HGB Ep. 548 - Haunted Outer Banks Series - The Upper Islands

Moment in Oddity - House in the Clouds (Suggested by: Jenny Lynn Raines)

In Thorpeness, Suffolk, England, there is a structure that was built in 1923 to receive water pumped from the Thorpeness Windmill. Its founder, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie designed it as "a fantasy water tower in a fantasy village". What is unique about this structure is that it was turned into a residential home which was incorporated to improve the look of the water tower. The mock Tudor and Jacobean style structure incorporates a residential living space approximately 70 feet from the ground level. The water tower originally was able to hold 50,000 imperial gallons, however during WWII the tower was unintentionally hit by friendly gunfire from anti aircraft guns. Once mended, the water tank saw a reduction in capacity down to 30,000 imperial gallons. By 1977, the main water tower was no longer needed to supply the village. It was then removed, allowing the House in the Clouds to be fully transformed into a home. The residence boasts five bedrooms and three bathrooms with a total of 85 stair steps from top to bottom. The structure is very unique and has been featured in the media many times, but a several story home built around a water tower, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The USS Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb

In the month of July, on the 26th, in 1945, the USS Indianapolis arrived at Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands with unassembled atomic bomb parts. The ship was sent on a high speed voyage from San Francisco out into the western Pacific ocean with no one on board knowing what the cargo consisted of. The voyage took 10 days and arrived at the island after the Manhattan Engineer District built special bomb assembly buildings, loading pits, and other facilities at the base. Already prepared was a 37 member team of scientists and specialists who were in charge of last minute experiments and tests, thus resulting in the final assembly of the uranium bomb. Only four days after its delivery, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine with a loss of almost 900 lives. On July 30th, the target insert, projectile, and initiators were assembled in the bomb. On August 5th, after consultations with meteorologists to determine that weather predictions were favorable for a visual bombing, the mission was given the 'go ahead'. Consequently, on August 6th, 1945, the bomber Enola Gay took flight and rose to 31,000 feet, deploying the bomb over Hiroshima at 8:15am. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese died either from the initial blast or later from radiation poisoning, with the majority of deaths reported to be civilians. Nagasaki was later bombed on August 9th leading to the surrender of Japan on August 15th with Japan signing the instrument of surrender on September 2nd, 1945.

Outer Banks - The Upper Islands

The Outer Banks are a vast ecosystem that have supported life for millions of years. Humans have been here for centuries. Key moments in American history are connected to the Upper Islands of the Outer Banks from the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony to the Wright brothers' first flight. There are numerous haunted locations and legends in the Upper Islands. On this second episode of our Outer Banks Series, we are going to explore the history and hauntings of the Upper Islands! 

Just north of Hatteras Island is Bodie Island with the Bodie Island Lighthouse. There are two stories behind the name of the island. One is that a man with the last name Boddy had settled the area. A more interesting story claims that so many bodies washed up on the island from shipwrecks that it just made sense to call it Bodie Island. Bodie Island isn't really an island as over the years it has connected to other northern barrier islands to make a peninsula. The government decided to build a lighthouse here in 1837 because this area had lost more vessels than any other area along the Outer Banks. The lighthouse was completed in 1847, but because a man who had no experience in building lighthouses had been put in charge of construction. The lighthouse was leaning within two years. A second lighthouse was built in 1859, but it didn't last long either as the Confederates thought the Union would take it over during the Civil War and they blew it up. The third and current lighthouse was built in 1871. Bricks from Baltimore and iron from New York was used to construct the distinctive lighthouse. A keeper's quarters duplex was built and the first order Fresnal lens was lit on October 1, 1872. Because the lighthouse was remote in those early days, the keeper's wife and children would stay on the mainland. The light was electrified in 1932 and the NPS took over its operation in 1953. The lighthouse is hard to miss at 156 feet and with its horizontal black and white stripes. The lighthouse itself is not haunted, but the keeper's cottage has some stories. People claim to hear knocking coming from the other side of the bricked in fireplace. This usually happens around 4:00 pm. There are also stories that a young female ghost haunts the area, possibly one of the bodies that washed up here. She is seen in period clothing and likes to follow visitors around, occasionally showing up in photos.

Many indigenous tribes called the Outer Banks home. These were the Secotan, Poteskeet and Chowanoke. They would head out to the eastern banks in the summer for fishing and then move back inland to places like Roanoke Island and the mainland during the winter. Early relationships between the indigenous people and European explorers were good. In 1584, the English attempted to colonize Roanoke Island for the first time. Roanoke Island is across from Bodie Island. Governor Ralph Lane founded Roanoke Colony and it wasn't long before they needed more supplies. Sir Richard Grenville was bringing a resupply and he was delayed, so Lane threw in the towel and headed back to England. Grenville finally made it to the colony two weeks later and he left the supplies and a small detachment of men. 

The second attempt to colonize Roanoke came in 1587, led by John White. The original plan by Sir Walter Raleigh was to set up the city of Raleigh in Chesapeake Bay. Grenville's men had become pretty desperate by this time because they needed supplies, so when White showed up to check in on them, they forced White to stay there and Roanoke Colony was re-established. White needed to get supplies, so he promised to be back in 1588, but White wouldn't return until 1590 because of the Anglo-Spanish War. He found the settlement still there and it had clearly been fortified, but all of the settlers were missing. The only clue left as to where they had gone was the word "CROATOAN" carved into the stakewall. White assumed that this meant they had gone to Croatoan Island. He couldn't investigate that theory because of rough seas and he headed back to England. His granddaughter was born at Roanoke Colony and was the first English person born in this New World. Her name was Virginia Dare and the county where Roanoke Island is located is named for her, Dare County. We still don't know what happened to the 115 colonists that disappeared.

Manteo is the main city on Roanoke Island. They do offer a ghost tour here, but it wasn't available the night we were in the area. There's a good reason for the tour because several locations here are haunted. Manteo was incorporated in 1899 and was a bustling trade center. In the mid 1980s, the town was renovated for a 400th anniversary party and Princess Anne came to dedicate the Elizabeth II, a representative 16th-century sailing ship like what the colonists would have used to come to the island. There are several hotels on the island and a few of them are reputedly haunted. The first is Roanoke Island Inn. The inn overlooks the harbor of Shallowbag Bay and has over 1.5 acres of gardens. Asa Warren Jones built the inn as his home in the 1860s. It eventually became a boarding house in the early 1900s. Through the generations, the same family continued to own the house and each would expand the house. The post office for Manteo was once housed in the inn and one of the postmasters there was named Roscoe Jones. The Roanoke Inn opened in 1990 with eight rooms under John Wilson and Billy Parker. Lauren and Jason Borland bought the inn in 2017. 

The spirit at the inn is thought to be Roscoe. He was laid off from the post office and he was absolutely devastated. He begged to keep his job to no avail. He walked home, smelled the roses growing near the front porch one last time, walked up the stairs to his bedroom and locked himself in. He never left the room again and his wife took to leaving a meal for him on the table and he would come down when everyone had gone to bed, to get the plate of food. Roscoe passed away a few years later, never having spoken to his family again. Neighbors started claiming to see Roscoe leaving the inn in his postal uniform. The apparition would disappear when it reached the post office. Some people would see the apparition return to the inn as well. Two of the rooms that had previous been Roscoe's room have had prankster activity. One couple reported that their jewelry had been played with. Boxes and other items have been thrown around on the third floor and screams and disembodied footsteps have been heard coming from that floor as well.

The Tranquil House Inn has a great view of the Roanoke Island Festival Park and sits on the historic water front. The inn has a Nantucket styling to it with custom cypress woodwork and stained glass. Donnie Just and his father Don had owned the inn since 1993 and then Mike and Holly Harrington purchased the property in 2020. Mike had proposed to Holly there in 2005. The inn had originally been located across the street, but a fire in the 1930s destroyed it, so it was rebuilt here. The desk manager had been Carolyn and she told Peggy Schmidt who wrote "Ghosts of the Outer Banks" that the first floor had the most activity. One morning a guest staying on the first floor approached Carolyn when she was alone and asked her if anything strange had been reported in her room before. Carolyn didn't get a chance to respond before the guest told her that she had seen a female apparition that very morning. She awakened to see the ghost standing by her bedside. This spirit was in period clothing and every time the guest tried to get up, the spirit would push her gently back down. The guest got really annoyed and yelled, "Stop!" and the spirit disappeared. Carolyn said that other guests reported disembodied whispers in that room. Other rooms have had their televisions turning on on their own. They checked wiring and found no issues, so they bought all new TVs. That didn't solve the issue. Another time, a couple approached Carolyn and and told her there was a ghost in their room. She asked how they knew and the man said that the night before he went to the bathroom and he made sure to put the toilet seat down. His wife had him trained properly. He was the first person in the bathroom the next morning and he found the toilet seat up. As he looked at the seat, he watched as it slammed down.

The charming Victorian White Doe Inn was opened near the turn-of-the-century and is named for the legend about Virginia Dare and the White Doe. It is said that Virginia grew into a beautiful woman with fair skin, blonde hair and gray eyes. She caught the eye of two Native American men in the tribe that had rescued her and her mother from the Roanoke Colony. One was a warrior and the other a medicine man. Virginia fell in love with the warrior and the heartbroken medicine man used his magic to turn Virginia into a white doe. The only way to snap her out of the spell would be to hit her with a magic arrow. Warriors would hunt for the white doe, but it was elusive. One day, the Medicine Man decided he needed to find the white doe because he was afraid she would be killed. He wasn't aware that the warrior who was his competitor in love was hunting the white doe too. The Medicine Man found the white doe and he fired his arrow. At the same time, the warrior had found the doe and fired his arrow as well. The Medicine Man's arrow turned the white doe back into Virginia and the warrior's arrow hit and killed her after that. Now it is said that her spirit still haunted the island as a white doe. The white doe speaks with a woman's voice.

Ok, so that is a legend, but the haunts at the White Doe Inn seem very real. The Meekins family had lived in the Outer Banks since before the American Revolution. Theodore Meekins came to Manteo from Rodanthe on Hatteras Island. He married Rosa P. Midgett in 1896 and the couple had seven children. They purchased a lot in 1904 and built a house with the help of Theodore's brother-in-law John Wilson and local carpenter Joe Dailey. They built the three-story Queen Anne style house in Manteo using a photograph that Rosa had found of a house she liked. The home had seventeen rooms when completed. This is the largest house on Roanoke Island. Meekins became a magistrate and also served in the North Carolina State Legislature from 1945-1947. Meekins also built the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station near Rodanthe, which is one of the most famous life-saving outposts in the history of the US Coast Guard. Meekins died in 1952 and his son Theodore Jr. inherited the house, which passed onto his wife Goldie when he died in 1959. Everyone called her “Miss Goldie.” Eventually, the house was too much for Goldie and she sold it in 1993 to  David and Tonia Roberts who turned it into a bed and breakfast. The current innkeepers of the inn are Bob and Bebe Woody. There are nine rooms and a gourmet breakfast is served in the mornings. Both employees and guests have had strange experiences at the White Doe Inn. Lights and electronics turn on and off by themselves. A small door behind the staircase opens and closes on its own. Guests will here it periodically at night and go to check about the sound. They won't find anything but the closed door. But when they walk away, it opens again slowly. 

There's a haunted theater in Manteo too. The Pioneer Theater was built in 1918 by the Creef family and they owned it until 2023 when they closed the theater. It was purchased in February of that year by the Basnight and Hatchell families and they retained the name and paid homage to the Creef family. The theater hosts movies, music, theater and events. There are rumors that members of the Cleef family haunt the old movie theatre. People in the theater have had their cell phones knocked out of their hands.

Back on the road and off Roanoke Island to the Outer Banks islands again brings us to Nags Head. This village was founded in the 1830s as a tourist colony. Francis Nixon brought his family here shortly before that, looking to avoid malaria in the area where they had been living. He encouraged other friends to visit as well. The huts where the fishermen and ship salvagers lived on Nags Head were soon replaced by beach cottages. The Bankers weren't upset about this development as it brought a new form of income. They sold vegetables and seafood and took people on tours aboard horse-drawn carts. Hotels were built in 1838. A boardwalk was built in 1850 to the beach and there was a Pavilion where music was played and a bowling alley was built. During the Civil War, the Union marched in and commandeered hotels to use as headquarters. The city was incorporated in 1923. Hurricanes hit in 1899 and 1933 and World War II brought danger near the shore. One story on how it got the name Nags Head claims that "nags" was for the ponies there and that ship salvagers put lamps on the heads of their nags to get ships to crash into the shoals. The real story is probably that some shipwrecked sailors named it after a place they had come from in Europe.

The Oasis Suites Hotel is located at 7721 S. Virginia Dare Trail. This originally was a waterfront restaurant that was also named Oasis. Violet Kellem was the woman who opened that restaurant in 1950 and she had an ingenious plan for getting people to flock to the restaurant. This was perhaps the 1950s version of Hooters. The waitresses wore white Bermuda shorts and shirts, blue ties and aprons and no shoes. The servers were provided on-site housing. The specialty at the restaurant was lace cornbread, which was like a crunchy hushpuppy served with lots of butter. The Oasis closed in 1980 and was reopened as The Dock by Warren Jones. In 1990, Violet's grandchildren bought the restaurant and renovated it and opened it as The Oasis once again. The Hatchell Family bought it in 2003, but the restaurant burned to the ground in 2004 and that was it for the original restaurant. The Hatchell's decided to rebuild, but this time they would open a hotel. This is a boutique hotel of suites with kitchens and ghosts.

When the restaurant was still open, a group of four fishermen approached the building late one fall evening thinking that the restaurant was still serving because they saw lights on, but the doors were locked. When they looked in the windows, they saw a black tails and tie party going on. It was strange because there were no cars parked outside. The men peered in again and suddenly the party was gone. No one was inside. Another ghost that haunted the restaurant was an old sea captain with a long wiry beard in a blue sailor's cap and long blue coat with three big black buttons. His full-bodied apparition was seen occasionally running in slow motion from the grill to the freezer. Other times he just stood staring.

There was also the spirit of a monk that had the total monk hair and robe that appeared once to the restaurant manager named Ron. Seems he was just passing through. And then there was this female ghost with red hair and blue eyes in a pink 1950s-style dress. She liked to appear and scare the staff. Ron also claimed that a spirit may have saved his life. This was in March of 2004 when the fire erupted that destroyed the building. A flammable liquid was used for renovating the floors near the grill and it caught fire. Ron got everybody out except for one person. When he realized someone was still inside, he ran inside and immediately heard a very loud male voice say, "You have three seconds to get out!" Ron ran out and saw with relief that the employee was outside. Then the building became entirely engulfed. 

Nags Head Woods is supposed to be haunted as well. In the woods there is a small, yellow hunting cabin that people claim had been the home of the Goat Man. He obtained that name because he raised goats. One night some local teens decided to antagonize him, but they didn't find him at home so they killed his goats. The man sought revenge and chased down the teens with an axe, which he threw. He missed them all. It is said that through the years, he took on the look of a goat. He was a half-man and half-goat. Legends claim that he chases people at night through the woods. There's not just a Goatman in this 640 acres of wetlands, but also a witch. Peggy Schmidt conveys the story in "Ghosts of the Outer Banks." (p. 21) There is also a woman who was walking her dog and saw a man approaching her. Her dog got his hackles up and started barking, which immediately put her on guard. The man continued to come towards here and then she noticed he was wearing an old sea captain's uniform and then he disappeared.

The Eagles Aerie Club FOE #4506 is located at 2706 S. Croatan Hwy. They moved in to the building in November of 2017. Before the Eagles obtained the property, this was a variety of restaurants. There had been FireFly Restaurant, Almost Eleven Restaurant, and Mykonos Restaurant and Bar. Staff at the restaurants reported wine glasses flying off counters and some wine bottles doing the same. Shadow figures were also seen and the bathrooms would sometimes lock themselves.

We arrived in Kill Devil Hills next and even though we're always taught that the Wright Brothers conducted their flying experiments in Kitty Hawk, it's actually Kill Devil Hills where their National Memorial is located. This is where most of the people in the Outer Banks live. It's very commercial here, so if you are looking for a peaceful beach vacation, this might not be the area for you. The town was founded on the site of Orville and Wilbur's first controlled, powered airplane flight, which happened on December 17, 1903. The breezes coming in off the Atlantic were perfect and there was a big sand hill for them to fly the airplane off from. After each test, they would have to hike up the sand with the plane. Locals helped them carry the planes. They eventually planted the grass to make it easier. There was no town here so the brothers built simple wooden buildings to use as workshops and living quarters. The Wright Brothers National Memorial was dedicated in 1932. Kill Devil Hills got its municipal charter in 1953 and there are a few legends about how the Town got its unique name. One claims that cargo ships carrying rum would sometimes wreck along the coast and the rum cargo would wash up ashore on the sand hills and locals who found the rum said it was strong enough "to kill the devil." The more interesting story claims a man tried to extort money from the Devil and he trapped him in a pit at the top of the hill that the Wright Brothers had built. A huge granite pylon sits in the spot today as part of the memorial.

After we visited the memorial, we headed the four miles up to Kitty Hawk to the Black Pelican restaurant to have lunch. Kitty Hawk was named for the Algonquin Chickahawk, which means "a place to hunt geese." We picked it because we read it was haunted. This is a large restaurant tucked right behind the sand dunes leading out to the beach. During the late 1800s, this was one of seven lifesaving stations along the Outer Banks, Old Station Six. The Station Keeper here was named James Hobbs and he didn't get along with one of the surfmen in his charge named T.L. Daniels. No one knows if there was an animosity here because Daniels disrespected Hobbs' wife or if Daniels was just generally unruly, but Daniels ended up dead from a gunshot wound. His body was found on the floor near where the front desk of the restaurant lobby sits today. There were no police to report the crime to and nobody at the station liked the guy. So a decision was made to bury the body at sea and clean up the station and that's what the crew did and Hobbs never faced any punishment and that might be why Daniels' spirit is still here. Disembodied footsteps are heard and doors have closed all on their own. People sometimes see blood on the wall. This is that kind of thing that keeps reappearing and then disappearing. Some staff have reported seeing the ghost of Daniels. Male bartenders claimed that they got pushed by something they couldn't see. Unfortunately, our server was new and she hadn't had any experiences yet.

Currituck was named by the Native Americans who fished and hunted here. The name means "land of the wild goose," which was fitting because there was an abundance of geese here during migration. The name carried over for the Sound and the county where the town of Corolla (kuh rah luh) is located. A herd of feral Banker horses call this home. The town had originally been named Jones Hill after an early settler, which was later changed to Whalehead. A post office was established in 1895 and the name was changed to Corolla at that time after the petals of a flower. Development really didn't happen until the 1960s with a big burst in the 1980s.

Corolla features the Currituck Lighthouse, which is the fourth and final lighthouse in the Outer Banks. The lighthouse rises 162 feet and was built from red brick that was left unpainted. It opened in December of 1875 and became automated in 1939. The lighthouse still has its original Fresnal first order lens. This lens replaced an incandescent oil vapor lamp that replaced a Funck's hydraulic float lamp that was fueled with lard oil. A system of weights rotated the huge lens until electricity came to the lighthouse. A keeper would have to crank the weights by hand every two and a half hours. Visitors are allowed to climbs its 220 steps and the Outer Banks Conservationists own it. The lighthouse keeper's house is still here and its reputedly the North Room that is haunted. One of the lighthouse keeper's daughters died while playing on the beach. The North Room had been her room and people think somehow it ended up cursed. A friend came to stay at the house and slept in that room and contracted an illness that she eventually died from. A wife of a lighthouse keeper came down with TB and she quarantined in that room until she died. Now people who go into the room say they get an uneasy feeling and some even become physically ill. Disembodied voices are heard in the room sometimes and sheets have occasionally been tugged.

The Whalehead Club is located at 1100 Club Road and was built in 1922 by Edward Collings Knight Jr. who was a conservationist and waterfowl hunter. The hunting lodge was built in the Art Nouveau style. During World War II, it was used as a training base for the US Coast Guard. This brought hundreds of sailors to Corolla and they built support buildings and barracks. The next iteration was a boys' correctional school and then it was a rocket fuel testing site. In the 1990s, the building was restored to its original condition and is open to visitors. The 21,000 square foot building is open for historic tours and ghost tours. The smell of cigar smoke has been detected, especially near the portrait of Edward Knight. The first story of this occurrence was in the 1960s when families of the corporation testing the rocket fuel were staying there. A daughter went to her parents room and said she smelled smoke. They searched the house and when they got to the dining room they saw smoke coming out of the portrait of Mr. Knight. It was as though the cigar he held in the picture were real. There is the ghost a young girl here who once tried to grab another young child down in the basement. When an adult went to go see who was in the basement, there was no one there. A staff member once heard disembodied footsteps coming up behind them on the basement stairs. The basement is said to be the most haunted area. A visitor claimed that something grabbed his leg when he was walking on the second floor alone. Pots and pans have banged themselves together in the kitchen. Doors open and close on their own. One of the reasons it might be haunted here is because dead bodies from shipwrecks were brought to get them off the beach.

And finally there is the legend about the portrait of Theodosia Burr. Theodosia was the only child of Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr was a Founding Father and the third Vice President of the US, serving under Thomas Jefferson. He had been a lawyer and served as an officer during the American Revolution. Burr is probably most famous for having a duel with Alexander Hamilton in which he mortally wounded Hamilton in 1804. His daughter Theodosia was born in 1783 and was named after her mother. The Burrs would have three other children, but two were stillborn and one died at age three. Burr and his daughter were very close and he made sure she had a good education. He considered her to be a confidante. She married Joseph Alston in 1801 and they had one son who died in 1811. Theodosia was aboard a schooner named Patriot that was sailing off the Carolinas in 1812 when it was either hit by pirates or became shipwrecked. 

What happened to Theodosia is an ongoing mystery. And this was added to by the discovery of a portrait on the Outer Banks fifty years after Theodosia disappeared. In 1869, Dr. William Pool was visiting Nags Head when he was given a portrait of a young woman as payment for his services. No one knew the woman, but the Doctor knew the portrait was valuable. The fisherman who gave him the portrait said that a young woman had drifted ashore near Nags Head and that she didn't know who she was and all she had with her was the portrait. The fisherman had cared for her and he asked her to be his wife. The portrait hung in their cottage. The doctor had helped the fisherman's wife and when the doctor tried to take the portrait, the elderly wife jumped from the bed howling that the portrait was her's and then she ran into the ocean. The portrait washed up on the shore the next day. Dr. Pool took the picture home with him and it hangs today in the Lewis Walpole Library. The portrait is known as the Nag's Head Portrait of Theodosia Burr. Peggy Schmidt adds a twist to this. (p. 65)

The entire Outer Banks is a fun, relaxing and beautiful place full of history and what seems to be a lot of haunts. Are any of these locations in the Upper Islands of the Outer Banks haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 547 - Haunted Outer Banks Series - The Lower Islands

Moment in Oddity - Castle-like Structure Part of Canadian Home (Suggested by Michael Rogers)

In Edmonton Alberta, Canada there is a unique home which garners the attention of tourists, if not the locals themselves. It is considered a South Side landmark and was established in 1983. A Scottish dentist, Ken Wallace, added on to the two car garage area above his Lendrum home. The addition appears castle-like, complete with suits of armor. The space is a bonus room of sorts and it housed Wallace's collection of antique furniture and has stained glass windows. The homeowner used the lower portion of the building as his dental office, but he desired additional space where his daughters could play. They were the reason why he added the castle themed portion to his property. When Dr. Wallace retired, he sold his home to his oldest daughter who now works as a dental hygienist out of the home. They even have an old dental sink in the front yard. Wallace's youngest granddaughters enjoy playing in the castle area while his teenage step-granddaughter hangs out there with her friends. The castle like structure may catch tourists' eyes but apparently the interior is equally interesting. According to the Edmonton Journal, "There's a fireplace, along with two huge antique sideboards and an antique sofa, plus a row of throne-like chairs. A small spiral staircase leads to a loft, and an even smaller staircase from there ends at a tiny solarium with a trap door that opens out to the top of the garage." The castle is decorated for the holidays yearly and the family celebrates Christmas within its walls. Castles are all unique in their structure, but finding a castle as a second story addition in a modern day neighborhood, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - First Air Conditioner Created

In the month of July, on the 17th, in 1902, the first air conditioner was invented. AND BOY ARE WE THANKFUL FOR THAT! The inventor's name was Willis Carrier and he became known as the "Father of Air Conditioning". Carrier came from modest beginnings, but with his determination and creative problem solving methodologies, he created an innovation that performed what once was thought to be impossible. Controlling the temperature of an indoor environment prior to Carrier's invention often relied upon the architecture of a home. A building could utilize large windows and high ceilings for cross ventilation, while deep eaves and large trees would shade porches to help keep the structure cooler. Even cupolas held a cooling purpose allowing heat to escape the highest point of a home. In 1902, Willis Carrier was working at a publishing company in New York where the temperatures and humidity were a huge problem. The fluctuations in heat and humidity throughout the day would cause the paper that was being printed upon to grow and shrink, thus resulting in poor quality images. Willis submitted his air conditioner drawings to the publishing company which marked the birth of air conditioning with humidity control. This led authorities in the field to standardize four major functions that A/C must perform: control temperature, control humidity, control air circulation and ventilation and cleanse the air. After a few years of refinement and testing, Willis Carrier was granted his US patent in 1906 with the description of "an Apparatus for Treating Air".

Haunted Outer Banks - The Lower Islands

The Outer Banks stretch for 200 miles from southeastern Virginia to Shackleford Banks in North Carolina. The Atlantic that borders its eastern side is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic because of the hundreds of shipwrecks that have occurred here. We traveled much of this stretch on our recent road trip and took in many of the sites while learning about the history and legends of this area. A key figure in history connected to the Lower Islands of the Outer Banks was Blackbeard the pirate. He came to his violent end here. There are numerous haunted locations and legends in the Outer Banks. On this first episode of our Outer Banks Series, we are going to explore the history and hauntings of the Lower Islands!

We took a road trip up through the Outer Banks here in June of 2024. Our first stop in the Outer Banks after leaving Charleston was Okracoke Island. The island is 16 miles long and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore makes up most of the island, so the beaches are protected. The only way to get on the island is via boat and there are ferries that will take you and your car to the island from three locations: Hatteras Island, Swanquarter and the one we took, Cedar Island. You have to make a reservation for the Swanquarter and Cedar Island ferries and they do cost money. The Hatteras Island ferry is free and runs on a first come, first serve basis. They also have introduced an express ferry that is for people on bike or foot. The Cedar Island ferry dropped us off in the heart of the tourist area of the island. There are lots of places to eat and shop and if you are interested in fishing charters or the beach, this is the spot for you.

Okracoke was first inhabited by Native Americans and some of them were the Croatoan. Most indigenous people just visited the island for fishing though. The original name was Wococon and eventually the W was dropped and different spellings morphed into Okracoke. The spelling we all know today made its official appearance on a map in 1852. One of the most infamous and colorful characters to call Okracoke home was Edward Teach, whom most of us know as Blackbeard. Okracoke was one of his favorite places to hideout and it would be here that he would come to his end during a naval battle in the Okracoke Inlet. This was on November 22, 1718. British naval Lieutenant Robert Maynard was tasked by the Virginia Governor at the time to track down Blackbeard. Maynard took two small sloops to Okracoke following a tip he had gotten that Blackbeard was anchored there. They found the pirate in an inlet that faces Pamlico Sound that is called Teach's Hole today. Blackbeard had tied one on the night before, or rather, tied on a lot the night before and he was in no condition for a fight. When he saw the sloops he started a running battle, meaning he was heading straight for the two sloops which were at the channel's mouth. The ships came close enough that Maynard and Blackbeard were able to have a conversation. This basically went with Blackbeard trying to make a deal with Maynard to just let him go, no harm, no foul. But Maynard was specifically here for Blackbeard and told him so, so Blackbeard got a glass of wine and drank damnation to Maynard and his men and said he would neither take nor give quarter. Then Blackbeard fired on the other sloop, killing the commander and several men. Several men on Maynard's sloop were wounded as well. Maynard decided to take a chance and play Blackbeard. He retreated to his quarters hoping to get the pirate to come to him. Blackbeard lashed his ship to the sloop and boarded with his men and they were quickly ambushed. It was a quick and harsh fight and when the smoke cleared, Blackbeard lay dead. His men were either dead or wounded. Maynard removed Blackbeard's head, put it on the bowsprit and took it back to Virginia. Blackbeard's body was thrown into Teach's Hole where legend claims it took a couple laps around Maynard's sloop. People believe that Blackbeard's ghost wanders Okracoke Island. 

There are many historical sites to check out on the island, which we definitely did after visiting the Pony Pen. These ponies on Okracoke arrived here via a shipwreck. These were Spanish mustangs that managed to make it to the island and now their descendants are kept in the Pony Pen. They used to roam free on the island, but as more and more people came and cars arrived, it got too dangerous for the horses. These horses are very unique. They have an unusual number of vertebrae and ribs and they have a distinct posture and size, which is why they are referred to as ponies. The National Park Service has cared for them since 1959. Then we went back into the main part of the island and visited the David & Alice Williams House. The house was built in 1900 and is a two-story house with a large veranda. It was built for David Williams who was the first Chief of the U.S. Coast Guard station on Ocracoke. The house was moved from its original spot to this one near the ferry dock, so that it wouldn't be demolished. It's now a museum and gift shop and home to the Ocracoke Preservation Society. There are various displays from seashells to stuff on Blackbeard to the original occupants of the house. I overheard the woman running the gift shop mention something about the place being haunted. Here is us talking to her about that. (Okracoke Shop)

The woman on the bike on Howard Street was actually part of a story named "Mad Mag." The author that the woman at the store was telling us about is Philip Howard. His great-great-great-great-great grandfather, William Howard, bought the island in1759 and the Howard family has lived and died on this island for decades. Philip wrote two books of history and ghosts stories and he started the ghost tour on Okracoke. He is retired now, but his daughter has taken up the reins and we joined her for a ghost tour. The family owns a shop called The Village Craftsmen where local artisans sell their wares. Right across the street is the family's cemetery. We shared a reel on Instagram of the cemetery in June while we were there. There are over 80 cemeteries across the island. Most are surrounded by fences, not to keep the people out, but to keep the bodies in. The water table sometimes would bring coffins up out of more shallow graves during flooding. 

Many of the people who lived on Okracoke in the early days were schooner captains or sailors. There was no ferry to bring people and supplies. Many of these captains would sail to other ports and one of these men was Captain John Simon Howard. He went to Maine and brought back a young Margaret Eaton with him. They married and as Mag got older, she got quirky. She would decorate the trees with hanging flowers and other things and began making herself elaborate hats. Now while these endeavors were creative, Mag was actually slipping into mental illness. Her husband came home one day to find that she had chopped one of her toes off with a meat cleaver. Another time, John came home and found a cat in the stew pot. Mag was 52 when John passed away in 1923. We'll pick up Philip's story on pg. 115 in "Howard Street Hauntings and Other Stories."

We headed over to the Okracoke Lighthouse. The lighthouse is a 77 foot tall white tower that was built in 1823 by architect Noah Porter. The solid brick walls were five-feet thick at the bottom and two-feet thick at the top. The interior isn't very big and the spiraling stairs in the middle can no longer be climbed. The original light was basically silvered reflectors that magnified the flame of a whale oil lamp. A Fresnel lens replaced this in 1854. In 1929, the oil lamp was replaced by an incandescent bulb and in 1946 the lighthouse became fully automated. Lighthouse keepers stayed in a house near the lighthouse that was expanded through the years. Despite the Okracoke Lighthouse being one of the oldest lighthouses in the country that is still in use and having keepers die on the premises, there are no hauntings reported at the lighthouse. But there is a haunting connected to Captain Joe Merritt Burrus. He was serving one winter in 1917 when his supplies ran low. The food wasn't as big a concern to him as was his chewing tobacco. He ran out and had to chew boat caulking. Anyway, Captain Joe retired and died in 1951 and its said his spirit haunts the cottage he moved into after retiring. Howard recounts the following in his book Howard Street Hauntings about a conversation Captain Joe's nephew had with a woman who had purchased the cottage. (p. 16)

We visited the British Cemetery, which is the final resting spot for four sailors from HMT Bedfordshire, which was torpedoed on May 11, 1942. These were the only bodies recovered from the attack. Many hurricanes have blown through the island with the most recent being Dorian in 2019. These storms have changed the topography of the island. And there have been many man-made changes. In earlier years, the island was separated by two streams called Big Gut and Little Gut. This divided the village into two groups called The Creekers and The Pointers. This wasn't about political class or station in life, but rather, about location. And a friendly rivalry developed that continues to today, even though the Navy filled in the creeks in 1942 when they dredged to make it easier for their ships to get around. Other things that changed the island is that people really like to move the houses around.

We stayed at the Pony Island Inn, which was in the middle of the village and enjoyed some great food and local brews at 1718 Brewing. Night came and we headed off to the Village Craftsmen and Philip's daughter Amy took us through the village and shared several of the haunted locations with us. The former Odd fellows Hall is one of the places that has been moved around on the island and is the last Greek Revival structure on the island. It was just undergoing some refurbishment when we stood outside of it and no one is sure exactly what its next iteration would be. This two story building was built in 1901 by Charlie Scarborough who bought the property from James and Zilphia Howard. This became Ocracoke Lodge No. 194 Independent Order of Odd Fellows. the lodge was on the second floor and the first floor was used as a public school. The building was sold as a private residence in 1917. During World War II, the upper floor became home for Naval Officers. After the war, wings were added to the building and it was opened as the Silver Lake Inn. This was one of the island's first modern hotels with running water, electricity and indoor plumbing. This became the social center of the village. Years later, the business became Island Inn. It closed under foreclosure in 2010 and was reopened again, but closed again in 2015. The Ocracoke Preservation Society bought the building in 2018 and removed it from the wings and placed in a new spot on new pilings in 2021, which is how it still is today. The building is said to be haunted by a ghost called Mrs. Godfrey. A guest told Philip Howard the following story in his book "Digging Up Uncle Evans." (p. 31)

The James Henry Garrish House was another stop for us. This was a home built by a descendant of one of the original settlers to the island, Henry Garrish. When James passed in 1947, the house was sold out of the family. The house was rented out as a summer rental and renters started reporting odd activity. Pictures on the walls would be hanging upside down. The house was remodeled and added onto with an L-shaped addition of three rooms. A rear porch was enclosed and turned into a hallway, which made the interior of the house get a little weird. Amy explains that to us and shares the haunting experience of one man who stayed in the house. (Amy Garrish House)

The beaches are amazing here. And speaking of them, there is a haunting connected to the beach. This is from Philip Howard's book "Howard Street Hauntings and Other Stories. (p.75) And our final story for Okracoke is really cool and features a ghost ship. (p. 91)

The next morning we headed to the ferry for Hatteras Island early. There are seven towns that make up the island of Hatteras: Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Frisco, Buxton, and Hatteras. There have been humans on the island since at least 500 AD and some historians believe that the colonists from Roanoke might have ended up here eventually. European settlers arrived in the 1700s. The island was originally called Hatterask for the indigenous people that were there first. During the Civil War, the Confederates built two forts on the island. The Union army won its first victory in The Battle of Hatteras Inlet and they would control the island. Freed slaves came to the island in 1862 and lived in a barracks there that became known as the Hotel De Afrique. This was the first safe place for escaped slaves in North Carolina and was part of the Underground Railroad. Ferry used to be the only form of transport to the island, but the Bonner Bridge was built in 1963 and that made it so people could drive to the island. That bridge was replaced with the Marc Basnight Bridge in 2019. US Lifesaving Stations soon dotted the island and the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was built. The US Weather Station in Hatteras would receive the initial telegraph that the Titanic was sinking.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was unfortunately completely surrounded by scaffolding when we visited. Although for us it was easy to envision what it looks like without the scaffolding because it has the same black and white candy-cane striping as the St. Augustine Lighthouse. This is the tallest brick lighthouse in the world, rising to 208 feet. This wasn't the first lighthouse here. The first was built in 1803 and made from sandstone and rose 90 feet. This lighthouse was a complete failure as its sandstone color blended in with environment and the tower was too short. In 1853, 60 feet were added to the tower so it stood 150 feet. The top portion was painted red with white at the base. A first order Fresnal lens was added as well. In the 1860s it was decided a new lighthouse was needed This one was completed in 1870 and had been built on a floating foundation because of the high water table. Six foot by twelve foot yellow pine timbers were laid crossways below the water table and granite rock layers were placed on top of the timbers. The base is octagon-shaped and made from brick and granite and painted red. The black and white pattern of the tower was added in 1873. It's a beautiful lighthouse. 

The lamp was electrified in 1934. Beach erosion  forced the closer of the lighthouse and the beacon was moved to a skeletal steel tower the following year. By 1950, the beach had built back up and the lighthouse was reopened, but the beach would erode again and an ambitious decision was made. The lighthouse was going to be moved. The museum had an entire room dedicated to this undertaking and amazingly, the lighthouse was moved 2,900 feet to its present location over 23 days in 1999. On top of that, the oil house, Principal Keeper's Quarters, Double Keepers' Quarters and dwelling cisterns were all moved. The U.S. Coast Guard maintains the light, while the National Park Service takes care of the lighthouse and buildings. This lighthouse is haunted by a ghost cat. It matches the lighthouse as it is said to be black and white. The cat appears as a full-bodied apparition that rubs on visitors legs and they quickly realize it is a spirit when they reach down to pet it and it disappears. There are also a couple stories of a male apparition named Bob who wears a yellow raincoat.

There is also a mystery story connected to the lighthouse and Hatteras Island. In January of 1921, a five-masted commercial schooner named the Carroll A. Deering was found run aground  just off Cape Hatteras. This isn't strange considering that the Outer Banks is the Graveyard of the Atlantic. What was strange is that the ship was missing its entire crew of twelve. The life boats were gone. When the Coast Guard boarded the ship, there was no question that the crew had left in a hurry. Food had been prepared, but was untouched. The sails were set and the boat was in good condition until it was torn up by the Diamond Shoals as it sat off Cape Hatteras. The crew and life boats were never found. What had happened to them? Did bad weather force them from the schooner? Did pirates attack? Did some other crew of men force them from the ship? To this day, no one knows, but there are theories. We don't think pirates were involved because why wouldn't they take the ship for themselves? If there had been a mutiny on the ship, surely the mutineers would have taken the ship. A message was found by a man in a bottle off the North Carolina Coast in April 1921. It read, "Deering captured by oil-burning boat." After that, newspaper ran with stories that a Bolshevik plot to steal cargo and ships had hit the Deering. Many of our listeners probably wondered if the man who found that message was being honest and he wasn't. He later admitted that he wrote the message. Even though the Bermuda Triangle wouldn't be a thing until several decades later, people have wondered if it was responsible. A Coast Guard captain had the time had the most reasonable answer. He believed the ship had become stuck in a storm and the crew decided to row the nine miles to shore aboard the lifeboats, but the ocean was too rough and the boats didn't survive. 

Many listeners have heard of the Gray Man of Pawleys Island and we have covered it for a Moment in Oddity. This is a figure that is a harbinger of doom. Well apparently, Hatteras Island has a Gray Man as well. The legend goes that a man named Gray was killed by a sudden storm near Cape Point. Now whenever a storm is threatening the area, the Gray Man shows up on the beach between Cape Point and the Hatteras Lighthouse. In 1966, a hurricane was on the outskirts of Cape Hatteras and heading that way. The Coast Guard went out to warn residents to leave or batten down the hatches. After they were done, one of the newer Coast Guard members spotted a man down on the beach. This figure appeared gray and was waving its arms and pointing. Before one of his fellow guardsmen could stop him, he ran towards the beach to help this person. Just before he reached the man, the man disappeared. The Coast Guardman looked all around like, where did this guy go. When he got back to the rest of the crew who were waiting for him in a vehicle, they informed him that what he had just seen was the Gray Man of Hatteras. A picture was captured of the Gray Man during Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

One of the most well known legends connected to Hatteras Island is the story of Hatteras Jack. Hatteras Jack was apparently a white dolphin and sailors claimed he had the soul of a sailor who lost his life at sea. The treacherous waters were hard to navigate, of course, and the story goes that Hatteras Jack was good at guiding ships to safety. The dolphin would circle a ship to get its attention and then lead the way when it was safe. Some ships would blow their fog horn to call Hatteras Jack. After he guided a ship to safety, he would jump through the air and even walk on his tail as if celebrating. As time passed, technology improved and the need for Hatteras Jack went away and he seemed to go away too. People believe that the sailor's soul was now at rest.

The Lower Islands of the Outer Banks are both beautiful and crowded during the summer season. Many people love to spend their summer vacations here. And then there are the Bankers who call the Outer Banks home. Both residents and visitors have experienced strange things. Are any of these legends based in fact. Are the Lower Islands of the Outer Banks haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 546 - Winnipeg's Hamilton House, a Psychical Hotbed

Moment in Oddity - Reindeer Killed By Lightning (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

Many people and animals have a natural fear of lightning. Powerful and beautiful in its own right, lightning can also be very destructive. A clear example of lightning's power occurred back in August of 2016. On Norway's Hardangervidda Plateau, an unbelievable weather event took place. The unimaginable aftermath was discovered by a park ranger who found 323 wild tundra reindeer which had been killed by an unusual lightning event. After the mass kill off, instead of removing the carcasses, the park decided to leave the reindeer's bodies where they were. They allowed nature to take its course, thus giving scientists the opportunity to study this island of decomposition and how it might change the arctic tundra ecosystem. Predators, in the form of wolverines, golden eagles and arctic foxes, exploited the easy meals afforded to them while the getting was fresh. Then scavengers like ravens and crows moved in. From there, the 'landscape of fear' in the animal world was additionally studied by the scientists. The decisions animals made in relation to food vs safety trade-offs was revealed as scientists watched the carcasses of bloated reindeer bodies decomposed into dry skeletons. With such an unusual situation afforded to scientists to observe, it's easy to imagine that much was learned during the study. However, a beautiful Norwegian Plateau covered by over 300 desiccating reindeer carcasses  caused by a freak storm of nature, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - National Hot Dog Day

In the United States, on the third Wednesday of every July, one particular food item is celebrated and to many Americans, it is the epitome of summer. Some of us of a certain age can recall the commercial jingle, "Oh I WISH I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner, That is what I'd truly like to be, Cause if I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner, Everyone would be in love with me..."  Whether you love Pink's, Oscar Meyer, Dodger dogs, turkey or veggie dogs, this particular BBQ fare for American's just screams SUMMER! *Fun Fact, over 25 million hot dogs are sold at baseball stadiums every year. Whether your dogs are grilled, pan fried, rotisseried, toasted over a campfire or boiled, they are sure to satisfy, especially with such a variety of toppings. If you're a purist then you will go with just mustard and ketchup, or you can add onion, relish, chili, mayo, cheese and even sauerkraut, the toppings can go on and on. According to the website, National Day Calendar, "On May 31, 2012, a world record was set for the most expensive hot dog. The “California Capitol City Dawg” sold for $145.49 at Capitol Dawg in Sacramento, California. That particular hot dog consisted of: a grilled 18″ all-beef, in natural casing frank from Chicago, served on a fresh-baked herb and oil focaccia roll spread with white truffle butter, then grilled and topped with whole grain mustard from France, garlic and herb mayonnaise, sauteed chopped shallots, organic mixed baby greens, maple syrup, marinated/fruitwood smoked uncured bacon from New Hampshire, chopped tomatoes, sweetened dried cranberries, moose cheese from Sweden basil olive oil and pear-cranberry-coconut balsamic vinaigrette and ground peppercorn. That sounds like quite the intermingling of flavors for one's taste buds! Proceeds from the sale of each 3 lb.'super dog' were donated to the Shriners Hospitals for Children that year. To those who will be celebrating National Hot Dog Day on July 17th this year, enjoy.

Winnipeg's Hamilton House

Dr. T. G. Hamilton was a trail blazer in the field of Paranormal Research. Hamilton was a medical doctor and because of his experiences with death, he began to wonder if there was a way that we could figure out what happens to us after we die. Hamilton and his family moved into a large home in Winnipeg and it was here that he carried out much of his research, along with his wife. Their children continued the legacy of peering behind the veil. And perhaps that is why the Hamilton House of Winnipeg, Canada is said to be haunted. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of Hamilton House.

The area where the Hamilton House stands was named Elmwood after the nearby cemetery of the same name that opened in 1902. This neighborhood would become one of the most industrialized areas of Winnipeg. Winnipeg itself was founded at the confluence of the Assiniboine (Uh sin a boyne) and Red Rivers. The name Winnipeg comes from the Cree words "win" and "nippee" meaning murky water. Many First Nation tribes made this there home before Europeans arrived, from the Red River Metis (Meh tease) to the Ojibwe (Oh Jeeb way) to the Dakota peoples and, of course, the Cree. Europeans built several forts in the area to facilitate fur trading and the Red River Settlement was started in 1812 by Scottish farmers. They were known as Selkirk Settlers and their presence intensified issues between the two fur trading companies in the area, Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company. There was a battle and a merger. The unincorporated village of Winnipeg emerged from the Red River Settlement in 1862 and Winnipeg eventually was incorporated in 1873.

Thomas Glendenning Hamilton, or T.G., was born in 1873 in Toronto. His early years were spent in a sod house. When he was ten, his family moved to Saskatchewan and his father died shortly thereafter. His mother moved the family to Winnipeg in 1891. T.G. attended Manitoba College and then moved on to medical school and graduated from Manitoba Medical College in 1903. He married Lillian May Forrester in 1906 and they would have four children, Margret, Glen and Arthur and James who were twins. In 1910, Dr. Hamilton and Lillian moved into a house at 185 Kelvin Street (which is today 183 Henderson Highway) in Winnipeg that the doctor would set up as his medical office. The medical practice was on the main level and surgery was in the basement and the family lived on the upper two floors. The house was built in the classical revivalist style, which combined Greek and Roman embellishments with columns. It has a simple elegance. There is nothing particularly special about it on the surface.

T.G. was a well respected practitioner who eventually became president of the Manitoba Medical Association, president of the Canadian Medical Association, the founder of the Manitoba Medical Bulletin and a fellow at the American College of Surgeons. So he is not the type of man one would assume would get involved in the paranormal field. But that is just what he did. He became the first president of the Winnipeg Society for Psychical Research. T.G.'s journey into the paranormal started with the death of his son Arthur who died from the Spanish Flu in 1919. He had a deep desire to know what had become of his son after death. And don't we all understand that quest? Because of his background, T.G. wanted to use science to figure out where we go after we die. Hamilton would join an international group of scientists exploring psychical phenomenon who were well respected like Nobel Prize–winning French physiologist Charles Robert Richet and British chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes. Hamilton first investigated telepathy and after being satisfied that this was a thing, he moved on to telekinesis and then to working with mediums.

The Hamilton family all took part in experiments and research and they documented everything in pictures and text. These documents are called fonds and the Hamilton family donated their fonds to the University of Manitoba. This research was conducted from 1918 to 1945 and covered all aspects of spiritualism and unexplained activity from teleplasm to telekinesis to psychic phenomenon. The collection includes 1300 notes and documentation and 700 photos. The Hamiltons held hundreds of seances in their home, most accounts claim that they hosted 1,000 in a room of their house. We worked our way through many of the photos. There is a teleplasm coming from a woman's mouth that has the face of a man in the center of it. It looks like a photo that has been placed in the middle of cotton. The teleplasm had to have been a favorite because there are many pictures of this. Some are just barely forming at the mouth and others have pictures, some with as many as five pictures in the middle. One of these pictures featuring three faces we'll share on Instagram and it was described as "A photograph of a teleplasmic mass that contained the faces of Lillian Hamilton's aunt Christine and her brothers that appeared during a seance at the home of the British chemist, Mr. Myers, in August 1932."

[University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections - Hamilton Family fonds (PC 12, A.79-41)]

One of the favorite experiments of the Hamiltons was table tipping. A friend had visited their house and asked if they had ever tried it and he explained that it was an old parlor game he had witnessed in the old country. He had experimented with it and gotten good results. The Hamiltons were intrigued and they bought a small wooden table that was about the size of a piano bench. They sat on two sides and had two other people sit on the other sides and everyone placed their fingertips lightly on the table. The table immediately became agitated, described as though it were in the hand of a giant, and it began to pound up and down and tilted on two legs. The action was described as aggressive. The Hamiltons then began to call out letters of the alphabet and the table would tip to indicate which letter was chosen. Lillian's mother was there and she wrote down the letters on paper. After a few minutes, the experiment was stopped and the lights turned up, so that they could study the message. The message had come from somebody claiming their name was Myers and he said he was the chief spokesman. The message was "Plato Book 10 allegory very true. Read Lodge. Trust his religious sense. Myers instead are here. Stead answers doctor's questions." 

The Hamiltons weren't acquainted with the works of Plato, so they certainly didn't know that there were 10 books in Plato's "The Republic." Book 10 was Plato's argument that philosophy-based education was superior to traditional poetry-based education. At his time, poets were thought to be the wisest. The Myers who brought the message was Frederic W.H. Myers who founded the Society for Psychical Research. He had passed in 1901 and he put forward the idea that the human self survives bodily death and he tried proving this through his own psychical research. Myers was described as a man who had lost his Christian faith and was seeking a new religion that would reassure him that the soul went on after death. The name Lodge referred to Oliver Lodge who was a Christian Spiritualist who wrote "Survival of Man" in 1909. The name Stead referred to the famous journalist and Spiritualist William T. Stead who died on board the Titanic. During his first seance, a spirit communicated to him a prophecy: "Young man, you are going to be the St. Paul of Spiritualism." He popularized psychical research through his writing and he founded the magazine Borderland in 1893 with the renowned medium Ada Goodrich Freer. The focus of the magazine was on Spiritualism and research of the paranormal.

So let us just stop here for a moment and pull the listeners into a rabbit hole with a big side of synchronicity. The day before Diane started the research for this episode, she was going through the movies playing on Pluto TV and saw that Titanic was on, so she turned it on. About 30 minutes into the movie, she checked her messages on Instagram and saw that listener Jimmy Tucker had sent a reel about a flood at the suburban Chicago Titanic exhibit. The strange thing about the story is that no one could find the source of the water. There were no pipe leaks. This wasn't from a flood of rain. It was a complete mystery. You can find the story from a couple weeks ago. So we have a weird phenomenon connected to a Titanic exhibit and Diane is learning this while randomly watching the movie Titanic. Fast forward to the next day and here we have this Stead who died on the Titanic. And here is some strangeness with that. The British Association for Victorian Studies published an article entitled "Ghostly Messages from Beyond the Titanic: W.T. Stead, Spiritualism and The Blue Island." This is from the article, "For his spiritualist daughter Estelle, her father’s tragic death was merely the beginning of a series of extended séance communications she would have with him through the medium, Pardoe Woodman. Purportedly voiced by her father after the Titanic’s sinking, Estelle and Woodman published The Blue Island: Experiences of a New Arrival Beyond the Veil, in which Stead revealed his journey into the spirit world, from floating above the sinking Titanic, to his observations of the spirit world’s aesthetic appearance. In climactic detail, the narrative opens with Stead relaying emotive descriptions of the ship’s destruction and the effect on the spirits who passed on: ‘here were hundreds of bodies floating in the water —dead —hundreds of souls carried through the air, alive; very much alive, some were. Many, realising their death had come, were enraged at their own powerlessness to save their valuables. They fought to save what they had on earth prized so much. The scene on the boat at the time of striking was not pleasant, but it was as nothing to the scene among the poor souls newly thrust out of their bodies, all unwillingly’. The rest of the narrative is lighter in tone, focusing on practical details of the afterlife, including the clothes ghosts wear, architecture in the spirit world, and the change in corporeal desires, such as not needing to smoke, and only consuming food as a means of ‘refreshment’, rather than as vital sustenance. However, it was the triviality of many of these details that led one critic to deem Stead’s bold visualisation of the afterlife ‘a trifle dull’." And then, a couple nights later, Kelly shows Diane a video of a guy on the street in NYC trying to convince people to sing a song while he plays his guitar. He manages to wrangle in a girl who tells him that she is performing in Titanique just a couple blocks over and the man who is with her plays in Foreigner. We looked up Titanique to see what that was and its a parody of Titanic featuring the songs of Celine Dion and a woman portraying Dion breaks into a bunch of the scenes being re-enacted on stage, singing her songs as well as the cast sang Dion's songs too. Let us just say, if we were scheduled to be taking a cruise anytime soon, we would be cancelling. All this Titanic has been a bit much!

Okay, so back to this message they got while doing the table tipping. The Hamiltons saw the message as evidence that they should continue on and they regularly held table sittings with the same group that had been in the room when they had this first message. In February 1921, Lillian started meeting with the family's nanny, Elizabeth Poole, in a darkened room on the second floor of the house to use the Ouija board. After the first table tipping experiment, the two women switched to table tipping and they would get the table to strike the floor in a regular rhythm up and down. The two felt this was an upgrade to the Ouija board that they had used before this time. This room became the main room used for experiments and was kept locked when not in use. A red bulb was in the center of the room for light. The Hamiltons also began to conduct experiments in other people's homes like Sylvia Barber. 

The Hamiltons often worked with a medium by the name of Mary Marshall and she claimed to be able to channel a German spirit guide named T.A.M. Marshall was a British medium who was introduced to the Hamiltons by their nanny Mrs. Poole and she manifested raps, levitation of tables, writing on glass and knotting of handkerchiefs under the table-leaf. During a seance in 1932, T.G. photographed Marshall producing a nasal ectoplasm with various images in it, including the face of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The plasm sure looks like cheesecloth. Doyle actually visited Hamilton House and took part in a seance and he claimed that a table went flying across the room. He described Winnipeg as a psychic center. The Hamiltons never claimed to be spiritualists and were active members of the United Church of Canada. Guests they invited to witness the seances and participate included lawyers, fellow doctors and even clergymen. T.G. had started down this road because of the death of his son Arthur and he claimed that he had contacted Arthur. 

There were some famous deceased people that the Hamiltons also claimed to have contact with and these included missionary and explorer David Livingstone, British author Robert Louis Stevenson and preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Hamilton made great effort to prevent fraud during seances as well. From the start Hamilton had taken measures to preclude the possibility of fraud during the seances. He would set up 11 cameras to catch all angles and had a remote-control apparatus. He and his guests would physically check mediums and sitters before any experiments. Mrs. Poole even channeled a ghost telling the group they needed to give mediums a sponge bath before seances to guard against fraud. This could just be that Mrs. Poole enjoyed that and we're shocked she didn't go for the massage add-on. And special scrutineers were invited specifically to watch for fraud. Politician William Lyon Mackenzie King attended a seance in August 1933 and he wrote of the experiments in his diary that they were "amazing beyond all words." T.G. wasn't shy about sharing his findings with his medical peers either. The British Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Association held a joint convention in Winnipeg in August of 1930 and Hamilton presented the results of his psychical research to more than 500 delegates. Dr. Henry Bruce Chown had participated in several of the investigations and he came out as a believer in the phenomena, but he also, interestingly, said that he didn't believe that it was a result of spirit activity. And that is the side that many of us fall on. Could these manifestations be due to something other than a human spirit manifesting strange things? As we look back at our episode on Carl Jung, he definitely was finding other possibilities for unexplained events, especially of the psychical nature.

T.G.'s experiments came to an end on April 7, 1935 when he had a massive heart attack and died at the age of 61. His wife Lillian continued to conduct seances until 1945 and Hamilton House continued to be a meeting place for a circle of Spiritualist mediums. T.G. had always thought of Lillian as an equal and she partook as much in the research as he did at a time when women didn't get much credit for that. T.G. Hamilton hadn't published a complete record of his research on psychical phenomena before he died, so his children continued his legacy. His youngest son, James, edited a book Hamilton had started called "Intention and survival: psychical research studies and the bearing of intentional actions by trance personalities on the problem of human survival" and got it published in 1942. His daughter, Margaret, published a sequel named "Is survival a fact? Studies of deep-trance automatic scripts and the bearing of intentional actions by the trance personalities on the question of human survival" in 1969.

Margaret lived in the house until 1986. She eventually sold the house and it became a variety of businesses like the Olive Branch, which was a gift and art shop that sold work crafted by artists in Kenya and other parts of the world. The upper stories were rented out as Air B&B apartments for a time. The Hamilton House was acquired by the current owner, Gags Unlimited Inc, in 2021 and they have put forward an effort to share not only the house with the public, but to rebuild its energies and continue to conduct psychical experiments. They offer meeting space, tours of the house, group seances, metaphysical workshops and psychic readings. There is also a shop on the first level. And they offer overnight private paranormal investigations because the house is reputedly haunted.

Cheryl Wiebe (Weeb), who owns Gags Unlimited, has had her own experiences in the house. She told Winnipeg's CTV News, "'My personal experience is when I was waiting for the appraiser and I was at the front counter, which is right 10 feet from the door, and I heard a knock at the door. I went to go and answer the door and it is glass, and nobody was there. So I went to the back door thinking someone was there, that it was the appraiser and nobody was there.' Wiebe said a similar experience happened when she was renovating the home with her son. He went to use the washroom and heard a knocking sound. When he returned, he asked his mother if it was her. I said, ‘I’m not knocking. I was hanging wallpaper.’ He said ‘I was downstairs and somebody knocked on the door,’ and he knocked on the wall. He said it was clear, like that."

CTV News' photojournalist Zachary Kitchen who shot the interviews had some weird experiences. Nearly all the batteries on his electronics drained. And this next one is really weird. He was using a wagon to haul his camera gear and when he was unloading the equipment for the shoot, he found a ring that he hadn't put in the wagon. Turns out this was a ring that had been found buried in the carpet during renovations by Cheryl and she keeps it on a counter. Only Cheryl and Zach were in the house at the time.

Psychic Medium Bernice Bisson had an opportunity to read the house one summer and she experienced doors opening and closing on their own and unexplained noises. There is a window on the second floor where many people have seen a woman in the window when no one is in the house. She seems to be gazing out across the street to the cemetery where all the family members are buried. This woman even showed up in the listing picture when the house was for sale. She appears to have short hair and light-colored clothing.  

Many of the photos captured by T.G. Hamilton seem hard to believe, but they have garnered a cult following in the artistic world and despite the fantastical claims of the Hamiltons, they were very much respected and continue to be even today. The fact that the University of Manitoba took their collection and have shared it with the world is proof of that. In the end, it is up to the listeners to decide. Did the Hamiltons and their various friends and guests contact the other side? Is their former home haunted? That is for you to decide!

Show Notes:

A video of Hamilton's ectoplasm photos: https://youtu.be/W0HncGNBCqY?si=_Kjt4P5RUIbeQY0Y

HGB Ep. 545 - USS Yorktown

Moment in Oddity - Henry "Box" Brown (Suggested by Dennis Gibbons)

Back in the early 1800's there was a man by the name of Henry Brown who was born enslaved on a Virginia tobacco Plantation. When the owner of the plantation died, Henry's family including his parents and seven siblings, were divided up among several slaveholders. At the time, he was 15 years old and was sold to work in a tobacco factory in Richmond. Brown was allowed to attend the First African Baptist Church where he met his future wife, Nancy who was enslaved at a neighboring plantation. Nancy was controlled by an abusive man who sold her and the couple's 3 children while Nancy was pregnant with their fourth child. Henry was shattered by the loss of his family and was determined to escape his enslavement. He enlisted the aid of friend and free Black man, James C.A. Smith Jr. Henry Brown wanted to flee north and a plan was devised to build a crate that Brown would hide inside of while being shipped to Pennsylvania, where slavery was almost non-existent at the time. On March 23rd, 1849, Henry crawled into the crate which was around 3 feet long, 2 1/2 feet deep and 2 feet wide. The wooden crate had three air holes drilled into it by which Henry could breathe. He was taken to a shipping company where his travels began. The uncomfortable expedition took a total of 27 hours by wagon, steamboat and train, eventually being released from the confines of the crate at the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Upon exiting the box, Henry sang a hymn he had written, based upon Psalm 40 of the Old Testament. Following his escape from slavery, Henry received the nickname, Henry 'Box' Brown. There were many methods enslaved people attempted to escape to a better life, but a method of being shipped in such a small box over many miles certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Death of Jean Moulin

In the month of July, on the 8th, in 1943, French Resistance leader Jean Moulin (Mulan) died while being transported to a concentration camp. Moulin was considered the face of the French Resistance. He stood up to the Germans during the occupation of France during World War II. The Gestapo arrested him in June of 1940 as a suspected communist and they tortured him. He attempted to cut his own throat and was taken to a hospital and then released. Moulin smuggled himself out of France in September 1941 and headed to London where he met up with Charles de Gaulle who lead "Free French." He parachuted back into France in 1942and organized the resistance movement. Moulin was betrayed by one of his people and the Gestapo arrested him again. They interrogated and tortured him. He was nearly dead from the torture when he was loaded on a train to be taken to a camp in Germany. He died from his injuries. The French consider him a hero and have named many streets, schools and universities for him.

USS Yorktown

We just returned from a road trip through the Outer Banks of North Carolina and along our way, we stopped in Charleston, South Carolina. We've seen the USS Yorktown from afar before, but on this trip, we boarded this magnificent aircraft carrier twice. She was one of twenty-four Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II. Today, the carrier is a museum that not only houses the museum of the Medal of Honor Society and artifacts from her service, but there are rumored to be several spirits on board. Join us as we share the history, hauntings and our experiences on board the USS Yorktown.

Charleston Harbor sits between Charleston and Mount Pleasant and is bordered by Daniel Island, James Island and Sullivan's Island. In 1670, a colonial expedition set sail from England and wound up in present-day Charleston Harbor. They founded the city and called it Charles Town in honor of the King of England, Charles II. The town was originally settled on the west bank of the Ashley River on Albemarle Point and then it relocated in 1680 to Charleston Neck, which was a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. These two rivers joined to form Charleston Harbor with an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean. Charleston has seen its share of pirates, sailors and slave traders as a port city. The dark waters hold many tales. Dolphins are plentiful and the buildings and ships that border the bay hold a vast amount of history.

The first thing one notices at the harbor is the USS Yorktown. This is the “Fighting Lady,” a legendary WWII aircraft carrier and she is massive and impressive. Patriots Point opened in 1976 after the Patriots Point Development Authority was established. The grounds feature the Patriots Point Museum, Cold War Memorial, Medal of Honor Museum, Vietnam Experience Exhibit, the USS Laffey (a destroyer) and the USS Yorktown. This USS Yorktown wasn't the first aircraft carrier to hold that name. As a matter of fact, five ships have had the name Yorktown, which was inspired by the Revolutionary War Battle of Yorktown. The 1781 battle was decisive and led to Cornwallis' humiliating surrender. The first Yorktown was built in 1839 and was a 16-gun sloop. She wrecked in 1850 on a reef near the Cape Verde Islands. A steel-hulled gunboat was the second Yorktown. She was decommissioned in 1919. The next Yorktown would be the first aircraft carrier to hold the name and this was commissioned in 1937 and she served gallantly through to World War II. 

The carrier was described as invincible as it managed to outmaneuver many torpedo attacks. The Yorktown also managed to survive a Japanese dive bombing attack. Multiple bombs were dropped and none hit their mark...except for one of them and it was a devastating result. That bomb went through the Flight Deck and exploded below deck, killing and injurying many sailors. The carrier went to Pearl Harbor for repairs and quickly turned around and headed to the Battle of Midway. The success of the Pacific Fleet was high at the beginning, but the USS Yorktown would be hit by three massive bombs that caused her to stall movement. She finally got going later, but another attack came in and two torpedoes hit her port side. She lost power again and began to list and she was abandoned. There was an effort to save her later, but that didn't work and she now sits on the ocean floor.

And that brings us to USS Yorktown (CV-10), which had her keel laid in December 1941 at Newport News, Virginia with plans to name her Bonhomme Richard, after John Paul Jones' frigate from the Revolutionary War. Jones had named it thus to honor Benjamin Franklin and his pen name from Poor Richard's Almanac. After the loss of the other Yorktown carrier, it was decided to rename this carrier USS Yorktown and that took place on September 26, 1942. The USS Yorktown was commissioned in April of 1943. She was an Essex-class aircraft carrier and measured 872 feet in length and able to displace 36,380 long tons. The carrier was propelled by four steam turbines and four screw propellers. She could carry up to 100 aircraft. It was decided to have Eleanore Roosevelt christen the ship and she at first refused because She had christened the other Yorktown and obviously it had sunk so she figured they wouldn't want her to christen this one too. But they did and they convinced her to do it. So there is this long speech going on before the christening and all of a sudden, the Yorktown launched itself. This was seven minutes before it was scheduled to do that and it had no help. There were several cables holding the carrier that don't let go by themselves and no one could explain how this happened. Eleanor jumps up when she sees this and hurls the bottle of champagne at the ship and it proceeds to bounce off of the ship, but she is quick and adept and catches the bottle. She throws it at the ship again and this time it busted like it was supposed to, averting any future bad luck.

The Yorktown performed some shakedown exercises and then headed for Pearl Harbor via the Panama Canal and arrived on July 24, 1943. Life on board was like being on a floating city. Sailors were served four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight rations. The Navy recommended a diet of between 3500 and 4500 calories a day since these were fighting men. Most sailors put a lot of weight on while they were out to sea. Our tour guide shared with us all that was needed to make chocolate chip cookies for the entire crew. About 10,000 cookies took 112 pounds of chocolate chips, 165 pounds of flour, 500 eggs, 100 pounds of granulated sugar, 87 pounds of shortening, 12 pounds of butter, 3 pounds of salt, 3 cups of vanilla, a quart of water, 1.5 pounds of baking soda and 75 pounds of brown sugar. There were usually three or four dentists on board. Same for barbers. There were a couple of stores where sailors could buy snacks or toiletries. The Yorktown won awards for its food and was one of the few ships to have ice cream Savannah shared this fun story about George Bush Sr. (Savannah Ice Cream)

Joseph "Jocko" Clark was the first Captain of the Yorktown and he was the first Native American to graduate from the Naval Academy. USS Yorktown's first assault operations took place at the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. In January, she was fighting at the Marshall Islands and then off for four months of Central Pacific raids. In June of 1944, Yorktown took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. This battle was the largest aircraft carrier battle in history. The US Fleet had 15 carriers with 900 aircraft. US Navy fighters shot down down nearly 400 Japanese aircraft in what was called the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The Yorktown herself destroyed 37 enemy planes and dropped twenty-one tons of bombs on Guam. At the end of 1944, a typhoon sank three of the American destroyers and the USS Yorktown took part in the rescues of their crews. In January of 1945, the USS Yorktown was able to break through to Japan's inner defenses and soon she was launching strikes on the Tokyo area. 

In March, the Japanese managed an assault on the Yorktown and while most of it was rebuffed, a bomb did get through and hit the signal bridge and passed through the first deck and exploded near the ship's hull. This punched two large holes in her side and killed five men and wounded twenty-six others. She continued on though with her raids. She spent several weeks bombing Okinawa. Then she pounded Tokyo some more. August 13, 1945 was the last day she bombed Tokyo. Two days later, Japan said they would surrender and it did so on September 2, 1945. The USS Yorktown earned eleven battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation.

After the war, the Yorktown sailed for San Francisco Bay and dropped off her crew and then went to Guam to pick up more sailors to bring home and she returned again to San Francisco Bay. In 1947, the Yorktown was decommissioned. She would be reactivated again in 1952 and conduct training operations rather than combat missions during the Korean War. The carrier was modified throughout the latter 1950s and was reclassified as an antisubmarine warfare aircraft carrier. She conducted special operations during the Vietnam War and concluded her last tour of duty in July of 1966. Yorktown's next big assignment was recovering Apollo 8 after it splashed down from its mission of being the first human spaceflight to reach the moon. It orbited the moon 10 times before returning to earth. The USS Yorktown was officially decommissioned in 1970 and donated to the Patriot's Point Development Authority and today is a museum.

Also at Patriot's Point was the Allen M. Sumner-class, USS Laffey, which was known as "the ship that would not die." This destroyer was named for Seaman Bartlett Laffey who received the Medal of Honor for risking his own life in March 1864. He took a 12 pound howitzer mounted on a field carriage with him and his crew into a heated battle and stood by his gun, despite the enemy fire which cut the gun carriage and rammer. The enemy was turned back. The destroyer was launched in 1943 and had a crew of 336. The Laffey was part of the D-Day invasion at Normandy. She resisted the most intense kamikaze attack in history on April 16, 1945, which is how she got her nickname. The Laffey managed to shoot down several fighters, but she was hit by four bombs, six kamikaze crashes and strafing fire. Thirty-two of her sailors were killed and 71 wounded. Many of the deaths came from one of the 40 mm gun mounts. We got the experience what it was like to be a part of that moment with an interactive exhibit with sights and sounds. It's amazing to think of 11 men standing in this very cramped space loading up bullets and this one took a direct hit from a kamikaze, which killed them all. There have been reports of a shadow patrol aboard the destroyer, which people have seen from the Yorktown at night.

There were a couple of strange incidents on board. Somewhere between the Fighter Pilot Ready Room and the Bomber Pilot Ready Room, a pilot named Lieutenant Hummel disappeared aboard the Yorktown in 1944. The entire ship was searched and he was never found. And a pilot named Smokey Stover seemed to predict his death. He was worried as he gathered his things for a large battle called "Operation Hailstorm. He stopped a chaplain and explained what was so heavy on his mind. He said, "I had this peculiar dream. Last night the dream was all about the mission and in the mission, I actually fly, but I get shot down by the Japanese. They find me, they take me back to the island where they marched me around the island, interrogated me, and then executed me." The chaplain said, "That's a dream, not a premonition. If you stick to what you do best, you'll be fine." Stover flew the mission and he was right. he got shot down and bails out in the water. Nobody could rescue him because of the ongoing battle. No one knows what happened to Stover, but at the end of the war, the Japanese Center reported to the United States that at that battle, they took seven Americans out of the water and marched them around the island, interrogated them and then executed them.

The Yorktown seems to have several spirits hanging around. For years, people have reported strange activity and shadow figures. There were 141 deaths on the Yorktown with only five of them a result of direct enemy fire. The first death was an assistant pharmacist who died from a lice infestation. He had an allergic reaction and all the scratching killed him. There was another death in the Catapult Room. In the 1960s the cable of the catapult snapped. One sailor heard the snap and he jumped down from his bunk and that saved his life because the cable went right through where he had been. Another sailor wasn't as lucky. He ran to the phone to report the issue and the cable hit him and well, the cable went through the phone and through him.

Brian Parson was an electrician who worked on the ship after it became a museum. He was staying in a designated room for people working on the ship where they could have privacy as scouts regularly had sleepovers on the carrier. One night, Brian was lying in his bunk when the door to the room slammed open and hit the wall. He figured it was some scouts pranking him, so he jumped up quick to catch them and when he looked out into the hall, he saw no one. Keep in mind that he also hears no one running away, which would be something one could clearly hear on a metal ship. There were also chains on either side of the hallway to bare anyone from coming down the hall and those chains weren't moving. If some scouts had ducked under them or jumped over them, they certainly would have been swinging. Even stranger, a tour guide was telling this same story to a group outside the door and they heard a loud banging on the door even though no one was in the room.

Brian also had experiences with a shadow figure that everyone has nicknamed Shadow Ed. (p.84) And a visitor to the Yorktown shared this experience with Shadow Ed. (p. 85)

And then there is Shadow Sam in the pea coat. (Shadow Sam)

We went to a dark area of the ship where many people have felt a heavy feeling and that they are not welcome. Women in general feel unwelcome on the ship. Occasionally people have heard an audible voice say "move" and felt cold spots in this area. A couple years ago, some investigators set up a ghost grid pointing down the hallway. They heard a loud bang and see nothing. They were filming everything and the next day they were looking at the video and noticed that something passed through the grid. What was interesting is that this seemed intelligent because the bang came from another direction and distracted them from watching the grid. So they didn't see the movement at the time. Very much a military tactic.

Scrappy was a dog that became the mascot of the carrier. The crew found the Airedale wandering around Pearl Harbor and adopted him. They named him Scrapper Shrapnel or Scrappy for short. He had a custom made helmet and life jacket. There is this cute picture of him in a Grumman F6F Hellcat in 1943. Our guide tells us about Scrappy haunting the carrier. (Scrappy)

Bruce Orr wrote "Ghost of the USS Yorktown and in there he shares the experiences of a docent named Lori. (p. 65-66)

There are various planes and helicopters on the Flight Deck. One of these was the SH-3G Sea King, which was an anti-submarine helicopter that served during the Vietnam War. The Sea King was also the type of helicopter that recovered the Apollo 8 crew. One day, a female visitor to the Yorktown looked inside that helicopter and saw a man wearing a World War II uniform. She mentioned this to a nearby docent who rushed over to the helicopter because no one was supposed to be inside the aircraft. He too saw the World War II pilot and he noticed that he was translucent. As to why a World War II pilot would be in a Vietnam War era helicopter is anyone's guess.

At one time there was another ship moored here at Patriot's Point called the USCGC Comanche. The Comanche was a cutter that had been commissioned in 1934. She mainly served as an escort through the waters of Greenland. During World War II, the Comanche was part of an escort group when one of the ships was hit by a torpedo from a German U-Boat. This was a former merchant ship called the Dorchester. It quickly sank, within 20 minutes. The blast had killed many men and those that survived were now in the icy waters, many without life jackets. The captain had told them to sleep in life jackets and they hadn't listened because they were hot. Of the 902 aboard the Dorchester, 672 died. The Comanche rescued 97 survivors and the rest of the survivors were picked up by other ships. Four of the dead were two Protestant reverends, a Catholic priest and a Rabbi. They all sacrificed their lives by giving away their life jackets to sailors and keeping everyone calm. They were all given Purple Hearts and Distinguished Service Crosses posthumously. That wasn't the end of the story for this tragic event. The Comanche seemed to have carried spirits to Patriot's Point with it and this was paranormal activity was witnessed by a Boy Scout troop. (p. 67) Those red lights, of course, were on all the life jackets. This bathed the Comanche in an eerie red glow. The Comanche was destroyed in 1989 by Hurricane Hugo as she was sunk as an artificial reef. Divers sometimes still see the red lights.

Military ships see a lot of death through accidents and war. The Yorktown was considered the Lucky Y because she didn't see many deaths. 141 deaths isn't many considering the action she saw. Other ships could lose as many as 600 crew in just one battle. Some attribute this luck to Jocko having the ship blessed by shamans. They claimed that this ship wouldn't see any more deaths than its predecessor and that number was exact. CV-5 had 141 deaths, just like this Yorktown. But even with that luck it seems that spirits do linger. Is the USS Yorktown haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 544 - Haunted Old Sacramento

Moment in Oddity - FLIP Research Vessel (Suggested by: Duey Oxberger)

There was a most unique research vessel invented in 1962 called FLIP, which stood for 'Floating Instrument Platform'. FLIP was designed by The Gunderson Brothers Engineering Company in Portland, Oregon. Technically it was not a ship at all, but a 355 foot oceanographic research vessel. FLIP was operated by Scripps Oceanography of San Diego, CA for the U.S. Navy. The reason why this vessel was named FLIP was because it could be towed out to sea in a horizontal position and then flipped 90 degrees with 300 feet submerged underwater. To accomplish this flipping process, the research vessel's operators would direct water into several ballast tanks. The transition from the horizontal to the vertical positions would take almost 30 minutes to complete. Flip was originally built to study long-range sound propagation for submarine warfare, however, the research platform was also used to gather information on geophysics, meteorology, physical oceanography, marine mammal research and for gathering other scientific data. FLIP was exceptionally impervious to waves. A 30 foot wave would only make the vessel rise a mere three feet in the water column and it could even withstand swells of up to 80 feet. Most rooms in the buoyant end of FLIP were designed with specifications to operate in both the horizontal and vertical positions. Things like bunk beds, toilets and stoves were built on swivels, while sinks and doors were built both in the horizontal and vertical positions. FLIP gathered valuable data for nearly 60 years before being retired in August 2023. FLIP’s unique design made it the only vessel in the world capable of operating both horizontally and vertically and that fact alone, certainly makes it odd.

This Month in History - Cuyohoga River Fire

In the month of June, on the 22nd, in 1969, the Cuyahoga (Kieya HOEGA)river in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire. The fire was blamed upon the extensive pollution of the Cuyahoga River and witnesses stated that the inferno reached heights of five stories high. It called to light the city's ineffective pollution abatement program. The blaze was recorded beginning around noon and took approximately 20 minutes to get under control. A fireboat and three fire battalions battled the fire eventually containing it to a railroad trestle owned by Norfolk & Western Railway Co. with an estimated damage of $45,000, causing the company to close the area to rail usage. A secondary trestle owned by Newburgh & South Shore Railroad Company sustained $5,000 in damages, however that trestle remained open. It was documented that the fire was caused by a buildup of oily waste and trash that accumulated on the river under the two trestles. Cleveland's Bureau of Industrial Wastes investigated, and it was surmised that the blaze was caused by a discharge of highly volatile petroleum derivatives that had a low flash point but still ignited,possibly due to a flare, at the sight of the railroad bridges. At the time of the fire there was national concern over pollution in Lake Erie and the rivers that flowed into it. This occurrence negatively reflected upon Cleveland's reputation precisely due to the Cuyahoga River's documentation of being the most polluted river in the nation. Over the years, the Cuyahoga river has caught fire 14 times, with the most recent blaze having occurred in August of 2020 after a reprieve of 51 years. 

Haunted Old Sacramento (Suggested by: Brian Pertl)

Old Sacramento is known as Sacramento's "Front Porch." The entire sector is protected as a National Landmark and for good reason. Much of California's early history is seated here. The town saw immense growth during the California Gold Rush and with that came death as well. Cholera epidemics swept through and fire and floods destroyed the place more than once. Old Sacramento had to be raised eighteen feet to prevent flooding, leaving behind underground tunnels. These tunnels are said to be filled with spirits and several of the historic buildings that still remain have unexplained activity. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of Old Sacramento.

The city of Sacramento is the capital of California. The Sacramento Valley was inhabited by the Miwok, Maidu, Nisenan and Patwin people before trappers, traders and settlers moved into the territory. There were several villages with a few hundred members from each tribe. Spanish cavalryman Gabriel Moraga came in 1808 to survey the Sacramento River, which he actually named. Swiss-born Mexican John Augustus Sutter was assigned the duty of colonizing the area and he built Sutter's Fort and eventually Sutter's Mill. One of his employees discovered gold and Sacramento was off and running during the California Gold Rush. While Sutter definitely is credited with starting a colony here, it would be his son John Sutter, Jr. that would be the more successful and he actually founded and platted out the city of Sacramento. This city would become the commercial center of the California Gold Rush since it was built right along the river. And while being close to the river was great for business, it was bad when it came to flooding, which the city did regularly until levies were built and the city rose considerably above the river with thousands of cubic yards of earth being brought in on wagons in 1853. This was a massive endeavor, especially for business owners. What happened is that the city built these eighteen-foot tall brick walls along the streets and filled in the center with the dirt. Now business owners either had to deal with having this wall in front of their property or they could bring in construction companies to jack up their buildings to what was now the new street level. So now there is an underground tunnel system.

Local merchant Sam Brannan opened a store near the Sacramento River once the Gold Rush got started. He and several businessmen eventually bought the Sutter family's property, but not by honest means. Sutter Jr. had been very ill and desperate to move south to Mexico. He didn't like the terms of the contract to buy the property, but somehow the businessmen convinced him to do it. He moved and was never paid. Sutter Jr. returned back to Sacramento and Brannan promised to pay him $40,000, which wasn't paid either. Lawsuits ensued and the California Supreme Court got involved and Sutter Jr. would eventually get about $3,500. People, especially miners, flocked to Sacramento and many of the early structures were simply canvas tents on poles. These would be replaced by wood and brick structures and Old Sacramento came together. Many early structures still remain, there are 53 historic buildings, and the Old Sacramento Waterfront is a thriving retail and commercial district.

Old Sacramento Underground Tunnels

There are claims that Old Sacramento is one of the most haunted areas in the world. And the most haunted place in Old Sacramento has to be the underground tunnel system. This area was notorious for crime and murder and all kinds of nefarious activity. Investigators claim that there are spirits of victims of disease, floods and fires in the tunnels. People have claimed to hear disembodied crying and laughing and shadow figures have been seen. One apparition people have see is a woman in Victorian dress. There is also the spirit of a young man who may have been murdered in the tunnels. Ghost Adventures investigated the underground. They captured disembodied footsteps and on a full-spectrum video camera they caught what looked like a large black mass move away from them behind a wall. It definitely was weird. Aaron heard a man say "F you" audibly behind him. The Spirit Box also said, "F you." Zak asked, "Out of Nick, Zak and Aaron, who don't you like?" and "Aaron" clearly came over the box. They also got the name "Laura" and "Help" over the box

Sacramento History Museum

The Old Sacramento area is anchored by a reproduction of the 1854 City Hall and Waterworks Building that now houses the Sacramento History Museum. The original building was the city's first municipal building and not only included the Mayor's office, but the fire department, police department and city jail. The city's water supply was kept in tanks up on the roof. The building later became strictly just the city prison. The building was sold and demolished in 1913 due to damage from the weight of the water and the railroad tracks that curved around the building. Parts of the jail weren't demolished and still exist today. The museum hosts ghost tours annually in October. 

The museum has the trunk of May Hollister Woolsey who died at the age of twelve in Sacramento after getting a mosquito bite. May died in a house in Sacramento that eventually became a derelict boardinghouse that was bought by a man named Ed Duffy in 1979. He started refurbishing the house and when he knocked out a stairwell, he discovered a small steamer trunk. Inside the trunk were a satin wedding hat, petticoats, marbles, buttons, spools of thread, Christmas tree ornaments, rubber baby galoshes, sewing kit, ostrich feather, doll-size slippers, a diary and a lock of her hair. Mae's mother was devastated at her loss and contacted a medium to try to talk to her daughter and this medium channeled a letter from Mae that is also at the history museum, although it isn't on display. Mae just basically said she wasn't dead, only gone and for her mother not to be sad and that her mission on earth isn't done yet. Her spirit is said to hang out by her burial in the cemetery and also possibly here with her belongings.

And there is also the spirit of George Nicholas Simmons. He was the last man hanged at the jail. He was a highwayman and when the authorities caught up with him, the blood from a victim he had killed was still wet on his horse's bridle. He was tried at the court, found guilty and hanged December 4, 1863. A tour guide said that guests on his tour captured a few pictures of him telling the story of George outside the museum and there were orbs that seemed to be moving all around his body.

Lady Adams Building

This is the oldest remaining structure in the district. It dates to 1852. This was a wholesale and import house that was started by four German immigrants who arrived in town aboard the Lady Adams. They named their store Lady Adams Mercantile Company because the initial goods sold came in off the Lady Adams. The mercantile went bankrupt in 1861 and was replaced by the Fogus & Coghill Grocery. The building was raised fifteen feet in 1865 and became the Mebius & Company Wholesale Grocers. It was vacant in the 1950s as the area became Skid Row. Old Sacramento was redeveloped in the 1960s and the Lady Adams Building and its next door neighbor Howard House were renovated. When reconstruction was done, the ground floor opened as Evangeline's gift shop and the upper two floors featured a bank-themed restaurant and bar. Today, this is the Evangeline's Costume Mansion, which opened in 2000. The mansion features eight themed rooms and visitors can participate in a scavenger hunt through the two buildings. Names for the rooms include the Gothic Chamber, Renaissance Room, The Saloon, The Lab, The Jungle, The Disco, Storybook Land and The Circus.

There are many reports, especially from employees, about haunting activity. They have been touched and watched items move around. The basement seems to be the most active area. News10 ABC participated in an investigation at the mansion in 2015. Reporter Jeff Maher had a device he called a PX Device that says words that started going off and said "highway." A psychic with the group said that there was a man on the second floor who was throwing around F bombs and saying he wanted some whiskey. A Spirit Box in the basement sounded like it responded "Robert" when asked for a name. It also answered "basement" when asked where they were right now. When the investigators asked for knockings, they got them. A viewer told Maher that she had her hair pulled when she was shopping there once. They used dowsing rods to identify that they were talking to a spirit named Penelope - a psychic said she had a dream about a Penelope - and she had come to Sacramento from Colorado. 

The Vernon-Brannan House

The Vernon-Brannan House was built on the site of Sacramento's first post office after it burned down in 1852. Samuel Brannan owned the plot and he sold it to Henry E. Robinson who built a three-story hotel he named the Jones Hotel. This opened in 1854, but was closed within a year. A woman named O.J. Clark took over the building and reopened it as a boarding house she called the Vernon House. Ten years later, Samuel Brannan bought back the property and restored it back to the hotel and opened it as Brannan House. Brannan sold it to Peter Bryding in 1875. Today, the building is a Colderbank office. There is a spirit of a woman in the building. Some think she died in a fire, perhaps before the hotel had been there. People claim to hear her spirit whispering in their ears. One time it was "excuse me." She likes to turn on  the upper balcony lights if someone is out on the patio.

Dingley Spice Mill Building

Nathaniel Dingley was born in Maine in 1824 and left for the California gold mines in 1849. He was married four times and had four daughters. He was divorced twice and his fourth wife was in the process of divorcing him when he died in 1897. Dingley was a pioneer coffee merchant who amassed a great fortune from his coffee business and he owned a lot of property in San Francisco and Sacramento. Dingley built the two-story building in 1853 and he lived on the second floor while running the coffee business on the first floor. Dingley got busted in 1854 for having four kegs of blasting powder in the building and went to jail for awhile. The City Recorder decided that a merchant's license did not give Dingley the ability to deal in gunpowder. A special license was needed for that and no amount over fifty pounds was allowed. And this was for good reason since there was such a danger from fire. As a matter of fact, fire did break out in 1867 and the paper reported, "Dingley's spice and coffee mill, on the north side of I street, was considerably damaged... [Dingley's] exertions to save the last mentioned building is worthy of remark. He had but a small quantity of water in the house, but he made every drop of it tell against the encroaching flames. In his efforts to save his house his face got considerably scorched, which will require several days to regenerate the blistered surface; however, he feels satisfied that it is no worse, and thinks his injuries but slight to what his loss would have been in case the house had met the fate of others near him." Dingley was cruel to a daughter he had with mental disabilities. He threw her down the stairs once. The strange happenings in the building are caused by the ghost of Nathaniel Dingley, people say. Since he wasn't a nice guy, the haunting isn't very nice either. Items are thrown off shelves, the lights upstairs turn themselves on and off on their own and there are strange sounds. The feeling in the building can be oppressive.

River City Saloon

The River City Saloon had been located on the Waterfront, but it is permanently closed now. It had touted itself as the last Old West saloon left in Sacramento and the building dates back to the 1800s. The first building was wood and this was replaced by a brick building in 1857. This saloon not only served drinks, but there was a brothel here run by Johanna Heigle. Sacramento newspaper man Parker French bought the saloon and reopened it as Parker French's Saloon. Men had to be careful not to get too drunk or they might get Shanghaied. When Prohibition shut down alcohol, the bar switched to Sasparilla. By the 1960s, the building was part of Skid Row. The River City Saloon moved in in 2008 after a remodel to its original grandeur. The interior featured a 1905 Triple Arch Brunswick back bar from a New York hotel and a pressed tin ceiling. The bar seems to have three ghosts that haunt the place. There is a prankster male ghost who sometimes steals from customers. Another is a child ghost and the third is a mysterious one that entails a hand print that shows up on the mirror behind the bar. Employees claimed that after closing time, things would move around behind the bar. Light fixtures hanging from the ceiling would swing on their own. Reporter Jeff Maher investigated here for News10 ABC in 2015. The PX Device that he used at the costume shop was used here as well and said "story" and "10" which fits with the fact that he was doing a story for Channel 10, so sounded like an intelligent haunting. The dowsing rod indicated that there is a spirit there that died under the age of twenty. Maher caught what he thought was an apparition in a picture that looked like a woman in a dress. He explained that they had earlier contacted a woman who had worked at the brothel and she said her last name was Murphy. 

The Eagle Theater

The Eagle Theater was California’s first theater. The original building was just canvas and wood with a tin roof. The flood of 1850 wiped out the theater. The Eagle Theater that is in the district is a reconstruction. The original went through several owners and bankruptcies in a short period of time. All members of the town would come out for plays. Tickets were sold at the saloon in front of the theater. The parks department put together several accounts and put together this history of the theater, "Seats were rough boards, apparently without seat-backs and possibly sitting atop tree stumps or packing crates. General lighting was provided by three multi-candle chandeliers, while stage lighting most likely was achieved with oil lamps placed directly in front of the stage. Entrance was through the saloon although visiting ladies and genteel men could be spared the indignity of passing through this rowdy space by sitting in the "boxtier" gallery (loosely akin to a balcony), accessed via an outdoor ladder staircase next to the main entrance." Today, the theater offers docent and video programs on the history of Old Sacramento. 

Many people believe that the former director at the theater from the 1970s is the spirit here. Items get moved around, as do chairs. Ghost Adventures investigated here and interviewed a woman named Sue. She said that a person on a tour had seen an actor on the stage and he looked away  and didn't see the man, so he asked Sue where the man had gone and Sue was like, what man? Later, Zak asked the spirits if they knew Sue whom he talked to earlier and the Ovilus answered "Possibly." Zak saw a shadow move in a corner. When Zak asked if the spirit could show that he was there, a rocking chair started rocking on its own.

The Delta King

The Delta King is a paddlewheel riverboat located on the Old Sacramento Waterfront near downtown and the Golden 1 Center. The riverboat was built in 1925 in Glasgow, Scotland and Stockton, California. It ran between San Francisco and Sacramento for 14 years from 1927 to 1940. The Delta King made these trips with its sister ship, the Delta Queen (which is also haunted). These were some party boats featuring live jazz, gambling, drinking even though Prohibition was on and there was fine dining. A famous suicide took place on the steamship in 1932. If you've listened to our recent Phantasmal Crime about the death of Paul Bern, you heard that Bern was common law married to a woman named Dorothy Millette. As a brief recap, Bern had left Millette and moved on to movie star Jean Harlow and married her. Bern ended up dead, some say by suicide, some say murder. Millette could've possibly been the murderer. Whatever the case, she had mental health issues and ended up on the Delta King on September 6th, 1932. She jumped overboard and her body was found washed up in Walnut Grove a week later. Millette wasn't the only suicide though. A month before, a man wearing a blue suit and a black necktie, with a key to Room 104 in his pocket, jumped off the steamship and drowned. He was never identified. Other deaths on board include a dairyman named Leroy Deskin who jumped overboard in 1933. His body was never found. Another man hanged himself in his cabin in 1934. There was also poison and heart stimulants in his cabin. The man had registered under a pseudonym, so he was never identified. 

Once the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge were completed in 1937 and 1938, the need for the riverboats disappeared. Both of the Deltas were basically out of business. The U.S. Navy drafted both riverboats, painted them gray, and used them during World War II as troop transports. After some time, they became naval barracks and towards the end of the war, they served as hospital ships. The Delta Queen was purchased by the Green Line Steamers of Cincinnati and run along the Mississippi River. She was fitted with her twins steam engines meaning the Delta King had to be towed anytime it was moved. Many plans for the steamship fell through. There was an idea to create a floating Chinese restaurant. Another idea put forward the idea to turn it into a floating Ghirardelli Square. So the Delta King was shuttled around between California and Canada. In Canada, it served as a rooming house for workers at an aluminum manufacturing plant. 

The Delta King was partially submerged in San Francisco Bay by 1984. Brothers Ed and Charlie Coyne bought the neglected steamship and towed it to the Pacific Drydock Co. in Oakland. The original steel hull was stripped and completely restored and then it was towed to Old Sacramento Waterfront and given a complete historical renovation under architect Walter Harvey. The whole process of getting the Delta King back to its former glory took five years. Much of the original woodwork was preserved. The steamship was rechristened and reopened in April of 1989. This now serves as a hotel and restaurant. There are 44 rooms, which have either city views or river views. The restaurant is named the Pilothouse Restaurant and is the original grand dining room of the steamship. There are also wedding packages available. And then there are the ghosts, Apparently there are several ghosts.
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Guests and employees claim that spirits tip over glasses and glasses get broken randomly, drain batteries and bounce balls. A chair from the theater was found in the elevator and the theater had been locked at the time. One of the spirits is male and he appears wearing a light shirt, dark pants and a hat. This ghost tends to walk along the lobby wall, but before he goes through the office door, he turns, walks away and disappears. There is also the spirit of a little girl aged around 10 years old. She appears wearing a long dress and she has dirty blonde hair and sometimes she is bouncing a ball. Her disembodied giggling is heard and sometimes her footsteps are seen in the morning dew on the deck. Staff claim that when investigators ask what her name is, she can't remember and it is believed that she was raped and murdered by a crew member. A former crew member named Pierre is said to have lost his life in the engine room and his spirit remains. The theater rooms are probably the most haunted areas of the ship, although Room 436 gives them a run for their money. 

The blog Haunted Honeymoon reported, "Some strange occurrences happened in our stay. While we were talking to staff members in the lounge a glass cracked in the hands of one of them when she put ice in it. The glass was not warm when she did this. While we were having breakfast in the Pilothouse Restaurant a menu tilted, fell over, and knocked into a glass which broke. The wait staff came over to clean and reset the table and the same menu tipped again, and broke yet another glass. Our full camera battery also drained over the course of one night."

Paul Dale Roberts wrote on the blog True Ghost Tales (dot) com, " The employees that I interviewed on this gorgeous riverboat are Greg Costenson - Beverage Director, Alice Briggs-Ben, Stacey Sorokowsky, Karen Macias - Guest Receptionist. Greg has never seen a ghost, but he has heard all kinds of stories about the ghosts on this boat. While I was interviewing Greg, HPI Paranormal Investigator Debbie Talani was trying to gather some photographic evidence of paranormal activity on the boat. Debbie had an unusual situation happen while taking pictures. She took a picture of one of the employees of the boat and when she looked back at the picture, he was no where in the photo. This was quite odd! On this night, I had a date who does not want to be identified with this story and I sat her down at the bar, while I conducted interviews and Debbie did some lone scouting investigation...Greg brought over an employee named Alice Briggs-Ben and she tells me that patrons have heard a little girl playing or a man walking. Patrons have seen a little girl going down the hallway, or heard her singing...'ring around the roseys'. In the Suspect's Murder Mystery Theater and the Delta King Theater, there are stories of many entities that hang out in this area of the boat...

Another employee Stacey Sorokowsky tells me that one time at 2am, she went downstairs and she was locking up inventory, when all of a sudden the air in the room chilled with coldness. That was her only paranormal experience, but she was told by the server that he actually saw the little girl ghost. Now Karen Macias has been an employee for 8 years and she has experienced the presence of the little girl ghost 3 times and the man ghost 3 or 4 times. She has seen the man ghost with her peripheral vision, she saw him walk one way and then back another way quickly. She has heard the little girl laughing. One time a patron told her to keep the little girl from playing in the hallway, because he couldn't sleep, he didn't know she was a ghost. After 10pm is when the paranormal activity usually starts according to Karen. Karen tells me that there are more ghosts in the theater. Unfortunately, there was a play going on. Debbie and I, could not investigate this area. Debbie's digital audio recorder would not work for her tonight, so we couldn't pick up any EVPs. Karen shows me a book that Stan Garvey wrote about the boat, called 'King and Queen of the River'. This book details the history of the Delta King. The book was published in 1995. It's a hard book to find. In this book, I learn that the wood was cut in Scotland and assembled & launched to Stockton, where the boat was built. I asked Karen how old does she think the girl ghost is? Karen thinks the girl is anywhere from 7 years old to 9 years old. One employee saw barefoot footprints of the little ghost girl show up on the floor. He freaked out and quit his job instantly. I asked Karen what does the man ghost look like and she describes him as wearing a dark cap, white shirt and dark pants. One time Karen thought the man ghost was mad at her and he shifted all of her papers on her cabinets to the left hand side of one cabinet."

Sacramento is a city with many haunted locations and the Old Sacramento Waterfront seems to have a cluster of them. With a rich history dating to before the Gold Rush and an entire network of underground tunnels, it's not surprising. But are these locations really haunted? That is for you to decide!