HGB Ep. 624 - Haunts of Fredericksburg, Virginia

Moment in Oddity - Situs Inversus

We recently lost a wonderful actress, Catherine O'hara. While her body of work is expansive, there are some roles that she is best known for. She played Kevin's mother in Home Alone 1 and 2, Cookie Fleck in Best in Show, Sheila Albertson in Waiting for Guffman, Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice 1 and 2 (and who can forget the scene in the first Beetlejuice when she starts singing the Banana Boat Day-O song). She was also the original speaking and singing voice of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas, along with so many other memorable characters that she played during her lifetime. But one thing she is not well known for, is the fact that she had situs inversus which was discovered prior to 2020. Situs Inversus is a rare, typically harmless, genetic condition where a person's organs in the chest and abdomen cavity are flipped to the opposite side than a typical human. There are variances to the condition. Situs Inversus Totalis is a complete and total reversal of all thoracic and abdominal organs. While Dextrocardia, is specific to just the heart being located on the right side of the chest. Most affected people live a normal life and are often not aware of their condition unless they have had a chest x-ray, abdominal ultrasound, CT scan or MRI. Situs Inversus affects 1 in 10,000 people. Once a person is made aware of the condition, most decide to wear a medical alert bracelet or necklace in case of a medical emergency. While nearly everyone who has had this opposite organization of organs has lived a healthy long life, it certainly is odd! 

Haunted Fredericksburg, Virginia

Fredericksburg in Virginia has seen a vast amount of American history with roots reaching back to the 17th century. There are centuries old buildings here and blood-stained battlegrounds that lend themselves to paranormal activity. Many locations in the city have ghost stories connected to them. Join us for the history and hauntings of Fredericksburg, Virginia. 

The canal that runs through downtown Fredericksburg is a favorite spot for people to jog and bike along. The canal holds a significant place in the local history, not only as a part of the mill industry, but Fredericksburg found itself in a precarious position during the Civil War as a prominent port that sat midway between the capitals of the North and the South. Two Civil War battles would be fought here. This area of the Piedmont was first inhabited by a Siouan-speaking tribe called the Manahoac. This strategic place for the indigenous people would also be strategic for the colony of Virginia. A fort was established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1676 along the Rappahannock River. The town of Fredericksburg was founded several decades later in 1728 and named for the Prince of Wales, Frederick. George Washington's family moved to a town across the river from Fredericksburg in 1738 and his mother Mary would eventually move to Fredericksburg later. As a matter of fact, her home here still stands and is one of the haunted locations we'll talk about a bit later. Naval war hero John Paul Jones also called this city home, as did President James Monroe. After the war, Fredericksburg lost a chunk of its population, but it still remained a center of trade, finally incorporating in 1879. Today, tourism is one of its key economic engines and GEICO's headquarters is here! Fun Fact: Musician Link Wray invented the power chord of modern rock guitar in Fredericksburg.

The Battle of Fredericksburg

There were two battles in Fredericksburg. The second one is nicknamed the "forgotten battle of Fredericksburg." The more well known first battle took place from December 11th to 15th, 1862 and had General Ambrose Burnside leading the Union forces and Robert E. Lee leading the Confederate forces. This would be one of the largest battles - with 200,000 combatants - and deadliest of the Civil War. 

The Battle of Antietam had taken place before this and Union General McClellan had failed to pursue General Lee so he was removed from command of the Army of the Potomac. When Burnside became the replacement, he knew he needed to come up with an amazing plan to get to Richmond before General Lee. When he surveyed the route, Burnside decided that going toward the lower Rappahannock River was the best idea and then he could cross the river and get into position. There, he would cross quickly and position himself between Lee and the direct route to Richmond. The plan had great promise, but, to accomplish it successfully, speed was essential. General Burnside's group of 100,000 men arrived on November 15th. They found the bridges all destroyed, so they ordered pontoon bridges to be sent, but they were delayed until November 25th, giving the Confederacy time to prepare.

This would prove very beneficial to the Confederate side. Union engineers attempted to assemble the bridges, but Confederate snipers made it hard to get the work done. General Burnside decided to shell Fredericksburg and he hit it with 150 Federal guns. They did a lot of damage and the engineers got back to their work, but eventually the Confederate riflemen started shooting again. 

Burnside needed a new plan, so he sent a regiment with men from Michigan and Massachusetts to row across the river and stop the snipers. They managed to cross under fire and drive the snipers away. On December 12th, Burnside got the rest of his army across the river. They occupied Fredericksburg and Burnside plans to have 60,000 men in Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin’s Left Grand Division to crush Lee’s southern flank. That flank has General Stonewall Jackson heading it up and the initial assault on him is successful. But then both sides suffer heavy losses in what was called the Slaughter Pen. The Slaughter Pen Farm is a 208 acre area on the southern end of the Fredericksburg Battlefield. The Union was gallant, but outnumbered. Burnside had said of his plans, "I wanted to obtain possession of that new road, and that was my reason for making the attack on the extreme [Federal] left." This road that he spoke of had been built by the Confederates to connect the two wings of the Confederacy. Burnside hoped that cutting this road in half would disorganize Lee's side and they could pursue them and cut them off from Richmond. However, the Union was unorganized and orders were misunderstood and Stonewall had a powerful counterattack. The Union put forward only a fraction of what was needed. There were 8,200 Union to 38,000 Confederate. The Federals ended up in an open plain as easy targets and they eventually made there way into the woods, but Lee's best men were there to meet them.  

By 3pm on December 13th, the fighting at the Slaughter Pen was over with 5,000 soldiers dead and neither side had gained anything. Another area on the battlefield that had intense fighting was the Sunken Road. This lane had been a simple wagon road that had been worn down into a trench from all the years of use. It sat at the base of five hills known as Marye's Heights and Confederate General James Longstreet had his group of men here. Fighting at this location began around noon. 

Union General Edwin V. Sumner initiated repeated attacks on the Confederate lines. The Sunken Road that the Confederates were on gave them the ability to beat back each assault as it came and despite seven Union divisions trying to make 14 charges, none of them was able to enter the Sunken Road. Nearly 1-in-3 Federal soldiers became a casualty at Marye's Heights. General Lee was appalled by the carnage and he said, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it." The armies stayed where they were on December 14th and there was a lull in the fighting. General Lee allowed Burnside to attend to his wounded that day. Burnside told his generals that he wanted to retreat back over the river the following day, but they opposed this decision and said that they felt they should remain in the town and prepare another thrust. Almost as sign, the Northern Lights made an unexpected appearance over Fredericksburg that evening. Burnside knew as he surveyed the damage dealt to his side that this was a Confederate victory. The following morning, he instructed his troops to retreat across the Rappahannock. There were 18,500 casualties with 12,500 on the Union side and 6,000 on the Confederate side. Six weeks after this bitter loss at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln removed Burnside from command and appointed Maj. General Joseph Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac. This win gave Lee a big boost and he went on to victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863.

We want to share an interesting side note to this battle Pvt. George Heiser of the 136th Pennsylvania was a prisoner of war after the battle because he refused to leave a wounded comrade. Heiser survived this battle and a stint as a prisoner of war at Libby Prison. He would later participate in memorial parades through the years and opened up a store in Johnstown Pennsylvania and he was very generous letting people take what they needed and paying later, He and his wife would be swept away and killed in the Johnstown Flood in 1889.  

The Second Battle of Fredericksburg took place on May 3, 1863. General Lee had left Fredericksburg for Chancellorsville at this point and left Major General Jubal Early in charge. He was joined by other brigades bringing the Confederate side up to 12,000 men and they had 45 cannons. Major General John Sedgwick was leading the Union and he had a force of 27,000. Sedgwick's plan was to attack both ends of Marye's Heights, but a canal and stream were in the way, so he decided to hit the center. The initial assault was repelled, but a second one drove the Confederates off the ridge and they retreated to Lee's Hill. They tried to make a final stand and were defeated again so they ran southward. There were 700 Confederate casualties and 1,100 Union and the Union held Fredericksburg. Union General Joshua Chamberlain had a real way with words and he wrote many letters home. We want to share this excerpt from one of his letters, "At last, outwearied and depressed..." (Pg. 203) Many historians have wondered why Burnside sent wave after wave of troops up against the stone wall that the Confederates were barricaded behind at the Sunken Road. This had nearly been a massacre. The Sunken Road is the most haunted section of the battlefield. Visitors claim to hear the distant echoes of war cries and sounds of battle. And much like Gettysburg, people see ghostly soldiers marching in formation and even fighting each other and ghostly horses sometimes thunder across the field. 

Just up from the road, Marye's Heights gives a feeling of dread and has the apparitions of soldiers and spectral lights. The smell of gun powder can be strong at times. Cold spots have been reported along the stone wall. Some have claimed that the aurora borealis appearing as the two sides buried their dead in the field was a paranormal event. Away_Meringue wrote on Reddit, "When I moved here from Alexandria in 2018 I felt a very strong supernatural pull. I was coming down the road around twilight and saw a Confederate soldier figure standing under a tree behind one of the old battlefield fences."

Rising Sun Tavern (Suggested by: Kim Harmon)

The Washington Heritage Museums include three of our haunted locations: Rising Sun Tavern, Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop and the Mary Washington House. President George Washington’s youngest brother was named Charles. When he reached adulthood, he inherited 750 acres of land in Spotsylvania County, Virginia from his father who had died when he was five-years-old. He purchased two lots in what was the county seat at the time, Fredericksburg, and he built a home for himself there in 1761. This was a wood frame, one-and-a-half story building covered with broad hand-beveled clapboards. There was a gabled roof with three tiny dormers and several chimneys. There was a large ballroom that would burn down later and a banquet room with a paneled corner fireplace and built-in cupboard. The home hosted a Peace Ball celebrating the victory at Yorktown in 1781. Charles Washington would live there with his family until 1781 and was sold to a Larkin Smith in 1791 who sold it again in 1792 to Colonel Gustav Wallace. 

Wallace rented the building to John Frasier who opened it as a tavern he called the Golden Eagle in 1793. This operated for 35 years, but John would die just a few months into running the tavern. The post office was also located here. Preservation Virginia acquired the Rising Sun Tavern in 1907 and completed a series of restorations that included the front porch and the original railings from the 18th century bar were found under the plaster and the entire bar was rebuilt. Chair rails, cornices, paneled wood and fireplaces and the unique stairway were all repaired and painted in their original colors. 

The ghost that hangs out here is said to be the first proprietor, John Frasier. Frasier died in 1793 after going upstairs and taking a nap. He has stayed on to watch over the tavern in the afterlife. His spirit is said to move items around, he likes to play with the lights and staff and visitors have all heard his laughter and some even say they have seen his apparition. His disembodied footsteps are heard upstairs. An employee was going upstairs and she heard the disembodied footsteps and she scolded John for scaring her and she felt a tug on her dress. Tricorne hats in the gift shop have been found aligned in the middle of the floor. Wilson was an employee and he said one night they were closing up and they put the bar that they placed across the front door in its place and when they turned around, they heard a loud clunk behind them and the bar had flown off from the door and just landed a couple inches right behind Wilson and his fellow tour guide. He didn't believe in ghosts until he started working here. Some people also claim that John's wife Elizabeth is here too.

Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop

The Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop is located at 1020 Caroline Street. The house was built in 1772 as a home and apothecary for Dr. Hugh Mercer. He had left Scotland after the Battle of Culloden and settled in Pennsylvania. While there, he got involved in the French and Indian War and met Colonel George Washington who encouraged him to move to Fredericksburg to open a practice. More than likely because his mother lived there. Mary Washington would be one of Dr. Mercer's patients. He used a variety of remedies including leeches, lancets, snakeroot, and crab claws. The practice ran for 15 years and then Dr. Mercer joined the Revolutionary Army and he died as a Brigadier General at the Battle of Princeton. Preservation Virginia took ownership of the house and restored it and then passed on ownership in 2013 to the "Washington Heritage Museums" group. Docents give guided tours of the first floor and visitors can tour a self-guided tour of the second floor and gardens on their own. Staff has reported some strange things happening in the museum. There is a child ghost here. A guide once saw the single bare foot of a child going up the stairs. 

Mary Washington House

The other museum that is part of this collection had belonged to George Washington's mother. The Mary Washington House is located at 1200 Charles Street. Mary had moved to Fredericksburg to be near her children, Charles and Elizabeth. Her son George bought this house for her in 1772 from Michael Robinson because it was near Elizabeth's home, Kenmore Plantation. The wooden house was originally a three-room cottage with a detached kitchen. There was a bedroom upstairs for guests that is referred to as the George Washington Room. One bedroom downstairs was Mary's bedroom and then she had a room for entertaining. 

Mary would spend the last seventeen years of her life in the house. Her youth had been tough. Her father died when she was three and by the time she was thirteen, her mother and step-father had also passed, so she was an orphan. Mary met the widower Augustine Washington when she was 23 and the two married in 1731. The couple would have six children. Augustine died in 1743 and Mary would never remarry. (This wasn't because she was heartbroken - explain the law at the time.) Before she died from breast cancer in 1789, she got to witness her son lead the Continental Army to victory and become the first President of America. Many famous people visited Mrs. Washington, and a legend claims one of these people was General Lafayette who came by the home seeking a visit with Mrs. Washington during the Revolution and he found her working in her garden. The President-to-be came to this home to receive his mother's blessing before attending his inauguration in 1789. Mary's granddaughter Betty moved into the house with her husband after Mary died. They added a central hall, a fancy parlor with carved woodwork and added additional rooms to the upstairs. The couple had seven children and two of them died in the house as infants. In 1806, the first Presbyterian minister in the town moved into the house and he also ran a boys' school out of it. A north wing was added to the house at that time. He lived at the house for 34 years. The house then was divided into a duplex. Jane Dickenson bought the house and lived in it during the Civil War. She nursed Confederate wounded there. A Union cannonball struck the house in the attic. Dickenson left in 1864 and the house became a hospital for the Union. The bodies of six Union soldiers were buried in the backyard.

Preservation Virginia acquired the Mary Washington House in 1890, saving it from being disassembled and shipped to the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. They restored the house and opened it as a museum in 1900. In 2012, the Washington Heritage Museums would acquire the house. Starting in the 1970s, ghost stories started to be told about the house. Mary never left her final home it seems. Her apparition has been seen tending to the garden. She is sometimes seen sitting by a window and people claim to hear the rustling of a dress. The hem of a petticoat has been seen swishing past a door. It is also thought that there is some activity from formally enslaved people who had worked here and maybe even a couple of boys from the boys' school days.

Michelle Hamilton is the manager of the Mary Washington House and she wrote the book "Ghosts of Fredericksburg." She said of the ghost at the house, "It's very gentle. It is very like a tea drinking spirit in here and usually pulls pranks. Things get knocked off the shelves in the gift shop and papers on my desk get messed up every once in a while. A former employee had her soda bottle turned upside down on her desk. It's just very gentle, very playful and very whimsical. We once heard this giant slamming sound coming from upstairs. I realized I have to be the brave one to go upstairs. I'm like, okay guys whatever you've done you better put it back." She wrote in her book (pg. 21 and 23)

Richard Johnston Inn 

The Richard Johnson Inn is a bed and breakfast located at 711 Caroline Street. John Taylow had been an original signer of the Declaration of Independence and he built the original row house here in 1770. This row house was combined with the row house next to it to make it a larger house. A kitchen house was in the courtyard and there were slave quarters. The inn is named for the man who bought it in the early 1800s, Richard Johnston, who served as the mayor of Fredericksburg from 1809 to 1810. There was no running water or central heat in the house until after the 1930s and by 1970, it was in such a state of disrepair it was only good for use as a warehouse. A man named Hunter Greenlaw bought it in the 1970s and renovated the property into office space, a restaurant and shops. Greenlaw sold it in 1986 to Libby Gowin, who turned the home into The Richard Johnston Inn that it is today. The tradition of running it as an inn continued in 1993 when Susan Thrush bought the property. L&L Hospitality bought it in 2001 and did some modernization and continue to run it today. The house survived the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, only suffering minor fire damage during the Civil War. The inn being over 245 years old, lends itself to ghosts stories and there are said to be multiple spirits here. There is at least one child spirit and it has been heard talking and laughing. The most well known spirit is a former enslaved man named Toby who was tasked with keeping the eleven fireplaces clean. When he is around, people smell the scent of smoke. 

There are stories of Confederate sharpshooters firing from the windows during the Battle of Fredericksburg and there could be spirits connected to that. legatedomitor wrote on Reddit, "The Richard Johnston Inn downtown Fredericksburg is very much haunted. I was in there doing work along with another person. My coworker kept asking who was watching us and following us around. Asked the employee on duty and was advised no one was staying at the inn, the figure pretty much stayed staring and following us until we were gone. Not threatening just very very weird, cold spots randomly in there too."

The Chimneys

It is uncertain who originally owned The Chimneys. Scotsman John Glassell was a local merchant and he is credited with building The Chimneys, located at 623 Caroline Street, and named for the chimneys on either side of the house. He arrived in Fredericksburg in the 1770s and purchased land from Englishman Charles Yates. Some historians believe that Yates actually built the house, which is estimated to have been built between 1771 and 1773. Yates had been a Mason and would've had the skills needed for the meticulous craftsmanship found inside the house. Whatever the case, when the American Revolution started, Glassell headed back to Scotland in 1775 because he was a loyalist and he never returned. He turned the house over to William Glassell who he had given power of attorney. The house was two stories, built in the Georgian style and framed with mortise and tenon joints, secured by hardwood pegs. The hipped roof was designed after the construction of ship hulls at the time and is was supported by three heavy king post trusses. The interior featured a central hall plan with two rooms on each side of the hallway. There was decorative carving on the woodwork of the moldings, paneling and mantelpiece. 

The house changed hands throughout the 1800s and no one knows for sure who started calling it The Chimneys. President Chester A. Arthur's wife, Nell, had lived in the house when she was a child. The president of the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation bought the house in 1966 and rented it out until the foundation turned it into a museum and office space in 1975. A man named William Vakos purchased and renovated it in 1982 and he opened it as a restaurant. In 1985, Robert Mitchell III became the new owner and he held onto it until 2000, when Tommy Mitchell bought it. In 2014, The Chimneys opened as Billikens Smokehouse, a family-owned BBQ restaurant with great food, live entertainment and stunning views. 

Billiken is not a family name, so we had to ask, what is a billiken and the restaurants website says, "The Billiken is believed to be the creation of Ms. Florence Pretz, a Kansas City art teacher and illustrator. In the early 1900s, she dreamed of this whimsical figure and brought it to life. Ms. Pretz initially produced the Billiken as coin banks and statuettes, later expanding to dolls. This charming good luck symbol quickly became a national craze, with its likeness appearing on everything from postcards to hood ornaments. Around 1908, the Horsemen Doll Co. manufactured the Billiken doll, selling an impressive 200,000 units within the first few months. During the Great Depression, the Billiken gained a reputation as a beacon of good fortune. Poems were written celebrating the luck he brought to those who owned him. Described variously as a fairy, an imp, a charm, and even a god, the Billiken’s appeal transcended borders. In China, he is known as the “God of Things as They Should Be,” and he has left his mark in places as far-flung as Alaska and Canada. The Billiken exists to amuse, make you laugh, and bring you luck and happiness. Most importantly, he invites you to ask the timeless question: What is a Billiken?" 

Patrons and staff have claimed to hear strange sounds, they feel cold spots, door knobs turn on their own and rocking chairs rock on their own. The spirit of a young boy is said to haunt the house and he was seen by a woman who was putting her son to sleep. She thought his friend who was laying in the bed with him was over for a sleepover and that her husband hadn't told her about it. She put both boys to sleep and then asked her son who the boy was the next morning. her husband had no idea what she was talking about and her son had no idea who the boy was either. 

There may be a couple of female ghosts as well. One of these female ghosts was seen by a family living in the house in the early 1800s. She was a full-bodied apparition and she was playing a harp in the house. She also joined a little girl sitting at a piano playing, several years later. Author Mark Nesbitt claims to have interacted with the spirit of a former enslaved man named Nicodemus. He was coming through the Underground Railroad in Fredericksburg, but was left behind and died in a fire while he waited for a fellow traveler to return for him. Nesbitt had been accompanied by a medium named Julie Pellegrino and she is the one who relayed this information. 

Chatham Manor 

Chatham Manor is located at 120 Chatham Lane and was completed in 1771. It was designed in the Georgian architectural style and was constructed for farmer and statesman William Fitzhugh. He had named his house for his friend William Pitt who was the Earl of Chatham. The plantation stretched over 1,280 acres and included an orchard, mill, slave quarters, a dairy, barns, and ice house, stables and a race track for horses. Fitzhugh regularly raced his horses here against his neighbors. Chatham had a slave rebellion in 1805. Tired of being abused, the slaves overpowered the overseer and a couple other men and whipped them. An armed posse arrived at the plantation later in the day and they killed three slaves and deported two others. Fitzhugh decided to sell and he sold the property Major Churchill Jones. His brother William inherited the property when Churchill died and he deeded the property to his eldest daughter Hannah Jones Coalter as a wedding present in 1825. Hannah had always wanted to free her slaves, so she set up her will to manumit her 93 slaves. Manumit meant that the slaves were freed, but that there was an arrangement as well. The slaves could decide to remain enslaved in the state of Virginia or they could be freed with enough money to help them get established in another state. They had to leave Virginia if freed. Hannah's relatives sued and claimed the Dred Scott decision meant that slaves couldn't make that kind of decision. A local court said the slaves could be freed, but the Virginia Supreme Court divided and the relatives won. The property was sold to Hannah's younger sister Betty and her husband J. Horace Lacy in 1848. 

Lacy joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War and rose to the rank of major. When the Union came to Fredericksburg, they took over Chatham Manor and forced Betty and the children to leave.

The property served as a U.S. Army headquarters and later became a Union hospital. After the war, the house fell into disrepair and the Lacys had to sell it to pay taxes in 1872. The property had several owners, but no one did anything with it until General Daniel Bradford Devore and his wife Helen bought the manor in the 1920s and they renovated it and made the place into a real showpiece. They added a beautiful English-style garden. In 1931, General Motors executive John Lee Pratt and his wife, purchased the Chatham estate. Upon Devore's death, the estate was willed to the National Park Service in 1975 and now serves as the headquarters for the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. It sits on only 85 acres now and offers tours of five rooms that were turned into a museum. The property has the distinction of being visited by both President Washington and President Lincoln. 

The ghost story here is about a lady in white. Her story goes all the way back to Fitzhugh's ownership. She was a young woman when she visited the manor. This woman hadn't come because she wanted to, but because her father had sent her away from England because she had fallen in love with the wrong young man. He hoped to break them up. However, the young man had followed her across the ocean and he met up with her at the manor. During their meeting, they discussed eloping. A servant heard the plans and reported them to a guest at the house, General George Washington. Washington agreed to stop the elopement, so when the young woman climbed out of her window, she found Washington waiting for her. The girl was sent back to England and forced into another marriage with a boy from the right side of the tracks with the right bank account. Before she died on June 21, 1790, she vowed that she would return to Chatham Manor each year on the anniversary of her death. Many visitors to the manor have claimed to see the glowing lady in white. She is usually seen wearing a white period dress. She made her first appearance on her death. Legend claims that she actually appears every seventh year on June 21st. She is normally seen walking a path along the river and she seems to be looking or watching for someone.  

Fredericksburg has a history intertwined with the Antebellum period and the Civil War, which seems to feed the paranormal side of things. Are these locations in Fredericksburg haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 623 - Haunted Hanoverton, Ohio

This Month in History - Fold-Out Piano  (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

In the month of February, on the 18th, in 1935, the fold-out piano for invalids was debuted. The compact instrument was designed for bedridden patients. The piano extended towards the patient's hands, with the keyboard often slanted at an angle. One of the first models made an appearance at the British Industry Fair in 1935. These pianos were created to allow long term patients with limited mobility to play the instruments while lying down. Many of the patients that initially played the fold-out pianos were convalescing from polio. The design of the instruments was very unique. They looked like a traditional upright piano, but the keyboard portion would fold out and extend.  The base was situated at the foot of a patient's bed with the keyboard stretching all the way up to the players hands as they reclined on their pillow. Music can have a very soothing and therapeutic effect. We are certain that for many bed-bound patients, having access to a fold-out piano was cherished. Today we have much smaller piano options for patients to enjoy, but for the 1830s, the fold-away piano certainly was a wonderful invention. 

Haunted Hanoverton, Ohio (Suggested by: Anthony Wallace)

Hanoverton is a village in Ohio that is over 200 years old and has a deep connection to the canal systems. The village was a safe haven for runaway slaves and a thriving port. The most historic street in the town is Plymouth Street, which features many century homes and twenty-two buildings that date back to the very early years of the village. There are legends about a witch, haunted houses and a haunted tavern. Join us for the history and hauntings of Hanoverton, Ohio!

James Craig was a Quaker abolitionist when he arrived in the future Hanoverton, Ohio. Craig founded the village of Hanover in 1813 and named it for the city of the same name in East Pennsylvania. Incorporation would come in 1836. Major D.B. Douglas came through the area in 1828 to survey a new canal route and the Sandy and Beaver Canal was chartered that same year. This canal would wind its way from the Ohio River near Pittsburgh west through Hanoverton, to the Ohio and Erie Canal, which connected to Cleveland for seventy-three miles. The canal had a lock system with ninety locks and was completed in 1848. Construction took longer than expected due to the Panic of 1837 causing financial difficulties. The mid-section of it had lots of issues and fell into disrepair and eventually operations completely ceased in 1852. A lot of work for very little reward. The main downfall for the canal came when a dam outside of the nearby city of Lisbon failed and a big section of canal was ruined. But while the canal was running, commerce thrived for Hanoverton. Population in the village reached its peak in the late 1830's of 2,000 inhabitants. Not only did the village lose its canal system, but in 1854, the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad opened up, which bypassed Hanoverton. That was a death knell for the industry here and the boom was gone and people left. Even today, the village has a population below 400. There are several locations in town with legends and ghost stories.

Dr. Robertson's Home 

Dr. James Robertson's home is located at 10181 Plymouth Street and is the oldest home in Hanoverton. The original half-house was built in 1817 and today is three "Western Reserve Half Houses" with a total of six bedrooms and six baths. It has been taken down to its bare bones and rebuilt and found a new owner in 2020. Dr Robertson had come over from Scotland and he was the only doctor in the county, having settled in Hanoverton in 1823. James married Anna Eliza in 1827 and they had eight children. 

He had studied medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, but some of his medical training came at his own hands and he, uh, well you know, got into that grave robbing thing apparently, so he could practice. He would dig up bodies from the nearby cemetery and bring them up to the upper room of his home in the middle of the night. People say they see him in the window of that room and they have captured some weird images in the window. The house has a secret room that was discovered during renovations that is believed to have been part of the Underground Railroad because Dr. Robertson was an abolitionist. There are remnants of a tunnel passageway that connected the doctor's house to his brother-in-law George Sloan's "Brick Row" that was across the street. A canal boat would be used to whisk the runaway slave to safety in Canada. Visiting clergy would stay here and the house got the nickname "Presbyterian Minister's Hotel." It made sense that the home was inviting to clergy because the doctor's father had been a minister. The doctor died in 1868 at the age of 68 and was buried in the Grove Hill Cemetery. Everything we read about him revealed that he was a highly respected man who had a warm heart and sacrificed to bring the poor medical care. So even though he might have done a little grave robbing, he was a good man.

The Witch of Hanoverton 

And speaking of Grove Hill Cemetery, there is a legend of a witch buried here. Even though this is a small town, there are at least four cemeteries here. We couldn't find much information on its founding, but it is fairly large and very well kept. There are several legends connected to this woman who is named Christina Sloan. She is buried in the family plot at the cemetery and there used to be chains and medallions all around the family plot, supposedly as protection, and the last of these fell away in 2019. People claimed she would rattle the chains if you got too close. 

Christina's headstone reveals that she died at the age of 22. The stories about her claim that there were actually two Christinas in the family, a legitimate one and an illegitimate one. Obviously, the illegitimate Christina is supposed to be the witch. So, George Sloan was a man from Ireland and he settled in Hanoverton and worked in the local mercantile. He married Jessie Robertson in 1825 and they had five children, one of whom was Christina. Christina was beautiful and had many admirers. One of these men was the town's pastor who became quite taken with her and obsessed. When he confessed his feelings to her, she didn't reciprocate. He approached her a second time with the same results and this time he got very angry and told the townspeople that Christina was a witch and she was bewitching the men of Hanoverton. The townspeople formed a mob and they apprehended Christina so they could hang her and she threatened that she would return from the grave to get vengeance. They killed her, buried her in Grove Hill and put the chains and medallions up. Some people equate the towns boom turning to a bust and becoming a ghost town to Christina. But there is another story told about her. Her father George was said to be a man who had trouble with infidelity. He got a mistress pregnant who named the child Christina also. George never took responsibility for this illegitimate daughter and Christina grew up poor. She knew George was her father and she approached him one day looking for money. George didn't want to lose his good reputation and he hired a couple of Irish friends to threaten her and one thing lead to another and Christina ended up dead. George felt guilty and had her buried in the family plot without a marker. Are either of these stories true? Probably not. Some people believe that Christina died during the cholera epidemic that came through. It's hard to know because Christina's headstone has very little information on it. Ground penetrating radar has indicated that there is indeed an unmarked grave in the plot as well. So who knows, maybe the stories are true. Did these women possibly curse the town? 

Spread Eagle Tavern 

The Spread Eagle Tavern is located at 10150 Plymouth Street and is an inn and restaurant that has stood for over 180 years. Now, we aren't sure what the name meant back in the early 1800s, but it is a tad, um, unique in our modern day vernacular. LOL! 

A man named Will Rhodes built the tavern in 1837. I tried to find out more about this person and I hit a major wall. The only Will Rhodes I could find connected to this city was William P. Rhodes, the oldest son of Capt. John and Mary Jane Rhodes, but he was born on Sept. 6 1850. Capt. John's family was from Hanover County in Ohio and said to be early settlers there, but I couldn't find his father's name and he had no siblings named William. So I believe this Will Rhodes was connected to this very successful family in Savanna, Illinois and the strange thing is that William P. Rhodes does end up in Hanoverton where he marries Hattie Pearce on Sept. 7, 1887, who had been born in Hanoverton in 1863. I don't know if they lived in the town at all or just married there. The Rhodes mostly had their business in Illinois and Will eventually ends up in California where he dies. Anyway, whoever this Will Rhodes is, he has the tavern built by canal artisans who lost their jobs in the Bank Panic of 1837. Basically, they needed something to do and so they were put to work building the tavern. 

The architecture is Federal style, so its a large rectangle and was built from brick. Basically, it is architecturally boring. It has three stories, eleven rooms and twelve fireplaces. There was a really well known 18th century architect named Asher Benjamin and much of the design of the tavern was inspired from his pattern books, particularly interiors like the windows, raised paneling, intricately carved mantles, door casings, fluted column frames and raised linters above the front door and windows. 

There is a wood-framed saltbox that is next to the tavern and was built before the tavern. This was home to Hanover's Justice of the Peace. The next owners of the tavern were Oliver Perry Nicholas and his wife Susannah Zepernick. The couple had married in 1839 and had five children. Unfortunately, a disease epidemic hit in 1854 and killed Oliver and two of the couple's sons. The tavern started serving as a meeting place for the Sandy Valley Order of Free and Accepted Masons in 1863. They would gather on the third floor. By the late 1800s, the tavern had become a private home and it changed ownership through the years until Peter Johnson bought it at auction in 1988. At the time, Johnson had no idea of the history behind the building and he planned to use it as a guest house. He had regular visitors to his brick and tile manufacturing firm, Summitville Tiles, and he figured the tavern would be great for housing them since this was a remote area without lodgings. Peter researched the history and as he pieced it together, he decided to restore the building and mapped out a two-year plan. Peter's son David shares about the work his dad did, "The rooms were stripped down to the stud walls so we could rewire and replaster. Every piece of woodwork was removed, numbered, restored, and then replaced...My dad salvaged weathered beams, siding, hand blown window glass, and foundation stones from demolished area barns and incorporated them into the reconstruction of [the] outbuildings." those outbuildings included a smokehouse, livery, and country kitchen with walk-in fireplace hearth. The fireplaces have these neat tiles all around them that feature local historic scenes and these tiles were made by Summitville Tiles. The basement is absolutely amazing. Remember that rathskeller from the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville? Peter added a rathskeller to the basement with 12-foot vaulted ceilings made from bricks. These bricks came from a 190-year-old house. The dining space was expanded by taking down a wall between the tavern and an 1820s house that was next door. 

Peter put his wife Jean in charge of decorating the interiors and Jean wanted to wind back the clock and complement the history and architecture of the building. Jean asked for help from J. B. Ayers III and Paul Dolrea of Antiques & Interiors of Willoughby, Ohio. These antiques included old candlesticks, pewter ware, old photographs, historic documents, mirrors, reproductions and actual antiques and an original Revolutionary War flag.

The Johnsons decided to name the rooms and dining areas and bars for local or national historic figures. They wanted to honor the man who inspired the architecture so the parlor is named for Asher Benjamin. The bedrooms are named for Abraham Lincoln, George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dolley Madison. Marcus Hanna was a local industrialist who funded the presidential campaign of William McKinley and a room is named for him. Two dining rooms are named for Presidents McKinley and Taft because they were Ohio natives. Barbara Bush was the First Lady when the tavern reopened in October of 1990, so a dining room is named for her too. There is also the Patrick Henry Tavern Room. When Peter retired, David took on the business and the running of the inn. Today, the inn offers five rooms for rent and meals are served in the seven dining rooms. President Lincoln gave a speech in Hanoverton and he dined or stayed at the tavern. A bill for the event was uncovered about 20 years ago. President McKinley had also stayed here. 

The tavern is said to be quite haunted. David Johnson said, "It’s just incredible history. This is remarkable; every neighbor on this street has a ghost story." He pointed out that the village was a place that runaway slaves ran to and it is believed that the ghost of an escaped slave is here. There was also an 8-year-old girl who died in a fire back in the 1800s that is here. The General Manager of the inn, Mike Ellis said of the little girl's spirit, "She’s happy-go-lucky, running through here playing like she doesn’t even know she’s dead." He didn't believe in ghosts until he started working at the tavern. This child spirit likes to hang out mostly on the stairs. Her full-bodied apparition has been seen multiple times and visitors say that she had blonde hair. Guests also have heard the sound of a piano playing in the Rathskeller (basement) area. 

The most haunted room at the inn is the Jefferson room. Olevia Nichols was the daughter of Oliver and Susannah and so she lived at the tavern as they ran it and it is believed that this was here room. The story claims that she left for a time to New York City to try to become an actress. All stories claim that she failed at that, but some say that she met a man in NYC and they became engaged and then he left her, so she came back home to Ohio. Other versions claim that she came back to Ohio and then met a young man who became her fiance and then broke her heart. She went into a depression and lock herself into the Jefferson Room and hanged herself in there. But we're not sure about the veracity of that story since there is no proof about the suicide. She died in 1907 at either the age of 59 or 60 - there are only years on her very simple stone. She never did marry, so that part is true. But remember, her father and a couple siblings died in 1854, so we aren't sure she was still living at the tavern in 1907 when she died. People do think she has returned to the tavern to haunt it. Guests who stay in the Jefferson Room say that it feels very depressing and heavy in there. The water faucets turn on by themselves. People who are staying in the room below will hear noises above them when no one is in the room. These noises sound like some kind of party or gathering. A sad looking female apparition has been seen looking out of the window. Olevia likes to pull the covers off of people. She doesn't like men in her room and when they shower she will turn the water ice cold. A maid reported that she was cleaning the toilet when the shower came on full blast all by itself. Now, as a cleaning lady, that would piss me off if I had already cleaned the shower. 

Michaela wrote on her blog Madame Whip, "My best friends parents actually stayed on the third floor once and said that they were awoken around 3 a.m. to the sounds of furniture being dragged across the floor like someone was rearranging. They also had their covers pulled off of them and saw their doorknob turn multiple times with no one on the other side. They said that they did not believe in ghosts before that, but now they definitely do." She continued, "Around 3 a.m., the four of us descended into the dark tunnels for another whack at hearing something creepy. We sat in a circle, knee to knee, lights off, no phones and not saying a word.  My friend Ashley and I both closed our eyes so that we could intensify the concentration.  Next thing I know, I heard a mans voice that sounded like it was underwater. It was just one quick muffled sentence, but it was enough to freak me all the way out. The weirdest part? Ashley heard it too. At the same exact time. The other two in our group did not hear it, but our dramatic response to hearing this was enough to make us all go back upstairs.  We could not believe that we just heard this crazy noise at the same time.  It was just unreal to have the reassurance that I wasn't losing my marbles or hallucinating...We ran into the current manager of the inn and he wanted to know if we experienced anything. We told him about the creepy muffled voice that sounded like it was underwater. He looked a little shocked. He told us that where we were in the tunnels by the restrooms is where the most paranormal activity happens. These tunnels are not there for no reason, they were used for the underground railroad as well. He also mentioned that the canal actually ran through there at one point and flooded the place and apparently a slave had perished in the water. Oh my word. Coincidence or paranormal experience? I can never be 100% sure, but I know what I heard."  

A man who had stayed at the inn told YouTube's Curious History that he was lying in bed when he heard a knock on the closet door. He thought it was weird, but he knocked on the bedside table to see what would happen and sure enough, there were two knocks on the closet door in response. He knocked on the table again and got two more knocks. So he decided to stop. Curious History also shared a story from a former general manager who was in the building alone one night and he was in the basement and he felt this very strong and ominous presence near him, probably about five feet away. He was so scared to his core that he ran through the building and out to his car. He got in and called the owner to tell him that he couldn't go back into the building. This dark presence tends to hang out in the basement and people say its a former runaway slave. This was a beloved manager who had worked there for some time, but this was it for him. A server went downstairs one day and saw a tall man sitting at the bar all dressed in black with a tall hat on his head. She went back up and asked why someone was seated downstairs because no one was supposed to be down there yet. She was told that no one had been seated downstairs. Her reply was, "Yes, there is." A couple other employees joined her in going downstairs and no one was there. There was no way anyone could have come up without them seeing the person. The host himself has heard the piano in the basement play by itself.

There is a long history to this little village, especially in regards to the Spread Eagle Tavern. Are these locations in Hanoverton haunted and is the legend of a witch true? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 622 - Nemacolin Castle

Moment in Oddity - Robert Liston, Fastest Knife in the West End (Suggested by: Jared Rang)

Anesthesia was first used during surgery in October of 1846. Prior to that, patients would often go into shock during surgery if it were not performed quickly enough. Blood loss was also increased if the surgery was not performed fast. A legendary Scottish surgeon, Robert Liston, was known as "The Fastest Knife in the West End", due to his incredible speed while performing amputations. He was famous for being able to perform leg amputations in under 30 seconds. Prior to beginning the amputations, he was well known for saying, "Time me, gentlemen". Robert Liston was a pioneer in his field, becoming the first Professor of Clinical Surgery in Europe. He performed Europe's first public surgery under anesthesia on December 21st, 1846. Due to Robert Liston's desire for speed during surgery, he did have a few mishaps. During a leg amputation, Liston reportedly removed the patient's testicles inadvertently. He also was infamously known for a speed surgery that he performed which resulted in a 300% mortality rate. How could this be, you ask? Well, during the amputation of a patient's leg, Liston accidentally cut his assistants fingers which lead to infection and the assistants death. The amputee patient also died of gangrene. And a nearby witness to the surgery suddenly believed he had been stabbed during the surgery and is said to have died from shock, most likely, a heart attack. Some accounts label this story as fabricated, but regardless, in today's day and age, the thought of speed surgeries and amputations, certainly are odd.

Nemacolin Castle (Neem ah colon)

The Nemacolin Castle is also known as the Bowman's Castle and is found in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. While the mansion itself dates back to the Victorian era, there are things on the property that go back even further than that with remnants from the former Fort Burd here and even before that from indigenous people. The Bowman family built the castle and three generations lived here before it became the museum it is today. There are claims that nearly a dozen ghosts haunt the property. Join us for the history and hauntings of Nemacolin Castle.  

The site where the castle would end up being built was prime real estate for the indigenous tribes near the Brownsville area. They left behind earthwork mounds, one of which was named Redstone Old Fort by the colonists who settled here. Brownsville became a gateway for westward expansion particularly because of its location near the Monongahela (muh·naang·guh·hee·luh) River. The name means "falling banks." Before the French and Indian War in the 1750s, the land was popular hunting grounds, but people weren't living here. The area was long reported as being empty and unpopulated when the indigenous people left. The Ohio Company of Virginia began a survey of the region in 1749 with a goal of bringing 1,000 families to the future Brownsville. The guide for the group was a Native American named Nemacolin. In 1759, Fort Burd was built on the future site of the castle, which was a high bluff above the Monongahela (muh·naang·guh·hee·luh) River, and named for Colonel James Burd who was the British officer that ordered the building of the fort. Burd is credited with fortifying the Pennsylvania frontier. Before we get into talking about the castle property, the city of Brownsville has had a rough time of it. The Rust Belt suffered greatly after the industrial economy failed. Brownsville was a port town that built keel boats and steamers and then the steel and iron industry was here and eventually there was coal mining. When all of this went away, the town's population diminished and the downtown area was practically abandoned. Revitalization has only begun just a few years ago. We imagine that many of the location could be haunted just from being abandoned. A lot of great buildings had to be demolished because they fell into such ruin. Some of the interesting location here that still exist include the following. The Dunlaps Creek Bridge was the first cast iron bridge built in the United States and this was from 1836 to 1839. The Historic Saint Peter's Church was built in 1843 in the Gothic Revival style and was the first Catholic parish in Fayette County and is the oldest continuously operating parish in Western Pennsylvania. The Flatiron Building was built in 1830 and is one of the oldest, most intact iron commercial structures west of the Allegheny Mountains. Another historic home in the town is the Thomas H. Thompson House, also known as Wayside Manor, which was built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style in 1906. The house has a hipped roof with red Spanish tile, carved stone detailing and dormers on three sides of the roof. There is also a carriage house on the property dating to 1917. 

In 1783, John Bowman arrived in the future Brownsville and worked as a merchant and built a home. He was followed by his brother Jacob Bowman in 1786. Jacob was in the employ of a man named Robert Elliot who bought the first lot in Brownsville. Elliot bought that plot from Thomas Brown who was platting out the city that would be named for him, Brownsville. Jacob's parents had originally come to America from Germany. He was born in Hagerstown, Maryland in 1763 and then he came to Brownsville.

In 1788, Jacob purchased the first parcel of land where the castle was built shortly after the American Revolutionary War from a man named William Lynn. Jacob built a trading post with a space above it for him to live, which was a perfect location because it was located at the Redstone Creek river crossing. This location near the river made Brownsville the perfect place for building flatboats for travelers and traders on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This was a terminus for the Nemacolin's Trail. The first wagon load of merchandise for the trading post arrived from over the mountains on Cumberland Road in 1789. The following year, Jacob had enough money to buy a half lot next to the parcel he had already bought. Jacob had learned the mercantile business from his former employer Robert Elliot and Elliot went on to set up a string of trading posts with another partner named Colonel Eli Williams. And we bring that up because it leads into this interesting tidbit. Remember how we have talked about General "Mad Anthony" Wayne on other episodes? Well, Colonel Williams was carrying supplies to General Wayne in 1794 when Native Americans killed him on the way. The first nail factory west of the Alleghenies was started by Jacob in 1795. With the original trading post, Jacob had built a log addition that served as a kitchen and then in 1805, he rebuilt the kitchen out of stone. This is referred to as the trading post room at the museum today. The interior has a large fireplace that was used for cooking. The Nemacolin Castle is clearly a hodgepodge of different designs and materials and that is because this started out as that trading post and then the Bowmans added to it over the years as it became the large home it is today. The name Nemacolin Castle really fits because the mansion resembles a castle with a prominent front tower topped with a crenellated parapet and a battlement running alongside it. The site still holds part of Fort Burd, the well that was dug by the soldiers who served there. There is still water down in the well and it can be seen at the museum. The name Nemacolin for the castle came from the Lenape chief Nemacolin who helped to improve and mark the ancient Native American trail through the Alleghenies known as Nemocolin's Trail. 

The mansion was built up to three stories out of stone in 1822. Jacob married Isabel Lowry in 1787 and the couple had nine children, five daughters and four sons. Jacob had been the first president of the bank and his sons James and Goodloe followed in those footsteps. Another son named Nelson was a cashier and director at the bank. His son William became an Episcopal minister and Rector at Grace Church. The daughters were Mary, Anna, Louisa, Matilda and Harriet. Jacob died in 1847 and he left the house to his son Nelson. 

Nelson had married Elizabeth Dunn in 1856 and they had six children, but only two survived to adulthood. The couple added the east wing of the house, updated the nursery from a colonial style to Victorian style and added the brick tower that gave the house its castle appearance. As a matter, starting in 1859, local books refer to the house as being fort-like with a castle-like residence. Nelson died in 1892 and the obituary said he lived in a "castle shaped house." Charles Bowman was one of Nelson's sons and he inherited the house. He had been born in 1867 and lived his entire live at the Bowman Castle. He served as a Justice of the Peace in the area for many years and married Lelia Jacobs in 1897 and they had two sons. Charles and Lelia redecorated the drawing room, library, sitting room and other parts of the house. The couple enjoyed throwing extravagant parties in the house during the Roaring 20s. Charles died in 1945 and Lelia continued to live in the house until her death in 1959. The family decided that it would be best to turn the home into a museum and they hire Esther Brain to run it. Esther restored parts of the house and made some changes. In 1961, the Brownsville Historical Society formed and they leased the castle from the family. Charles Bowman Jr. died in 1962 and the house was put on the market after that. Fayette County ended up purchasing the house in 1965. The house was designated as a National Historic Site in 1975 and got some much needed funds to replace the roof and do extensive renovations. The balconies would be restored in 1986. The house really has been meticulously refurbished and features 22 rooms with gorgeous and unique fireplaces and mantles, colored glass, marble sinks, carved wood and hand-hewn beams. The Brownsville Historical Society manages the museum.

Many of the items in the house have been in the Bowman family for years and were donated to the museum. Other interesting items have also been added. One of mine and Diane's favorite things about visiting these old homes that are now museums are all the antiques that can be found inside and we always manage to run across some new things we haven't seen before. We did a virtual tour of the castle and added some more of these to our list. 

They have the original plate that Jacob brought with him and ate off of, as well as a folding chair that came apart for easy transport. They also have Jacob's original postmaster desk that is 260 years old and it has slots for keeping people's mail. The house holds many unique features including a chimney cupboard that got that name because this is a type of closet that is the size of a chimney, so the family wouldn't have to pay that extra room tax. There is also a one-spring horse and a child would sit on it and instead of rocking, they would bounce on it and it would scoot across the floor. This had real hair from a horse for the mane and the saddle on it was made from real leather. This particular toy is in great shape and even made an appearance on American Pickers. They have a Ben Franklin stove, which worked better than a fireplace because it kept the heat in the room rather than sending it up a chimney. The Bowmans brought some superstitions with them from Germany and one of those was that it was good luck to have a squirrel in the house, so they have a squirrel cage and there was an early form of a running wheel too. Later generations did a lot of traveling and they brought back many pieces of furniture and decorative items from Italy and France.

The town of Brownsville practically became a ghost town like many old towns in the Rust Belt. As industrial things like steel and coal left the region, so did the people. Many of the buildings in the downtown area were abandoned and fell into decay, but the town is striving to bring itself back and people coming to Nemacolin Castle are helping to do that. And that includes people coming for the ghosts at the castle. 

Paranormal claims have been made about the castle for many years and these include EVPs captured, the sound of disembodied footsteps and actual apparitions. The balcony doors have multiple locks and they are found open many times after they have been locked up tight. People claim to have identified ten distinct spirits here. Obviously, Jacob Bowman was very attached to this property and he is most often seen in the library of the home. His name has also been heard audibly by someone yelling it. Another spirit here is said to be Mary Bowman. Now, Jacob's daughter Mary lived to be 63 and this spirit seems to belong to a younger person. It's possible that Mary returned as a younger version of herself, but the Bowmans did lose four children before adulthood, so this spirit could belong to any one of them.  

A ghost dog is in the castle and one paranormal investigation group reported what felt like a dog nuzzling or pushing against a wrist in the nursery. The nursery seems to be the dog's favorite spot, but it has also been seen in the hallways. Amos was an indentured servant that worked for the Bowmans and he is said to walk the hallways. 

Nelson Bowman, who inherited the castle from his father Jacob, is said to haunt the library just like his father. Elizabeth Bowman, his wife, is also here in the afterlife and is seen often wearing a white dress and will run and scream down the hallways. The spirits of two little girls like to play hide and seek with investigators and hang out mostly in the nursery. One story claims that security sensors inside went off one night and when the police arrived, they saw a little girl looking down on them from a window. After they entered the castle, they found no one inside. The Lady of the Hall is seen wearing a dark colored Victorian dress with her hair pulled back and she is usually in the second-floor hallway. An elderly old woman's spirit has been encountered in the servant's quarters and so it is thought that this had been a servant to the family. Often, investigators feel as though their chest is tightening and they have trouble breathing in this space and it has been surmised that this ghost died from some kind of breathing issue like tuberculosis. The ghost is seen wearing a dark purple dress. 

The castle was featured on the Bio Channel TV show "My Ghost Story." Ghosts N'at did an investigation there in 2020 and they caught a knocking on their recorder and then and EVP right after saying, "I'm knocking." Arstatler did a ghost hunt in 2015 and wrote on TripAdvisor, "We did have some experiences to add to our ghost hunting adventures: voices, the piano playing by itself, and the always eerie feelings that occur. But aside from the ghost hunt, the place is just a wonderful historical site to visit." femmeforce wrote on reddit, "I've had many EVP's, creepy spirit box responses, and what appears to be a dark mist going down the hall. I cannot explain that so I keep going back."

JEB did a ghost hunt in 2017 and wrote on TripAdvisor, "Went to Nemacolin Castle on Feb 18th 2017 didn't know what to expect. Turned out to be a good night, Renee Kruse was Awesome with history of the property and her personal ghost stories of 15 yrs. Night started out slow but picked up quickly, had activity in the nursery with Mary. And the next room where Mr. Bowman bedroom was, someone saw a shadow figure on the mirror. Found artificial flowers in 2 doorways, got evp's from bishop's room. Heard footsteps and knocks in the bachelor room, also got words from the ovulus as affair and couple of names. When walking out of nursery sounded a pebble was thrown in my direction, nothing to be found. While checking my pictures got images of a woman in 2nd floor hallway twice. And a picture of a shadow figure in the nursery of a child, a woman with me heard her name called twice on the spirit box. Overall a good night." A couple years ago, the director from the castle was out walking his dog in the snow at night. He glanced up at the castle while he waited for his dog to do its business and he saw a young 20-something woman with dark hair looking out of a window at him. She faded away behind the curtain. He saw that there were no cars parked outside the castle, so there should be no one inside the house. The only footprints in the snow outside were his and his dog's. He called for another director to come out and they both searched the house to no avail. It had been locked up tight and no one was inside. Flash forward a few weeks and this same director was cleaning in the castle during the off season. He got to the library 
and he glanced at the portrait of Anne Bowman on the wall and he recognized her as the woman he had seen looking out the window. 

 Brownsville is starting its comeback and one of the key places helping with that is the Nemacolin Castle. There is no better example of the changes that have come to this area than this actual house, which unbelievably, was kept in the possession of just one family until it became a public venue. Is this why so many spirits have remained with the house? Is the Nemacolin Castle haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 621 Haunted Sydney, Nova Scotia

This Month in History - National Bird Day (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

In the month of January, on the 5th, every year since 2002, the United States has celebrated National Bird Day. This annual observance focuses on bird conservation and appreciating avian wildlife through activities like birdwatching, education, and improving habitats. This year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City posted an interesting bird related article to commemorate the date. The topic was about a rock crystal figurine from Nuremberg, Germany that dated to the 1500s. This figurine featured a pigeon with ruby eyes and silver guilded legs and collar. The Met article posed a very interesting question: "How many cows would this statue be worth in the 1550s?" Now, of course, this sounds like a preposterous question in 2026, but cows had a very high value at that time. One cow at that time was worth approximately 175 grams of silver. The answer to the question was that the little statuary was more than likely valued at roughly 275 cows. As for the value of seeing a bird that you haven't seen before and can now add to your life list - and surely you must have a birding life list - that is priceless!

Haunted Sydney, Nova Scotia

Sydney, Nova Scotia's historic North End has a haunted reputation. Many of the buildings here have stood for more than 100 years and a handful are now museums. The Cossit House is one of the oldest houses on Cape Breton Island and haunted by its former occupants. The same is true with the Jost House. There are also a couple of haunted churches of all things. And the nearby Fortress of Louisbourg endured a couple of sieges and is today a National Historic site with several ghosts. Join us for the history and hauntings of Sydney, Nova Scotia. 

The British founded the city of Sydney in 1785 on the east coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.  Today, it has been absorbed into the regional municipality, but it once was the colonial capital of Cape Breton Island. The capital moved to Halifax - a location we covered in Ep. 423. Sydney was named in honor of Thomas Townshend who was the 1st Viscount Sydney. He was serving as the Home Secretary in the British cabinet at the time. The city was incorporated in 1885. Beginning in the 20th century, the region's biggest employer would be the steel industry and Sydney would be the base of North America's main steel mills. That steel would eventually nationalize and the population of the city would shrink and today tourism is its top industry and cruise ship facilities were constructed. Fun Fact: The world's largest fiddle is here on the waterfront. And there are several haunted locations in the city that we are going to explore. There is a historic murder case that took place in North Sydney. John Flahaven was killed in the early morning hours of October 16, 1832 by two English sailors. These sailors were Reuban Easman and William Johnston and they had taken shelter in the Flahaven's barn. While the men were there, John's wife Charlotte became taken with Johnston and the two had an affair. The couple decided that John needed to go, so Reuban and William devised a plan. They let one loose one of the Flahaven's cows and when John went out to retrieve it, the men were waiting in ambush for him. The murder was discovered because the men did a bad job of burying the body and left a hand sticking up out of the ground. The three were arrested and found guilty of the murder and sentenced to be hanged. They were kept at a jail that is now the basement of a private home at 25 Charlotte Street. Their spirits are thought to still be down in that basement and thre are some people who claim they haunt the whole neighborhood because wood that was used to build some of the houses was actually used to build the gallows that were at Victoria Park first.  

Cossit House Museum (Suggested by: Stephen Weiss)

The Cossit House was built in 1787 by Reverend Ranna (Rene) Cossit for his family. Cossit had actually been born in Connecticut to a French family that came to America in the early 1700s. He decided to go into ministry and was ordained in 1773 and he married Thankful Brooks from New Hampshire. The couple decided to settle in New Hampshire and they had seven children there. They would add six more later. 

Despite being loyal to the British, the Cossits remained in New Hampshire during the American Revolution. In 1785, Rev. Cossit was offered a ministry position in Sydney and he moved his family there in June of 1786. No parsonage was offered to him and that is why he ended up building the house at his own expense. And he also had to build the church, which wasn't finished until 1805. The British government did cough up 500 pounds for the church. The house was pretty big for the time and designed in the Neoclassical Georgian architectural style. This was a one-and-one-half story wood home built from local timbers with a rubble stone foundation and gabled roof. The interior was a central hallway plan. After years of ongoing political conflict that Cossit found himself in the middle of, he resigned from the Sydney mission in July 1805. He moved onto an appointment to Yarmouth and that is where he died in 1815. His wife Thankful had preceded him in death in 1802 while giving birth to their thirteenth child. A John Lorway bought the house in 1826 and then the Cossit House passed through various owners through the years. The Old Sydney Society partnered with the Nova Scotia Museum and the Provincial Government and they refurbished and staged the house as it would have been in the late 1700s and opened as a museum in 1977.  In 2008, the entire area around the house became part of a Heritage Conservation District, which includes a seven block area with 100 buildings.

There are claims that the house is haunted. Reverand Cossit liked to smoke a pipe and people catch the scent of pipe tobacco. Female visitors have often also reported the feeling of a little hand grabbing their hand. Cold drafts is another claim, especially near the stiarway. Suffling footsteps and laughing and giggling from upstairs have also been heard. 

Old Sydney Society employee Breagh MacDermid had said she had a unique experience with a medium when in the Cossit House. She told the Saltwire website, "A medium came from off the ship and she started crying when we went into the kitchen. She actually started speaking to me as if she was Thankful Cossitt and she kept crying and telling me how sad she was and stuff like that. I couldn’t stop thinking about it — I still can’t stop thinking about it, a week later. It was so sad and so heartbreaking." Haunts From The Cape investigated in 2017 and they reported, "Last year, with the help of Joyce Rankin of the Old Sydney Society, we encountered a negative force that wanted us to leave. The more we pushed it, the angrier the responses got." They have a video on YouTube and indeed the Spirit Box says to "leave" and they ask why they should leave and the answer is "not safe" and when they ask if they are making them uncomfortable, there was a clear "yes." 

Jost House Museum

The Jost House is one of the oldest wooden structures in Sydney and was built in 1786 in the Neoclassical style. The house was similar to the Cossit House in that it was also one-and-a-half stories and had a gable roof. In 1900, the roof was raised and changed to a low pitch roof to increase the number of bedrooms. There were two chimneys, with one servicing three fireplaces including a beehive oven in the basement. 

Sparrow only lived here until 1787. The next owner was Halifax merchant Thomas Jost, for whom the house is named. He bought the property in 1836 and the house stayed in the Jost family until 1971. Jost opened a general store in a corner room of the house, which was open until 1850. Then he opened a new store behind the house and Jost was considered one of the more important businessmen in the city of Sydney. The Old Sydney Society bought the house in 1991 and they restored it and opened it as a museum with artifacts from the Jost family and other collections put together by prominent Cape Bretoners like Dr. J. Esmonde Cooke’s collection in our Apothecary room featuring an assortment of medicinals and apparatus used in the making of medicine in the early 20th century. The Marine room reflects the maritime heritage of the city. There have been several ghosts spotted here, including a little boy in the basement. He is mischievous and once stole an earring from an employee and he locked another employee in a cabinet. A woman in blue has been seen on the staircase and people think that this is Joan Harris who was a well loved in the town that helped develop cruise ship visits to the town and who is primarily responsible for the museum's creation. Two women haunt the upstairs Victorian Room. Books have gone flying off of shelving.

St. Patrick's Church Museum

St. Patrick’s Church was founded as a Roman Catholic Church in 1828. A balcony was added in 1850 to help with the growth of the population, but eventually, a new church ha to be built. A Lebanese group took over the church and worshipped there until 1950 and then the Old Sydney Society took over the church and began restoring it in 1966. They reopened it as a museum. 

St. Patrick's Church Museum has a market bell hanging on the museum's first floor and legend claims that if the bell rings three times, the door to the upstairs belfry will open on its own. Old Sydney Society employee Breagh MacDermid told the Saltwire website, "There is a ghost at St. Patrick’s but he’s pretty jolly. All he’ll do is run across the balcony and then if you ring the market bell three times, he’ll open the belfry door. A lot of people like to do that on the tour and he almost always does." 

St. George's Church 

St. George's Anglican Church is the oldest building on Cape Breton Island and was built in 1785. The church was originally a small stone building in the Gothic Revival style with three circular windows on two sides. In 1853, a chancel and vestry were added, but just a few years later it was decided to rebuild the church, so it was torn down to its foundation. It was built again in the Gothic Revival style and the windows were changed to a pointed style and made from stained glass. A stone tower and spire were added in 1888. The interior has wall-hung headstones, memorial tablets, memorial stained-glass windows and a Casavant organ. The grave markers in the cemetery are made from limestone and sandstone. The church received a Royal Pew in 1854 meaning that it was an official place of worship for members of the Royal Family. 

Even though it is a church, this is said to be the most haunted location in Sydney. The local ghost tour always makes sure to stop by the graveyard. The legend connected to the church claims that a male ghost wanders the cemetery, especially at night. He is referred to as the pacing apparition. It is believed he is searching for a final resting place next to his family as he was denied burial here because he had committed a monstrous crime.  

Fortress Louisbourg 

The French were the first Europeans to settle Cape Breton Island. In 1713, they built a naval support base in the harbor, which they quickly abandoned after it froze over. They chose another spot for a new winter port that was well protected and free of ice and they called it Havre Louisbourg (Av-ruh Loo-ee-boor) after King Louis XIV.This fishing port became a major commercial port and fortifications were built around the town totaling two-and-a-half miles of wall. Four gates granted access to the town. The Fortress of Louisbourg wasn't very strong as it was built on a low-lying area and all its defenses were to the sea, so there was no protection for land assaults. The finest hospital in North America was here in the 1700s. During the War of Austrian Succession in 1745, the British beseiged the harbor and captured it, but they returned it to the French after the war. Around 500 British and colonial forces and approximately 300 French troops were killed or wounded during that siege. The French and Indian War began after several skirmishes between the French and American colonists escalated. That war broadened into the Seven Years' War and the British again laid siege to Louisbourg in 1758. This lasted for six weeks before the French surrendered with 172 British killed and 300 wounded and an unknown amount of French casualties. The British took over the fortress and launched the Siege of Quebec from there. The French soldiers and inhabitants were sent back to France and then the British began demolishing the town. The process took six years. The British kept a garrison at Louisbourg until 1768. For more than 150 years, the site remained rough and mostly forgotten.

In 1920, the fortress became a National Historic Site. The Canadian government undertook a massive restoration effort in 1961 to recreate Louisbourg as it had been in 1744. Sixty buildings were built and also two bastions. One of these reconstructed buildings was the Military Chapel. The site is operated by Parks Canada and offers self-guided and guided tours, demonstrations and re-enactors.

Many battles were fought here and many lived were lost, so its not surprising that there are rumors of hauntings. There are bodies still buried in the ground in places. A couple who was staying overnight on the grounds one night, fled in the middle of the night because they had become so scared. There are tunnels on the property where apparitions have been seen and EVPs have been recorded. People have also been pushed by unseen forces. One of the most seen ghosts is a French soldier who seems to be on patrol near the ​King's Bastion​, usually on foggy nights and his uniform seems to be ragged and he seems to be very sad. A young drummer boy was killed during a battle and the sounds of drumming is sometimes heard. There is a White Lady here as well. Visitors and staff tend to see her around dusk walking the ramparts and she sometimes wails. People assume that she had been the wife of a soldier or officer who had died at the fortress. 

The Lartigue House was owned by Joseph Lartigue and his Basque wife Jeanne. They came with the first settlers from Newfoundland and Joseph worked as a fisherman and trader, but eventually he worked in public office, serving on the Superior Council and then as town magistrate. They built the house in 1734 on a rubblestone foundation with a timberframe. Part of the house was used as a courtroom. The couple raised twelve children in the house. Jeanne stayed on in the house until her death in 1763, so she was there for the founding and the fall. There are claims that disembodied footsteps are heard upstairs.

The Duhaget Property was owned by garrison officer Robert Tarride Duhaget who had been born in the south of France. The house was built in 1737 with beveled board siding. Robert married Marguerite Rousseau de Villejouin and the couple hoped to fill their large home with children, but they remained childless. Duhagets health failed in 1757 and he returned to France where he died. Staff report seeing shadow figures on the stairs. One time, someone tripped on the stairs and was falling when an unseen force propped them back up so they didn't fall. A presence at the house has been talked about for 50 years. Fortress of Louisbourg events co-ordinator Kyle Allen, told the saltwire website, "There was one year with the curatorial department and I was one of the people that was responsible for setting up and dismantling the period displays and things like that during the spring and winter. I was working in the Duhaget residence hanging a curtain on the second floor and I clearly heard footsteps in the attic. I looked up the stairs and the padlock was on the one door that leads into the attic so nobody could have been in there, but it was clearly footsteps."

Michel Rodrigue was a seaman who sailed up the Saint Lawrence with French and West Indian goods to trade for flour and vegetables in other parts of Canada in the 1730s. He raised five children in the home with his wife Marguerite, who was the daughter of Joseph Lartigue. He lead a militia during the Siege of 1745 and after the town fell, he went back to France. Troy Allen was a longtime employee and he was once in the Rodrigue property closing up the building and making sure no one was inside when he looked out a window to the building across the street and there was a face staring at him from a window. He proceeded to the next window and when he looked at that window the same face was still across the street staring directly back at the same spot he had just been previously in the proceeding window. 

The Military Chapel was a central religious building within the King's Bastion and featured the patron of St. Louis IX. Governor Duquesnel was buried in the chapel. Barracks were also inside and government functions were carried out here as it was the most fortified part of the fortress. A psychic in the chapel once sensed negative energy in the attic of the chapel and an investigator's camera died inexplicably. Kyle Allen told a story about an experience his father had here. He said, "Another story, my father worked here in the ’70s and ’80s. In the 1970s, our military chapel burnt due to an electrical fire and he was cleaning out the smoke and soot damage out of the rooms adjacent to the chapel. He was cleaning out one room, moving everything into another room, cleaning that one, moving it all back. At one point, he sees this ball of beeswax floating into the next room. So he thought the smoke had gotten to him, went outside, found another staff person and they went back up. Here in the room that he was cleaning, you could clearly see on the table the outline of the beeswax because there was no soot underneath where the beeswax was sitting. Forty feet away is where the beeswax was sitting on another table. They lifted it up, nothing but soot underneath the other table where it ended up, and the only mark on the beeswax was where they had just touched it. So there’s always things that are unexplained." Unexplained knocks and bangs are often heard.

Sydney is the largest urban area on Cape Breton and the heart of the waterfront. This has become a popular cruise ship stop and tourist destination and if you are into ghosts, this would be a great spot for it. Lots of old buildings with unexplained activity inside possibly. Is the city of Sydney in Nova Scotia haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 620 - Haunted Gainesville, Georgia

Moment in Oddity - Bumpy Snailfish (Suggested by: Ruth Dempsey)

Many strange creatures lurk in the deepest depths of our oceans, many of them, yet to be discovered. In March of 2019, off the central coast of California, a new and dare-I-say adorable species of fish was discovered. The Careproctus colliculi, or common name bumpy snailfish, is a deep sea dweller in the Pacific ocean. Ruth aptly nicknamed the little guy, the 'Old Man of the Sea'. Bumpy snailfish measure in at only about 4 inches in length. They are a pale pink hue with large eyes and wide pectoral fins. Their appearance is likened to a bumpy bald headed little old man with a beard. They live at depths of over 10,000 feet. It took several years of detailed studies including DNA sequencing, CT scans and morphological comparisons in the laboratory, to ensure that the bumpy snailfish was previously unknown to science. In August of 2025, the findings were published in the journal of Ichthyology & Herpetology. If you recall a prior oddity on the blobfish, this species is considerably more cute, but it also certainly is odd.

Haunted Gainesville, Georgia (Suggested by: Veronica Martin) Synchronicity

The city of Gainesville is in the northern part of the state of Georgia and was in the heart of the Georgia Gold Rush. Yes, Georgia had a Gold Rush. This fueled the early growth of the city, but eventually textile mills and the poultry industry would drive the local economy. Several of the historic buildings in town have ghost stories attached to them. Join us for the history and hauntings of Gainesville, Georgia!

Gainesville is the county seat of Hill County in northern Georgia. European settlers arrived in the early 1800s and they named their settlement "Mule Camp Springs." On April 21, 1821, the name changed to Gainesville in honor of a war hero from the War of 1812, General Edmund P. Gaines. Gaines was also known for his road building and surveying. A few months later, Gainesville was selected as the county seat. the town stayed relatively small until gold was found in Lumpkin County in 1829. Georgia is definitely not a state that comes up when talking gold rush, but the Georgia Gold Rush was the second significant gold rush in the United States. This rush spread through the North Georgia mountains and lasted until the early 1840s. Then the gold miners headed off to California for the gold rush there in 1848. There are multiple stories as to how and when the gold was discovered including an indigenous man finding a gold nugget in 1815, a man named Thomas Bowen found gold in the roots of a blown over tree at Dukes Creek, a Frank Logan and his enslaved man found gold at Dukes Creek, John Witherood found a three-ounce gold nugget at Dukes Creek and on it goes. Clearly, Dukes Creek definitely plays some part in the beginning of the gold rush. It is estimated that Georgia produced about 870,000 troy ounces or 27060024.8 grams of gold between 1828 and the mid-20th century. With this rush, people and business moved into Gainesville. The springs here also turned this into a resort destination in 1849. Things were great until a fire ripped through in 1851 and destroyed much of the city. The Atlanta and Richmond Air-Line Railway arrived in 1871 and this helped to regrow the city. Textile mills were built in the 1890s and these would be the primary economic driver, particularly with cotton. After World War II, a businessman named Jesse Jewell started the poultry industry in north Georgia and Gainesville has even earned the moniker "Poultry Capital of the World." Fun Fact: Tulsa King has filmed some scenes in Gainesville, Georgia. The historic Hall County Courthouse Annex provided an authentic backdrop for several scenes. 

Not only did Gainesville have the deadly fire in 1851, but the 5th deadliest tornado in United States history hit here on April 6, 1936 and injured 1600 people and killed 203. The storm spawned 17 other tornadoes across the south. There were actually two F4 tornadoes that tore through the business district, setting off fires, one of which killed 70 employees at the Cooper Pants manufacturing company. The factory had been here since 1893 and the flames trapped 125 employees who were mostly young women. The death toll of 70 in the collapse and fire is the highest in a single building ever hit by a tornado. The factory wasn't rebuilt. Wreckage from the tornadoes was piled to 10 feet in some places. President Franklin Roosevelt toured the damage three days later and returned to rededicate the courthouse and city hall that had been destroyed by the tornadoes. But this wasn't the only time the town was hit with a tornado. There was a deadly tornado in January 1903 that killed more than 100 people. We'll talk about that a bit later.  

Blackstrap Rock Hall 

Gainesville has a ghost tour, meaning we have some ghosts in this city! It's no wonder with the tragedies that have occurred in the city. The ghost tour begins and ends at Blackstrap Rock Hall because they are the ones that came up with the idea. Blackstrap Rock Hall is a fairly new venue, having just opened in May of 2023. It is located at 852 Main Street and hosts live shows and even caters to student musicians through Let There Be Rock. They feature live rock music - no DJ stuff - and this includes heavy metal, punk, goth, alternative or grunge. There are rehearsal suites in the back that bands can rent for practicing. Their grand opening was right up our alley with handmade art, music and horror memorabilia, taxidermy, oddities, clothing and records hard to come by at "your typical flea market." There's not much out there on the history of the building. Diane did find that before Blackstrap was here, this was Southern Safety Supply.

An apparition has been seen in period clothing going inside the green room and then exiting the green room. And we have a bathroom ghost here as well, only this time it's the men's room. This spirit presents as some kind of force holding the restroom door closed. Tour guide Ryan Cadaver said, "I’ve been locked in there once myself and it feels as if you’re pushing against the weight of a person leaning against the door. We changed the locks on the door, but we still get calls to this day with people saying they are locked in the bathroom." There is never anyone leaning on or holding the door closed.

Piedmont Hotel

General James Longstreet has a strong presence in Gainesville. He was a controversial figure, being that he was General Robert E. Lee's trusted advisor. Longstreet was born in South Carolina, but spent much of his childhood in Augusta, Georgia. His uncle, who lived in Augusta, was a fervent supporter of states rights and this became extremely important to him as well. He attended West Point, where he became friends with Ulysses S. Grant, and the two men fought together in the Mexican War. When the Civil War started, Longstreet was serving in the New Mexico territory and he quickly resigned and took an appointment as Brigadier General for the Confederacy. General Lee wrote after Longstreet foiled the Union attempt to seize Richmond that "Longstreet was the staff in my right hand." Interestingly, when the war ended, Longstreet and Lee parted ways on April 12, 1865 and never spoke to each other again. Longstreet moved to New Orleans for a time. His reputation got better in the North as he wrote in support of Republicans and Grant gave him a pardon and nominated him to be the Surveyor of Customs for the Port of New Orleans. The South deemed him a scalawag. Longstreet moved to Gainesville in 1875 where he bought a farm. His wife died in 1889 and he married his second wife, who was 34-year-old Helen Dortch in 1897. He was 76 at the time, but in defense of this being a legit thing, Helen did defend Longstreet's name until she died in 1962. He passed away in 1904 and is buried at Alta Vista Cemetery in Gainesville. 

Longstreet had a strong presence in Gainesville. He served as the postmaster for a time and bought and ran the Piedmont Hotel. With the railroad coming to town in 1871, it made sense to build hotels. A man named Alvah Smith bought the property where the Piedmont Hotel stands in 1873. This was a spot strategically close to the railway stop. Smith struggled financially, so it was slow going for building the hotel. By 1875, construction came to a grinding halt because of several liens filed against him. The largest of these was filed by his own sister. He needed a partner, and fast, and that would be General Longstreet.

The agreement that the men came to was for Longstreet to buy a half interest in the hotel for $6,000. Smith told the General that this would settle the liens and get the hotel finished. Then both men would operate the hotel until Smith was able to buy back, with interest, the half that Longstreet bought. Smith was really bad with money. Not only did the $6,000 not cover the outstanding debts, but there was no way to restart construction. So Smith signed the whole hotel over to Longstreet and the General took over the remaining debt. Construction resumed and was finally completed in 1876. The General put his son, John Garland Longstreet, and his wife, Maria Louisa, in charge of managing the business. Although Longstreet remained actively involved until his death in 1904. The hotel was three stories tall with wrap around verandas on all three levels. There was a kitchen and dining room and privy. There were also stables on the grounds. This was a really fine establishment for the time. And it was the perfect place for Longstreet to run his political life through, which not included him being postmaster for the city, but he also was Ambassador to Turkey, US Commissioner of Railroads and US Marshal for the Northern District of Georgia. Many notable people came through the hotel including the author of Uncle Remus Tales, Joel Chandler Harris, Confederate Generals Joseph Johnston and William Mahone and Union General and New York Congressman Daniel Sickles. Sickles became a well known person due to him being the first person to successfully use the "temporary insanity" defense after he killed his wife's lover, Francis Scott Key's son. And future US President Woodrow Wilson and his wife Ellen were frequent guests. Their daughter Jesse Woodrow Wilson was even born at the Piedmont in 1887. Apparently, chicken was a big thing at the Piedmont and the Piedmont Poultry Federation, makes the claim that southern fried (batter fried) chicken was first served at the Piedmont.

By 1899, the hotel's heyday was over and it was leased to Rev. J.A. Bell to be used as a boys' boarding school under the name Piedmont High School. In 1900, this became the Georgia Military Institute and once that closed, it was used as a boarding house. The Longstreet family still owned it by 1918 and the building had become so rundown by then that they decided to raze it, but it was later decided to preserve the ground floor, so just the top of the hotel was taken down. The family lived in this space as a house, but it must have been abandoned or changed into some kind of business and the city forgot what it had been. 

The Longstreet Society had been formed to honor the life of General Longstreet and they wanted to open a museum. They went to a property with some dilapidated buildings and discussed buying it and bulldozing the buildings to build a new museum. And then they discovered that the largest building was part of the previous Piedmont Hotel. They only had $400 in the bank, so they got seventeen people to sign a $10,000 loan guaranty agreement with the Gainesville Bank and Trust. This saved the hotel and they replaced and restored everything. After some financial issues later, the hotel was deeded to the Gainesville-Hall Trust for Historic Preservation with the agreement that the hotel would serve as Longstreet Society headquarters and the Society would manage the building. It runs as a museum today and has been restored to appear as the ground floor was when the hotel was open and the outside gardens got the same treatment. (Piedmont photos) Dallas Stephenson wrote an article for the UN Vanguard Paper in 2024 entitled A Toast to the Ghost and he shares this about the Piedmont, " Richard Pilcher, described paranormal activity that has appalled many guests during their stay. 'Longstreet would often visit the hotel accompanied by his wife and children that would soon pass away from pneumonia and scarlet fever,' Pilcher said. It is said that they still frequent the hotel after their passing. A man and his wife stayed at the hotel in the “Wilson room.” One night, the man was going back to his room after supper and saw a woman in his room. He soon discovered that woman was not his wife. It was later determined that he had seen Longstreet’s wife in a long white gown. When the lights were turned on, she disappeared. When Longstreet and his children stayed at the hotel, it was common for the children to play with marbles. Late at night many said they heard marbles falling to the ground alongside child laughter. Amongst all these stated accounts, there were never any children staying in the hotel during that time." 

Gainesville Train Station 

Longstreet loved to walk down to the train station when trains arrived, so he could greet visitors and drum up business for the hotel, or even just the dining room. He spent so much time at the train station that perhaps he left an impression in the ether there. People claim to have seen his apparition waving at the train station. And a figure resembling General Longstreet has been seen standing in the steam from the locomotive, but when the train pulls out and the steam clears, there was no one there. Now interestingly, this train station is not the original one that was built here because that was damaged in the 1903 tornado. The current one was built in 1910, six years after Longstreet passed away. Today, Amtrak uses the station and there are some offices inside and the local Eagles also use it. 

Gainesville Cotton Mill

The Gainesville Cotton Mill is said to be one of the most haunted buildings in the city. The original mill was built and opened in 1897. This was a time where there were practically no safety laws, there was no OSHA. And child labor was encouraged. Most families had to have everybody working to put food on the table. Children started working at the mill as young as eight-years-old. Accidents happened quite often, ranging from crushed arms to falls and even death. Workers went hours without a break or food. Depending on the weather, the factory could be extremely hot or very cold. During the hot summer of June 1903, the first deadly tornado to hit Gainesville would strike. Destruction was widespread with $750,000 worth of property damage. More than 100 people were killed and 300 more injured. Eighty of the dead were at the cotton mill, which had it's top two levels ripped off.  Had it not been for the interference of the cotton warehouse in the rear, the mill would probably have been totally demolished.Many of the mill families lost their homes and were homeless too. Operations ceased and the doors were closed in 1989. Today, the mill is 400,000 square feet and was bought by Bob Adams to house his two storage companies, Adams Transfer & Storage and Adams Data Management. He did millions of dollars of renovations and officially moved into the building in 1993. Bob saved the floors, which were 4-by-6-inch pine laid on a diagonal and the 39-inch-thick walls are made from brick. There are also the original, rounded-topped windows and a towering smoke stack and concrete anchors for an old water tower. The building actually sits on water and they still have to pump water out of it today. Bob said the building is really only suitable to being a mill and wasn't built that well, but he loves it. The only thing they really changed about the building were adding two cooling towers in the back.

The fourth and fifth floors have the most paranormal activity. Glen Eddins, the general manager of the storage company told the Gainesville Times, "There's definitely a ghost. In 1903, there was a tornado that tore and collapsed the roof on the fifth floor; part of the fifth collapsed on the fourth floor. In 1903 this was a full-steam-ahead cotton mill and there was a day care center here and a lot of children were killed in that tornado. You get a kind of a chill of being watched and the hair stands up on the back of your neck." There have been many reports of children running and laughing on the top floors through the years. The elevator would go to the top of the building on its own and people could hear footsteps walking out. And there have been apparitions that people thought were real people until they disappeared. 

Brenau University

Brenau University was founded as a private women's college in 1878 and called Georgia Baptist Female Seminary. The term seminary was weird because it wasn't actually religious. In 1900, a man named H. J. Pearce purchased the institution and renamed it Brenau, which comes from two words from two languages. There's the German brennen, meaning "to burn" and the Latin aurum, meaning "gold". This is proved out with the college's motto, "As Gold Refined by Fire". Brenau College was privately owned until 1911. Men were invited to attend classes in the late 1960s. Brenau College became Brenau University in 1992. One of the coolest buildings in the city is located at 202 Boulevard NE. This is the Pearce Auditorium, which is part of the Brenau University's campus. It was built in the Second Empire style in 1878 as an opera house and features a mansard roof, a beautiful stained glass window and four pairs of arched doors that serve as entrances. The exterior is painted a pinkish color and this happened by accident. They were cleaning ivy off the outside and it had grown into the brick, so quite a bit of brick flaked off and they had to putty it, which also meant they had to paint it and they chose white and you can guess how the pink happened. The theater seats 720 people and at the time it was built, it was the largest of its kind in the South. The theater gets its name from H.J. Pearce, who was president of the Uuniversity.

Dallas Stephenson wrote this about Brenau University, "Brenau University, known as the women’s college in the 1800s, is a known location for unearthly occurrences. Alyson Boyko, the host of the annual ghost tours at Brenau, described the experiences that happened on campus. 'Strange things have happened here in the girls rooms at the dorms like red writing all over the walls when no one is home.' A boy dubbed “Little Red” often frequents the girls’ dorms at Brenau. 'If you leave a red marker or pen out in Wilkes or Yonah Hall, Little Red will come and write on your walls with the red marker, hence the name.' 

Pierce Auditorium in Brenau University is known for the haunting of Agnes who took her own life there. In the 1920’s, another student at Brenau known as “Agnes” took her life in the Pierce Auditorium. People have different ideas of what happened to her. Some say Agnes took her life because she did not get into the sorority she wanted and hung herself from the balcony in the auditorium. Others claim she was heartbroken or lost the love of her life and she hung herself over the high dive swimming pool in the basement of the school. Agnes is said to still haunt the college as a friendly ghost. 'Agnes likes to play with the lights in the auditorium,' Boyko said. 'Before shows, people running lights will leave the light board in the tech box for Agnes to mess with before the show so she feels included.' Many students have also reported that they would leave penny jars in their dorms. When the students came back from events, the penny jars would be knocked over with all the coins face up." Theater directors have closed up and locked everything at night and come back in the morning and the lights are all on.

Gainesville seems to have a reason to be hosting a ghost tour. Sounds like a good place to hear some great music and run into a ghost or two. Is Gainesville, Georgia haunted? That is for you to decide!