This Month in History - Sweetest Day 3rd Sat Every October
In the month of October, on the 8th, in 1921 Herbert Birch Kingston and a committee of local confectioners established the first Sweetest Day in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to this, Candy Day was originated in 1916 by The National Confectioners Association as a commercial push to encourage people to buy more sweets. This promotion stopped temporarily because of sugar rationing during World War I. The celebration's evolution into The Sweetest Day was begun by Kingston and a group of candy makers who sought to bring joy and comfort to orphans, the elderly, and those who felt forgotten. Silent film stars like Theda Bara and Ann Pennington handed out candy in the 1930s, which made the charity event famous. Over the decades, it has evolved from a regional act of charity into a broader occasion for expressing appreciation, love, and friendship. Today, the Sweetest Day is celebrated every 3rd Saturday of October. People celebrate by sharing greeting cards, small gifts, or sweets with loved ones and neighbors as a simple reminder that a kind word can enrich daily life.
The Black Jail of Guthrie (GUH three)
An abandoned and decaying building in Guthrie, Oklahoma has served a number of purposes throughout its history. This started as the Black Jail and then became a place of worship for the Nazarene Church. Then it was a social club before a cult known as the Samaritan Foundation made this their headquarters. And then there was the murder. It's no wonder that people say the place is haunted. Guthrie has a couple of other haunted locations as well including a train depot, theater and former saloon. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Black Jail and other haunts of Guthrie.
Guthrie was the first capitol of Oklahoma. The history of this town is a crazy one as it seems to have started overnight. The historic Land Run, or Harrison's Hoss Race, brought 10,000 people to Guthrie in a single afternoon, which was quite the thing for a town that was only a railroad stop before the Land Run. In 1887, the spot was used as a coaling and water stop named Deer Creek along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The Harrison part of the Harrison's Hoss Race name was for President Benjamin Harrison. He had signed a proclamation on March 23, 1889 opening up the Unassigned Lands in the Oklahoma District. This made two million acres available for settlement under the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862, which stated that settlers could claim up to 160 acres of public land and if they improved it over the next five years, they would get the title to the land. Prospective settlers from across the United States came by wagon, horse or railroad. Fifty thousand people surrounded the Unassigned Lands on April 22, 1889 and at noon, the signal was given that the entry points were open. An avalanche of wagons and horsemen surged forward. Ten thousand of them ended up in Guthrie and a tent city sprang up, which was replaced quickly with wooden buildings and Guthrie became one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi. Wooden buildings were replaced by brick and sandstone later. The Guthrie Chamber of Commerce reports in their history by "August 1889, The Guthrie City Directory listed the following: 6 banks,16 barbers, 16 blacksmiths, 17 carpenters, 2 cigar manufacturers, 5 newspapers, 7 hardware stores, 15 hotels, 19 pharmacists, 22 lumber companies, 39 doctors, 40 restaurants, and an astounding 81 lawyers!" In 1890, Guthrie became the Territorial Capital. When Oklahoma became an official state in 1907, Guthrie was its first state capital. The state government moved to Oklahoma City in 1910. There are over 2,000 buildings in the Guthrie Historic District and just outside that boundary is the First territorial Jail, commonly known as the Black Jail.
The Black Jail was one of the very first Federal Prisons in the Midwest. Today, it sits on the NW corner of 2nd Street and Noble Avenue and was built in 1892. The jail was constructed with 18-inch thick limestone and brick walls that were dark in color and so the inmates took to calling it the Black Jail. As was the case with these old jails, the stone construction and era left the interiors stiflingly hot in the summers and freezing in the winters. These temperature changes led to illness.
Despite being solidly built and advertised as inescapable with a metal cage surrounding the front entrance on the second floor at the top of the stairs, inmates did escape. The first escapee was W.D. Lockett, who escaped in 1895 after he was imprisoned for counterfeiting. He escaped by prying the lock off his cell and then he went through a window connected to the kitchen. Bill Doolin was another of the inmates to escape. Doolin was an American outlaw who many believe was the Wild West's greatest gang leaders. He led the Doolin-Dalton gang and their specialty was robbing banks, trains and stagecoaches. Doolin had been born in Arkansas in 1858 and at the age of 23, he headed to Indian Territory to be a cowboy. He found work as a cattleman under Oscar Halsell who also employed a variety of men who would become outlaws. One of these men was Emmett Dalton. Emmett and two of his brothers would form the Dalton Gang. Doolin would have his first run in with the law in Coffeyville, Kansas when he got drunk and disorderly with some other guys and a shootout with lawmen ensued - that escalated fast! The lawmen were wounded and Doolin got away. He joined the Dalton Gang shortly thereafter and is thought to have been holding horses for them in an alley during a bank robbery that ended up with four of the gang members dead and Emmett wounded with 23 gunshots. Doolin formed his own gang at the end of 1892 that he called The Wild Bunch. The gang would be one of the most powerful in the Old West. Doolin was captured while using the sulfur springs in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and he ended up in the Black Jail. As Deputy Bill Tilghman escorted Doolin into Guthrie, a crowd of 2,000 people lining the street cheered. On July 5, 1896, Doolin and 13 other inmates broke out of the jail. Four of them had overpowered one of the guards. Doolin used a revolver to get the only other guard at the jail to unlock the cells of nine other prisoners. The group locked one guard in the bull pen and the other in a cell and then took a bunch of coats and vests that belonged to the jailer and guards and took a few weapons. They ran into the night. Doolin was tracked down two months later and killed by a posse.
The county no longer needed the jail by 1924 and it was closed. The Guthrie Church of the Nazarene bought the building and remodeled it so they could use it as their church building. The third floor was removed so the second floor could be expanded into a sanctuary. First floor cells were converted into classrooms. Another pastor took over the church in 1934 and the congregation surged, so the building was expanded again by 2,000 square feet. The original red sandstone was covered by white stucco. The church occupied it until 1970.
The Logan County Association for [Mentally Handicapped] Citizens used the building for a while and then it was donated to the territorial Gunfighters Club in 1990. And then came the jail's cult period. The Samaritan Foundation Cult acquired the building in 1993. This cult was connected to the disappearance and death of Allen Ross. Allen Ross was a Chicago cameraman and indie filmmaker who made seven films with German filmmaker Christian Bauer. Right after they completed their final film, he vanished without a trace. Christian Bauer made the documentary "Missing Allen" in 2001, four years after Ross' disappearance, since the police didn't seem to be doing anything. He investigated what happened to his friend. The Samaritan Foundation was started by a woman named Linda Greene. Greene had become a nurse and was working in an innovative Oklahoma hospice in the 1980s. She was a sometimes actress and poet and married five times. Linda embraced the esoteric and before long, she had surrounded herself with 60 like-minded people that she at first led in self-help seminars. Before long, this was a religious cult based on her obtaining answers with dowsing. These people believed that Linda could answer the great mysteries of life by using swaying pendulums to give them answers. She would move a pendulum over objects and that pendulum would give the Samaritans guidance on the biggest and smallest of decisions. It was believed that the pendulum would fight off evil forces too. And then Linda also wrote books she believed would revolutionize the world. The teachings got crazier as the group went along as Linda promoted an obsessive fear of government agents and telephones and zombies. Yep, they feared the walking dead before it was a popular series. There was a custody battle that drew unwanted attention to the cult because a mother had taken her two children with her to the cult and then told her husband, Jonathan, she wasn't coming home. He fought for the kids and during the two days of testimony during the custody court case, the Samaritan Foundation’s teachings were exposed to the public. The Branch Davidian Waco thing had just happened and people thought the groups were connected. Jonathon testified to his wife’s “bizarre” behavior beginning 18 months earlier when she began receiving correspondence from the Samaritan Foundation. She was swinging a pendulum over things including the children to remove evil. To defeat bar codes on product labels, which Greene also claimed were evil, groceries were placed on circular drawings. He found the same drawings underneath the children’s pillows. It was also revealed that Linda taught her followers that vampires could steal their souls through the phone lines. And she claimed to be Christ. Johnathan won the case and this was the beginning of the end for the group as officials started paying attention to them and eventually condemned the jail building. The cult left Guthrie for Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1995 when the pendulum told them to go. After Allen disappeared, the group scattered to the wind.
Allen Ross first picked up a camera as a teenager in Chicago. After leaving home, he worked driving a cab while he lived a bohemian life in a downtown loft. Allen met Christian and they started making films together featuring odd and unexplained topics. One of these films featured UFO abductees.
In 1993, Allen met Linda Greene and fell in love with her. At the time, Linda was working as a nurse and writing books. Allen illustrated one of the books for her. He told all of his family and friends that he was very happy with Linda, but they were still shocked when he announced that he was leaving his beloved Chicago for rural Oklahoma. Linda and Allen ended up in Guthrie and Allen would send postcards back to his twin brother Brad. One such note read, "I seized the opportunity to seek answers for questions I had not been able to ask." Another cryptically read, "The masters will shut you up in a pen with others, then it will be up to you to find a house to enter." Allen told everyone that they were living in a former jail and church in Guthrie that Linda called The Monastery. Allen met up with Christian to make their final documentary in 1995 and they wrapped filming in New Orleans. Christian Bauer told Dennis Murphy in 2005 that Linda showed up in New Orleans and she was nothing like what he expected. He described her as being "very demanding. She was very controlling. She was not the caring kind of woman I had imagined her to be when I saw her on the picture the first time. Allen seemed embarrassed by her presence. When she mugged for his camera, Allen panned away. He's telling her, stay away from us but she follows the camera and she dances. He wants to get away from it, and he continues his pan and she just disappears out of the frame." Allen left New Orleans and returned to Wyoming with Linda and no one saw him again. Eventually, Linda's ex-husband contacted the Cheyenne Police and told them that Allen had been murdered. He even said that Allen was buried in the basement of his and Linda's home. The police didn't find anything and shortly thereafter, Linda faxed the police and Christian Bauer and accused her ex-husband of killing Allen. She wrote, "After Allen was shot, he was dragged perhaps downstairs. I saw Denis carry two sacks of concrete, which were by the back door, downstairs."
Allen's body was finally discovered exactly where Denis said it was, buried under concrete in the basement of the home he shared with Linda. Investigators zeroed in on Linda and her devoted follower, Julia Williams, but Linda died of liver failure in 2002 before she could face justice. Julia was eventually arrested and convicted as an accessory to murder after the fact.
After the Samaritan Foundation left the building in 1995, it sat abandoned and has continued to deteriorate through the years. It is owned privately and unsafe to enter, so there are no tours there. There are tales of it being haunted and there are believed to be several ghosts that wander the empty spaces.
Ghost Adventures investigated in April of 2017 during Season 14. The brought a Ouija Board with them and as it spelled out the first word, Aaron's camera kept going in and out of focus. The
Ouija Board spelled out: "JP", "No" (x2), "1119", "Yes" (x3), "1", "Kill", "Get out", "2", "Zozo", "Mama", "Kill one of you", "Jay", "Fami...", "Kidney." Of course, Zak ends up feeling like he is in a trance. Everybody felt a cold energy and a shifting in energy that got very heavy. They heard disembodied footsteps, a door slam and strange noises. The overhead night vision camera stopped working on its own. The Puck Device fed out the words "Paranormal", "Malevolent", "Holy" and "Assault." The X Camera caught a large piece of plywood falling to the ground after it allegedly levitated.
Throughout the years, people would claim to hear weird noises in the jail. Imagine the sound of a cell door shutting during the pastor's sermon. Disembodied voices have been heard many times and people even claim to hear phantom singing when standing outside the jail.
A group did an investigation of the jail and one of the members shared with Professor Caleb Lack, "When I was there it was rather dangerous. I was assigned to write about it from an author of the book "Ghostly Tales from America's Jails." I personally witnessed a few unexplainable moments. Walking up the main floor of the prison, I noticed a large hole in the floor. Peering into the basement, I stopped walking to observe and take some photos. Lightly behind me I heard a few dragging footsteps lingering. I was truly startled because I was wearing soft-soled shoes. Another experience that caught my attention was while I was in the basement photographing James Phillips cell, I noticed what appeared to me a man walking across the window. In hopes that it was one of the volunteer workers, I rushed up the stairs to speak to him. I ran to the front door and I stepped outside and looked up the street and around and there was no one in sight. While standing in the cellblock hallway of the basement, my associates and I were startled by the sound of metal hitting metal similar to the closing of a cell block door. There's only one metal door left in the prison and that door was about 3 ft in front of us within our view. We searched for another door and with no luck at all, we were not able to locate the origin of the noise or recreate the noise with any debris in the area. We had the sense of being followed and the strong sense of being watched. It was very uncomfortable."
James Phillips was an inmate in the jail in 1907 and he was the first white man sentenced to be hanged there. As he watched the gallows being built, his fear grew and one day he collapsed and died with the coroner reporting that he had died of fright. His spirit continues to hang out in the old jail. His spirit is seen looking through the window across Second Street where the gallows would have been being built.
Stone Lion Inn
The Stone Lion Inn was built in 1907 by the Houghton family. They had begun their life in Guthrie in a home next to where they built this new home. This cost them around $12,000 to build, which made it the most expensive home in the town at the time. The mansion was 8,000 square feet and had four floors with bedrooms upstairs and a library and parlor on the first floor. The Houghtons had twelve children and unfortunately, one of their children died from whooping cough. This was seven-year-old Irene and the story goes that her nurse had given her the wrong medicine. The Houghtons eventually fell on hard times and they moved from the house in the 1920s. The mansion then became the Smith Funeral Home in 1929. The next owners would be the Walker family, who bought it in the 1950s. They owned it for more than thirty years and then a woman named Becky Luker bought it in 1986. The house had caught her eye when she saw it advertised in the window of a real estate business. She was inspired and believed that this house would make a perfect bed and breakfast. She recruited a bunch of people and they got it renovated and converted into the bed and breakfast.
Dinner is served in the oak-paneled dining room and the cook can also be seen preparing meals in the 200-year-old French kitchen. There is seating for ten in the kitchen. The interior features six suites that can be booked and leaded glass bookshelves, Adam’s staircase, bathrooms with clawfooted tubs, 3 fireplaces and huge pockets-doors. The mansion’s grounds have pecan trees, flowers, and lilac bushes. A scrumptious breakfast is served in the mornings. And on weekends, the B & B hosts murder mystery parties.
Becky shared the following story that probably goes back to its funeral home days. On the day Luker closed on the house, she did a tour of the house with Mrs. Walker, who at the time was an elderly woman with curly bright blue hair. The furniture had been auctioned off, but there was still one table in the house. Becky said, "I really didn’t know what it was at the time. I said, ‘Aren’t you going to take this table?’ She says, ‘No sugar, we don’t have room for that.’ I asked if it was a baker’s table, and she said, ‘Well no I’m not sure what it’s used for, but use it any way you see fit.’ She knew damn well it was an embalming table." That table is still in the bed and breakfast and guests will see it upon entering and it usually is holding a tray of Coke products and an ice bucket on top. But that isn't all that is left over from the house's past. There are spirits. Becky had no doubt there were ghosts when they started renovations. It seemed that the spirits didn't want their home changed. Luker told the Ocolly website in 2014, "I had no idea about the history of this place when I bought it. I’m a skeptic, but some things are hard to look past...Steps going up and down the stairs, doors opening and closing, but when you’re living with that many people, you’re thinking someone must be getting up to go to the bathroom or having a cigarette on the front porch. When everything was done and my mother and the workers went home, we still were hearing the noises. Then I began to think, ‘This house has issues.’"
Becky even found herself calling the police on occasion. She believes the third floor is the most haunted. Becky shared that her son would neatly put away his toys at night before going to bed, but in the mornings, he would find his toys scattered all over the room. Perhaps Irene is enjoying the toys. There are those who think that her father is in the house as well and his pipe tobacco can be smelled.
Guests have seen child-size apparitions and claimed that these figures tucked them into bed or they have heard ghost children and complained the following day about noisy children in a bed and breakfast that had no overnight child guests. A wooden ball has also been seen rolling across the mansion floors. A staff member shared, "The first time, I was doing laundry down there, and the door locked on me. I sat down there for a while before someone came home and heard me. It happened a couple more times, but I remembered to use another exit I forgot about the first time whenever it happened again. I prop up things against the door so it won’t happen again." She also shared, "The doors will open and close in sequence. When you’ve been in this house as long as we have, you know which door is opening or closing from anywhere in the house. It’s always in the same order when it happens." And also, "Ebony, my daughter, was 5 at this time, but she would be the only one who went upstairs to play by herself. I asked her what she was doing once, and she said she was playing with that little girl. I said, ‘What little girl?’ She said, ‘The girl that plays upstairs.’"
When Becky bought the White Peacock Inn as a sister property, she had a strange experience. The Stone Lion Inn took on a severe, unexplainable rancid smell that spread over the entire first floor of the inn. Believing the main house was "jealous" of the new property, the owner sat on the stairs and verbally reassured the building that they weren't abandoning it for the White Peacock. The smell immediately vanished.
Blue Belle Saloon
The Blue Belle Saloon is located at 224 W. Harrison Ave. Yelp reports that it is permanently closed due to some property tax issues, but it last was a pizza parlor. The saloon started in a tent when the Land Run happened and then in 1899, it became the brick structure that still stands today. The ground floor was the saloon with silent film cowboy star Tom Mix working as bartender from 1902 to 1904. The upper level was a brothel run by a woman known as Miss Lizzie. Miss Lizzie was considered a great businesswoman and philanthropist in the town, but she came with a very dark side. She was a trafficker and several of the girls in her establishment weren't there by their choice. And when we say girls, we mean girls. As young as thirteen. What Miss Lizzie would do is approach a family in need and offer to help them out, but this came with a heavy price. A daughter would have to go with Miss Lizzie. At some point, one of the women at the brothel was murdered by a patron. There are claims this is the most haunted place in Oklahoma, so its unfortunate that it sits empty now.
People claim to hear disembodied female voices and singing. Disembodied footsteps are heard coming from empty rooms. Staff and guests report objects moving on their own. There are several apparitions that have been seen. One is a cowboy attired man who sports a black hat. He likes to hang out at the bar. The madame Miss Lizzie has been seen in the rooms upstairs, as well as two of the working girls. People have named them Estelle and Claudia and Claudia is believed to be the one who was beaten to death by a client.
The Old Santa Fe Depot
The Guthrie Depot was the Old Santa Fe Train Depot. Today, it is a private wedding venue owned by Adam and Abigail Ropp. There was an original wooden structure built in 1887 that sat here until a flood destroyed it. The brick Santa Fe Depot was completed in 1903. Nine lines of railways were coming through in 1904 and the finest restaurant in town was opened named the Harvey House. Many Harvey Houses had hotels too, but not this location. It did have the famous Harvey Girls though. Their living quarters were on the second floor and they had a Harvey Matron. She monitored everyone coming and going on the stairs. The station closed to passenger rail service in October of 1979. The building was boarded up and sat empty until the late 1990s when it was restored. There are several spirits here. One is called the Upstairs Woman. People claim to see a spectral woman looking out from the second-floor windows. She is usually in a period dress, but other times she is wearing the Harvey Girls waitress uniform. So maybe there are two female apparitions here? Fred Harvey's wife loved the Guthrie Depot. Her name was Pearl and some people believe she may be one of the ghosts. Chairs pull out on their own and drinks mysteriously show up on tables.
There is a basement apparition too. In 2008, the Mid America Paranormal Science Team investigated the tight basement area. Within minutes of setting up equipment, they captured video footage of a torso-up apparition that leaned over before moving directly into a wall.
The Pollard Theater
Most theaters are haunted and this one claims to harbor five spirits, but there is a good reason for that that has nothing to do with theatrical productions. This started as a large wooden dry goods store, built shortly after the Land Run of 1989. The building was rebuilt with brick and native stone after a fire in 1901 and reopened as the Patterson Furniture Store. Now as a furniture store, it was responsible for building coffins and thus, it served as the local funeral parlor. In 1919, George A. Pollard purchased the building and converted it into a vaudeville house. He ran it for a year until he was elected mayor and he handed it off to other management. Silent films were also shown until 1929 when Talkies started and at the time, a man named Al R. Powell was leasing the theater and so he reconstructed the building, adding a large stage and orchestra pit, hand-painted wall murals, vita phone talking picture equipment, a grand marquee with room atop for an orchestra, and seating for 800. The theater was called The Melba at that time and was Oklahoma's first all-sound motion picture theater. During the depression, Powell would accept an egg as admission-eggs were in short supply then-and he made a business of boxing them for sale in the theater. The Powell family operated the theater until 1986. At that time, it was brought back to its roots as a theater for stage productions. Students from Guthrie High School did a lion's share of the work converting the 48'x18' movie stage to the current 50'x50' theater stage and adding the proscenium arch, installing new seats and ensuring handicapped access. Riggers from San Antonio built a 14-line counterweight system for hoisting scenery and the stage roof was raised 22 feet.
Much of the old Melba was preserved, including the 1920's murals that adorn the auditorium and the original tin ceiling and wrought iron chandeliers in the lobby. The Pollard Company was the group that formed and consisted of performers, directors, designers, carpenters, costumers and painters. Today, they provide plays, musicals and concerts.
Oklahoma Paranormal Research & Investigations investigated with Fox News 25 in 2003. The psychic in the group reported, "I noticed while in this area that part of the original wall between buildings abruptly stopped. I felt drawn to the area, but could not understand the connection with the partial wall other than to say it had some significance. I then walked into the small tool closet and saw an elderly gentleman sitting on one of the bar stools in the room. He did not say anything, nor did he appear to try to communicate. I believe we may have frightened him as he immediately disappeared within seconds after I entered the small room. I walked through the halls of the dressing room area when a bit of movement caught my eye from within one of the rooms. It was then that I saw a lady with dark hair sitting at one of the dressing tables. She simply smiled at me and quickly disappeared." The Admin Area/Old Housing Rooms featured, "Several of us witnessed the bathroom door opening on its own (could not be re-created) and unfortunately, of the three video cameras present, not one captured it on film. A large crash was also heard in this area, and the source was not able to be located. Erik also heard an audible male's voice saying "hello" while in this area. It was in this area that I came across a small boy between the ages of four and five. He was very shy at first and insisted on playing games with us. He showed me his red ball and showed me that at one time while he was playing, he had bounced his ball down the stairs and had gone running after it only to fall and injure himself. He did not specify to me if he was killed from the fall, but only that he was injured. He later revealed his name as being Issac and said that his mother was there with him."
Guthrie is a charming small town that also has a ghost tour. There do seem to be several haunted locations here. Are the Black Jail and these other locations haunted? That is for you to decide!
