptus, at 1661 Octavia-st. What old-timer does not remember the lean, erect, shrewd-eyed Negress with her old black straw bonnet, gold hoop earrings, spotless kerchief fastened with a winking moss-agate brooch, moving among the stalls of the old Sutter-st market? Mammy, who was reputed the wickedest woman in San Francisco, who figured in every important lawsuit for nearly half a century, but who lied so cunningly that the most astute lawyer never tripped her. Mary Ellen Pleasant had an uncanny way of chancing upon gossipers and professed to the skeletons in the closets of every high-ranking family in the city. Folks took care not to snub her. You never knew when she would find out something about you. The history of Mammy Pleasant and her hold on Thomas and Teresa Bell will perhaps always be shrouded in secrecy. For although she had been offered $50,000 tell what she knew after the death of Mr. Bell and her grim rift with Teresa Bell over a property settlement in 1899, loyalty was one of Mammy’s virtues. People said she was a blackmailer, a procuress, a thief, a horsewhipper of children—who was also capable of generosity and infinite gentleness—and that she had been a New Orleans slave whose master had freed her for “certain reasons.” She had hypnotic powers over women and brewed love philters which she sold to wealthy damsels. Among the latter was Sarah Althea Hill. She helped Sarah Althea bury Senator Sharon’s coat and waistcoat in a cemetery one dark night—assuring Sarah Althea that this procedure would revive the sulking senator’s dead love for her. It was common legend that Mammy was in league with Blind Bill, the Bell butler. When Thomas Bell died from a fall over the banisters of his own house and his son Fred was the victim of a mysterious assault in the house, tongues clacked unrestrainedly. Before he died, Tom S. Burns, who was Teresa Bell’s old notary public, swore he knew Mammy had killed Thomas Bell by giving him drugged port wine and pushing him over the banister. Little wonder when mammy died in 1904 at the age of 89, and Teresa Bell sold the “House of Mystery,” which subsequently became a select boarding house, that folks labeled the place haunted." 

Back to the Queen Anne Hotel, a group of three paranormal investigators stayed overnight in Room 307 and since one of the haunting experiences is said to be having your bags unpacked for you, they left a backpack full of equipment and other things on the bed, along with a REM Pod on the bed and they left the room. They had also set up one of their cell phones to pick up any activity on video and when they came back, the backpack hadn't been touched, but the video revealed the REM Pod going off. As they watched the video, the REM Pod went off again and it lasted for probably 30 seconds. A fan in the room also turned on by itself. They left again with the REM Pod on the bed and video captured it going off several times on its own. They got out an EMF detector and it started going off and then they heard a knock coming from a desk in the room. So they didn't get anything crazy and nothing with any valuable communication, but there definitely seemed to be something messing with the equipment. 

Sam and Colby stayed in Room 410 around three years ago. Two girls joined them named Katrina and Stas (stahz). Before they went to the hotel, they stopped at a museum for about 30 minutes and left all of their bags and stuff in a car on the street. In San Francisco. This was a hatch back. You listeners can imagine what happened. So, the boys had to make this video with a very basic camera and no equipment because it was all taken. But we like old school anyway. At one point in the night, Katrina's back was touched and maybe this was because the head mistress was trying to get her to stand up straight - posture you know!

The FootTracker Blog participated in an investigation in 2011 and wrote, "As we are in room 410, perhaps the large crowd was too much for Miss Mary Lake, we did not see a full body apparition. However, as we stayed in the room longer, we noticed the chair at the end of the bed has a crease on it (and was getting more apparent), just like someone is sitting on it….hmmm." They also felt a cold spot in that area as well.
djsreddit wrote on reddit in 2015, " My mom has always been into the supernatural and she sparked that interest in me as well. We saw the Queen Anne hotel on tv as being a haunted place that people have experienced encounters with something. We lived nearby, about an hour away, at the time so we called and booked the room of the deceased women that reaches out to people who stay there. Fast-forward to that night, we toured the surrounding neighborhood and grabbed dinner. Finally we get back to the room, i set the cameras up to record as we sleep to try and catch any activity. Once they're prepped i went to shower while my mom watched tv. I finished my shower and went and laid on the bed to watch some tv. I had my arm hanging off the edge of the bed while laying there talking to my mom when out of nowhere i had the feeling I've read others describe as the warmth being sucked from your body. I immediately pulled back from the cold and tried to feel the area my arm was again and it immediately cooled my arm again. At this point i started to speak to tell my mom, but it was so surreal that i didn't know what to say so i tried sit up off the side of the bed. It was at this point that i felt something push on the center of my chest that was so cold that i could define what was firmly pushing me back onto the bed as a hand. I burst into tears, not sobbing, but water was pouring from my eyes out of fear. My mom was frantically asking me what was wrong because all she could see was me laying down quickly. I tried to calm myself enough to tell her what was going on, but before i could explain, the hand removed the pressure from my chest and it was as if nothing had happened. The freezing cold area where my arm was hanging had disappeared. I calmed down and explained everything to my mom. She said that we should just leave and i said no. I was dead set on getting video after we fell asleep. Why? Because this wasn't my first experience and i really just wanted something i could show others around me to try and give some type of proof. I had to set alarms because at the time the tapes were only able to record 2-3 hours at a time and needed to be changed. Our initial experiment was to just push the blankets on the floor and go to bed. We did this because there are multiple accounts of people not only seeing an entity, but that they wake up with the blankets covering people up to their neck when they went to bed without the blanket covering them. I woke up around 3am to my alarm. First issue is that i set an alarm for every two hours. We went to bed at 10pm and my alarms were loud ringtones. Nothing that i could've slept through. The second thing i noticed is that the blanket that we pushed off the bed was now covering my mom and I all the way to our necks. The blanket was smoothly covering us as if someone had pulled it out of the dryer and shook it out and set it perfectly on top of us. I woke my mom to tell her, but she was completely out. She would wake up, but then fall right back to sleep. I got up to change the tape and then went back to bed. When we woke up the next day everything felt normal. Nothing was out of place minus the blanket and nothing followed us after we left, but there were more than a few photos that show what could be orbs floating nearby me in the room. I didn't catch anything on video, but i also slept through my alarms so who know what was going on around us that night." 

Susie Milwaukee wrote on TripAdvisor in 2017, "My family actually stayed in a lovely corner room with a turret. We were impressed the hotel survived the San Francisco earthquake and fires. We knew nothing of the hotel supposedly being haunted. I half awoke one night to experience a feeling like someone was tucking me in and gently pushing on my collarbone. I thought it was a strangely comforting feeling. The next day, we found out the hotel was supposedly haunted by the former headmistress, Mary - who ran a boarding school for girls. We were told she likes to tuck people in at night! I was shocked and a little freaked out by what I’d experienced the night before. It wasn’t a scary experience, it was comforting. I believe it was Mary."

The Queen Anne Hotel is a gorgeous example of its namesake and the fact that it embraces that historic Victorian charm on the interior makes it that much better. One can see the love and effort that Mary Lake took to make this place a home for young girls. This place gave her a lot of pride and losing it was devastating. It wouldn’t be surprising that her spirit would want to return. The question is, did her spirit come back here and does she haunt the hotel? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 594 - Haunted Tulsa

Moment in Oddity - Queen Victoria Burial Requests

We love the Victorian era so, of course, we gotta love the Queen for who it was named, Queen Victoria. Something that we really love about her is how much effort she put into her funeral and burial. This was a woman with a plan. A twelve page plan! First, she had a list of things she wanted to accompany her in the coffin. These items included: 
A plaster cast of Prince Albert's hand. The Queen had actually slept with this every night after his death in 1861.
A photograph of John Brown.
A cape made by her daughter Alice for Prince Albert.
Her wedding veil and rings.
As much jewelry as could be placed on her, including rings on every finger and bracelets on her wrists.
A bouquet of Scottish heather.
Albert's dressing gown.
Casts of her children's hands.
A lock of John Brown's hair and his mother's wedding ring. These were controversial items that the family didn't know about because they were probably part of a secret list given to her doctor and dresser. The doctor took pains to hide the fact that the ring was on her wedding finger. Did this indicate that she had married John Brown?
Queen Victoria requested that she not lie in state. She didn't want any black. Nobody should wear any black and she wanted a white pall on her coffin. The Queen was a soldier's daughter, so she wanted a military funeral. She was buried wearing a white satin dress and her wedding veil. Her death left the world and her country in a bit of shock even though she was 81 at the time, but for us the real shock is just how meticulous and planned she was in regards to her burial and her requests were certainly odd.  

This Month in History - Tour de France Begins

In the month of July, on the 1st, in 1903, the first Tour de France started. The Tour de France is a bicycle race that runs through multiple stages over multiple weeks in the country of France. Every year features a different route, but the typical modern day route runs over 2200 miles and goes through 21 stages over three weeks. The first race ran through six stages that were very long, typically 250 miles each. Today's stages are a little over 100 miles. There were one to three rest days between each stage and the route was relatively flat. Cyclists raced solo, so there were no teams like the modern race. The leader after a stage was run would wear a green armband, rather than today's yellow shirt. Cyclists got paid at the end of each stage if they were one of the fastest eight cyclists of the stage. If a cyclist gave up before finishing a stage, he could still ride in a stage the next day. This 1903 race had 60 cyclists and only 21 would complete all six stages. Maurice Garin was the winner, sealing the greatest margin of victory that there would ever be in the Tour de France. He won by 2 hours 59 minutes 31 seconds. He won 6,075 francs and used that to buy a gas station where worked for the rest of his life. 

Haunted Tulsa 

Tulsa is a thriving city with a diverse cultural and arts scene, but it wasn't always that way. The city suffered through the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The area was settled by the Creek Nation after they were removed from their ancestral homes in Alabama and Georgia and Tulsa eventually became an oil boomtown. The history here has led to hauntings in many locations and we are joined by Teri French of Tulsa Spirit Tours to explore the history and hauntings of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Teri French is the owner and operator of Tulsa Spirit Tours, which has been hosting tours in Tulsa, Oklahoma for 22 years. This was the first of its kind in Oklahoma. Teri also founded the Paranormal Investigation Team of Tulsa, P.I.T.T., in 1999 and she has written the books "Tulsa's Haunted Memories," "100 Things To Do in Tulsa Before Your Die" and "100 Things To Do in Oklahoma Before You Die." She joins us on this episode. 

Kelly: Tulsa is often referred to as "Green Country." Why is that? 

As most people know, Oklahoma became the final stop for many Native American tribes after the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830. What would eventually become Tulsa was settled by the Five Civilized tribes:  Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, and Seminole. The Turtle Clan of the Creek specifically founded Tulsa , calling it Tulasi in their native tongue meaning "old town." Tallahassee also gets its name from this word. There is a Washington Irving Park here because the writer visited in 1832. The first non Native home built here was a log cabin by Lewis Perryman in 1846. He and other settlers called the place Tulsey Town. Railroads and the oil boom would build Tulsa into the town it is today. Despite its success, Tulsa had a dark side. Teri shares with us a bit about the founders of Tulsa and the degradation of race relations that blew up into the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

Kelly: Teri, can you share a little about the history of Tulsa? 

Tulsa Theater

This theater started as Convention Hall and was built by the city of Tulsa between 1912 and 1914 at a cost of $125,000. The theater was designed by architects Rose and Peterson out of Kansas City. This was the largest hall between Kansas City and Houston, Texas at the time. Opera performances were popular here with the most celebrated in October 1916 being Georges Bizet's (zhorzh buh zay) Carmen starring Mary Garden. The building remained Convention Hall until 1952 when it became Tulsa Municipal Theater. In 1979, the theater changed its name to Brady Theater and ran as that until 2019. Today, it is known as Tulsa Theater. One of the well known performers here has a legend and haunting connected to him, Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso. He performed there in 1920 and reportedly caught the cold that led to his death of pleurisy in 1921. Teri French told 2 News Oklahoma, "He wanted to see the oil wells and how they made them. And as they came back, it was raining. It was cold, miserable, and the car broke down. He had a great performance, according to history. It was one of his best. Standing ovations and the whole nine yards." Many blame Tulsa for his death and believe his spirit returned to the theater to haunt it. Another reason for hauntings here is that victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre were brought inside the theater. 

Tulsa Little Theater

This theater was built in 1932. There were fires in 1965 and 1966. The theater was renovated in 2004 and this seems to have sparked paranormal activity. The Law Office of Bryce A. Hill bought the Tulsa Little Theatre, and renovated it, while keeping everything as original as possible to the point of when it was built in 1932 and is now using the Front building as their Law Office’s. They called Teri French to come in and investigate. Some of that weird stuff included disembodied footsteps going across the ceiling. Sandbags in the main stage area will sway back and forth and since they are heavy, that definitely doesn't seem to be something that could happen without some amount of force. PITT hosted an event there in 2005.

Cain's Ballroom

French has said, "I think it was in the 40s and 50s when it was considered a rowdy roadhouse. It was actually in the Tulsa World that some of the toughest gang fights occurred right outside the Cain’s Ballroom door." That may be why this location is haunted. 

The Cave House

Kelly: The Cave House is one of the strangest pieces of architecture we have ever seen. This started out as a simple chicken restaurant in the 1920s, but there was something else going on there too. Can you tell us about this? 

Gilcrease House

The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art is also known as Gilcrease Museum and houses a wide variety of historical items and art. The building was made from sandstone. It is said to be the most haunted location in Tulsa. French said of this location, "Cameras would fail. Cell phones would shut off or wouldn’t work. It was just weird. We never turned the bus off because we were afraid, at one point, we wouldn’t be able to get it started...So, a couple of years back, they installed a bunch of new security cameras and they kept going off in the south bedroom one evening. Tulsa police were called, and they came out with trained police dogs where they tried to go up the stairs. The dogs absolutely refused to go up. They started whimpering and wouldn’t budge. They ran out of the house. And when the police went up there by themselves, not a living soul was there." The spirit here is thought to be Thomas Gilcrease and he doesn't seem to like visitors. 

The Hex House

Who doesn't love a haunted attraction that is inspired by an actual true story, particularly one that is thought to be one of the best in the country? This might be the case with the Hex House. The original Hex House was located at 10 East 21st Street and was owned by Carolann Smith. This location is a parking lot now that has been for sale for a long time. It doesn’t seem like anyone wants to buy it. Rumors claim that the basement still exists under the parking lot. The attraction is housed in a store front at Town West Shopping Center at 5610 W. Skelly Drive. The story was related by Gene Curtis in "The Tulsa World" in 2007, "A 1944 investigation by police revealed a small casket buried in the backyard of a Tulsa house and two young women who had been under hypnotic or occult control for seven years.

The probe was nicknamed the "Hex House" case because police and reporters thought it had all the spooky elements of a Halloween story -- bondage, spell-casting, mesmerism, hypnotism. But this case was real, not a Halloween tale, and led to a short prison term for Carolann Smith, 45, and freedom for the two young women, Nell Willetta Horner, 30, and Virginia Evans, 31, who had been forced to live in an unheated basement of the house at 10 E. 21st St. and to turn over their paychecks to Smith. The young women told authorities they had been led to believe they would receive a great reward in heaven, called the "big payoff," for serving Smith, who apparently had devised a religion of her own. Horner told police that Smith had starved and beat her under the guise of religious purification." The investigation was touched off when Smith obtained eight World War II ration books for herself, the two young women, several fictitious names and for a daughter, Bonnie, that actually was her dog, BonBon. Neighborhood children told Alice Allen, a teacher at Lee Elementary School, where ration books were issued, that there was no Bonnie but that Smith had a dog named BonBon. They also knew that Smith and the two young women had buried a casket in the backyard in the middle of the night. When police investigated, they discovered Horner and Evans living either in the basement or in the servant's quarters and sleeping on orange crates without blankets while Smith lived in luxury. They found 45 pairs of expensive women's shoes, many of them unworn, silverware and glassware, clothing, jewelry, expensive furniture, 18 pairs of new gloves and cash.

Meanwhile, the young women wore tattered dresses to their jobs and had no cosmetics, although Smith had "enough to stock a drug store." The hundreds of beauty items and perfumes were kept in her bedroom. When they dug up the back yard, police first found a dog's carcass buried in a cardboard box and underneath that a small casket containing the carcass of BonBon that had been buried 5 feet deep. Books dealing with the means of developing will power, magnetism and self-mastery of fate were found in Smith's house. They also found writings by her that dealt with the means by which the human mind could be affected and about witchcraft and magic. When the case got to court, it was something less than the sensational and lurid case observers expected, but it was still puzzling. The big question, of course, was how did Smith control the two young women? Horner testified she always followed Smith's orders. She said she was told in 1940 to have nothing to do with her family and that from then on her last name was Sherman. She assumed that she had been adopted by Smith, who sometimes used the last name Sherman. Evans testified that "we thought she was leading us into a good life." "She always quoted Scriptures to bring out her point," she said. "They fitted in perfectly with what she wanted us to do."

In addition to receiving the paychecks of the two young women, Smith also received $31 a week from Evans' father for her support and extra money to pay for a nurse. She had written him that Evans was mentally ill and needed a nurse that would cost that amount. A District Court jury found Smith guilty of suborning (inducing) perjury and sentenced her to a year in prison. She pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge of using the mail to defraud Evans's father, a wealthy Stroud merchant, and making false claims to obtain ration books. She was placed on probation for the latter crimes. The subornation charge stemmed from a Municipal Court case in which Evans and Horner testified against a neighbor who lived in the adjoining duplex of the house. He was charged with assaulting Horner. Horner said she and Evans were told exactly what to say in their testimony and that they were rehearsed for hours. She finally typed a script and memorized it, she said.

From the Haunted Attic website, "As Carolyn engaged in rituals to communicate with the spirits of her lost children, the house became a focal point of dark energy. The once-proud home fell into despair, the walls adorned with strange symbols and the yard littered with trinkets and offerings from those seeking to break the curse. Visitors reported feeling an oppressive energy surrounding the house, with many claiming to see apparitions of the children playing in the yard or hearing their laughter reverberating through the halls. The legend of the Hex House gained interest from paranormal enthusiasts and ghost hunters. In 1998, a team of paranormal investigators conducted a series of investigations of the grounds of the former Hex House capturing photographs of orbs (spectral energy) and recordings of unexplained sounds, including disembodied voices. Their findings only solidified the house’s reputation as a haunted location, transforming it into a popular destination for thrill-seekers and the curious alike." 

The "Hex House" was a favorite site for young Tulsans to visit on Halloween for years after the case was settled. But the house was torn down in 1975 and the site became the parking lot for the Akdar Shrine. The Shrine later moved to 27th Street and Sheridan Road and its old site -- where the Hex House had been -- became the site of apartments.

Kelly: Do you have a favorite haunted location? 

Tulsa seems to have several haunted locations in the town. Are these places haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB EP. 593 - Haunted Foggy Bottom

Moment in Oddity - Tasmanian Devil Births

Many of our listeners are familiar with Taz, the Tasmanian devil from the Looney Toons cartoons. The real life carnivorous marsupials live exclusively on the island of Tasmania. There are over 330 species of marsupials in the world but there is one not-so-fun, fun-fact about Tasmanian Devils that makes them quite unique. Tasmanian Devils have a rear facing pouch. This orientation keeps them from filling their pouches with dirt as they dig their burrows. That detail of their bodily orientation is not entirely strange however. Other burrowing species of marsupials such as wombats and quolls also have rear facing pouches for the same reason. What is so unusual about the devils, is the fact that on average, they give birth to between 20 and 40 babies all at once while only having 4 teats in their pouch. The underdeveloped babies latch on to their mother's teats for approximately 3 months while they mature. This means that regardless of how many babies are born, it is highly unlikely that any given litter would number higher than four. Once the mad dash to their mother's teats has ended and four babies have successfully latched on, the remaining baby devils, known as joeys, perish by either starving or by being eaten by their mother. The joeys will begin leaving their mother's pouch at around 3 1/2 months and often will ride on her back while young. Tasmanian devil joeys stay with their mother until about 9 months old. Survival of the fittest is common in wild animals, but having to defy such high odds in the animal kingdom, certainly is odd. 

This Month in History - Birth of P.T. Barnum

In the month of July, on the 5th in 1810, Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut. At the age of 15, P.T. Barnum's father died which led to him holding a variety of jobs to help support his mother and five siblings. He eventually became a publisher at a local weekly newspaper and by the age of  19, he married 21 year old Charity Hallett with whom he had four daughters. After moving to New York City in 1834 he began his adventures as a showman, inviting the world to come and witness Joice Heth, a black woman who Barnum stated, "was the 161 year old nurse to General George Washington". Upon the death of the woman it was of course revealed to be a hoax. Barnum later acquired John Scudder's American Museum in New York City. He quickly transformed the traditional location to display instead human curiosities, dramatic theatricals, beauty contests and other spectacular attractions. P.T. Barnum once wrote, "This is a trading world, and men, women, and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature". Barnum traveled the world looking for oddities, living or dead, real or fake and garnered international attention for the showman's showcase of wonders. Many famous people in history attended his unique and sensational creation. Despite his name being popularly linked with the circus, P.T. did not actually become a circus showman until after the age of 60. Where he continued to work until his death in 1891 at his Connecticut mansion. The Times of London paid the late Showman tribute stating, "He created the métier of showman on a grandiose scale.…He early realized that essential feature of a modern democracy, its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it.…His name is a proverb already, and a proverb it will continue."

Haunted Foggy Bottom

Washington, D.C. is the home of the American government and every square inch of it oozes history. Shockingly, we haven't covered many haunted locations in the Capitol City, despite its extensive history. So it was definitely time to investigate what else is haunted in this city and we found a neighborhood with multiple ghost stories. Foggy Bottom dates back to the mid-1700s, but it would take nearly 100 years before people would settle here and these were mostly laborers. There were two grand homes here, one of which still stands and both reputedly were haunted. And there are a couple of legends connected to the area as well. Join us for the history and hauntings of Foggy Bottom.

Foggy Bottom started out as Funkstown, nicknamed for German settler Jacob Funck who originally owned the plot and subdivided it. The official name of the settlement was Hamburgh and it stretched over an area near the confluence of Rock Creek and the Potomac River. Jacob joined Robert Peter and James Linigan in officially founding the town in 1765. They would control it until 1791 when the territories were given to the city of Washington and the United States government. The town hadn't been very prosperous for them anyway, as few settlers would come. When the second phase of the industrial revolution brought factories to Washington, D.C., immigrants started coming and the neighborhoods filled with laborers. They worked in the gas works, breweries and glass plants and the industrial smoke that came off these facilities made the city seem foggy, thus the name Foggy Bottom was associated with the neighborhood. One of the beers that came out of Olde Heurich Brewing Company was called Foggy Bottom. The brewery ceased operations in 1956 and the building was razed to make room for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Foggy Bottom would become home for a variety of government institutions. The U.S. Department of State was established as the Department of Foreign Affairs in July of 1789 and the name change to State came a few months later. They are responsible for our foreign policy. This was joined by later buildings housing the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. George Washington University is located in Foggy Bottom and is a federally chartered university that was named Columbian College originally. It opened in 1821. This was the first university founded under Washington, D.C.'s jurisdiction. The idea of the college came from President George Washington and he willed some of his shares in the Potomac Company to establish the school, although those shares lost value before they could be used for that. Later presidents and leaders would take up the mantle and get the school opened. It was renamed for President Washington in 1904. There are rumors that Mitchell Hall, which had once been a hotel, is haunted. We didn't really find any stories connected to that though.

The Old Naval Observatory was here from 1844 to 1893. While everything about the observatory has moved, the building itself is still there and is a National Historic Landmark. In 1877, the moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) were discovered from the observatory. There were a couple of bridges in Foggy Bottom that have legends connected to them. There was a bridge that linked the neighborhoods of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom to each other over Rock Creek. This bridge, known as M Street Bridge, was built in 1788 and on a stormy night, it collapsed. Unfortunately, there was a stagecoach on it at the time and so the coach, driver and horses all went into the water and drowned. That bridge was rebuilt. Now it is said that on dark and stormy nights, people see a ghostly stagecoach with a ghostly driver and horses driving frantically across it as "he had been wont to do in the days of the flesh." A drummer boy is said to have drowned near this bridge as well and his apparition is sometimes seen and sometimes a faint drum beat is heard. The Whitehurst Freeway was once the K Street Bridge over Rock Creek. A story started in 1908 that a headless male ghost would hang out on the K Street Bridge. Nobody knows how he lost his head and were not sure if people driving on the freeway ever see him.

There had been graveyards here in Foggy Bottom at one time, but none of them exist here anymore. A place that was once called Camp Hill because soldiers were stationed there during the War of 1812 had what the paper described as a 'tolerably large graveyard." That seems to have disappeared by 1866, but nobody knows if the bodies were removed. Another graveyard was where GWU's Medical School is now on 24th Street between H and I Streets. Christian Hines wrote of the site in 1866 that it was originally "on a considerable hill and on opening 24th Street, each side of the street was dug down to a foot below the graves, leaving on both sides open graves and coffins projecting into the street. I have myself seen pieces of skulls lying in the streets, some of which were the skulls of colored people." There were a couple of other smaller graveyards where bodies found floating in the river were buried. These graveyards may have attracted Sam McKeever who lived in Foggy Bottom. A legend told about him claims that he was a grave robber. During the day, he was a rag merchant, but he found more lucrative work at night body snatching and selling the bodies to medical schools. One story even claims that he jumped a woman in a Foggy Bottom park in 1918 and knocked her on the head, killing her. He carried the body to the medical school and collected his money. It had been dark and he didn't bother to look at his victim. He probably should have because when he arrived home, he found his wife missing and she never came home. He eventually realized what he had done. Some people claim his spirit roams Foggy Bottom. Perhaps looking for his wife?

Foggy Bottom has a four block Historic District of row houses that date back to the 1870s. These housed the working class Irish, German and African Americans from 1870 to 1915. These laborers came after the Civil War because the industry was growing so quickly here. The need for skilled and unskilled workers was great. And the plus about the row houses is that they were very affordable because Foggy Bottom wasn't a really desirable place to live because of the soot, smog and odors. The district is bounded by 24th and 26th Streets, New Hampshire Avenue and K and H Streets and covers three acres. 135 of the buildings are historic and many of the row houses measure only 12 feet wide. Their style is late Victorian and they stand two or three stories tall and are made from brick. Street level of many of the houses hosted businesses like bakeries, saloons and grocery stores. Gentrification eventually changed the cultural and racial make-up of the row houses. Snow's Court was affected heavily by this. C.A. Snow had been the publisher of the National Intelligencer and he built four frame dwellings that was nicknamed an "alley dwelling." As many as five black people would share a space that measured less than 700 square feet. The alley was considered overcrowded and unsafe. Hughs Court is known as Hughs Mews, but had the same reputation as Snows Court and is where Sam McKeever was said to live. Today, those same houses have obviously been renovated, but they now sell for half a million dollars. We couldn't find any stories of haunted row houses, but we did find a couple of haunted mansion in Foggy Bottom.

House on 25th Street 

All we know about the location of this house was that it was on 25th Street near Wisconsin Avenue on the border of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom. Paranormal Investigator Hans Holzer wrote the book "The Ghosts That Walk in Washington" in 1971 after he investigated several locations in the capitol city and one of the locations was this house. Holzer usually took psychic medium Ethel Meyers with him, but in DC it seems he worked with a variety of what he called "reputable" mediums. One of them joined him in the house for a seance and reported that it was haunted by "a very old black man who kept telling the assembled witnesses that he hated them for some reason" and that there was a woman named "Elizabeth Hanford, who claimed that her father had been in Lincoln’s Cabinet, and that she had died by hanging when she was only twenty-four." 

The Octagon House

We've talked about a haunted Octagon House on HGB before. That house had that name because it was built as an octagon with eight sides. That is not the case with this octagon house. It has eight angles, rather than eight sides. There is a distinctive circular center room at its front as well, that takes away from the octagonal shape. The house is located at 1799 New York Avenue NW and was built in 1799 for John Tayloe III, who was the wealthiest planter in the country at the time. He inherited his father's plantation, Mount Airy, which was part of a group of interdependent plantations that covered 60,000 acres around 100 miles from DC. Tayloe not only was a plantar, but he bred horses and raced them and also built ships. Later, he owned several iron foundries.

Tayloe built the Octagon House in DC after a very important person suggested that he do so. His sister, Sarah Tayloe, married President George Washington's half-nephew and the President suggested Tayloe build in DC. The plan was for the house to be a winter home, but after 1818, they lived in it full-time until 1855. While the house is the only thing still around on the property, there originally was an ice house, smokehouse, laundry, stables and carriage house and, of course, slave quarters. As hard as it is to believe now, where the Octagon House was built was out in the wilds. The architect of the house was the man who designed the United States Capitol, William Thornton. He got some help from James Hoban, who designed the White House. The reason that the house ended up with its unique angles was due to the plot's location along New York Avenue, which was diagonal. The house wouldn't have looked right if it was placed facing either of the streets that it was along, so Thornton related the house equally to both streets, which put the two walls at a 70 degree angle from each other. When completed, the house had six sides and was built from red brick and trimmed with Aquia Creek sandstone. The interior featured mahogany doors, gold leaf embellishments, brass fixtures and closets, which were nearly unheard of at the time. An interesting feature were these two secret doors leading into the back hall and dining-room, both of which had no key holes, hinges or openings showing on the blind side. And the staircase is really interesting two. They have been described as "serpentine" with the way they curve up three stories. 

John Tayloe had married Ann Ogle in 1792 and the couple had 15 children with three of them being born at the house. When the War of 1812 started, Tayloe joined the Virginia militia and because of his experience with horses, he was put in charge of the DC cavalry. Tayloe's wife had offered their house to host the French consul and so a French flag was flying outside of the house when British forces marched into the city in August 1814. This saved the house from being burned since it was technically a "diplomatic residence." 

During the War of 1812, James Madison was President and he and first lady, Dolley, had to flee the city and when they did, the First Lady had her pet parrot taken to Octagon House for safe keeping. The White House was burned, so the Madisons needed somewhere to stay. The Tayloes invited the Madisons to live at the Octagon House and so the President rented the house for $500 for a six month stay. Dolley threw parties every Wednesday night and these were apparently called "Squeezes." That nickname came from the fact that the parties were so crowded, people were squeezed together. Dolley liked to invite people from all political persuasions to talk and build relationships and she made sure to greet everybody personally. And then she went to the kitchen and whipped up some Dolley Madison snacks like Zingers - ok, we made that part up. On February 17, 1815, President Madison ratified the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, in the upstairs study at the Octagon. 

In 1828, John Tayloe III died at the Octagon House at the age of 57. His wife stayed on there until she died in 1855. The Tayloe children rented out the house after that. A girls' school rented it first and then in the 1870s, the Federal government used it as office space for the Hydrographic Office of the U.S. Navy. By the 1880s, it had become a multi-family apartment building housing factory workers. In 1898, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) started renting the house for their new national headquarters and they eventually bought it in 1902, holding onto it until the 1960s. The American Architectural Foundation took over the building and restored it to its 1818 appearance and opened the house as a museum in 1970, which it remains today. It is said that this is the most haunted house in Washington, D.C. Curators, staff and visitors have all reported paranormal activity. People hear rustling silk on the stairs and pounding on the walls. Floating spectral lights have been seen. The hanging lamp in the main hallway swings by itself. Footprints have been seen in dust on the top floor landing.  

The house had call bells for the servants and slaves and these bells began ringing on there own as far back as the mid-1800s. It is believed that the spirits of dead slaves ring the bells to announce their presence. The bells are no longer in the house and so not heard in our modern era, but there are many stories from the past. In 1874, Mary Clemmer Ames wrote about it: "It is an authenticated fact, that every night at the same hour, all the bells would ring at once. One gentleman, dining with Colonel Tayloe, when this mysterious ringing began, being an unbeliever in mysteries, and a very powerful man, jumped up and caught the bell wires in his hand, but only to be lifted bodily from the floor, while he was unsuccessful in stopping the ringing. Some declare that it was discovered, after a time, that rats were the ghosts who rung the bells; others, that the cause was never discovered, and that finally the family, to secure peace, were compelled to take the bells down and hang them in different fashion. Among other remedies, had been previously tried that of exorcism, but the prayers of the priest who had been summoned availed nought."

Virginia Tayloe Lewis was a granddaughter of John Tayloe III and she wrote a memoir on the family that was never published. She had grown up in the house and experienced the weirdness with the bells. She wrote, "The bells rang for a long time after my Grandfather Tayloe's death, and every one said that the house was haunted; the wires were cut and still they rang… Our dining room servant would come upstairs to ask if anyone rang the bell, and no one had." The wife of American consul to China, Samuel Laurence Gouverneur, Jr., was named Marian and she shared the following about the bells, "I have been told by the daughters of General George D. Ramsay, Chief of Ordnance for the United States Army and commander of the Washington Arsenal in Washington, D.C., that upon one occasion their father was requested by Colonel John Tayloe...to remain at the Octagon overnight, when we was obliged to be absent, as a protection to his daughters… While the members of the family were at the evening meal, the bells in the house began to ring violently. General Ramsay immediately arose from the table to investigate, but failed to unravel the mystery. The butler, in a state of great alarm, rushed into the dining-room and declared that it was the work of an unseen hand. As they continued to ring, General Ramsay held the rope which controlled the bells, but, it is said, they were not silenced."

Dolley Madison hadn't lived in the house for long and certainly didn't die in it, but her spirit is thought to return to the house on occasion. She apparently likes to host ghostly receptions and her full-bodied apparition has been seen in the drawing room and in the front hall. Her spirit leaves behind the scent of lilacs. People know the spirit is the First Lady because the apparition is seen with a turban. Dolley liked to wear them because they made her look taller. In the 1960s, the museum superintendent was Alric H. Clay and he claimed that something unseen was opening the house's doors late at night and would turn the lights on.

 Two tragedies occurred in the house with two of the Tayloes' daughters according to legend, but we found nothing to support the stories. They both died in accidents by falling down the stairs while in the process of arguing with their father about the men they wanted to marry. One daughter had fallen in love with a British soldier before the War of 1812 and died before that war as well. The other daughter died in 1817 after she eloped with a young man her father didn't approve of and when she came home to reconcile, they fought. The stories got started in 1908 in an article that ran in the Minneapolis Tribune. No names were included in the story and three of the daughters did die before they reached their 30s, but none were recorded to have died in the house. And one of them had been an infant and another died after her father had died. Nonetheless, the ghost lore says that one is often seen crumpled at the bottom of the staircase. Sometimes the light of a candle is seen going up and down the stairs by itself. The other daughter haunts the third floor landing and the stairs between the second and third floors.

A doctor did experience a haunting on the stairs at the house in the late 1940s. At the time, a caretaker named James Cyprus was living in the house with his wife and she had become ill. He asked the doctor to make a house call. After the doctor had spent some time with Mrs. Cyprus, he discussed her care with James and then asked him a strange questioned. He asked if there was someone else staying at the house that was a re-enactor or something. James looked confused and said that only he and his wife were in the house. The doctor then told him that he ran into a man on the stairs who had been wearing a military uniform dated to the early 1800s. And there could be a female spirit connected to the stairs that belongs to slave that worked in the mansion. The story behind her claims that a British soldier threw her down the stairs during the War of 1812. People claim that screams that are heard in the house, belong to her. The soldier that is seen might be the one who killed her as some say he either flung himself down the stairs or that one of the Tayloe sons killed the soldier. 

Another bit of ghost lore claims that a gambler was living in the house in the 1880s, possibly with women, so some think the house had been turned into a gambling den and brothel. One day, he won a bunch of money off a local farmer and that farmer thought that the gambler had cheated. That evening, the gambler was alone sleeping a third story bedroom when the farmer broke into the house, crept up the stairs and shot him to death. A 1912 newspaper article reported that a man was staying on the third floor and claimed that was visited every night by the spirit of a man who was killed over a card game held in that same room.

The Van Ness Mansion

This mansion no longer stands, unfortunately. It had been at the corner of 17th and Constitution Ave and was built in 1816 in the Greek Revival style. The stable that went with the house is still on the property that now hosts the Pan American Union Building. The mansion was built for John Peter Van Ness who was a Congressman from New York from 1801 to1803. Van Ness had married the daughter of David Burnes who had gotten very wealthy selling 450 acres of his land to the Federal government. That would be the land under the White House and the area all around it. We believe we mentioned in our White House episode that Burnes sometimes appears at the White House. Anyway, his daughter Marcia married Van Ness and she founded the city's first orphanage. He became a major general in the DC militia and the Mayor of the City of Washington, while also dipping his foot into banking and real estate. He also built a horse track on his property. The couple had a daughter whom they named Ann and she would be their only child. Heartbreak came when she was giving birth to their first grandchild. Ann died in childbirth and the baby was born still born. That was in 1823. Marcia would die in 1832 when a cholera epidemic swept through DC. In his grief, Peter commissioned a grand neoclassical family mausoleum at Georgetown’s Oak Hill Cemetery and had all deceased family interred. He was completely devastated and all the life seemed to leave him. Peter wandered the mansion alone and withdrew completely from society. The mansion fell into disrepair. He eventually passed in 1846 and the house was demolished in 1908. The government gave the property to the Pan American Union and they built their headquarters there in 1910. It was fashioned in Beaux Arts style. 

When the mansion still stood, people claimed that it was haunted and many think this began when Van Ness withdrew into the house. People claimed to hear the dreadful screams of a woman, whom some think mught have been Ann in childbirth. People who visited the house before it was demolished claimed to hear disembodied footsteps and they would see the apparition of a woman in a period bonnet. Benjamin Henry Latrobe had designed the house and he also designed the stable that sits at the northwest corner of the property. It was refurbished and houses the OAS Art Museum of the America’s offices. The building also houses a terrifying haunting. Apparently when Peter died, a grand memorial was thrown for him and a carriage drawn by his finest six white horses took his body to the cemetery to join his family in their mausoleum. For some reason, the ghosts of those six horses are seen galloping around the property and they are headless. We have no idea why they have no heads. These spirits are often seen on March 7, the date of Peter’s death. After they run around for a while - maybe looking for their heads - they return to the stable just passing through the wall. 

Foggy Bottom has an interesting history and has played a significant role in the beginnings of the American adventure. Is it possible that these various locations in the neighborhood of Foggy Bottom are haunted? That is for you to decide!