Moment in Oddity - Kailasa Temple (Suggested by: Karen Miller)
Megalithic structures are found all around the world and they are all fascinating. It is hard to comprehend that human beings could construct such things with their hands and basic tools. One of these renowned structures can be found in India. This is the Kailasa Temple and is technically a cave temple. Rather than being a temple that was built, it was formed by excavating 200,000 tons of volcanic rock from a single block of stone. The temple is one of 34 stone temples that make up the Ellora Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Not much is known about the temple. It is thought to have been built between 600 and 1000 BC, but nobody knows who ordered it built. A legend claims the king became ill and his queen prayed to Shiva to cure him. She promised to have a temple built to Shiva and that she would fast until the shikhara, or very top, was built. Little did the queen know that this construction could take years. An engineer recommended that they carve down into the stone and build the top first. And that's what was done. Whether this story is true, we'll never know, but the temple was indeed carved from the top down. When finished, the temple was three stories with lots of ornate decoration that could have been added a little at a time over the centuries. A herd of carved elements at the base of the structure seem to be carrying the temple on their backs. Both Vishnu and Shiva are honored by the Kailasa Temple, which is an outstanding example of Indian art and an engineering marvel and the fact that it was carved from the top down, certainly is odd!
This Month in History - Calamity Jane Born
In the month of May, on the 1st, in 1852, Calamity Jane was born. Calamity Jane was born as Martha Jane Cannary in Princeton, Missouri. She moved with her family via wagon train to Montana in 1865. Her mother died the following year from pneumonia and the family moved to Salt Lake City. Jane's father died in 1867 when she was 14. She took her siblings to the Wyoming Territory and worked a variety of jobs from cook to nurse to dance hall girl to ox team driver and even some sex work. There are legends about how she received the nickname Calamity Jane. The story she told was that she helped during military conflicts with Native Americans and saved a Captain Egan who had been shot in his saddle and as he fell, she grabbed him and pulled him onto her saddle and road to the fort where he was saved. He dubbed her Calamity Jane, the Heroine of the Plains. Another story claimed that she told men that offending her was to court calamity. Another questionable story about her includes her being married to Wild Bill Hickok and having a child with him. She joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show 1893. Jane died from an inflamed bowel and pneumonia in 1903. She was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood.
Rapid City and Hotel Alex Johnson
Rapid City, South Dakota is full of great eats, history and culture. The Hotel Alex Johnson has been opened for nearly 100 years and is located in downtown Rapid City. The hotel has hosted celebrities, presidents and even a couple of ghosts. Today, the hotel is run as a part of Hilton's Curio Collection, so the interior has been modernized, but that hasn't chased away the spirits of the past. And this city has a couple of other haunted spots as well. Join us for the history and hauntings of Rapid City and the Hotel Alex Johnson.
The Black Hills Expedition came to the Black Hills in search of gold and they found it in 1874. The announcement of this find brought a rush of people to the Dakota Territory. Not everyone was successful and a few of these discouraged prospectors decided to found a city. The spot they chose was near a limestone spring and so they called their settlement Rapid City. The group, led by John Brennan and Samuel Scott, platted the town with six blocks in the center for a business district. They advertised the settlement as the Gateway to the Black Hills to attract families to relocate. And the people came and continued to come, making this South Dakota's second largest city today. The 1800s brought more commerce and industry and the 20th century would make it a tourist destination. President Calvin Coolidge and the First Lady visited Rapid City in the summer of 1927. He set up an office there and announced he would not seek reelection in 1928. And a little fun fact, Al Capone was invited by the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce to live in the Black Hills in 1930. Capone declined. It was about this same time that Alex Johnson decided to build a hotel here.
Alex Johnson was born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania on May 20, 1859. He went to school to become a teacher and obtained his teaching certificate in 1878. He married Ida Devore and the couple had three children. The family moved to the Dakota Territories looking for an opportunity to make more money. Johnson got work as a traveling auditor for elevator companies and attended law school. He passed the bar in South Dakota and later became a special agent for the Chicago & North Western Railroad. Johnson continued his work with the railroad throughout the rest of his life, reaching Vice President of CNW, holding that role until he retired in 1929. During that time, he decided to build a hotel, which he hoped would be a showplace of the West.
The timing was perfect for this hotel. The day before ground was broken for the Hotel Alex Johnson, work began on Mount Rushmore. Construction continued from October of 1927 to July 1, 1928 when the hotel officially opened. The hotel was designed by Chicago architects Oldefest & Williams and done in the Germanic Tudor architectural style. This style is clearly reflected in the half-timber work and multiple roof gables at the top of the hotel and the large groups of rectangular windows. The hotel rises 122 feet and has 11 stories. The hotel featured standard guest rooms and suites, a total of 143 rooms. Today, those suites are the Executive Suites, a Presidential Suite and a Bridal Suite. Johnson wanted the interior of his hotel to reflect the land upon which it was built, so he insisted that the Lakota Sioux Tribe be represented. There is a chandelier that has hung here from the beginning made from the tribe's war spears. The Native American symbol for the four sacred corners of the earth is represented in several places as well. The lobby has brick flooring and ornate woodwork, particularly on the banisters of the upper level that looks down on the lobby.
There is a bar off the lobby called Paddy O'Neill's and this was named for the first official guest of the hotel. Good thing his name wasn't John Smith. There is also the Vertex Restaurant & Bar that is on the top two floors of the hotel and is members-only. The hotel has hosted six US Presidents over the years: Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The 1959 Hitchcock movie "North by Northwest" was filmed at nearby Mount Rushmore and the hotel served as lodging for director Alfred Hitchcock and stars Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant. The hotel is mentioned several times in the movie as the Sheraton-Johnson Hotel because that was its name at the time. This was the place the mysterious George Kaplan was staying. North by Northwest is considered one of the greatest movies of all time and features a plot where an innocent man is mistaken for being someone with the government trying to prevent a mysterious organization from smuggling out microfilm that contains government secrets. The climax of the movie takes place at Mount Rushmore.
Twenty years after the hotel opened, it changed ownership to the Eppley Hotel Company. It then fell under ownership of the Sheraton company and was called the Sheridan-Johnson Hotel when Sheridan acquired the Eppley Hotel Company. That lasted nine years and the hotel took on its original name again in 1965. Hilton took over the hotel in 2015 and made it part of its Curio Collection managed by Liv Hospitality. The hotel announces its name with a glowing red rooftop sign. This place is not shy about their haunts and even offers a Ghost Adventure stay, which includes a reportedly haunted room, a K2 Meter, free parking and a dining credit. The website also includes information about the three spirits thought to be here and the lobby keeps a ghost book. The hotel has seen its share of death with reportedly eight deaths at the hotel.
Guests and staff have reported seeing shadow figures, particularly in unusual places. Doors open and close by themselves. Cold spots are felt, people feel as though they are being watched and they feel someone unseen sitting down next to them. Knocking is heard as well as growling and there are reports that one entity here does seem to be aggressive, so perhaps that is who is growling. This mean spirit has also shoved, bitten and pinched people. Chairs are pushed from one area to another or sometimes heaved across the room by something unseen. One of the ghosts here is believed to belong to Alex Johnson himself. He died in the hotel in 1938. His full-bodied apparition is seen in various locations. There is a young female ghost here as well that is believed to be Alex Johnson's niece who died of an incurable disease. She likes to wander the eighth floor and has been seen running through the hall and knocking on doors. She vanishes once seen. Her disembodied giggling is heard too.
Domico Rodriguez worked as a general manager of the hotel in 2018 and he told the 605 Magazine, "People say they hear kids running up and down the hall. Well, we don’t have a lot of kids that stay here, particularly not young children. But that’s one of the things that they often talk about. They hear them playing in the hallway.” Raz Goldman was a hotel lobby clerk and he told the Black Hills Fox in October of 2020, "There’s something I always feel a little creeped out on the 8th or 3rd floor. For me in room 812 the safe would not open. We did everything we could and it would not open. Finally, before I called maintenance the safe just opened. I don’t know why or how that happened but it did.”
The most famous ghost here is our Lady in White. There are two stories told about a bride who killed herself. This could either be two totally different brides or just two legends connected to one woman. Both stories claim that the bride was jilted. She had been staying on the eighth floor and threw herself out of the hotel window, falling to her death. Or she hanged herself inside her eighth floor room from the telephone cord. This second story actually has a crime scene photo to go with it, so it isn't just legend. Some people claim that she was murdered, particularly her friends who say that she had a large inheritance. The police never found evidence for murder, so it was ruled a suicide and remains that way. She died in Room 812 and so this is the most active room. She opens and closes drawers in here and even turns the drawers upside down and puts them back in that way. The Lady in White's disembodied crying is heard and guests have awakened to find the window open in the morning. This ghostly bride is seen floating down the hallway of the eighth floor as well.
Ghost Hunters investigated the hotel in 2011. Jamie Paul Koehler, a gift shop employee at the time, saw a dark figure out of the corner of his eye, walk up from behind him and then past him through a locked door. It freaked him out good. The general manager says people hear people yelling "Let me out of here!" down in the basement. He lived in Room 304 for a month when he first got to the hotel and one night he felt something shift on the bed and then lean on him. Something he couldn't see. Bob Almond was the Director of Maintenance and he could never get plumbers to go into a crawl space between the 9th and 10th floors where much of the major plumbing was located. One plumber got very nauseous and another heard an audible growl. He also lost a painter who was touched by a ghost and refused to return. The guys thought they debunked this as the heating pipes making noise, until the thermal camera picked up a figure. They did debunk a claim that a man got out of the shower and "Help Me" was written on the steam of the mirror. As we know, someone could have written something before and then it would show up and the Ghost Hunters proved that with an experiment.
The team brought their dog Maddie with them. She refused to go in the room where the crawl space was located and they got high EMF readings. Grant and Jason heard the sound of something like a box dragging across the floor. Tango went into the crawl space and asked something to knock after he knocked and something did. He repeated it and there was knocking again. Later, Jason and Grant would be in the same space and hear disembodied footsteps. Amy and Adam were in room 304 and they captured a deep voice on their recorder. Tango and Steve were sitting in the balcony of the ballroom and they captured some kind of a white mist travel several feet around the tables on a camera. It was very creepy. They also asked the spirit to make a banging sound and it sounded like some soft knocking. They debunked it as dust, but I'm not so sure because it shifts twice. Jason felt something blowing on the back of his head in Room 304. They looked for a vent, but couldn't find anything that would cause that. Amy and Adam had also felt like something touched their hair when they were in this room. Adam sleepy in Room 802 and caught a female voice on EVP a little after 4 am.
Elks Theater
The Rapid City Elks built the building that now houses the Elks Theater in 1911. This was to be their lodge and opera house. They sold the Elks Lodge in 1920 to a man named Art Rose and he held onto it for five years before selling it to Black Hills Amusement Company. Talkies came to the theater in 1929. In 1969, Common Wealth Theaters bought the theater and they sold it to United Artist 1988. We're not sure why, but the company locked up the theater within a year and left it abandoned. Burst pipes severely damaged the interior. Doug and Lori Andrews bought Elks Theater in 1992 and began refurbishing it. They sold it to Curt Small in 2008 and he still owns the property. There is one benevolent spirit here that everybody calls Jimmy. Curt Small doesn't believe in ghosts, but he has said that patrons claim to have seen the apparition and that they see the seats set down and flip up on their own.
The Old Hanging Tree
Along Skyline Drive one will find the stump of a very large old oak tree. This is reputedly what is left of Rapid City's hanging tree. Several historical records do describe a hanging tree being used to execute criminals, but no one knows for sure if this is the exact location. That doesn't keep this spot from being haunted. A woman who lived in a house on the hill near the tree claims to have seen the spirit of a cowboy pass into her house and he walked through the hallway. She also once heard a disembodied voice tell her to "Get out!" And people who have been outside near the tree have claimed to hear the sound of a horse and even felt the horse rush by them. On one occasion, a dozen people all heard the sound of the horse as if it were struggling.
Sioux San Hospital
The Sioux San Hospital originally started as a boarding school for Native American children. It opened in 1898 and was called the Rapid City Indian School or School of the Hills. The goal was to teach Native American children how to read and write and adapt them - read that as conform them - to English culture. Some of the children were mistreated and we can imagine that they were not very happy being away from family and being forced to learn things they may not want to learn. There are stories that some were beaten to death or neglected to death and that they were buried on the property. The boarding school closed in 1933 and reopened later as the Sioux Sanitarium to help Native Americans who had tuberculosis. Those who died at the hospital and had no family were buried on the property. The hospital closed in the 1960s. It reopened as the Rapid City Indian Health Service Hospital. Unmarked graves still exist on the property. The crying of children is heard on the property. And the apparitions of Native American children have been seen and they slowly fade away after being seen.
Hookey Jack
There was a legendary character from Rapid City we wanted to share with you. His name was John Leary, but every one knew him as Hookey Jack. Now, when we first heard this story, it just sounded like a legend. Miner loses his hands to dynamite, replaces them with hooks, works as a cop for decades and dies after being hit by a car. He then went on to haunt his old 7th Street apartment building, which later became a nightclub, restaurant and church offices. But this wasn't just a legend. It was all true as this article from the Lead Daily Call dated November 8, 1926 reveals.
Employees working at the businesses claimed to see strange orbs and saw objects that moved on their own, like billiard balls and tables and chairs. They also heard disembodied footsteps and some customers claimed to see an apparition. Most of the activity takes place on the third floor where Hookey Jack once lived and employees would refuse to go up there. No one would work in the building alone. Security cameras on the third floor picked up flashing lights when the building was empty. Bartenders claimed to see the spirit of Hookey Jack come towards the bar as if to order a drink and then he would just disappear. And people claim to see him looking out the glass doors at the front.
Several places in Rapid City seem to be haunted. The city is definitely a historic place and with its location so close to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore, it makes a great tourist destination. Are these locations in Rapid City and in particular the Hotel Alex Johnson haunted? That is for you to decide!
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