HGB Ep. 560 - Haunted Cemeteries 30

Moment in Oddity - The Giant's Causeway 

The Giant's Causeway is located in Northern Ireland and is believed to be 60 million years old. This is a unique formation of hexagonal basalt stones that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. This is referred to as a causeway because the tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead down to the sea and go under it. All of the stones seem to have been cut in the shapes they have whether they have four or more sides. But scientists claim that these stones were formed from a volcanic fissure eruption. The use of "giant" in the name indicates that legends are connected to this site. One story claims that there was an Irish giant named Finn McCool and a Scottish giant named Benandonner. The two were mighty rivals and Finn built the causeway so that he could have a meeting with Benandonner. After the meeting, Benandonner ripped up the causeway and ran back to Scotland. For his part, Finn McCool left behind his giant boot, which is fossilized at the Giant's Causeway in "bay of the giant." Causeway guides told a different story in the 1700s and this story was also written out as a poem in 1830. Finn had fallen in love with a Scottish maiden, but he couldn't reach her, so he decided to build the causeway. He was making good progress, but it was stopped by his grandmother who didn't want him going after the maiden because she feared losing him to Scotland. She used magic to create a storm that destroyed the causeway. Finn built it again and she destroyed it again. This went on and on and on this final night, the storm lashed out as Finn built. He was exhausted by the time he got to the other side and fell into the maiden's arms and died. His grandmother was horrified that her magic lead to his death and she turned to stone and continues to stand at the causeway today. The legends are fun, but a giant more than likely didn't build the causeway. Regardless, the formation certainly is odd!

This Month in History - St. Paul's Cathedral Bombed

In the month of October, on the 10th, in 1940, St. Paul's Cathedral was bombed. King Aethelberht (a thel barret) I dedicated the first Christian cathedral to be built here in 604 A.D. He dedicated that cathedral to St. Paul. It burned to the ground later and was rebuilt and then destroyed by the Vikings in 962. A third cathedral was also burned down in 1087. The fourth cathedral stood for many years, but burned up in the Great Fire of London in 1666. English architect Sir Christopher Wren built the fifth and final cathedral in the baroque design and crowned it with a beautiful dome. Wren considered it his masterpiece and he was buried inside it. During the Battle of Britain in World War II, the German Luftwaffe bombed Britain heavily. A nighttime raid was launched on October 10th and a Nazi bomb went through the dome and left the high altar in ruin. The image of St. Paul's in the midst of smoke and fire inspired the British people. The cathedral survived the Blitz and the bells rang out in 1944 to celebrate the liberation of Paris and again in 1945 at the end of the war in Europe with services attended by 35,000 people.

Haunted Cemeteries 30

A bench, hewn from natural wood, that is located in one of our featured cemeteries reads, "Here I sit broken-hearted, thinking about, our dearly departed." And that is why we have cemeteries. To remember our dearly departed family and friends. For those of us that wander these cities of the dead, we make new friends along the way as we stop and read a headstone here and there. A life remembered for a brief moment. We give that to the dead when we stop and care. And in some cemeteries, our efforts do not go in vain as we are watched and surveyed from beyond the veil. On this haunted cemeteries episode, we feature haunted cemeteries in Arizona; Alabama; Ontario, Canada; Prague, Czech Republic; South Dakota and two St. Mary Churchyard's in London, Britain.

Evergreen Mortuary and Cemetery

Evergreen Cemetery was founded in 1907 on 110 acres outside the city of Tucson to replace the original city cemetery known as Court Street Cemetery. That cemetery was open from 1875 to 1907. When it closed, the bodies were moved to Evergreen. The process took 20 years. Remains from another cemetery named Presidio were also relocated here. This means that many of the early pioneers of Tucson are buried in Evergreen. The cemetery is surrounded by mountains and features a lush landscape with many trees has attracted  wide variety of birds through the years, so it has been listed as a Bird Sanctuary by the Audubon Society of Tucson. Evergreen Mortuary was opened in 1974 to make the cemetery a one-stop shop. The NorthStar Memorial Group acquired the property in 2014.

Some of the notable people buried here are Jacob Mansfeld who started the first public library in the territory and Thomas Jeffords who was a U.S. Army scout and blood brother to Apache leader Cochise and helped negotiate a treaty with the Apache. The Drachman family were pioneers who came to Tucson from California. Philip Drachman traveled as steerage to New York in 1852 and through several years, made his way to the Territory of Arizona. There he opened a dry goods store with his friend Joseph Goldwater and got involved in real estate. By 1881, he owned a saloon and a few years later he had a cigar shop and he got involved in politics. Drachmann died in Tucson in 1889. He was buried in the Masonic Plot at Evergreen Cemetery. His son Mose got involved in Tucson real estate and politics, following in his father's footsteps. He too is buried at Evergreen.

The Evergreen Cemetery page on Facebook shares this about Maria Wakefield Fish who was buried at the cemetery in 1909, "Governor Safford invited Maria to come to Arizona and inaugurate the public schools in Tucson. There were no railroads; the desert stretched out desolate and hostile Indians ranged the country. Maria braved the dangers and came and took the post and opened the public schools of Tucson and practically of the territory. She was the pioneer that opened up the splendid vista of education to boys and girls of today. Wakefield Middle School was named for her. She was also the first American woman married in Tucson - the date was 1874."

Many people believe this cemetery is one of the most haunted places in Tucson. There is the disembodied sound of children laughing and playing that is heard. A woman was walking through the cemetery one day and felt a sudden and forceful yank of her hair. There was no one near her. There can be an eerie silence about the place at times. More quiet than any cemetery should be. No birds sing, no bugs flit and no wind courses through the trees.

Hodges Cemetery

Hodges Cemetery is a family cemetery in Alabama that dates back to 1887 and is on land owned originally by W. L. Hodges near the border with Brookside. There are around 135 graves here and despite being a small graveyard, it is apparently very active with spirits. That could be because the cemetery regularly gets disturbed by recreational ATV riders and other trespassers. People driving by the cemetery claim that something bangs against their car. Ghostly hands and faces appear on the windows of their cars. Shadow figures dart among the tombstones and strange noises are heard. And there have even been claims of sightings of a wolf with glowing red eyes.

Drummond Hill 

The land of the Haudenosaunee was once where Drummond Hill Cemetery now sits. This land sits in the Niagara Falls area in Ontario, Canada. A settler named Christopher Buchner bought 400 acres of land in 1799 from his father-in-law James Forsyth. On the top of a hill there, he designed a burial ground. The earliest burial dates to 1797. During the War of 1812, the Battle of Lundy Lane was fought. Lieutenant Governor Gordon Drummond took command of the British forces and his goal was to drive the Americans from the west bank of the Niagara. Brigadier General Winfield Scott led the Americans and they emerged from a forest right into the path of Drummond. At first, Scott's men took a big beating, but then one regiment moved to flank the left side of the British, which surprised two battalions. Another American regiment arrived and one brigade under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Miller released a devastating attack on the British and earned the title of "The Hero Of Lundy's Lane." Several attacks later and many deaths later, the battle ended in a draw. The hill was named for Drummond. 

One of the notable people buried here is Burr Lockhart Plato who was a slave in West Virginia. He escaped and used the Underground Railroad to get to Canada in 1856. He settled in Niagara Falls and grew in prominence there until he was elected as a councilor in 1886, one of the first black politicians in Canada. Laura Secord is also buried here. During the War of 1812, she walked over twenty miles from American-occupied territory to get a message to the British warning them of an impending American attack. This was despite her father being a Patriot. Her husband was a Loyalist. The information helped the British and the Mohawk repel the attack. Her effort was largely forgotten until 1860 when she was formally thanked and awarded 100 pounds by the Prince of Wales, Edward. Schools have been named for her, a museum was set up for her, there are monuments and memorial coins and stamps and even chocolates were made in her honor. Her legend has reached almost mythic levels.

The main ghosts seen in this cemetery are of course, soldiers. People have seen the spirits of five soldiers in Royal Scots uniforms. They limp across the cemetery. A residual haunting plays out featuring three British soldiers walking towards Lundy House, which was used as a hospital during the war. The sounds of battle are often heard. People claim to feel as though they are being watched. Ghost Walks had taken a group out on their Niagara Ghost Bus Tour and as they exited the cemetery, a woman turned to look back because she felt a cold breeze on her neck and she yelled, "Turn around! Look!" The whole group saw black figures hovering behind graves and then they just disappeared.

Bohnice Cemetery

The Bohnice Cemetery is located in the city of Prague and was founded in 1909. This was the burial ground for the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital. There are about 4,000 bodies in the cemetery. The grounds of the hospital are very large and described as being more like a village. The grounds feature a park that is used as a music venue and host for festivals and exhibitions. The main building, which is a baroque country house, still houses patients. The St. Wenceslas Church had been a church, then a barracks and military warehouse. It's open for special occasions now. There are also villas, a theater, cafe and farm. And then there is the abandoned cemetery. Through the years, grave robbers came and took many of the headstones that had metal so that they could sell the metal. So most burials are unmarked. And the cemetery is so overgrown, no one would know it was a cemetery if not for the fence and gate. A small chapel is in ruins with just the outer brick walls still standing. A large cross still sits against a wall. The last burial took place in 1951 and the cemetery was abandoned in 1963. 

Before the closure, about 40 patients were buried every year. Some patients with syphilis were treated with blood that was contaminated with malaria. It was thought this would give patients fevers that would kill the bacteria. Sometimes it worked, but most ended up dead. Especially when the treatment was used for schizophrenia or mania. There are also victims from a typhus epidemic and prisoners from World War I. There is only one gravestone here that can be read and it reads, "Maria Tuma Reiter" with her death marked as April 1912. She had been 29 years old. She passed from pneumonia, but is believed to not have been a patient, but rather a worker who lived in the cottages nearby with her husband and two children. The most notable burial here would be Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand. And the possible murderer of a sex worker named Otilia Vranska might be here. Sergeant Pavlíček never confessed to the murder publically, but he had friends who claimed that he confided to them that he had murdered the woman. Otilia was found, cut in half, with her body in two different suitcases set with two different destinations. The murder was never solved. Pavlicek was admitted to Bohnice psychiatric hospital and he committed suicide there.

It is said that the cemetery is full of negative energy. Satanic rituals were conducted in years past and remnants have been left behind like circles of salt. Seances were held for years, as recently as 2008 and this was recorded on security cameras. People claim to hear strange sounds coming from within the cemetery. Unexplained lights are also seen. A legend claims that Maria's gravestone has stayed so nice because her spirit protects it. Thieves claimed that when they tried to take her headstone, they were grabbed on the shoulder by a woman who said, "Hey, this is sacred!" She might be haunting the cemetery because there is one story that claims she was admitted to the hospital for wrong reasons and was raped and impregnated and that the doctor who committed this act, killed her during an abortion attempt. There is another story that thieves were carrying a large tombstone out of the cemetery when they were scared by something they saw and dropped it. That headstone now sits near the front gate. 

Keystone Cemetery

Keystone Cemetery is perfectly situated so that Mount Rushmore can be seen from the grounds. The grounds are picturesque and there is a cute little white chapel. This cemetery is also known as Mountainview Cemetery and was founded by Patrick F. Hayes in 1900. The first burial was his daughter Catherine who had died at just 18-months-old. Notable burials her include David N. Swanzey who was friends with Charles Rushmore and Gutzon Borglum and helped with giving Mount Rushmore its name. His wife was Carrie Ingalls - yes, a member of the "Little House on the Prairie" family. His son, Harold David “Davey” “Red” Swanzey, is also buried here and had been a worker at Mount Rushmore. As a side note, Mount Rushmore was built from 1927 to 1941 and 400 workers using ropes and scaffolding moved nearly 450,000 tons of rock and not one person perished. 

Also buried at the cemetery is Harry Hardin who was known as "Wild Horse." He had a donkey named "Sugar Babe" and the two became characters advertising Landstrom's Black Hills gold jewelry. Hardin played the part of a bearded prospector. He would tell people he survived the Custer Massacre, but he was born twenty years after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. A recent burial in 2005 was for Orville Francis Salway who was also known as Paha Ska. The name means "White Hills" and was given to him by Ben Black Elk. Paha Ska was an elder of the Oglala Sioux tribe and he traveled the world as an ambassador for his tribe and the city of Keystone. He won numerous awards for his artwork, which is on display at the Crazy Horse Memorial.

The grave of Robert "Bobby" Buntrock is here. He was born in Denver in 1952 and his parents moved the family to California when he three-years-old. They got him signed to an agent and when he was seven, he landed his first role on an episode of "Wagon Train." When he was nine he landed his biggest role as Harold "Sport" Baxter on the sitcom Hazel starring Shirley Booth. He retired from acting in 1967 when he was fifteen. The family moved to Keystone and Bobby died there in 1974 at the age of 21 when his car veered off a bridge under construction and landed in Battle Creek where he drowned. He was young, making this tragic, but even worse is that his mother met a similar fate just a year before this. And yes, on the exact same bridge.

There are stories of spirits in the graveyard. Disembodied and haunting laughter is attributed to Wild Horse Hardin. Ghostly apparitions have been spotted standing in the cemetery. Caitlin wrote on B102.7's website, "Friends and I went to this cemetery years ago. I took many pictures with my digital camera and found nothing on the pictures, but I took a video on my cell phone. Unfortunately, I no longer have the video but after reviewing the video there something big and white shot across the screen of my phone. Also, on our way out, all of our phones stopped working – said there was service, but when we tried to call out, our phone just shut off."

St. Mary's Churchyard at Hendon

A church of some sort has stood on the St. Mary's Churchyard site in Hendon, North London since Anglo-Saxon times. The original church is thought to have been named for Mary Magdalene by a heretical cult linked to the Knights Templar. This churchyard contains family sepulchers numbered with Roman numerals and an addition was added between World War I and II for newer burials. It is said that an ancient and horrifying history is part of the churchyard and may have influenced Bram Stoker’s writing of Dracula. The Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper reported in 1892 a story that dated back to 1828. A young medical student approached the vicar of St. Mary's Church in 1828 and him that he desperately needed to get access to his family's vault. The vicar at first refused, but then agreed saying that he would only open it if the young man promised not to open any coffins. He should've stuck around to supervise becasue the young man brought an axe with him and proceeded to chop off the head of his mother's corpse. When authorities asked the man why he did this, he claimed that he was dying from a hereditary disease that had also killed her. When the story was shared in the newspaper in 1892, it was opposite a review of the Lyceum Theatre’s production of King Lear. At that time, Bram Stoker was the manager of the Lyceum Theatre and probably saw the article. Could this have inspired some of his ideas for Dracula? Van Helsing cut off the head of Lucy after she turned vampire at a churchyard called Kingstead. It's description sounded a lot like St Mary’s Hendon reading, "a lordly death house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming London, where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill, and where wildflowers grow of their own accord." When Dracula was published, St Mary’s Churchyard was in the countryside. Today, it has homes all around it.

That's interesting, but on top of possibly being connected to Dracula, this churchyard is haunted! The disembodied sounds of shuffling have been heard as though a group of phantom monks are walking through the churchyard and in the church. This is heard most often during religious festivals. The sounds of a ghostly choir are heard around the church. Some of it sounds like Benedictine monks chanting and they would have been here before King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. The manager of Arsenal Football Club before World War II was herbert Chapman and he was buried here. His ghost haunts his burial and is said to also show up at the Old Highbury Stadium.

St. Mary's Churchyard in Wanstead

Just as with our other St Mary’s Churchyard, this has had a church and graveyard for at least 800 years dating back to around 1208. The current church was built in 1787 and designed by architect Thomas Hardwick. This church was made in the Georgian style. The oldest headstone dates to 1685 and is for a man named James Waly. Notable burials here are the sculptor Joseph Wilton, Royal Navy Vice-Admiral Robert Plampin and Thomas Turpin, allegedly uncle to dastardly Dick Turpin who was Essex's most famous thug. Winifred East was the wife of an auctioneer whose decapitated body was found on the southern railway between Kidbrooke and Eltham in Wanstead. She was only 28 and her murder was never solved. The Derry Journal of Monday 18 March 1929 gave these details, "A young man who is known to have entered the carriage in which Mrs. East traveled, and left at a later station, is being sought the police. When the driver of the electric train had just passed Kidbrooke station he saw in the distance dark object lying between the two sets of rails. As he came closer, he saw that it was the decapitated body of a woman. He reported the matter to the stationmaster at Well Hall, the next stopping place. After establishing the woman’s identity, the police searched the train in which she was known to have left Barnehurst, and the discovery of number of her personal belongings under a seat were able to determine the actual compartment in which she traveled." She was buried in St. Mary's Churchyard.

There are claims that at least four spirits have made this churchyard their home. There is a grey lady here that seems to be looking for her husband. Sightings of her have been reported for nearly 100 years. Dick Turpin must have liked his uncle because it is said that he likes to show up in the churchyard every so often. Dick also shows up at St George’s Field in York, close to where he was executed in 1739 and lots of pubs claim his ghost too. The third spirit seen here is a skeleton who is wheeling along a handcart with a coffin on it, so he seems to be working as a ghostly grave digger. And there is a lady in white here too whom seems to be upset that grave robbers took her body.

We love cemeteries, especially if they have a haunted reputation. All of these cemeteries are unique and interesting. Are they haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 559 - Lord Baltimore Hotel

Moment in Oddity - El Ojo (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

In Argentina there is a most unique island called El Ojo. It is located in the Parana Delta in the Buenos Aires Province. The island itself actually floats, and is nearly entirely circular in formation. The lake that El Ojo floats within is round as well and the island rotates on its own axis due to a river that flows beneath it. The island has its edges continually broken off as it rotates around the lake, continuing its perpetual circular shaping. As to how El Ojo came to be is still unknown. The island is uninhabited and roughly 118 meters in diameter. Over time it will slowly reduce in size due to the erosion of its edges. A strangely circular segment of land spinning within a circular lake resembling an eyeball, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Bruce Mozert Photography (Suggested by: Jenny Lynn Raines)

In the month of October, on the 14th, in 2015, American photographer Bruce Mozert passed away. Mozert was most well known for his exceptional underwater photography. In 1938, Mozert was working on a photoshoot in Miami, Florida. While there, he heard about the filming of a Tarzan movie in Silver Springs near Ocala, Florida. Once Bruce arrived at Silver Springs and he encountered the crystal clear water, he decided to stay. Mozert became Silver Springs official photographer. Bruce stated of Silver Springs, "I saw that crystal clear water and that's how I got into my underwater work". His photographs were very unique. He didn't typically feature fish or other subjects normally found underwater. The majority of his photographs highlighted women underwater doing every day chores that would routinely be done on land. Tasks like cooking, reading newspapers, mowing lawns and even archery were featured. The photos are stunning and were used to advertise Silver Springs to tourists and film crews. Over the years his photographs were published in The Huffington Post, National Geographic, Life, Look and Smithsonian Magazine. His reproductions of his work can be purchased online through various sites. Even if you have no interest in purchasing any of his pictures, we highly recommend searching his photography to enjoy. Bruce Mozert passed away in his Ocala, Florida home at the age of 98.

Lord Baltimore Hotel

Viewing historic pictures from the Lord Baltimore Hotel conjures images of the Overlook Hotel and Jack Torrance standing for a photo with a large group of guests. It's heyday came during the glitz and glamour of the 20s and 30s. The hotel has stood for nearly 100 years and hosted several notable people. It also was the scene of several suicides after the Stock Market Crash. And for that reason, despite its historic charm, there are many ghosts hanging around the hotel. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Lord Baltimore Hotel.

Before the City of Baltimore was founded, the Susquehanna tribe was here at what is known as the Potomac Creek Complex. The merchant ship The Ark arrived at nearby St. Clement's Island with 140 colonists in 1634. More Europeans followed and settled north of the island and the city of Baltimore was founded in 1729. The city was named for Cecil Calvert, the 2nd Baron Baltimore and was laid out in 1730. Growth was slow as people were skeptical that the city's port would be an effective place of transport. A man named Dr. John Stevenson shipped his Flour over to Ireland successfully from Baltimore and once other merchants saw this, Baltimore exploded. Official incorporation came in 1796. The War of 1812 put Baltimore in the crosshairs of the British. In 1814,  the Battle of Baltimore was fought and the British were unable to take Baltimore and they fled. The nation was inspired by the victory and so was Francis Scott Key, who watched the battle as a captive onboard a British warship. He was inspired to write a poem called "Defense of Fort M’Henry," which became our National Anthem. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was America’s first railroad and gave the city even more prominence. So many immigrants came through Baltimore's port that it was second only to New York City as a national port-of-entry.

Before the Lord Baltimore Hotel was on the site, there was another hotel named Hotel Caswell here. It had opened as a 250-room hotel in 1905. Harry Busick had come to Baltimore from the small town of Still Pond. He got a job as a clerk at the Carrollton Hotel and worked there for a year until it burned to the ground. Busick moved on to the University Hospital and he became very successful. He got a loan from a bank and leased the New Howard Hotel. Within two years, he was managing the Caswell Hotel. With the responsibilities of running tow hotels, Busick formed the Union Hotel Company and under that he decided to build a "super-hotel" in Baltimore. He  bought the Caswell Hotel for $750,000 in 1919 and nine years later he had it razed. Now, he was going to build his dream hotel. 

Busick hired the renowned architect William Lee Stoddart to design the hotel. Stoddard had designed several hotels up to this point, but the Lord Baltimore would be his finest achievement. Stoddart was famous enough in his time for his divorce from his wife to become a national scandal covered by the New York Times. In 1908, his wife Mary filed for divorce, citing extreme cruelty, and took the couples three children from New Jersey to Reno, Nevada. Stoddart counter-sued, accusing Mary of having an affair with an architect friend of his. The New York Times, in National Enquirer fashion, published three personal and intimate letters that Mary had written to Stoddart in which she begged for a divorce and fianacial help. Stoddart finally agreed to the divorce and sent money. The scandal didn't hurt him that much as his success with the Lord Baltimore Hotel and other grand hotels reveals.

The design features a Beaux-Arts style with elements of Italian and French Renaissance. This was the last high-rise building in Baltimore with classical ornamentation in the downtown area. The foundation of the hotel was in a U-shape with two steel and brick towers capped by an octagonal tower with a granite trim and flat roof that was at the rear or the bottom of the U. There was also a copper-covered mansard on that rear tower with carved stone dormers and large medallions depicting the head of a lion. The copper has now turned the hue of gray-green patina and it's just a very cool look. Rising to 289 feet, the hotel was the tallest building in all of Maryland at the time. The interior featured elements of Italian Renaissance and large squared piers with Corinthian capitals. A marble stairway led from the 5,300 square foot lobby to the  main dining room that had mirrored transoms and large windows. The lobby was surrounded by a mezzanine and originally had Terrazo marble floors and rose Traventine marble walls. There was a banquet hall on the second floor that featured crystal chandeliers and room for over 1200 people. There were also meeting rooms on this level. Like many hotels of the time, the ground level featured stores.

The Lord Baltimore Hotel opened in the winter of 1928 with 700 rooms. Many in the city attended its opening gala, including Governor Albert Richie, Baltimore mayor William F. Broening and even some relatives of the royal Baltimore family. This was such a big affair that a local radio station broadcast the opening live. There was a two-story speakeasy hidden away in the hotel that was remodeled into a storage closet in 1933 after Prohibition was over. Harry Busick died shortly after the hotel opened when he drowned in 1930. A New York Times headline reads "Harry Busick of Baltimore Found Dead Near Ducking Blind." His sons Nelson, Howard and Morton took over managing the hotel and it flourished. Even though the Great Depression and World War II impacted the economy, the hotel managed to do well because of the superior service, design and amenities.

In the 1940s, the hotel underwent a re-decoration program. The Calvert Ballroom received a collection of historic murals done by Baltimore artists Mabel and John Georgi. One of the murals shows a view of Baltimore in the 19th century looking south from the Washington Monument and another shows street scenes of Baltimore during the 19th century. During the early years of the hotel, it was segregated as ordered by local ordinances, so no blacks were allowed inside. By 1958, the Busick brothers were done with those ordinances and they opened the hotel to everyone. And so that year, three baseball greats - Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson - were able to stay at the Lord Baltimore when they played in the All-Star Game hosted by Baltimore. Ten years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed while attending the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. King was given the keys to the city by the mayor Tommy D’Alessandro III at the hotel. (That's Nancy Pelosi's brother.)

The Busick brothers decided to sell the hotel in 1960 to a New Yorker named Weissberg for $7.1 million.  The Lord Baltimore went through several owners after that and it started to deteriorate. The Baltimore downtown had an economic downturn as well and business wasn't going well for the hotel. It struggled until a company named Federated Enterprises, Inc. bought it at auction in 1969 and began an extensive renovation. This was an inspired effort, but didn't work and the hotel closed in 1982. This was after the hotel had suffered three suspicious fires as well. In 1992, Universal Equities partnered with Radisson Hotels and they reopened the hotel as the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore. The building was renovated further and brought back to its former glory. Hilton bought the property in 1997. In 2013, the Rubell family bought the hotel and ended the relationship with Radisson so they could operate it independently. The family proceeded to invest millions into the building. Under their management, the Lord Baltimore has flourished and won numerous awards. 

With over 20 documented cases of suicide by jumping from the roof of the hotel, it's no wonder rumors persist that the hotel is haunted. Suzanne C. Koogler DeVier writes the Baltimore Through My Eyes blog and she shares, "With elevator access to what is now the LB Skybar, an outdoor space on the 19th floor, jumpers would have found it very easy to make their way to the edge of the roof. After my grandfather began working there as the night auditor, per my grandmother, one of the jumpers actually landed on the hood of his brand new car, completely destroying it." The Lord Baltimore has ended up on many Top 10 haunted hotel lists and participated in the world's largest ghost hunt for several years. 

A woman and a man are heard quarreling on the mezzanine when no one is visibly seen. The elevator seems to have a mind of its own at times and the 19th floor seems to be the most haunted. Guests claim to feel a presence in their rooms and some claim to be touched while near or on the elevator. The spirit of a little girl wearing a cream colored dress and black shoes with a red ball that the staff call Molly, has been seen in the ballroom and on the 19th floor. Guests have complained to the front desk about a young girl bouncing a ball keeping them awake. The story behind her is that her parents jumped from the roof of the hotel and took her with them. A ghostly couple seen dancing in the ballroom is said to be her parents, but some investigators disagree and say the couple definitely don't like being disturbed.

WJZ in Baltimore has a segment called "Where's Marty?" and last year for Halloween he was at the Lord Baltimore. They had several things happen that they couldn't explain. During the intro, a wall sconce started blinking for no apparent reason. A little red ball that was used as a trigger object, rolled all by itself. The camera guy who was named K2 - lol - told viewers that the battery in his camera completely died. WBAL TV11 reported from the hotel this year, 2024, in September for National Ghosthunting Day. They caught a figure on the SLS Camera. Reporter Tori Yorgey told viewers that a tripwire on the floor had been flickering for several minutes and a K2 she was holding kept pinging as well.

The hotel has this account from a former employee named Fran Carter, "In 1998, Fran was on the nineteenth floor of the building, preparing a small meeting room for future use. She was working at a table facing the wall with an open door to her left. She bent over the table for a few moments, absorbed in her work. Then she looked up and to her left at the doorway. A little girl wearing a long, cream-colored dress and black, shiny shoes ran by the open doorway, bouncing a red ball before her. Fran immediately ran outside, calling after her, 'Little girl, are you lost?' The hallway was completely empty. Fran, quite shaken at this point, turned around to go back to the meeting room when she saw two people walking down the hallway toward her. The first was an older gentleman dressed in formal attire. He was accompanied by a woman in a long ball gown. Fran asked them if they were looking for their granddaughter because she had just run by. She turned to point in the direction the child had passed. When she turned her head back toward the two people, they had just vanished right before her eyes. Fran was then so frightened that she called a security guard. He stayed there with her until she finished her work, and no more ghostly visitors appeared on the nineteenth floor that evening. A few years later a guest at the hotel told Fran that she believed that her room had a ghostly visitor. She was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a child crying. As she sat up in her bed, she saw a little girl crying and rocking herself back and forth while sitting in the window of her room. As the woman rose to go to the girl, she slowly faded away. The little girl was wearing a long, cream-colored dress with black shoes. One evening, a few years later, Fran was approached by a coworker who told her that three people were standing in the dark in the ballroom of the hotel. The hotel’s ballroom is a very large room, which can accommodate 1,250 people seated at banquet tables. Three arched ceiling length windows dominate the far wall of the room, the side of the room opposite the entrance doorway. When Fran entered the ballroom, she walked across the room in the direction of the windows. She noticed that there were indeed three people standing there in the darkened, moonlit room. One man stood before the far left window, another stood before the far right window, and a woman stood a few feet behind the men before the middle window. They were all looking upward through the windows. Fran noticed that he was wearing a dark, possibly blue, sport blazer with metallic buttons that gleamed in the darkness. He had an ascot tied around his throat and appeared quite the dapper gentleman, She thought that his clothing was odd, but at this point didn’t know that her visitors were out of the ordinary. She then asked them if they would like some light and walked by the man in the ascot to turn on the light switch, just a few feet from where we was standing. Light immediately flooded the room-and the three visitors were gone!”

Haunted hotels are the best places to rent a room and they sure are fun to investigate. Are people really seeing the ghost of a little girl at the hotel? Are there spirits hovering near the beds? Does the elevator really have a mind of its own? Is the Lord Baltimore Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 558 - Croke-Patterson Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Miramichi Moose

Most people know that if you encounter a wild moose, you definitely don't want to mess with it. They typically can be very dangerous animals. However, back in the early 1900's there was a man in New Brunswick, Canada who did not heed this common knowledge. As the story goes, John Connell saved a young moose from freezing in the snow. The man got the moose up out of the snow and brought the animal into his barn. Connell named the moose Tommy and he raised him alongside his horses. He taught the moose to accept a harness just as he did with his horses so that his rescued moose could pull a sleigh. Connell also saddle-trained the moose and he would ride Tommy into town from time to time. Connell is not the only person in history to tame a wild moose. A man named Sellick was known to trap and tame moose back in the mid 1800's. He would then use the beasts as draft animals. It is said by some that moose are better than horses because they could wade through snow better and easily travel 50 miles in a day without tiring. In 1904, John Connell was contacted by the Newfoundland government. The government wanted to begin a population of moose on the island. It is said that Connell went out and captured six or seven moose and sent them by train to Howley, Newfoundland. Moose are very majestic animals, but training one to be ridden, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Panama Canal Treaty

In the month of October, on the 1st, in 1979, the Panama Canal Treaty transferred jurisdiction over the Canal Zone to Panama. The United States had tried to negotiate a treaty with Colombia back in 1903. This agreement would give the U.S. rights to the land surrounding where the Panama Canal was to be built. Colombia would not ratify the treaty, but at the time, Panama was in the process of seceding from the country of Colombia. President Theodore Roosevelt supported the Panamanian quest for independence. Roosevelt's support proved to be beneficial as the Panamanian government signed the treaty and the Panama Canal opened in 1914. Over the years, control over the canal spurred tensions between the United States and Panama. In 1964, a riot erupted between U.S. citizens and Panamanians over flying the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone. It was soon recognized that there needed to be further negotiations regarding the Canal. 1967 brought both governments three treaties that were agreed upon, however a shift in Panamanian government, including a coup, delayed any immediate completions of the proposed treaties. Between 1973 and 1976 communications began again with concentrations on U.S. perpetual use of the waterway instead of perpetual control of the Panama Canal. This led to the eventual Torrijos-Carter Treaties that President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos signed on September 7, 1977. The first treaty stated that the U.S. would continue using its military to defend the canal, thus allowing perpetual use by the United States. The second treaty stated that the Panama Canal Zone would cease to exist on October 1st, 1979, with the Canal itself being turned over to the Panamanians on December 31st, 1999.

Croke-Patterson Mansion

The Patterson Inn has been known for most of its life as the Croke-Patterson Mansion. This grand Victorian mansion is located in Capitol Hill in Denver, Colorado. This was a private home for many years and then had other uses before becoming the boutique hotel it is today. This is a location where Diane had her second ever paranormal experience. The basement is incredibly creepy and there are many ghost stories about this location. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Croke-Patterson Mansion.

There are many legends connected to the Croke-Patterson Mansion. Tracking down a real history can be difficult. On top of that, we all know that people spreading rumors and legends can give them a life spiritually, forming tulpas. We'll try to do our best, but also we'll share some of the legends because they are important when it comes to the house. The Croke-Patterson Mansion sits at 420 East 11th Avenue in Denver. Capitol Hill is the neighborhood that surrounds the state's capitol. Diane lived here for a couple of years, a couple blocks down from the capitol in Poet's Row. This area had been where Denver's rich families built their audacious mansions. The Silver Crash of 1893 caused a slump in the local economy and building shifted to apartments and boarding houses for transient middle-class families. Before all of this though, the area was homesteaded by Henry C. Brown. He owned 160 acres and it was dubbed Brown's Bluff because it was a dry, dusty bit of land. No one thought it would become prime real estate. He eventually donated a portion of the land for the state capitol to be built upon. Plans for the capitol stalled eventually and Brown claimed the land back, upon which the state sued him and got the land back.

It was here in Capitol Hill that Thomas Bernard Croke decided to build his massive mansion. Croke was the son of Irish immigrants and was born in Wisconsin in 1856. He moved to Denver in 1874 with some siblings and he got a job at the Daniels & Fisher store in downtown. Croke did an excellent job and was quickly promoted to management and before long, Daniels and Fisher partnered with Croke so he could open his own store. This store specialized in carpet and he made enough to build a mansion at the corner of East 11th Avenue and Pennsylvania Street. Croke hired contractor J.M. Cochran and architect Isaac Hodgson, Jr. to design what would become one of the three finest examples of the Chateauesque style in Denver. This is the only one still around. The design was meant to mimic the Chateau d'Azay-le-Rideau (ah-zeh luh ree-doe) castle in France. Many people believe the home follows after the Richardsonian Romanesque that was popular at the time though. The mansion stands three-stories and has a basement. 

The outside was made from Manitou sandstone and featured turrets, dormers, bay windows, arched doorways and spires. Initially, that sandstone would have been beautifully carved, but sandstone doesn't hold up and the years were not kind to the facade. The stable was connected to the house and was a mini replica of the main house. The main floor featured a large hallway with a library, parlor and dining room were on either side of the hallway. The second floor had five bedrooms and the third floor had servant bedrooms and a playroom for children. The basement had the ballroom and a laundry and storage rooms. In all, the house spread over 14,000 square feet.

Croke's wife, Margaret Dunphy Croke, had died before Croke moved into the mansion with their two young children, probably in 1887. He also moved his parents in, but his mother died shortly after they moved in. After six months in the house, Croke decided to move everybody out. He built this grand house and only lived in it for six months. Croke wanted to move back to his ranch north of Denver. He approached a man named Thomas Patterson and made a deal to trade the mansion to him for 1,440 acres of ranchland. The real reason Croke left his mansion was probably because of the silver crash and he was unable to pay his mortgage anymore.

Thomas Patterson was an Irishman who moved to America with his family when he was ten. They lived in New York and then Indiana and Patterson joined the 11th Indiana Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, he went to law school  and he became a successful lawyer, politician who served in Congress from 1877-1879 and journalist who purchased the Rocky Mountain News in 1890. While studying, he met Katharine Grafton at school and the couple married in 1863. They would have five children with three of them living to adulthood - Mary, Margaret and James - and moved to Colorado in 1872. The couple became prominent residents of Denver and Katharine was known for her philanthropy and she was an influential suffragist serving as president of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association. Things weren't rosy for the Patterson's early on. Their two-year-old son Tom died and Katharine felt that her husband didn't offer her enough comfort. On top of that, their son James ran away from home and got into trouble with the law. Katharine felt it would be best if she moved herself and their three living children to Europe and she did so for four years from 1884 to 1888. Thomas felt that the Croke Mansion would be a wonderful showplace for his family and so he  moved into it in 1892. The Pattersons would live in the mansion for the next thirty years. Only Margaret would live past her twenties. James died in 1892 at the age of 26 and Mary died in 1894 at the age of 27. Katharine died in 1902. Thomas died in July of 1916.

Margaret Patterson had gone to school and studied to become a medical missionary. She never followed that path. Margaret had cared for her siblings before they passed and after that, she met Richard Crawford Campbell who was a distant cousin. He was an influential newspaper editor. The couple married and Richard became the business manager for the Rocky Mountain News under his father-in-law Thomas. After the paper was sold, Campbell turned to real estate and founded the Campbell Investment Company. Margaret and Richard had three children and they lived with her parents in the mansion and then continued on at the mansion after their deaths until 1924 when they bought another home that was more modern. Margaret died in June of 1929 and Richard died shortly thereafter in February 1930.

The Campbells had a daughter who was also named Margaret and she sold the mansion to the Louise Realty Company. This was leased to the Joe Mann School of Orchestra. By 1927 KFVR radio station was housed in the mansion and then in 1930, it was converted into seven apartments. The house changed hands several times for decades and it fell into disrepair, particularly the outside. Several mansions around it had been demolished to make way for apartment buildings and so a grassroots effort started to save the rest of the old mansions in Capitol Hill. Realtor Mary Rae had fallen in love with the Croke-Patterson Mansion and she bought it and continued to run it as apartments. She and her husband worked to get the house on the National Register of Historic Places and they succeeded in 1973.

Dr. Douglas and Melodee Ikeler bought the mansion in 1998 for $600,000 and they lived in it for 10 years. Dr. Ikeler was a very successful veterinarian and he wanted a grand home to reflect his wealth. The architecture of the mansion was perfect for him and he said of it, "I was able to live in a large place shaped like a castle with fancy and elegant interior and exterior." The couple eventually divorced, the house went into foreclosure in 2007 and sat in limbo for a while with different plans for it. One of them involved a religious organization using it as a homeless facility, which thankfully didn't happen because they were going to gut everything inside. Architect Brian Higgins bought the mansion in 2011 for $565,000 and he began renovating it into a bed and breakfast. He was also a director and produced a documentary on the renovations he named "The Castle Project." The film was released in 2013 and the remodeled Patterson Inn opened that same year. Chris Chiari became owner of the mansion in 2018 and he runs it as a boutique hotel, still named the Patterson Inn. Our listener Dolly, who has joined us on several investigations, stayed overnight at the mansion. The mansion has nine uniquely themed rooms for rent. The 12 Spirits Tavern serves up drinks in the basement.

That name for the pub is because there are claims that there are 12 spirits here. Ghost stories have been told about the mansion for decades. There are many reasons for hauntings. The incredibly haunted Cheeseman Park is nearby. Denver was once called the "Little Venice" because of all the ditches crisscrossing through the city to bring water to the neighborhoods and Capitol Hill was full of these ditches and since water can be a conduit for paranormal activity, it is thought the ditches helped this. And then there are the legends. One legend that is told is that a baby died in the house and the mother was so upset about the death that she buried the baby in the basement within a wall. For a number of years, that hole was there. I have a story about it. And the hole was there when our listener Dolly visited. We'll share a picture on Instagram. This legend never shares what the baby died from or who the mother of the child had been. There also is no proof of any of this story. But psychics and mediums have for decades claimed something about a baby and this basement.

Another legend is told about these guard dogs. In the 1970s, there was remodeling going on and the workers would come in to find that their work had been undone overnight. There were a lot of homeless people near the mansion, so they figured some of them were breaking in at night. They put up a fence and hired a security guard. The same issue kept happening so it was decided to bring some guard dogs in to watch the house at night. Three dogs were brought in and on their first night, one of the dogs went through a plate glass window on the third floor and it passed on the driveway. On the second night, a second dog went through the same window and the third dog was found shaking and drooling in a corner. There is no plate glass window on the third floor, so if dogs did go out a window, it was a tiny window in the turret room.

The mansion has always been a creepy place to me. This is the location where I had my second ever paranormal experience. (Diane tells story about visiting the mansion and going down to the basement where there is a hole she stuck her head in and felt the presence of something and what felt like something touching her head.)

Thomas Patterson is one of the spirits here and he shows up in the downstairs pub, which had been his smoking lounge. Katherine Patterson is thought to haunt the Biltmore room. She likes to turn the lights on and off during the night. An Irish caretaker is said to haunt the carriage house.

When Mary Rae owned the mansion, she received several complaints from renters who stayed on the fourth floor. The tenants complained of hearing sounds on the fourth floor that sounded like a loud party and sometimes they heard a screaming baby. The area where the sounds emanated from was a small storage area. Mary was perplexed as to where the sounds could've come from. Trenton Parker who converted the mansion to an office building said, "My mom used to live there in the 1970’s when the mansion was six apartments and she lived on the third floor for about six months, and heard a woman screaming and a baby crying in the tower and would hear parties going on in her apartment and when she opened the door nothing would be going on. Her and the roommate that she lived with could not live there anymore because the ghosts were very active and they could not get any rest living there."

Melodee Ikeler was pregnant with triplets when she and her husband lived in the mansion. She had a great deal of trouble getting out of bed near the end of her pregnancy. She was home alone and needed to get out of bed and couldn't do it. She said, "I was rolling trying to get out of bed and looked to the side of the bed and saw a woman standing next to the bed, offering her hand to help me out. I took her hand and got out of the bed. Then, she just vanished through the wall next to the bed." Melodee decided to get the house blessed, so she had a priest come in and he walked into the front parlor to start his blessing and all of a sudden all the plaster peeled off around the fireplace and a dark vortex of wind came out of the fireplace. The priest ran out of the mansion. Melodee claimed that the drawers in her husband's desk would open and close on their own even though it was locked.

Rocky Mountain Paranormal wrote about an incident that Diane heard about on the radio the morning after it happened, "In 2004, the 850 KOA ZOO BOO Tour radio show featured the mansion. We were the featured paranormal research group. At the end of the nights broadcast, all of the people who were staying for the 5:00 a.m. broadcast were told to 'find a place to sleep in the mansion.' Casey Lamb a radio station employee, decided he was going to sleep in the basement where the medical offices had been located. When he got to the room he saw a person in the corner of the room by the fireplace, then he realized that he could only see the head and he knew that there was not supposed to be anyone left in the building. He ran upstairs to get us to search for someone who had either been left behind or had broken into the mansion. Several people went to the basement and searched, but nobody was found. The next morning, one of Melodee Ikelers children said that that was where they always 'saw a man standing in the corner.'" Now the way Diane remembers it, it was the morning after they stayed overnight and Casey was the last one out of the house, but he didn't know that and he told everybody that there was still a guy down in the basement sleeping in the corner. Someone took a picture of this figure and it sure looked like someone under a blanket with just their head showing.

Nobody could do any kind of investigating after that because Dr. Ikeler started asking for $5,000 a night for rental. So this was going on long before the Conjuring House. As we said, Melodee divorced the doctor in 2007 and the house went into foreclosure. Someone visited in January of 2010 and said of the experience that the home felt very peaceful, but "I will say, however, there was a very dark and penetrating feeling in the cellars – the game room and the family room was fine. However, the cellar areas were very unsettling and again, I was EXTREMELY anxious to get back upstairs. I truly don’t know if I could live in that home." Brian  Higgins noticed that the mansion was haunted while they were doing renovations. He and his work crew reported seeing apparitions of children, they felt cold spots and they heard strange sounds and voices.

Ann Alexander Leggett and her daughter Jordan wrote the book "A Haunted History of Denver's Croke-Patterson Mansion" in 2011. Here is an excerpt from the book. (pg. 25) 

Ann wrote, "When they had offices there, they couldn't keep tenants because typewriters would type in the middle of the night by themselves, babies crying on the third floor, party noises coming from a back closet, and so those kinds of things persist. When we first started the research I had just googled "Croke-Patterson" and I got this lady's blog and she said she used to have an office there in the late 80s. She said all kinds of strange things happened there. So I got her email and said, you know, "Would you be willing to talk to me about it?" And she didn't answer me and didn't answer me. Finally, she came back and said "Why?" So I explained who I was and that I was writing a history of the house and about the hauntings as well. She said, "Well, okay, I just want my stories to be taken seriously because they were very intense to me." So I sent her this list of questions and she answered a couple of them and it's a little bit vague, and then I don't hear from her again and so I emailed her back and time goes by and she sends an email back that says "Good luck with the book." She just couldn't go back there. She just couldn't deal with it anymore." 

Jordan and Ann were interviewed by Westword and they shared this with the paper. Jordan said, "A few people have had a lot of trouble walking up the stairs to the third floor. You get two thirds of the way up the stairs and all of the oxygen is gone. On the tape you can hear Mom and the psychic gasping. Months later, I found a death certificate totally by accident. Death certificates are not easy to come by, and I was at the clerk and recorder because at a certain point in the 1960s anything beyond that is either in the basement of the City and County building or in the library, so I was going to find out where exactly the book I was looking for was. And he pulls up on the microfiche, he's like "Oh yeah here's back to 1960 or something" and he's like, "What is this?" and it says "Death Cert." So he pulls it up and there's a random death certificate stored with the tax records on this house and it's for the house when Dr. Sudan owned it. Dr. Sudan his wife it turns out committed suicide in the house. It wasn't publicized, there's no obituary, there's really nothing about it, and then he got remarried five years later and so this death certificate is a copy of the one issued the day of, so it looks like he had to prove that she was dead or something so he could get remarried. So I found this death certificate and it says how she died and all this stuff we didn't know. The woman who committed suicide, she mixed rat poison and water, which creates cyanogas which is similar to Zyklon B, which is the gas they used in the Holocaust to gas people. Within one to three minutes, all the oxygen is gone." Ann said, "Krista felt [the gasping] was the woman who died form the cyanogas suicide and basically suffocated and couldn't breathe. She felt that woman stands at the top of the stairs. And how bizarre that Krista and I didn't know that."

The Patterson Inn appears to be a gorgeous upscale boutique hotel, but could the historic ambiance be hiding something sinister? Are there spirits from the past hanging around in the afterlife? Is the Croke-Patterson Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 557 - Life and Afterlife of Karen Carpenter

Moment in Oddity - Stonehenge Altar Stone

Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England is a prehistoric megalithic structure. There have been various theories as to its purpose. At one time it was thought to be the remains of a Druid temple, or a burial monument, or possibly a meeting place for the people of the time. The most recent studies have proposed that Stonehenge enabled people to measure the skies like a modern day observatory, allowing the users to predict celestial events and the equinox. This enabled the users to better plan for their agricultural, social and religious needs. Nobody knows how the enormous stones were put into place, with the heaviest weighing over 20 tons and the average bluestones weighing about 2 tons. There is an altar stone that lies near the middle of the stone circle. Through chemical analysis it was recently determined to have not been sourced from Wales like the monument's bluestones. Instead, the grey-green sandstone was discovered to have likely come from northeast Scotland. There are various theories as to how the giant stones were brought to the monument. Some were sourced as close as 15 miles away. The smaller pillar stones came from 140 miles away, but the altar stone traveled a distance of over 450 miles and that, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Panic of 1873

In the month of September, on the 20th, in 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time in its history. The event was caused by the Financial Panic of 1873. The stock market had crashed in Europe which prompted New York to shut down the American Exchange for ten days. These incidents began the first "Great Depression" which lasted from 1873 until 1879. Americans sold their investments, banks failed and the railway industry collapsed. Throughout the time there was a 14% increase in unemployment and almost 20,000 businesses declared bankruptcy. After the Civil War, currency consisted of specie which were metal coins like gold and silver. There were also Greenbacks that were issued by the government and they were not fully backed by gold. Paper money did not have the American peoples' trust behind it and the Greenbacks are thought to have greatly contributed to the Panic of 1873.

The Life and Afterlife of Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter was one half of the Carpenters, a brother and sister singing duo that sold over 150 million records and they had 17 hits. She was an amazing drummer and singer. Her voice had no equal. But despite her amazing talent, she was a tortured soul that suffered from an eating disorder at a time when such a thing was misunderstood and it eventually took her life. And quite possibly that may be why her spirit is at unrest. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of Karen Carpenter.

Some people, especially of the younger persuasion, may think of the Carpenters' music as just being cheesy easy listening songs, but the siblings were musical geniuses. Get ready for me to gush. I have loved the Carpenters from the time I was a kid and I loved the fact that Karen was a contralto because I myself sing at a lower level and when we would take music in school, I hated the choir stuff because the teacher always tried to get me to sing higher and it just isn't me. Karen died when I was twelve and I remember not understanding what exactly an eating disorder was. The made-for-TV movie The Karen Carpenter Story featuring actress Cynthia Gibb in the title role came out in 1989 and I remember watching it and being more familiar with eating disorders at that time because they started talking about them more in school. And I realized at that time what a tragic figure Karen had become. I had no idea at the time how personal, eating disorders would become for me. I'm going to talk about some stuff here that I never have before on the podcast, so bear with me for just a minute. I was in a relationship for 24 years with a person who suffered from both anorexia and bulimia. This is something that people don't just get over and it is probably the most difficult type of addiction/mental health issue to deal with because we have to eat to live. So a person suffering from an eating disorder has to learn how to eat in a healthy way while trying to recover. My ex's eating disorder started at the same time as Karen Carpenter's, which was a time where nobody understood why these people wouldn't just eat. Why would they starve themselves? The medical industry had no idea what to do to help these people. They were only really concerned with getting pounds back on people. Eventually, mental health professionals realized that people with eating disorders don't see themselves in an accurate way and that there were very deep psychological issues. For Karen Carpenter, many of her whys for going this route began with her relationship with her mother and for my ex, that was very much the reason as well. For the most part, my ex was able to live a relatively normal life and would speak at schools about the issue, but there were times she would struggle and I can say that when we split up, it was very difficult for me to make that decision because I was worried that the eating disorder would rear its ugly head and it did. But we can't stay in a relationship that isn't working for us because we are worried what will happen to the other person. Many of you have dealt with people who struggle with addictions and there really is nothing we can do. A person has to get well for themselves. And that was the case with Karen. She had to get well for herself and she just couldn't get there and its so sad because one can only wonder how much more amazing music she could have created through the years.  

Karen Anne Carpenter was born on March 2, 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut. She was the second child of Harold and Agnes Carpenter. Her older brother Richard had been born four years prior. The siblings liked the arts and Karen began ballet and tap dancing at the age of four. She was more of a tomboy and enjoyed playing softball outside, while Richard was quiet and stayed inside learning to play the piano. The piano was something he hated when he was being classically trained, but when he switched to playing by ear and a teacher who gave him freedom, Richard turned out to be a prodigy. The family moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles, California in 1963 because Harold had been offered a job there. When Karen started at Downey High School in 1964, she decided to join the school marching Band and the conductor gave her the glockenspiel to play. This was an instrument that she didn't care for and she longingly watched others playing the drums. One of those people was her friend Frankie Chavez and he convinced Karen's parents to buy her a $300 Ludwig drum set and he taught her how to play.

During these early years, it became clear to Karen that her mother favored Richard. So much so that she didn't feel as though her mother loved her at all. Agnes has been described as a controlling matriarch. It was Richard's talent that the family focused on and the Carpenters did whatever they could to put forward his musical career. Karen's first foray into performing with a musical group was in high school when she and two other girls formed the band Two Plus Two. The band was short lived because when they finally booked their first gig, one of the girls' mothers wouldn't let her go. In 1965, Richard invited Karen to join him and a college friend in a band he formed and named for himself, The Dick Carpenter Trio. They got several gigs in jazz nightclubs and even signed a contract with RCA Records to produce two instrumental records. Those records were never released. Karen and Richard were invited to audition bassist Joe Osborn, who would become part of the Wrecking Crew, a well-known session musician group. Osborn wasn't really impressed with Richard, but he liked Karen on the drums and when he asked her to sing, he got very excited and signed her to his label.

Karen was 5ft 4in when she graduated from high school in 1967 and she was a relatively healthy weight at 150 pounds, but she felt as though she were chubby and so she started something called the Stillman water diet. This was a high-protein, low carbohydrate, low fat diet that called for eight glasses of water a day as well. Basically, a fairly healthy way to lose weight. Karen enrolled as a music major at Long Beach State where Richard was attending and she joined him in the college choir. Karen had also been studying drum technique with Bill Douglass, who was a jazz drummer with Benny Goodman. The choir director immediately noticed the extraordinary instrument that was Karen's voice and he took her under his wing and trained her to have a three-octave range. The Carpenter siblings decided to form a new band at this time that they called Spectrum. They did a lot of experimenting and recording in Joe Osborn's garage studio, but nothing really came out of it record wise. 

The siblings decided to enter a TV talent show in 1968 and performed "Dancing in the Street." It really showcased Karen's drumming talent and the siblings won the finals. And then A & M Records came calling and signed the siblings to a recording contract in 1969. Karen played drums, a little bass and was co-lead singer on their first album "Ticket to Ride." The title song was a Beatles song that became a hit for The Carpenters and it hit No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. The next album "Close to You" was even bigger with two hits: "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun." The latter was a song that was written for a bank commercial by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. Paul Williams was also under contract with A & M Records and Richard ran into him at the studio and asked if there was a full length version of the song. There was and as we all know, that song went on to be one of the greatest hits for The Carpenters and their signature song. It hit No. 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, right behind the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" in 1970. May 1971 brought a third studio album "Carpenters" with the songs "For All We Know," "Rainy Days and Mondays" and "Superstar," the greatest Carpenters song of all time! Fight me! June 1972 featured "A Song For You," the fourth studio album with songs "Hurting Each Other", "It's Going to Take Some Time", "Goodbye to Love", "Top of the World", "I Won't Last a Day Without You", and "Bless the Beasts and Children."

Karen saw herself as a drummer who also happened to sing. She even ranked higher than John Bonham in a 1975 Playboy poll about best drummers. So she liked her spot back behind the drums, but because she was fun-sized like Diane, it was hard for people to see her when she was singing and it was decided that Karen needed to get out from behind the drums. Mouseketeer Cubby O'Brien took over at the drums. This put Karen as the focal point on stage and she was uncomfortable with that. On top of that, now she would see pictures of herself. A photo from an August 1973 Lake Tahoe concert made Karen think that she looked fat, so she hired a personal trainer. He suggested she try a low calorie, high carb diet. She lifted weights and started bulking up, which just made her feel like she was fatter. She and Richard sat down and watched themselves on a Bob Hope television special in the fall and she asked Richard if he thought she looked heavier. He said, "Yes." Karen fired her trainer, bought a hip cycle and started limiting her calories. The Carpenters left on tour and she said of eating on the road, "When you're on the road it's hard to eat. Period. On top of that, it's rough to eat well. We don't like to eat before a show because I can't stand singing with a full stomach… You never get to dinner until, like, midnight, and if you eat heavy you're not going to sleep, and you're going to be a balloon."

Karen initially lost 20 pounds and the sister of an old boyfriend told her that she looked fabulous. And she did and that would have been great had she stopped there, but she didn't. Around this same time, Richard himself started taking Quaaludes and he became heavily addicted. Between the issues both siblings were dealing with, concerts started being cancelled. In 1979, Richard checked himself into rehab and took a year off from touring. Karen decided to try her hand on a solo album and she recorded with producer Phil Ramone in New York. A & M Records shelved the album, even though Quincy Jones came forward and asked A & M Records co-owner Herb Alpert if he could remix the album. A & M wouldn't budge and they even charged Karen $400,000 to cover the cost of recording, which was paid out from The Carpenter's future royalties. The solo album was eventually released in total in 1996 under the title "Karen Carpenter." It was received well.

Karen had many friends and enjoyed going out with them and she often would hide the fact that she wasn't eating her food at restaurants by offering lots of tastes to everybody and by pushing her food around and hiding it. She would wear clothes that were too big so that people couldn't see that she was rail thin. She would wear tighter and sexier clothing on stage and her manager Sherwin Bash was horrified when he saw how skeletal she had become. Audiences would gasp when she took the stage because she was so gaunt. Karen's relationship with her mother continued to deteriorate through this time. When Agnes would be eating with Karen, she would scoop food onto her plate when she noticed her passing off her meal to others. Randy Schmidt shares in the biography he wrote about Karen Carpenter "Little Girl Blue" about a time that a family friend spotted Karen sunbathing topless outside. That friend said, "They put this screen around her so nobody else could see her. She loved to go lay out in the sunshine. I don't know whether it was to get a tan or get away from her mother. Anyhow, I happened to go out to the kitchen for something and I saw her out there. She just had on her little bathing suit shorts. You couldn't tell whether it was a girl or a boy. She had absolutely no breasts."

The occasional friend would encourage Karen to get help, but Karen always said she had no problem. And her family was no help as Agnes insisted that the family could take care of themselves. And she certainly didn't want any shame brought on the family. Anorexia is about control and this seemed to be the only thing Karen had control over. She could control what she ate, which probably eased her pain that she couldn't get her mother to love her and Richard controlled the music. And the only time Agnes seemed to pay any attention to Karen was when she was rail thin and in failing health. Agnes would nurse her back to health at those times. 

Karen was terribly lonely in love as well. In 1980, she met a property developer called Tom Burris and the two began a whirlwind romance that led to them getting married within two months. Before the wedding, a friend asked Karen if she was sure about rushing into a marriage. But Karen was desperate for love and she also wanted to get pregnant. The wedding was almost called off when Karen found out that Tom had had a vasectomy. He promised to reverse the procedure, but Karen told her mother that she was going to cancel the wedding. Agnes told her she would do no such thing because this would embarrass the family and all these people were traveling to come to the wedding. And the wedding had already been paid for. So Karen married Burris and it was an awful union. Burris was broke and he spent most of Karen's money while he emotionally abused her saying that she was an ugly bag of bones. He also informed her that he wasn't going to have children with her. Karen filed for divorce in 1981. A devastated Carpenter fell further into her eating disorder and she withered down to just 90 pounds.

Karen was using a variety of techniques to drop weight from overexercising to taking thyroid medication to taking fistfuls of laxatives, up to 90 tablets a night. The Carpenters left for a European tour in October of 1981. While doing an interview on BBC television, Karen was asked about rumors floating around that she had anorexia. Karen just said she was fine, but tired. The interviewer then said that reports claimed she had gotten down to six stone in weight, which is 84 pounds. Karen became agitated and said that that was untrue. But perhaps this broke through a bit because after returning home, Karen set out on a year long recovery. She started seeing a psychotherapist named Steven Levenkron who had written a book on eating disorders called "The Best Little Girl in the World." He took the thyroid medication away from Karen. She started purging to continue her weight management. The Carpenter family flew to New York to do a therapy session with Karen and Agnes refused to tell her daughter she loved her when prompted by Levenkron. Richard for his part, tried many times to help Karen, but he couldn't understand the disorder. He would try to love on her and then he would try cajoling her and then he would try anger and yelling. But after this meeting, the family returned to California and gave up.

Almost unbelievably, Karen starved herself down to a low of 77 pounds. She was hospitalized in September 1982 with an irregular heartbeat and dizziness. The hospital got her up 30 pounds and she maintained a steady weight after this, but her heart had clearly been damaged by the starvation and medication abuse. She returned to California after being released. Carpenter attended a gathering of past Grammy Award winners in January of 1983 and Dionne Warwick said that she seemed upbeat and exclaimed, "Look at Me! I've got an ass!" She also said she had a lot of living to do and was excited to start working on music. She met with Richard on February 1, 1983 to discuss new projects and this would be the last time the siblings saw each other. On the morning of the 4th, Karen got up early to prepare for the signing of her divorce papers and she collapsed on the floor of a walk-in closet at her parents' house. Her mother found her and called 911. Paramedics found her in cardiac arrest with a heart beat every 10 seconds. She was rushed to Downey Community Hospital where she was pronounced dead. She was 32 years old. The coroner ruled she died from emetine cardiotoxicity, which was basically ipecac poisoning. Ipecac is a drug used to induce vomiting and Karen had apparently been using it to control her weight. That kind of abuse causes the heart muscle to dissolve.

We can never know, but if Karen had suffered from her eating disorder today, she would probably not have died. Paul McCartney said of Carpenter, She had the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive." Many female artists claim to have been influenced by Karen and there is no doubt that she was one of the greatest voices in history. Drummers heap praise on her for her drum skills as well. Her death was not in vain as it brought Anorexia Nervosa onto center stage and her family started the Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation to raise money for research on eating disorders.

One can't miss the Jim Henson Company Lot that is located at 1416 N. La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. Kermit the Frog towers above the front gate and he's wearing a Charlie Chaplin's The Champ suit, holding a cane and tipping his bowler hat. And thers's a reason for that because this property was established as Charlie Chaplin Studios in 1917 by the actor. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, " I decided to buy land in Hollywood and build one. The site was the corner of Sunset and La Brea and had a very fine ten-room house and five acres of lemon, orange and peach trees. We built a perfect unit, complete with developing plant, cutting room, and offices." Chaplin built his studio in the English cottage style and a large orchard was torn out for a backlot where large outdoor sets could be built. There was already a large home on the property that Chaplin was going to use as his personal residence, but it instead was used by studio personnel and his brother Sydney. Most of Chaplin's classic films were shot here. Chaplin sold the studio in 1953 to a group that planned to tear down the studio, but they decided to lease to television production company Kling Studios. The adventures of Superman with George Reeves was filmed here. Red Skelton bought the studio in 1960. In 1967, this became A & M Records and served that purpose until 1999. Jim Henson's kids bought the studio in 2000 to be the new home of The Jim Henson Company.

For thirty years, the A & M Studios were one of the top studios in Hollywood. Studio 2 was the favorite studio for Richard and Karen Carpenter. Christopher Ward is a songwriter who has written songs for Hilary Duff, Diana Ross, The Backstreet Boys, Wynonna Judd and Alannah Myles, which was her song "Black Velvet." On his website he shares, "A few years before that, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers had been recording in Studio 2 and things just kept going wrong. Nothing major, but enough to derail the process and necessitate a series of calls to studio maintenance. A buzz here, a faulty patch there, funky headphone sound. Death by a thousand cuts. The band didn’t want to abandon the room they were comfortable in but eventually it was beyond nuisance level. And no one had a solution. Then someone suggested consulting a spiritual advisor. 'Karen Carpenter’s ghost is unhappy', they were informed by the consultant and as a remedy it would be necessary to install a sizeable crystal in one of the studio walls. And the crystal had to be lit 24/7. Done! Tech issues solved. Happy Heartbreakers. Recording resumed. I found myself working there because Diana Ross asked me to record a gospel choir for the song 'Hope is an Open Window' which Tim Tickner and I wrote with her and were producing for Diana. Since the album was done and time was tight, Diana wanted the choir recorded by Friday. The call came on Wednesday. Our project coordinator booked us into the Crystal Room at A&M. Fortunately, the session went off without a hitch. The crystal did its job. The choir sang beautifully and Diana loved it. I don’t know if the crystal is still there but somehow I suspect it is. It seems to me it would fit in nicely in Muppet world." A former employee at the Jim Henson Studios said, "...when I worked there I was told specifically never to turn off the light on the crystal in B because Karen's ghost would get mad."

Ghost Hunters investigated the studios in 2007 and one piece of evidence they captured was an EVP of what sounded like a woman muttering. Charlie Chittenden Paranormal did a ghost box session in 2016 and tried to contact Karen. There was a female voice that came through and he said it sounded like "I love them." I heard the love but not sure what the rest was. It could've been her voice and it might not have been. Jim Harold had a listener join him on the Campfire in 2012 and this listener saw the full-bodied apparition of Karen.

Tim Jackson was filming a video at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in which Ksenia Buzina and Leonid & Friends were performing the song "Superstar." Jackson writes, "A very odd thing happened when I was videoing the newest song from Ksenia Buzina and Leonid & Friends, Ksenia appeared to be a ghostly figure while the other members did not! Ksenia mentioned that Richard Carpenter had heard their version and loved it and maybe this was the way of Karen making her presence known on stage with Ksenia!!" It probably was just a lighting thing, but it was very odd looking.

 

Karen Carpenter once said of her anorexia, "It's like being haunted. It's the worst thing in the world." Clearly she was very haunted by the spirit of anorexia. Is that why she may still be around in the afterlife? Is the ghost of Karen haunting places? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 556 - Nashville's Belmont Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Three Stags Head Pub (Suggested by: Lyn Beasley)

There is a pub called Three Stags Heads located in Wardlow Mires, just outside of Derbyshire, England. The structure is a longhouse that was built in the mid to late 18th century with a simple whitewashed exterior. The facade is adorned with three stag skulls, hence the name, while the interior harkens back to days gone by where it is said that modern phones and such are not allowed. There are various versions of lurcher dog art to be seen as well as consumed. It is said that their Dark Lurcher beer is quite strong. They serve other local brews and food as well. One item within the pub however is quite unique, at least to modern times. Within a glass case in a corner, sits a mummified cat. The animal was found inside the chimney and is said to have been placed there to ward off evil spirits. There are some European cultures that would often place a deceased cat within a building's walls. This was done because of the belief that cats were thought to bring good luck to the people residing in a building and that the cats could ward off bad luck. Most accounts have shown that this practice proved to have used felines that had previously passed away before being concealed within a buildings' structure. Regardless, finding a mummified cat within the walls of a building, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Attica Correctional Facility Riot

In the month of September, on the 13th, in 1971, New York State Police stormed Attica Correctional Facility. A riot of inmates began on the 9th in the overcrowded prison with 1,281 inmates at the maximum security institution, taking over a large portion of the facility. The rioters were seeking to negotiate to improve conditions and treatment at the prison. The police were able to retake most of the facility on the 9th, however, the rioters moved to an exercise field called D yard and there they held 39 prison guards and employees hostage for four days. Prior to that, one guard was beaten to death. Eventually negotiations stagnated and the New York Governor issued a mandate to regain control of the prison by force. On the morning of September 13th, a final notice was read to the inmates by police, ordering a surrender. The convicts responded by holding knives to their hostages' throats. Shortly thereafter, helicopters flew overhead and dropped tear gas. During the melee, officers fired 3,000 shots killing 29 of the inmates and 10 of the hostages while wounding 89 others. Many of the deaths and injuries happened during the initial gunfire, however some inmates were shot and killed after they surrendered. The resulting deaths of both prisoners and hostages caused condemnation by the public and prompted a Congressional investigation. It was not until January 2000, that New York State settled a 26 year old class-action lawsuit that had been filed by the Attica inmates against prison and state officials. The payout totaled 8 million dollars that was then given to former and current inmates.

Belmont Mansion

The Belmont Mansion is haunted by a woman who knew devastating loss, Adelicia (Add ah lish ah) Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham. That's a lot of surnames because there were a lot of marriages. The mansion is located in Nashville and is now a part of the Belmont University Campus. This is an elaborate antebellum villa that served as a summer respite from the Louisiana heat. And it just might be a respite for Adelicia in the afterlife. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Belmont Mansion.

The story of Belmont Mansion begins and ends with Adelicia Acklen. Her parents were lawyer and minister Oliver Bliss and Sarah Hightower Hayes and she was born on March 15, 1817 in Nashville. This early Nashville was a couple years from the first steamboat arriving, which would bring the town out of isolation and starts its build into a big city. Adelicia was raised in Nashville and attended the Nashville Female Academy. It would be after her graduation that tragedy would begin in her life. She met a man named Alfonso Gibbs and the two became engaged. Gibbs never made it to the altar, dying before the wedding. A new love would come into her life in 1839, when she was twenty-two. This was a wealthy slave trader and planter named Isaac Franklin. The slave trade he owned was one of the largest in the south. He was twenty-eight years Adelicia's senior and the couple had four children: Victoria, Adelicia, Julius and Emma. Tragedy struck again as Julius lost his life in 1844 at birth. Two years later, Adelicia senior would lose Victoria to croup, Adelicia Jr. to bronchitis and her husband Isaac. She wasn't yet thirty years of age and she would now be the wealthiest woman in Tennessee. Isaac Franklin passed onto her the Fairvue Plantation in Tennessee, four cotton plantations in Louisiana, some land in Texas, stocks, bonds and hundreds of enslaved people.

In 1849, she met and married attorney Joseph A. S. Acklen who hailed from Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville had been founded by and named for his grandfather John Hunt. He was born a year after Adelicia and started at the University of Alabama at the age of fourteen. He went to fight in the Texas Revolution in 1835 and served under Colonel James W. Fannin, Jr. Nearly the entire company was executed at Goliad, Texas, on March 27, 1836, but Joseph had already left for home and escaped the massacre. He studied law in Huntsville and President Martin Van Buren appointed him the United States Attorney for the North Alabama Judicial District in 1840. He visited Nashville in April of 1847 and attended a ball where he met the recently widowed Adelicia Franklin. They started a long distance relationship and within two years, Joseph had moved to Nashville to marry Adelicia. And an interesting note here is that Adelicia bascially got him to sign a prenuptial agreement that stated she would retain ownership and control of all the property she brought to the marriage and Joseph agreed. 

The couple decided to build Belmont Mansion in Nashville and began construction in 1850 on 175 acres. The mansion was originally called Belle Monte or "beautiful mountain" and sat on a hilltop. This would take ten years and when it was finished, it was the largest home in Tennessee at the time. It was designed by architect Adolphus Heiman in the Italian villa style and included 36 rooms. The Grand Salon was really something and was designed to impress. The room was larger than most people's homes and featured a columned chamber that was filled with natural light from floor to ceiling windows and the barrel-vaulted ceiling that rose 20 feet was adorned with a dramatic painted sky. A six foot cast iron fountain provided natural water sounds. The walls featured carved woodwork and painted finishes. All first floor rooms connected to the Grand Salon. A stairway connected the Grand Salon to the private bedrooms upstairs and the upper hall had access via another stairway to the cupola, which was a full on octagonal room that could be opened up in the summer months to cool the house and provided a view of the grounds. There was also a telescope in the room. 

The Central Parlor had an optical illusion on the ceiling to make people think they are sitting in a Roman palazzo. The original mirror and Cornelius and Company gas chandelier still remain in this room. The parlor still has eight of the twelve pieces of the Acklen’s parlor suit. The grounds themselves were beautiful with gardens and gazebos, a water tower, a two-hundred-foot long greenhouse and conservatory, bathhouse, bowling alley, art gallery and even a zoo. The Gardener’s Monthly featured an article about the greenhouse at Belmont in 1868 describing it as "built of iron, [was] truly a Crystal Palace, with its high dome and spacious wings." The greenhouse had plants from all around the world with a two-story conservatory in the center. A furnace under the greenhouse helped to control the temperatures. The heat from the furnace would rise through the vents in the floor providing climate control. The mansion really was a showplace and the family even opened the gardens and zoo up to the public.

The couple had six children, Joseph, William, Claude, Pauline and Laura and Corinne who were twins. The twins were named for her sister. Tragedy struck yet again in 1855 when the last surviving child from her first marriage, Emma, passed away from Diptheria. The Acklens commissioned a painting from the artist Gschwindt that was described in The Daily Picayune as, "The child is reclining on a sofa and seems to be just awaking from a pleasant dream, of which the last scene is just fading away. From the clouds, in the background, we see the vanishing form of an angel emerge, clasping the hand of the unconscious child, and pointing to the future. We need only to add that the child soon after died." This portrait was hung in the library of the mansion, but no longer exists. At this point, Adelicia has lost all four of her first children. But 1855 wasn't done with her. The twins, Laura and Corinne, died from Scarlet Fever at the age of three. So she has lost six children at this point. Adelicia would take a trip to Europe after the Civil War and bought a sculpture featuring two little girls cuddling each other and she had inscribed with "Laura and Corinne."

As we mentioned, there was an art gallery on the property and Adelicia and Joseph amassed quite the art collection. This was the first major art collection in Nashville and the couple loaned their collection to various exhibitions. Adelicia was even appointed by the Governor in 1875 to serve on a committee that decided what art pieces would represent Tennessee at an exhibit held in Philadelphia for the United States Centennial. She became very involved in charity work and was elected Treasurer for the Ladies Soldier's Friend Society in 1861. The Nashville Refugee Clothing Association was an organization that supported refugees of the Civil War and Adelicia served on its board in 1864. She donated to orphanages, purchased city bonds for post-war redevelopment in Nashville, invested in the Maxwell House Hotel and in the 1880s, served on the Board of Directors for the Working Women Exchange. Adelicia loved to entertain. There were cotillions and galas and balls and most were held out in the gardens under the full moon. She would pick different themes for the parties and use exotic decor like Japanese lanterns to light the festivities. 

The Civil War brought change for the Acklens and strife. Tennessee seceded from the Union in June of 1861. Joseph paid to get a Tennessee militia armed and in uniforms. He got little thanks for that when the nearby Fort Donelson fell and the Confederate army decided not to defend Nashville. Adelicia stayed at Belmont, but Joseph ran to Louisiana to run the plantations they had there. About a third of Nashville's population left. Now before you think Joseph ran off scared, he actually went to a worse situation. One of the plantations was on the Mississippi River and this area was controlled by Federal gunboats. The Confederates liked to cross here though, so skirmishes happened often. On top of that, both sides wanted to burn the cotton on the plantation because they didn't want either side to benefit from it. Joseph was trying to protect around 8,500 bales of cotton. The Union came to him and offered to protect the cotton, but Joseph didn't want the Confederates to retaliate against him. The Union did eventually provide protection against his will. Despite being only 45, Joseph was sick, tired and so arthritic he couldn't write by 1863. He asked a friend to write a letter for him to Adelicia that the South was going to lose the war and slavery would be over and he was happy that this was going to be the case. Joseph then died of malaria and Adelicia had lost her second husband. 

This left Adelicia in a quandary. The cotton down in Louisiana was worth a lot of money. A story told about her is that she traveled secretly down to Louisiana and used her beauty and charm to get both sides of the war to help her with the cotton. She convinced a Confederate General she was friendly with, not to burn the bales of cotton and then she contracted with a Yankee wagon train to transport the cotton to a New Orleans port. This was with the help of a Union Admiral she was friendly with. The only problem was getting the cotton from the plantation to that port without having rebels rob the train. Somehow she managed to convince some Confederate soldiers to escort the cotton on the train. Neither side knew that she was working both sides. The cotton made it to New Orleans and was sold to the Rothschilds in London for nearly a million dollars in gold. That would be worth nearly 17 million today. 

The couple's eldest son Joseph was off at military school during much of the Civil War. He then went overseas to colleges in France and Switzerland and returned to Tennessee to finish his law degree in 1871 at Cumberland College, School of Law in Lebanon, Tennessee. He set up shop in Memphis and married a woman there named Hattie Bethell and then moved to her sugar plantation in Patternsonville St. Mary Parish Louisiana. Hattie became pregnant shortly thereafter and died in childbirth. The baby also passed. Joseph, Jr. stayed on at the plantation until 1884 and served in politics in Louisiana. He moved back to Nashville in 1884 to practice law again and lived at Belmont until it was sold in 1887. He married again and had eight children and passed away in 1938.

Adelicia would marry for a third time in 1867 to a doctor named William Archer Cheatham. He was a medical reformer and ran the Tennessee Insane Asylum. While there, he implemented the most advanced theories of moral treatment for the mentally ill that had been developed during the 19th century. Dorothea Dix considered the Tennessee hospital the most superior for mental health and it really was one of the best in the nation. Cheatham first wife had passed in 1864 and he brought two children into the marriage, Martha and Richard. He established a private practice in Nashville and worked at that until his death in 1900. Adelicia remained at Belmont Mansion until 1884 when she left for Florida with her three other adult children. The following spring they went to Washington D.C. and this is where Adelicia died in May 1887. Before her death, she sold Belmont Mansion to a developer who sold 15 acres of the land and the mansion to two women from Philadelphia. They opened a school for young women called Belmont College in 1890. This merged with Ward Seminary in 1913 and became a junior college named Ward-Belmont. Minnie Pearl graduated from here as did Mary Martin. In 1951, the school changed ownership and is today Belmont University, which reopened as a coeducational, liberal arts school offering bachelor and graduate degrees.

Today, Belmont Mansion is open as a museum and conducts tours under the care of the Belmont Mansion Association. For years they have painstakingly restored and refurbished the mansion and it is gorgeous. Many pieces of furniture belonged to Adelicia's family. The Rose Garden remains, although it is only about a quarter of the size it had once been. There were roses of every color here and many were show-worthy. A Freedom Fountain has been installed where some of the enslaved cabins would have been at one time. Some of those people included Brutus Jackson, Frances Jackson, Aggie, Fred, Ben Gant, George, Rena Gibbs, Julia Ann, Mortimer, Randolph, Rose, Salley, Manuela and her two children, Betsy and her children: Alexander, Amanda, Harriet, Ivey, James, and Joseph; and Maria and her children: Ezekiel or Zeke, Mary Ann, and William. They've done a great job at the mansion with digging into the history of the enslaved who were here. There are names of other enslaved people who had been at the other Acklen plantations on the fountain as well: John Baker, Betsy or Bettie Baker, Ruffin, Georgina, Eva Snowden Baker, and London.

The east campus entrance for the university had once been the service drive and entrance. Delivery vehicles would damage the oyster shell lined carriage drive, so this separate drive was created with an entrance on the east side of the house where the kitchen was located. A white Italian marble fountain is still located in the front of the mansion and was installed in 1857. And guess what? It actually still works and is said to be the oldest operational fountain in its original location in the American South. A water tower fed water via gravity to this fountain and two others. And there is also a cast and wrought iron gazebo that dates to 1853 that was bought out of the Janes, Beebe & Company of New York catalog. The center featured a large cast-iron outdoor aquarium filled with gold and silver fish. The original Aviary is still here and would have been filled with exotic birds that included a white owl Adelicia had received as a gift.

Unexplained things have happened in this house for a very long time. Adelicia herself claimed that she was haunted by the spirits of her twin daughters. She kept their room as it had been when they were alive and she would spend hours in there, running her hands over the furniture. She would tell friends that she sometimes heard their laughter. The main spirit here is thought to be Adelicia though. Faculty and students have both claimed to see her disembodied spirit. One employee claimed that she was walking down a hallway, cleaning up and checking things after an event, when she ran in the apparition of Adelicia who was wearing an elegant evening gown. On another occasion, a tour guide saw the spirit of Adelicia and as told that the furniture in one of the bedrooms was not in its proper place. 

Adelicia seems to gravitate towards holiday seasons and so is most often seen around Christmas. People believe this is because the university conducts an elaborate ceremony in which a massive tree is set up in the main hallway and a chorus descends the stairway dressed in period clothing and carrying lit candles. Adelicia would've loved this kind of pomp and circumstance. Thoughts as to why she would be here in spirit include her sadness over the loss of her children and possibly that she was greedy and unwilling to give up her earthly treasures. Haunted Nashville written by Frankie and Kim Meredith Harris in 2009 has some great ghost stories and this is one connected the Christmas hauntings. (pg. 84)

And they share these other stories as well. (pg. 86)

David Weatherly wrote on the Eerie Lights blog in 2019, "Susan, who shared her ghostly encounter with me, had spent a lot of time at Belmont in the early 2000's and it was during this period that she had her own run ins with the spirit of Adelicia. As she reports, 'I was friends with one of the security guards at the time, and he worked in the mansion and on its grounds. He would tell me quite often how the motion detectors would go off in the middle of the night when the building was completely empty. They would investigate of course, and find nothing, and they'd have to reset all the alarms. A friend of mine had sworn to me that she'd seen the ghost of the woman, Adelicia, right outside the building one night. A ghost that she swore vanished when she was looking at her. I was doubtful and thought maybe she'd just been up to many hours studying, or maybe she'd been drinking or something, but she always swore she'd had nothing to drink and wasn't tired. Then, one night I was in the main building myself. It really is a beautiful building and there are a lot of items that are original and belonged to the family like furniture and artwork. I was looking at some of the things when I heard what sounded like a child crying. I knew there were no kids in the building. It didn't sound like a baby, more like a little kid, maybe 5 to 7 years old, crying from being upset or hurt. I only heard it twice then it was as if there was silence beyond what's normal silence. I felt a chill and the hair went up on the back of my neck. It's like that feeling, you know someone is behind you and it was almost like slow motion, I turned around, and there she was, this woman in an old-fashioned dress. I know my jaw dropped and I felt frozen, just staring at her. It felt like a long time, but I know logically that it was only seconds. She was looking around like she'd heard that kid crying, and she had her left hand up to her face like she was upset. I saw her and then she just faded away! That made the whole thing even scarier! I knew right away that I'd seen Adelicia Hayes. Maybe she was looking for one of her kids who had died in the house. I never doubted my friend again, and in fact, we both had another sighting of the woman when we were together outside the mansion a few months later. We saw her out front and the same thing happened, she just faded away. I've been convinced since that time that ghost exists and that Adelicia Hayes still stays around the old mansion.'"

The Belmont Mansion is really something to see and that might be why Adelicia has returned in the afterlife. It must have been hard to leave and hard to sell, but now she has the freedom to come and go as she wishes, if it is indeed her haunting the place. Is Nashville's Belmont Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!