This Month in History - The Haymarket Affair
In the month of May, on the 4th, in 1886, a bombing took place at a labor demonstration in Chicago, Illinois. The event became known as the Haymarket affair. This was a rally that began peacefully on May 3rd, but then erupted into violence when police fired at the crowd of strikers. It was organized to support striking workers who were demanding to reduce their work shifts to eight hours per day. The initially peaceful gathering was held at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant on the West Side of Chicago. On the 4th, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they were working to disperse the crowd. The resulting gunfire from the police resulted in the deaths of seven officers and four civilians, with many others injured. Eight suspected anarchists were identified and charged with the bombing. The legal proceedings made international news. During the trial, one person was identified as possibly having built the bomb, but evidence at the hearing indicated that none of the defendants on trial had thrown it, with only two of the eight defendants on trial having been present at the Haymarket at the time of the bombing. Seven people were sentenced to death and one person received 15 years in prison. Governor Richard H. Oglesby commuted two of the death sentences to life in prison. One person died by suicide while awaiting his execution and the remaining four were hanged on November 11, 1887. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld criticized the trial and pardoned the remaining four deceased defendants.
Haunted Fort Smith, Arkansas
Fort Smith in Arkansas was the gateway to the West. The city is over 200 years old and got its start as a military outpost. There are several haunted locations here that are connected to that military heritage. And some are connected to the law, like the US Marshals. And then there are places of ill-repute. Fort Smith was a place where outlaws, bootleggers, gamblers and ladies-of-the-evening flourished on the traffic that came up the Arkansas River. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of Fort Smith!
US Army troops established Fort Smith in 1817 in Arkansas to help keep the peace between the Osage and Cherokee. They named it for General Thomas Adams Smith, commander of the United States Army Rifle Regiment. People started to settle around the fort and it was expanded in the 1830s. The town of Fort Smith was founded by John Rogers and was incorporated in 1842. It was a military and supply center during the Mexican-American War and the California Gold Rush. During the Civil War, the Battle of Devil's Backbone took place nearby and the Confederate post was occupied by Union troops. Formerly enslaved people took refuge in Fort Smith after the war. The fort was abandoned in 1871, but parts of the original fort are still visible at the Fort Smith National Historic Site. Before the historic site was established, the site was a federal court under hanging Judge Isaac Parker who sentenced 160 people to death and hanged 79 of them. The courthouse is part of the historic site. Fort Smith had an interesting history through the 1900s with legalized prostitution for awhile, Jim Crow laws, lynchings and strikes. The city continues to hold a strong military presence with Fort Chaffee and it also has quite a few haunted locations.
Fort Chaffee (Chay fee)
Fort Chaffee was built in 1941 and started as Camp Chaffee, named for a World War I Cavalry officer named Adna Chaffee Jr. This eventually stretched over 72,000-acres. This military base was the training site for thousands of troops heading overseas during World War II. German prisoners-of-war were housed here. It later served as an annual reserve training center. Vietnamese and Cuban refugees were housed here during the 1970s.
The Arkansas National Guard still uses 66,000 acres of the property and the other 6,000 has been redeveloped. 700 buildings were demolishedTwo interesting facts: Elvis Presley was processed into the army at Fort Chaffee in 1958 and Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon, worked at Fort Chaffee in the 1970s helping Vietnamese refugees at the camp. People hear disembodied footsteps and whispers, some people feel cold spots and there is a story about a disembodied arm floating in mid-air. Ghost Adventures visited the fort during Season 4. Their evidence included strange noises like music, work sounds and banging. A ball of light was captured flying into Zak's chest. And they captured the following EVPs: "It's Getting Hot In Here", "Its Not The Cops", "Watch Your Back", "Come And Get Me", "If You Believe That ****", "Get On The Bed", "Coffee, Cafe", "Get Out", "It's Hot In This Building and I'm Here To **** You."
Fort Smith National Historic Site
When it comes to the former Fort Smith, all that is left of that are the stone foundations. The Old Commissary Building still stands and is the oldest standing building at the historic site. This was built between 1838 and 1846 and initially was used for food and supply storage. Within a few years, it was the largest and busiest supply posts in the southwest.
Both sides ended up using the building during the Civil War. From 1875 to 1890, Hanging Judge Isaac C. Parker’s office was on the second floor of the building. The first floor became home for the Hammersly family from 1890 to 1896 since two members of the family were court officials; Jacob Hammersly was the Court Crier and his daughter, Florence Hammersly, was a Deputy Court Clerk for Judge Parker. A group of local women saved the building when plans were made to demolish it. They opened it in 1910 as the Old Commissary Museum, which was the city’s first history museum. When the NPS made the building part of the historic site, the museum moved to the Atkinson-Williams Warehouse and changed its name to Fort Smith Museum of History. The Old Enlisted Men's Barracks was built in 1846 and was a two-story structure with porches on both sides at the first and second floor levels. Stone was quarried from Belle Point. A fire ripped through the building in 1849 because of a defective flue and it had to be rebuilt. It continued to house single enlisted men until the fort closed in 1871. But that wasn't it for the barracks. The next iteration for it would be as the courthouse for Judge Isaac Parker. While Judge Parker sounds like he would be a harsh man with the nickname of "Hanging Judge," he was actually a man who believed in redemption and he would weep as he sentenced a man to death. He would preach at the gallows before hangings. Parker had arrived in Fort Smith in 1875 at the age of 40 and at the time, outlaws had operated in the area with impunity for years and the justice system was in shambles. Parker fixed that and the gallows helped. The jail and US Marshal's Office was also located in the barrack's building. The jail was in the basement and had been the former mess hall and most people referred to it as hell on the border. Now it had two large cells that could hold up to 50 men each. There was limited ventilation and a bucket for the toilet. Today, the Barracks is the visitor center. The courtroom had been recreated on one end of the second floor with period desks and chairs.
Eighty-six men would die on the gallows here, but it is the Judge who is thought to be the predominant spirit because he suffered psychologically and had nightmares constantly after becoming the judge. Visitors feel a heaviness near the recreated gallows structure. Anomalies appear in photos.
A cleaning lady had been there late one night to do some dusting and when she entered the courtroom, she saw a man dressed in a dark period suit, sitting before the judge's bench. She excused herself, not wanting to disturb the man. She thought maybe he was a re-enactor or somebody left over from an event held earlier that day. But then she thought, wait a minute, nobody should be here at 10 o'clock at night. When she went back into the courtroom, the man was gone. Visitors have claimed to see this same figure and they describe him as being a large, heavyset man with a dark beard, and that is how Parker looked in his later years. People have also heard disembodied footsteps, smelled cigar and pipe smoke and heard whispered conversations and the rapping of a gavel.
AM Nightshade wrote "Arkansas: True Hauntings, Urban Legends, and Paranormal Encounters from the Natural State" and in there he shares, "A ranger named Tom Yates, who worked the site for fourteen years before his retirement in 2018, described his first experience with the jail's sounds in an interview with the Fort Smith Times Record. He had been closing up the building on a winter evening when he heard what he was certain was a man crying in the lower cell block. He went down the stairs expecting to find a visitor who had stayed past closing. The cell block was empty. The sound stopped when he reached the bottom of the stairs and did not resume. Yates had several subsequent experiences in the jail over his fourteen years, all of them in the auditory range: sounds that had no visible source and that stopped when he approached them."
Author Bud Steed had been taking pictures of the Barracks one day and he saw a man looking out the window from the upper floor. He didn't think much of it until the group he was with went inside and he realized that the upper level was padlocked and no one was in there. There were no other entrances or ways to get to the window. The shadowy form of a man has been seen hanging out around many of the museum's displays. (Jail experiences from Steed book)
Fort Smith Museum of History
As we mentioned, The Fort Smith Museum of History is now located in the Atkinson-Williams Warehouse Building, which is located at 320 Rogers Avenue. This four-story brick building was built in 1907 and designed by architect Tllman Reddick. This was a commercial warehouse owned by Colonel Benjamin Atkinson and W. Buckner Williams who specialized in hardware. They ran the Atkinson-Williams Hardware Company into the first decades of the 20th century.
A warehouse district grew up around it as this became a wholesale distribution center. The company became an exclusive distributor for John Deere and Studebaker. In 1979, that building became the home to the Old Fort Museum, now the Fort Smith Museum of History. The museum has more than 35,000 artifacts in its collection. The third floor is said to be the most haunted. Leisa Gramlich was the museum's executive director and shares that one of her most frightening experiences happened one day as she arrived to the third floor. She said, "We got off the elevator and heard a child's voice plain as day, like a child running and yelling. Playing is what it sounded like, and I even walked from the elevator back to the back here and said, 'Who's up there?', and I hear the voice jump from that corner to this corner so I came over here and there was nothing here." Investigators have reported getting a sudden cold chill in the museum's basement. A slamming gavel is heard on the second floor that has some of Judge Parker's furniture. A child ghost has been seen on the second floor too.
Miss Laura's Social Club
The Row had been the former red-light district in Fort Smith. One of the brothels still stands today as a museum, Miss Laura's Social Club. This Victorian was built in 1896 and started as the Riverfront Commercial Hotel and was converted to a brothel in 1903 by Laura Ziegler, hence the name Miss Laura's.
The house was quite grand and soon earned the nickname as the "Queen of the Row." The brothel was high class and only accepted the best clientele and working girls who made three times what was charged in other bordellos. The girls couldn't come downstairs unless they were fully dressed. Miss Laura made sure they got regular medical exams. Miss Laura sold the house in 1911 to "Big Bertha" Dean who ran it until it closed in 1948. The building served a variety of uses as it fell into disrepair and then in 1963 a man bought it and did a full remodel to open it as a restaurant. In 1992, it became a visitor's center and today is a museum. There are several ghosts here. People feel cold spots and catch the scent of cigars and brandy as though men still sit in the parlor waiting to converse with the girls and pick their "date" for the evening. The sounds of laughter have been heard audibly. A woman in a white gown has been seen, especially walking the upper floor. A ghostly piano is frequently heard playing in the mansion.
The Clayton House
The Clayton House started as the Sutton House in 1852. William Henry Harrison Clayton bought it in 1876 and doubled the size of the house before moving in his family in 1882. He changed the look of it to Victorian Gothic/Italianate style as well. Clayton was the federal prosecuting attorney for the hanging judge. He had married a woman named Florence and they had six daughters and one son. Florence was part of a literary group that helped to establish the first public library in Fort Smith and Clayton was active with the Freemasons and Knight Templars in town.
The house was six thousand square feet and had a formal parlor, a study, sitting room, dining room, ornate coal-burning fireplaces, a semi-detached servants’ quarters, a kitchen, four bedrooms and a common living area near the bedrooms. The Claytons lived here until 1897 and they left behind a few pieces of furniture that are still with the house, including a writing desk, a tea table and the family Bible. The house was a boarding house owned by Emma High for many years after the Claytons. Before the Claytons bought the house, it served as a Civil War hospital for the Union and many of the spirits here are thought to go back to this time.
People claim to smell weird scents and some have been touched and had their hair pulled and there have been full-bodied apparitions seen. There is the Lady in Brown who seems to be residual as she usually sits just looking out a window and doesn't respond to anyone. She wears a long brown skirt and white linen high-necked blouse buttoned all the way up with her grey hair in a bun. People think she might be Emma High. She is seen for a moment and then disappears.
Bud Steed wrote "Haunted Fort Smith & Van Buren" and in it he shares a story a tour guide named Amy shared with him, "Amy had been working in the office, which is located at the back of the home when she thought she smelled something burning - an odd type of smell that was unfamiliar to her. She searched all throughout the house, checking to make sure that nothing was on fire. Finding nothing that would account for the smell, she went back to the office to continue her work, but while passing through the study, she once again smelled the odd smoky odor. While standing there trying to figure out where it was coming from, she realized that it seemed to be all around her but concentrated just in the study, not in the adjoining rooms. At about that time, a maintenance worker who was doing some restoration work outside came in for a moment, and she asked him if he smelled the smoke as well. He said that he did and it smelled like high-end pipe tobacco. A bit nervous now, she half-jokingly asked whoever it was that was smoking if they could refrain from doing it in the house and while she was working. Within moments, the smell of pipe tobacco completely disappeared, and she has never experienced it since." Perhaps this had been Clayton visiting the house in the afterlife since the scent seem concentrated to the study. Or something residual frozen in time, although it went away when asked to do so.
Lanky-Concentrate wrote on Reddit, "So, I currently work here! There is a servant's door with a large buffet on the other side. This door has a history of opening on its own! It's happened at 2 in the morning when no one was in the house! On the other side of the door is a table with a silver tea set that rattles all on its own. I've had so many experiences that it's easy to block it out which sounds insane. In the same area I've seen a woman several times. Unsure if it's the nurse or a servant. There are also footsteps in the study that you get used to."
OceanStorm1914 had worked at the Clayton House and they wrote on Reddit, "All that being said, there are 4 or 5 active spirits and residual energy/hauntings from when it was a Union hospital during the Civil War. There's the gentleman in black (men wore dark colored clothes, he's always been perfectly polite to me), 1 or 2 women (not sure on that count. I've seen one lady almost clear as day except no color and others have said they've seen someone else), a young girl, and a grey cat. Based on hair style, I'd say it is a photo of the girl. She's most likely around 10, maybe younger, and during a spirit box session conducted during an investigation the team let me shadow and help with, her name is Grace. To me, she was a sweet heart and a shy little thing. I never physically saw her like the 3 others, but once we were introduced she made her self known. Edit: took another look at the photo. Someone mentioned the spirit having a shawl or similar and that's a definite possibility. If it is, it's the woman in brown that I never saw."
Martha Siler had been the former director of the Clayton House and she had some experiences. She said that one bedroom on the second floor had doors that would slam hard and people would hear music playing and hear boots stomping. Martha saw the apparition of a woman dressed in a linen shirt and brown skirt in Mr. Clayton’s study one day. A carpenter took some pictures and he captured what appeared to be a woman in one of them and he was the only one in the house. Paranormal Investigation and Research of Western Arkansas has been to the house numerous times and recorded EVPs, including a meowing cat, a man shouting obscenities and someone calling Anna.
There is a spirit that hangs out on the upstairs landing area and the bedrooms near the stairs and people call him "The Angry Man." People think he was a soldier and he is often seen dressed in black and he paces the floor impatiently. He was possibly seen at a wedding at the house. (Printed story) A volunteer once heard the piano in the house playing. She freaked out because this piano is a Mathushek orchestral square piano from 1884 that is worth $40,000. She thought a visitor was pounding on it. She ran to the room where it was and the music stopped right before she got there. She looked into the sitting room and no one was in there. She searched the whole downstairs and no one was there. It then occurred to her that maybe a spirit was playing it so she asked aloud if the person would stop playing the piano because it was an expensive antique and if anything happened to it, she would lose her ability to work there. She never heard the piano play again.
Fort Smith has all the charms of a southern city, including the ghosts. Maybe. Are these places in Fort Smith haunted? That is for you to decide!
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