HGB Ep. 550 - Bellaire Demon House

Moment in Oddity - Motorcycle Sidecar Ambulance (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

During WWI there was a most unique form of ambulance utilized by the British, French and Americans. During the war, smaller and lighter ambulances were needed during the heat of battles. Four wheeled versions of ambulances were large, heavy, bumpy and prone to getting stuck on uneven and muddy terrain. It was determined that motorcycles using a sidecar for the injured was the most conducive option to supply the need. Prior to the war, one of the first motorcycle sidecar ambulances was used on Redondo Beach in California back in 1915. They were found to be very efficient for getting drowning victims across the sand to transport to local medical facilities. Even an animal hospital in London used this style of ambulance for transporting animals as early as 1912. However, motorcycle ambulances really became widely used due to the war. Although there were various suppliers during WWI, the Indian Motorcycle Company was the most widely used contractor followed by Harley Davidson. These motorcycles had reliable motors and were lightweight. Of course, the motorcycle ambulances did not offer a very smooth ride, but it was determined that their ability to get injured soldiers to medical care so quickly, really increased the rate of survival for victims. Some of the sidecar ambulances had double decker stretchers attached while others looked a little more similar to a traditional sidecar. Our favorite photo is of a motorcycle ambulance whose sidecar looks very much like a coffin, however I would imagine taking a ride in THAT one would be most disconcerting although it did look like the most safe option. One thing we are sure of, riding in a motorcycle sidecar ambulance must have been odd.

This Month in History - Voting Rights Act

In the month of August, on the 6th, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by Lyndon B Johnson. This piece of federal legislation was established to prevent racial discrimination in the voting process. The act was intended to reinforce the voting rights already protected by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. There are many provisions listed in the act. Section 2 prohibits state and local governments from denying the right of any citizen to vote based on their race or color. Another section mandates that jurisdictions containing large populations of people who speak a different language be provided with bilingual ballots and other election materials. Section 5 disallows any jurisdiction from implementing changes that affect voting without acquiring approval from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C., to ensure the changes do not affect protected minorities. It has been stated by the U.S. Department of Justice, that the Voting Rights Act is thought to be the most efficacious piece of civil rights legislation ever administered in the United States.

Bellaire Demon House

The Bellaire House has a big reputation and is located in southeastern Ohio in the city for which it is named. The Heatherington family built the house, lived here and died here and are said to haunt it now. But this isn't just the Bellaire Haunted House. People refer to this as the Bellaire Demon House. The house is said to be plagued with lots of ghostly and demonic activity. Possibly because it sits on a ley line or maybe because a coal mine blew up nearby killing 42 men. Or maybe somebody just opened a bunch of portals. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Bellaire Demon House!

Mound Builders were the first to live in the area of Bellaire, Ohio and they were followed by the Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo. Two men named John Rodefer and Jacob Davis purchased several acres of land to set up a village in 1834 and they named it Bell Air after Davis' former home in Maryland. Captain John Fink started early mining operations in Bellaire. A man named John Heatherington immigrated to Bellaire from England in 1829 and he was soon followed by his four sons, John Jr., Jacob, Ralph and Edward. They worked a mine in the hill south of McMahon's Creek and the local farmers really complained about it because it was a very loud process. Then the farmers realized it was bringing money and people to the area, so they decided losing the morning sleep wasn't so bad after all. The Heatherington family were not only good at mining, they were musically inclined as well. After a long day in the mines, they would bring out their clarinet, drum, fife and other instruments and play folk songs. As we said, John had a son named Jacob. Jake had been born in England in 1814 and immigrated to Ohio to join his parents in 1830. In 1837, Jake rented a coal-bank from Capt. John Fink after buying  eight acres of land on credit. He would build his fortune on this start and despite not really being able to read or write, he eventually owned nearly all of the coal mines in the Ohio Valley and grew his 8 acres of land to 800 acres. 

Jake had a mule that he named Jack that helped him build his coal mining business. The two worked the initial coal-bank by themselves and a great affection grew between man and mule. Jacob built his mansion in 1847 with the help of a Jack. This point in history was famously commemorated in the nursery rhyme "This is the House that Jack Built." This is a rhyme that starts with one verse that adds a verse and continues to built up to 11 refrains with this being the final stanza, "This is the farmer sowing his corn, That kept the cock that crow'd in the morn, That waked the priest all shaven and shorn, That married the man all tatter'd and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milk'd the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in the house that Jack built." It is said that Jacob led Jack the Mule through the house after it was done to show him what it was like. We're not sure what the house looked like when originally built, but today The house is surrounded by a wraparound porch. The first floor has a foyer with piano, living room, kitchen, bathroom and large room that has been nicknamed the Seance Room. Upstairs there is the Emily Davis Room, Edwin Heatherington Room, bathroom, old study leading up to the attic and the Altar Room.

The house was said to have been built over one of Jacob's mines, Coal Mine #1, that had exploded and caught fire and been abandoned. Finding a good history on the house and the family works about as well as finding a good history on the Conjuring House. And that's the problem with these locations. Lots of legends and mystical stuff, but not many verifiable facts. And that's what we like around here, facts. It was said the house was also built on a ley line near some sacred Shawnee Native American burial caves. We couldn't find a marriage date, but Jacob eventually married a woman named Eliza Armstrong who was said to be a beautiful young woman. Legend claims that she saw a falling star one day and decided to find out where it had fallen and this led her to Bellaire where she found Jacob. Another story claims that she came to Bellaire and worked in a bar and that's how she met Jacob. Whatever the case, the couple married and had ten children with eight of them surviving to adulthood. The Heatheringtons and the Davis family, who were cofounders of Bellaire, were abolitionists and they worked together with a local reverend to help runaway slaves.

Jacob lived to be 90 and died in 1904. Eliza had died before him in 1896. A beautiful sculpted monument was placed over her grave featuring a woman seated holding a book, looking down and Jacob said he commissioned this because people had always looked down on her, so now she could look down on people. Jacob's middle son, Alexander, inherited the coal-mining empire, but he didn't keep it because he seems to have gotten some form of mental illness and ended up in the Athens Asylum for the Insane in Athens, Ohio. Records from the asylum indicate that Alexander may have had epilepsy and had partial paralysis of one side of his body. After he was committed, his daughter Lyde took over the coal business. Lyde had also inherited the house, so she lived there with her younger brother who was named Edwin. The siblings seemed to be close and Edwin was very upset when Lyde died in the house in the dining room. He wanted to try to contact her again after she had died.

Edwin set out to study the occult and he brought some mediums in the house to conduct seances. Psychics came from all over the country to see if they could help Edwin contact Lyde. Through these seances, it is thought that a portal was opened in the house and there are even claims that multiple portals were open. Other members of the Heatherington family finally managed to kick Edwin out of the house and they sold the house. Edwin died in 1962 at the age of 75. We're not sure of ownership of the house after that point until around 2008. The current owner of the house, Kristin Lee, wrote the book "Paranormal Confessions" True Stories of Hauntings, Possession and Horror from the Bellaire House" in 2021. She began her journey towards the house with the destruction of her home in Quincy, Ohio after Hurricanes Frances and Ivan. A FEMA grant helped her to relocate herself, her two sons and their dog Bella to Bellaire where she found the Bellaire House being sold under foreclosure. The price and size of the house was perfect. When Kristin saw it for herself, she was taken with its beauty and charm. She truly felt it was a dream to now own the house, but soon she would see it as a nightmare.

The haunting for her family started very simply with disembodied footsteps. While we usually just breeze over these accounts of footsteps coming from something unseen because they happen at nearly every haunted location, it seems that these places that we have covered like the Witch House all start out with these basic disembodied steps. Like the spirits are quietly introducing themselves to disarm residents before unleashing more intense experiences. Kristin heard the steps coming from above her head when she was on the second floor. It sounded like someone was walking in the attic. She was the only one in the house. The steps stopped and she tried to convince herself it was just the creaking of an old house, but then the steps started up again.

Shortly after that, Kristin was sleeping on a couch in the living room when she was startled awake. It took her a minute to orient herself and then she realized that a figure was sitting at the end of the couch. This was a transparent man that she started calling The Gray Man because he looked as though he had stepped out of a black and white photo. She screamed this first time that she saw him. The Gray Man stood up and walked into the foyer and disappeared. Objects would be regularly moved around and things would go missing. Most of the activity in the house is on the second floor, so Kristin became scared of the second floor. She eventually moved most of their belongings, especially their clothes, to the first floor. The Altar Room, as it is known today, became their little sanctuary as Kristin felt it was the safest room in the house and she had cast protection spells and circles around it. She figured she would let the spirits in the house have the second floor and try to coexist, but that didn't work out. Kristin spent a night in the Edwin Heatherington Room with her dog Bella. She awakened to see a terrifying entity. It appeared as a static electric black rain cloud in the room and caused the whole room to fill electrified. Kristin felt something force her backward and then it held her down while Bella started going crazy, running around the room barking. Then something picked Bella up and threw her backward. Kristin and Bella ran from the room and Kristin knew then that her family had to leave the house because now the spirits were attacking them. So she moved out. The year was 2009.

Kristin left the house abandoned for a while, but local code enforcement told her that she needed to come back and take care of the house. At this point, Kristin had moved to Massachusetts, but she couldn't afford to completely lose the property and she started renting it out. No renters stayed very long. One year was the most any renter managed. The renters reported lots of strange activity and one family had a chandelier fall that almost hit someone in the head. Another renter reported a full-on physical assault. Then there were no more renters, so Kristin needed to come up with another idea. She decided to open the house up to paranormal investigators. And it seems that investigators have communicated with Lyde Heatherington, Edwin Heatherington and several other entities that include the Gray Man and a child ghost who had belonged to a servant and it is thought the child fell from the attic and the ghost of a young girl identified as Emily Davis who wears a white dress. Kristin has not only watched as Emily opened the door to her office and entered, but then watched as she went up to the attic. Kristin also had Emily come through a Spirit Box and say, "Hi Kristin." Kristin asked what her name was and got "Emily" and then after a minute "Davis." Emily Davis apparently drowned in the nearby Ohio River.

Edwin likes to be made a part of the seances that are conducted in the house and Kristin tells people to leave an empty chair at the table for Edwin. One group decided they didn't want to do that and they put a doll in the chair. Kristin shares what happened next in her book, "Edwin quickly made his displeasure known. The chandelier in the foyer started blinking, as if he were telling us that this is his house and these are his rules! He wanted his seat back immediately. I walked into the Seance Room and asked the ladies again to leave a chair open for Edwin. When they refused a second time, a lightbulb in the chandelier exploded! The group finally removed the doll from the chair and let Edwin have his seat. After that, all was well, although Edwin held a grudge against the group and warned me to stay away from them. I was happy to oblige."

The house has been featured on a variety of paranormal shows. Paranormal investigator John Zaffis says of the Bellaire House, "After spending a few nights at the Bellaire House and experiencing the spirits within its walls, I can say it's very haunted and still has a few secrets to share." Exorcist Bishop James Long said of the house, "I can tell you that Bellaire House is one of the most active haunted locations that I have ever investigated." Bishop Long has conducted a cleansing of the house. When he did his initial walk-through, he definitely sensed an evil presence. He turned on a recorder and got the following EVPs: Bishop, leave, demon, dark. Kristin claimed that the black cloud entity was a demon and that it was expelled from the house in 2015 when Bishop long came. At yet, something still remains supposedly. The entity that is in the attic is considered to be malevolent and seems to have control over the other spirits in the house. For this reason, people are told not to trust Emily if she comes through because the entity likes to use her to get information or to fool people. No one is sure that Emily really is a child spirit and there definitely seems to be proof that nefarious energies in a haunted location have used the appearance of a child spirit to fool investigators. 

Kristin shared this story in her book with an interaction that happened with Emily when Kristin was still living at the house with her two boys, "When I was still living at Bellaire House, some neighborhood kids came over to play video games with my son. You can only imagine my shock and horror when I saw them climbing out onto the roof through a bedroom window. I quickly nipped that plan in the bud. After I closed and locked the window, I asked them what had ever given them the idea to climb out onto the roof. They told me that a little girl in a white dress had told them to go onto the roof and play. After I sent the children home, I confronted Emily to find out if this story were true. The entity didn't like it when I refused to abandon my line of questioning. When challenged, Emily behaves like a bratty child who isn't getting her own way, or like a slippery snake slithering deeper into the underworld energies. In a spiritual battle, she becomes sinister, cold, and dead, and shows no mercy. Unlike typical malign entities, Emily feeds on sadness rather than fear in order to stay charged. I've personally found that the energy level of anyone engaging with her is very low."   

Jim Backus is a paranormal investigator that joined Kristin and several guests for a special Valentine's Day seance. He sat on the back porch with Kristin for a bit before the festivities began and he couldn't get over the feeling that something was watching them from the nearby woods. Kristin suggested it could be a coyote, but Jim felt it was human-sized. He remarked that he thought it could be either a French soldier or a Native American spirit. Both were possibilities as some of the French and Indian War took place in this area. The group later got lots of activity with REM Pods going off and on when asked. A girl who was part of the group named Allison, had her shoe pulled off by something they couldn't see.

During another investigation in the house, a group was down in the basement when they heard the cracking of a whip. Several investigators then felt a gust of air go past them and another investigator cried out that something felt like it whipped her leg. Kristin definitely emphasizes how dark the force is in the house and that it feeds off of anger, fear and sadness. So this makes us ask, why would you allow people into a house that could be so dangerous? And this is what causes our skeptical minds to doubt some of these stories. When something is over the top, it's just hard to believe. We read a newspaper article from the Akron Beacon Journal written in 2021 by Hana Khalyleh. She and her group spent the night in the house and were able to sleep peacefully and didn't collect any evidence. She admits in the article that despite investigating several haunted locations that she has never experienced anything paranormal and doesn't think that ghosts are real. Is that why nothing happened? Are investigations really mostly about what people take in with them?

But there have been hundreds of teams that have visited the house and gotten plenty of evidence. There are claims that some spirits have been crossed over, which is something neither of us believe anyone can do, but if that were the case, why don't the portals close here and why don't the spirits leave? This is never explained as more and more extravagant stories about the house are told. Kristin has claimed that people have contacted entities called The Star People and the Secrets of Ormus Earthbound spirits. Maybe this poor house has just had too many people coming through, opening things up without closing anything. Maybe Bellaire House has become a way station for spirits on their journey. We probably will never know. Is Bellaire House haunted? That is for you to decide.