HGB Ep. 517 - Haunted Cemeteries 28

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Moment in Oddity - Lake Bacon 

Who here loves bacon, raise your hand. I'm sure many of you listeners raised your hands with Diane and I. OK, now who here loves Lake Bacon? What is lake bacon you ask? Well, back at the start of the 20th century, America was experiencing a meat shortage. The population was growing by leaps and bounds. Land was overgrazed and the Bison were in danger of becoming extinct. A resourceful fellow by the name of Frederick Russell Burnham came up with an alternative to the typical meats Americans consumed. Can you guess what Lake Bacon is referring to now? Frederick was a soldier and chief of scouts for the British army during the Second Boer War. He then made his home in Africa in 1893. Meat animals of American fare such as cows, sheep and chickens were not native to America and yet that is what made up a large part of peoples diets. So Frederick Burnham proposed Hippopotamus meat. At the time, African animals like ostriches and camels had been introduced to particular areas of America and had adapted very well. Even Louisiana Congressman Robert Broussard was on board with the importation of hippos thinking they would solve his problem with invasive water hyacinths. The plants plagued the waters of New Orleans choking out the fish supply and hippopotami love eating hyacinths. A bill was then introduced in 1910, the H.R. 23261, also known as the Hippo Bill. It was meant to acquire $250,000 in funding to import useful animals, of which hippos were included, into America. The New York Times even wrote an article describing the taste of hippo meat with many Americans believing that the meat would be available very soon. The bill failed which ultimately turned grazing lands into feed lots and everglades and marshes were drained to create grasslands for cattle. Had the bill passed, Sunday morning breakfast could very well find many of us noshing on Lake Bacon today, and that certainly is odd.

This Month in History - How the Grinch Stole Christmas Premiered

In the month of December, on the 18th, in 1966, the original telecast of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas, premiered on CBS in the United States. Since then the children's book turned animated movie has become a perennial holiday special. Most of our listeners appreciate the original movie's narrator and voice of the Grinch as performed by Boris Karloff. The story of the Grinch with a heart that is two sizes too small, displays how a little bit of kindness can change the outward perception of a person, or Grinch. Disguised as Santa Claus, the Grinch raids the homes of Whoville on Christmas Eve. He steals their gifts and holiday treats assisted by his dog Max who is disguised as a reindeer. The pair then retreat to the Grinch's icy mountain top lair with their loot. On Christmas morning, the Grinch is shocked to hear the Whos of Whoville still singing a joyous song despite having all their gifts and holiday meals stolen. His shenanigans to stop Christmas in Whoville were thwarted in part by the kindness of Cindy Loowho, as well as the singing of the Whos. It's then that the Grinch realizes that Christmas still came regardless of his actions: 'It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled til his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. Maybe Christmas...perhaps means a little bit more.' The Grinch then proceeds to bring all the gifts and Christmas goodies back to Whoville and is welcomed back into their community with the Grinch himself carving the roasted beast for the Christmas feast.

Haunted Cemeteries 28

Cemeteries are always fun to visit and when they have ghost stories connected to them, it's even better. On this Haunted Cemeteries episode, we feature cemeteries in Alabama, Ohio, Texas and Nebraska. As taphophiles, we also treasure the unique and odd that can be found in cemeteries and we are going to share some of that here too, as well as a very solemn cemetery for infants. And who doesn't want to hear about a place connected to death called Dead Man's Hole? Join us for a walk through some cities of the dead!

Dead Man's Hole

Death for so many has a pit stop at a mortuary before heading off to a cemetery. We're going to start this episode off talking about an obscure mortuary that was shared to us by listener and Executive Producer Beth VanderYacht. Ever heard of Dead Man's Hole? The River Thames has played final resting place to many bodies for hundreds of years. The Tower Bridge was completed and opened in 1894. The bridge was designed in the Neo-Gothic style and formed from a solid steel frame after a competition was run for a design and abandoned. There were 50 entries that had been submitted and one that was rejected was by civil engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry. An architect named Sir Horace Jones teamed up with Barry and they altered the design slightly and proposed it, gaining approval from Parliament in 1884. Jones never got to see the bridge finished as he died one year into construction. The bridge took 8 years to complete with 31 million bricks and 13 million rivets installed into it. It allows ships through by moving the roads like two giant seesaws that pivot.

On the eastern side of the bridge there is an alcove under the bridge that has glossy white tiles. This is Dead Man's Hole. Like so many bridges in the world, there are many people who have met death from the bridge. These could be victims of accidents, murder or suicide. Their bodies tended to float into this alcove and a pole and hook system would be used to fish the bodies out of the water. The bodies would then be left on display to see if anyone would identify and claim them. Sometimes those bodies would be waiting a long time. Long enough to explode from decomp. You can visit this spot and would never know what had once been here, save for the hook and pole that still hang on the wall.

Camping with a Grave

This next burial isn't haunted that we know of, but it's interesting because of its location and we figured you taphophiles would appreciate hearing about it. In the Ossineke State Forest Campground there is a campsite that overlooks Lake Huron. Not many people would expect to find a grave at a campsite, but this pine surrounded and beach adjacent site is the final resting place for A.J. Michalowski. And he's been here a long time. And old gravestone marks the spot under a tree and most people find it adorned with trinkets left behind as memorials. A.J. was only twenty-six when he drowned in Lake Huron back in 1865. He had worked nearby at the old Oliver sawmill and one day when he was off of work, he decided to sail a small boat across Thunder Bay to Alpena. This was in November and Lake Huron is known to get some wind that's nicknamed "the gales of November." A burst of wind probably capsized the small craft and A.J. drowned. His body washed up on shore very near to where he is buried. If you want to camp next to a dead guy, ask for Site Number 4.

XYZ Grave

And let's throw in one more odd burial. This one is found in a gorgeous and very peaceful cemetery called Fountain Hill Cemetery. It's located in Deep River, Connecticut. Back in the winter of 1899, four men staged a bank robbery at the Deep River Savings Bank. What the robbers didn't know was that the bank had been tipped off that it was being targeted and they hired a local man named Harry Tyler to guard the place at night. One of the men was in the process of prying open one of the bank's tall windows when a shot rang out and hit him in the head. He fell back dead and his three accomplices scattered. Nobody identified or claimed the body, so the town decided to bury the criminal in an unmarked grave at the Fountain Hill Cemetery. Harry Tyler received a letter shortly after the burial and it requested that the robber's grave be marked with a cross that had the letters X, Y and Z on it. There was no name attached, but Tyler could tell that the writing was female. He complied. After the cross started to deteriorate, the town put a small shoebox size stone on the plot and marked it with XYZ. People claimed that a woman dressed in black would visit the grave every year in December. She would leave a small flower. Apparently, this went on for forty years. A newspaper article identified the dead robber as Frank Howard, but his stone has still always just read XYZ.

Arlington's Lost Cemetery of Infants

We heard about this location from our friend Maria Wessenauer over at Hollywood Exhumed. This is located at 801 West Mitchell Street in the northwest corner of Doug Russell Park in Arlington, Texas. For most of history, an unmarried pregnant woman was a pariah and usually sent off into seclusion to have her baby. The Berachah Industrial Home was founded by Reverend James Tony Upchurch in 1903 and  offered these women a place to stay. They not only had a place that cared for them, but they got training to help them reintegrate into society. The home became its own self-sustaining town. There was also an orphanage that opened here around 1935. As time went on, the home closed and the buildings were demolished to make way for the University of Texas Arlington. What has remained through it all is the little lost cemetery that became a final resting place for babies who were stillborn or died from complications during childbirth. The first burial was Eunice Williams who was one of the residents. There are eighty graves in total. People have reported seeing shadow figures darting between the trees and the disembodied sounds of children and babies are heard.

Bladon Springs Cemetery in Alabama

Bladon Springs is located in Choctaw County in Alabama and is named for the nearby mineral springs that had a hotel and spa spring up around them. A cemetery was established and is located at 3599 Bladon Springs Road. It's surrounded by a wrought-iron fence with the familiar arched wrought-iron sign above the entrance. This is a fairly small cemetery with around 150 burials, mostly of families. But that doesn't stop it from having a big reputation as creepy and haunted. The main spirit belongs to Norman Staples whose grave can be found towards the back of the cemetery and to the right under a Spanish-moss laden oak tree. Norman was the son of James T. Staples who was a steamboat entrepreneur. Norman followed in his father's footsteps and upon James' death, he took over ownership of the steamship James T. Staples, which had been launched in 1908. Papers declared this the grandest steamboat on the rivers of Alabama. Norman wasn't great with money and was soon heavily in debt and the steamship was seized in 1912. Watching the steamship get auctioned off was too much for Norman and he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun, killing himself on January 2, 1913. He was buried at Bladon Springs Cemetery and soon after, crewmen on the James T. Staples claimed they saw Norman's spirit walking the deck at night. The ghost was also seen in the boiler room. Shortly after that sighting, the boiler exploded and killed 26 crewmen. This blew it from its moorings at the dock and it floated down the Tombigbee River to the Bladon Springs Cemetery and sank. The explosion and sinking was the last great steamboat accident on an Alabama river. Norman's spirit is said to have left the sinking ship and now resides at the cemetery where it has been seen walking among the tombstones. He seems to favor the graves of his four children: James Alfred, Berth Jaddetta, Mable Claire, and an unnamed infant. They all died before the age of six.

Chestnut Street Cemetery

Chestnut Street Cemetery in Cincinnati is also known as the Old Jewish Cemetery and is the oldest Jewish burial ground west of the Alleghenies. In the early 1800s, there weren't many Jews in Cincinnati and thus there was no separate burial ground for them. One of them was named Benjamin Lieb, although nobody knew that he was a Jew. He was living as a Noachide as he married a Gentile. He became gravely ill and knew he was going to die, so he went to the other Jews and begged them to bury him as a Jew. He then confided that he was a Jew. The community decided that they should buy a plot of their own and they paid $75.00 to Nicholas Longworth for a small plot. Lieb was the first burial. There would be 85 total burials before the cemetery was full. A cholera epidemic that hit Cincinnati in 1849 filled it up quickly. It was closed and then it was decided to move the burials to a bigger cemetery named Walnut Hills Cemetery. And that's where our haunting comes in.

The haunting centers around a man named Edgar Johnson. He was a prominent New York lawyer whose father was buried in the Chestnut Street Cemetery. He threatened to sue if his father's remains were moved. So Edgar's father went nowhere and Edgar himself died in 1893. He apparently intended to guard his father's remains even after death. A woman claimed to see something strange in the cemetery shortly after Johnson's death. She was passing a high brick wall that separated the cemetery from the street and when she got to the gate, she looked through it and something "of large proportions, wrapped in a winding sheet and the face glowing as though phosphorescent. It had a smooth gait, and the arms were crossed before the breast. Its step was measured, but long, and it appeared to move slightly above the grass. It encountered no obstacles, even though it passed the overturned head and foot stones. No rustling came from its trailing garments. Occasionally, it would stop, the arms drop and the body bend forward, as though the glowing eyes were making close quest of some object." This figure was heading straight for her and she tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. She was frozen to her spot, unable to move. The figure then turned towards the shadows and dissolved away. The woman finally found her feet and headed for the police station where she reported the encounter. A police officer who took the report believed that she had seen something that scared her, but as to what it was, he wasn't sure. People started claiming that it was Edgar guarding his father. Investigators also claim that this cemetery is a hotbed for EVPs and have captured human whispers or barking dogs when no dogs were heard audibly.

Port Isabel Cemetery

Port Isabel Cemetery is located in Port Isabel, Texas. Port Isabel is as far south as one can get in Texas and on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. The town was established after the Mexican War of Independence and became a major exporter of cotton. Because of its location, the Union and Confederates fought over the town and each held control of it and its port at different times. But before this, Mexico owned this part of Texas and the land where the cemetery was founded was granted to a man named Don Rafael Garcia by the Mexican government. Garcia founded a ranch on the land in 1829 called El Fronton de Santa Isabel, which translates to Saint Elizabeth's Bluff. He didn't live at the ranch, but rather hired workers to operate it. These workers were the ones who laid out an acre of the land as a burial site. It's believed this dates back to the 1840s, but no burials remain from that time. The oldest marked graves date to the 1880s. Initially, this was consecrated as Catholic ground, but it eventually became a community cemetery. The Champion Family immigrated from Italy and owned the property in the early 19th century. They donated the cemetery to the Catholic Church in 1926. 

Apparently, there is a haunted tree here. A woman's grandmother had told her a story about what was called the Sybil Child haunting a tree at the cemetery. The Sybil Child had been a prophet a couple hundred years ago. This woman went to the cemetery after midnight on the night of a full moon, which her grandmother had told her were the requirements to guarantee a sighting. The woman waited to see if any tree in particular seemed to call to her and then she headed towards a nondescript tree in the center of the graveyard. She knelt next to the tree and closed her eyes. Almost immediately she saw "flashes and glimpses, too fast for me to process, played against the back of my eyelids. My eyes were closed, but I knew that the skin on my arms and neck had become the color of moss. I was sick. My skin turned to moss, then my flesh, and finally, my bones showed through.” The woman then claimed that she was given a vision of cities filled with green moss that was an illness like a plague. It spread like wildfire across the world. The woman screamed and her eyes snapped open. She was all alone in the cemetery and it was quiet. Her skin was normal. She claimed to see the vision over and over again for quite some time. Had she been given a vision by the Sybil Child? This child would go into a trance and walk the town every full moon and she would report tales of doom. So she was like a walking harbinger of doom. One morning after a full moon, she simply disappeared. And now she gives visions to those seeking them at the Port Isabel Cemetery. There is also said to be the apparition of a little boy that wanders throughout the cemetery.

Ball Cemetery

Ball Cemetery is located at 20999 South 176th Street in Springfield, Nebraska. The cemetery is named for the Ball family, a pioneer family, who own it privately. We're not sure when it was founded, but the oldest headstone dates to 1869. The cemetery was open to burials for people other than members of the Ball family. One of these people was William Liddiard. He was born in England in 1850 and immigrated to America when he was seventeen-years-old. He served as Sarpy County Sheriff for eight years and then served as deputy United States Marshal for five years. He also served as a scout under General Miles and the General gave him the nickname "Rattlesnake Pete" because he regularly killed rattlesnakes out on the trails. One day, he killed as many as 500. And he left Springfield, Nebraska to join Buffalo Bill for some adventures. Here is a letter from Cody to Rattlesnake Pete, "My dear Bill, I will let you know about bringing Indians soon as I can hear from my agents in Paris—in two or three weeks. We are after a great Building there. My business is simply great. We will get pretty near to $70.000 here this week. Your friend, Bill Cody."

There are believed to be several spirits in the cemetery. One of them is Rattlesnake Pete who passed July 15, 1906 in Wyoming and was brought back to Nebraska to be buried in Ball Cemetery. There is another spirit who seems to be angry and has physically touched people in rough ways. There is a female spirit who has been heard both singing and speaking softly. She laughs too, particularly after someone feels their clothing get tugged. The spirit is said to belong to a woman named Mary Mumford. A strange mist has formed in the cemetery and disembodied footsteps are heard, especially in the fall when there are leaves on the ground. 

There are many unique stories connected to these cemeteries. Each is special in their own way. Several seem to have spirits. Are these cemeteries haunted? That is for you to decide!