HGB Ep. 243 - Sorrel-Weed House

 
Moment in Oddity - Fifty Degree Temperature Change in Just 2 Minutes

The Black Hills area of South Dakota can experience a wide range of temperature variations, especially in the winter months. One reason for this are the warm Chinook winds that blow in over the Black Hills. The occurrence is so common that Black Hills have been dubbed the “Banana Belt” of the Midwest. Inversions, which are warm air flowing over a shallow pool of cold air, cause temperature jumps as well since the Black Hills rise above the plains into a warm air layer. Even though these temperature changes are expected, no one expected what happened on January 22, 1943. Temperatures on that day rose and fell almost 50 degrees in a only two minutes. During that January, arctic air had blown down from the north and temperatures in the Dakotas were falling into the way below zero range. On the morning of the 22nd, temperatures in a Black Hills town named Spearfish were sitting at -4 degrees Fahrenheit. This was recorded at 7:32am. Two minutes later, the temperature was recorded as 45 degrees Fahrenheit, a rise in temperature of 49 degrees. The temperature rose a few more degrees over the next two hours and then plummeted from 54 degrees back to -4 degrees in 27 minutes. This change was so quick and drastic that car windshields froze over with thick frost and plate glass windows cracked. This was so weird that it received national media coverage and was featured in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” and “Strange as it Seems” cartoons in the newspapers. A drastic change in temperature in just two minutes, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - The Four Chaplains Heroic Act

In the month of February, on the 3rd, in 1943, a very heroic moment in history took place involving the SS Dorchester. During World War II, the SS Dorchester, a U.S. Army transport ship, was hit by a German torpedo just off the country of Greenland. Before the war, the Dorchester had been a luxury passenger liner built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. It was launched in 1926 and featured electric fans and telephones in every room. She was refitted for the war in New York and made five successful crossings from New York City to Greenland. On February 3rd, she was only 100 miles from her destination when she was hit by the torpedo nearly an hour after midnight. She began to list immediately and it was clear she was going to sink. There were not enough life jackets on board. Four army chaplains, Catholic Father John P. Washington, Dutch Reformed Reverend Clark V. Poling, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode and Methodist Reverend George L. Fox, tried their best to keep the men calm as lifeboats were launched. The Four Chaplains gave up their life jackets to four frightened young soldiers. They had decided to go down with the ship and survivors reported seeing the Four Chaplains standing on the deck, arm-in-arm, praying together. They died along with the Captain and 667 other men making this the third worse loss of life at sea for the United States during the war.

Sorrel-Weed House

We have been inside the Sorrel-Weed House twice and while we have never had a paranormal experience in the house, there is definitely an energy inside this house. The house has been through many changes in its 175+ years. After starting as an Antebellum mansion to a wealthy slave owner named Francis Sorrel, it served as a store that found the outside of the house completely changed, then it was apartments and finally is a museum today, in much need of renovation. The house was witness to tragedy and today is considered to be quite haunted and has been featured by both Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. Join us as we take you through the history and hauntings of the Sorrel-Weed House!

Savannah is the oldest city in the state of Georgia. The city is truly charming with its layout of park-like squares surrounded by Antebellum homes decorated in black wrought iron. One of those squares is Madison Square. The grand DeSoto Hotel once stood along the square and has now been replaced with the DeSoto Hilton. On the western edge of the square, there is the Green-Meldrim House, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1853, that serves as St. John's Episcopal Church's parish house and rectory. The Eliza Jewett House, built in 1842, stands across the square from the Sorrel-Weed House. As one can see, these squares just ooze history.

The land where the mansion stands today was once the location of a British barracks during the second bloodiest battle of the American Revolution. This was the Siege of Savannah in 1779. This was the most serious military confrontation in Georgia between the British and the Continental Army. The goal of the Americans was to liberate the city of Savannah from British occupation, which had lasted for a year. The American rebels and their French allies attacked on the night of October 8th. It started with a false attack to draw the attention of the British away from the real assault. The plan did not work. Miscommunication had one French line attacking before the rest were in place. The battle ended up in a ditch where a French flag and a South Carolina flag were planted. The Rebels probably thought this would indicate some kind of victory, but it would be anything but victory. The British, in response, cut down the attackers and their colors. Their counterattack lasted for an hour and left 80 of the American and French troops dead in the ditch. More than a thousand men lost their life in what was considered the bloodiest hour of the war. The rebels retreated in defeat. It was a great British victory.

Francis Sorrel was born to Antoine Francois Sorrel des Rivieres, a French military officer and sugar plantation owner, and Eugenie de Sutre, a free woman of color, in Haiti in 1793. At that time in history, Eugenie would have been referred to as mulatto, which was a term to distinguish between free people of color who had white fathers, versus black slaves. Francis was only six months old when his mother died. The Slave Rebellion was already well underway at this time and Antoine felt it was too dangerous and he left the island. He also left Francis. Eugenie's family would raise him and he would never see his father again. Francis did well for himself and was invited by Richard Henry Douglass to enter into a partnership. The Douglass-Sorrel firm opened an office in Savannah and Francis traveled there to run the business. Listeners may be asking themselves right now, how is it that Francis was able to do this since he was considered mulatto because his mother was mulatto? He hid the fact this his mother was a woman of color and he was fair skinned. He married Lucinda Moxley in 1822. She was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner and he had eyes on the fortune she would inherit as the eldest daughter because as a woman, her inheritance would pass on to her husband.

The couple had three children together and after the third was born, Lucinda came down with yellow fever. She died from the disease in 1827, destroying Francis' dreams of a large inheritance. He was doing well on his own as he had started his own shipping business, but he still liked that Moxley money. So he did what any man with such a goal would do, he married his dead wife's younger sister, Matilda. Matilda and Francis had eight children together, one of who was Gilbert Moxley Sorrel. Gilbert went by the name Moxley to honor his mother and he became a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. He helped in the capture of Fort Pulaski. He commanded Sorrel's Brigade and took part in nearly every major Civil War battle, including Gettysburg. After the war he became an executive for the Ocean Steamship Company and took a place on the Georgia Historical Society board. He wrote a book, "Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer," about his experiences during the war, which has been consulted by many movie producers when making movies about the war because Moxley wrote about the personal side of many historical figures. The house has a later edition of the book that contains pictures and Diane got to look through it and found it interesting to see some of the personal comments Moxley made. Several of them were not very nice. Three of Francis and Matilda's children died before reaching adulthood. They raised their five other children and Lucinda's three children together.

The Sorrel-Weed House was designed and built by renowned Irish architect Charles B. Cluskey in 1841 for Francis Sorrel. Construction began in 1836 There are three distinct architectural styles represented by the house. The main one is Greek Revival with a Haitian style represented in the shuttered balcony found on part of the house and in the orange coloring of the mansion. French Regency styling is mostly seen inside the home. Cluskey hated adding the Haitian elements, but Sorrel insisted, so the architect put the balconies away from the front of the house where they would not interrupt his Greek Revival elements. These elements include a parapet with elliptical arches, Doric columns on the portico, a sweeping double entrance and balconies on the first story front windows. The front foyer has a common piece of architecture found in Savannah mansions and that is a division of space in the foyer done by two columns, to differentiate between guest space and private family space. The stairway across from the foyer is Regency in style and is a center stairway that ascends to a midfloor stoop that has stairways going off to the left and right to climb up to the second floor.

The most interesting room inside the mansion is an oval shaped dining room with curved wooden doors. The doors are very unique and took several weeks to make as they were formed using water rather than the typical technique of just hollowing out a tree and using the natural curve of the tree for the doors. We noticed that the interior of one of the doors did not have a handle and the reason for this is chilling in how it relates to slavery. With a home like the Sorrel's where there were more than a dozen slaves serving a family of mostly children, it would be very easy for the slaves to overpower the master. So slave masters would use some practices to instill fear in their slaves. One of these was making it forbidden for a slave to get caught in a room with no way out. A slave would have to enter the dining room through these doors and move fast enough to put down whatever he had on the table or make his way in and out of the butler closet before the doors he came through closed or he would be trapped as there was no door handle. He would then face a reprimand or beating for this infraction.

There were two rooms on the first floor with doors that separated them to serve as parlors for the men and women. The rooms would be opened to each other when large dinner parties were hosted. The slaves would have to move the heavy furniture up and down the stairs to open up the rooms and to bring tables into the rooms. The basement is large and open and was where multiple kitchens were located. There are four fireplaces down here. One of the kitchens was specifically for the slaves and where there food was prepared. Any interesting fun fact about slave food is that it is what we considered typical southern comfort food today like black-eyed peas, collard greens, fried okra, etc. After the Civil War, rich southern families had lost nearly everything and they could no longer afford their expensive upper crust food anymore and the slave food that was served downstairs to the slaves, came upstairs to the rich dining rooms and eventually became the mainstay food of the south. So next time you eat some good southern vittles, keep in mind that this was once considered slave food.

One of the rooms in the basement would eventually serve as a doctor's office for Francis Sorrel, Jr. and he would work on wounded soldiers during the Civil War here. That means multiple amputations took place in this room. This is a room made famous by legends of it being used as a room for conducting Voodoo. The first time we saw it was on a ghost tour we took several years ago. There was a night vision camera hooked up in it and a couple of people on the tour were invited to enter and dance around. There were some weird lights and orbs, but these easily could have been dust and bugs. The girl that was in there did say that she needed to get out after about five minutes because she suddenly did not feel well. We didn't tempt the spirits. On Diane's recent visit, this room was wide open and decorated like an office with a medical table and instruments. It felt like any other room to her. A dumbwaiter had been used to transport food from the kitchen upstairs to an area right outside the dining room, but it no longer exists.

Another room that is on the first floor is what was probably Frances Sorrell's office. There are large windows around this room that lead out to the Haitian balconies. As many of you know, there was a time in history where houses were taxed according to the number of doors. Frances beat paying taxes on his "doors" leading to the balcony by making them windows. They stretch nearly to the floor and there is a hidden pocket in the wall where the one set of windows push up into making it easy for even a man to go out on the balcony without bending down. Diane got to test it out and went out on the balcony to get a closer look at the orange paint on the outside of the house. When it was originally restored, the Historic Savannah Foundation did not want the owner at that time to use the color. They claimed that it was not a historic color in Savannah. They apparently forgot the Haitian influence style of the house. When the city said no, the owner scraped off twenty layers of paint and found the original paint, which was, indeed, orange. The color stayed. We've never been to the second floor where the bedrooms are located, so we can't tell you what those look like.

There is a carriage house next to the house and it was in the upper area where the slaves were housed. Up to fifteen of them shared a large open area with a small kitchen and fireplace. This would have been very crowded. Diane asked about the smell of horses coming from the downstairs area where the carriages were stored and that is when she learned that horses were kept in stables outside of town. There was a separate room off the large room that had its own furnishings and a door and this was Molly's room since she was considered a level above the slaves. She was a type of middle management and had been given this position because of how well she cared for the Sorrel children as a nanny. There is no official record of Molly, but the legend around her claims that she was mulatto. Many of the slaves in the Sorrel household were listed as mulatto and it is generally understood that Francis had no problem helping himself to the bodies of his female slaves and it is thought that he fathered a few children with them.

The area below the carriage house was recently excavated and Diane's guide had taken part in that work. They believe a large wine cellar had once been in this area that stretches the length of the carriage house. They found a case down there with several brandy bottles inside of it and something quite remarkable and surprising was inside the case as well. A letter from Robert E. Lee was found. The guide said that General Lee had visited the home a few times, but they are not sure how this had ended up in the case or why. Next to the Sorrel-Weed House is a large house that once served as the guest house for the Sorrel's. It is now a private residence, but the family had lived there for a time when their finances took a nose dive. Two original mirrors that now hang in the parlors were found over in this guest house and they are two of the only original furnishings left from the Sorrel household. The Sorrel-Weed House was designated a state landmark in 1953, the first house in Georgia to be so honored. Day tours are 60 minutes and cost $10, starting at 10am and running to 5pm. Evening ghost tours are offered as well. Go to the carriage house to get tickets.

Matilda Sorrel was not a happy woman. She was given to bouts of depression and one can imagine that her relationship with Francis was not necessarily based on love, but rather, position in society. The women's parlor, where she spent much of her time reading, has windows that look out on the carriage house. The legend that surrounds the house claims that one day, Matilda looked out those windows and could see into the room that was Molly's and she saw a vision that shocked her to her core and fed her depression. Francis was having sex with Molly. The distraught Matilda, climbed the stairs to the third floor of the guest house next door and threw herself out of a window, head first, onto the brick patio below. There is no proof that this is what caused Matilda to take her life. It could have been mental illness or perhaps she even discovered the truth about Francis being a man not of pure white ancestry. Whatever the case, Matilda did indeed kill herself on the property. A family friend wrote his mother of the event, "The sad news has reached the office that Mrs. Sorrel, probably in a fit of lunacy, sprang from the second or third story window of her residence on Harris Street, next door to the house which was the family mansion for many years, falling upon the pavement of the yard, and by the concussion terminating her life." This happened in 1860. There are claims that Matilda made this jump from the mansion itself. This is difficult to ascertain. Francis did sell his mansion in 1859 to a man named Henry Weed, but there are claims that Francis was in the mansion in 1862 when Robert E. Lee visited.

The tragedy went further when it came to Molly. Shortly after Matilda's death, Molly was found hanged in her room in the carriage house. There is no clear indication as to whether she committed suicide or was murdered. There is also no clear indication in historical fact that Molly existed or that a slave killed herself on the property. The house remained in the Weed family until 1914.  A.J. Cohen Sr. bought the 15,000 square-foot mansion from the Savannah Bank & Trust Co. in 1941. His son, A.J. Cohen Jr., built a one-story brick building around the Bull Street side about five years later that reached out all the way to the street. He did this to create a store front and opened the first of three Lady Jane clothing shops. Cohen also knocked out most of the walls in the basement where the store was located. And yes, many of these walls were load bearing and now the house is held up by steel girders placed in the ceiling of the basement.

In the 1960s, Cohen Jr. moved into the house with his family and continued to run the apparel business. The store started to do poorly in the 1980s and finally closed in 1991. The Cohens put the house on the market. Stephen C. Bader bought the house in 1996 and worked at renovating it for some time, but there was a lot of controversy surrounding his ownership. He had several workplace violations and scores of unpaid bills. His contractor and architect finally quit. A few of the positive things that he did were dismantling the storefront the Cohens built and he is the one who took the house back to its original orange color, which he toned down after pressure from the city. Bader spent four years burning through money and workers before his tenure with the house ended. After that, we're not sure how ownership went, but Diane was told that there had been apartments here, so we imagine that was after Bader. The current owner seems to be the group that runs the tours now, but we don't know their official name. The website is http://sorrelweedhouse.com.

There are several spirits haunting the Sorrel-Weed House and many claim that it is one of the most haunted houses in Savannah. Ghost Hunters was here in 2005 and Ghost Adventures visited in 2015. Both shows claimed to catch EVPs. The Ghost Hunters think they got the cries of a slave on an EVP. The EVP seemed to say, "Help! Oh Francis, help! Oh my God! Oh my God!" Zac Bagans said of his time in the house, "Our investigation of the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, Georgia, gave me a three-alarm hangover. It was very similar to a real one—headache, nausea, dizziness, throbbing, memory loss—but weirder. I can usually gauge how bad my hangover is going to be by the interactions I have with spirits during a lockdown, but this one threw me for a loop."

Diane asked her guide if he had experienced anything unexplained and he said he had never noticed anything he would consider to be a haunting. He has been alone in it at night and heard noises, but he always assumes that it is just the noises of a very old home. But others have definitely experienced weird activity. One of the people who lived in an apartment basement was named Steve and he was there for three months. He felt very uneasy in what was later called the Voodoo Room. He moved upstairs and claimed to hear the sound of parties and other social gatherings coming from downstairs when clearly there was no one down there. When he would go downstairs to investigate, the sound of music, laughing and talking would stop.

The scent of residual cigar smoke has been smelled by guests touring then men's parlor. Residual noises from the Revolutionary War are heard inside and outside the house. Some interesting finds during excavations were bullets from both wars. Diane got to see these bullets and how very different the bullets were from the wars. It is thought that the Revolutionary War bullets were possibly from bodies that had been buried where the house now stands, setting it up for future hauntings. Shadow figures are seen regularly and people claim to have been groped, poked and to have stabbing pains.

People who have toured or investigated the house claim to feel nauseous or a choking sensation when they are in the basement. A person named Jamie Stewart said, "I visited this house recently as a skeptic. When I entered the home I felt Ill. Our tour guide wasn’t great and didn’t really tell us what had happened there until we got to courtyard. But yet I felt extremely ill and nearly vomited in courtyard when we got out of basement. It’s not that I didn’t believe in ghosts but I was indifferent. This incident has left me to do research on it as I was freaked out by my reaction and the fact that I felt fine after I left the house."

Camera and cell phone batteries are known to be completely drained while in the house. David Duran wrote an article for Country Living about his experiences in Savannah and one segment was about a ghost tour he took at the Sorrel-Weed House. He got an interesting picture in a mirror that seems to feature a person who was not part of their group who has hair and clothing from another time period. Here is that photo:

Photo by David Duran

Leslie took a weird picture in the house and said, "I took this picture with my cell phone. We were at the Sorrel Weed House on the ghost tour. I didn't really look at the picture until I downloaded the picture on my Facebook. I saw the blue streak at the bottom and what looks like a man in a red uniform with a tan hat on. Maybe a uniform. The man on the right is an actual person. the other is, well, I'm not sure. You decide." Here is that picture:

Photo by Leslie

The legend of the Sorrel-Weed House seems to be just that, a legend. And yet, there are many people who have experienced something they can't explain inside this home. Paranormal investigators claim to have caught a lot of evidence. But we ourselves have felt perfectly fine in the mansion. Is the Sorrel-Weed House haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 402 - Virginia Military Institute

Moment in Oddity - Dentures (Suggested by: Scott Booker)

Many people erroneously believe that President George Washington had wooden teeth. His dentures were actually made with ivory from hippos and elephants, real human teeth, rivets, gold and spiral springs. Some of the first dentures were found in Mexico in 2500 BC and they were made from wolf teeth. Italy had dentures made from both animal and human teeth in 700 BC. Japan was the first country to fashion wooden dentures. Carved ivory and bones, along with human and animal teeth were what dentists of the 18th century experimented with. Dentists weren't the only profession working on dentures. Ivory Turners, Goldsmiths and Barber-Surgeons all got in on the action. A man named Alexis Duchateau had dentures made from hippopotamus, but they rotted so he joined forces with a dentist and they created the first porcelain dentures in 1770. In the 1850s, dentures started to be made from a hardened rubber called Vulcanite that was teamed with porcelain teeth. Celluloid was the first type of plastic used for false teeth and eventually was replaced by polymethylmethacylite in 1938 and is still used today. The history of dentures, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - James/Younger Gang Attacked by Townspeople

In the month of September, on the 7th, in 1876, the James-Younger Gang was attacked by an angry mob of townspeople while trying to rob a bank. Jim, Cole and Bob Younger joined forces with Bill Chadwell, Clell Miller and Jesse and Frank James to form the James-Younger Gang with the purpose of robbing banks. And that is what they were doing that September day. Five of the men galloped into town, firing their pistols and whooping and hollaring to create a distraction while three other members of the gang entered the Northfield Minnesota First National Bank. Jesse James ordered a cashier to open the bank safe, but the cashier stalled claiming that the safe was on a timer. A teller made for the back door and was shot in the shoulder on his way out. He cried for help from the townspeople and the citizens came running with their guns. Clell Miller was shot dead by a medical student and Bill Chadwell was mortally wounded by a nearby business owner who used a rapid-fire Remington repeater rifle. All three of the Youngers were badly wounded and Frank James was shot in the leg. Jesse shot the cashier in the head and ran out of the bank, managing to get on his horse without getting shot. What was left of the gang, rode out of town and the James brothers made off on their own. They escaped to the Dakota Territory and eventually reformed a new bank robbing gang in Nashville, Tennessee.

Virginia Military Institute (Suggested by and research assistance: Jules Schlosser)

Virginia Military Institute holds the distinction of being the oldest state-supported military college in the United States. This was founded over 180 years ago and the institute takes pride in having a competitive educational program that also develops cadets to be citizen soldiers and many have gone on to be officers in the various branches of the military. One of the members of the faculty was Stonewall Jackson and there are those who claim his spirit haunts the place. That's not the only ghost here though. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Virginia Military Institute!

Virginia Military Institute is located in Lexington, Virginia, which is in the Shenandoah Valley. The Cherokee and Monacan tribes had settled here, but left after European settlers came to the area. The city was named in 1778 after Lexington, Massachusetts in honor of that city being the place where the first shot in the American Revolution was fired. A fire in 1796 almost destroyed the city and it would also come under fire during the Civil War. Texas hero Sam Houston was born here in 1793. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee would have their final resting places here. And it was here that Virginia established a military school.

Virginia Military Institute or VMI was established in 1839 and one of the traditions started at that time is still carried on today: walking guard duty as a sentry. Every cadet that has come through the school has experienced this tradition. We love that the first cadet assigned this duty was named John B. Strange. But before this first official guard duty, there had been other "guards" here. What prompted the establishment of the institute was a desire by the citizens of Lexington to get rid of the riff raff that they had guarding the local arsenal that had been built during the War of 1812. The soldiers sent to protect this arsenal were apparently a bunch of party animals that created more trouble than they were worth. But the citizens wanted to keep their arsenal. An idea was put forward to establish something like West Point Academy. 

Lexington attorney John Thomas Lewis Preston took up the reigns and lead the charge by writing three anonymous letters in the Lexington Gazette in 1835. Preston put forward the idea that students getting a liberal education while learning military discipline would not only protect the arsenal, but give the state the ability to have trained officers for the state's militia. Preston got local business owners to join him and they managed to get the Virginia legislature to pass a bill authorizing the school's formation in 1836. The Governor signed it into law and a board was formed to organize the school. Preston came up with the name Virginia Military Insitute and Claudius Crozet became the first president of the board. He had been an engineer in Napoleon Bonaparte's army and Thomas Jefferson referred to Crozet as "the smartest mathematician in the United States." The initial plan for the school was to open as a military and engineering school, rather than offering a liberal education.

The first graduating class consisted of 16 cadets who graduated in 1842. Something that has kept VMI unique is that unlike other senior military colleges in America, VMI enrolls only cadets and only offers bachelor degrees. Over the years, degrees have been offered in engineering, science and liberal arts and all cadets have to be a part of ROTC. In 1851, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson became a part of the faculty. He was a major at that time and taught Natural and Experimental Philosophy. In 1859, he led a group of VMI infantry and artillery units in traveling to Charles Town, Virginia to witness the execution of John Brown. Shortly thereafter, the Civil War started and VMI cadets were pulled into active duty. Many served with the Confederacy and many of the VMI alumni were considered the best officers in both armies, with 15 graduates attaining the ranks of general in the Confederate Army.

One of those to obtain general during the Civil War was Thomas Jackson, who also earned his nickname "Stonewall" at that time too. He would also die during the war at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Before fighting began, Jackson saw that many of the men under him were from VMI and he declared, "The Institute will be heard from today." Jackson was hit by friendly fire the evening of the battle. He and his staff were returning to camp when another regiment thought it was a Yankee trick and that men from the Union cavalry were sneaking in for a surprise attack. The General was hit in the left arm twice and once in the right hand. He was not given care right away and by the time he got help, his arm had to be amputated. He developed pneumonia and died from it eight days after being shot. His doctor, Henry McGuire, said of Jackson's death, "A few moments before he died he cried out in his delirium, 'Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front rapidly! Tell Major Hawks—' then stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished. Presently a smile of ineffable sweetness spread itself over his pale face, and he said quietly, and with an expression, as if of relief, 'Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.'" On May 15, 1863, the Corps of Cadets escorted Jackson’s remains to his grave in Lexington. His arm didn't make the trip. It was buried at the field hospital. Perhaps that is why he is at unrest, but more on that later.

The cadets of VMI were called into service again during the Civil War for the Battle of New Market. This campaign helped turn the tide in favor of the Confederacy. Two hundred forty-seven cadets marched 80 miles from Lexington to New Market before the battle started on May 15, 1864. The VMI cadets held the line and pushed the Union forces back over an open muddy field, capturing Union artillery along the way and securing a victory. Ten of those men would perish and 47 were wounded. Six of the dead are buried on the VMI grounds behind a statue named "Virginia Mourning Her Dead" by sculptor Moses Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a cadet at VMI and wounded in that battle. The American Battlefield Trust recognizes this as the only time in US history that a student body from an operating college fought as a unit in pitched combat in battle. In all, VMI cadets were called into action fourteen times. And on that term pitched battle, we weren't sure what that was, but apparently it is like a date. A very bad date. Worse than a blind date because there will be causalities. This is a planned battle where both sides commit to it with the option of pulling out before the battle begins. So this differentiates it from an ambush or a meeting engagement, which is at an unexpected time and location. The Institute would suffer its own damage during the war when it was shelled and burned on June 12, 1864. This was only a temporary set-back as the damage was repaired and the Institute was reopened on October 17, 1865.

The school would continue to grow and expand, educating more and more cadets into the early 1900s. Fourteen hundred thousand alumni would serve during World War I and cadets at the school practiced building trenches and conducting trench warfare where Foster Stadium would eventually be built. After the war, the library was added as well as a new engineering building. Special training programs were added during World War II and more than 4,000 alumni served during the war. So many veterans of the war wanted to use their GI Bill at VMI, that a new barracks needed to be built. However, like so many other areas, VMI was slow to diversify their cadet body. The first cadets were strictly from Virginia and numbered twenty-three. It wasn't until 1857 that the institute was open to all residents of America. And it wouldn't be until 1972 that the first black cadets would graduate. Back in 1991, VMI was taken to court because it would not admit women. The Justice Department said that it was unconstitutional for tax payers to support a school that didn't allow women while the school argued that "admitting women would destroy the camaraderie among men that is at the heart of its military training." Women won and the first female cadets entered the Corps in 1997. Today, women comprise about 8 percent of the 1,600-member cadet Corps. 

Since the Mexican-American War, VMI cadets have served in every war involving the United States. During World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, over 300 alumni were killed; during Operation Desert Storm two alumni were killed; two VMI alumni were killed on September 11, 2001 in the terrorist attacks on America and twelve alumni were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another well known graduate of VMI was General of the Army George C. Marshall who graduated in 1901 and served as the World War II Army Chief of Staff. He was architect of the Marshall Plan, which was named for him and was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The Marshall Plan was an economic plan for Europe to rebuild after World War II and was enacted in 1948. The plan also wanted to halt the spread of communism and led to the start of the Cold War and called for the formation of NATO.

Another well known graduate was Jonathan M. Daniels who graduated in 1961 as valedictorian. After Daniels graduated, he realized he was called into the ministry and attended the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He heard Dr. Martin Luther King calling for clergy to become involved in the Civil Rights movement and Daniels went to Alabama to help register black voters. He was arrested for doing that. After being released, he accompanied a Catholic priest named Richard Morrisroe and two black teenagers named Joyce Bailey and Ruby Sales to a store to buy some sodas. A man named Tom Coleman, who was the part-time deputy sheriff, stopped them on the steps of the store. He held a shotgun and aimed it at sixteen-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Ruby down and stepped in front of her, taking the shot from the gun, killing him instantly. Coleman fired again, seriously wounding the Catholic priest. Martin Luther King, Jr. said of the incident, "One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels." Daniels would eventually be named a Lesser Saint of the Episcopal Church for his sacrifice.

There are several legends and ghosts reputedly that are connected to the military institute. The first legend is connected to the Virginia Mourning Her Dead Statue for the fallen students from the Battle of New Market. Cadets claim to have heard cries coming from the statue. And there have even been real tears reported to be coming from the eyes. One of the ghosts at VMI is also connected to the Battle of New Market. Cadet William Hugh McDowell from North Carolina started at VMI in August of 1863. He was killed on May 15, 1864 at the battle while serving as a cadet Private in Company B. (You know who else was a part of Company B: the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy!) Private McDowell's remains were taken to his father, along with his effects. His father noticed that a gold watch he had given his son was not among those effects. Nobody knows what happened to the watch, but the cadet seems to be at unrest over that. People claim to see the ghost cadet walking around as though he is looking for something on the battlefield.

There are claims of a helpful ghost who knocks on the doors of cadets that are set to do guard duty. It is as though the spirit is making sure they are not late for sentry duty. And another ghost seems to belong to a hanged man and there is a story told about a cadet who hanged himself from the balcony at JM Hall. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson also seems to be hanging out here in the afterlife. Some of his possessions and the bones of his war horse Little Sorrel are on display at the campus chapel. This was only one of two Civil War horses that were mounted when they died. Jackson's body laid in state in his classroom. Many people have witnessed a blue light that drifts through the hallways and goes into Jackson's old classroom. They believe that blue light is Jackson's spirit.

The most disturbing spirit here is called The Yellow Peril. This figure appears on the third floor of the barracks and got its name because it has a bony and yellow face. The best narrative about this entity we found on Reddit by poster libertyordeath11, "I have had a couple of different experiences/encounters at VMI, but none compare to this one. There was a story about a ghost/poltergeist called The Yellow Peril. Apparently it was a ghost that was only seen on the 3rd floor near a particular stairwell inside the barracks that had a yellow face with a bloody gash down the center. (I’m literally getting chills as I write this…) Anyway, there were a couple of cadets and faculty that had claimed to have seen it. Always the same description, same location, and always at around 0330 at night. (This is also the time when drum-outs take place; when a cadet is dismissed for an honor violation). Everyone who said they saw it always said that they were walking the stoops when they got the powerful feeling that they were being watch or that someone was following them. When they turned around, there it was, the yellow face with a bleeding scar, staring right at them.

Anyway, one night when I lived on the 3rd floor of the barracks (I was a sophomore cadet at the time, and all sophomores live on the 3rd floor), I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. (Cadet rooms do not have bathrooms, and you have to leave your room and walk on the outside stoop to go to one.) I remember looking at my clock and it said 0329, but I didn’t think anything of it. Well I went to the bathroom and was walking back to my room, passing by that particular staircase, when every hair on my body stood up. (Again, I’m getting chills right now just writing this.) I have never before nor since had such a strong “sixth sense” feeling like it, and I can actually remember an internal voice in my head telling me that if I turned around, I was going to see something I did not want to see. Well, I’d love to tell you that I was brave and turned around, but I didn’t, and instead I pulled my bathrobe up over the back of my head and walked as swiftly as I could back to my room. Everything in me wanted to run, but I knew that if I did that, I would panic. The whole way back I felt like I was being followed, even once I got into my room. I went to go lay down in my rack, pulled my blanket over my head, and tried to go back to sleep.

Here’s where it gets even creepier… A couple of months later I was doing some personal research in the bottom level of the library in the section on VMI history (which is rather extensive). Anyway, I found this book called “Memories of VMI” or something like that, published in 1937. It was a collection of different stories from alumni around the turn of the century, some comical, some not so. Well, as I was flipping through the various chapters/stories, I saw one titled “The VMI Phantom”. It sounded interesting, so I began to read it. It was a story from an alumnus who was talking about an event back when he was a cadet. He said that one morning a sophomore cadet seemed pretty shaken during breakfast, and his roommates were trying to find out what was wrong. After a while, he finally told them that the night before, around 0330, he awoke in his bed to the feeling that he was being watched. When he looked up, he saw standing over him a ghost with a yellow face and a bleeding scar… (More chills.) His roommates all laughed at him and told him that he was just dreaming. Well, a few nights later two other sophomore cadets said they both woke up in the middle of the night after feeling the sensation that they were being watched, and both saw the ghost with a yellow face and bleeding scar. Word traveled through barracks about the apparition, and a number of cadets decided to try to “catch” the spirit. The next night two cadet roommates who were on the football team woke up and saw the ghost. Both apparently leapt at the ghost and tried to pin it to the wall with a chair. One cadet was flung over a table by the ghost and the other broke his arm. After that, the entire barracks was in a state of panic. Cadets slept with their rifles, bayonets, and a few kept pistols underneath their pillows. Officers who normally performed midnight checks to make sure cadets were in their beds after lights out were apparently rushing along the stoops as quickly as possible, completely neglecting to even look into rooms. After a time, the ghost hadn't been seen for a while, and everything went back to normal…

After finishing the chapter, I was utterly stunned. Here was a story, written from a no doubt honorable man, almost 100 years prior, describing the exact same ghost, with the same descriptions and in the same location, that cadets and faculty were seeing today. No one I talked to ever knew anything about “the yellow peril” having been seen decades before, and the book I found probably hadn’t been read for well over 50 years. After that, I knew that what I felt on the 3rd stoop that night wasn’t my imagination. It was the same ghost that has been haunting that area of the old barracks for a hundred years. I never walked anywhere near that part of the barracks after dark for the rest of my cadetship." 

In 2019, LuckySquirrel 21 wrote on Reddit, "I remember when I was a cadet there. I was on guard one foggy night and I was walking along my assigned route. It was dead silent. All of a sudden I thought I heard foot steps behind me. I looked back but no one was there. I kept walking and I heard them again. Again, I turned around, no one there. I was pretty scared at this moment so I thought I’d play a trick. I walked a couple of steps and then suddenly stopped before my foot touched the ground, AND I SWEAR TO THIS DAY I HEARD A STEP BEHIND ME! Also, I remember hearing a story from an alumni, class of ‘76 who heard this story from another alumni, class of ‘47. He told me that him and his roommates were up late one night in their room studying, when all of a sudden the door flew open in a gust of wind and a ghostly cadet dressed in civil war style clothes walked in carrying a lantern. All he said was “turn out your candles” before he disappeared." 

Jkinster shared his experience on Reddit 11 years ago, "First let me begin by saying that I am a Cadet at the Virginia Military Institute and am bound by the nations strickest code to tell things how they truly happen, not loaded with a bunch of half truths and what not. Having said that, my first encounter, if you will, happened oh about 2 years ago in my second year here at the I. I was the corporal of the guard that night, 2nd relief and my shift ran from 220 to 440 in the morning. So one night as I was making my nightly check of the Jackson Memorial Chapel, I noticed a thick fog setting in over the parade ground, which is never very settling at 330 in the morning. Anyway, my job was to ensure that all the doors were locked and no one was in there after hours. Well I checked the three main entrances in front of the building, all locked, and made my way to the one door behind the chapel which happened to be down two stories of concrete stairs that ran along the outside of the building. Being in uniform for guard includes a dark grey blouse, starched white pants, and thick soled leather low quarters which make a very distinct sound hitting concrete pavement. As I was walking down these stairs, I could feel chills running down my spine and noticed my flashlight trembling from my hands shaking so badly, which is no normal occurrence for me. I reached the last step and reached for the door when as I stopped moving heard two more clacks of low quarters hitting pavement as clear as day come down the stairs right behind me. Shaking I spun around saw nothing and proceeded to run back up to the ground level dropping my flashlight behind the chapel. As I was moving back to the guard room at a rather brisk pace, I looked across the parade deck and noticed what looked like a deer grazing just inside the fog line. Weird for 330 AM. But I kept moving and after a few more steps looked again and saw its head perked up staring directly at me, now this animal was about 100 yards away in fog but I could clearly see it on all fours and the faint outline of its head perked up in my direction. And after what just happened, I was a little spooked until I saw it rear up on two legs and dart in the opposite direction into the fog... I'm not sure if this has any historical occurrence here at VMI, but I know what I saw and I was terrified, so I ran back into the guard room and stayed put til my shift was over...

Another odd occurrence was with what my roommate and I believed to be the legendary yellow peril of VMI, said to haunt the third stoop in a corner of barracks with a not so bright history. The yellow peril is said to take the form of a cadet in a dark grey blouse wearing a garrison cap with the brim pulled down over his eyes and a faint yellow tinted face with a gash strewn across it. So one night during Virginia's biggest wind storm in the past decade, My roommate and I were sitting our room when we heard a loud screech coming from the wind rattling the window panes in the windows when all of a sudden the windows slammed shut, which open inward and the transom above our door slammed shut which also opens inward. That alone was enough to worry us when as we moved towards the door to see what happened we both saw crystal clear a figure without a face in a cadets uniform walk past the door window looking in. We realized it was around 2 AM so we looked to see who it was and saw nothing, looked in rooms to our left and right and saw no one awake. came back to our room and saw no one there. Petrified, we both sat for a while staring aimlessly out the doorway until we both eventually fell asleep. If any of you aver get a chance to talk to a VMI alumni, ask him what hes seen, it'll blow your mind." 

Another Redditer wrote, "I've had some weird shit happen to me and one of my roommates in that corner of Old Barracks. We were in room 121 and squatted there from 3rd class year till 1st class. So two stories. 1: My roomie and I were up late cramming for a statics final 3rd class year while our other two roomies were out in scott ship doing whatever it is LA majors do. It's just a bit before 2am and we're tired and decide to call it quits for the night. Lights go out, pillow over the head, and I'm drifting to sleep. A few minutes later the light of one of our other roommates turns on, there was no audible flick of the switch or anything. It wakes us both up and we have a minor "Yo wtf just happened" moment. Eventually we calm down and get back to snoozing. A few nights later, we're studying some more late at night and the same thing happens. This time we're both still up and visibly saw it. The switch indeed did not move, the light just turned on. We really freaked out this time and didn't fall asleep for the rest of the night. Left for winter furlough the next day.

2: First class year I woke up around 3:30 having the urge to take a massive piss. I get myself out of bed, through my bath robe and warm comfy slippers on, and stumble over to that small men's room in the corner. Relief washes over me as I execute and exquisite midnight pee. After I wash my hands and dry them, I walk out of the bathroom. As my eye's are adjusting from the bright light inside to the almost pitch black of old barracks, I make out the shape of someone coming into the bathroom through that really narrow entryway. So I go sideways and reach out to pat him on the back and guide myself around him. Except my hand goes through him. If I had not just used the restroom I would have pissed myself in shock. I ran back to my room and was awake all night from the adrenaline."

A cadet named James D. Hankins wrote in a letter in 1921 to a friend named Florence about a spook haunting the Old Barracks. In the letter he tells the woman that the ghost has them all so scared that they are sleeping with loaded pistols on their tables and bayonets under their pillows. He remarks, "Poor Old Ghost." (Citation: James D. Hankins papers. Manuscript # 0144, Virginia Military Institute Archives https://archivesspace.vmi.edu/repositories/3/resources/224 Accessed September 10, 2021.) Clearly, the Institute has a firm place in military history. Is Virginia Military Institute haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 300 - It's a Haunted Gay Life

Moment in Oddity - Whispers of Yellowstone Lake
Suggested by Carren Sanders

Science has been able to document and explain many weird atmospheric occurrences that have happened throughout the years, but when it comes to the Whispers of Yellowstone Lake, they have documented the phenomenon, but never explained it. The first reports of these sounds were collected in 1893 and published in Science Magazine by Edwin Linton. He had heard the strange noise himself twice. But accounts go back much further than that to the fur trappers and mountain men. For many years after Linton's article, nobody mentioned the sounds, but reports started again in 1924. Jack Haynes was a photographer and he was with a group in a boat on Yellowstone Lake early one morning. They all heard this low roar that got louder and rose in pitch and then faded, only to start up again from another direction. It happened a third time and all of this took place in less than a minute and then it was silent. People who have heard the Whispers say that they sound like these weird ethereal aerial sounds that mimic an electric harp and that they sound as though they are coming up out of the lake or that the sound is hanging over the lake. They are like a low hum that increases in decibels and it sounds almost as if the hums pass right over the person who hears them. It then fades away.. There have been several causes suggested over the years. Some say it is caused by swarming bees, but the sound is still around in the winter. Others believe it is just the wind blowing through the trees. A man named Ed Henry suggested that the weird sound was created by air currents created by the mountains and many agree. The sound is always heard when the lake is calm and early in the morning after an unusually cool evening. Whatever it is that causes the whispers, they certainly are odd! And here is a sample shared by the National Park Service!

This Day in History - Pulse Nightclub Massacre

In the month of June, on the 12th, in 2016, Omar Mateen, opened fire inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The Pulse Nightclub was opened in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler as a gay bar and nightclub that hosted various theme nights. This particular night happened to be Latin Night, so most of the victims were Latino. Mateen was a security guard who had been to the club a few times. He had sworn allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and a recent event in which the U.S. killed Abu Waheeb, the leader of the militant group Islamic State in Iraq, triggered him. That would not only make this a mass shooting and hate crime, but also a terrorist attack. The attack started around 2am with Mateen marching into the club carrying a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. An off-duty police officer working as security called in the police immediately. There was an initial engagement, but Mateen barricaded himself inside and created a hostage situation. He claimed to have explosives, which made the police more cautious about bursting in, but in actuality there were no explosives. At the time of the attack, this was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in US history. Today, it is still the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ community in US history. The Pulse Nightclub is now a memorial site and museum, slated to open in 2020.

It's a Haunted Gay Life

This episode is going to be a little different and why shouldn't it be since this is officially HGB's 300th episode! June 2019 marks a few things. I've been producing the podcast for exactly 4.5 years. We've hit a big episode number and have almost 4 million downloads of the podcast. And the month of June is gay pride and 2019 marks 50 years since the StoneWall Riot that started the big push for gay rights in America. This coming together of big milestones inspired this episode and what I will present here for your listening pleasure is a bit of gay history that has hauntings connected to it and after producing a haunted history podcast for this many years, I have changed my opinions, beliefs and practices in regards to the paranormal and will share that perspective. Plus, my top 10 most haunted places I've visited! Join me on an exploration into my haunted gay life!

For podcasters, big milestone shows usually mean rolling out a big topic. I struggled. What did I want to do? I haven't done Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum yet. How about Skinwalker Ranch? Or perhaps Raynham Hall in England? But these places have been done to death and I really enjoy doing the obscure places. But I wanted this episode to be different. I thought that I might share my top haunted locations based on my own experiences - and I will throw a few of those in - but this would be repeating things from other episodes. Almost like a review show. Then I thought about the fact that I've been doing History Goes Bump for a year now, on my own. I've settled into my own skin and realized that my views have changed from the very first episode. I listened to Episode 1 a few weeks ago and once again cleaned up the audio a little bit and added an intro disclaimer in hopes that people would not just listen to that episode and decide they didn't like HGB, but give it a chance as the production has drastically improved. As I listened, I realized that I had changed my mind on a few things and even more importantly, in the last four and a half years, I've had quite a few of my own experiences that I can't explain. I also got really inspired by a podcast I just binged. The latest season of Uncover by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is titled The Village and it explores the history of the Toronto Gay Village and unsolved murders of gay men and transsexuals that have happened there. That trip through history made me think of American gay history and my own. Things have changed so much. And wouldn't you know, as I explored the history, I found some haunts in some very important landmarks.

I turned sixteen in 1987. I guess that makes me a little old for some listeners as the vast majority of podcast listeners are millennials. While most teens at that age are concerned with passing their driver's license test, I was realizing what it was exactly that made me seem different then everybody else and it wasn't just that I wished I lived in the attic of the Addam's Family House while they all lived downstairs. I was gay. It amazes me as I sit back today and see that we live in a culture where people don't even have to claim a gender anymore and can love anybody they want to love. That wasn't the case when I was a teenager and it certainly wasn't for the decades before I came out to myself. There was a time when a relationship of mixed religious beliefs or races was taboo and even illegal. My how things have changed and I'm so happy for young people today. There are definitely still places where it isn't accepted and families that will still lay down judgement, but for the most part, we are pretty close to being where we should be.

I like to educate on this podcast, so let's take a trip back 50 years to one of the most momentous moments in gay history here in America. There was a time when not only was homosexuality considered a mental illness, it was illegal to practice. Come with me to The Stonewall Inn

The Stonewall Inn

The Stonewall Inn got it's start in 1930 as a speakeasy located at 91 Seventh Avenue South. Vincent Bonavia was the owner, so it was known as Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn and its cover was that it was just a basic tearoom serving up light faire and some non-alcoholic beverages. It eventually was raided by prohibition agents, but it continued to operate. When Prohibition was repealed, Bonavia decided he wanted to move to a better location. There was a building on Christopher Street that had once been stables back in the mid-19th century. Bonnie's Stonewall Inn moved in there in 1934 and took up two storefronts, 51-53 Christopher Street. The bar and restaurant was very successful until the inside was gutted by a fire in 1964. The place needed somebody new to love it.

In walks the Mafia. They were all about making a profit and they saw a need in New York City for gay bars. So in 1966, three members of the Mafia refurbished the Stonewall Inn and reopened as a gay bar. At that time, it was the biggest gay establishment in the U.S. This not only made it popular with the gay community, but it put a big target on it for the police. It was customary for the New York Police Department to raid bathhouses and gay bars. Every establishment got hit at least once a month. The ludicrous rules in place at the time were that it was illegal for same sex people to dance close to each other, it was illegal to serve gay people alcohol and customers had to wear clothing specific to their genders. For example, a woman needed to wear three pieces of feminine clothing. A police raid usually happened early in the evening and if the bar was lucky, they would have been tipped off, so they could hide a bunch of liquor and continue business after the raid. The police would come in and turn on all the lights. Everybody would be lined up along the wall, verbally harrassed and they would have to present their IDs. If you didn't have ID or were a man dressed in drag or a woman dressed butch, you would be arrested. Bar employees would also sometimes be arrested.

By 1969, the gay community in New York had had enough. On June 28, 1969, the gay community would make their stand and their frustration would erupt in riots. At 1:20 in the morning, eight police officers raided the Stonewall Inn. They expected the typical subjugation, but the 200 patrons refused to cooperate. They were all informed they were under arrest, but the cops needed more paddy wagons. As they waited for the wagons, a crowd began to form outside and before long, it was ten times its original size. The wagons arrived and the first to be loaded was a lesbian. She pushed back and refused to get in the wagon and as she fought she was hit in the head with a billy club. She was picked up and thrown into the wagon. And that was all it took.

Some of the crowd pushed against the paddy wagon trying to tip it over, while others threw beer bottles and bricks at the other wagons. There were ten officers against a crowd of 600 and in a true twist of irony, they ended up seeking shelter in the very gay bar that they made unsafe for the gays. Despite this being their place to love and dance, the rioters turned on Stonewall and threw anything they could at the windows, from bottles to rocks to garbage cans. Attempts were made to bust down the doors. The Tactical Police Force was called in and they managed to squash the rebellion and arrested a bunch of people. The streets were cleared by 4am. Several people had been injured including four of the officers. Damage to Stonewall was devastating. Everything was broken.

This would not be the end to the riots. News spread quickly through Greenwich Village and riots occurred on the next five nights. Things quieted down and the raids stopped. The next year on June 28th, a parade was hosted marching from Greenwich Village to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. This would be the first gay pride march and they have continued in city's around the world all the way until today. I'll never forget my first pride parade. It was so much fun and even though at the time, the city of Denver only gave us access to one side of Colfax Avenue, we were able to celebrate, rather than hide who we were.

The Stonewall Inn did not go on however. It closed. And for the next twenty years, a variety of businesses used the building. There was a shoe store, a bagel shop and a Chinese restaurant. In the early 1990s, the block of Christopher Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues was co-named "Stonewall Place" and another gay bar named just Stonewall opened in part of the building where the original Stonewall had been. Through the efforts of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Things went well for the bar until 2006 when it closed again due to mismanagement and noise complaints. Another group of investors took over in 2007 and renovated the neglected club and was reopened as the Stonewall Inn in March 2007. It is still going strong today.

With this kind of history from Prohibition to the launch of a national push for human rights, it is easy to believe that some energy is inside this building and there are both patrons and employees who claim that Stonewall has ghosts.One employee said, "We think we have ghosts. Doors slam if no one is there, so we say there are two guys and one girl ghost upstairs. It's an ongoing, running joke." And the upstairs is indeed where most of the run-ins with apparitions take place. That's all I could find, but I'm sure if I ever got the chance to talk to employees there, I'd hear a lot more.

Harvey Milk's Old Castro Camera Shop

Harvey Milk was born on May 22nd in 1930 in Woodmere, New York. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who owned a department store. He worked in the store when he was growing up. It was also as he was growing up that he figured out he was gay. He attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany, which is now known as State University of New York. He studied math and history and became a writer for the school paper. Many of his columns featured commentary on diversity. When he graduated in 1951, he decided to enlist in the Navy and he was enrolled in officer training. He did well and ended up stationed as a diving instructor in San Diego. His naval career would come to an abrubt end when his orientation was discovered. He resigned at the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He decided to get a job as a teacher and did so working as a public school teacher on Long Island. He later would work as a stock analyst in New York City and then as a production associate for Broadway musicals. The Vietnam War would get him more active in politics and activism.

He eventually made his way to San Francisco in 1972 and opened up a camera store on Castro Street. The Castro District and gay culture go hand-in-hand. The Castro Street Fair has been hosted for 45 years and was started by Milk in 1974. He started it because of the discriminatory policies of local merchants who tried to block two gay men from opening a store. It was an offshoot of the Castro Village Association, the first US organization for gay businesses. The influence of the Castro Street Fair was much of why Castro transformed into the center of the LGBTQ community.

Milk went on to announce that he would be running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He lost the race, but he was now a prominent figure in politics. He ran again for the combined San Francisco City/County supervisor seat in 1975 and almost won. Mayor George Mascone appointed him to the city’s Board of Permit Appeals. This was a precedent and made Milk the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk ran for state assembly and lost, but this spurred him to champion an amendment that would replace at-large elections for the Board of Supervisors with district elections and he won his next race. He was inaugurated as a San Francisco City-County Supervisor on January 9, 1978. He became an advocate for many people, especially the gay community. He once said during a speech, "Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out." Many people hated Milk though and he received daily death threats.

Former city Supervisor Dan White was really angry. The bad blood between him and Milk went back to an early controversy over the building of a mental health facility for troubled youths. Both White and Milk opposed it, but then Milk changed his mind and voted against White who lost on the issue. White never forgot that and voted against every issue Milk supported after that. White would resign his seat on November 10, 1978 citing that the money was not enough to support his family. He then changed his mind, but the Mayor would not let him back. Now White hated Mayor Moscone too. On November 27, 1978, White managed to get into City Hall with a gun through a basement window. He went to Moscone’s office and killed him, then walked down the hall and killed Milk. White used the Twinkie Defense, which basically was claiming he had so much sugar that he had lost his sanity so he was not accountable for what he did. And it worked. He was acquitted of murder charges and given a lesser sentence for manslaughter. People rioted on Castro Street and set police cars on fire. The police in turn raided gay businesses and beat people.

Perhaps this is why Harvey Milk is not at rest. I mentioned that Milk opened up a camera shop when he first moved to San Francisco. This shop would become a neighborhood center. Milk's spirit is said to have returned here and taken up residence. Moviemaker Gus Van Sant definitely felt this was the case as he filmed the movie Milk. For the film, Van Sant recreated the former Castro Camera Shop in the gift store that took its place. He tells the following story, "The gift store owners were very into the legacy of the store and willing to let us close their shop down and move our set in. They had a mural of Harvey Milk. During a shot at night there was a take where we were using most of the room and there were three or four actors in the scene. Some people were sitting on the sofa which was outside of the shot and during one of the takes somebody walked in from outside and sat down on the sofa during the shot. After the shot was over and I yelled 'Cut,' he apparently got up and walked out. The actors were like, 'Did you see that guy?' I didn't see anybody, but they kept describing Harvey, so I figure it was the ghost of Harvey walking into the store for a brief second."

Milk would make another appearance via a Ouija Board in 2012. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to name a Navy vessel for Milk and it just happened to be his 82nd birthday. Supervisor Scott Wiener said, "LGBT people have always served in our armed forces. For many, many years, our community was hidden and oppressed in the armed services. Now, because of the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' our community can serve openly and proudly. We must support our LGBT soldiers past and present. I can think of no better way to do that than to name a vessel for a Navy officer who went on to become one of the most important civil rights leaders in history."

Another supervisor named John Avalos suggested they ask for Harvey Milk's opinion on a Ouija Board. He described what happened as, "We actually put our hands on the Ouija board and the letters g-o-o-d-r-i-d-d-a-n-c-e-d-a-d-t came out. We asked Harvey, and Harvey gave us these letters: 'Good riddance don't ask, don't tell.' It was quite clear that Harvey Milk would have been opposed to 'don't ask, don't tell.' I can honestly say that's one aspect of this resolution that's really valid."

Upstairs Lounge

Our final stop is at a location in New Orleans. This was a bar known as the Upstairs Lounge and it was located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. The tragedy that occurred here was made worse by the fact that this location had only one entrance and patrons had to climb up some wooden stairs to get to the bar. We need to go back to the summer of 1973 in June. The French Quarter has always been an open and party kind of place, but back in the 70s, gay people still needed to keep their gathering together underground. It was the last Sunday in June and was the final day of Gay Pride for the city. Such a celebration was new as Stonewall had only happened four years prior.

Happening at the same time in America was a not so well known targeting of gay churches. The Metropolitan Community Church, MCC, had been founded in 1968 by Troy Perry. MCC churches were starting in big cities, many of them having to share space at community centers or spaces. Earlier in 1973, a Nashville MCC was burned as well as the Los Angeles headquarters for the MCC. A fledgling MCC congreation in New orleans had asked the Upstairs Lounge if they could use the space for church services. Since the Upstairs Lounge was a gay bar, it was a no brainer and they said yes. The group would move services to their pastor's house just a couple weeks before the Upstairs Lounge would be firebombed, but this was still a spiritual center for them.

The afternoon of June 24th, the lounge hosted an all-you-can-eat buffet and free beer. Around 130 people attended. The beer ran out and only about 60 people stayed, mostly MCC members. They gathered around the piano and sang some songs together. At 7:56 pm, the buzzer downstairs sounded. This usually meant that a cab had come to pick someone up, but no one had called for a cab. One of the guys went to the steel door that led to the stairs leading downstairs and when he opened it, flames rushed inside the club. Someone has deliberately set the wooden stairs on fire. The bar was an immediate inferno and as I told you, this was the only exit. There were windows, but they were boarded up or had iron bars over them. There was no marked emergency exit. Some bars were far enough apart that a few people were able to squeeze through and jump down to the sidewalk.

The local MCC pastor was Rev. Bill Larson and he was at the lounge. He attempted to get through the bars and became stuck. He burned to death wedged in the window. This would become an image of the mass murder as his body remained in that window into the next day. A bartender named Buddy Rasmussen knew where the emergency exit was and he managed to get fifteen people out. One of those men, MCC assistant pastor George "Mitch" Mitchell, ran back inside to get his partner and both men ended up dying. Twenty-nine people died that night and three more would died later from their injuries. More people died that night then died when the entire French Quarter burned down in 1788. Not only was it troubling that someone would set out to burn a gay club and murder gay people, but the city had a very tepid reaction. It was as if no one cared. Descriptions of the aftermath were horrible and none of the coverage mentioned that this was a hate crime.People claimed it was God's judgement and a cab driver even said, "I hope the fire burned their dress off." Two days after the firebombing, the story disappeared from headlines. And to be honest, I knew nothing of this until I heard Mark Bologna cover it on his podcast "Beyond Bourbon Street"

Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, said of the victims, "We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar." As if gay people didn't carry ID or were unworthy of identification. Churches refused to host memorial services. Clearly, there are many reasons why spirits would be here in the afterlife. We have a painful death, murder and no justice because nobody was ever caught in connection to this crime. Not to mention the community's reaction. Several victims were dumped into a mass grave at a Potter's Field because their shamed families wouldn't claim the bodies.

The Upstairs Lounge was not rebuilt or reopened. There is a bar in the first floor under the lounge called The Jimani Bar. Patrons and employees all claim to have unexplained experiences. People feel as though they are being watched and that someone or something they can't see, is there. Disembodied voices are heard both in this bar and on the third floor. Voices are also caught on EVP and they have told investigators their names and that they don't want to be forgotten. Full-bodied apparitions have been seen walking on the second floor and in the kitchen area of the Jimani. And obviously, the vision of these ghosts is horrible as they are seen charred. The smell of smoke floats on the air and I can only imagine that occasionally there is another smell as well.

Gay history is important and I'm glad that I was able to share a few key pieces of that history. Are these locations haunted? That is for you to decide!

My Most Haunted 2019

I've been doing ghost tours since I was a kid. At this point, I've lost count of how many I have done. I've been going into haunted locations just as long, but for most of those years I was not actively seeking interactions. As we like to say around here, I didn't tempt the spirits. For those of you that have been on this journey with me - and that includes any of you that have binged the back catalogue - you know that I have been tempting the spirits more and more and starting here in 2019, I have been doing actually ghost hunting or investigations. What changed that got me doing that? Number one is that I really wanted to start getting my own answers. Number two is that I had been afraid to interact with the spirit world, partly because of my religious upbringing and partly because I didn't have a partner in crime to do it with. I wrote down a list of haunted locations that I have visited that have been discussed either on a regular episode or a BonusCast. These are places that I've actually been inside and wandered around a bit. I'm sure I've missed a few places or forgotten about some. I have 25 of them: Mammoth Cave, Mineral Springs Hotel, King's Tavern (Natchez), The Colosseum, Moses Cone Manor, Sorrel-Weed House, Driskill Hotel, Biltmore Estate, 1725 Captain Taylor House, Old Charleston Jail, Disneyland, Hotel Cassadaga, The Stanley Hotel, Queen Mary, Croke-Patterson House, Molly Brown House, Sugar Mill in St. Augustine, Cuban Club, Treehouse Bar in Orlando, Lillian Place House, Baker House, Waverly Hills Sanitorium, Lemp Mansion, Ripley's Odditorium and the St. Augustine Lighthouse.

Of those 25, I would say that in ten of them, I have had some kind of unexplained experience. So I guess that makes it easy to do a top 10 most haunted locations based on my experiences. But before I share that, I want to talk a bit about some of my beliefs that have changed. Obviously, I'm more open to tempting the spirits although I would say there are certain methods I'll never use...can you say Ouija Board? I used to really wonder about child spirits and I didn't think that a child's spirit would just be left here. But I'm not sure where I stand on what happens directly after we die, so it is possible in my mind that a child spirit might still be around. And the thing that has convinced me the most about this are the EVP of children I have caught myself. As for what a ghost is, I'm still open to ghosts being sourced from many things, but I lean most heavily on some kind of trapped energy. I think this is why the most common experiential thing we hear when it comes to the paranormal is that someone feels weird in some way.

10. King's Tavern

9. Croke-Patterson Mansion

8.Lillian Place House

7. 1725 Captain Taylor House

6. Treehouse Bar

5. Mineral Springs Hotel

4. Ripley's Odditorium

3. St. Augustine Lighthouse

2. Baker House

1. Waverly Hills Sanitorium

So I've done 300 episodes and way more locations than just that. Am I running out of material? No way! I've counted 200 locations on my suggestions list still left and you guys add to it consistently. Some of them don't have enough for a regular episode, but they make it into a BonusCast. And speaking of those, I have over 150 of those available and some of those have been my favorite to produce. So I can sit back at the end of this episode and declare, "It's a haunted gay life!" Or is it? That is for you to decide!