HGB Ep. 613 - Kreischer Mansion

This Month in History - Hedy Lamarr Born (Written by Jim Featherstone)

In the month of November, on the 9th, in 1914, Hedy Lamarr was born. She played a key role in shaping today's technology. Hedy Lamarr didn't invent WIFI, but she co-invented a key technology - frequency hopping. This laid the foundation for modern wireless communication, including WIFI, Bluetooth and GPS. In 1941, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a method to prevent enemy ships from jamming torpedo signals by having the signal "hop" between different radio frequencies. The U.S. Navy didn't adopt the process at the time, but the concept became crucial decades later in secure and spread-spectrum communications. This technology is used today to spread a signal across a much wider frequency band than is necessary for its information content, making it more resistant to interference and jamming. By using a unique code to spread the signal, it becomes difficult to intercept or detect without knowing the specific code, thus enhancing security and privacy.

Kreischer (Cry sure) Mansion

A little known factory town was home to the Kreischer Mansion, which actually had a twin. There were two exact mirror-image homes that sat next to each in Staten Island, fittingly owned by brothers. Only one of them remains and it changed ownership many times over the years. There were deaths on the property and people took to calling this the murder house.  It very well might be a real life haunted mansion. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Kreischer Mansion. 

Kreischerville had been a small company town on the New York City borough of Staten Island. Its history is one of bustle and then crash and the bustle is understandable because of its proximity to the harbor and there was ample immigrant labor. This was originally an area settled by the Dutch and they called it Charleston. Kreischerville was named for its founder, Balthasar Kreischer, who had come to America from Germany in 1836 after a great fire had obliterated New York City. His specialty was in brickmaking as his grandfather had been a brick manufacturer and he was apprenticed to be a stonecutter in that business. Balthashar opened a brick factory on the Lower East Side of New York City. The brick business was prosperous as builders were seeking elements to help fireproof buildings and bricks were a no brainer. Kreischer decided to relocate the business to Staten Island because rich clay deposits were located there. The entrepreneur decided that it would be best to build a company town to make it easier to attract workers. In 1875, he built tenement houses and in 1890 double houses were added. Most of the houses would be of that variety and four of them remain today. Sidewalks in the town were laid with yellow Kreischer bricks. The town of Kreischerville had everything that laborers needed: a post office, a country store and several churches. The town went back to the Charleston name during World War I because, you know, we were at war with Germans.

Prominent in the company town were the homes of Kreischer and his two sons, Edward and Charles. Balthashar built a mansion on top of a hill near the brick factory in the 1860s. This was a massive Italianate-styled villa that no longer stands today. He also built two identical mansions in 1888 for his sons down from the hill and next to each other. These were in the Victorian Queen-Anne style and interestingly were made from wood. The houses had a prominent corner tower, verandas, decorative railings, gables with jigsaw bargeboards and tall chimneys. The interiors were opulent with chandeliers and the walls were covered in Lincrusta wallpaper, which is a cross between leather and linoleum. There were seven bedrooms and three bathrooms, parlors and a dining room.

Kreischer died the year after his son's mansions were built. A fun fact about Balthashar is that he gave Henry Englehard Steinway $75,000 to help start his piano manufacturing company, Steinway & Sons. And his daughter Louisa married Henry Steinway's son Alfred. The brick factory of all things burned to the ground shortly after that. It was rebuilt, but the family's fortunes had fallen. Now there are some who say that this downfall lead to Edward Kreischer killing himself by shooting himself in the temple near the factory in 1895. But something else might have happened here and this might have been murder. We saw a story that claimed Edward's wife was having an affair with a doctor. And with that doctor's help it is said that she was poisoning Edward, but that wasn't working so they shot him. But he also was said to have had a fight with his brother and then also someone at the factory. But according to the New York Times and the reports at that time, this was a suicide. (Newspaper Bookmark)

The factory shut down in the 1930s. Eventually both Balthasar and Edward's houses burned down and were demolished, so only Charles' mansion is still standing. It was abandoned for a time. A Victorian restaurant was run in the house until 1997. Ohio developer Isaac Yomotovian bought the five-acre estate in 1999 for $1.4 million. He wanted to build a 55-plus community on the property. He restored the house, but was unable to fulfill any other part of his vision. He put the house on the market in 2012, but only got one offer so he held onto it and put it on the market again in 2016. At some point there had been a restaurant in the house, but we couldn't find much on that. There was an auction held in 2021 to sell off the house. Eric Bischoff and Julia Mackie obtained the property in 2024 and have been restoring the house into something that can be an events center and wedding venue. 

The house had run a haunted attraction out of it for many years with the last run being in 2024 and people had rented it for paranormal investigations and various events had been held here. We're not sure if any of that will continue in the future. There are several reasons why hauntings might be going on. Obviously, we have Edward's death. Then two children died on the property, Henry and Alfred. Seances were held in the house to try to communicate with Edward to figure out if he was murdered or committed suicide and it is thought they opened portals, but didn't close them. A legend claims a cook died in the kitchen. And then there was a murder in our modern era. This happened in 2005. There was a former Marine at the house who was working as the caretaker. His name was Joseph Young and everybody called him Joe Black. He got himself mixed up with the mob, specifically the Bonnano crime family. They paid Joe $8,000 to rub out a man named Robert McKelvey. McKelvey was also involved with the mob and he had offended a guy named Gino Galestro and he owed him money. So Joe got three other men together to help him and they got McKelvey to come to the mansion and they stabbed him. McKelvey managed to run for the door and a couple of the guys grabbed him and tried to strangle him. McKelvey got outside where the four men finally managed to drown him in the shallow pool out in the front yard. The body was taken down into the basement and dismembered and burned in the coal-burning furnace. The FBI investigated for a year, but by the time they got to the house, the furnace had been removed. There was enough other evidence though to bring Joe to trial and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2008. In 2009, Galestro was given 20 years for ordering the hit.

When the haunted house attraction was going, a room was dedicated to dolls and they were hung from the ceiling and walls. There could be attachments as people donate dolls to the house. People claim to hear a woman's wailing and it is thought that this is Edward 's wife, Frieda. Children are heard often in the house. The lights have minds of their own. Cold spots are felt and most people just feel uncomfortable in the house. 

Rick Rispoli was a caretaker at the mansion in 2019 when Inside Edition visited. He told reporter Lisa Guerrero that they have heard moans and groans and disembodied footsteps and doors have slammed shut on their own. Rick also shred with Inside Edition that he and his sister were unloading chairs about 12:30 at night and a song came on over the radio, which wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that this was his sister's car and she was holding her keys. The car wasn't running, no keys in the ignition. The direct opposite of stories we hear about cars that stall near haunted locations. He also said that they have caught in pictures, which peaked our interest based on the details. These were a cluster of 4 orbs that moved into five different pictures through five shots. It was like they moved in a circle. We will point out that these big lights were on in the house and the front doors were open , so possibly a reflection into the camera and the taker moving? Pictures have captured what people claim are spirits. Rick has had so many experiences. He claims that a picture once caught seven faces in seven windows. They shut the water off in the winter, so he went down in the basement with his assistant and they were having issues so they decided to get a plumber. Before they left the basement, they heard kids screaming upstairs. They were the only people in the house, but they checked anyway. Then they went to get the plumber and returned four hours later. The same thing happened when they were in the basment, so they quick shut off the values and got out of the house. Another time he was in the house with a buddy and they both watched a black mass come down the stairs and go out the door. The kids like to prank Rick by moving stuff around and they tug on his shirts and pants. When they had the haunted attraction, they also ran a hayride and the one night, one of the drivers came into Rick and said, "You need to stop having that kid in the white shirt that comes out from between the barns running in front of the wagon." When Rick asked how old the kid looked, the driver said, "About 10." And Rick was like, we aren't hiring no 10-year-olds. He had a guide who road on the back of the wagons and she complained about the same thing. A worker got scratched on the back of his leg outside when he was working.

Paranormal Files was there to investigate in 2023. Rick was still there and he told them that they had picked up on Edward, Balthasar and their wives. The kids were apparently punished back in the day by being locked in the closet. When the haunted attraction was being run, they would occasionally put customers in the closets and they would get stuck in the closets. So Rick said they thought it was an issue with the doors and the wood swelling so they shaved off some of the door and the issue continued. There also is an entity that hangs around outside that Rick said they call "The Hairy Man." He's disheveled and so they think he was a homeless guy that might have died on the property. As Rick was giving the investigators a tour of the house, several times there were unexplained noises coming from upstairs. These sounds happened again when the tour was over and the investigators started investigating. They captured childrens voices and even a scream. They used the Night Talker App and they got "My life ended fast" and "I Move Things." The cat balls kept going off. The Rem Pod went off for a really long time. I've never heard one go that long. They were using a Ouija board at the time. This device was right in front of a mirror, so they asked it to come through the mirror and the Spirit Talker said "Bad spirit." This thing only increased in intensity. This was a room where they conducted seances. These guys were legit scared. When they asked if this was a member of the Kreischer family, the Spirit Talker said, "No, it's not." When they asked later who they were speaking to and they got "Henry." They had a motion detector music box in the other room and it kept going off. This place was crazy with activity and that probably is because this is a place that hasn't been investigated often and when they were there in July 2023, nobody had been in the place since November. 

But many of the big names have been here including Sam and Colby and Nick Groff and Katrina brought Paranormal Lockdown in 2016. The new owners are hoping for a rebrand, but with as crazy as the activity is in this place we'll see how that goes. kay_ray_1105 commented on Instagram, "That place is haunted.  You can fix it up all you want, ultimately the paranormal activity will still be there. There’s no way in hell I would ever consider going anywhere near that place, no matter how nice they fix it up. Seriously do your research. you will find what I’m telling you is true."

There are several haunted locations on Staten Island, but the Kreischer Mansion seems to sit all on its own at the furthest tip of the island from where most of the ghostly stuff happens. But we thought it would be fun to venture up about 10 miles to Fort Wadsworth. This is one of the oldest military installations in the nation and sits on 226 acres and is part of the National Park Service. They call it Gateway National Recreation Area. The British had occupied Staten Island from 1776 to 1783 and they were the ones to fortify this particular area of Staten Island in 1779. After the Revolutionary War, the state of New York built the fort to defend the Narrows in the early 1800s. This complex included Fort Wadsworth, Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins. In 1841, New York State gave the War Department permission to occupy part of Fort Wadsworth. Maybe the state would regret this later as the federal government decided to take full control in 1847. Fort Tompkins had started as sandstone and this was upgraded to granite and brick by 1876. Battery Weed was also rebuilt between 1847 and 1862. Fort Wadsworth would get its name in 1865 to honor Brevet Major General James Wadsworth, who was killed during the Civil War. More modernization came in 1907 with electricity. The place got lights and motorized ammunition hoists and telephones. The fort was manned during World War I, but didn't see any action. The fort was equipped with anti-aircraft guns during World War II. The U.S. Army Chaplain School was located at the site from 1974 to 1979 in Fort Tompkins and then the army completely vacated in 1979 and the Navy turned it into the headquarters of Naval Station New York. The Navy gave Fort Wadsworth to the NPS in 1994. 

So even though the place really saw no battle, there are stories of ghosts. Visitors have a feeling of being watched.  Disembodied footsteps are heard. People have claimed to see a  glowing apparition in a Civil War uniform hanging out in an underground tunnel. At first, they think this is a costumed staff member, but as they get closer, they see that the soldier is somewhat transparent. 

Staten Island is often called the forgotten borough of New York City. The Kreischer Mansion sat almost as if forgotten for sure. We hope that it does indeed have a bright future. We're thankful it isn't going to be torn down to make way for condos. Is it haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 612 - Haunted Historic Cary Homes

Moment in Oddity - Raining Meat (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

We have all heard bizarre stories of strange objects falling from the sky. From frogs, to fish, to sharks. Umm, hello, Sharknado? Typically these strange occurrences are attributed to waterspouts picking up the critters and then depositing them, sometimes miles away. Even Diane once had the experience of a fish falling out of the sky and landing right next to her. Although that was one fish and I am sure that the bird of prey that dropped it was ticked about losing its lunch! Back in March of 1876 there was a very strange event that occurred over Olympia Springs in Bath County Kentucky. According to a New York Times article, chunks of meat showered down on Allen Crouch's property as his wife was outdoors making soap. Mrs. Crouch stated that, "The sky was perfectly clear at the time and the meat fell like large snowflakes." Most of the pieces were around 5x5 centimeters. The following day, two men showed up to taste the meat-rain, even though much of it was spoiled by this time. The unidentified men proclaimed that the meat had either the flavor of venison or mutton. Pieces of the meat were preserved. A few months later, a report was published in Scientific American, that the substance was actually nostoc which is a type of cyanobacteria that can float in the air, unseen until it rains. It then swells up forming a jellied mass and falls to the earth. It is also known as 'star jelly' and 'witches butter'. However, once nostoc takes on its gelatinous form, it has a green color to its mass as it is a blue-green algae. It does not resemble meat. In addition, Mrs. Crouch had stated that it was a clear day, no rain involved. The man that declared the 'meat snowflakes' as being of cyanobacteria origin also shared samples with a histologist who said it was likely the lung tissue of a human infant or a horse! Seven samples were examined. Two were determined to be lung tissue, three were muscular tissue and two others consisted of cartilage. Ultimately, Dr. Kastenbine wrote in an 1876 edition of the Louisville Medical News, that the creation of the meaty shower was projectile vulture vomit. Vultures can often eat up to 20% of their body weight when given the opportunity. It has been recorded that they can projectile vomit up to 10 feet in distance and have been known to do so when startled as a defense mechanism, or when needing to take sudden flight or gain altitude. Whatever the reason that created this event, chunks of meat raining down onto the earth not only is disgusting, but it certainly is odd. 

Haunted Historic Cary Homes 

Cary is a town west of Raleigh in North Carolina that routinely shows up on lists as a desirable place to live and is known as the gourd capital. Railroad companies found it desirable too and this became a town built by the railroad. Cary also was a center of manufacturing with many factories opening up. The town attracted all types from robber barons to bootleggers and some of their historic homes still remain and feature ghost stories and legends. Join us as we explore the histories and hauntings of these Cary homes! 

Cary, North Carolina got its start as a railroad village. The Tuscarora and Catawba people lived on the land until European settlers came to the area. Disease decimated the Native Americans numbers. A man named John Bradford set up a homestead and called it Bradford's Ordinary. He built an inn and opened it in the 1750s. Two other men owned land in the area and their names were both Nathaniel Jones. By the early 19th century, the settlement had a gristmill and sawmill and in 1854, the North Carolina Railroad came. This would be the year that Bradford's Ordinary would become an official town under a man named Allison Francis Page, or Frank Page, who named it Page's Station. He is considered the founder of Cary and he added another sawmill and a general store and built his home that he named for himself, Pages. When Page opened the post office in 1856, he named the town Cary for Samuel Fenton Cary, the head of the Sons of Temperance in the state. The population didn't really grow until after the Civil War and most of this centered around the railroad. There were a few factories opened as well and the town was incorporated in 1871. Since Page believed in temperance, as port of the incorporation, it was written into Cary law that no whiskey couldn't be sold in town and most other spirits were added in 1889. The prohibition law would remain until 1964. This left the city wide open for bootlegging, which was rampant. And it had its share of shootouts. But the city also became an educational hub. The Research triangle Park was a place where IBM established a strong presence in 1965. And for our gamers, you've probably heard of Epic Games behind little games like Fortnite, they are headquartered in Cary. Many successful men came to Cary to build their factories and they also built their homes. 

The Cotton House

We'll start with the Cotton House because...beer. The Cotton House Craft Brewers call the Cotton House at 307 S. Academy Street home now. This had once been known as the Pasmore House because William Pasmore had it built in 1900. He had married Cassandra Wilson in 1856 and they had seven children. Two tragic deaths occurred here involving William's daughters. The second death was horrific. Stella died in 1906 at the age of 31 from typhoid. She was a beloved teacher at the Cary High School. 

In 1902, Mary Pasmore was 42 years old and the Roxboro Courier reported, "Awful Death in Flames. Raleigh, N.C. Sept. 5th. Miss Mary Passmore, aged 42, of Cary, suicided last night by burning. She was found wrapped in flames in an outhouse and died at eleven o'clock last night. She declared before she died that she set fire to herself because she was tired of living." William himself died in 1901 at the age of 63, so he didn't have to experience his daughters' deaths. Imagine his poor wife. Later, his son William would be arrested for public intoxication in Cary, which took some effort since it was a dry town. The house eventually became a boarding facility for some of the very first students at Cary High School. In 2018, the brewers had a name, but not a house, until they found the Pasmore House. They renamed it and renovated into a tap room and brewery. Two of the original fireplaces were exposed and they added a 25-foot Prohibition-era bar with an Italian marble top. Walnut fixtures hang from the ceiling and the bar back and tap handles were all fashioned by local carpenters and woodworkers. There is also a 1910 piano on the premises. People claim that there are spirits left over from the school boarding house days and perhaps even the Pasmore daughters are here. 

Katherine Loflin is a historian in the town, has written the "Hidden History of Cary," and hosts the ghost tours in town on a trolley. She has brought guests through the Cotton House on tours and says that on those tours they have captured audible word responses. Disembodied footsteps are heard and employees and patrons have reported seeing full-bodied apparitions. We should mention that the street the brewery is on, Academy Street, has the apparition of a horse connected to it. This horse is also heard on the nearby Ambassador Loop near the Page-Walker hotel. It isn't aren't often seen, but people hear the ghost galloping and it is thought to be connected to the Civil War. Peggy Van Scoyoc write in her 2006 book Just a Horse Stopping Place, “this horse could be heard coming up that street galloping and just going as fast as he could go, but nobody would ever see any horse.”

The High House

Unfortunately, the High House no longer stands, but may still have a female apparition hanging around the site. The house had stood on the left side of High House Road and was built by Tingnal Jones sometime between 1760 and 1765. The house stood two stories and had high ceilings. Fanning Jones inherited the house from his father Tingnal and he lived in it until 1822. He sold it to a Raleigh lawyer named Nathaniel Green Alford in 1833. The Williams family owned it next and when they moved out in early 1900, the house was left abandoned. There is no record of it after 1930 and we could find nothing about a demolition record. The house seems to have just disappeared, but more than likely just collapsed. Leander Williams had been born in the house in 1883 and he told his daughter Margaret of a dream he had. This dream was about valuables being buried in the hearth of the house and apparently his mother had the same dream. So they returned to the high House that they had abandoned and found the hearth torn apart. As to where this treasure had come from, perhaps it was from an earlier occupant. Fanning Jones was considered a scoundrel in Cary. He was on the side of the Tories during the Revolutionary War and he put together a group that murdered and pillaged. So perhaps this was some of his loot. Hauntings were reported about the house dating back to the Revolutionary War. The ghost of a woman was seen in the house and walking around outside of it. One of the legends told about her is that two men were in love with her and one day, one of them killed her in a fit of rage during a fight. Another legend claims that the woman is Fanning Jones' wife. She died a few years after their marriage in 1799. The Raleigh Register reported on September 8, 1806, that she was found "in a grove far from the house, depraved of all reason, where it is supposed she had been praying (having been very religious for some time past). She remained in the deplorable condition till her death on July 27, 1806." Robert Hoke Williams wrote of his father's experience with the female ghost and this is shared in a document called "The Ghost of High House" available from the AAFA Library. (Document) 

The woods where High House had stood had ghost stories connected to them as well. An 11-year-old boy reported in the 1860s that he saw a woman wandering in a field in broad daylight and she was heading towards the house. He assumed it was his mother returning from church, so he ran to the house to greet her and found no one in the house. His parents didn't return until later in the day. And in the 1870s, a young girl was staying in the house and awoke at night and asked her dad for water. He took her out onto the front porch and handed her the water dipper. She looked past him with wide eyes and started screaming. The father turned to see a woman standing very still in the dark front yard and the feeling he got was of something not human. They rushed back into the house for fitful sleep and left early the next morning for Raleigh. This female ghost appeared to three generations of the Williams family and is still seen in the Black Creek Greenway to this day.

Nancy Jones House

The Nancy Jones House is located at 9321 Chapel Hill Road and was built in 1803, making it the oldest known residential structure in Cary. Where it stands today is not where it started. It was moved in 2021. The two-story house was built in the vernacular Federal style architecture with chimneys on both sides and a one story addition on the back with the kitchen. The rear second story was a later addition as well. The double-tier Italianate-style front-gabled porch was added in 1880. Four of the rooms had Federal-style three-part mantels with reeding. The walls had paneled wainscot and flush-board sheathing and the floors were made from heart of pine. Many rooms in a Federal style house were called shed rooms, which means they functional rooms like a laundry room or kitchen which were typically found at the back of the house. They were usually very simple. This was built by Henry and Nancy Jones to run as a tavern and stagecoach stop, but probably not an inn, so they lived in the house as a residence. The land underneath had been owned by Henry's father, Nathaniel Crabtree Jones. Fun Fact: There were so many Nathaniel Joneses in the area that they all took to having middle nicknames to identify themselves, so there was also a Nathaniel White Plains Jones. And another interesting fact is that there was a practice where fathers would let their sons build on land they owned, but wouldn't give the land to their sons until their death and this was done to convince sons to stay close to home and not "Go West, young man." Henry had been previously married and had a daughter named Eliza. He and Nancy would have five children together. Henry died in 1841 and Nancy continued to run the business and live in the house for another 30 years, so that is why it carries her name. 

By the Civil War, the area around the tavern was called Jones Station. Union troops camped out on the property as they went to and from Bennett Place in Durham. Sherman's troops marched through North Carolina and they Raleigh to Jones Station. North Carolina governors would stay here and President James K. Polk once stayed as well. Nancy's youngest son Adolphus wrote to his half-sister Eliza in 1874, “Mother will be 91 years old in a few days… She retains the faculties of her mind pretty well but her physical powers are gradually giving way. She walks about the yard and garden – sometimes she walks over to a near neighbor’s house.” 

Nancy died in 1876 and Adolphus inherited the house and he opened it as a school. Adolphus later sold to S.R. Horne and then the house passed through several hands. The Heater family lived in the house during the Great Depression and when their well drilling business went bankrupt, they sold the chandeliers from the house. Thomas and Audrey Stone owned the house from 1935 until 1991, when Audrey passed away. She put forth the effort to get the house on the registry of historic places in 1984. She welcomed people for tours as well. Other families lived in the house. Kent Henley rented it in the late 1990s. Then Sri Venkateswara Temple owned the property. The town of Cary got ownership of the house in 2019 and moved it in 2021. It is still undergoing renovations to be used as offices. Peach brandy was very popular in Cary and Henry Jones apparently made his own and he wrote in a letter to his daughter Eliza in 1836, "You wish to know my method of making Peach wine; In the first place I beat and press the peaches as late in the Evening as possible in Order to give the liquor as little chance to ferment as possible, which it will be sure to do in warm weather, next morning have a good clean tight Barrel ready, with about Eight gallons of Brandy in it before you begin to put in the peach Juice…” The letter goes on after more explanation to say, “I never added Sugar to any I ever made, but am Satisfied it would be the best, say one pound to 10 gallons I think would be enough…".

Margaret Heater always maintained that the house was haunted and she had many experiences in the house when living there. She claimed to hear disembodied footsteps and when she would yell for her father to help her, he would look around for whoever had been walking around and never found anyone. The Heater family also couldn’t keep the doors locked. They would lock everything up tight at night and find the doors unlocked in the morning. Families that lived in the house after the Stones claimed to hear strange noises they couldn't explain and disembodied footsteps. Kent Henley heard the strange creaks and such as well, but he always maintained it was just the wind.  

The Matthews House 

The Matthews House is located at 317 W. Chatham Street and is this large beautiful white house with black shutters that was built in 1915 by lumber magnate Joseph Cephus Matthews. After the house was no longer a private residence, it hosted several businesses including a floral shop, dress shop and a salon. Carroll and Sheila Ogle bought the house in the early 2000s and they refurbished the house to be an events center, specifically for weddings. They added a Grand Ballroom and a commercial kitchen. Carroll passed away and Sheila eventually sold the house in 2016 to the Chung family who renovated the house further and continued the wedding business and they partnered with Southern Harvest Catering.

Paranormal Investigator Katherine Loflin told the News Observer in 2023, “We think we get a lot of Bob. Bob seems to have stuff he wants to tell us.” Her group, City Doctor Productions, believes that they contacted up to 50 spirits during one ghost hunt at the house. The Bob that she was referencing was Bob Strother, a prominent resident in the town who ran a floral shop and was known for his Christmas decoration displays. He died in 2019The News Observer joined the investigators and reported, "Upstairs in the master bedroom, Al Parker had volunteers try out the spirit box, which involves wearing headphones tuned to a rapidly changing AM/FM receiver flicking through stations every half-second. For this otherworldly exchange, Parker fired off questions while the volunteers, headphones on, barked out whatever words arrived through the airwaves - radio or spectral. Is anybody here with us right now? Robert was the answer. Is that Bob Strother? Bob, are you here with us tonight? Escape was the answer. How many people are here with you? 51 came the answer. Does it bother you that we’re here?" During a previous investigation, the investigators got the following words during an ESTES Method session: smoke, fire, powers that be and rip-off. Katherine Loflin wondered what these words could mean and when she dug into the history, she found out that Bob had planned to buy the Page House and renovate it in 1971, but he was unable to do that because the house burned to the ground. A caretaker at the house was to blame as he tried to extinguish a small fire started by a spark with a rag that he dropped on a can of gasoline. But Bob actually believed that the fire had been set on purpose by some people who didn't want him controlling what they felt was the historic heart of the town and he told this to the Cary Historical Society during an interview he did with them. Loflin said, "Until somebody acknowledges that Bob got a little screwed, that might be why Bob’s sticking around." 

One of the other spirits here is a little girl named Janelle and she seems to be connected to a painting of what is believed to be her and this painting has a tendency to fall off the wall on its own. Loflin has been trying for several years to get to the bottom of who this little girl is and we hope one day that she is successful.

Old houses always seem to have interesting stories. Cary's historic homes have interesting stories and could quite possibly be haunted. Are these historic Cary homes haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 611 - Haunted Newport Mansions

This Month in History - First Deep Level Electric Tube

In the month of November, on the 4th, in 1890, the world's first deep-level electric "tube" railway was officially opened in London, England. Deep-level rail lines are subterranean train tunnels and they were created to result in less disruption to surface streets and buildings. The railway was designed by James Henry Greathead and was inaugurated by Edward, Prince of Wales, in November, 1890, but did not open to the public until December 18th of the same year. This was the first major railway to use electric-powered trains. The line ran approximately 3.2 miles from Stockwell to King William Street in London. The construction method consisted of tunneling and lining the tunnels with cast iron tubing which earned the route the nickname of "The Tube". The nickname is still used today for London's underground railway system. The initial tunnels ran under the River Thames and were a major technological achievement proving the viability of deep-level electric tube railways, thus paving the way for future lines. Today, The London Underground AKA 'The Tube', accommodates on average, around 4 million people per day. 

Haunted Newport Mansions

Belleview Avenue was the Millionaire's Row of Newport. The avenue was lined with Gilded Age summer cottages built by wealthy industrialists. Those "cottages" were actually palatial estates and many of them still stand today and are run as museums or are privately owned. Several of them are haunted. These include Belcourt Castle, Seaview Terrace, The Breakers and Rough Point. Join us as we explore the history and haunts of these summer cottages to the rich and famous in Newport, Rhode Island! 

Belcourt Castle 

Newport is thought to have become a summer playground to the wealthy because of its proximity to New York City, views of the Atlantic Ocean and mild climate. Oliver Belmont was an interesting character. Belmont was born in New York City in 1858 to August Belmont who was an agent for the Rothschilds family and he built great wealth. August was so prominent that the famous Belmont Stakes, which is the oldest horse race in the Triple Crown, was named for him. Oliver attended the United States Naval Academy and served for a year as a midshipman before joining his father's banking firm. He became the publisher of the weekly paper, Verdict. Oliver served as a Representative in Congress for New York's 13th district from 1901 to 1903. August died in 1890, leaving his vast fortune to Oliver who was still a bachelor at the time. He decided to use some of that inheritance to build a massive summer home in Newport. And this wasn't because he had a large family. Belmont was a bachelor at the time. And as to why he chose Newport, it must have been because this is just what the rich and famous did because Oliver detested the nouveau riche (reesh) who built what he felt were ostentatious homes in Newport and he asked the architect to build his house facing away from all the others. Now, perhaps his neighbors didn't really care for him either. This was a guy who proposed marriage to a debutante named Sara Swan Whiting, but his parents objected because he was too young and they sent him off to Germany to learn the banking business. While there, Oliver delved deeper into gambling, which he had taken up in America before getting to Germany. He also discovered absinthe and became a heavy drinker of it. His playboy lifestyle got so bad that his parents agreed to him marrying Sara, which wouldn't be a good thing for her. The couple married in 1882 in Newport and they traveled to Paris for their honeymoon. Sara's mother joined them for several weeks and Oliver decided he had enough of that and he went out hitting up gambling houses and brothels and continuing with his drinking of absinthe. He got violent with Sara and see left for America. Oliver took up with a French dancer. After Sara got home, she realized she was pregnant. Oliver would disown that daughter - she managed just fine without him, becoming a prominent New York socialite. Belmont married Alva Vanderbilt in 1896, the ex-wife of a good friend of his. And she may have become that ex-wife because Oliver traveled with the Vanderbilts when they were married and it is believed they were having an affair. Belmont died in 1908 after he got septic from an operation for Appendicitis.

Richard Morris Hunt was the architect of Oliver's gorgeous Victorian mansion, which he called Belcourt. Belmont really did most of the planning and Hunt disagreed with much of the design, but he figured that it was Belmont's money so he did what Belmont wanted. One of these design elements was having stables and carriage areas on the first floor. Oliver wanted his prized horses in the mansion. Construction started in 1891 and was completed in 1894. Another quirk was building no kitchen because Oliver had his meals delivered from town. Several architectural designs were used including French Renaissance, Gothic and various German and Italian styles. The main house was a large three-story block with two-story wings coming off it with a large central courtyard. The roof on the main house is mansard with oval copper dormers. 

The mansion had 60 rooms and covered 50,000 square feet. The interior had magnificent hallways to highlight Belmont's love of pageantry and horses. The first floor had a Grand Hall and foyer with stained-glass windows decorated with the Belmont coat of arms and damask in blood red. A Grand Staircase connected the Lower Grand Hall to the Upper Grand Hall and most rooms are French in design with elements of Gothic. After Oliver's second wife passed in 1933, Belcourt went to Oliver's brother Perry Belmont. When World War II started, he emptied Belcourt out because he was afraid it would be damaged during the war and he sold off most of Alva's belongings because he hadn't cared for his sister-in-law. Perry sold Belcourt to a man named George Waterman in 1940. Waterman planned to open the house as an antique auto museum, but zoning wouldn't allow that, so he sold it to Edward Dunn after he had spent a bunch of money restoring the mansion to its original look. Dunn owned it for eleven years and never lived in the house. He rented out the stables to the military so they could repair equipment. Louis and Elaine Lorillard bought the mansion in 1954 and they used it as a seat for the Newport Jazz Festival, but the neighbors protested a continued use in this way and the property was sold to the Tinney Family in 1956. What they bought was rundown and abandoned house for the most part. The Tinneys poured their hearts into bringing the mansion back to life. They changed the name to Belcourt Castle and restored it, filling it with their own antiques and reproductions they made. The banquet hall featured a chandelier done in an Imperial Russian style with 13,000 rock crystal prisms and 105 lights. The rose marble mosaic floors in the hall were refurbished as well. The family installed tracker organ in the Organ Loft and raised the roof of the loft to accomicate thatand they converted a reception room into a chapel with German Renaissance stained glass. They added taller entrance gates and sculptures of terra cotta, marble, stone and bronze. The mansion was opened as a museum and visitors marveled over the English style libraray, Empire-style dining room, French Gothic ballroom and antiques and furnishings from 33 European and Asian countries. A Tinney family member lived in part of the mansion as a private residence and when Harle Tinney lived there, she hosted the tours. No better guide than the owner. The Tinney family held onto the property until 2012 when Harle sold to Carolyn Rafaelian who renovated the mansion and reopened it as a tour house, event space and gallery for art. 

From the 1940s to the mid 1950s, the mansion was abandoned and boarded up. Teenagers would challenge each other to sneak in and a creative caretaker decided to scare intruders by pretending to be a ghost and it worked with rumors spreading that the house was haunted. And while this was fake, it seems the place has real ghosts. There are many ghost stories affiliated to Belcourt and many of the spirits must be connected to the artifacts and antiques in the house because there are reports of knights and ghostly monks. 

Harle Tinney wasn't shy about sharing her own experiences. She even wrote a book about the ghosts in 2006. Harle claimed to wake up one night and see a man clad in a brown robe. For an instant she thought it was her husband until she reached over and felt him next to her. Then she watched the robed entity turn and walk through a wall. There is a monk statue that Harle believes has this monk attached to it, so they say the statue is haunted. The first floor ladies room used to have the monk statue near it and people claimed to see the spirit go from the Grand Hall into the bathroom. The statue was later moved to the chapel and there were claims the ghost monk was seen in there. One time a person thought the monk was preparing a mass in the chapel and she asked Harle when the mass was going to be held and when Harle asked why she asked that, Harle ended up informing her that she saw a ghost. Likewise, a suit of armor on the second floor is rumored to be haunted. People claim to hear it screaming when they pass by it. A psychic said that she had been told by the knight that he had been killed by a spear and left by his fellow knights for dead and so he died alone. The helmet on the suit of armor sometimes turns on its own. Chairs in the ballroom move on their own. Sometimes this movement is throwing the sitter out of the chair. A tour guide only worked one season after she had an experience that terrified her. She was leading a tour group through the ballroom and she heard a male voice saying to get out several times. She felt very uncomfortable the entire summer and didn't return after that. A lady in pink has been seen in the master bedroom and Harle thought it was her mother-in-law visiting. A woman in a ball gown is sometimes seen on the second floor gallery.

Ghost Hunters investigated the house during Season 5 in 2009. Harle and her husband had painstakingly recreated a golden coronation coach and this was one of the items that the Ghost Hunters wanted to investigate because of reports of a ball of light floating above the carriage. One of the interesting things that happened was Jason and Grant were in the banquet hall when they heard footsteps above their heads. When they got upstairs, the thermal imaging camera revealed a heat signature on the floor that looked to be the shape of a footprint. Disembodied footsteps were heard on the spiral staircase. Some people believe that Mr. Tinney haunts the house since his funeral was held in the ballroom. People say his spirit has been seen on the balcony above. The crew were able to pick up voices either humming or moaning near the suit of armor.       

Seaview Terrace

Seaview Terrace is massive and gorgeous. This is the fifth largest Newport "cottage." It is also known as the Carey Mansion, but was built by a man named Edson Bradley, Jr. Bradley made his wealth in Bourbon whiskey and built his first mansion in Washington, D.C. in 1907, which was known as Aladdin's Palace. This was a French-Gothic mansion on the south side of Dupont Circle that covered more than half a city block. The mansion had a large ballroom, an art gallery, a Gothic chapel and unbelievably, a 500-seat theatre. Edson was in D.C. to try to fight against Prohibition. Bradley decided in the 1920s that he would like to move to Newport, but he loved his mansion. So he decided to disassemble it and move it with him. This would be a big undertaking and is thought to be one of the largest buildings to be moved in this manner. The site that he bought in Newport already had an Elizabethan-Revival mansion that had been built in 1885. Bradley clearly liked massive homes, so he incorporated this mansion into his mansion. Edson planned to give this to his wife, Julia Wentworth Williams, for their 50th anniversary. The construction was completed in 1929 with a mostly Châteauesque style of the 16th century in France. Howard Greenley built Aladdin's Palace and he moved it and built Seaview Terrace. For his efforts, the American League of Architects awarded him the President's Medal in 1928. The original mansion on the site had been called Seaview Terrace and Bradley kept the name. The house had some "quirks." The attic was where the servants lived and the floors had many spy holes, so the servants could see into the rooms before. It was said this was so they could make sure guests didn't steal anything. The chapel had a pipe organ in a hidden room next to the chapel and this room could only be accessed by a trap door on the second floor. Stained-glass windows were all made in the 16th century.

Edson and his wife Julia moved into the 54-room, 39,648 square foot mansion. The Bradleys filled the home with medieval decor that included hunting trophies, there was Chinese porcelain, Renaissance chests, Chippendale chairs, Gobelin tapestries, elaborate hanging lamps and Persian tiles. Julia was a leading society hostess in D.C. and hosted the American Beauty Ball. She wanted the house to be the most beautiful in the city for that ball and she bought up every rose in the city to decorate the house. The city was devoid of roses for a while after that. 

Julia and Edson had one daughter together. Julia didn't enjoy Skyview Terrace for long. She passed away the same year it was completed at the age of 77 and her funeral was held in the chapel. Edson's fortunes turned and he passed in 1935. Their daughter, Julie Bradley Shipman, acquired the estate and she lived there until 1941. She failed to pay three years worth of taxes, so the city made her vacate and the house became officer quarters for the U.S. Army. The property was sold for only $8,000 in 1949 - it had cost $2 million to build. .In 1950, the mansion became a girls boarding school named "Burnham-by-the-Sea." The mansion became famous starting in 1966 when it was featured as the fictional "Collinwood Mansion" in the vampire soap-opera, "Dark Shadows." In 1974, the Carey-Bettencourt family bought the property and they still own it today, thus the name "Carey Mansion." Parts of the mansion were destroyed in a fire on February 28, 2024.

Several paranormal shows have investigated the mansion. SYFY's Stranded (created by Josh Gates - was similar to the reality show Fear. People were left at a haunted location for several days ) was there in 2013, Ghost Hunters investigated during Season 7 in 2011 and Ghost Nation and Kindred Spirits teamed up for an investigation on Halloween in 2020. That is because the Carey Mansion is said to be one of the most haunted locations in Rhode Island. Weird banging that happens randomly is heard, as are disembodied voices. One of the spirits is said to be Julia Bradley and she is seen most often as an apparition sitting at the Estey organ, playing it in the chapel. 

On Stranded, three musician friends investigate the house and they hear disembodied footsteps, doors open and close on their own and their EMF goes off several times. A set of locked double doors burst open in front of all three of them. And they heard phantom organ music, which freaked them out because the organ appeared to have been dismantled for years. Was this Julia playing? On their first visit, Ghost Hunters heard an audible male voice in the grand hall saying, "Hello, is that you?" A door handle turned by itself on the third floor. The crew said that up to this point, this was "the loudest evidence they've ever heard." Ghost Nation got a lot of evidence when they returned before Halloween in 2023, which included disembodied whispering, eerie noises and cold spots. They caught on camera a weird mist in the garage. It looked like smoke, but there was no one in there when they went to investigate. 

The Breakers

The Breakers is another mansion built by a Vanderbilt. Cornelius Vanderbilt II had been left $5 million dollars by his grandfather for whom he was named and he was also left $70 million by his father, William Henry Vanderbilt, so he was a very wealthy man. He took over as President of the New York Central railroad when his father passed in 1885 and was known to be a hard worker and he also donated a lot of money to charitable causes. Vanderbilt married Alice Gwynne in 1867 and they had seven children. 

The couple built their 70-room Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance summer mansion in 1893 to replace an earlier wooden home they had on the property that had burned to the ground. This was declared the grandest and biggest, three-story cottage in Newport. Architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the house and the interior was designed by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman Jr. The mansion was built from Indiana limestone blocks with a foundation of brick, concrete and limestone with a Terra Cotta red tile roof. The interior had marble, terrazzo and mosaic floors, alabaster fireplaces, gold painted hand-carved woodwork and marble fountains. The National Register of Historic Places says of the mansion, "The elaborately decorated facades and interiors appear now as they did upon completion in 1895, as documented by the photographs of its construction in 1895 and those of its interior in 1904. The original furniture and fixtures, interior plasterwork, gilding and decorative painting remain untouched from when Cornelius Vanderbilt II occupied The Breakers." The first floor has a Great Hall with six doors that have limestone figures representing humanity's progress: Galileo, Dante, Apollo, Mercury, Richard Morris Hunt and Karl Bitter. There is a library with coffered ceilings featuring paintings of a dolphin within a frame of walnut paneling with gold leaf and green Spanish leather embossed with gold. (Library picture: By UpstateNYer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7548915) There are two busts in the library: a bronze of William Henry Vanderbilt II, the oldest child of Cornelius II and Alice, who died of typhoid at the age of 21 while attending Yale University; and a marble of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. There is a Music Room on this level as well that hosted recitals and dances. The ceiling is gilt coffered with silver and gold lining and the edges feature the names of composers. A Second Empire French mahogany ormolu mounted piano is in the room and Alice was known to play this while her husband played violin. This floor also has an ancient Rome styled Billiard's Room with slabs of Italian Cippolino marble and Renaissance style mahogany furniture. A dining room, kitchen, breakfast room and pantry are on the first floor too. That dining room is said to be the grandest room in the house with 12 freestanding rose alabaster Corinthian columns.

The second floor had bedrooms for the family. The third floor had a sitting room with Louis XVI style walnut paneling and mostly servants' quarters. The attic had a few more servant rooms and cisterns that supplied hydraulic pressure for an Otis elevator in the house and a fresh water cistern and salt water cistern. The Terrace was an open-air patio that had classical columns and arched openings with a view of the ocean and estate gardens. (Picture: By Renata3 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109923572) 

Cornelius died at the age of 55 in 1899. Alice outlived five of the Vanderbilt children, dying in 1934. The couples son Alfred died on the RMS Lusitania after he gave his life jacket to a woman who couldn't swim. Gloria Vanderbilt was a granddaughter of Cornelius and Alice. During World War II The breakers served as "Newport No. 1 air raid shelter." Youngest daughter, Gladys, inherited The Breakers and she opened it for public tours in 1948. Her heirs sold the mansion to The Preservation Society of Newport County in 1972 with the stipulation that they could still use the bedrooms located on the third floor. Alice Vanderbilt loved this home and seems to still be here in the afterlife. Her full-bodied apparition has been seen and staff claim to feel as if they are being watched. No investigations have been granted at the house, so we have to trust the staff on this. The house doesn't seem to embrace its haunting.

Rough Point

Frederick William Vanderbilt had Rough Point built in 1887 by architectural firm Peabody & Stearns. This was in the English Manorial style and the house was constructed from red sandstone and granite. The location was in a beautiful spot overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, bordering the Cliff Walk. The Vanderbilts started renting the house in 1894. Tinplate King William Bateman Leeds, Sr. rented the house in 1904 and 1905 and bought it in 1906. Leeds died in 1908 and his wife held onto the house until 1922 when she sold to James Buchanan Duke and his wife Nanaline. 

Duke had made his money in electric power and tobacco. Duke University is named for his father. The Dukes added two new wings to the house. They had a daughter, the infamous Doris Duke. She was twelve when her dad passed in 1925 and he left his whole fortune and residences to her, leading her becoming a billionaire and one of the richest women in America. Her debutante ball was held at Rough Point in 1929 and this became her most prized property. For a time in the 1950s, she emptied Rough Point out completely and lived in New York City, but she returned in 1958 and refurnished the house. Someone who helped her with the redecorating was interior designer Eduardo Tirella, who became her good friend and close confidant. Tirella would come to his end at the hands of Doris. Doris was an interesting woman. She used her vast fortune to buy lots of things, but she also was very philanthropic. And she had a wide array of interests. Doris studied singing under Composer, soprano and celebrated voice teacher Estelle Liebling. She learned to surf from the Duke himself in Hawaii. She was the first non-Hawaiian woman to take up competitive surfing under surfing champion and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku. She worked in a canteen for sailors in Egypt during World War II. Doris also worked as a foreign correspondent for the International News Service in 1945. After the war, she wrote for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. She could speak French fluently. Duke also loved animals and even owned a couple of camels. But she was also described as vindictive and possessive. She once stabbed a lover during a fight.

Those two personality flaws may have lead to the death of Eduardo Tirella. Tirella had been an actor and advised on films and he was a Renaissance man and war hero. He was gay and quite skilled at interior decorating. Doris had hired him as the artistic curator and designer for her several homes. Ed had worked for her for ten years and in 1966, he was ready to move full-time to the West coast and dive deeper into his Hollywood career. He would have to sever his professional ties with Doris to do this and he knew she wouldn't be happy. Surely, he had not only heard about her famous anger, but probably witnessed it first hand. 

On October 6th, he flew into Newport and Doris picked him up at the airport. The next day, Ed told Doris the news and they fought, as reported by Rough Point's staff. Things calmed down and the two got into Duke's station wagon to head to an appointment with Ed driving. When they got to the gates of the estate, Ed got out of the car to unlock the chain and open the gates. Doris jumped into the driver's seat, released the break, shifted to drive and hit the accelerator without the gates even being open yet. The two-ton vehicle hit Tirella, burst through the gates, crossed the street smashing through a fence and crashed into a tree. Ed was left crushed under the rear axle, dead. Doris was taken to the local hospital with minor injuries. Police questioned her and held no inquest. Within 96 hours, they rules the incident a terrible accident and Duke would never face consequences for what nearly everybody believes was a murder. Some people believe there was a quid-pro-quo here because Doris donated a massive amount of money to Newport to refurbish 84 colonial-era homes. 

Several of the police were rewarded as well. The police chief retired shortly after the crash and bought a couple of condos in Florida and the investigator that questioned Duke got a promotion over other detectives to police chief. Doris died in 1993 and Rough Point has remained much as it was when she lived there. The house was tied up in litigation for a few years and eventually opened as a museum in 2000. The Newport Restoration Foundation, that Duke set up to restore the mansions in Newport, manages it today. And it would seem that Doris is still at her mansion according to employees.

The podcast Hometown Ghost Stories shared an employees experience at Rough Point in 2020, "Shirley ran through in her head everything she was supposed to do before leaving for the night. She cursed herself for not taking notes when Mrs. Clark explained it to her earlier in the day. It was her first night closing up shop at the Rough Point Mansion and she made mental notes rather than writing everything down. She said out loud, 'I think I just shut off the lights and lock up.' The echo of her voice bounced around the immense foyer, sending a chill down her spine. The building gave her the creeps during the day, never mind alone at night." Shirley always chuckled to herself about how picky Mrs. Clark was about how things should be left, like chairs pushed in, but not touching the table. And Mrs. Clark said the employees always had to say goodnight to Doris. Shirley forgot to do that. She grabbed her car keys out of her pocketbook and got the feeling that something was watching her. Looking back at the house she thought she saw a woman in the window. She put on her glasses to see better, but dropped them in the dirt and bent down to get them. When she looked back up at the house, the figure was gone. Shirley went back to the house, unlocked the door and hollered inside, "Goodnight, Doris." As she closed the door again, she heard what she thought was the faint voice of Doris Duke singing her favorite song from the room with the window where she saw the woman.

In the process of finding stuff on Doris Duke, I came across this story on Reddit about another mansion Doris had owned that is now demolished, Duke Estates in Hillsborough, New Jersey. This person wrote, "Before this was removed, me and my father had one of the scariest encounters in our life here. Back in the late 00’s, me and my father went to the estate for a boy scout outing. After everything was over, my father, my friend, my friends father and I decided to walk around for a little bit. We stumbled upon the closed down mansion, and decided to sneak past the gates to have a look around. After we last those gates, I started to get a really weird anxious feeling, but just brushed it off. My friend and his father ran somewhere, and my dad and I were at the side of the house. We both instantly freeze up, and get this absolute dread and fear coursing through our bodies. I’m in absolute tears, but we can’t move. My dad recounts that he heard a voice screaming “LEAVE NOW”, but he replied, “I’m a follower of Jesus Christ and God, you can’t hurt us”. The feeling then slowly subsided, and we can move. We got out of there quickly, and didn’t talk about it for about a decade. When I brought this up a few years ago, he was surprised I even remembered. We talked it over and we both remember the same exact events and how it played out. My friend and his father didn’t experience this though, just us two." 

The historic mansions on the former Millionaire's Row of Newport, Rhode Island are really something to see. We're glad that many of them still stand and that they have been restored to their former glory. Are these summer cottages haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Halloween Special 2025 - Halloween Music

We always try to pick a fun theme for our Halloween Special and this year we thought we would feature Halloween Music. Not just the music one might hear in a horror movie - and we will definitely talk about some of that - but music made specifically for Halloween. There is a whole history to what some may call "Monster Music" that goes from fun novelty songs to Goth Punk and even the disturbing. Join us for this candy corn filled, costume wearing romp through one-eyed purple people eaters, monsters mashing, ghostbusters busting and nightmares before Christmas.

Let's set the mood with a little true ghost story from our listener John. He wrote us, "Hi, I wanted to share a true story from my family. My parents divorced when I was 3 and never spoke to each other again, best I can tell. They have both told me this story at different times. When they first got married, they were renting a house close to where my dad milked cows. Every night, they would hear heavy steps upstairs that came down the steps and through the kitchen and every morning, the kitchen door would be open. They changed the locks and this still happened. One night, my dad dragged a heavy China hutch in front of door. The next morning, the china hutch was against the wall and the door was open. One morning after dad had gone to work, mom heard the footsteps, but they came in their bedroom this time. Her little dog started whining and hiding under the blankets. Mom heard someone say her name right in her ear. She jumped up, grabbed her shoes and walked to my dad's job. They moved out days later and the landlord told them a man was killed in the attic of the house and that he was having a hard time renting it out. The house burned to the ground a few years after that even though there was no power to the house." 

So we've done an episode on Haunted Music, Ep. 344, and we wanted to share a little bit from that about the Devil's Chord. Music was very connected to the church up until the Middle Ages or Medieval times. The Devil's Interval or Devil's Chord was introduced at this time and it was considered so diabolical, that it was banned by the Church. The Devil's Chord was not harmonious like the other music of the time. Harmony has notes that flow together and share pitches and frequencies. There is a set timing to the harmony, like a waltz is 3:4 time and a march is 2:4 time and etc. 

The Devil's Interval is formally called the Tritone. This is the augmented fourth and the diminished fifth. According to Carl E. Gardner’s 1912 text  "Essentials of Music Theory" a “triad” in music is composed of three tones. These tones are a starting note plus the third and fifth tones found along its scale like C and then E and G. Most chords are independent, but a tritone is dependent and has “dissonant” or tense intervals. There is something about a dissonant chord that is disturbing to our spirits. If a composition ends with a tritone, it is uncomfortable. And in a singing composition, it is nearly impossible for any singer, regardless of talent, to sing. Thus, any piece of music with the Devil's Interval is thought to be creepy and chilling. Because of all of this, the church banned it and called it Diabolus in Musica. John Sloboda, a professor of music psychology at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, was interviewed on NPR in 2012 and he explained how it is that the Devil's Interval is disturbing saying, "Our brains are wired to pick up the music that we expect, [and] generally music is consonant rather than dissonant, so we expect a nice chord. So when that chord is not quite what we expect, it gives you a little bit of an emotional frisson, because it's strange and unexpected." Many composers have used the Devil's Chord throughout history. Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde has the Tritone in its prelude. For this reason, it is sometimes called the Tristan chord. This incorporates the notes F, B, D sharp and G sharp. Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" also has the chord and some terrifying imagery which will also become a part of performances of the Devil's Interval. In this opera, there is a scene that has drums and timpani and feels evil with a scene playing out what seems to be a Black Mass. Beethoven has it in his Piano Sonata No.18 and "Fidelio." Michael Tippett's Second Symphony features the Tritone prominently. Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" was a salute to the dead coming alive at Halloween and first performed in 1875. Hungarian composer Franz Liszt used the tritone scale and images of devils playing violins and dancing in his Mephisto Waltzes. 

Jazzmen used the Devil's chord throughout the '40s and '50s and even had a hand signal to pay homage to what they called 'the flattened fifth'. This was a high five but with the thumb folded in to the palm and the musician would call out "Oolya Koo, man!" When singing the tritone jazz performers would sing with a false chord technique that came off as just a sound like a scream or growl. Metal singers do the same today. In our modern era, one can hear it in Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," Black Sabbath songs, Rush's "YYZ," the song "Maria" in West Side Story, Busta Rhymes’s “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check,” The Simpsons theme song and death metal music.

And since we were talking about screaming there, we should probably talk about Screamin' Jay Hawkings and his song, "I Put a Spell on You." We heard this information from the Professor of Rock on YouTube. Screamin' Jay Hawkins didn't start out as this shock rock ghoul who would come out on stage like a Voodoo priest that looked half crazed. He actually wanted to be an opera singer. But instead, he learned how to play the piano and started fronting blues bands. The guys in the band would be drinking while they performed and this got Jay into howling and the audiences loved it. In the mid-1950s, Jay wrote a love song called "I Put a Spell on You." It was this lovesick ballad. Hawkings band entered the recording studio and did a little rehearsal and the producer was dissatisfied with the sound. He knew that Jay and the band were good at cutting loose on stage and so he told Jay that the song sounded stiff and he wanted them to play it like they would on stage. Well Jay didn't know what to do because the band was drunk when they did that kind of thing on stage. When he told the producer, Arnold Maxon, that and Maxon got a bright idea to create the right conditions. He went out and got some ribs and fried chicken and a ton of booze. He told the band to eat and drink up and they all got hammered. Then they recorded the song and Jay grunted and howled and hollered through the whole thing like a mad man and it was a gold recording that today is a Halloween staple.

Spooky Little Halloween is a great account to follow on Instagram and she has a great website. She joined us on one of the Halloween Specials in the past. One of our favorite things that she does is putting together these playlists on Spotify. A staple of those lists are novelty songs. Several novelty songs have Halloween theming or topics that fit perfectly with Halloween. 

There's "Purple People Eater." Sheb Wooley created "The Purple People Eater" song in 1958. He was more of a honky tonk kind of guy who wrote cowboy songs and appeared in Western films. He sure changed that with this song. Part of the song features the people eater's voice and a saxophone solo through a horn in his head and this was created by recording a normal voice and sax solo and later speeding up the tape. The same technique brought us Alvin and the Chipmunks. There's "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs. This song came out in 1966 and features the perspective of the Big Bad Wolf and thankfully, he seems more interested in a date than making her a meal. In more recent years there was the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff's "Nightmare on my Street" and the more obscure "Then She Bit Me." But clearly, the best Halloween novelty song is the "Monster Mash." Monster Mash was the first track on Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers 1962 album "The Original Monster Mash. So Kelly, what is the Mash? I mean these monsters are doing a mash. Well, in the 1960s, one of the really popular dances was called the Mashed Potato based on Dee Dee Sharp's 1962 hit "Mashed Potato Time." This entailed stepping backward, tilting the heel inward and then swiveling it outward while on your toes and then repeating that with the other foot. It's very similar to the Charleston. So the monsters are doing the mashed potato. Pickett changes up his voice to imitate Universal monsters, which makes this all the more fun.

One of our favorite groups for novelty songs is The Goldstars. This is a garage rock/punk group that hails from Chicago. In 2021, they produced "Stroll in Hell," which is a tune beloved by horror host Dr. Demento. There was 2023's "Leave Me Alone (A Halloween Song)". And this year they dropped one for my favorite guy, "I Frankensteined U." Follow at: https://www.instagram.com/thegoldstarsofficial/ Here is a medley of those songs. (Goldstars Medley)

Punk Rock just screams disturbing and Halloween. The Misfits produced their own song about Halloween (Misfits Halloween) There are a handful of songs that are just staples on any Halloween playlist. First up has to be Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters is a song written and performed by Ray Parker Jr. It was released in 1984 and hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Parker was inspired by a late night commercial he watched for a service business that included the line "Who ya gonna call." The other shoe-in has to be Michael Jackson's Thriller. I remember when the video dropped on MTV. It was so amazing! Thriller is a disco-funk song that was produced by Quincy Jones and was written by Rod Temperton. The song was meant to be reminiscent of film music. The addition of Vincent Price for the spoken-word sequence was a brilliant move. The song was released in 1983 and eventually reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is one of the bestselling singles of all time. The music video was made when Thriller began to slump on the charts. John Landis, who directed An American Werewolf in London, helmed the video and he wrote it with Jackson. The music video doubled sales of Thriller and the zombie dance is popular in movies and on dance floors around Halloween.

The Nightmare Before Christmas gave us This is Halloween, and again, a perfect song for the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote and performed the song and the Citizens of Halloween Town sing it. It's been covered by various bands. Warren Zevon wrote Werewolves of London with LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel and Zevon sang it with Mick Fleetwood playing drums and John McVie on bass. The song was released in 1978. The first line sets the tone, "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand." Time Warp is a song from the 1973 rock musical The Rocky Horror Show that also was used in the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The song is techn ically described as a glam rock song that is supposed to parody dance songs with instructions for performing the dance. Time Warp was written by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley.

Those are well known songs, but there are hundreds of Halloween/spooky themed songs. You can listen to them 365 days a year on DeadAir.co. One that I was reminded of the other day on there is Hell by Squirrel Nut Zippers. And I love The Crewnecks with their "Rockin' Zombie" and Lee "The Big Masher" Lilly with Spooky Movies. There's just something about these old spooky theme songs that take you back to an earlier time, back when we were trick or treating. 

Nothing sets a mood better than music. We're sure the listeners have all seen video clips from movies where the original music has been stripped and replaced with horror music, turning a rom/com or family friendly movie into a terrifying film. Some of the best Halloween music comes from horror movies with the supreme example being (Halloween Carpenter). Everybody knows that music and it immediately gets the heart pumping. You want to look around because surely something is after you and the cadence lends itself to running down the street in terror while being pursued by a knife wielding madman. Let's talk about some of our favorite horror composers. Obviously, the Halloween music was created by John Carpenter for his movie.

Danny Elfman! He is THE favorite for both of us. The entire soundtrack to "Nightmare Before Christmas" could enhance any Halloween party. But he also wrote the theme for "Tales From the Crypt" and the music for "Sleepy Hollow" starring Johnny Depp. There's also "Beetlejuice" of course and "Corpse Bride." Elfman's initial fame came as frontman to the New Wave band Oingo Boingo. Elfman moved into film scoring in 1985 when Tim Burton asked him to do the music for Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Elfman was hesitant because he honestly had no idea how to do that. He had no formal training, but he threw together a demo and Burton loved it. Elfman said that he got inspiration from Bernard Herrmann. 

Bernard Herrmann was born in 1911 and music critic Alex Ross wrote of Herrmann, "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary." He was definitely innovative. The best example of this is his score for Psycho. (Psycho Music) Like Halloween, this music sets the tone for a tense, driving piece. The shower scene has music that is a masterpiece that matches well with the stabbing movements of the killer. Herrmann achieved this with violins that were played with a screeching, stabbing effect. Hitchcock himself said of the score that "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music" and that "Psycho depended heavily on Herrmann's music for its tension and sense of pervading doom." Herrmann also wrote the music for many other Hitchcock movies like "The Birds," "Vertigo," "North by Northwest" and he scored "Cape Fear" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

The Shining has one of the creepier opening themes and this was composed by Walter Carlos - who is now Wendy Carlos - and Rachel Elkind. They took inspiration from a traditional melody known as "Dies irae," which is Latin for "day of wrath." This was a somber chant and used mainly in funeral services. That piece of music has been used often by composers to symbolize death. Carlos and Elkind put the melody in a lower register with brass tone color. They highly processed vocals and used exotic percussion. And then there is this synthesized low drone, which is really unnerving. 

Graeme Revell of New Zealand lead the industrial rock group SPK in the 1980s and started film composing in the 1990s. He has scored "Dead Calm," "The Crow," "From Dusk to Dawn," and "Bride of Chucky." Marco Beltrami is an American composer who has written a number of scores for some of our more recent horror flicks like "Scream," "The Faculty," "Resident Evil," "Carrie," and "A Quiet Place." Just like Tim Burton works often with Danny Elfman, Beltrami worked often with Wes Craven. His score for A Quiet Place was nominated for a Golden Globe. And then there was Jerry Goldsmith. His list of horror compositions is massive: Coma, Poltergeist, Alien, The Omen, The Swarm, Gremlins, The Haunting and many of their sequels. And then, I have to mention Bear McCreary because I love the theme from The Walking Dead, which he created. He's also done the music for Happy Death Day, 10 Cloverfield Lane and the remake of Child's Play. Honorable mention for John Williams, who is one of my favorite film composers, for the theme for Jaws. How memorable is that?

And finally, let's end this with probably the most disturbing song ever recorded, "Frankie Teardrop." People have been warned not to listen to this song alone and at night. Some people have claimed to become ill when listening to the song. The group who performed it was named Suicide and they dropped the song in 1977. The Professor of Rock said of this song, "The stark, bizarre arrangement and the brutal lyrics are still rattling listeners decades later, including me. I heard it the other day and I couldn't finish it." Suicide was a musical duo formed by vocalist Alan Vega and instrumentalist Martin Rev. They used a lot of synthesizers and primitive drum machines in their music. What really makes the song unsettling is Alan Vega's blood curdling screams. They disturb the soul. The song is the story of Frankie who is a poor factory worker who descends into madness. He takes the lives of his family and then himself. I've listened to just a brief portion of it and that was enough. This kind of song reminds us of one we talked about on the Haunted Music episode "Gloomy Sunday."  

Gloomy Sunday was a Hungarian piece of music with a notorious reputation. The song was said to cause people to unalive themselves. Gloomy Sunday was written by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress and is nicknamed the "Hungarian Suicide Song." It was written in 1933. The original lyrics were written as if the world was ending and reflected the despair about war and people's sins. Poet László Jávor wrote his own lyrics to the song, titled le Szomorú vasárnap (Sad Sunday). The protagonist wants to commit suicide because his lover has died. More people remember those lyrics. "Gloomy Sunday" was first recorded in English by Hal Kemp in 1936, with lyrics by Sam M. Lewis. Billie Holiday performed it in 1941 making it incredibly popular. Urban legends began claiming that people were killing themselves after hearing the song and radio networks began banning the song, just like Frankie Teardrop. 

Music is incredibly powerful. It can take people to the depths of despair, curdle their blood with fear and bring them joy. And all of that is demonstrated through the music of Halloween. Whether it's a horror score or a fun novelty song, music sets the tone for Halloween. Try using music to get you in the mood for Halloween this year. Pick some classics and find some new pieces as well. And let the magic of Halloween music take hold!  

For all your Halloween tunes: https://deadair.co/ 

HGB Ep. 610 - Legends of Feathered Terrors

Moment in Oddity - High Hopping Wallabies

At History Goes Bump, we love everything weird. From stories of hauntings, to sightings of cryptids and aliens, and even strange animal encounters. So when our listener Michael Rogers posted about a kangaroo that broke into a pot farm, I had to know more. The high jumping bandit had supposedly broken into a grow farm in Australia and ate so much of the crop that it took the poor creature 4 days to sober up! Well, that story is not true, however, a story that IS true is that of unusual crop circles that were being found at a poppy farm in Tasmania. Tasmania is the world's largest producer of legally grown opium for the pharmaceutical market. Opium is produced from poppy flowers. The mystery of the crop circles was revealed when intoxicated wallabies were found in the fields, high as kites. Wallabies are marsupials and basically look like a smaller version of a kangaroo. The critters had been breaking into the poppy fields and eating the heads of the flowers. They would get so high that they would erratically hop in patterns before their ultimate crash. Although the crop circles were not as precise as ones we have seen on television shows that some people believe were left by visiting aliens. The destruction concerning the poppy popping pests was such a big deal that Tasmania's attorney general stood before parliament to address what might be the world's most unusual agricultural crisis. Thankfully, there was no long term damage suffered by the wallabies once their highs wore off. But farmers watching their pharmaceutical crops become makeshift dance floors for high-hopping marsupials, certainly is odd. 

Legends of Feathered Terrors

Can there be anything more terrifying than a monster that can swoop down out of the sky and attack? Perhaps even pick you up? Probably the most famous scary flying creature of American lore is Mothman, but the pterodactyl would have to be the most petrifying flying monster in the history of the world. But to be sure, neither of these creatures have feathers. They seemed to fly with bat-like wings. However, there are a class of feathered fiends that could give both of them a run for their money. Join us for legends of feathered terrors!

Kelly, there are some pretty scary birds that live in Antarctica and they are called skuas (Skew uh). These are dark-feathered birds that resemble seagulls. Now, while I have had a seagull dive bomb my sandwich on the beach a time or two, seagulls are not really anything to be feared...maybe, we'll get into that in a minute. The skua is quite different as Antarctica's top avian predator. King George Island in the South Shetlands is home to the brown and south polar skua. Scientists who study and tag the birds have found out the hard way that these birds will guard their nests at all costs. And like a scene straight out of Hitchcock's "The Birds," the skua fire off alarm calls that alert the other parent that there is a stranger and they both dive-bomb the scientist, pecking at the head and face. They scream the whole time and have no mercy. Now honestly, any bird with sharp claws and beaks can be scary and attack. And there once was a violent attack by a group of birds that gave Alfred Hitchcock inspiration for his movie. There was a mass bird attack in the seaside town of Capitola in California on August 18, 1961. The event was described as, "Capitola residents awoke to a scene that seemed straight out of a horror movie. Hordes of seabirds were dive-bombing their homes, crashing into cars and spewing half-digested anchovies onto lawns." There was a cause for this behavior from the birds that wasn't known until more recent times. Toxic algae. But it really doesn't matter what caused the birds to become crazy attacking birds, the fact is that they became feathered terrors.

Terror birds are said to go back about two million years and they had been the apex of predators in South America. These were large, flightless birds that were carnivorous. Terror birds are technically known as Phorusrhacids (For us rock ids) and they ranged from three to ten feet in height and could hit weights up to 770 pounds. They were believed to have highly flexible necks that gave them the ability to strike fast and hard. And their tightly fused beak could cause a lot of injury by pecking. Could some of the reports of large birds in more recent decades be connected to these ancient large birds? 

A man name John Bolduan was camping at a resort near Webb Lake in Wisconsin in June of 2005. He enjoyed bike riding, so set out on one of the bike paths. He came to a grassy field and he noticed a bird that looked similar to a Sandhill Crane with silver feathers, but the bird seemed to be really large. John set his bike down quietly and crept through the grass to get a better look. He told Linda Godfrey in her 2014 book American Monsters, "At first I thought it was an emu, an Australian bird that can get up to six or seven feet tall that some farmers in the area were raising, but as I got closer, I knew it wasn't an emu." He spooked the bird and it took off and John said, "The size was then truly apparent as it flew away. The wingspan I estimate must've been eighteen feet. It was at least three times as large as any eagle I had ever seen. It was gawky as it flew away, the flapping of those huge wings was slow and seemingly laborious. The wings seemed to roll as they flapped, like dropping a big rock in water and seeing the waves roll from it. It was not graceful. Not only was the wingspan large, but the wing itself must've been two feet wide as it flopped over the horizon. It almost looked like the size of a small airplane or ultralight aircraft - in fact, there is a small airstrip there where small planes take off and land, and this bird was the size of a Piper Cub as it flew over the trees." John estimated the wings were as wide as the road, which was twenty feet across. Was this some form of mutation of a crane? John was positive of what he saw and he never saw it again. Nor did anyone else report the Webb Lake Big Bird.

Native Americans told stories of Lake Monsters fighting with giant avians. These giant birds were referred to by Native Americans as Thunderbirds. Some of these myths claimed that Thunderbirds could carry off humans and even whales. Many of these stories came out of the Pacific coastline and the Great Lakes area and the reason they were referred to as Thunderbirds was because when they flapped their wings, it sounded like thunder. Native Americans even created myths that lightning came from their eyes and rain was water falling off their backs. These became a sort of trickster spirit as well. The Lakota of the Black Hills called them Thunder Beings. They felt they had a divine nature. Depending on tribe, thunderbirds could be good or bad. Could these Thunderbirds have survived through the years? 

The Mukwonago Chief reported in November 24, 1916 about a Battle With Giant Eagles, "California Deer Hunters Had Fierce Fight Before Overcoming Two Monarchs Of The Air. Attacked by two monster eagles while deer hunting in the Malibu district, Doctor Kingsbury of Ocean Park, G.M. Wilson, a rancher, and Policeman Harry Wright of Santa Monica, fought two hours before they were able to kill the birds, writes a Los Angeles correspondent. Shrieking and screaming, the eagles tore at the men with their claws, tearing Wright’s clothing in many places and inflicting a flesh wound on Kingsbury’s right shoulder. The fight began with only one of the birds. Then men were hunting on the Williams ranch with two dogs. Suddenly a huge eagle swooped down and grabbed one of the dogs. It circled 20 feet in the air with the dog in its talons before the men could fire. The first shot missed, but the second shot from Kingsbury’s gun brought the bird down. As the three men rushed forward, the eagle dropped the dog and struck out at Wright, screaming all the while. Its screams brought its mate, the latter making an attack on Kingsbury and sinking its talons into his shoulder. Williams shot and killed the bird that was fighting with Wright and then the two rushed the remaining eagle. It started to fly away and then came back. The men began shooting at it, driving it a little further away with each shot. For four miles they chased the bird before finally killing it."

In 1977, there was a report out of Lawndale, Illinois that a 10-year-old boy named Marlon Lowe had been attacked by two large birds while he was playing outside. One of the birds actually picked him up and carried him over 30 feet before his mother realized what happened and she ran after the bird and it eventually dropped her son. Not only did the mother witness this attack, but several other people were nearby and saw it. These witnesses described the birds as having a white ring around their necks and large black bodies. Their bodies were four-and-a-half feet long and each of their wings were four feet long. These birds were nicknamed Bigclaw. A man claimed that when he was a kid he saw the same birds that grabbed Marlon a couple days before the incident. He was hiking with a couple of friends along Spring Creek near Lawndale and they noticed these birds dropping from the air close to them.   

One of the most well known reports of a large bird in America was reported in the Tombstone Epitaph on April 26, 1890. Two gunslingers claimed that they shot a large bird out of the sky. They described it as having no feathers and a head like an alligator. The story went that the bird was dragged back to town and photographed, but that seems to be a total legend as the issue on file at the Library of Congress reveals no picture. If this really happened, the bird sounds like it was some kind of pterodactyl. One of the men told a reporter back in the 1930s that he was one of the men who shot at the monster. He said that the story had been misreported - or maybe they lied - but they didn't hit the bird. They merely spooked it and their terrified horses took off with them on board. So there was no bird brought back to town. 

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman wrote of a couple of large bird encounters in his book "Curious Encounters: Phantom Trains, Spooky Spots and Other Mysterious Wonders." He wrote about a sighting that occurred on April 10, 1948 in Overland, Illinois. Three people said they saw a large bird that seemed to be the size of an airplane, flying over them. There was a similar sighting shortly after that in Alton, Illinois where a father and son claimed to have seen a giant bird with a body the size of a Piper Cub airplane.

Marco Polo wrote stories of a creature called a Roc in his Book of Travels. The Roc also appeared in the book Arabian Nights and was a creature from Middle Eastern folklore. This bird was so large, it blocked the sun when it flew during the daytime. Polo wrote that the wings were as big as palm leaves and that it was white in color. The bird laid eggs that were over 150 feet in circumference. One of its favorite prey was elephants, which it carried high into the sky and dropped to kill them. In Arabian Nights, Sinbad is carried away by a Roc after he has a shipwreck and he is placed in the Roc’s nest on top of a mountain. In the nest is an egg that is as large as 148 hen’s eggs. Sinbad escapes by lashing himself to the Roc’s leg with his turban. He flies high in the sky with it and manages to get away when the Roc flew near another island. In another story in the book, Rocs destroy ships by picking up huge boulders and dropping them on the ships. 

There was a recent sighting in South Greenburg, Pennsylvania reported on Lon Strickler's Phantoms & Monsters website, "There was a sighting of a monstrous bird in South Greensburg just as it was getting dark, four people were sitting around in the yard having a barbecue and enjoying the beautiful weather when suddenly, their attention was drawn skyward by a sound like a 'swish' or a 'swoosh' or as one witness stated, 'like the air coming straight down.' Several of the observers at almost the same time yelled out some exclamations including one man who said, “What the hell is that?” 

They were all startled to see a tremendously large bird that was flying over a tree in the yard about 30-40 feet overhead. The man who was going the cooking turned and looked up to see the creature fly above him at a distance of about 40 feet away. As the bird passed the tree, it veered slightly to the right and went straight down the road ahead maintaining its low-level path. When first observed the massive wings of the creature were in an upward position and were beginning to drop slowly, almost as if they were rolling to the bottom. The swoosh sound could be heard when the wings were moving. The powerful bird had flown about 125 yards down the road, at which time the wings were coming back up. The creature was observed as it continued to move steadily down the road, passing just above the rooftop of a house with its wings flapping slowly and steadily about 3-4 times until it reached a group of trees about ¼ miles away, where it was lost from sight. It took about 20 seconds to go the ¼ mile distance. As it passed over, it appeared as though it was peering below, with its head and beak positioned downward. It was estimated that if the bird was on the ground it would stand between 4 ½ to 5 feet tall. The entire body was the same dark color, either darkish brown or black. The body width was about 25-30 inches wide. One witness said the body, “was very bulky and husky.” The head was oval-shaped, and the beak was short for the size of the animal, about 8-10 inches long. The tail was about 2 feet long and came out wide to a point. It was the size of the wingspan of the creature that impressed the witnesses which they estimated at 10 feet or more in length. When asked why nobody thought to take a picture, they pointed out that while there were cell phones lying there with camera functions, all involved were mesmerized by the encounter. One witness felt as if he was almost ‘in shock’. It was later learned that another witness who lay along the road where the big bird flew over also reportedly saw the creature. One witness has been a long-time hunter and is very familiar with birds native to the state and is certain that he saw something quite unusual. The area where these observations have taken place, while surrounded by some wooded locations, is well populated, and nearby Route 119 is a highly traveled roadway."

Clinton County in Pennsylvania has some recent stories. This is towards the center of the state and is a place of rivers and valleys. Two people reported seeing a “large bird with a very long beak” in the summer of 2010 near Coudersport Pike. Then in June of 2012, two girls said they saw a Thunderbird while camping in Chapman Township and this bird had a 14-foot wingspan. There were no feathers on its head. The youngest of the two went running screaming into the cabin when the bird swooped low over her. The other girl said, "I know people think I’m strange when I talk about it, but it was real."

The Pennsylvania Wilds website continues the stories of sightings in Clinton County with this, "The biggest champion of the Thunderbirds was Hiram Cranmer, a retired postmaster who lived in Leidy Township, Clinton County. Cranmer was a sort of connoisseur of the weird, often discussing ghosts, UFOs, and monsters. He claimed to have seen his first Thunderbird in 1922, and four others after that. They had a tendency to inhabit northern Clinton County and southern Potter County, which, to be fair, is a pretty remote area. A large flock of Thunderbirds could be pretty easily hiding up there. Once, there was even said to have been a photo of a Thunderbird. According to the story, some men managed to kill one, nail it to a barn, and take a black-and-white photo while they posed in front of it. The photo, now missing, has become known as the “Lost Thunderbird Photo,” and is itself a story of legend. It may have ended with Cranmer. Researcher Ivan Sanderson claimed to have left the photo with Cranmer when he visited in 1963. Cranmer died when his house burned down in 1967, possibly taking the Thunderbird photo with it. In Lyman’s book, he hints at this as well, mentioning that the photo 'burned in a home.'" 

Pennsylvania seems to be the most popular place for large avian monsters when it comes to more modern sightings. Someone living in Greenville, Pennsylvania had noticed a large shadow passing over them and they thought this was from a small aircraft, but they looked up and were startled to see a grayish-black creature soaring overhead. And this wasn't a quick sighting. The bird hung around for 20 minutes. The witness said the wingspan was around 15 feet with a body of about 5 feet. A neighbor saw the same bird the next day and said it was "the biggest bird I ever saw." A month later, it is believed this same bird was seen in Erie County, Pennsylvania. The report had the same wingspan and described the bird as being "dark gray with little or no neck, and a circle of black under its head. Its beak was very thin and long—about a foot in length." 

Someone going by MP reported to Lon Strickler, "You know that Indian folklore in part tells the truth. I'll explain. Back in December 2001 to be exact, I went on a cruise to the Caribbean. It was a Royal Caribbean cruise. On our third or fourth day, we landed in Puerto Rico. One hour into port, a group of ten of us got a tour guide for just about an hour. Well, the tour guide was explaining spots of interest on the island, but since it was like a rainy-overcast day, he said that it wouldn't be possible to visit those sites. He took us to the beach in San Juan. We all got out, the sun was out just for like 20 minutes. I was married to my ex-wife at the time and I was taking pictures of her just a couple feet from our tour bus. Well, I saw the clouds coming in, the cloud was shaped almost like an arrow, and at the tip of the arrow were two giant birds. They both had white rings on their necks, one was way larger, and the other one was about the size of a Cessna propeller airplane. I yelled to the tour guide to look up at the clouds and repeated to all the members to look up, but by that time, the two giant birds went straight up higher than the clouds. Then the rain came down and we quickly got into the bus. Nobody believed me. I took pictures of the cloud. I still have them, but the birds weren't in the view. Indian legend says these birds bring rain clouds to villages that are in need of rain for planting their harvest. In a way the Indians were right." 

A man named JD had called Lon Strickler with this unbelievable report. It's the largest modern day one we have heard and this near an airport in Virginia. He later wrote this statement and sent it to Lon, ""On Monday Dec 15th at 6:45 PM (dark) I is was traveling on the Airport Rd near the New Kent Co., Virginia Airport. This section of road went by the New Kent trash collection center. The road is bordered by woods on both sides.

As I approached this location, I noticed something large and dark on the road very near the trash collection lot. I hit my brakes and came within 50 feet of what appeared to be a huge bird. Like I told you on the telephone, when I say huge, I mean something of unbelievable size. First of all, it had the overall shape of an eagle. It definitely had talons which were lighter in color. It also had beak which seemed too large and long for it's face. The overall color was dark, I'd say black. The height was at least 8 feet, probably more as it bobbed up and down. It may have been eating something when I approached it. It's head moved toward the direction of my car and made a grunting sound. It turned away from me and the long tail with feathers swung around in my direction. The wings, which extended across the road, unfurled as it lifted off the surface. The wings were massive, but like I said reached past the width of the road. I told you 25 feet on the telephone, I still believe that is a correct estimate." 

CNN reported back in 2002 about a massive bird sighting reported out of Anchorage, Alaska, "A bird the size of a small airplane was recently said to be seen flying over southwest Alaska, puzzling scientists, the Anchorage Daily News reported this week. The newspaper quoted residents in the villages of Togiak and Manokotak as saying the creature, like something out of the movie "Jurassic Park," had a wingspan of 14 feet - making it the size of a small airplane." 

A resident named Moses said the bird made him think of an old Otter plane, but when it banked, he could see that it was a bird. Scientists were skeptical of the size. They assumed people were seeing a Steller's Sea Eagle, which can be quite large, but they are native to Japan. So if that is what this was, it was far away from home. Of course, their wingspan reaches 8 feet, which is far off the mark of 14 feet. And no witnesses reported the color of the bird being black and white like the Steller's Sea Eagle. A Raptor Specialist named Phil Schemf said, "I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been alive for the last 100,000 years." Some time later, a local pilot saw the same bird and said, "The people in the plane saw him. He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out." 

Linda Godfrey had this great passage on Texas Monster Avians from the 1970s. (pg.28) 

Most cryptozoologists are very strict in their definition of a Thunderbird and so many don't believe a Thunderbird has ever been seen. In order to be classified as a Thunderbird, the cryptid must be between four and eight feet tall with a wingspan of fifteen to twenty feet And they are dark in color. Whether a bird hits that mark or not, it is clear that some species of birds are much larger than their counterparts and have lead to some terrifying interactions. Did or do any of these feathered creatures exist? That is for you to decide!