HGB Halloween Special 2024 - 80s Horror

Horror movies are a Halloween tradition. Many of us spend Halloween night pursuing a good scare via the medium of film. There have been dozens of horror sub-genres and many of these hit their stride in the 1980s. In our opinion, the 1980s was the pinnacle of horror movies. There have been many great movies since, but there was just something special about that decade. Join us for a fun conversation about the horror movies of the 1980s on the HGB Halloween Special 2024!

George Mellies produced what is credited with being the first horror movie in 1896. The movie was called "Le Manoir du Diable," which translates to "The House of the Devil." It's also sometimes called "The Haunted Castle." This is what one would call a short and we mean short, it was only three minutes long. The film featured animated skeletons, ghosts, cauldrons and the Devil. Focusing on the supernatural was the MO of early horro movies from 1900 to 1920. And while our premise for this episode is that the 1980s were the finest era for horror movies, most film scholars deem the 1920s and 1930s as the Golden Age of Horror. And we could almost agree with that considering Nosferatu came out in 1922 and the Universal Monster Movies launched with Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, The Mummy in 1932 and The Invisible Man in 1933.

Hammer Horror Films would hit their stride in the 1950s and it dominated the horror scene with stars like Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Barbara Shelley. And Alfred Hitchcock started producing hit horror films at the same time with Vertigo and Rear Window and then into the 1960s with Psycho and The Birds. During the 1960s, cheap horror movies were produced with a few hitting gold like George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968. That movie grossed $30 million on a $100,000 budget. Giallo movies also started in Italy in the 1960s. Devil inspired movies, particularly about possession, found a home in the 1970s with The Omen and the Exorcist. And then our decade arrived and slasher movies really took off. But the movies of the 1980s, covered all the different sub-genres of horror.

The Shining (1980)

The Shining was one of Stanley Kubrick's masterpieces and took Stephen King's novel of the same name to the next level with amazing performances by Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. This was Kubrick's first foray into the horror genre and features a slow-burn ghost story. Many memorable scenes found their way into pop culture and continue today from the line "Here's Johnny" to "Red Rum" to the twin girls in blue dresses standing in the hallway to a flood of blood coming from the elevator. Jack Nicolson played Jack Torrance who was an alcoholic aspiring novelist who slowly descended into madness through the film, which ultimately ended with him trying to kill his wife and son. Throughout the movie, he is plagued by visions of ghosts as is his son Danny, who has a gift called the shining, which is a telepathic ability. The music is great and gives a real sense of dread and the location of a remote hotel in the winter with only the Torrance family watching over it, is just screaming for something creepy to happen. It only adds fuel to this movie that in reality, Stephen King had stayed at the haunted Stanley Hotel in Colorado and had his own paranormal experiences there. This, of course, brings up the question of whether there really are ghosts at the hotel or if it is Jack's mental illness making them up. Whatever Kubrick meant for us to believe, he directed a great movie that stays with you.

The Changeling (1980)

This movie was based on a true event that happened in Colorado at a home near Cheeseman Park, so I loved that. This was a supernatural film out of Canada co-written by Russell Hunter, who based the screenplay on paranormal experiences he had while living at the Henry Treat Rogers Mansion in Denver. The movie itself is set in Seattle and tells the story of a New York City composer who moves into a haunted house in Seattle. The star of the film is George C. Scott and he does a great job with this highly under-rated film. It's one of the best haunted house movies out there and still gives the chills today. The opening sequence is hardcore, leaving Scott's character a widow and childless, and the seance scene is one of the greatest in film history. There's lots of places to watch it for free, like Tubi.

The Rogers mansion no longer stands, but it had been built in 1892 in the Federal architectural style and was painted white. Rogers passed away in 1922 and his wife Kate lived in the home until her death in 1931 and the house passed onto their niece Frances. Frances passed away and her husband rented out the mansion and that is how Russell Hunter came to rent it in 1968. He had encounters with a ghost cat and heard this continual bouncing sound coming from the attic. He couldn't figure out what in the attic was causing the noise so he had an architect join him for a walk through and they discovered a sealed-off stairway behind a second-story closet that led to a smaller attic space and when they opened the door, a small red ball bounced down the stairs. The noise stopped for a while, but when it returned, he invited over a group of friends who all heard the sound and when they opened the door, a red ball bounced down the stairs once again. Hunter claimed he found a journal and a young boy named Eric, whose age changed everytime he told the story, was locked away in the attic as a sickly boy and he died there. There was never any proof of the story and the mansion was demolished in 1969 to make room for apartments. People claim to see the ghost of a boy still hanging out at the corner where the house had once been.

Friday the 13th (1980)

The original Friday the 13th movie dropped in 1980 and launched the twelve-film franchise. This was a slasher film with the main character being Jason Voorhees, the embodiment of a little boy who drowned while away at summer camp, due to the negligence of the camp counselors. This first film reveals the killer to be his mother, but subsequent films feature a very grown-up Jason. We prefer Michael Myers to Jason and clearly the Friday the 13th movie was inspired John Carpenter's film. Jason is pretty good at coming up with some unique ways to kill people. This was one of Kevin Bacon's first films.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Bruce Campbell was an unknown when he starred in Evil Dead. Now, he is a household name for those of us who love horror movies, and particularly the ones featuring zombies. The film was written and directed by Sam Raimi and was a huge success, launching the careers of Raimi and Campbell. This is one of THE largest cult films to ever be made and not onyl has had sequels and remakes, but an awesome TV series that we were bummed to see come to an end after 3 seasons. Campbell plays Ash Williams who ends up at a remote cabin in the Tennesse woods with a group of friends. They discover a Sumerian version of the Book of the Dead and a tape. They play the tape and read from the book and unleash the evil dead, which appear to possess trees and Ash's friends. In the end, all of Ash's friends end up dead and we are left wondering what happened to him, until Part II came out later in the decade.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Obviously, this is a werewolf movie and it features the most amazing practical effects transformation of man into werewolf in any film every made. David Naughton stars in this John Landis film as a backpacker in England who is attacked by a werewolf. His character, who is also named David, turns into a werewolf with the next full moon. His friend Jack, who had been backpacking with him, had been killed by the werewolf. The ghost of Jack appears to David letting him know that he is indeed a werewolf and that Jack's spirit will walk in limbo until this bloodline is killed. He wants David to kill himself. David can't kill himself and ends up killing six people as a werewolf. He eventually is killed by the police in his werewolf form. The film was a critical and commercial success.

The Howling (1981)

This is another werewolf film. Dee Wallace stars and portrays a news anchor named Karen White who is traumatized by her experience of being stalked by a serial killer. She and her husband go away to a place called The Colony for her to recover from the experience. Karen eventually figures out that the entire colony is made up of werewolves who can shapeshift at will. She manages to escape with a friend who came to rescue her, but as they leave, Karen is bitten by her husband who has become a werewolf. Karen later transforms into a werewolf on live TV and her friend shoots and kills her. Rob Bottin created the amazing make-up special effects in the film, which was directed by Joe Dante.

Poltergeist (1982)

Poltergeist taught us all the lesson that you don't move the headstones from a graveyard without moving the bodies as well. For many of us, this was our first foray into paranormal investigation. The film stars JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson and Heather O'Rourke as little Carol Anne, who gives us all the memorable line "They're here" after starring at a television full of snow one night. Carol Anne is the youngest in the Freeling family who have just moved into a planned community in California. Shortly after Carol Anne's revelation, the family starts experiencing paranormal activity in the house and much if it is downright frightening. None of us can forget the creepy demonic clown doll that tries to strangle Carol Anne's brother. Carol Anne herself is abducted to inside the house by the spirits. The family is forced to bring in help and they do eventually get Carol Anne back and run screaming from the house as coffins and skeletons start erupting from the ground all throughout their new neighborhood. Before this all happens, Nelson's character named Steven, finds out from his boss with who he developed this community, that they only moved the headstones from a cemetery they built over. They didn't move the bodies. Steven Spielberg wrote the screenplay and the film was directed by Tobe Hooper. Despite being a horror film, it was the eighth highest grossing film of 1982.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

This 80s slasher film was very unique because it was entirely written and directed by women. The director was Amy Holden Jones and Rita Mae Brown wrote the screenplay. This is a slasher film centered around a group of girls having a slumber party that is interrupted by a drill-wielding killer. Brown had meant this to be a pardoy of the slasher genre, but the film was made from a serious angle. Three of the girls mange to make it to the end of the film, which is different then most that ended with one final girl. There's a lot of comedy in this one and it has a cult following and also had sequels.

Creepshow (1982)

Creepshow couldn't be anything but great with director George Romero helming a screenplay by Stephen King. Tom Savini did the special effects. The film is an anthology that comes across as though reading a comic book and was inspired by the EC horror comics King and Romero grew up reading in the '50s. The anthology features five stories with very weird creatures and stories and inspired a reboot series on Shudder, which is amazing as well. Stephen's son Joe Hill (who is way better at this horror thing than his dad) also appears in the film as the young boy reading the comic. Probably the worst of the five stories is "They're Creeping Up on You!" because it features cockroaches.

The Thing (1982)

This is one of John Carpenter's masterpieces and is a remake of 1951's "The Thing From Another World," which was based on the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella "Who Goes There?" The film starred Kurt Russell and was filmed in Alaska, British Columbia and LA. The Thing features a story about a group of American research scientists at a remote base in Antarctica who take in a sled dog and realize too late that the dog harbors some kind of creature within it. This beast assumes the shape of its victims and picks everybody off, one by one. The Creature is eventually destroyed by Russell's character, but things don't end well as he is left to freeze to death since he blew up the base. The practical effects in this film are amazing!

Sleepaway Camp (1983) 

We've never seen this one. The story centers around a girl named Angela who loses her family in a boating accident. She goes to live with her aunt and cousin and the aunt sends them to Camp Arawak. Violent accidents start claiming the lives of the campers and soon it is revealed that a crazy killer is committing the acts. Although people claimed that this film was copying Friday the 13th, it has become a cult classic and is credited with having one of the most shocking twist endings in the horror genre.

Children of the Corn (1984)

Children of the Corn was based on Stephen King's story of the same name and was directed by Fritz Kiersch (Cure Sk). The film features Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton play a couple traveling through rural Nebraska to Seattle. In Nebraska, they meet a group of children who revolted under the leadership of two boys named Isaac and Malachi. During this revolt, the children sacrificed all the adults in the town. They did this sacrifice for an entity they call "He Who Walks Behind the Rows." In the end, the couple torches the cornfield and escapes with two of the children who hadn't joined the cult.

Night of the Comet (1984)

This is another zombie movie and this one is set in the middle of Valley girl central in Southern California, so its lots of fun. The premise is that a comet passes through the sky and everybody who is outside gets turned to dust. The few people who survived were exposed to radiation and they start to become zombies. Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney star as Regina and Samantha who are sisters that fight for survival in postapocalyptic Los Angeles. I remember thinking it would be kinda cool to have the run of the planet. We're left to believe that the sisters go on to have bitchin' lives as they help to repopulate the planet.This movie is worth the watch for the hair and clothes alone.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Diane remembers watching this movie for the first time at a sleepover when she was 13. It left her with nightmares for two weeks. A Nightmare on Elm Street was produced under New Line Cinema, leading to the company being referred to as "the house that Freddy built." The Freddy refers to Freddy Krueger who was portrayed by Robert Englund. Krueger is an undead child killer that is horribly burned and has a glove hand with finger knives. He comes to people in their dreams and kills them while they are dreaming. The final girl in this movie is portrayed by Heather LangenKamp whose name is Nancy. Johnny Depp has his film debut in this one. This first movie launched the franchise, which has nine films and a television series. Wes Craven wrote and directed the slasher and he claimed that the story was inspired by a series of newspaper articles sharing stories about Hmong (mung) refugees who fled to the United States from Cambodia. These refugees suffered from something called Asian Death Syndrome. They had disturbing nightmares and some were so bad that the refugees died.

Gremlins (1984) 

Gremlins is a horror comedy starring Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates with Howie Mandel voicing Gizmo. Galligan plays Billy who receives a Gizmo the mogwai from his father for Christmas. This is a cute furry creature that comes with three rules. If the rules aren't followed, it will spawn  other mogwai which are mischievous and aggressive. The rules are do not expose the creature to light, especially sunlight, which will kill it; do not let it come in contact with water; and above all, never feed it after midnight. Gizmo gets water spilled on him and several mogwai are spawned. They later eat after midnight and form cocoons from which gremlins emerge, led by one named Stripe. Chaos ensues, as does death. All the Gremlins are killed and Gizmo is given back to his original owner. The Motion Picture Association complained about the film being too violent for a PG rating and two months after the film was released, the rating of PG-13 was created.

Fright Night (1985)

Tom Holland directs this vampire horror film featuring William Ragsdale as Charley and Chris Sarandon as the vampire Jerry Dandrige. Roddy McDowall plays a horror TV host who hosts a program called Fright Night. Jerry the vampire moves in next to Charley and Charley figures out what Jerry is and a conflict develops between the two. Charley enlists the help of McDowall's Peter Vincent and the two are able to destroy Jerry and save Charley's girlfriend whom Jerry bit. The movie features a great new wave soundtrack and quickly became a cult classic. 

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

The Return of the Living Dead is set in Louisville, Kentucky and is described as a mordant punk comedy. This zombie movie brought about the idea that zombies feast on brains. A warehouse owner and two of his employees inadvertently reanimate a corpse with a toxic gas called Trioxin. They manage to dismember and burn the corpse, but while burning it, they release the toxic gas into the air and as it rains, corpses in a nearby cemetery reanimate. A group of friends fight the zombies with several getting killed. The military comes in and nukes the town, killing all the human survivors. The film ends with more toxic rain falling and zombies screaming in their graves.

Aliens (1986) 

This is one of my all time favorite horror movies. I like it better than the first one. The creature for the Alien movies is unique and one-of-a-kind and in this sequel, we get to meet the one who birthed all these eggs, the Alien Queen. The film starts with Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is picked up by a salvage ship after she has been in stasis for 57 years. The company she worked for debriefs her and decides to send a team of Colonial Marines to destroy the aliens and eggs left behind. At least, that is what they tell Ripley. They actually want to bring back a couple aliens so that they can use them as weapons. Ripley also didn't know, because she's been asleep for half a century, that colonists were sent to this exomoon to terraform a colony. When the Marines arrive, they find everybody dead except a little girl named Newt. The rest of the film features the Marines battling the aliens and nearly all of them are killed. Ripley manages to get away with Newt and another Marine who was injured, but the Alien Queen hitched a ride and we get to hear Sigourney Weaver yell, "Get away from her you bitch" when the alien goes after Newt. Such a great line. The Alien franchise has seven films in its anthology with the most recent being dropped this year, 2024.

The Hitcher (1986)

Rutger Hauer plays the Hitcher, who is a serial killer that stalks his victims. C. Thomas Howell plays the latest young motorist to get the Hitcher's attention. Howell picks up the Hitcher and is soon threatened by the killer, so he pushes him out of the car. As Howell drives from Chicago to San Diego, he continues to run into the Hitcher. One of the most memorable scenes that I remember kids talking about in school was Howell finding a severed finger in his French fries. The Hitcher continues to play with Howell's character and eventually kills a bunch of cops and a waitress, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who tries to help Howell. In the end, Howell finally is able to run over the Hitcher and then shoots him a bunch of times with a shotgun.

Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser was terrifying ans disgusting. This film was adapted from Clive Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart and features a mysterious puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration. A person who solves this puzzle box is in for a real "treat." The Cenobites are summoned and these are some truly scary creatures. They all feature some kind of painful torture devices on their body because they are sadomasochistic beings and they bring the one who has summoned them the pain of having their body hooked all over and then pulled apart. This happens to Frank Cotton and he spends the rest of the film trying to rebuild his body with the help of his sister-in-law Julia whom he had been having an affair with. Julia has to bring men back to her house where Frank is hiding in the attic and kill them so that Frank can use the blood to build his body. The Cenobites eventually kill Frank and his niece gets rid of the box by throwing it in a fire. It's retrieved and eventually will show up again as there are eleven films in the Hellraiser franchise. This was Barker's directorial debut and features Doug Bradley as Pinhead.

The Lost Boys (1987)

This is one of the best vampire movies and stars Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Jami Gertz, Dianne Weist and the two Coreys, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. Patric and Haim play brothers who move to a seaside town in California with their mother. Haim's character Sam meets the two Frog brothers and they tell him that the town has the undead creeping around it and that they are vampire hunters. Patric's character Michael falls for a girl named Star who brings him into the orbit of a biker gang lead by Sutherland's David. The gang invites him to join and offers him to drink from a bottle of what he thinks is wine. It was actually blood and Michael begins his transformation into a vampire. This condition is reversible as long as Michael doesn't kill anyone. Michael, Sam and the Frog brothers go to the vampire lair during the day and drive a stake through the heart of one of them and run away. They prepare to fight that night with water guns filled with holy water. The vampire gang attacks and all of them are killed, including David. When Michael doesn't become human again, the group realizes that David wasn't the head vampire. The head vampire is the guy their mom is dating, Max. Max wanted to make their mom the mother of his lost boys. The grandfather of the family drives into the house with his truck and impales Max with a wooden fence post. Michael is saved.

They Live (1988)

They Live is another classic 80s horror movie helmed by John Carpenter. The film was based on the 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson and starred "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. Piper plays a drifter who happens upon some sunglasses through which he can see which people in society are aliens. These aliens make up the ruling class. This class uses subliminal messages to control the masses. The film has become a cult classic probably because of an innane fight scene that goes on for six minutes and some of the dialogue, which includes "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."

Child's Play (1988)

Child's Play brought creepy dolls to a whole new level. This Good Guy doll becomes possessed by the spirit of a serial killer who reanimates the doll and continues to go on killing sprees. The story was created by Don Mancini, John Lafia and Tom Holland, who directed, and Brad Dourif plays the voice of Chucky. Alex Vincent made his film debut as Andy, who gets Chucky as a gift. Chucky starts his murdering ways by killing Andy's babysitter. Andy gets blamed for the murders Chucky commits and he gets institutionalized. His mother realizes shortly after that that Chucky has been moving and talking without batteries. Chucky finds out that he needs to possess Andy to become human again and he kidnaps him. Before he can do a ritual, Andy's mom and the cop who originally killed Chucky when he was human, save Andy and eventually Chucky is set on fire and shot multiple times with one bullet piercing his heart and killing him for good...until the sequel. Child's Play is a franchise with seven films and a television series.

Pet Semetary (1989)

Stephen King wrote the novel Pet Sematary upon which the film is based and he wrote the screenplay. The film was directed by Mary Lambert and starred Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby and Fred Gwynne. The Creed family, which consists pf Louis, Rachel and their kids Ellie and Gage, move from Chicago to Maine. Shortly after getting there, Ellie's cat Church dies and Louis' neighbor Jud Crandell tells him about a place that will bring the cat back to life. Jud and Louis bury Church at a special pet cemetery and Church comes back, but he isn't the same cat he was before. There's something off and bad about him. When Gage is killed in the road, Louis does the unthinkable, he buries the small boy at the pet cemetery. Gage comes back and starts killing people, which eventually includes his mother. And oh man, Louis does it again. He buried Rachel ion the cemetery and she comes back and we're left with an image that leads us to believe Louis is about to lose his life. Poor Ellie is left on her own.

It really is clear that the 1980s has a special place in the horror genre. So many cult classics and franchises were birthed during this time. The Slasher movie really found its groove. Stephen King really came into his own at this time too. What is your favorite 1980s horror film? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 561 - Legends of Sea Monsters

Moment in Oddity - The Cornell Pumpkin (Suggested by: Cassandra Distilli)

Back in October 1997, a giant pumpkin was speared atop Cornell University's McGraw Tower, a whopping 173 feet in the air. To this day nobody knows who, why or how. As the gourd lasted from month to month suspicions grew as to whether it was actually a pumpkin. A sample of it was taken via a remote controlled weather balloon and it indeed was identified as the gourd in question. Over the years, no true answers have been uncovered. Obviously for the pranksters, the escapade was highly dangerous and they likely did not wish to get in trouble. There was an anonymous submission in 1999, received by a reporter named Manjoo that, "it involved some daredevil clambering up the tower's steep spire, and some strategically placed duct tape". That tipster never named names. The decaying, daredevil, deciduous gourd even had a dedicated webcam which was a newer technology for the time and had people viewing around the world. In March of 1998, the pumpkin was removed. The plan was to have Don M. Randel grab it while up in a crane bucket. However, while the bucket was unoccupied a gust of wind bumped the crane bucket into the tower. This vibration knocked the wrinkly decaying pumpkin down onto a construction scaffold. Regardless of how it got there, a massive pumpkin being skewered onto a university spire 173 feet in the air, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Dizzy Gillespie

In the month of October, on the 21st in 1917, Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. (chr-Raw) He was the youngest of nine children whose father was a local bandleader. Many instruments were available to John 'Dizzy' Gillespie and his siblings. At the young age of four, Dizzy began with the piano. After the passing of his father when Dizzy was only 10 years old, he then taught himself how to play the trombone and trumpet by the age of 12. Dizzy idolized jazz trumpeter, Roy Eldridge, and longed to become a jazz musician himself. In 1933, Gillespie received a music scholarship to Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. He was hired by the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935 and subsequently went on to work with the orchestras of Edgar Hayes and later Teddy Hill. While Dizzy was with the Cab Calloway Orchestra he began writing big band music for Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey. After a falling out with Cab Calloway he spent time freelancing. He continued to grow as a musician, performing with big names of the time and then Dizzy joined the Earl Hines band in 1942. This was when he really started developing his 'Bebop' style. This was known as the first modern jazz style however Dizzy said of it, "People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here ... naturally each age has got its own shit." In addition to all the great music Gillespie created, he was also known for his puffed cheeks style of playing and bent trumpet when he performed. In 1953, his trumpet bell got bent upwards in an accident. He liked the sound so much that he had a special trumpet made with the bell raised at a 45 degree angle. Dizzy Gillespie had a 56 year touring career by his final performance. He was an innovator in the world of jazz and his music is still enjoyed around the world, today.

Legends of Sea Monsters

The most unexplored areas of the earth are its vast waterways. Humans can't breath underwater and thus our explorations of the seas are very limited. We often wonder if stories about mysterious and sometimes ferocious sea creatures are inspired by our imaginings of what could be below the surface of the water or if they are based on true experiences. When deep sea explorations do manage to send back pictures, some very unique and weird creatures are revealed. They help to make some of the legends we have heard about monsters in the water, more believable. On this episode, we are going to explore the myths and legends and possible true stories of sea monsters.

Sea creatures can be pretty odd. Seahorses are pretty unique and the leafy seadragon variety of this family of Syngnathidae (Sig nath ah die) look like floating plants or bits of seaweed and yet they are a fish. The Gulper Eel resembles a regular eel when it is swimming, but when it feeds, it looks more like a balloon on a stick. This eel has a huge jaw that it extends backwards from the head as it takes a huge gulp of water and then the head deflates as water is expelled through its gills, leaving behind tasty crustaceans. The Gulper Eel is also one of those deep-sea creatures that has bioluminescence. The Dumbo Octopus is actually named for Disney's Dumbo the elephant character and that is because this deep ocean creature that hangs out around 13,000 feet under the water, slowly flaps its ear-like fins to move. And then there is the Vampire Squid. Apparently, this creature isn't really a squid and it actually doesn't do anything vampiric. It's just a deep, dark red color and the webbing between its arms is cloak-like. These are all real creatures found in the sea. But what about the creatures that we learn about in myths and legends?

For many of us, our first foray into stories about scary creatures in the water involve horror movies. "Jaws" left many of us fearing the possibility of a giant sized shark literally hunting humans. Giant Octopuses and the Kraken have made many appearances in movies like "It Came From Beneath the Sea" and "Clash of the Titans." And we all grew up reading books featuring Roman and Greek mythology with many varieties of sea creatures. What kid didn't fear a piranha would nibble on them in a river and "Stand By Me" made us all think twice about jumping in a small pond for a swim, especially the *ahem* boys because of leeches. There are mermaids, which have presented themselves as both good and bad in various tales. But is there any truth to any of these stories about fantastical sea creatures? Anyone who has seen old maps drawn out by explorers, has probably noticed that these explorers had a penchant for drawing sea monsters on the maps. Was this just for artistic flare or were these images supposed to serve as a warning for something that was actually seen? In some cases, sea monsters were included on maps to symbolize certain things. For example, German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller is widely known as the first to use the word "America" on a map. In 1516, he created a large-scale wall map of the world called the Carta Marina Navigatoria and on it he drew King Manuel of Portugal riding a sea monster to symbolize Portugal's mastery of the oceans. So in that case, a sea monster was decorative. 

But these whimsical additions to maps weren't necessarily meant to just be decorative. Chet Van Duzer wrote the 2013 book "Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps" and in an interview with the Scuba Diving website he said, "Although the sea monsters on many medieval maps seem imaginative and fantastic to our eyes, in most cases they were the artists’ best efforts to represent an animal that contemporary scientific texts such as encyclopedias or bestiaries (medieval books of animals) said existed. We have to bear in mind that in the vast majority of cases, the cartographer was drawing or painting a creature he had never seen, copying the image from a book whose artist had never seen the creature either. There is a decorative aspect to all sea monsters, but particularly on medieval maps, the principal intention was to create a more complete image of the world by including some of its aquatic life — and also to indicate the dangers that the sea might present to sailors." Cornelius de Jode made a map of North America in 1595 and on it he drew a creature named the Hoge and described it as good to eat with a delicate favor, but its picture on the map looks terrifying. We are left wondering what exactly this was based upon. 

Probably my favorite mythical creature would be the Gill Man, who is one of the main monsters in the Universal Movie Monster line-up. And that's why, because I love my Universal Monsters. The movie "Creature From the Black Lagoon" is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year (2024). That movie was inspired by real stories being shared in the Amazon about a man-like sea creature. The producer of the film, William Alland, went to a dinner party hosted by Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa in 1941. Figueroa told Alland about a humanoid, fishlike creatures that supposedly lived in the Amazon river. He had heard several stories about the creature. Those stories about a fish-man stayed with Alland for ten years and in 1951 he wrote a screenplay outline inspired by those stories that he called "The Sea Monster." Maurice Zimm rewrote that initial story in 1952 and Harry Essex and Arthur Ross fleshed out the story into a script that they called "The Black Lagoon." Director Jack Arnold was attached to the project and the work of those three men, along with cinematographer William E. Snyder and aquatic cinematographers James C. Havens and Scotty Welbourne and the design of Milicent Patrick's Gill Man suit, brought forward something far deeper than just a simple monster movie. Sequels took viewers down the road of whether the Gill Man was a missing link in the evolution of fish into human or a human that was adapting back to the sea. Is it possible that humans could live in the water? Did we once live in the water and lose our gills?

Author HP Lovecraft embraced the idea of a fish-man and wrote the horror novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The story is set in the once profitable port town of Innsmouth that is basically a ghost town when the narrator of the story visits. Historical accounts he gathers inform him that an epidemic killed half of the residents. The few people who live here smell of dead fish and have flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes. A local drunkard tells the narrator that it wasn't an epidemic that killed the townspeople, but rather a race of creatures called the Deep Ones who were immortal fish-like humanoids. They bred with some of the people of Innsmouth and the offspring would evolve into fish people as they aged and they would return to the ocean. The drunkard also tells the narrator that the Deep Ones intend to take over the world. The narrator eventually runs into some Deep Ones and sees that they have fish-like heads, are grey-green in color, have gills on their neck, webbed hands and unblinking eyes. We won't share the weird twist at the end, but things don't go well for the narrator.

The Ichthyocentaur (Ick theo cendoor)

The Ichthyocentaur is a Greek mythic being and is a triton, meaning its body is made from three things: the upper half is human, the middle is horse and the tail is fish. The creepy part about this thing is that the earliest examples of it appeared in friezes at the Pergamon Altar, which Hitler had brought to Berlin because this has been considered by many to the Seat of Satan. One is also seen portrayed on a map of Scandinavia from the 16th century. These creatures are also sometimes called sea-centaurs. Most myths feature them as being peaceful and they blow on conch shells to calm storms. Although in some stories they do the same thing to start storms.

Jörmungandr (Yore Mon Gone der)

Jörmungandr is found in Norse mythology and is known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent. This is the middle child of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboda, which explains how he came to be unfathomably large. This is a sea serpent that is depicted as encircling the Earth and biting its own tail. When it releases its tail, the final battle of the world or Ragnarök will start. Jörmungandr is an arch-foe of the Norse thunder-god, Thor. It is said that during Ragnarök, Thor and Jörmungandr will fight each other to the death.

Cirein-cròin (Curen Croan)

In Scottish Gaelic folklore, the cirein-cròin is a large sea monster that would eat seven whales a day. It liked to attack humans by playing a trick on them. This creature would change itself into a small silver fish so that a fisherman could catch it and then once it was hauled on board the boat, it would change back into a monster and eat the fisherman. This creature is one of the most terrifying sea creatures of the time in the Scottish Gaelic folklore tradition.

Devil Whale

The Devil Whale was a mythological creature that seemed to have a demonic nature and was usually depicted as either a whale or a sea turtle. This creature was huge, giving it the ability to swallow ships whole. When it was sleeping, it resembled an island. This creature was usually attracted to a ship upon which a fire was started and it would attack the ship and drags it to the bottom of the sea. The Devil Whale originated in Ireland starting in the 6th century. An early story was reported by an explorer known as Saint Brendan the Navigator who lived from 484 AD to 577 AD. One Easter Sunday as he was traveling with some monks, he stopped the group to camp on an island. They started a fire to cook their meal and the island started moving. It was trying to swim away and Saint Brendan realized they were on the back of a Devil Whale. They all ran to the safety of their boats. There were some who referred to the Devil Whale as Cetus

Cetus

Guillaume le Clerc wrote in the 13th century AD, "But there is one monster, very treacherous and dangerous. In Latin, its name is Cetus. It is a bad neighbour for sailors. The upper part of its back looks like sand, and when it rises from the sea, the mariners think it is an island. Deceived by its size they sail toward it for refuge, when the storm comes upon them. They cast anchor, disembark upon the back of the whale, cook their food, build a fire, and in order to fasten their boat they drive great stakes into what seems to them to be sand. When the monster feels the heat of the fire which burns upon its back, it plunges down into the depths of the sea, and drags the ship and all the people after it." The Cetuss was sometimes described as a whale, but at other times it was more of a sea serpent with the head of a wild boar and the body of a whale or a dolphin with divided, fan-like tails. These large beasts grew to 40 feet in length and their skeletons were taller at the shoulder than an elephant. The term cetacean (for whale) derives from cetus and that is the name of the whale constellation.

Taniwha

The taniwha is a part of Maori mythology and is described as being reptilian with spines running down their backs. At least some of them are described that way. They can appear in different ways. Some have wings and resemble dragons and the ones found in the sea, usually appear like a whale or a large shark. The taniwha live in deep pools, rivers or the sea. The creatures were believed to have traveled here with different canoe crews. A taniwha could be either protective or something that was dangerous and frightening depending on how the Maori treated it. Thus, the Maori revered the taniwha. The taniwha would attack people from other tribes and they usually ate those people. New Zealand's capital, Wellington, has a harbor called Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Tay Fah Nah Nooee a Tahrah). Legends claim that this was carved out by two taniwha and one of them petrified into a hill that overlooks the city. Another legends features three sisters who were out picking berries and one is kidnapped by a taniwha. It takes her back to its cave lair where she eventually bore it six sons. Three were taniwha and three were human, The woman trained her human sons to fight and gave them weapons and they eventually killed their taniwha brothers and they were all able to escape and return to their village. If a Maori had a significant interaction with a taniwha, it could become a taniwha when it died. Crocodiles occasionally cross from Australia to New Zealand, but they cannot be sustained there for long as it is too cold. Some historians believe that the taniwha were just crocodiles that the Maori weren't accustomed to seeing.

Bakunawa (Bok ew nawa)

The bakunawa comes from Philippine mythology and is a serpent-like dragon. The name means "bent snake" and this sea serpent is thought to control eclipses, earthquakes and sometimes the weather. The eclipses happen when the creature eats the moon. Filipinos discovered that the Bakunama didn't like loud noises, so when ever there is an eclipse, the Filipinos go outside and ring bells and hit things to make noise.

Hydra

No, this is not the global terrorist organization from the Marvel Universe.  Hydra is from Greek mythology and was the offspring of the volcano god Typhon and Echidna who was a half-woman, half-sea serpent. Hydra was a gigantic water monster with nine heads. One of them was said to be immortal and would grow back as two if cut off. The Hydra had poisonous breath and blood. The creature lived in the lake of Lerna in the Argolid. People believed that Lerna was an entrance to the Underworld. Killing Hydra was one of Hercules' Twelve Labors. He covered his face with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes and used a sword to cut off its heads. At first, Hercules had no success because the heads kept growing back. He enlisted the help of his nephew who cauterized each neck stump after Hercules removed the head. Athena gave Hercules a golden sword to cut off the immortal head and he placed this under a rock.

The Kraken

Giant squids are definitely a thing, but could there be one as big as the Kraken. The Kraken has always been depicted as being large enough to enclose its tentacles entirely around a full sized ship or submarine. Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" features a giant squid that measured 72 feet and is the antagonist against Captain Nemo and the crew of his submarine called Nautilus. The Giant Squid attacks the Nautilus, which rises to the surface, so that the crew can fight the creature. Captain Nemo ends up in a tentacle and is saved by master harpooner Ned Land who gets the squid right between the eyes with a harpoon and Ned then dives into the water and cuts off the tentacle holding Captain Nemo, saving the captain from drowning. This was basically Verne retelling the story of the Kraken. The Kraken was first mentioned by a Norwegian king named Sverre Siggurdsson (Svear like swear) in 1180 AD and it gets its name from the Norwegian krake, meaning malformed or overgrown, crooked tree. The king described the sea monster as being so large that it could be confused as an island. The Kraken dwelled off the coasts of Norway and Greenland and liked to hang out in the waters near Iceland. Icelanders called it Hafgufa and described it as being the largest of the sea monsters. Stories of the Kraken describe it as looking crablike with long tentacles that could reach all the way up to the topmasts of ships. So this creature is octopus-like, but it is different enough that its not just a giant octopus. Scholars believe that early Norwegians would see bits of large squid or octopus washing up on the shore and they formed their myths of the Kraken around that. 

Scylla (Sky lah)

Scylla actually started off as a water nymph who was the daughter of Phorcys (Four keys), a Greek sea god, and Ceto, a sea goddess. This is the ultimate sea monster who is described as being man-eating. And she might have a bad disposition because one story claims that Scylla had been a beautiful woman who had the sea god Glaucus fall in love with her. He went to a witch and asked her to make a potion that would make Scylla fall in love with him. The problem with this is that the witch was in love with Glaucus, so out of jealousy she made a potion that turned Scylla into the hideous sea beast. What made encountering Scylla even more dangerous for sailors was that she was positioned across a strait from a sea-swallowing monster named Charybdis that formed whirlpools. So sailors would try to avoid the whirlpool and pass really close to Scylla. The distance between the two was described as being within arrow's range. This kind of scene is played out in Homer's Odyssey and six sailors are grabbed off the deck of Odysseus' ship and swallowed whole by Scylla. Our modern era has coined "between Scylla and Charybdis" as "between a rock and a hard place."

Triton

Triton in Greek mythology was the son of the Olympian sea god Poseidon and Amphitrite, who was the queen of the sea. The best description of Triton is that he was a merman with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish. If you've seen the movie "The Little Mermaid," that's Triton. People described him as being dreadful. He used a conch shell to control the sea. And this leads us into merpeople. 

Mermaids and Mermen

Mermaids and Mermen are water creatures that have the upper body of a human and the bottom half of a fish. These creatures are associated with weather on the sea like storms and floods and they are sometimes blamed for shipwrecks. Merfolk have appeared for centuries in the folklore of nearly every culture in the world. The most popular story that has carried over into our modern era is "The Little Mermaid," which was written by Hans Christian Andersen. The first appearance of mermaids is traced to 1000 BC and a story that originates in Assyria. The Assyrian goddess of fertility, Atargatis, became a mermaid after casting herself into a lake. She did this because she ended up killing her lover. She was so beautiful she couldn't completely transform into a fish and retained her human form above the waist.

Scottish myths featured the Ceasg, which was the maid of the waves and had the form of a woman above the waist and the tail of a salmon. The Merrow are the merfolk of Scotland and Ireland and they not only feature the traditional human body with fish tail, but they have webbed hands. The mermaid of the Starbucks lodo is a Melusine, which are found in mainland Europe and are freshwater mermaids that can have two tails. This mermaid could take on a human form for as long as a week, so she married a human. She would transform into her mermaid form once a week while taking a bath. Kinda like the movie "Splash." She forbade her husband from coming into the bathroom when she was bathing, but one day he did and when he saw her tail, she left him forever.

Germany has the Undine, which was probably inspiration for The Little Mermaid. Undine was born as a mermaid and exchanged for a human child. She grew up and married a human who rejected her later and Undine returns to her family and the sea, but warns her husband that if marries another woman, she is duty bound to kill him. We'll just say, the husband ended up dead. Likewise, the Little Mermaid fell in love with a human prince, but he rejected her and married another and the little mermaid starts to dissolve into sea foam and is rescued in the last moments. Not quite like the Disney ending. Cambodia and Thailand have the legend of the golden mermaid who is named Suvannamaccha. She falls in love with a prince and has a baby with him. What's with mermaids and princes? There are mermaid stories from Africa, New Zealand, Cameroon, Brazil, South Korea, China and the list goes on. There are those who believe that early stories of mermaids were possibly sea cows or manatees. They are cute, but I would never mistake them for beautiful women. Sightings of mermaids continue today, although scientists claim that has never been any proof to those sightings.

Wildmen were popular in folklore and one story that was told in 1210, featured a wild merman of sorts. The story was told by a monk named Ralph of Coggeshall. He wrote, "Men fishing in the sea caught in their nets a wild man. He was naked and was like a man in all his members, covered with hair and with a long shaggy beard. He eagerly ate whatever was brought to him, but if it was raw he pressed it between his hands until all the juice was expelled. He would not talk, even when tortured and hung by his feet. Brought into church, he showed no signs of reverence or belief. He sought his bed at sunset and always remained there until sunrise. He was allowed to go into the sea, strongly guarded with three lines of nets, but he dived under the nets and came up again and again. Eventually he came back of his own free will. But later on he was never seen again. Ralph noted that people didn't know if the wild man was a 'mortal man, or some fish pretending human shape, or was an evil spirit hiding in the body of a drowned man'."

Sirens

Sirens in Greek mythology first appeared in Homer's Odyssey, but were not described. Other works have described Sirens as being part woman and part bird. Sometimes they were depicted as birds with human heads. Sirens live on small islands in the sea and can also be found in the water. They have a unique and beguiling power. Sirens have beautiful singing voices that entrance sailors and this leads those sailors to their deaths. Sirens would sometimes be used as synonyms for mermaids, but they clearly were a very different mythical creature. This melding of the two started in the medieval period.

The Loch Ness Monster

We weren't sure about bringing the Loch Ness Monster up because stories have been told about this monster for centuries and yet it seems that sightings in our modern era have been debunked as hoaxes or identifiable objects or animals that were mistaken as a sea serpent. For example, an otter was once thought to be the Loch Ness Monster. Most people call the monster Nessie. It is thought that it was first sighted around 500 A.D. at Loch Ness, which is a large freshwater lake near Inverness, Scotland in the Scottish Highlands that reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and is the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain. The interesting part about this first documented sighting is that it was recorded in the 7th century biography of Saint Columba who was an Irish missionary that introduced Christianity to Scotland. Now while most stories about Nessie don't seem scary, Saint Columba stopped specifically at Loch Ness because he had heard that there was a beast in the water that was killing people who would be swimming in the lake or fishing on it. And it just so happened that St. Columba saw the monster about to attack a man and he invoked the name of God and yelled, "Go back with all speed." The creature retreated and never seemed to attack anyone again.

Leviathan

Leviathan shows up in a lot of literature and is always presented as a demonic sea serpent that is the embodiment of chaos. Of all the mythical sea creatures, this is the one I believe in because it comes up in the Bible many times. Leviathan appears six times in the Bible in five verses. We want to share the most significant passage, which is Job 41, "Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? 2 Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? 3 Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? 4 Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? 5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house? 6 Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? 7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? 8 If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! 9 Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering. 10 No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me? 11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me. 12 "I will not fail to speak of Leviathan's limbs, its strength and its graceful form. 13 Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor? 14 Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth? 15 Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; 16 each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. 17 They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. 18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn. 19 Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. 20 Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. 21 Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth. 22 Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. 23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. 24 Its chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone. 25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing. 26 The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. 27 Iron it treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. 28 Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones are like chaff to it. 29 A club seems to it but a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance. 30 Its undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. 31 It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. 32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had white hair. 33 Nothing on earth is its equal- a creature without fear. 34 It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud."

Leviathan goes back to a Babylonian creation myth as well when the god Marduk defeats the sea serpent goddess Tiamat and uses her body to create the heavens and the earth. The Jewish Festival of Booths known as Sukkot, concludes with the following prayer, "May it be your will, Lord our God and God of our forefathers, that just as I have fulfilled and dwelt in this sukkah, so may I merit in the coming year to dwell in the sukkah of the skin of Leviathan. Next year in Jerusalem." Also as part of Jewish tradition, Leviathan is said to send so much heat out of its mouth that it boils the waters of the deep and that it carries such an odor that no living creature can stand it. Some Gnostic sects identify Leviathan as an ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail. So just like the Norse Jörmungandr (Yore Mon Gone der). All sea serpents seem to be terrifying and Leviathan seems to be the most terrifying of all.

Clearly, there are dozens and dozens of myths and legends that include monsters that live in the sea. These tales have endured for centuries and even feed our current fears of what may lie below the surface of the water, There are very real and very deadly creatures that live in the waters. Are some of those creatures related to these mythical beasts? Did any of these mythical beasts exist? Are these sea monsters a real thing? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 560 - Haunted Cemeteries 30

Moment in Oddity - The Giant's Causeway 

The Giant's Causeway is located in Northern Ireland and is believed to be 60 million years old. This is a unique formation of hexagonal basalt stones that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. This is referred to as a causeway because the tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead down to the sea and go under it. All of the stones seem to have been cut in the shapes they have whether they have four or more sides. But scientists claim that these stones were formed from a volcanic fissure eruption. The use of "giant" in the name indicates that legends are connected to this site. One story claims that there was an Irish giant named Finn McCool and a Scottish giant named Benandonner. The two were mighty rivals and Finn built the causeway so that he could have a meeting with Benandonner. After the meeting, Benandonner ripped up the causeway and ran back to Scotland. For his part, Finn McCool left behind his giant boot, which is fossilized at the Giant's Causeway in "bay of the giant." Causeway guides told a different story in the 1700s and this story was also written out as a poem in 1830. Finn had fallen in love with a Scottish maiden, but he couldn't reach her, so he decided to build the causeway. He was making good progress, but it was stopped by his grandmother who didn't want him going after the maiden because she feared losing him to Scotland. She used magic to create a storm that destroyed the causeway. Finn built it again and she destroyed it again. This went on and on and on this final night, the storm lashed out as Finn built. He was exhausted by the time he got to the other side and fell into the maiden's arms and died. His grandmother was horrified that her magic lead to his death and she turned to stone and continues to stand at the causeway today. The legends are fun, but a giant more than likely didn't build the causeway. Regardless, the formation certainly is odd!

This Month in History - St. Paul's Cathedral Bombed

In the month of October, on the 10th, in 1940, St. Paul's Cathedral was bombed. King Aethelberht (a thel barret) I dedicated the first Christian cathedral to be built here in 604 A.D. He dedicated that cathedral to St. Paul. It burned to the ground later and was rebuilt and then destroyed by the Vikings in 962. A third cathedral was also burned down in 1087. The fourth cathedral stood for many years, but burned up in the Great Fire of London in 1666. English architect Sir Christopher Wren built the fifth and final cathedral in the baroque design and crowned it with a beautiful dome. Wren considered it his masterpiece and he was buried inside it. During the Battle of Britain in World War II, the German Luftwaffe bombed Britain heavily. A nighttime raid was launched on October 10th and a Nazi bomb went through the dome and left the high altar in ruin. The image of St. Paul's in the midst of smoke and fire inspired the British people. The cathedral survived the Blitz and the bells rang out in 1944 to celebrate the liberation of Paris and again in 1945 at the end of the war in Europe with services attended by 35,000 people.

Haunted Cemeteries 30

A bench, hewn from natural wood, that is located in one of our featured cemeteries reads, "Here I sit broken-hearted, thinking about, our dearly departed." And that is why we have cemeteries. To remember our dearly departed family and friends. For those of us that wander these cities of the dead, we make new friends along the way as we stop and read a headstone here and there. A life remembered for a brief moment. We give that to the dead when we stop and care. And in some cemeteries, our efforts do not go in vain as we are watched and surveyed from beyond the veil. On this haunted cemeteries episode, we feature haunted cemeteries in Arizona; Alabama; Ontario, Canada; Prague, Czech Republic; South Dakota and two St. Mary Churchyard's in London, Britain.

Evergreen Mortuary and Cemetery

Evergreen Cemetery was founded in 1907 on 110 acres outside the city of Tucson to replace the original city cemetery known as Court Street Cemetery. That cemetery was open from 1875 to 1907. When it closed, the bodies were moved to Evergreen. The process took 20 years. Remains from another cemetery named Presidio were also relocated here. This means that many of the early pioneers of Tucson are buried in Evergreen. The cemetery is surrounded by mountains and features a lush landscape with many trees has attracted  wide variety of birds through the years, so it has been listed as a Bird Sanctuary by the Audubon Society of Tucson. Evergreen Mortuary was opened in 1974 to make the cemetery a one-stop shop. The NorthStar Memorial Group acquired the property in 2014.

Some of the notable people buried here are Jacob Mansfeld who started the first public library in the territory and Thomas Jeffords who was a U.S. Army scout and blood brother to Apache leader Cochise and helped negotiate a treaty with the Apache. The Drachman family were pioneers who came to Tucson from California. Philip Drachman traveled as steerage to New York in 1852 and through several years, made his way to the Territory of Arizona. There he opened a dry goods store with his friend Joseph Goldwater and got involved in real estate. By 1881, he owned a saloon and a few years later he had a cigar shop and he got involved in politics. Drachmann died in Tucson in 1889. He was buried in the Masonic Plot at Evergreen Cemetery. His son Mose got involved in Tucson real estate and politics, following in his father's footsteps. He too is buried at Evergreen.

The Evergreen Cemetery page on Facebook shares this about Maria Wakefield Fish who was buried at the cemetery in 1909, "Governor Safford invited Maria to come to Arizona and inaugurate the public schools in Tucson. There were no railroads; the desert stretched out desolate and hostile Indians ranged the country. Maria braved the dangers and came and took the post and opened the public schools of Tucson and practically of the territory. She was the pioneer that opened up the splendid vista of education to boys and girls of today. Wakefield Middle School was named for her. She was also the first American woman married in Tucson - the date was 1874."

Many people believe this cemetery is one of the most haunted places in Tucson. There is the disembodied sound of children laughing and playing that is heard. A woman was walking through the cemetery one day and felt a sudden and forceful yank of her hair. There was no one near her. There can be an eerie silence about the place at times. More quiet than any cemetery should be. No birds sing, no bugs flit and no wind courses through the trees.

Hodges Cemetery

Hodges Cemetery is a family cemetery in Alabama that dates back to 1887 and is on land owned originally by W. L. Hodges near the border with Brookside. There are around 135 graves here and despite being a small graveyard, it is apparently very active with spirits. That could be because the cemetery regularly gets disturbed by recreational ATV riders and other trespassers. People driving by the cemetery claim that something bangs against their car. Ghostly hands and faces appear on the windows of their cars. Shadow figures dart among the tombstones and strange noises are heard. And there have even been claims of sightings of a wolf with glowing red eyes.

Drummond Hill 

The land of the Haudenosaunee was once where Drummond Hill Cemetery now sits. This land sits in the Niagara Falls area in Ontario, Canada. A settler named Christopher Buchner bought 400 acres of land in 1799 from his father-in-law James Forsyth. On the top of a hill there, he designed a burial ground. The earliest burial dates to 1797. During the War of 1812, the Battle of Lundy Lane was fought. Lieutenant Governor Gordon Drummond took command of the British forces and his goal was to drive the Americans from the west bank of the Niagara. Brigadier General Winfield Scott led the Americans and they emerged from a forest right into the path of Drummond. At first, Scott's men took a big beating, but then one regiment moved to flank the left side of the British, which surprised two battalions. Another American regiment arrived and one brigade under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Miller released a devastating attack on the British and earned the title of "The Hero Of Lundy's Lane." Several attacks later and many deaths later, the battle ended in a draw. The hill was named for Drummond. 

One of the notable people buried here is Burr Lockhart Plato who was a slave in West Virginia. He escaped and used the Underground Railroad to get to Canada in 1856. He settled in Niagara Falls and grew in prominence there until he was elected as a councilor in 1886, one of the first black politicians in Canada. Laura Secord is also buried here. During the War of 1812, she walked over twenty miles from American-occupied territory to get a message to the British warning them of an impending American attack. This was despite her father being a Patriot. Her husband was a Loyalist. The information helped the British and the Mohawk repel the attack. Her effort was largely forgotten until 1860 when she was formally thanked and awarded 100 pounds by the Prince of Wales, Edward. Schools have been named for her, a museum was set up for her, there are monuments and memorial coins and stamps and even chocolates were made in her honor. Her legend has reached almost mythic levels.

The main ghosts seen in this cemetery are of course, soldiers. People have seen the spirits of five soldiers in Royal Scots uniforms. They limp across the cemetery. A residual haunting plays out featuring three British soldiers walking towards Lundy House, which was used as a hospital during the war. The sounds of battle are often heard. People claim to feel as though they are being watched. Ghost Walks had taken a group out on their Niagara Ghost Bus Tour and as they exited the cemetery, a woman turned to look back because she felt a cold breeze on her neck and she yelled, "Turn around! Look!" The whole group saw black figures hovering behind graves and then they just disappeared.

Bohnice Cemetery

The Bohnice Cemetery is located in the city of Prague and was founded in 1909. This was the burial ground for the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital. There are about 4,000 bodies in the cemetery. The grounds of the hospital are very large and described as being more like a village. The grounds feature a park that is used as a music venue and host for festivals and exhibitions. The main building, which is a baroque country house, still houses patients. The St. Wenceslas Church had been a church, then a barracks and military warehouse. It's open for special occasions now. There are also villas, a theater, cafe and farm. And then there is the abandoned cemetery. Through the years, grave robbers came and took many of the headstones that had metal so that they could sell the metal. So most burials are unmarked. And the cemetery is so overgrown, no one would know it was a cemetery if not for the fence and gate. A small chapel is in ruins with just the outer brick walls still standing. A large cross still sits against a wall. The last burial took place in 1951 and the cemetery was abandoned in 1963. 

Before the closure, about 40 patients were buried every year. Some patients with syphilis were treated with blood that was contaminated with malaria. It was thought this would give patients fevers that would kill the bacteria. Sometimes it worked, but most ended up dead. Especially when the treatment was used for schizophrenia or mania. There are also victims from a typhus epidemic and prisoners from World War I. There is only one gravestone here that can be read and it reads, "Maria Tuma Reiter" with her death marked as April 1912. She had been 29 years old. She passed from pneumonia, but is believed to not have been a patient, but rather a worker who lived in the cottages nearby with her husband and two children. The most notable burial here would be Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand. And the possible murderer of a sex worker named Otilia Vranska might be here. Sergeant Pavlíček never confessed to the murder publically, but he had friends who claimed that he confided to them that he had murdered the woman. Otilia was found, cut in half, with her body in two different suitcases set with two different destinations. The murder was never solved. Pavlicek was admitted to Bohnice psychiatric hospital and he committed suicide there.

It is said that the cemetery is full of negative energy. Satanic rituals were conducted in years past and remnants have been left behind like circles of salt. Seances were held for years, as recently as 2008 and this was recorded on security cameras. People claim to hear strange sounds coming from within the cemetery. Unexplained lights are also seen. A legend claims that Maria's gravestone has stayed so nice because her spirit protects it. Thieves claimed that when they tried to take her headstone, they were grabbed on the shoulder by a woman who said, "Hey, this is sacred!" She might be haunting the cemetery because there is one story that claims she was admitted to the hospital for wrong reasons and was raped and impregnated and that the doctor who committed this act, killed her during an abortion attempt. There is another story that thieves were carrying a large tombstone out of the cemetery when they were scared by something they saw and dropped it. That headstone now sits near the front gate. 

Keystone Cemetery

Keystone Cemetery is perfectly situated so that Mount Rushmore can be seen from the grounds. The grounds are picturesque and there is a cute little white chapel. This cemetery is also known as Mountainview Cemetery and was founded by Patrick F. Hayes in 1900. The first burial was his daughter Catherine who had died at just 18-months-old. Notable burials her include David N. Swanzey who was friends with Charles Rushmore and Gutzon Borglum and helped with giving Mount Rushmore its name. His wife was Carrie Ingalls - yes, a member of the "Little House on the Prairie" family. His son, Harold David “Davey” “Red” Swanzey, is also buried here and had been a worker at Mount Rushmore. As a side note, Mount Rushmore was built from 1927 to 1941 and 400 workers using ropes and scaffolding moved nearly 450,000 tons of rock and not one person perished. 

Also buried at the cemetery is Harry Hardin who was known as "Wild Horse." He had a donkey named "Sugar Babe" and the two became characters advertising Landstrom's Black Hills gold jewelry. Hardin played the part of a bearded prospector. He would tell people he survived the Custer Massacre, but he was born twenty years after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. A recent burial in 2005 was for Orville Francis Salway who was also known as Paha Ska. The name means "White Hills" and was given to him by Ben Black Elk. Paha Ska was an elder of the Oglala Sioux tribe and he traveled the world as an ambassador for his tribe and the city of Keystone. He won numerous awards for his artwork, which is on display at the Crazy Horse Memorial.

The grave of Robert "Bobby" Buntrock is here. He was born in Denver in 1952 and his parents moved the family to California when he three-years-old. They got him signed to an agent and when he was seven, he landed his first role on an episode of "Wagon Train." When he was nine he landed his biggest role as Harold "Sport" Baxter on the sitcom Hazel starring Shirley Booth. He retired from acting in 1967 when he was fifteen. The family moved to Keystone and Bobby died there in 1974 at the age of 21 when his car veered off a bridge under construction and landed in Battle Creek where he drowned. He was young, making this tragic, but even worse is that his mother met a similar fate just a year before this. And yes, on the exact same bridge.

There are stories of spirits in the graveyard. Disembodied and haunting laughter is attributed to Wild Horse Hardin. Ghostly apparitions have been spotted standing in the cemetery. Caitlin wrote on B102.7's website, "Friends and I went to this cemetery years ago. I took many pictures with my digital camera and found nothing on the pictures, but I took a video on my cell phone. Unfortunately, I no longer have the video but after reviewing the video there something big and white shot across the screen of my phone. Also, on our way out, all of our phones stopped working – said there was service, but when we tried to call out, our phone just shut off."

St. Mary's Churchyard at Hendon

A church of some sort has stood on the St. Mary's Churchyard site in Hendon, North London since Anglo-Saxon times. The original church is thought to have been named for Mary Magdalene by a heretical cult linked to the Knights Templar. This churchyard contains family sepulchers numbered with Roman numerals and an addition was added between World War I and II for newer burials. It is said that an ancient and horrifying history is part of the churchyard and may have influenced Bram Stoker’s writing of Dracula. The Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper reported in 1892 a story that dated back to 1828. A young medical student approached the vicar of St. Mary's Church in 1828 and him that he desperately needed to get access to his family's vault. The vicar at first refused, but then agreed saying that he would only open it if the young man promised not to open any coffins. He should've stuck around to supervise becasue the young man brought an axe with him and proceeded to chop off the head of his mother's corpse. When authorities asked the man why he did this, he claimed that he was dying from a hereditary disease that had also killed her. When the story was shared in the newspaper in 1892, it was opposite a review of the Lyceum Theatre’s production of King Lear. At that time, Bram Stoker was the manager of the Lyceum Theatre and probably saw the article. Could this have inspired some of his ideas for Dracula? Van Helsing cut off the head of Lucy after she turned vampire at a churchyard called Kingstead. It's description sounded a lot like St Mary’s Hendon reading, "a lordly death house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming London, where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill, and where wildflowers grow of their own accord." When Dracula was published, St Mary’s Churchyard was in the countryside. Today, it has homes all around it.

That's interesting, but on top of possibly being connected to Dracula, this churchyard is haunted! The disembodied sounds of shuffling have been heard as though a group of phantom monks are walking through the churchyard and in the church. This is heard most often during religious festivals. The sounds of a ghostly choir are heard around the church. Some of it sounds like Benedictine monks chanting and they would have been here before King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. The manager of Arsenal Football Club before World War II was herbert Chapman and he was buried here. His ghost haunts his burial and is said to also show up at the Old Highbury Stadium.

St. Mary's Churchyard in Wanstead

Just as with our other St Mary’s Churchyard, this has had a church and graveyard for at least 800 years dating back to around 1208. The current church was built in 1787 and designed by architect Thomas Hardwick. This church was made in the Georgian style. The oldest headstone dates to 1685 and is for a man named James Waly. Notable burials here are the sculptor Joseph Wilton, Royal Navy Vice-Admiral Robert Plampin and Thomas Turpin, allegedly uncle to dastardly Dick Turpin who was Essex's most famous thug. Winifred East was the wife of an auctioneer whose decapitated body was found on the southern railway between Kidbrooke and Eltham in Wanstead. She was only 28 and her murder was never solved. The Derry Journal of Monday 18 March 1929 gave these details, "A young man who is known to have entered the carriage in which Mrs. East traveled, and left at a later station, is being sought the police. When the driver of the electric train had just passed Kidbrooke station he saw in the distance dark object lying between the two sets of rails. As he came closer, he saw that it was the decapitated body of a woman. He reported the matter to the stationmaster at Well Hall, the next stopping place. After establishing the woman’s identity, the police searched the train in which she was known to have left Barnehurst, and the discovery of number of her personal belongings under a seat were able to determine the actual compartment in which she traveled." She was buried in St. Mary's Churchyard.

There are claims that at least four spirits have made this churchyard their home. There is a grey lady here that seems to be looking for her husband. Sightings of her have been reported for nearly 100 years. Dick Turpin must have liked his uncle because it is said that he likes to show up in the churchyard every so often. Dick also shows up at St George’s Field in York, close to where he was executed in 1739 and lots of pubs claim his ghost too. The third spirit seen here is a skeleton who is wheeling along a handcart with a coffin on it, so he seems to be working as a ghostly grave digger. And there is a lady in white here too whom seems to be upset that grave robbers took her body.

We love cemeteries, especially if they have a haunted reputation. All of these cemeteries are unique and interesting. Are they haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 559 - Lord Baltimore Hotel

Moment in Oddity - El Ojo (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

In Argentina there is a most unique island called El Ojo. It is located in the Parana Delta in the Buenos Aires Province. The island itself actually floats, and is nearly entirely circular in formation. The lake that El Ojo floats within is round as well and the island rotates on its own axis due to a river that flows beneath it. The island has its edges continually broken off as it rotates around the lake, continuing its perpetual circular shaping. As to how El Ojo came to be is still unknown. The island is uninhabited and roughly 118 meters in diameter. Over time it will slowly reduce in size due to the erosion of its edges. A strangely circular segment of land spinning within a circular lake resembling an eyeball, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Bruce Mozert Photography (Suggested by: Jenny Lynn Raines)

In the month of October, on the 14th, in 2015, American photographer Bruce Mozert passed away. Mozert was most well known for his exceptional underwater photography. In 1938, Mozert was working on a photoshoot in Miami, Florida. While there, he heard about the filming of a Tarzan movie in Silver Springs near Ocala, Florida. Once Bruce arrived at Silver Springs and he encountered the crystal clear water, he decided to stay. Mozert became Silver Springs official photographer. Bruce stated of Silver Springs, "I saw that crystal clear water and that's how I got into my underwater work". His photographs were very unique. He didn't typically feature fish or other subjects normally found underwater. The majority of his photographs highlighted women underwater doing every day chores that would routinely be done on land. Tasks like cooking, reading newspapers, mowing lawns and even archery were featured. The photos are stunning and were used to advertise Silver Springs to tourists and film crews. Over the years his photographs were published in The Huffington Post, National Geographic, Life, Look and Smithsonian Magazine. His reproductions of his work can be purchased online through various sites. Even if you have no interest in purchasing any of his pictures, we highly recommend searching his photography to enjoy. Bruce Mozert passed away in his Ocala, Florida home at the age of 98.

Lord Baltimore Hotel

Viewing historic pictures from the Lord Baltimore Hotel conjures images of the Overlook Hotel and Jack Torrance standing for a photo with a large group of guests. It's heyday came during the glitz and glamour of the 20s and 30s. The hotel has stood for nearly 100 years and hosted several notable people. It also was the scene of several suicides after the Stock Market Crash. And for that reason, despite its historic charm, there are many ghosts hanging around the hotel. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Lord Baltimore Hotel.

Before the City of Baltimore was founded, the Susquehanna tribe was here at what is known as the Potomac Creek Complex. The merchant ship The Ark arrived at nearby St. Clement's Island with 140 colonists in 1634. More Europeans followed and settled north of the island and the city of Baltimore was founded in 1729. The city was named for Cecil Calvert, the 2nd Baron Baltimore and was laid out in 1730. Growth was slow as people were skeptical that the city's port would be an effective place of transport. A man named Dr. John Stevenson shipped his Flour over to Ireland successfully from Baltimore and once other merchants saw this, Baltimore exploded. Official incorporation came in 1796. The War of 1812 put Baltimore in the crosshairs of the British. In 1814,  the Battle of Baltimore was fought and the British were unable to take Baltimore and they fled. The nation was inspired by the victory and so was Francis Scott Key, who watched the battle as a captive onboard a British warship. He was inspired to write a poem called "Defense of Fort M’Henry," which became our National Anthem. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was America’s first railroad and gave the city even more prominence. So many immigrants came through Baltimore's port that it was second only to New York City as a national port-of-entry.

Before the Lord Baltimore Hotel was on the site, there was another hotel named Hotel Caswell here. It had opened as a 250-room hotel in 1905. Harry Busick had come to Baltimore from the small town of Still Pond. He got a job as a clerk at the Carrollton Hotel and worked there for a year until it burned to the ground. Busick moved on to the University Hospital and he became very successful. He got a loan from a bank and leased the New Howard Hotel. Within two years, he was managing the Caswell Hotel. With the responsibilities of running tow hotels, Busick formed the Union Hotel Company and under that he decided to build a "super-hotel" in Baltimore. He  bought the Caswell Hotel for $750,000 in 1919 and nine years later he had it razed. Now, he was going to build his dream hotel. 

Busick hired the renowned architect William Lee Stoddart to design the hotel. Stoddard had designed several hotels up to this point, but the Lord Baltimore would be his finest achievement. Stoddart was famous enough in his time for his divorce from his wife to become a national scandal covered by the New York Times. In 1908, his wife Mary filed for divorce, citing extreme cruelty, and took the couples three children from New Jersey to Reno, Nevada. Stoddart counter-sued, accusing Mary of having an affair with an architect friend of his. The New York Times, in National Enquirer fashion, published three personal and intimate letters that Mary had written to Stoddart in which she begged for a divorce and fianacial help. Stoddart finally agreed to the divorce and sent money. The scandal didn't hurt him that much as his success with the Lord Baltimore Hotel and other grand hotels reveals.

The design features a Beaux-Arts style with elements of Italian and French Renaissance. This was the last high-rise building in Baltimore with classical ornamentation in the downtown area. The foundation of the hotel was in a U-shape with two steel and brick towers capped by an octagonal tower with a granite trim and flat roof that was at the rear or the bottom of the U. There was also a copper-covered mansard on that rear tower with carved stone dormers and large medallions depicting the head of a lion. The copper has now turned the hue of gray-green patina and it's just a very cool look. Rising to 289 feet, the hotel was the tallest building in all of Maryland at the time. The interior featured elements of Italian Renaissance and large squared piers with Corinthian capitals. A marble stairway led from the 5,300 square foot lobby to the  main dining room that had mirrored transoms and large windows. The lobby was surrounded by a mezzanine and originally had Terrazo marble floors and rose Traventine marble walls. There was a banquet hall on the second floor that featured crystal chandeliers and room for over 1200 people. There were also meeting rooms on this level. Like many hotels of the time, the ground level featured stores.

The Lord Baltimore Hotel opened in the winter of 1928 with 700 rooms. Many in the city attended its opening gala, including Governor Albert Richie, Baltimore mayor William F. Broening and even some relatives of the royal Baltimore family. This was such a big affair that a local radio station broadcast the opening live. There was a two-story speakeasy hidden away in the hotel that was remodeled into a storage closet in 1933 after Prohibition was over. Harry Busick died shortly after the hotel opened when he drowned in 1930. A New York Times headline reads "Harry Busick of Baltimore Found Dead Near Ducking Blind." His sons Nelson, Howard and Morton took over managing the hotel and it flourished. Even though the Great Depression and World War II impacted the economy, the hotel managed to do well because of the superior service, design and amenities.

In the 1940s, the hotel underwent a re-decoration program. The Calvert Ballroom received a collection of historic murals done by Baltimore artists Mabel and John Georgi. One of the murals shows a view of Baltimore in the 19th century looking south from the Washington Monument and another shows street scenes of Baltimore during the 19th century. During the early years of the hotel, it was segregated as ordered by local ordinances, so no blacks were allowed inside. By 1958, the Busick brothers were done with those ordinances and they opened the hotel to everyone. And so that year, three baseball greats - Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson - were able to stay at the Lord Baltimore when they played in the All-Star Game hosted by Baltimore. Ten years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed while attending the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. King was given the keys to the city by the mayor Tommy D’Alessandro III at the hotel. (That's Nancy Pelosi's brother.)

The Busick brothers decided to sell the hotel in 1960 to a New Yorker named Weissberg for $7.1 million.  The Lord Baltimore went through several owners after that and it started to deteriorate. The Baltimore downtown had an economic downturn as well and business wasn't going well for the hotel. It struggled until a company named Federated Enterprises, Inc. bought it at auction in 1969 and began an extensive renovation. This was an inspired effort, but didn't work and the hotel closed in 1982. This was after the hotel had suffered three suspicious fires as well. In 1992, Universal Equities partnered with Radisson Hotels and they reopened the hotel as the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore. The building was renovated further and brought back to its former glory. Hilton bought the property in 1997. In 2013, the Rubell family bought the hotel and ended the relationship with Radisson so they could operate it independently. The family proceeded to invest millions into the building. Under their management, the Lord Baltimore has flourished and won numerous awards. 

With over 20 documented cases of suicide by jumping from the roof of the hotel, it's no wonder rumors persist that the hotel is haunted. Suzanne C. Koogler DeVier writes the Baltimore Through My Eyes blog and she shares, "With elevator access to what is now the LB Skybar, an outdoor space on the 19th floor, jumpers would have found it very easy to make their way to the edge of the roof. After my grandfather began working there as the night auditor, per my grandmother, one of the jumpers actually landed on the hood of his brand new car, completely destroying it." The Lord Baltimore has ended up on many Top 10 haunted hotel lists and participated in the world's largest ghost hunt for several years. 

A woman and a man are heard quarreling on the mezzanine when no one is visibly seen. The elevator seems to have a mind of its own at times and the 19th floor seems to be the most haunted. Guests claim to feel a presence in their rooms and some claim to be touched while near or on the elevator. The spirit of a little girl wearing a cream colored dress and black shoes with a red ball that the staff call Molly, has been seen in the ballroom and on the 19th floor. Guests have complained to the front desk about a young girl bouncing a ball keeping them awake. The story behind her is that her parents jumped from the roof of the hotel and took her with them. A ghostly couple seen dancing in the ballroom is said to be her parents, but some investigators disagree and say the couple definitely don't like being disturbed.

WJZ in Baltimore has a segment called "Where's Marty?" and last year for Halloween he was at the Lord Baltimore. They had several things happen that they couldn't explain. During the intro, a wall sconce started blinking for no apparent reason. A little red ball that was used as a trigger object, rolled all by itself. The camera guy who was named K2 - lol - told viewers that the battery in his camera completely died. WBAL TV11 reported from the hotel this year, 2024, in September for National Ghosthunting Day. They caught a figure on the SLS Camera. Reporter Tori Yorgey told viewers that a tripwire on the floor had been flickering for several minutes and a K2 she was holding kept pinging as well.

The hotel has this account from a former employee named Fran Carter, "In 1998, Fran was on the nineteenth floor of the building, preparing a small meeting room for future use. She was working at a table facing the wall with an open door to her left. She bent over the table for a few moments, absorbed in her work. Then she looked up and to her left at the doorway. A little girl wearing a long, cream-colored dress and black, shiny shoes ran by the open doorway, bouncing a red ball before her. Fran immediately ran outside, calling after her, 'Little girl, are you lost?' The hallway was completely empty. Fran, quite shaken at this point, turned around to go back to the meeting room when she saw two people walking down the hallway toward her. The first was an older gentleman dressed in formal attire. He was accompanied by a woman in a long ball gown. Fran asked them if they were looking for their granddaughter because she had just run by. She turned to point in the direction the child had passed. When she turned her head back toward the two people, they had just vanished right before her eyes. Fran was then so frightened that she called a security guard. He stayed there with her until she finished her work, and no more ghostly visitors appeared on the nineteenth floor that evening. A few years later a guest at the hotel told Fran that she believed that her room had a ghostly visitor. She was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a child crying. As she sat up in her bed, she saw a little girl crying and rocking herself back and forth while sitting in the window of her room. As the woman rose to go to the girl, she slowly faded away. The little girl was wearing a long, cream-colored dress with black shoes. One evening, a few years later, Fran was approached by a coworker who told her that three people were standing in the dark in the ballroom of the hotel. The hotel’s ballroom is a very large room, which can accommodate 1,250 people seated at banquet tables. Three arched ceiling length windows dominate the far wall of the room, the side of the room opposite the entrance doorway. When Fran entered the ballroom, she walked across the room in the direction of the windows. She noticed that there were indeed three people standing there in the darkened, moonlit room. One man stood before the far left window, another stood before the far right window, and a woman stood a few feet behind the men before the middle window. They were all looking upward through the windows. Fran noticed that he was wearing a dark, possibly blue, sport blazer with metallic buttons that gleamed in the darkness. He had an ascot tied around his throat and appeared quite the dapper gentleman, She thought that his clothing was odd, but at this point didn’t know that her visitors were out of the ordinary. She then asked them if they would like some light and walked by the man in the ascot to turn on the light switch, just a few feet from where we was standing. Light immediately flooded the room-and the three visitors were gone!”

Haunted hotels are the best places to rent a room and they sure are fun to investigate. Are people really seeing the ghost of a little girl at the hotel? Are there spirits hovering near the beds? Does the elevator really have a mind of its own? Is the Lord Baltimore Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 558 - Croke-Patterson Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Miramichi Moose

Most people know that if you encounter a wild moose, you definitely don't want to mess with it. They typically can be very dangerous animals. However, back in the early 1900's there was a man in New Brunswick, Canada who did not heed this common knowledge. As the story goes, John Connell saved a young moose from freezing in the snow. The man got the moose up out of the snow and brought the animal into his barn. Connell named the moose Tommy and he raised him alongside his horses. He taught the moose to accept a harness just as he did with his horses so that his rescued moose could pull a sleigh. Connell also saddle-trained the moose and he would ride Tommy into town from time to time. Connell is not the only person in history to tame a wild moose. A man named Sellick was known to trap and tame moose back in the mid 1800's. He would then use the beasts as draft animals. It is said by some that moose are better than horses because they could wade through snow better and easily travel 50 miles in a day without tiring. In 1904, John Connell was contacted by the Newfoundland government. The government wanted to begin a population of moose on the island. It is said that Connell went out and captured six or seven moose and sent them by train to Howley, Newfoundland. Moose are very majestic animals, but training one to be ridden, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Panama Canal Treaty

In the month of October, on the 1st, in 1979, the Panama Canal Treaty transferred jurisdiction over the Canal Zone to Panama. The United States had tried to negotiate a treaty with Colombia back in 1903. This agreement would give the U.S. rights to the land surrounding where the Panama Canal was to be built. Colombia would not ratify the treaty, but at the time, Panama was in the process of seceding from the country of Colombia. President Theodore Roosevelt supported the Panamanian quest for independence. Roosevelt's support proved to be beneficial as the Panamanian government signed the treaty and the Panama Canal opened in 1914. Over the years, control over the canal spurred tensions between the United States and Panama. In 1964, a riot erupted between U.S. citizens and Panamanians over flying the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone. It was soon recognized that there needed to be further negotiations regarding the Canal. 1967 brought both governments three treaties that were agreed upon, however a shift in Panamanian government, including a coup, delayed any immediate completions of the proposed treaties. Between 1973 and 1976 communications began again with concentrations on U.S. perpetual use of the waterway instead of perpetual control of the Panama Canal. This led to the eventual Torrijos-Carter Treaties that President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos signed on September 7, 1977. The first treaty stated that the U.S. would continue using its military to defend the canal, thus allowing perpetual use by the United States. The second treaty stated that the Panama Canal Zone would cease to exist on October 1st, 1979, with the Canal itself being turned over to the Panamanians on December 31st, 1999.

Croke-Patterson Mansion

The Patterson Inn has been known for most of its life as the Croke-Patterson Mansion. This grand Victorian mansion is located in Capitol Hill in Denver, Colorado. This was a private home for many years and then had other uses before becoming the boutique hotel it is today. This is a location where Diane had her second ever paranormal experience. The basement is incredibly creepy and there are many ghost stories about this location. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Croke-Patterson Mansion.

There are many legends connected to the Croke-Patterson Mansion. Tracking down a real history can be difficult. On top of that, we all know that people spreading rumors and legends can give them a life spiritually, forming tulpas. We'll try to do our best, but also we'll share some of the legends because they are important when it comes to the house. The Croke-Patterson Mansion sits at 420 East 11th Avenue in Denver. Capitol Hill is the neighborhood that surrounds the state's capitol. Diane lived here for a couple of years, a couple blocks down from the capitol in Poet's Row. This area had been where Denver's rich families built their audacious mansions. The Silver Crash of 1893 caused a slump in the local economy and building shifted to apartments and boarding houses for transient middle-class families. Before all of this though, the area was homesteaded by Henry C. Brown. He owned 160 acres and it was dubbed Brown's Bluff because it was a dry, dusty bit of land. No one thought it would become prime real estate. He eventually donated a portion of the land for the state capitol to be built upon. Plans for the capitol stalled eventually and Brown claimed the land back, upon which the state sued him and got the land back.

It was here in Capitol Hill that Thomas Bernard Croke decided to build his massive mansion. Croke was the son of Irish immigrants and was born in Wisconsin in 1856. He moved to Denver in 1874 with some siblings and he got a job at the Daniels & Fisher store in downtown. Croke did an excellent job and was quickly promoted to management and before long, Daniels and Fisher partnered with Croke so he could open his own store. This store specialized in carpet and he made enough to build a mansion at the corner of East 11th Avenue and Pennsylvania Street. Croke hired contractor J.M. Cochran and architect Isaac Hodgson, Jr. to design what would become one of the three finest examples of the Chateauesque style in Denver. This is the only one still around. The design was meant to mimic the Chateau d'Azay-le-Rideau (ah-zeh luh ree-doe) castle in France. Many people believe the home follows after the Richardsonian Romanesque that was popular at the time though. The mansion stands three-stories and has a basement. 

The outside was made from Manitou sandstone and featured turrets, dormers, bay windows, arched doorways and spires. Initially, that sandstone would have been beautifully carved, but sandstone doesn't hold up and the years were not kind to the facade. The stable was connected to the house and was a mini replica of the main house. The main floor featured a large hallway with a library, parlor and dining room were on either side of the hallway. The second floor had five bedrooms and the third floor had servant bedrooms and a playroom for children. The basement had the ballroom and a laundry and storage rooms. In all, the house spread over 14,000 square feet.

Croke's wife, Margaret Dunphy Croke, had died before Croke moved into the mansion with their two young children, probably in 1887. He also moved his parents in, but his mother died shortly after they moved in. After six months in the house, Croke decided to move everybody out. He built this grand house and only lived in it for six months. Croke wanted to move back to his ranch north of Denver. He approached a man named Thomas Patterson and made a deal to trade the mansion to him for 1,440 acres of ranchland. The real reason Croke left his mansion was probably because of the silver crash and he was unable to pay his mortgage anymore.

Thomas Patterson was an Irishman who moved to America with his family when he was ten. They lived in New York and then Indiana and Patterson joined the 11th Indiana Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, he went to law school  and he became a successful lawyer, politician who served in Congress from 1877-1879 and journalist who purchased the Rocky Mountain News in 1890. While studying, he met Katharine Grafton at school and the couple married in 1863. They would have five children with three of them living to adulthood - Mary, Margaret and James - and moved to Colorado in 1872. The couple became prominent residents of Denver and Katharine was known for her philanthropy and she was an influential suffragist serving as president of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association. Things weren't rosy for the Patterson's early on. Their two-year-old son Tom died and Katharine felt that her husband didn't offer her enough comfort. On top of that, their son James ran away from home and got into trouble with the law. Katharine felt it would be best if she moved herself and their three living children to Europe and she did so for four years from 1884 to 1888. Thomas felt that the Croke Mansion would be a wonderful showplace for his family and so he  moved into it in 1892. The Pattersons would live in the mansion for the next thirty years. Only Margaret would live past her twenties. James died in 1892 at the age of 26 and Mary died in 1894 at the age of 27. Katharine died in 1902. Thomas died in July of 1916.

Margaret Patterson had gone to school and studied to become a medical missionary. She never followed that path. Margaret had cared for her siblings before they passed and after that, she met Richard Crawford Campbell who was a distant cousin. He was an influential newspaper editor. The couple married and Richard became the business manager for the Rocky Mountain News under his father-in-law Thomas. After the paper was sold, Campbell turned to real estate and founded the Campbell Investment Company. Margaret and Richard had three children and they lived with her parents in the mansion and then continued on at the mansion after their deaths until 1924 when they bought another home that was more modern. Margaret died in June of 1929 and Richard died shortly thereafter in February 1930.

The Campbells had a daughter who was also named Margaret and she sold the mansion to the Louise Realty Company. This was leased to the Joe Mann School of Orchestra. By 1927 KFVR radio station was housed in the mansion and then in 1930, it was converted into seven apartments. The house changed hands several times for decades and it fell into disrepair, particularly the outside. Several mansions around it had been demolished to make way for apartment buildings and so a grassroots effort started to save the rest of the old mansions in Capitol Hill. Realtor Mary Rae had fallen in love with the Croke-Patterson Mansion and she bought it and continued to run it as apartments. She and her husband worked to get the house on the National Register of Historic Places and they succeeded in 1973.

Dr. Douglas and Melodee Ikeler bought the mansion in 1998 for $600,000 and they lived in it for 10 years. Dr. Ikeler was a very successful veterinarian and he wanted a grand home to reflect his wealth. The architecture of the mansion was perfect for him and he said of it, "I was able to live in a large place shaped like a castle with fancy and elegant interior and exterior." The couple eventually divorced, the house went into foreclosure in 2007 and sat in limbo for a while with different plans for it. One of them involved a religious organization using it as a homeless facility, which thankfully didn't happen because they were going to gut everything inside. Architect Brian Higgins bought the mansion in 2011 for $565,000 and he began renovating it into a bed and breakfast. He was also a director and produced a documentary on the renovations he named "The Castle Project." The film was released in 2013 and the remodeled Patterson Inn opened that same year. Chris Chiari became owner of the mansion in 2018 and he runs it as a boutique hotel, still named the Patterson Inn. Our listener Dolly, who has joined us on several investigations, stayed overnight at the mansion. The mansion has nine uniquely themed rooms for rent. The 12 Spirits Tavern serves up drinks in the basement.

That name for the pub is because there are claims that there are 12 spirits here. Ghost stories have been told about the mansion for decades. There are many reasons for hauntings. The incredibly haunted Cheeseman Park is nearby. Denver was once called the "Little Venice" because of all the ditches crisscrossing through the city to bring water to the neighborhoods and Capitol Hill was full of these ditches and since water can be a conduit for paranormal activity, it is thought the ditches helped this. And then there are the legends. One legend that is told is that a baby died in the house and the mother was so upset about the death that she buried the baby in the basement within a wall. For a number of years, that hole was there. I have a story about it. And the hole was there when our listener Dolly visited. We'll share a picture on Instagram. This legend never shares what the baby died from or who the mother of the child had been. There also is no proof of any of this story. But psychics and mediums have for decades claimed something about a baby and this basement.

Another legend is told about these guard dogs. In the 1970s, there was remodeling going on and the workers would come in to find that their work had been undone overnight. There were a lot of homeless people near the mansion, so they figured some of them were breaking in at night. They put up a fence and hired a security guard. The same issue kept happening so it was decided to bring some guard dogs in to watch the house at night. Three dogs were brought in and on their first night, one of the dogs went through a plate glass window on the third floor and it passed on the driveway. On the second night, a second dog went through the same window and the third dog was found shaking and drooling in a corner. There is no plate glass window on the third floor, so if dogs did go out a window, it was a tiny window in the turret room.

The mansion has always been a creepy place to me. This is the location where I had my second ever paranormal experience. (Diane tells story about visiting the mansion and going down to the basement where there is a hole she stuck her head in and felt the presence of something and what felt like something touching her head.)

Thomas Patterson is one of the spirits here and he shows up in the downstairs pub, which had been his smoking lounge. Katherine Patterson is thought to haunt the Biltmore room. She likes to turn the lights on and off during the night. An Irish caretaker is said to haunt the carriage house.

When Mary Rae owned the mansion, she received several complaints from renters who stayed on the fourth floor. The tenants complained of hearing sounds on the fourth floor that sounded like a loud party and sometimes they heard a screaming baby. The area where the sounds emanated from was a small storage area. Mary was perplexed as to where the sounds could've come from. Trenton Parker who converted the mansion to an office building said, "My mom used to live there in the 1970’s when the mansion was six apartments and she lived on the third floor for about six months, and heard a woman screaming and a baby crying in the tower and would hear parties going on in her apartment and when she opened the door nothing would be going on. Her and the roommate that she lived with could not live there anymore because the ghosts were very active and they could not get any rest living there."

Melodee Ikeler was pregnant with triplets when she and her husband lived in the mansion. She had a great deal of trouble getting out of bed near the end of her pregnancy. She was home alone and needed to get out of bed and couldn't do it. She said, "I was rolling trying to get out of bed and looked to the side of the bed and saw a woman standing next to the bed, offering her hand to help me out. I took her hand and got out of the bed. Then, she just vanished through the wall next to the bed." Melodee decided to get the house blessed, so she had a priest come in and he walked into the front parlor to start his blessing and all of a sudden all the plaster peeled off around the fireplace and a dark vortex of wind came out of the fireplace. The priest ran out of the mansion. Melodee claimed that the drawers in her husband's desk would open and close on their own even though it was locked.

Rocky Mountain Paranormal wrote about an incident that Diane heard about on the radio the morning after it happened, "In 2004, the 850 KOA ZOO BOO Tour radio show featured the mansion. We were the featured paranormal research group. At the end of the nights broadcast, all of the people who were staying for the 5:00 a.m. broadcast were told to 'find a place to sleep in the mansion.' Casey Lamb a radio station employee, decided he was going to sleep in the basement where the medical offices had been located. When he got to the room he saw a person in the corner of the room by the fireplace, then he realized that he could only see the head and he knew that there was not supposed to be anyone left in the building. He ran upstairs to get us to search for someone who had either been left behind or had broken into the mansion. Several people went to the basement and searched, but nobody was found. The next morning, one of Melodee Ikelers children said that that was where they always 'saw a man standing in the corner.'" Now the way Diane remembers it, it was the morning after they stayed overnight and Casey was the last one out of the house, but he didn't know that and he told everybody that there was still a guy down in the basement sleeping in the corner. Someone took a picture of this figure and it sure looked like someone under a blanket with just their head showing.

Nobody could do any kind of investigating after that because Dr. Ikeler started asking for $5,000 a night for rental. So this was going on long before the Conjuring House. As we said, Melodee divorced the doctor in 2007 and the house went into foreclosure. Someone visited in January of 2010 and said of the experience that the home felt very peaceful, but "I will say, however, there was a very dark and penetrating feeling in the cellars – the game room and the family room was fine. However, the cellar areas were very unsettling and again, I was EXTREMELY anxious to get back upstairs. I truly don’t know if I could live in that home." Brian  Higgins noticed that the mansion was haunted while they were doing renovations. He and his work crew reported seeing apparitions of children, they felt cold spots and they heard strange sounds and voices.

Ann Alexander Leggett and her daughter Jordan wrote the book "A Haunted History of Denver's Croke-Patterson Mansion" in 2011. Here is an excerpt from the book. (pg. 25) 

Ann wrote, "When they had offices there, they couldn't keep tenants because typewriters would type in the middle of the night by themselves, babies crying on the third floor, party noises coming from a back closet, and so those kinds of things persist. When we first started the research I had just googled "Croke-Patterson" and I got this lady's blog and she said she used to have an office there in the late 80s. She said all kinds of strange things happened there. So I got her email and said, you know, "Would you be willing to talk to me about it?" And she didn't answer me and didn't answer me. Finally, she came back and said "Why?" So I explained who I was and that I was writing a history of the house and about the hauntings as well. She said, "Well, okay, I just want my stories to be taken seriously because they were very intense to me." So I sent her this list of questions and she answered a couple of them and it's a little bit vague, and then I don't hear from her again and so I emailed her back and time goes by and she sends an email back that says "Good luck with the book." She just couldn't go back there. She just couldn't deal with it anymore." 

Jordan and Ann were interviewed by Westword and they shared this with the paper. Jordan said, "A few people have had a lot of trouble walking up the stairs to the third floor. You get two thirds of the way up the stairs and all of the oxygen is gone. On the tape you can hear Mom and the psychic gasping. Months later, I found a death certificate totally by accident. Death certificates are not easy to come by, and I was at the clerk and recorder because at a certain point in the 1960s anything beyond that is either in the basement of the City and County building or in the library, so I was going to find out where exactly the book I was looking for was. And he pulls up on the microfiche, he's like "Oh yeah here's back to 1960 or something" and he's like, "What is this?" and it says "Death Cert." So he pulls it up and there's a random death certificate stored with the tax records on this house and it's for the house when Dr. Sudan owned it. Dr. Sudan his wife it turns out committed suicide in the house. It wasn't publicized, there's no obituary, there's really nothing about it, and then he got remarried five years later and so this death certificate is a copy of the one issued the day of, so it looks like he had to prove that she was dead or something so he could get remarried. So I found this death certificate and it says how she died and all this stuff we didn't know. The woman who committed suicide, she mixed rat poison and water, which creates cyanogas which is similar to Zyklon B, which is the gas they used in the Holocaust to gas people. Within one to three minutes, all the oxygen is gone." Ann said, "Krista felt [the gasping] was the woman who died form the cyanogas suicide and basically suffocated and couldn't breathe. She felt that woman stands at the top of the stairs. And how bizarre that Krista and I didn't know that."

The Patterson Inn appears to be a gorgeous upscale boutique hotel, but could the historic ambiance be hiding something sinister? Are there spirits from the past hanging around in the afterlife? Is the Croke-Patterson Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!