HGB Ep. 570 - Aiken Rhett House

Moment in Oddity - Voo-per-tall  Sh-vaber-baun (Vader Braun) (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

In Wuppertal Germany, there is a semi unique mode of transportation. There are many suspended public transit railways around the world, however the Wuppertal train is one of only two that actually operates upside down. Dubbed the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, it is the oldest elevated railway with hanging cars. The cars themselves are constructed with extruded aluminum and fiberglass composite. Each individual car weighs just under 25 tons. The train transports approximately 80,000 passengers every day and the entire route only takes about 30 minutes to travel from end to end gliding a distance of 8.3 miles. The route itself offers beautiful views of the Wupper River for 6 of those miles at a mere 39 ft above the water's surface. There are 20 stations along the course, some of which display Art Nouveau architecture. It is a very  popular mode of transportation for both locals as well as tourists.  For those without a fear of falling, the Schwebebahn provides an awesome adventure albeit admittedly alarming for some, and this manner of transportation, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Sinking of the HMS Formidable

In the month of January, on the 1st, in 1915, the British battleship HMS Formidable was sunk. The ship was out on exercises about 37 miles off the Devon coast. When suddenly the first of two torpedoes from German U-boat 24 hit the Formidable's number one boiler on the port side. The second torpedo hit the starboard side, near the bow. The explosions caused the ship to list heavily to its starboard side while large thirty foot waves crashed over the damaged ship. The captain, his second in command and a signaler stayed at their posts as the ship began taking on water. They sent flares and rockets off at regular intervals hoping to alert other ships for rescue. It is said that nobody panicked. While lifeboats were being lowered, someone played a ragtime song on the piano and others sang. Without warning, the ship gave an enormous lurch. With that, the Captain exclaimed, "Lads, this is the last, all hands for themselves, and may God bless you and guide you to safety". The captain then walked to the foreship with his dog and waited for the inevitable. Many lifeboats were destroyed as they were lowered while still others sank due to the size of the waves.  One of the lifeboats known as a pinnace, or small boat with sails or oars, was spotted from land by a girl and her parents. The alarm was raised and thus rescue efforts began. Of the nearly 750 men, only 199 were saved.

Aiken Rhett House (Suggested by: Savannah Marchione)

The Aiken Rhett House is located in Charleston, South Carolina. This is a partially restored house museum that can be toured and was a home that remained in the Aiken family for 142 years. Some of their furnishings remain as do some of their spirits. Our listener Savannah Marchione suggested this location to us and she joins us to share about the history of the house and her own paranormal experiences that she has had while touring the house. 

For us, Charleston is synonymous with great old mansions. The city is very similar to Natchez, Mississippi in that respect. This is a place you come to see these beautiful and distinctive mansions. They are all very different. We'll sprinkle in a few here and there throughout this episode. The Aiken Rhett Mansion isn't opulent anymore. It isn't even completely refurbished, but it has it's own distinct beauty in its unfinished state. One can imagine what it had been like at its prime in the early 1800s when grand parties were thrown here. This mansion captured our listener Savannah's heart. (Savannah 1 - Savannah shares with us the history of the house and how she got interested in it to begin with. The Aiken Rhett House is located at 48 Elizabeth Street in Charleston, South Carolina. The house was originally built by Charleston merchant John Robinson in 1820 as a typical Charleston double house. The Aiken Rhett House stands three-stories and has 23 rooms and was built from brick.)

Six years before John Robinson built what became the Aiken Rhett House, he built the house that still carries his name at 10 Judith Street. Savannah will share that this merchant ran into financial issues, but through it all, he held onto this house, which is considerably smaller than the Aiken Rhett House at just 6,000 square feet and two and a half stories with a raised basement. It features double piazzas and an iron staircase leading to the front door. This home was later owned by Commander Peter Stevens who led the Citadel cadets at Fort Johnson against the Union at Fort Sumter. It was Stevens who ordered the shots at the Star of the West, a resupply ship sent by President Lincoln to Fort Sumter. This act is considered by some to be the first shot of the Civil War.  

In 1825, Robinson lost 5 ships at sea and he was forced to sell the house to meet his financial obligations. So in 1827, Willkam Aiken Sr. bought the house. Aiken was an Irish immigrants who had gained a large fortune as one of the cities leading merchants and used the house as a rental property. When Aiken sr died in a sudden carriage accident, his holdings were split between Henrietta Wyatt Aiken ( Williams wife) and his son William Aiken JR. In 1833 when William Sr and Henrietta decided to officially moved in and started to renovate the home and creates one of the most impressive residences in the 19th century Charleston. William Jr was a business man, Rice planter, and distinguished politician, and governor of South Carolina. William Jr was one of the states wealthiest citizens. Will Jr and his wife would vacation in Germany and come home with fine art and furnishings for their home. In 1858 Aiken Jr commissioned his cousin Joseph Daniel Aiken to design and oversee the construction of an art gallery, the only one of its kind in the city. Alot if the object acquired by the Aikens on their travels remain in the art gallery room.

When William Jr. and his wife Harriet obtained the house, they began to make several alterations to the property. The main entry moved from Judith Street to Elizabeth Street and a new foyer was created. An eastern wing was added, as was a large dining room on the first floor with a ballroom added above it. The central hallway was closed. Several outbuildings were added with Gothic Revival styling and these imcluded a cow shed, chicken coop and matching corner privies because why have only one when you can have two and matching, I mean, come on, this is the south! of course, another slave quarters was added and this is the bad part of the Aiken history as William Jr. was one of the largest slaveholders in South Carolina. He had a plantation on Jehosee Island with 700 slaves. The house kept nineteen slaves. While Aiken supported the Confederacy, he was not in favor of secession.

William Jr died in 1887 in Flat Rick N. Carolina. William Jr left his property to his wife Harriet. She continued to live in the house until her death in 1892. Their daughter Henrietta ( william jr named his daughted after his mother) and son in law Major AB Rhett raised 4 sons and one daughter in the house. Upon Henriettas death, the house was divided between her children and their heirs.    Your able to take tours in the home. You can tour the basement, the first floor and second floor but the third floor is blocked off. You are also able to tour the grounds, the horse barn with the horse caregiver living above the horses and cars. And there's a slave quarters and kitchen, the kitchen was located on the first floor and the bedrooms were located above the kitchen. The Aikens had 20 enslaved African Americans living on property. Like most large houses in the south, this house had a bell system to call for help when they needed. When Henrietta wanted a bath, one of the head female slaves would have to get up to 10 gallons of waters from the well, boil it and carry each bucket of water from outside kitchen and up 2 flights of stairs to the porcelain claw bath tub. Two of the slaves who were at the house were able to become emancipated, but do to lack of the funds they decided to stay at the home and passed away in the house not to long after. The Aikens always had up to 3 horses at the house, even after the children had bought 2 Duryea Motor Carriage, and one still sits in the barn. There was one man who would take care of the horses and he was an older white gentleman who was a family friend, i wasn't able to find his name. You are unable to tour the upstairs of the horse barn due to it being unstable. The library held up to 275 books and William Sr kept the books in constant rotation with new books. 

Two of the sons I'on Rhett and Andrew Burnet Rhett Jr continued to lived in the house until the mid twentieth century. Frances Dill Rhett, whose husband was a direct descendant of Gov. William Rhett, donated the house to the Charleston Museum in 1975 and it opened as a museum.[6] The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.[1] Since 1995, Historic Charleston Foundation has owned and operated the Aiken-Rhett House as a historic house museum. I want to break in here to talk a little about the Nathaniel Russell House. If you are in Charleston, you have to tour this mansion. The free-flying, three-story staircase that is inside is an architectural marvel. The staircase supports itself as it winds up in a cantilevered way, meaning it is fixed at only one end. And it has lasted all these years. It is truly mind-blowing. The mansion is at 51 Meeting Street and was built by its namesake who owned 18 slaves. The rest of the mansion is very unique with geometrically shaped rooms and elaborate plasterwork ornamentation.

The Aiken Rhett house is to be considered a very haunted house. Some visitors think it's haunted by the spirits if the family members that once lived there. There have been some experience of people hearing footsteps coming from above them and in front of them. Doors have been heard and seen opening and closing on their own, their is no central air or heating in the house, so whatever the temperature it is outside it's going to be inside, the only room that has air and heat is the art gallery room, and the basement where you check in for the tours and the gift shop. Some people have seen a women crying in a mirror in the ballroom. People have taken pictures and have had ghostly figures standing on the room. There have been loud noises and echos from the upper floors and sometimes there's been a string wind and a loud commotion after feeling the wind and a lot of the times the noises come from the ballroom. There were 2 architects working in he the house in the late 80s, say they saw a women crying when they looked into a mirror in the ballroom. If you walk through the slave quarters you feel a heavy feeling of anger and unease as you walk around the bedrooms. People have said they seen dark and black figures walk past them or behind them and get a shiver down their back. A few people have said they have heard singing but can't make out what is being sung and it sounds like old gullah.

Savannah shared her unexplained experiences at the house, "Now I've had 2 experience while I was in the slave quarters, I felt as if a dark figure had been falling me as I walked from one end to the other end, so I kinda stopped and started talking and saying I just wanted to learn about the history and didn't want any trouble and didn't want to case any harm, and it felt like the figure backed off and seemed to go and into one of the other rooms. There are 3 rooms in the slave quarters. And one room seems very dark and like something bad happened or there was al ot of hate in that one room. So you can do a self guided tour, you get an email and you open the link and you get a voice recording of what route to take and of the history of the house and the family and what your looking at. So i had gone inside and upstairs into the bathroom where the tub is, i felt a woman's presence in the bathroom, I had my head phones in and I was listening about the tub and there was a pause in the recording to give you a minute to walk around, well there was nothing playing for about a minute and I heard humming and I figured it came from the recording, I had one headphone in, so the recording came back on and said something about the sink being from France and their was another minute or so pause and I heard the same humming again. I was by my self with no one else around me or near me, I was the only one in that part of second floor. I have asked some of the staff and of course most of them deny any Hauntings of the house or the area and a few of them get upset if you ask. There are 3 or 4 cousins of the Aiken family who are in the board of the house to make sure it stays at is. There has been very very minimal work to the house and it looks like it had when the original family had lived in it. And one of those cousins works in the house to help answer any questions people have about the family. And I got lucky one day when I had asked a lady who was probably in her mid 30s if she thought the house was haunted, and she 100% thought it was. She went on to tell me she had a few experience in the house. She had 2 different shutters slam on her as she was opening them for the day and there was no wind that day. And one experience that absolutely horrified her was when she was upstairs in the bathroom with the tub she heard the same humming I did and had a feeling it was Henrietta because that was her bathroom, so she walked out of the bathroom she was a blonde women walk out the doorway of the bathroom and into the hallway and she say the balcony door open and then saw the back of the women walk down the stairs and into the ballroom, so the lady tried to get half way down the stairs to look into the mirror to only see the a dark figure run across the bottom of the stairs and out the back double doors that led to the back yard and as she looked into the ball room she say the blonde women with no face and heard screaming coming from behind her, the lady said she rain out the front door so fast she forgot to like the door and went and sat across the street and waited for the other lady who was opening with her to arrive, she said as she sat across the street she could hear the doors opening and closing, she could hear it all since she had opened all the shutters on the second floor."

The Aiken Rhett House was a place of opulence and parties, but also one deeply connected to one family. Perhaps that is why there are spirits still here. Is the Aiken Rhett House haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 569 - Return to Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Moment in Oddity - The Origin of Times Square's New Years Celebration (Suggested & Written by: Dwight Shepherd)

Most holidays have traditions that grow up around them. Things that, over time, just become almost a natural and expected part of the holiday. Did you ever stop to think how some of these traditions got their start? Take New Years, and in particular, New Years Eve. I’m sure every one of you is familiar with the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  Most of us have probably watched it at one time or another.  For some, it’s just something that we do EVERY New Years Eve. A few of you may even have seen it in person in New York City. Over 1 million people do that each year. Worldwide, another 1 billion people watch it on TV. Did you ever wonder how all that got started? Well, would you believe that its very beginnings can be traced to a small cemetery in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee?  Indeed, that’s where it all began. The cemetery is First Presbyterian Cemetery.  For those of you not familiar with it, it’s located behind the Tennessee Theatre. Let's go back to the year 1869.  An 11 year old boy had to pass by it on his way home from his job at The Knoxville Chronicle, which was located over on Market Square.  There were no child labor laws then, so he got off work at midnight each night. This meant the area near the cemetery was very dark and deserted. There were stories whispered that at least one of the residents of First Presbyterian Cemetery didn’t always stay in his grave, or at least his spirit didn’t. So, many nights, this 11 year old boy stayed at work until daylight. Now there were no beds at The Chronicle. Heck, there wasn’t even an employee breakroom back then. So in order to be allowed to stay, this boy started “helping out” throughout the paper. He began to learn about all aspects of producing a newspaper.  His family moved away briefly the next year.  However, within another year they were back in Knoxville.  He was back working at The Chronicle, and back to learning and earning his keep overnight. By the time he was 19, he was capable of running a newspaper himself.  And he soon got that chance.  He heard that a newspaper in Chattanooga had gone bankrupt.  Through the help of family and friends, he was able to put together $250 to buy The Chattanooga Times in 1878.  He turned that paper around, and was soon making a profit.  As a side note, although it has since merged with The Free Press, that paper is still in business today. In 1886, a friend let him know that a paper in another city was close to going bankrupt, and was available for sale.  Coincidentally, it was also named The Times.  He was able to come up with the $75,000 to buy that paper.  He turned it around as well.  The job he did was so impressive that even today, the masthead of The New York Times continues to list Adolph Ochs as publisher. Now Adolph Ochs grew The Times so much that he had to have a new building constructed to house his paper.  That building is located at what is now called Times Square in New York in its honor.  To celebrate the completion of his new headquarters, Ochs had fireworks set off from the building on New Years Eve 1904.  It was so well received, that they began doing it every year.  In 1907, they began dropping a ball as part of that celebration.  It has taken place every year, except 1942 and 43, because of World War II. They say that truth is stranger than fiction.  The fact that way over 1 billion people celebrate New Years Eve having its beginnings because an 11 year old boy was scared to walk past a haunted cemetery in Knoxville at night certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Hank Williams Checks into the Andrew Johnson Hotel Before Dying (Suggested & Written by: Dwight Shepherd)

On December 31, 1952, Hank Williams checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel to wait out bad weather and by the wee hours of the morning, he was dead. The Andrew Johnson Building on Gay Street in Knoxville will soon be renovated into a mix of commercial/retail space, permanent residences, and overnight rental accommodations. For a number of years, it housed the Knox County School System Central Office.  Before that, it was something completely different.  It opened as a luxury hotel in 1928, and was at the time, the tallest building in Tennessee.  In the 1930s radio station WNOX broadcast from its upper floors.  Their Mid-Day Merry Go Round program featured live performances from a list of entertainers that soon would be among The Who’s Who of Country Music. In 1936, Amelia Earhart stayed here.  During an interview conducted here, she told a local reporter because of the nature of flying, she didn’t expect to die of old age.  She disappeared on her around the world flight a year later.  In 1943, Russian composer Sergi Rachrominoff stayed here while giving a concert at the University of Tennessee.  It would prove to be his last concert. He died three months later. On New Years Eve 1952, Hank Williams checked in here because bad weather had canceled his flight.  Williams, in addition to being a country music superstar, was also a legal morphine addict.  A back injury caused him so much pain that he actually carried a card that authorized doctors to give him morphine to control the pain.  Unfortunately, Hank was also an alcoholic.  Those two are not a good combination. After getting to the hotel, Hank told his teenage driver, Charlie Carr, to get him a bottle of whiskey and a doctor to give him a shot of morphine.  Folks at the hotel told him where he could find both. Now, naturally the doctor had never treated Hank before.  Exactly how he figured the dose of morphine, only he knew for sure.  Anyway, it couldn’t have mixed well with the alcohol. Later that evening, Hank’s manager called.  Hank was in no condition to talk to him, so young Charlie Carr took the call.  Hank was due for a concert in Charleston, West Virginia.  They couldn’t wait for the weather to clear.  They needed to get on the road and keep driving until either they came to an airport where they could get a flight out, or they reached Charleston by car.  At 10:45PM, the driver called the front desk.  They were checking out, and he’d need help getting his boss to their car.  Charlie pulled a 1952 blue Cadillac to the hotel’s side entrance.  Porters and bellmen who helped Hank to the car said he was unresponsive, except for a couple of coughing noises, and was cool to the touch. Charlie finally pulled over in Virginia, and flagged down a highway patrolman.  Hank Williams was dead at age 29.  Many people believe that he actually died at the Andrew Johnson in Knoxville.  It has been reported that on foggy New Year’s Eves, an old blue Cadillac can be seen circling the AJ Building. Maybe Hank hasn’t quite checked out yet.

Return to Waverly Hills Sanatorium

In April 2018, Diane visited Waverly Hills Sanatorium for the first time and several listeners joined her on a tour of the place. The group experienced some unexplained things and Diane has been dying to get back and show me the place. Covid thwarted our plan to investigate privately with a group of listeners in April 2020. So, with an unexpected trip to Louisville in December 2024, we couldn't pass up a chance to do a tour. Gargoyles maintain sentinel duty atop the imposing structure of the sanatorium. Are they keeping ghosts locked inside or protecting the interior from spirits? It's hard to say. Perhaps a little of both as Waverly Hills Sanatorium quite possibly is one of the most haunted locations in America. Join us for this return to the history and hauntings of Waverly Hills Sanatorium!

Most people are probably unaware that Tuberculosis still kills over one million people every year. This isn't just a disease that ravaged people during the early 1900s. The disease was often referred to as Consumption because it seemed to consume the afflicted individual. Others called it the "white death." This disease was highly contagious and there was no cure. The city of Louisville was hit with the highest case load in the country by 1900 and they needed a place that could not only get the sick away from the rest of the population, but make sure the sick got the three main forms of treatment being used for TB: nutrition, fresh air and sunlight. Waverly Hills Sanatorium would become that place.

Waverly Hills sits on a spot where a school once stood. Major Thomas H. Hays had bought the land in 1883 with the goal of building a school for his daughters to attend. That school was just a one room school house that was located on Pages Lane. Lizzie Lee Harris was hired to be the teacher and she named the school "Waverley School" after some novels named "Waverley Novels." Major Hays followed suit and named the property "Waverley Hill." The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name after purchasing the land and opening the Sanatorium. The original sanatorium that they built was not the large structure that stands today. The first was a framed building with a hipped roof and only had two stories. It could accommodate around 40 to 50 patients. The climate of Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, was conducive to the spread of TB and by the early 1900s, the county was hit hard. The original hospital was ill equipped to handle the amount of patients that would be flooding in. The city of Louisville started to plan a new hospital in 1911.

The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a new hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. In order to start the building, the patients from the City Hospital had to be moved to tents set up on the grounds at Waverly Hills. The new pavilion was finished in 1912 and could care for another 40 patients. A children's pavilion was added as well for both sick kids and the children of patients. The plan for Waverly was to continue adding buildings and it eventually became like many other TB properties. These properties would become self-sufficient mini cities with their own water treatment facilities, post offices and growing their own food. Waverly followed the same pattern. But eventually, there was a desire to build a larger structure and that is the building that still exists today

Construction began in March of 1924 on the brick, five-story gothic styled building. It was designed by architect James J. Gaffney. The sanatorium would be able to house up to 400 patients. It was designed to provide a variety of treatments and was considered state-of-the-art at the time, despite the fact that many of the treatments they used for TB, we would consider barbaric. The facility officially opened on October 17, 1926. One of the treatments offered at Waverly Hills was time out on the Solarium.These were large patio areas on the outside of each floor where patients would sit for hours to take in the fresh air and enjoy the peace of the wooded area that surrounded the sanatorium. There was an audio system set up where patients could listen to music and the radio station broadcasting from within Waverly Hills. Our tour guide said it was like the first iPod. Some patients would be left out here up to 13 hours and there are even photos that show that some patients would actually be covered in snow. For this reason, the first electric blankets were used here. Another treatment was time in the sunroom, which was a room with heat lamps that were to provide a feeling as though being in the sun. The more barbaric treatments included electric shock for people with TB of the brain and surgical procedures to remove ribs and muscle. One of the worst treatments was a process where a lung would be deflated because TB needs oxygen to survive. This treatment did help some people, but mainly ended up killing people.

The facility served as a tuberculosis hospital until 1961. In 1943, streptomycin was discovered and it proved to successfully treat TB. This eventually would make Waverly Hills obsolete and so it did close in 1961 with any patients still remaining being transferred to Hazelwood Sanatorium. The following year it reopened after renovation as WoodHaven Medical Services, a geriatric facility for people with mobility issues and dementia. This facility ran until it was closed by the state in 1981. This was supposedly due to patient neglect. Simpsonville developer J. Clifford Todd bought the hospital in 1983 for $3,005,000. Todd joined forces with architect Milton Thompson and the men planned to convert it into a minimum-security prison for the state. Waverly is surrounded by a neighborhood and obviously, these people were not about to allow a minimum security prison in their backyard. The men switched to a plan to build apartments, but that fell through as well.

Robert Alberhasky bought the property in 1996 with the hope of turning it into an arts and worship center. He wanted to also build a replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue that is in Rio de Janeiro. This statue was going to be 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide and placed on the roof of the sanatorium. Donations fell through and the project was cancelled the following year. Tina and Charlie Mattingly then bought Waverly Hills in 2001. The Mattinglys hold tours of Waverly Hills and host a haunted house attraction each Halloween, with proceeds going toward restoration of the property. Restoration is going well, but is slow. The rooms that we saw that were restored looked great. Waverly Hills Historical Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

It is no secret that Waverly Hills is haunted. And while I generally leave it up to you to decide if a place is haunted or not, I can tell you that I believe something I cannot explain is going on in this building. Thousands of people have had experiences here, including us. The smell of fresh baked bread has come from the former kitchen. Many ghost hunters claim that the ghost of a small boy named Timmy roams the halls. There are no records of a Timmy at the sanatorium though. The creepiest story in connection to Waverly is that of The Creeper. The Creeper is a dark and terrifying entity that crawls along the floors and the walls and many believe it is demonic in nature. Others believe it’s a human spirit that's been twisted by the trauma of tubercular death. People who see it are filled with dread.

The refrigeration room has child ghosts that like to play Hide and Seek. A group investigating in here once caught an EVP on a phone. You can hear the guest say "Ready or not" and then a child's voice responds "Here I come."  Apparently, the refrigerators were sometimes used for more than just food. The vegetables and meat would be pulled out and replaced by bodies. People who are closed up in the unit routinely feel their hair being pulled or the shirts being tugged upon. Children also haunt the former cafeteria and are sometimes joined by a ghost cat. People feel it rubbing up against their ankles.

The Cult of Weird website reported the following experience, "As we continued our conversation I began to notice a small orb-shaped pinpoint of light moving across the second floor solarium. It was the size of a firefly but a blue-white color, and it would disappear only to reappear with perfect timing in every other window. My companion asked if I could see a blue light. I said that I could. We watched as it traveled the entire length of the west side of the building heading east. At first it appeared as if it was inside the building, but as it progressed it moved up above the solarium windows in front of the exterior brick. When this happened it became two separate identical points of light, spaced so closely they almost touched each other. When the light neared a bend in the building—the sanatorium is roughly question mark shaped—we lost sight of it. The light(s) traveled roughly 350 feet in approximately 10 seconds."

Diane visited with a bunch of listeners in April 2018 and we couldn't pass up the chance for Kelly to get to see it when we drove to Louisville for Jerry Paulley's memorial service. We were joined on the tour by Bailey Landrum and her friend Ellie. We started the tour where the cafeteria, kitchen and bakery were once located. We then went to the former chapel on an upper floor. There we were shown a picture captured on an investigation in 2003 by a staff member who has worked at Waverly Hills for 21 years and the picture features two guests standing in front of a window in the chapel and there is the head of another person between them. This was someone who was not standing there for the picture. And being that this was the third floor, it couldn't have been someone standing outside. And there was no glass in the windows in 2003, so it wasn't a reflection of someone else in the room.

There was a woman who had lived at Waverly Hills named Lois. She passed away here in a room that guests visit on the tour. Lois was only 28 when she died from TB in 1956. She had been pregnant when she got to the sanatorium, so when it was time to give birth, she was taken somewhere else to give birth and then brought back. Lois never got to touch her son that she gave birth to. She suffered from TB for 8 years and spent all of those at Waverly. Her sister, Audrey, also had the dreaded disease and joined her in the room. She managed to recover and lived to be in her 90s. Investigators have picked up EVP of a female voice saying "Audrey" as though Lois is searching for her sister. A flowery smell is sometimes detected and she likes to play with people's hair. We didn't get any activity here, but we were told that Ghost Hunters saw a full-bodied apparition here when they investigated. Our guide Kristal saw her only apparition near this area. (Kristal Experience)

Our tour group in 2018 had an amazing group experience at the elevator shaft on the third floor. A homeless man and his dog were thrown down to the bottom of this shaft and reports claimed that it had been a ritualistic murder. The homeless man had lived in the building for quite some time and he was very protective of it. As the tour guide was telling us this history, Diane clearly heard a dog whimper. She thought perhaps it was the power of suggestion until the tour guide asked if we all heard it and everybody said yes. Then a little bit later there was another whimper followed by a door slam. And we again heard the dog whimper a third time before we left the area. It was clear. It was audible. Diane had no doubt that the ghost of a dog had joined us...or at least a residual whimper. This time around we didn't get any activity, but were told about the ball moving down the hall on the Ryan and Shane Unsolved Buzzfeed Show. The ball went down the hallway and then turned the corner by itself, as if a dog was carrying it and we were also told that Tina once saw the apparition of a dog lying down in the hallway and then it disappeared. Then our guide shared this audio with us. (Dog Audio)

Diane had a guide tell her about an experience he had on the fourth floor. A group had arrived in a chauffeur van and the driver had joined the tour. The driver was bringing up the rear with the guy telling Diane the story and they distinctly heard the sound of dance music floating up the hall and they also could hear the sound of feet dancing on the floor. The fourth floor is probably the most haunted floor and is very creepy. People often feel uneasy and nauseous on this floor and it is cloaked in darkness with just a hint of ambient light. To get to the floor, you go through a metal door and the guide told us about some teenagers who were ransacking the place and they got locked in by something. They had brought an axe with them and tried to open the door with it, but had no luck. The marks in the door are still there. Whatever is on this floor does not seem to be human. There are supposedly shadow figures everywhere poking out of doors. We thought we saw a child ghost peeking out of a room several times. We went into a room that was used for the surgery and it was here where many people suffered and died from various experiments to ease their symptoms. A person in our group captured a weird picture of Bailey in here. And Kelly felt weird in here with tightness in her chest. 

The fifth floor opens up onto the roof. A nurse supposedly hanged herself in the center room. She had fallen in love with a doctor who was married and carried on an affair with him. She discovered she was pregnant and she told him about it. He rejected her and in her dismay, she committed suicide. Some stories claim that she lived in Room 502 and hanged herself there, but guides believe she hanged herself in the public area. We're pretty sure that is the truth as we were told a story about a man who visited and told the guides that he was 8-years-old when he came to the sanatorium with his mother who was a nurse and they walked off the elevator and into that open area and discovered the nurse hanging. Kristal pointed out that she didn't think it was a suicide because what nurse would hang herself near the children's wing, which was on the fifth floor. She thinks its possible that an orderly was asked to take the nurse out on behalf of the doctor.

The Morgue Wing has a cafeteria above it and in order for a patient to eat in the cafeteria, they had to get dressed. They couldn't enter in their gowns. There was a morgue slab still in the morgue that could hold three bodies. Only the bottom one can still hold any weight and many times, investigators try out lying down in that bottom one and being left for awhile. We were told on the tour about one woman who decided to do this and when her team returned 30 minutes later, she was curled up in the fetal position at the back of the slab. This was shared on TripAdvisor, "I got away from the other folks and did my own thing. I laid on the bottom morgue slab, hoping to get touched. But didn't. Later, I did a flashlight session with a female in the shock therapy bedroom while sitting on the bed and she answered questions by making the flashlight turn on. THEN, I went down the Death Chute alone - a 500 ft walk down in complete blackness. I could hear footsteps behind me but when I turned to take a picture, there was no one there. I turned on my FLIR and have two videos of an entity which followed me down the Death Chute and then led the way back up. It even played with my hair!" What that person meant by Death Chute is the infamous Body Chute. It was out last stop.

The creepiest location at Waverly Hills has to be the Body Chute. This is a long chute that went downhill a very long way and has 145 concrete stairs next to it. A track system would carry the bodies to the bottom where families could pick up the bodies or the local funeral parlor would collect them. The reason this was used was because so many people were dying, the administrators were worried that it would depress the patients and they would give up their fight and all hope when they saw so many of their compatriots die. The chute is dark and it smells. When Diane took the tour in 2018, the guide shared a story about an experience that she had at the Body Chute. She was giving a tour and had her back to the chute. She noticed that several people in her group were getting startled looks on their faces and one of them told her to turn around. When she did, she saw a white misty figure at the bottom of the Chute. She has experienced enough at Waverly Hills that she thought to herself, I'm okay as long as that just stays where it is. When she turned back around, she saw that her entire group had run away. She turned around again to see why they had run and the white figure was running straight at her. People report hearing screams and cart wheels on investigations. Kristal has seen someone get scratched on their abdomen here. A SWAT team has run out of the Body Chute they were so scared. Green orbs with faces have been captured in pictures. We had an experience there on this tour too. (Body Chute Sound) (Body Chute Amped) (Body Chute Full Audio) At the end here you hear that Kelly and I heard totally different sounds.

Visiting Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an experience that every paranormal enthusiast needs to have. Are the former patients and staff still wandering the halls in the afterlife? Is Waverly Hills Sanatorium haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 568 - Haunted Beijing

Moment in Oddity - Tabitha Babbit Circular Saw (Suggested by: Duey Oxberger)
 
Back in the early 1800s there was a woman by the name of Tabitha Babbit who was born in Hardwick, Massachusetts. She was a member of the Shakers which was a millenarian restorationist Christian sect founded in 1747 in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were originally known as the "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic worship style which included singing, dancing and shouting during church services. Babbit would often watch men at the local sawmill using two-man whip saws with considerable difficulty. She realized that half of their motion was wasted. She was a smart woman who pondered ways to create the same results as the two-man saws with more efficient effort. A weaver by trade, Babbit's idea was to create a round blade that would rotate by being connected to her pedal powered spinning wheel. Her prototype was then connected to a water-powered machine to maximize the effectiveness of cutting lumber. A larger version was later installed in the sawmill. There are some that dispute whether Tabitha Babbit did indeed invent the first circular saw. Due to the Shaker's religious beliefs, Babbit did not patent her invention. In their society, actions taken such as patents were prohibited due to the thought that intellectual properties should be shared by the entire community without restriction. While some believe that the story of Tabitha Babbit and her invention of the circular saw is simply Shaker lore, the idea of the first circular saw being derived from a spinning wheel, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Eli Whitney Birth

In the month of December, on the 8th in 1765, Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts. Eli was known as an inventor, manufacturer, mechanical engineer and has often been considered to be the "father of American technology". Despite all of his contributions to American society, Eli is most well known for his invention of the cotton gin. He attended Yale College and graduated in 1792. It was then that Whitney determined that if a machine could clean the seeds from cotton it could be quite profitable for the South. He set about drawing up plans for his invention and in ten days, Eli had a rudimentary model that could separate the cotton fibers from the seeds. In 1794, he received his patent for the cotton gin. Unfortunately for Whitney, Southern planters were not willing to pay for the use of his invention. This was due to the simplicity of the machine's design allowing for the pirating of the idea. This put Eli's company out of business by 1797. His patent was not allowed to be renewed in 1807 which led Whitney to surmise that,"an invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the inventor". Eli Whitney never sought a patent for any additional inventions.

Haunted Beijing

Beijing is a city with over 3,000 years of recorded history. Not only is this a city with a rich history, it has a rich culture, some of which is surrounded by folklore and the supernatural. There are several haunted locations in this capital city of China. Chaonei (Chow nay) No. 81 is found in the Dongcheng District and is a unique brick structure with an obscure history that seems to be mostly connected to the Catholic church. No one really knows why it is haunted, but it is said to be one of the most haunted locations in China. There is the Huguang Guild Hall, a haunted theater. A home for royalty, the Prince Gong's Mansion, has a couple ghosts stories. The Bell Tower may be connected to a young woman's ultimate sacrifice and now it occasionally rings out her haunting cry. And the Forbidden City itself has some creepy stories. Join us for the history and hauntings of Beijing, China.

The Chinese have a rich culture when it comes to ghosts. On our Legends of Taiwan episode, we discussed the Hungry Ghost Festival that is observed in that region. This festival entails performing rituals that honor dead ancestors. During the festival, it is thought that the spirits of the dead came from the underworld and mingled around the living. This was the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar. That day is called Ghost Day and the seventh month is called the Ghost Month. The Chinese believe that after death, a person is split into three different souls. The po part goes with the body to the grave, while another part goes to judgement and the hun part goes into an ancestral tablet. The po and hun make up the elements of a hungry ghost and it is referred to that way because those elements need to be nourished by offerings that are brought by descendants. At some point, the po and hun eventually make it to the underworld. But there are other kinds of spirits in Chinese folklore, at least ten of them. They are similar to what we would think of as demons.

The yāoguǐ is called a Weird Ghost and is said to have been concerned only with material things in life. They can transform into any physical object. The báguǐ (baggooee) is a Drought Ghost and they were full of lust in life and now create hot winds. The mèiguǐ (maygooee) is a Trickster Ghost and they caused people to be confused in life and can become animals in death. The gǔdú-guǐ (gwoodoo gooee) are Venomous Ghosts and they were hateful in life and can transform into insects in death. The lìguǐ (Ligooee) is a Pestilence Ghost that harbored grudges in life and causes disease and decay in death. There is a specific spirit called a Hungry ghost that is èguǐ (ehgooee) in Chinese and these were arrogant people that can now on gaseous forms. The yǎnguǐ Yawn gooee) is a Nightmare Ghost that was a fraud in life and can transform into pure darkness now. The wǎngliǎng-guǐ (wong leeon gooee) are Goblin Ghosts and were corrupted in life and take the essential energy within rocks and trees. The yìshǐ-guǐ (yeeshe gooee) are Servant Ghosts who were corrupted by their desire for accomplishment in life and in death can transform into blinding light. And finally there is the chuánsòng-guǐ (chewann sone gooee) or Messenger Ghosts, which were litigious in life and can transform into any person. With all these spirits hanging around, it isn't surprising that the Chinese have no issue believe that certain locations can be haunted.

Beijing is the capital of China and the discovery of "Peking Man" indicated that humans have been living in the area since the Neolithic period. The first formal city was built in the 11th century BC and was called Ji (Gee) City. Eventually, this connected with Xianyang (Shen Yawng) in 221 BC that was under the rule of the Qin (Chin) Dynasty. There were name changes and different dynasties that ruled through the years. Under the Mongol Yuan (You ahn) Dynasty in 1261, Ji City became the seat of power and thus the capital of China. Beijing would get its name during the Ming Dynasty in 1403. That dynasty would also rebuild the imperial palace and this would become the Forbidden City. The Chinese feudal dynasty period ended in 1911  and Beijing was no longer the imperial capital. By 1949, it would be the capital of China again. Beijing is a city with over 3,000 years of civilized history and one part of that history is the Chaonei (chow nay) Church.

The main building is distinctive and very unChinese in design with a French Baroque style that seems plucked out of the Victorian era. The property is made up of three buildings and is surrounded by a concrete wall that opens up at a pair of opaque metal doors. The plot is 8,100 square feet and has a few deciduous trees that partially conceal the three buildings here. There is the main house, a larger second house and a garage. Three dormer windows and a brick chimney decorate the mansard roof on the main house, which is two-and-a-half-stories with a basement. The exterior is made from brick with a Flemish bond and metal drainpipes run down the facade. The front entrance is framed with two rectangular columns that hold up a small stone balcony. The larger building is three-stories high and has a single-bay tower on one corner. This has the same French Baroque styling with four dormer windows piercing the mansard roof. The garage is a small dilapidated brick building with a gabled roof. Until 2017, all these buildings had been left abandoned and vacant. Vining plants covered most of the exterior walls and most of the windows had broken panes. The interiors featured broken floorboards and peeling plaster.

Finding an accurate history for the building is difficult as any records before the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 have been lost or are incomplete. Most historians believe the building was constructed in 1910 and run as the North China Union Language School. The school mainly taught missionaries from the west how to speak Mandarin. A couple decades later, the teaching program expanded to anybody interested in learning the language, which included businessmen, diplomats and scholars. There are some historians who disagree with that history and say the building was built in 1900 and used as a house by the French manager of the Beijing–Hankou Railway at that time. Another account says that the Imperial Chinese government built the structure and gifted it to either the British government or the Catholic Church. This definitely became the property of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing in the late 1930s. When World War II started, a group of Belgian Augustinian nuns moved in and used the place as a clinic until 1946.

The Irish Presbyterian Mission moved in next. Now there is a legend told about the time after this. The house was said to have been given to a Kuomintang officer who fled to Taiwan in 1949, leaving behind a woman who was either his mistress or wife. That woman then hanged herself in the house in dispair. There is no record to support this story. In the 1950s, the Communist government took control of the property and used the buildings for government business. The Red Guards occupied it for a time, but its said that they didn't stay for long because the place scared them. In 1980, the State Administration for Religious Affairs and United Front Work Department put forward an order that any property that had once belonged to a religious organization had to be returned to that organization, along with all their property. It would take until 1994 for the Catholic church to prove their connection to Chaonei and the Beijing Patriotic Catholic Association took ownership. At that point, the buildings were slated for demolition, but the church suggested that perhaps the buildings could be used as a Vatican embassy in China. It saved the complex from the bulldozer, but the property remained neglected. The government listed it as a historic property in 2009 and the Catholic church still owns it. The buildings were renovated starting in 2017 and they can be rented out. Before the renovations, the property was a magnet for urban explorers.  

Author and urban explorer Andy Smart visited the location several times to conduct paranormal investigations. Despite the fact that there are no records to back up deaths in the house, Smart wrote on his blog justturnleft.com in 2015 that he met a guy named ‘Jimmy’ Zhang Sunyin who went to school near Chaonei No 81 and he said, "When I was at school we used to walk past there every day. We all knew of the stories and tales about that place and that they probably weren’t true. However, most of the neighborhood, all the local people living around here and surrounding know that a girl had died in there at some time. They all know! We all think that the house is a very bad place. We don’t know why, we can just feel it." So if there wasn't some officer here who left a woman that hanged herself, what other reason is there that this place would be haunted? Another bit of lore that is shared claims some urban explorers died in the building in 2007. And then, despite the fact that no one knows the origin story of this place, a legend claims a priest who built the place disappeared before it was completed and that he haunts the place. 

The Chaonei No. 81 or Chaonei Church is said to be "Beijing's most celebrated 'haunted house'." The legends about this location inspired the idea to use it as a set for the 2014 3D horror film, "The House That Never Dies." Production began on that in 2011 and would take three years with the filmmakers eventually deciding to film at different locations. But the cast and crew did visit the house and the director studied 3,000 pages of data on the house that helped give him a vision for the film because of the stories of haunting activity. That film would become the highest-grossing Chinese horror film of all time. Stories of hauntings date to the 1970s. A man named Li Jongyie told the New York Times in 2013, "Even in the 1970s, people thought the house was haunted...As children, we would play hide-and-seek in the house, but we didn't dare come in by ourselves." Three construction workers were doing renovation work in 2001 and during that they opened up a hole in the basement and saw a flash of light followed by a ghost appearing. They ran terrified from the building and wouldn't return to work. The ghost most commonly claimed to be haunting the house is a woman. Her screams have been heard throughout the years. The house was always said to be cold, even in the summer and people walking by have always felt uneasy. For years, it was written in chalk outside the gate that there were no ghosts. But locals disagree.

The Huguang Guild Hall is an opera house in the Xicheng District. There are said to be four great theaters in Beijing and this is one of them. The theater was constructed in 1807 and today is part of a complex that includes the theater along with the Wenchang building, Xiangxian Temple and Chuwan hall. The interior has a stone floor and the decor features red, green, and gold. The hall hosts a museum of the opera's history in Beijing. In 1912, the Chinese Nationalist Party was founded here. Sun Yat-sen was the Premier of the Republic at that time and he was chosen as the party chairman. During World War II, the theater was used as a home for the poor. Legends claim that the theater was built over a former graveyard and we already know that is bad news here in America. Now imagine in a place like China where ancestors are so revered and their burials are so well kept. There are some angry spirits said to be here. Screaming is heard in the courtyard and don't throw anything into the courtyard or an audible voice will scold you, but its not coming from anybody who is living.

The Prince Gong Mansion is today a 650,000 square foot museum and tourist attraction with gardens. The mansion was built in 1777 during the Qing (Ching) dynasty for a court official named Heshen, who was apparently a real dirtbag. Historians claim he was the most corrupt official in all of Chinese history. The mansion gets its name from the sixth brother of Emperor Wenzong of Qing (Ching), Prince Gong, who was given the mansion in 1851. In 1921, Prince Gong's grandson offered the property to the Benedictines and they renovated what had become a dilapidated mansion. The Catholic church used it as part of a university until the priests were deported. It was used as a business property and in 1996 became a tourist attraction. The most recent renovations were completed during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Two supernatural stories are connected to the mansion and that corrupt official named Heshen. The Emperor Qianlong (Chee ahn long) was a mischievous little boy and one day he decided to scare one of the imperial concubines. He snuck up quietly behind her while she was putting on her makeup and the shock caused her to jump and she accidentally hit him with her comb. A lady of the court saw the concubine strike Qianlong and she reported it, which resulted in the concubine's disgrace and she committed suicide. Qianlong felt guilty about this and he insisted on seeing her body. He bit his finger and left a mark of blood on her neck, so he would recognize her in the next life. Heshen was born shortly after the concubine's death and he had a birth mark on his neck. Qianlong believed that Heshen was the reincarnation of the concubine. So that's the first paranormal story here. This earned Heshen favor with the Emperor and could be why his corruption went unchecked. The only good thing about Heshen seemed to be his devotion to his wife, Feng Shi. The couple's youngest son died in battle and Shi was completely devastated and became ill. It was said that she died of a broken heart. And that may be why her spirit continues to haunt the Prince Gong Mansion. Her ghostly wails are heard and her apparition is seen wandering in the gardens wearing a white dress.

The Bell Tower in Gulou (Goo low) has a legend going back to the Ming Dynasty. Emperor Yongle wanted a large bronze bell to be built to help keep the city's time and so he ordered a blacksmith named Deng to do the work. There was a ton of pressure on Deng to get this done on a tight timeline. An immense amount of heat was needed and the furnace just wasn't getting the job done. Deng's daughter came to visit and she noticed how stressed her father and his craftsmen were and so she threw herself into the furnace and that act of self-sacrifice gave the furnace the boost it needed and the giant bell was finally cast. The bell seems to have absorbed the spirit of Deng's daughter. This is revealed occasionally when the bell goes xie, xie, xie (“shoe, shoe, shoe”) instead of the normal gong, gong, gong. Why would the bell be ringing about shoes? Apparently, before the young woman leapt into the furnace, a worker tried to grab her and only managed to get one of her shoes, so she is asking for her shoe back.

And then, how could the Forbidden City not be haunted?! The Forbidden City is the imperial palace complex that was commissioned by Emperor Chengzu of the Ming dynasty in 1406 when he made Beijing the capital of China. The imperial family began living there in 1420, but even most of them didn't have full access to the property. Only the Emperor was allowed full access to everywhere and that's why it was called the Forbidden City. The buildings were built with feng shui in mind and the most important buildings honor the sun with their position. Hundreds of buildings were constructed with 980 of them surviving today. A twenty-six foot high city wall was built around the complex with three layers of bricks on each side. The four corners have towers and a legend claims that when one needed to be put back together, the artisans couldn't do it. It was repaired by the immortal patron or deity of architecture in China, Lu Ban. He was an actual person and invented many things during his lifetime from 507 to 444 BC. Upon his death, he became a god in Chinese folk religion. The Forbidden City was an imperial palace until 1924 and had housed 24 emperors in that time. Today, it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and a museum. 

One of the spirits here is thought to be a concubine named Zhenfei. The Guangxu Emperor had fallen in love with her in 1887 and this didn't please the aunt of his wife who was the Empress Dowager Cixi. Cixi also didn't like that the emperor had plans for political reform. When his plans failed, she somehow was able to assume power. She banished the concubine Zhenfei to a corner of the Forbidden City, where she was forbidden to see the emperor. The Empress Dowager ordered her killed in 1900, so she was drowned in a well and her family wasn't allowed to retrieve the body for a year. An inscription on the well tells this story, but it doesn't share that from that time, a weeping woman dressed in white has been seen walking around the city. Haunting flute music is also heard when no one is in the Forbidden City at night. There are also stories of ghost dogs being seen at the edges of the Forbidden City’s labyrinth. Don't worry too much about the ghosts here though because the doorways have high thresholds that must be stepped over and tour guides will tell you that they are there "because ghosts can’t jump, and they’d be trapped inside the room." How many other ghosts are here? Could be countless as some claim the Forbidden City is cursed because Emperor Yongle was said to have slaughtered over 2800 people in his harem when trying to suppress an alleged sex scandal. A fire broke out a few years later and some saw it as punishment for the Emperor.

Another ghost story shared about the Forbidden City dates to 1995. Apparently, a security was watching TV in the guard's room when two other guards came bursting into the room. They were breathless and scared. They said that they saw a woman dressed in all black walking around, so they went to tell her she needed to leave. She kept walking away from them and they finally managed to corner her at a locked door. They ordered her to turn around and when she did, they saw that she had no face. The guards were so scared, they dropped their flashlights. The other guard joined them to retrieve their flashlights and the woman was gone. The flashlights were still on the floor and still on.

Beijing is a huge city with millions of residents and a rich culture connected to the spirit world. Is it possible that ghosts walk among some of the locations in Beijing? Are these places in Beijing haunted? That is for you to decide.

HGB Ep. 567 - 1886 Olde Park Hotel

Moment in Oddity - Dr. Suess House (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

There is a very strange tower of a home located just outside of Talkeetna, Alaska. The home looks like it came straight out of a children's book. The outward appearance looks like 12 different homes all stacked on top of eachother with each subsequent house, smaller than the last. This is why it is known by locals as the Dr. Seuss House. The house itself has no correlation to the actual author, however the whimsical nature of the building's structure is the reason for the moniker. The home stands a towering 185 feet high. The creator and builder, Phillip Weidner, calls the structure his "poem to the sky". There are various ladders and staircases to the different levels which, according to what you are traversing, have a total of 14 to 17 floors respectively. The home is still currently under construction and due to the owner's day job as one of Alaska's top trial lawyers, Weidner finds it difficult to find the time needed to complete this unusual structure. He surmises however, that once it is complete, he and his family will enjoy the tower and he looks forward to sitting atop it to enjoy the Northern Lights in the future. We definitely recommend looking up photos of this unique home because it certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Phillips Brooks Born

In the month of December, on the 13th in 1835, Phillips Brooks was born. He was born into a wealthy New England family. He graduated from Harvard in 1855 and after a brief stint as a school teacher at the Boston Latin school, he began to study for his ordination in the Episcopal Church in 1856. While in seminary, Brooks preached at Sharon Chapel in Fairfax County, Virginia. After graduating in 1859, from the Virginia Theological Seminary, Phillips Brooks became an ordained deacon and in 1860 he became an ordained priest. His sermon at Harvard's commemoration of the Civil War's dead garnered Brooks nationwide recognition. After time spent in Germany, Brooks spoke of "thrilling music" and "thrilling incense" during church services. He encouraged many aspects of the liturgical movement, including congregational singing during the liturgy. Phillips Brooks had several publications based upon sermons and preachings he had delivered, but one thing he is most well known for today, is his authoring of the Christmas carol, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" which was based on the text that Phillips Brooks wrote in 1868.

1886 Olde Park Hotel 

The Olde Park Hotel has stood for over 130 years in Ballinger, Texas, which is known as the Greatest Little Town in Texas. From the outside, the hotel looks pretty unpretentious, but it has a storied history. The building has housed not only a hotel, but a brothel, a boarding house, school, restaurant and antique store. Today, it is run as an event host that can be rented. This is mostly for ghost hunts because this hotel is said to be one of the most haunted hotels in Texas. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Olde Park Hotel!

Ballinger, Texas was a railroad town. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway built a line west from Brownwood that terminated in a new town they built. They decided to name the town for a stockholder in the railroad company, Galveston attorney William Pitt Ballinger. The line was completed in 1886 and the town would be incorporated in 1892. Ballinger is home to one of the few Carnegie libraries still operating in its original building. This opened in 1909 with funds from Andrew Carnegie. The towns economy exploded around cotton production and the railroad. Soon saloons were popping up and outlaws started showing up. Gun battles happened occasionally. The current downtown historic district features a courthouse square with many buildings dating back to the late 1800s. These buildings include not only the library. but the Texas Theater, the historic post office, the County Building and City Hall. And then there is the Olde Park Hotel.

Pinning down a history of the hotel is very difficult. A flood in 1905 wiped out the official records in Ballinger. As we said, the hotel is unpretentious. The architectural style is hard to describe and pretty simple. Clearly, this is a building that has been added onto through the years. It is believed that it started as a white, two-story house that existed before 1886 as it appears in a picture dated before that time. The house would become a hotel in 1886 known as the Three Sisters Hotel. Ballinger would become a rough and tumble place that outlaws gravitated towards. The hotel would be multi-purposed into a bordello twice and the first time would have been in the 1800s. Outlaws more than likely stayed at the hotel, especially when it was a brothel. These outlaws could have included Sam Bass who committed the biggest train robbery in US history, the Newton Boys who were bank and train robbers and had stolen more than any other gang at the time they were caught, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, John Wesley Hardin was a gunfighter who killed his first man at age 15, Emmanuel "Mannen" Clements headed the ruthless Clements family who were cattle rustlers and gunfighters, and Jim "Killer" Miller aka,"The Deacon" who was a gunfighter." He got his nickname because he attended church and didn't drink or smoke. Bonnie Parker grew up in a nearby town and that's why its thought that she and Clyde had stayed here at some point. 

When prohibition started, the hotel became a place for bootlegging. Some time in the early 1900s, Washington Hampton Secrest II owned the hotel and called it the Secrest Hotel. The Keel family would buy it in 1922 and they owned it for multiple generations. The hotel would get the name Olde Park Hotel at that time. The history of the hotel also claims that this was called the Royal Hotel at some point and that the building would serve as a meeting house, boarding house, school house, restaurant, music store, a brothel for a second time and antique store. Jeanette Findley Truehardt was the owner who bought the hotel and opened it as an antique store. In 2016, Dan and Connie LaFave purchased the building from Jeanette. The couple began their own ghost hunting team in 2009 called Graveyard Shift Paranormal Investigations and that is why they were attracted to the hotel. They focused early on with local private hauntings. They branched out to bigger locations and the ghost town of Helena, Texas became one of their favorite places to investigate. Dan has penned four books, one of which is about the Olde Park Hotel. 

The couple renovated the 10,000 square foot hotel, creating 10 themed rooms. There is the Pink Room upstairs that is also known as Helen's Azalea Suiteroom in honor of Helen Keel. The Green Room is upstairs and is the only room with original furniture from the Keel family. There's also a doll in there called Ginny. The Rice Marriott Room is also known as the Red Room and is decorated with red and white pinstripes and was named in honor of the son of a previous owner of the hotel. The Yellow Room was also named Iona’s Oleander Suite named after Jeanette’s grandmother, Iona. There's a doll named Abigail in there. Downstairs is the LaFave’s Master Suite and its decorated in gold and burgundy. Preston’s Parlor was once Jeanette’s grandson’s room. The Pruiett Wildflower Room is named after “Tex” Pruiett Keel who was one of John and Virginia Keel’s sons. The Chrisco’s French Bordello is named after Jack & Juanita Chrisco and has blue and gold colors and a haunted mirror. The Presentation Room has a 10 foot movie screen and there is also the Secrest Sitting Room, Anne's Theater and Virginia's Country Kitchen.

Despite having all these rooms, the hotel is not run like a traditional hotel. The hotel is run as a haunted venue that can be rented for an evening. There are claims of over two dozen spirits at this hotel. Talk of haunting activity has been going on in Ballinger for decades. When Jeanette had the antique store, people would ask if they could go upstairs and when they came back down they would ask if the place was haunted. Many customers would tell her that they saw somebody walking around upstairs who would disappear. There was also the spirit of an older gentleman who liked to sit in an armchair on the second floor and a woman in a period dress was seen by a customer and she assumed she was dressed up since this was an antique shop, so she went up to her to ask about a price and the woman disappeared. Also during the antique store days there was a doll kept in the main store room that was not for sale. That was because the porcelain doll belonged to the current owners mother, and she once witnessed it levitate between two shelves of its own accord. A psychic told Jeanette that there were thirty spirits in the hotel. 

The LaFaves had experiences right from the beginning that continue. They decided to share the building with other paranormal enthusiasts. Part of the reason we have hauntings going on here is that Dan has brought in a lot of haunted objects, including dolls, and some of the wood they used for renovating came from the ghost town of Runnels. Location is also involved as the hotel is right across from the courthouse where criminals were hanged back in the day. That first night that Dan and Connie stayed in the hotel, they slept in the downstairs owner's suite. Dan was awakened by something caressing his scalp. He at first thought it was Connie, but when he opened his eyes he saw another woman. He jumped out of bed and the woman disappeared. She had been wearing a dress from the 1800s that was black with white and red on the sleeves. She had long black, curly hair. And she was completely solid. If she hadn't disappeared, he would have thought she was fully human. Dan thinks she was one of the working girls from the brothel days. That was the beginning of hearing disembodied footsteps and seeing a variety of ghosts that included children, a cowboy and other painted ladies. Cold spots are felt and disembodied voices are heard. There are nose pictures involving perfume and cigar smoke. People claim to be touched, pushed and scratched.

The couple decided to create a toy room for the child ghosts. Activity increased after that. They also set up a doll room, which features dolls from all over. Dan purchased a porcelain doll he named Ginny. This is the doll that is in the Green Room, which is also called the Honeysuckle Suite. The doll apparently moves around in this room and is found in different places. The first-floor hallway has a workshop at the end and women always feel uneasy in there. A male ghost haunts the workshop and Connie describes him as being a grumpy old fart. Although he is worse than just yelling "Get off my lawn." He can be violent. Dan was leading a tour with seven women and when he took them in the workshop, the spirit got angry. A woman suddenly said that she saw something peek out of a room and then pull back. Everybody looked in that direction and watched to see if whatever it was would appear again. And sure enough it did. A small, shadowy child specter walked between two rooms. This spirit was followed by a taller spirit dressed like a cowboy. This figure was so big it blocked out the whole hallway. The light was out in the workshop, so Dan flipped it on and the workshop ghost hurled an object that crashed across the room. One of the women fainted dead out. Several of the women ran from the workshop and exited the hotel. They were done with the tour.

Dan says upstairs in the back is the most haunted area of the hotel. Psychics have claimed that a room in that area has given them visions of a man attacking a woman. He grabs her by the throat and pushed her up against the wall. No one knows if he actually ended up killing the woman, but the energy in that room is quite dark. Nick Groff investigated the hotel over two nights for his Death Walker series during Season 2. He mostly ran around with what he called his Puckwudgie, which is a glorified spirit box, and tried interacting with the spirits of this man and this woman. Groff repeatedly asked for the man to touch him or try to attack him and nothing ever happened. Nick did claim to feel nauseous a couple of times and got some interesting stuff to come across the Geo Port, but nothing earth shattering. A Para Lyte went off during the night while he was sleeping and he heard disembodied footsteps in the hall and then a Paranormal Music Box went off.

Other spirits that might be here include a couple of the infamous outlaws. In March 1887, Emmanuel Clements was shot and killed in a bar in Ballinger by a man named Joseph Townshend. Townshend was ambushed by Jim Miller who was known as The Deacon and assassinated. Jim Miller was later hanged by a mob of people in 1909 after he killed a deputy marshal. The Deacon is said to haunt the hotel now and possibly Clements. We will say that the name Emmanuel came up multiple times on Groff's spirit box. Could the shadowy cowboy figure seen near the stairs be one of these outlaws? People have taken to calling him Slim. He apparently likes to whistle. There is another huge shadow cowboy that acts like a marshal in the place, policing the other ghosts. He is seen everywhere in the hotel. 

A lady of the evening named Annie hangs out on the second floor in the Traveler's Suite. She likes to talk on EVPs and has identified herself by name. There is a spirit that likes to stand by the downstairs bathroom and people call him Glenn. An unidentified old woman wanders the hallways. Several of the child ghosts have been identified as Dennis, who has blonde hair, Benjamin, who is 9-years-old and loves to talk and play in the play room, and an unnamed 5-year-old boy, who loves trains and the play room. Several previous owners are thought to be here. Kay Seacrest is one of them and she generally appears in a dress from the 1800s. One group staying overnight had Dan investigating with them and Dan asked the spirits to demonstrate the walking of cowboy boots and sure enough, there were the sounds of boots walking across the floor.

The Ghost and Getaways Blog investigated and they reported, "We investigated the 1st floor but we spent most of our time on the 2nd floor.  One team member reported a creepy feeling and having unexplained noises on their audio recorder near and in the LaFave’s Master Suite, however we were not able to get enough data to establish validity of the recordings or who it might be.  Other than that, there wasn’t much to report for the 1st floor.  We just seemed to gravitate to the second floor. In the Pruiett Wildflower Room, team members reported activity on the Rempod and a creepy feeling. Twice they spent the night in that room and reported activity throughout the night. Nothing was significant or frightening enough to drive them out of the room but they did NOT have a quiet night. We spent much of our time in the upstairs hallway and going towards the back. We had erratic EMF activity and could not find a reason or the source for it.  Using a laser grid, we may have seen shadows down towards the end.  I say that we may have seen shadows because, after a  while, the lights kind of play tricks with your eyes.  At least it does with me.  While we were not able to document shadows with a camera, a few of us are pretty certain we saw something. We also had some hits on the Parascope but they were erratic and did not seem to be in direct response to questions.  We used a Ghostbox as well but didn’t get any responses that seem to coincide with a direct question.  Most of our activity seemed to be with the Parascope and K2 meters."

Stephanie Hendricks wrote in September 2024, "I recently visited here August 24th 2024 for an overnight investigation and I must say this place is definitely haunted. Before we even began our investigation or even setting up our equipment , we heard weird sounds, footsteps, knocks and just an overall feeling of being watched and followed. Dan gave us the rundown on what all was accessible to us and then the tour and history of the place. After we did the tour we went about our way picking our rooms and deciding where we wanted to set up certain equipment and which items like motion activated lights or motion activated sound items to put in the areas we knew it would definitely trigger the most. I sat on my own adventure while the other two did the things they needed to do and I must say, even before it got dark I caught footsteps following me, breathing down my neck, deep heavy feeling of not being wanted, a deep growling sound and tugged from behind on my shirt. 

As it got dark, Dan was nice enough to do a spirit box session with us that most definitely brought all the spirits out to play. The voices that came through was insane, the answers we got when would we ask questions were so accurately answered it definitely made the hairs on my entire body stand up. He also was amazing enough to do a seance session with us and our EMFs were going crazy. The Para Light was going so high we all had a very eerie feeling, we felt heaviness in the room, footsteps outside the room, a scream, our motion triggered balls were lighting up like crazy in the doorway and the hallway. A dark shadow appeared in the doorway that one of the people I came with was so terrified he said he felt as if he was being held down in his chair. There were crying sounds that sounded so clear it’s as if the woman was standing right next to us. Dan went about his was and headed into his room and us 3 started our investigation. Dan has a room called “The Box” which is a mixture of the Estes method and his own where you put on blacked out googles with light flashing and headphones you put on that are totally noise canceling and a spirit box in a small dark room. No one but me would do it first. This has got to be the most disturbing part of my investigation. Not only was I in total darkness in a room, I was all alone on the 2nd floor as the other 2 were downstairs watching everything. I began my session and not even 3 minutes later there was loud footsteps, banging on the door and mind you I’m wearing noise cancelling headphone and I was grabbed on my right arm so tightly as if someone was telling me to get up or get out that I threw off my equipment and ran the heck out so fast and did not look back. Another encounter in the doll room I had was I had told Jolita one of the haunted dolls who is in a glass case to let me know she knew I was there in some way that when I came back I would know either something was off or changed and that I was going to come later to investigate the room more in depth. I came back about 20-30 minutes later and her head was turned a different direction. Trust me I had so many more experiences like knocking on my door, seeing movement outside my door, part of a leg/foot running away as I opened my door to my room BUT a hard shove out of a room that clearly didn’t want me there. From door opening and voices telling me to leave now, I would definitely recommend you visit this place and experience what we did. Like I said so much more happened that was totally insane I will definitely be back." 

The Olde Park Hotel has seen over a hundred years of history and some of it hasn't been pleasant. On top of that, many haunted objects have been brought into the hotel. And it runs as a haunted attraction during the Halloween season. Have all of these things led to paranormal activity? Is the Olde Park Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 566 - La Purisima Mission

Moment in Oddity - Hidden Message in a Bottle Found in Lighthouse Wall (Suggested by: Jenny Lynne Raines)

We love lighthouses and there is one located in Corsewall, Scotland at the most northerly point of the Rhins of Galloway that contained a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. A message in a bottle was found within the lighthouse wall. The message was written using a quill and ink and it was dated September 4th, 1892. Written in cursive were the names of the three engineers who installed a new lens and lantern at the top of the lighthouse. Once the task was accomplished and the lighthouse was re-lit, the team sat down with that quill and ink to record their names and to describe the purpose of their work at the lighthouse. The men then rolled up the paper and placed it inside a glass bottle. They then inserted the bottle into an empty space in the lighthouse wall. And there the bottle sat for 132 years. Recently there were engineers hired to make some repairs to the lighthouse. The men discovered the hidden bottle and retrieved the note from within. The engineers were astonished to discover that the paper described the exact same task that they were currently working on. The note read, "Corsewall Light & Fog Signal Station, Sept. 4th 1892. This lantern was erected by James Wells Engineer, John Westwood Millwright, James Brodie Engineer, and David Scott Labourer, of the firm of James Milne & Son Engineers, Milton House Works, Edinburgh, during the months from May to September and relighted on Thursday night 15th Sept. 1892. The following being keepers at the station at this time, John Wilson Principal, John B Henderson 1st assistant, and John Lockhart 2nd assistant. The lens and machine being supplied by James Dove & Co. Engineers Greenside Edinburgh and erected by William Burness, John Harrower, and James Dods. Engineers with the above firm." Finding a mysterious message in a bottle after being hidden for 132 years, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Danish-Icelandic Act of Union Signed

In the month of December, on the 1st in 1918, the Danish-Icelandic Act of Union was signed. This treaty agreement established Iceland as a fully sovereign state in a personal union with the Danish king. The state was then known as the Kingdom of Iceland but was still connected to Denmark through a shared monarch. Iceland then had its own flag, government and control over their domestic affairs, however, Denmark was responsible for managing Iceland's defense and foreign affairs. The treaty contained a clause wherein both Iceland and Denmark could request a reevaluation of the agreement in 1940. This clause allowed for the possible dissolution of the union if no new compromise could be made within three years. In 1944, Iceland wanted to have the issue of its constitutional status and the question of full independence settled. Due to WWII, negotiations with Denmark could not be conducted. On June 16th, 1944, Althing, which is Iceland's national parliament, abolished the 1918 Act. The following day, the Constitution of the Republic of Iceland was established.

La Purisima Mission (Suggested by: Marisa Tull)

La Purísima Mission is located in Lompoc, California. The Spanish mission once covered nearly 300,000 acres and was established to evangelize the local indigenous people known as the Chumash. The mission was successful with as many as 24,000 cattle and sheep and over 2,000 people. There was a major earthquake and the Chumash eventually revolted and the mission was abandoned. Eventually it was restored and is today a state historic park with stories of hauntings. Join us for the history and hauntings of La Purisima Mission. 

Lompoc (Lom poke) is based on the Chumash (choo mash) word lumpo'o, which means "in the cheeks." The Chumash apparently liked to name things for body parts and they were the main people group living in this area. This town has a very diverse history starting with the indigineous people groups who lived and hunted here for 10,000 before the first European settlers arrived. The Spanish building their mission would utterly change the culture and a devastating earthquake in 1812 would change the landscape. After the mission was abandoned, a Temperance Society decided to make this their mecca and they purchased 43,000 acres in 1874. By 1888, Lompoc was an officially city and it began to thrive as a port was built for shipping. The railroad would change that at the turn-of-the-century and agriculture would become a main focus for the economy. The area would become known as "The Valley of the Flowers." Then it was discovered that diatomaceous earth could be mined here and major mining operations began for that and that is still one of the main employers here. Vandenberg Air Force Base was established here as Camp Cooke in 1941 and it was the first Air Force missile base. When the Space Shuttle Program began, there were high hopes to use the base as a launch pad. The explosion of the Challenger in 1986 shut down the West Coast Program for good. The area went into an economic crash, but tourism helped bring it back and one of the top places to visit is the refurbished mission. This is the most authentically restored mission in California's mission system.

The mission begins with Father Junipero Serra who was born in 1713 in the village of Petra in Spain. His parents worked in the crop fields and that is what he did as a child. But he would visit the Franciscan friary that was near his home and his heart was really pulled that way. At the friary he was educated and his parents allowed him to become a novice in the Franciscan order when he was 17. He eventually became a full member of the Franciscan order and was given the name Junipero. In 1737 he became a full priest. The man was brilliant and he earned his doctorate and he decided yo go on a foreign mission and that is how he came to be in the Americas. He began in Baja California, which was under Spanish military rule. He and his fellow priests only had spiritual control. Father Serra noticed that as they moved through Baja California that the native population was dwindling. They were killing the indigenous people with disease, particularly syphilis. He moved further into California and he devised a plan to build three missions along California's central coast.

Serra planned the mission, but he didn't get to see it come to fruition. He had passed away in 1784 from tuberculosis. His successor was Spanish priest, Father Presidente Fermin de Lasuen. He was born in 1736 and became a Basque Franciscan. Lasuen would be known as the "forgotten friar," and he was often lonely and depressed. The priest should've been memorable as he founded nine of the twenty-one missions in California. He dedicated the La Purisima Mission on December 8, 1787 with a focus on evangelizing the Chumash. The Chumash had a difficult decision to make. They could either convert to Catholicism and join the mission or they would have to leave the region. In those first few years, several thousand Chumash were baptized into the Catholic Church. The price would be heavy for the Chumash. The Spanish brought many diseases with them. Hundreds died from chicken pox and measles. 

Those first years there was a lot of building at the mission as well. Over 100 adobe buildings were built and livestock were raised. A water system was designed that would help with the growth of crops. This was a prosperous time for the mission until the morning of December 21, 1812. The Santa Barbara earthquake shook the ground beneath the mission, scaring the priests, soldiers and indigenous people. This quake wasn't too bad, but the one that followed fifteen minutes later was so intense that the adobe walls of the buildings shattered and most of the mission was turned to ruin and rubble. The priests described it as "presenting the picture of a destroyed Jerusalem." Damage happened at all the missions within a 100 mile radius. Soldiers at the Presidio in Santa Barbara abandoned it, opting to build thatched huts, which proved to be a good idea because the area was played by earthquakes for months. The Presidio is a haunted location itself with stories of ghostly nuns and priests and soldiers. Not only was La Purisima Mission decimated, but a large fissure opened in the hill behind the mission and several feet of mud washed out from the crack. It was impossible to rebuild at this site.

Father Mariano Payeras (Pah ye rahs) had become the leader of the mission and he made the decision to rebuild in the location where it is located today, four miles northwest in the Canyon of the Watercress. A Catholic community grew up around the chapel and 1,000 Chumash converts called this home. Father Payeras was loved by everyone and was zealous in his work. Father Payeras was born on the island of Majorca in 1769. He joined the Franciscan order and traveled to Mexico to attend a missionary school. Then he worked at four missions in California for the rest of his life, ending at La Purisima. He wrote a catechism in the language of the Chumash that was never published, but proved useful at the mission. Father Payeras was given an ecclesiastical burial under the church's pulpit after he passed away on April 28, 1823 at the age of 53.

A rebellion had started in Mexico while Payeras had been in charge of the mission and the relationship between the Chumash and the Catholics was becoming strained. The supply ships had stopped coming and so a black market started with people looking for food and supplies. As the tensions rose, the Spanish made it worse by forcing the Chumash to work for very little money. Mexico fought for its independence from Spain and won in 1822. With the ousting of Spain from Mexico, the mission system started to lose its hold in California. And the Chumash at La Purisima rose up against the heads at the mission, locked themselves in the church and they controlled the mission for a month before Spanish soldiers from the Presidio marched on them and killed sixteen of them. Others were wounded. Pillars throughout the site still bare the battle scars to this day. Many of the Chumash ran off after this. There was soon no support for the missions. By 1845, the missions had been secularized and La Purisima was auctioned off by the Mexican government. A man named Don Juan Temple bought it for $1,100.00. This would be the time when the Mission Period became the Ranching Period.

The Catholic church acquired the title to Purisima in 1874 after going to court, but there was no reestablishment of the mission. The land was sold in 1883, without including the cemetery or the church, which by this time was in ruins. The Residence Building was used as housing, a blacksmith shop, a barn,  a general store and saloon. Eventually this building was abandoned after a fire destroyed part of the building. The Union Oil Company bought the land after this and then deeded it to the Landmark Club of California in 1905. They made a deal that the club had to repair the Residence Building, but they weren't able to raise the capitol needed and the Union Oil Company got the title back. The Catholic Church retained ownership of the chapel through this whole time and they joined the Union Oil Company in 1934 in giving the property to the County of Santa Barbara. California and Santa Barbara County bought more land, growing the property to 507 acres. This became La Purisima Historic Monument under the Division of Parks. The National Parks Service used a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp to help restore the site. This is today, a living museum. A museum, with ghosts.

For decades, people have claimed that the mission is haunted. Perhaps one of the most haunted locations in California. There are those who claim there is a dark energy here. There can be no doubt that the docile Chumash being forced into conversion and work and having their land taken, has left behind some negative energy and feelings. Ghostly soldiers have been seen by volunteers, docents and visitors. Cold spots are felt and people often feel that they are being watched. The corridors are filled with shadowy figures. When these figures are approached, they silently disappear. Many unexplained sounds are heard, including disembodied footsteps and whispers. Doors slam shut on their own. There are also reports of a spirit, people call the Weeping Woman. Visitors claim to hear her cries near the cemetery and others have seen her apparition wearing period clothing.

At the time when the mission moved from the Mission Period to the Ranching Period. At this time, there was a fiesta held on the site and a woman named Anita caught the eye of two different men. These men were named Jorge and Vincente. They challenged each other to get Anita's attention. The men were going to ride horses and try to grabbed three chickens that had been buried up to their necks. They were to ride at a full gallop, grab and chicken and wring its neck. Jorge didn't get any chickens and Vincente got all three. Jorge later fought with Vincente and he killed Vincente. The body was buried somewhere around the soldiers quarters. Jorge ran and was never captured. The spirit of Vincente is said to haunt the Soldier's Quarters. 

Bill Henry was a long time docent and he had several experiences over the years that he shared with the Lompoc Record in 2012. He was dressed as a soldier for a presentation and he felt something push or shove him from behind. When he turned, there was no one behind him. Early one morning he was opening up the park buildings and he had his young granddaughter in tow. Both of them suddenly started hearing what he calls “death chants.” The granddaughter was terrified  by them and wouldn't return to the property. Henry also saw the spirits of three girls perched in the window seat of the Cuartel. Henry says of the mission, "There are some things that just cannot be explained away, including sounds, lights without a visible source and random movements."  Bill told Ghost Adventures that he was cleaning up after Founder's Day festivities and he went into the Soldier's Quarters and saw bare footprints in the sand in an area that is locked up and the public doesn't have access.   

Another worker named Arthur Carlos said that the way the Married Soldier's Quarters were set up was that the wife and soldier shared a bed and there were cots for daughters. Boys were supposed to sleep outside. Arthur was sleeping overnight and he was on a cot, when he was awakened by something. He looked towards the door and he saw a soldier with a leather jacket and this figure gave him a very menacing look. He said to himself, "Ok Art, get a grip. You're just imagining things and this isn't real so don't worry about it." So he looked away and then he looked back a couple minutes later and the figure was closer. Pretty soon, the spirit was standing over him. The menacing look was still on the spirit's face and then it reached down and grabbed his neck. Arthur wrenched his neck to the side and his eyes popped open. He was like, oh I was asleep and dreaming, but then he realized that his adam's apple was really sore and throbbing. He was really freaked out after that and he won't sleep alone in that room again.

One visitor to the site said that she felt a sudden chill while exploring and she felt as though something were behind her. She turned a saw a shadowy figure the mission. The figure vanished as quickly as it appeared and she was quite shaken by the experience. Another woman had been visiting and she had dressed up as a vaquero and she was walking near the Sacristy Door, a place where women were not allowed during the mission time and this woman was thrown back up against the door. That woman never returned to the mission.

A volunteer at the mission was working late and they heard faint chanting in the chapel. He was the only person at the chapel, so he couldn't figure out where this chanting was coming from. He went to investigate and the chanting stopped. One day, there was a man playing music on a guitar in the chapel and he stepped over the grave of Father Payeras. His guitar immediately went out of tune. When he stepped back to where he had been, it went back into tune. He again stepped over the grave a few minutes later and the guitar went out of tune. The guitarist looked down and realized he had stepped over the grave, so he stepped back and the guitar was back in tune. He moved away from the grave because clearly, someone was not happy with him stepping over the grave.

Richard Senate is a world-renowned paranormal investigator out of California. He is a California historian and lecturer, so he has visited the mission many times. On one of those visits, he led a team of students and psychic researchers. He said, "Independently, the group’s members felt cold spots throughout the church at the Mission." Many had an odd feeling and one of the students said he had a sense of fear or unease while inside the church. Senate was told by someone who had worked on the Civilian Conservation Corps team in the 1940s, that he and other workers unearthed five small skeletons from under the tile floor of the church. Senate asked this worker to join him at the mission and show him where the skeletons had been found in the chapel. Those spots matched up with where the students had felt cold spots. 

Senate told Ghost Adventures that he has had three dramatic experiences at the mission. He was in the chapel alone one day and walking down the center when he got really dizzy and he looked down to catch his bearings and when he looked up, there were three Native Americans kneeling on the floor up near the altar. He described them having long hair and one had a blanket thrown over their shoulders. Their clothes were all dirty and ripped up and he distinctly remembered seeing one with pock marks all over his face. He believes those marks were from small pox. And Senate was positive that this wasn't a vision from the past or something residual because one of the Native Americans turned and looked at him. And then they all just disappeared. The second experience happened in the Weaving Room. Senate was standing near the door and he heard flute music. It was just a few notes and he didn't see what was causing the sound. Senate took the crew over to the Padre's Quarters and it was here that he saw the ghost of a greyhound dog. It was curled up on the floor sleeping. It woke up, look at Senate and then disappeared.

Novelist Tamara Thorne was at the mission and she heard disembodied voices speaking something other than English. A visitor named Steve claimed to see the ghost of a Padre in the Padre's Quarters. It's believed this was the ghost of Father Payeras. The bed in here always seems to mess itself up too. A docent named Dee Lonnon said, "I went out one night, and I was one of the last people to see the building be closed up and locked. I wanted to be there when they opened the room the next morning. By 7 a.m., I took my dogs out there for a walk, and sure enough, the bed was messed up, just like someone had been under the covers overnight." Now maybe an animal sneaks in somehow, but the place is locked tight. Steve Schuler-Jones was the operations ranger at La Purisima and he had many experiences. He was the contact for the security company and he got several calls that the alarm had been triggered. He would drive to the site and fine nothing out of the ordinary.

Ghost Adventures investigated the site in June of 2009. The evidence they collected included hearing a baby crying, battle cries, knocking and flute music. They caught several EVPs which captured "come here," "lay down," "sit up," "do you belong here," some Spanish words and the name Vincente", "lay down", "sit up", "do you belong here?" They captured an orb of light floating by the altar. On a thermal camera they captured something that looked like it was a figure standing out in the field. Maybe it was a Spanish soldier. They also caught what sounded like residual sounds of a man speaking in the field. There were people who said the thermal image was nothing. Someone going by CWilsonLPC defended the thermal signature caught by Ghost Adventures saying, "With regards to the thermal photo, it’s relatively hard to debunk, the area they pointed at was towards the south of the mission (alongside Purisima Road), if it was a false positive, there would have been heat signatures of all the animals in the paddocks there since from their direction, alongside any heat signatures from passing vehicles and wildlife in the brush, the paddocks would have been adjacent to their angle, there is the possibility of a trespasser since people do hike the trails there at night, but it would have been extremely unlikely since the trail access points come from the far north of the mission complex (at the base of Mission Hills neighborhood, a good 45-60 min hike), and the only other access points would have been guarded (all Purisima Road entrances). The Spanish soldier guess is reasonably accurate however, since the Spanish were outside the complex during the revolt while the native Chumash were inside."

Zak and crew also experienced the really common occurrence of the bed getting messed up on its own in the Padre's Quarters. The mattress and sheets were pushed up. Nobody was in the room from the time they were shown the room. When the room was first shown, the bed was neatly made. They crew also had a bizarre temperature fluctuation that we've never seen before. Their temperature gun went from 70 degrees to 40 degrees in the weaving room. Maybe it was a malfunction, but if not, that is really weird. 

La Purisima Mission is a reminder of a history where the indigenous people were pushed into changing their culture to suit strangers to the land. We have found time and again that subjugation of native people and causing their deaths through sickness or war, leaves a psychical energy that manifests in a supernatural way. Is that what is happening at La Purisima Mission? Is the mission haunted? That is for you to decide!