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!
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