HGB Ep. 564 - The Life and Afterlife of John F. Kennedy

Moment in Oddity - Invention of the Webcam (Suggested by: Ruth Dempsey)

For many people, coffee fuels their day. Those who work in a corporate setting know how tragic it can be heading to the coffee machine just to find the energizing beverage is all gone. What if you worked in a seven story building that only had a single coffee pot that held a mere 6 cups! That's the stuff of nightmares. Traveling multiple floors just to find an empty pot is a horrifying thought! In 1991, the University of Cambridge was in that particular predicament. Their solution was an invention that many of us use today. Computer scientist, Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser stated, "One of the things that's very, very important in computer science research is a regular and dependable flow of caffeine". To resolve the issue, Dr. Quentin and Dr. Paul Jardetzky set up a camera to monitor the single coffee pot that supplied all seven floors of their building. The webcam would record photos three times per minute. The men also wrote software that would allow people in other departments to view the camera images on their computers. This helped people cope with the emotional distress of traveling all the way from other floors just to find an empty carafe. Contemplating a building of 7 floors only containing a 6 cup fuel for life is terrifying in and of itself, but the fact that it was the precursor to a modern day device such as the webcam, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Bram Stoker Born

In the month of November, on the 8th, in 1847, Abraham "Bram" Stoker was born in Marino Crescent, Dublin, Ireland. He was the third of seven children born to parents Abraham Stoker and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley. Bram was a sickly boy due to an unknown illness which seemingly resolved itself once he started school at the age of seven. He wrote of this time, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years.". Serious illness never found him again until later in life. He even excelled in multiple sports while attending Trinity College and Dublin University. Stoker began his interest in the theatre while still a student. He took a position as a theatre critic but at the time, this type of job position was held in low regard. However, Stoker's way with the written word garnered much attention. Soon he was publishing his first short stories beginning in 1872 with "Crystal Cup" and graduating to his first novel with "The Primrose Path" in 1875. During his days as a theatre critic, Stoker wrote a favourable review of Henry Irving's performance in Hamlet. This critique prompted an invitation to dinner by Irving and the two became fast friends. Bram Stoker went on to work at the Lyceum Theatre alongside Henry Irving serving as his business manager and personal assistant. Stoker was a prolific writer but he is most well known for his Gothic horror novel Dracula. Some say that Vlad the Impaler was Stoker's inspiration for the classic novel, although today many people dispute this. However, the physical attributes of Count Dracula are said to be modeled after his friend Henry Irving with his aquiline face, high nose bridge, arched nostrils, domed forehead and bushy eyebrows. Bram Stoker suffered a stroke in 1906, shortly after the death of his friend Henry Irving in October 1905. The initial stroke left him significantly debilitated and over the following six years he suffered many more before his passing in 1912.

The Life and Afterlife of John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy's presidency lasted for only 1,000 days, but his legacy has lived on for decades. He was the youngest man elected to the Presidency and his youth and vision inspired a nation. His life was cut short by an assassin's bullet, a bullet that people still debate the origin of to this day. And perhaps that is why the spirit of JFK seems to be at unrest. Or was it because his life was cut so very short? Join us for the life and afterlife of John F. Kennedy!

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy on May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second of their nine children and named for Rose's father. Every one called him Jack. The family faced a bit of discrimination because they were Irish Catholics and this seemed to fuel the families desire to be successful. Joseph Kennedy attended Harvard College and made a promise to himself to become a millionaire by the time he was thirty-five. And he made good on that mainly through the Stock Market where he did insider trading and market manipulation. The Kennedy family was involved in politics, which would pass down from Joseph Kennedy's father to his sons. Trust funds were set up for the Kennedy siblings and they would never know want. Despite the life of privilege, Jack was a sick kid. He nearly died from Scarlet Fever before he was three. A variety of illnesses would plague him his whole life.

The Kennedys moved outside of Boston when Jack was three. The family spent summers in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, which is a six acre property with three houses that has been nicknamed the Kennedy Compound. Christmas and Easter would be spent at the Kennedy winter retreat in Palm Beach, Florida. Jack Kennedy started attending Canterbury School in 1930, but transferred to Choate (KOH-ate) the following year after he had an appendectomy and had to leave school to recover for several weeks. Choate technically was Choate Rosemary Hall, which was a private college-preparatory school in Connecticut. Joe Sr. had picked this school because he wanted his sons to mingle with Protestants as he figured this would help their future political careers. The pressure to succeed was tough for Jack and he had a hard time measuring up to his older brother Joe. So Jack became a rebel, leading a pack of boys into playing pranks like exploding a toilet seat with a firecracker. He nicknamed his crew The Muckers Club after the headmaster said a bunch of "muckers" had done the deed. One member of the group was a guy named Lem Billings who would be a lifelong friend of Kennedy.

Billings was a year ahead of Jack, so he repeated his senior year so that he could graduate with Jack. He spent holidays with the Kennedys and they treated him like another son. Jackie Kennedy would later comment that Billings had been a house guest at her house since she married Jack. Billings helped with the campaign for the presidency and would help organize White House dinners. He was often referred to as the "First Friend" and he helped Jack to get around when he was ill, some staff referring to him as being better than a trained nurse. Billings was gay and Kennedy knew this all the way going back to Choate. Based on some pictures that I've seen of the two, it would seem Billings carried a torch for Jack. The feelings may or may not have been reciprocated, but Jack wasn't worried about Billings.

Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College in 1936 and he got involved in sports and various clubs, one of which was the Spee Club, an elite "final club" at the university. In 1939, he traveled extensively through Europe. In 1940, he graduated cum laude from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in government. War was rolling across Europe at this time and the Kennedy brothers joined the Navy, with Joe going off to be a flyer in Europe and Jack became a commander of a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. That boat had a crew of twelve men under Lt. Kennedy and on August 2, 1943, it came upon a Japanese destroyer that was headed directly towards it. The destroyer split  Kennedy's boat in half, killing two men. Everyone else abandoned ship as Kennedy was slammed hard in the cockpit. He had an old football injury that was aggravated. Despite his injury, Kennedy rescued one of his men and then led the rest to a small nearby island. The group survived on the island for six days before two native islanders found them and went to get help. Jack had escaped death. The following year, his brother Joe would not escape death. His plane blew up while he was on a dangerous mission.

Jack returned home and received medals and the war ended. Joseph Sr. had been grooming his eldest for politics and he had big dreams for his son Joe. Now Joe was dead and Joe Sr. was determined to push Jack in the same direction he had been guiding Joe Jr. In 1946, Jack began his assent to the presidency by running for Congress in Massachusetts and he won. He served three terms and then ran for Senate, winning that seat in 1952. The following year, on September 12, 1953, he married Jacqueline Bouvier. Jackie was 12 years his junior. She was born in 1929 in New York and named after her father John "Black Jack" Bouvier. She grew up in Manhattan and Long Island and had a great relationship with her father early on, but he fell into alcoholism and had multiple affairs leading her mother to separating from her father in 1936. The divorce would be finalized in 1940 and Jackie was deeply affected by the split. Jackie graduated from George Washington University in 1951. 

Jack and Jackie met at a dinner party hosted by journalist Charles L. Bartlett in May of 1952. They had a lot in common. They were both Catholics and intellectual equals. Jackie's wedding dress was designed by fashion designer Ann Lowe, who came up in our previous episode about the Tampa Bay Hotel. The marriage was tested early with Jack nearly dying during a spinal operation in 1954 and Jackie suffered a miscarriage in 1955. In 1956, the couple had a stillborn daughter. In 1957, Caroline was born and the family posed for the cover of a Life magazine in 1958 as Jack ran for re-election to the Senate. Jack Kennedy was a writer on top of everything else and he wrote "Profiles in Courage" in 1955 and he won the Pulitzer Prize in history. Jack began flirting with the presidency in 1956 when he was almost nominated as Vice President. Four years later, the Democrats would make him their nominee for President.

JFK chose fellow challenger Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. He figured Johnson would help him win the South. Richard M. Nixon, who was the current Republican Vice President, was nominated as the Republican nominee. Many people thought that Kennedy was too young to be President at the age of 43, but it worked in his favor because this campaign would be the first to be heavily televised. Debates were run in prime time slots and a sweaty, older Nixon looked bad next to a young and fresh-faced Kennedy. The race was very close and Jack barely won the popular vote. During the campaign, Jackie was pregnant with John Jr. and he was born right before Kennedy was inaugurated. Jack was sworn in as the 35th president on January 20, 1961. His inaugural speech would give us the enduring line, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." The Kennedys would have another son named Patrick that was born in 1963, but he died shortly after birth from a serious lung ailment.

The Kennedys tenure at the White House improved "the People's House" greatly. The couple loved history and they wanted people to visit the White House. Jackie restored all the rooms in the White House and the couple gathered the finest art and furniture in the United States. The White House also became a home catered towards children as Caroline and John-John were very young. A tree house sat out on the White House lawn and a preschool was set up inside. Kennedy was the first president to have press conferences broadcast live on television.

The Kennedy presidency occurred at the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the United States had been racing to outdo each other in manufacturing nuclear weapons. JFK was very worried about the prospect of a war that he knew would kill millions of people. He also wanted to fight Communism and President Eisenhower had set his eyes on Cuba and overthrowing Fidel Castro and Kennedy carried out that task. A band of Cuban exiles were trained and sent to invade Cuba and the place they landed was called the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was ill-fated and no one was supposed to know the US was involved and it failed on all fronts. Kennedy paced around the White House for days berating himself for being so stupid. When it came to confronting the Soviet Union, he was far more successful.  

The Cuban Missile Crisis originated in October of 1962 and this would be the closest that America and the Soviet Union would come to nuclear conflict in all of history. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had reached a deal with Fidel Castro to bring nuclear missiles into the country. Castro was eager to agree because of the Bay of Pigs attempted invasion. American intelligence services caught wind of the plan and Kennedy knew there was no way he could allow those weapons to get so close to America. A public warning was issued by President Kennedy and it went ignored as missile sites were constructed in Cuba. Kennedy sent a letter to Khrushchev and issued a "quarantine" on Cuba. JFK addressed the nation that evening and said, "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." Tensions rose, we went to DEFCON 2 and JFK considered an attack on Cuba. There were mixed messages and misunderstandings as things escalated. The crisis ended on the 13th day of the confrontation after a secret deal was made that embarrassed the Soviets in public. They publicly removed everything from Cuba, while America secretly removed their missiles from Turkey in exchange. 

President Kennedy had big goals for America. He wanted to pass civil rights laws to help end segregation in the country and he proposed a new Civil Rights bill to Congress. He addressed Americans on TV saying, "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds…[and] on the principle that all men are created equal." JFK created the Peace Corps, that still exists today, and this program takes Americans around the world to help on projects in disadvantaged areas. He had dreams of winning the space race and he said in a speech at Rice University, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." Kennedy would be president for 1,000 days and then an assassin's bullet would cut him down in the prime of life and at the height of his presidency and he wouldn't see many of his goals come to fruition.

Now before we get into the assassination, we've painted a very nice picture here of JFK. This is what the Kennedys would want, specifically Jackie who would present the whole idea of Camelot to the general public. But there is a lot of "ick" when it comes to JFK. As we discussed in our Life and Afterlife of Marilyn Monroe, it was no secret that JFK was having an affair with Monroe, as was his brother Bobby. The idea that the brothers were behind her death is a source of controversy, but one that we could believe. JFK ended up cutting Monroe off after Jackie threatened to take the kids and make the affair public so that he could kiss a second term goodbye. The Kennedy men were not good for women. No one knows for sure how many women Jack slept with during his marriage, but saying "dozens," hardly scratches the surface. Three to five different women a week is very possible. JFK was an ill man with a list of ailments and he believed that sex helped treat some of these illnesses. And Jackie may have looked the other way because trying to keep up with a sex addict would be an impossibility. Maureen Callahan wrote the book, "Ask Not: The Kenndys and the Women They Destroyed" in 2024. In it, she shares the assault of a young virginal 19-year-old by JFK and it is clear that the Kennedy men for several generations have used women for their own needs.

But that wasn't the only dark side to JFK. Did the Mafia help get Jack elected? There are theories that the Chicago Outfit was approached by either Joseph Kennedy or Frank Sinatra to get their help with getting union members to elect Kennedy. Was JFK's marriage to Jackie, his second marriage? New York Times writer Seymour Hersh suggested in his book "The Dark Side of Camelot," with FBI records to back it up, that Jack got really drunk at a party in 1947 and ran off with a beautiful socialite named Durie Malcolm to a Justice of the Peace and got secretly married. When his father Joseph found out, he had it annulled. Malcolm denied before her death that she had ever married Kennedy. The Kennedy family used to joke that if a mosquito ever bit Jack, it would die. Jack had a failure of the adrenal glands called Addison's disease that would have killed him if not for cortisone shots. He had intense back issues for which he needed painkillers. He was prone to infection. The man was basically a walking pharmacy and his doctor was the original Dr. Feelgood. He would give the President these speed-laced cocktails. So whether he meant to be a drug addict or not, JFK certainly was one.

And this brings us to a day that would be a moment in time that many people can set the calendar of the lives upon. It was around thirty minutes after noon on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy and his wife Jackie were sitting in the back seat of a limo going through Dealy Plaze in Dallas, Texas, waving to the crowds when a bullet blew a hole into Jack's head. JFK was preparing to run for re-election in the fall of 1963 and Texas was an important state. The President's team planned a two-day, five-city tour through Texas which began with San Antonio. Dallas was the third stop and Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie, picked the Kennedys up in an open convertible Lincoln Continental limousine. It had a plastic bubble that could go on top of it in case of rain, but some early morning rain had stopped, so the top was taken off. The car entered Dealey Plaza and Nellie Connally yelled back to JFK, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." President Kennedy answered, "No, you certainly can't." She then heard three gunshots in quick succession. Her husband was shot in the back and the President was shot once in the upper back that went through to the front of the neck and once in the head. The back wound indicates a shot from behind. The head wound indicates a shot from the front.

The car had just gone past the Texas School Book Depository and inside, on the third floor, was a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald had once been a Marine who earned a sharpshooter qualification. He was reportedly a Marxist who moved to the Soviet Union and tried to get citizenship. When the Marines found out about this, they downgraded his discharge from honorable to undesirable. Oswald returned to the US with a woman he had married in the Soviet Union and their daughter in 1962. He purchased a rifle with telescopic sight and a .38 revolver. In 1963, he moved to Texas and got a job at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. The official investigation, The Warren Commission, would claim that Oswald acted alone and that he fired three bullets from a sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Book Depository. Oswald ran from the scene and when confronted by Patrolman J.D. Tippit, he shot and killed him. He then hid at the Texas Theater and was arrested there. He was arraigned and interrogated over two days. Oswald denied any guilt and said, "I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir … I’m just a patsy." The plan was then to transfer him to the county jail on November 24, 1963 and he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby. Ruby claimed he acted alone and that he was angry over the assassination, but many people believe he was part of a wider plan too. Ruby was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair, but the ruling was overturned on appeal. A pulmonary embolism from lung cancer, killed Ruby in 1967.

Nobody believes that Oswald was a lone shooter. Ok, there is a poll that about 33% of people do think Oswald acted alone, but anyone who watches the Zapruder film knows that the head shot came from the front of the President. That's why his head goes back and the back of his skull is blown off. A few seconds before that happens, Jack reaches up to his throat, which is probably when he was shot through the back. The House of Representatives Assassination Committee in 1979 found that it was possible that there was another shooter. Official records claim that there was no federal agent on the grassy knoll that day. JFK Documentary Producer Brent Holland tells a story about Texas police officer Joe M. Smith racing behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll and encountering a suspicious man lurking right behind the fence where it was believed the shots had come from. This man pulled out a Secret Service badge and he told Smith to keep looking. Several other witnesses reportedly ran into a Secret Service agent as well. So if there were officially no federal agents assigned to be there, where was this guy from? Was he really Secret Service? Did he fire the shots? 

There was a man named James Braden who was arrested on the day of the assassination at the Dal Tex Building in Dealey Plaza. It was found that this was an alias and his real name was Eugene Hail Brading and he had a long record of criminal activity. He was later released, but there are verified reports that he met with Jack Ruby the night of November 21, 1963. Fast forward to Robert Kennedy's assassination and guess who was picked up for questioning fifteen minutes away from the site of the assassination? Brading. There are other conspiracy theories as well. Some believe Cuban exiles carried this out or that the Mob had Kennedy taken out. New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello admitted on tape to the FBI in 1985 that he had planned the assassination and that Ruby worked for him. Still others look at the government and point at the CIA. There's no better way to shut up a President and give a stark warning to future Presidents, than to gun him down in broad daylight in front of a crowd of people. We've heard people argue that Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush might have been involved as well.

Jackie was an amazing woman. She had endured losing three children. She tolerated countless affairs. And she watched her husband get his head blown off in broad daylight as he sat next to her. She immediately crawled across the back of the car to gather the pieces of his skull that had been blown off the back of his head and then she tried to piece his skull back together and hold it together as they rushed to Parkland Hospital. Jackie boarded Air Force One later that day, still covered in her husband's blood and probably brain matter, and witnessed the swearing in of Vice president Lyndon B. Johnson because she wanted to reassure the nation that we had a continuity of government. And then she planned a great memorial and helped a nation mourn.

President Kennedy's assassination affected the country deeply. Neither of us were alive at that time, so we thought it would be interesting to hear from Diane's parents what it was like to be alive at that time. (Mom and Dad on Kennedy)

As Diane's parents said, a horse-drawn caisson carried Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin to St. Matthew’s Catholic Cathedral from the Capitol Rotunda on November 25th. The riderless horse with the boots in reverse in the sirrups was named Black Jack. This is one of the highest military honors bestowed upon the fallen. There were 800,000 people along the funeral procession route. Kennedy was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery and Jackie lit eternal flame. But this may not have been the end for JFK's spirit.

There are those that claim that there is a curse connected to the family, the Kennedy Curse. Now keep in mind, this is a large family so having several tragedies is possible. But it does seem they have had more than their share.

August 12, 1944 – Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. died when the military aircraft he was piloting exploded over East Suffolk, England.
September 9, 1944 – William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, newlywed husband of Kathleen Kennedy, was fatally shot by a German sniper while leading his company near Heppen, Belgium.
May 13, 1948 – Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (formally known as Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington) died in a plane crash in France.
August 23, 1956 – Arabella Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, died at birth.
August 9, 1963 – Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of John F. Kennedy, died of infant respiratory distress syndrome two days after his premature birth on August 7 in Otis Air Force Base, Massachusetts.
November 22, 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
June 5, 1968 – U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of his victory in the California primary; Robert died the following morning.
January 23, 1974 – Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, who dated Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. until his death, was murdered at her home.
April 25, 1984 – David A. Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room.
December 31, 1997 – Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a skiing accident after crashing into a tree in Aspen, Colorado.
July 16, 1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr. died together with his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette, when the plane he was piloting crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
September 16, 2011 – Kara Kennedy, daughter of Ted Kennedy, died of a heart attack while exercising in a Washington, D.C. health club.
May 16, 2012 – Mary Richardson Kennedy, wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., died by suicide on the grounds of her home in Bedford, New York.
August 1, 2019 – Saoirse Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died of an accidental drug overdose at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
April 2, 2020 – Maeve Kennedy McKean, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, disappeared with her eight-year-old son, Gideon, during a short canoe trip in Chesapeake Bay. Their bodies were recovered from the bay later that week. Autopsies revealed that both had accidentally drowned in the turbulent and chilly water.

Another weird thing about Kennedy that seems to have some paranormal connections are the connections between President Kennedy and President Lincoln. (pg. 117 in "Haunted Presidents by Charles A. Stansfield, Jr.)

As for Kennedy's ghost, there are people who say they sense the spirit of JFK at the Kennedy Compound. And his final resting place at Arlington Cemetery has reports of a bright, luminous mist being seen over the grave or near it. The full-bodied apparition of JFK has been seen at the grave as well. These mostly came in at a time when the coffin had to be moved so that a permanent gas line could be installed to replace a propane tank. Jack might also haunt a historic location on the Freedom Trail in Boston named the Union Oyster House.

No one is sure exactly when the building was built, but the street it is named for was laid in 1636. Hopestill Capen's dress shop was here starting in 1742. The oldest newspaper in the United States was established on the upper floor in 1771 and was called "The Massachusetts Spy." This was published by printer Isaiah Thomas. The first paymaster of the Continental Army set up his headquarters here in 1775. During the Revolutionary War, Capen's silk and dry goods store hosted the wives of Adams, Hancock and Quincy, as well as other women, who sewed and mended clothes here. Louis Phillippe, who would be king of France from 1830 to 1848, lived on the second floor of the building in 1796. He taught French to the young ladies of Boston. Capen's Dry Goods Store closed in 1826 and two men named Hawes Atwood and Allen Holbrook Bacon bought the former store and opened the Old Oyster House in 1826. They installed a semi-circular Oyster Bar. Fun Fact: The toothpick was used here for the first time. A man named Charles Forster had imported toothpicks from South America and he hired Harvard boys to eat at the Union Oyster House and ask for toothpicks. The restaurant then was owned by someone else and in 1970, Joseph and Mary Ann Milano bought the place and still own it today. This was a favorite restaurant for Jack and he loved the privacy of the upstairs dining room. The booth that he used was nicknamed "The Kennedy Booth" and it was dedicated to his memory. JFK's spirit likes to hang out at the booth. His apparition has appeared in the dining room and seems to just be silently watching people eat. In the bathroom, his reflection has sometimes been seen in the mirror.

President John Kennedy inspired a nation and highlighted that we could solve our common problems if we put our country's interests first and worked together. He was a catalyst to civil rights legislation. He protected this nation from nuclear war. And he was a flawed man. Jack's life was cut short and there really has been no justice for that act. Could his spirit be at unrest? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 563 - Historic Tampa Bay Hotel

Moment in Oddity - Mongolian Death Worm (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

The Gobi Desert is located in Southern Mongolia and Northwestern China. The land is stony and is almost waterless, save for some salt marshes. It is an extreme desert with temperatures ranging from -40 F in the winter and climbing to 113 F in the summer. Various animals call the desert home, ranging from camels, gazelles, wolves and snow leopards just to name a few. There is a most unique creature however that also calls this desert home. The Mongolian Death Worm. The worms are said to look like a sausage and range from 2-5 feet in length. Mongolians say that the death worms are able to kill from a distance by spraying venom at its prey or by means of an electrical discharge. The locals call it olgoi-khorkhoi which roughly translates to, "large intestine worm". It is said that there is no discernable head or tail and that the creature lives underground most of the time with the exception of summer when the creatures rise out of the sand to attack and kill. Their diet consists of prey based upon the size of the death worm. Prey items range from lizards and Fennec Foxes all the way up to villagers and camels when the worms are full grown. The bright red worms are feared by Mongolians and in the region, everyone knows someone who has encountered the terrifying creatures. This deadly cryptid has been entrenched in Mongolian folklore for centuries. Whether a mythical creature or not, the Mongolian Death Worm certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Inventor of Basketball Born

In the month of November, on the 6th, in 1861, James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball was born. He was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain and sports coach. Prior to inventing the now beloved game, Naismith studied and taught physical education at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in 1890 and in 1891 he invented the game of basketball. His brainchild came about due to the need to keep athletes in good shape during winter weather where outdoor winter exercise was more difficult. In 1894, he wrote the first "Basket Ball" rule book (so spelled at the time). Naismith then moved from Massachusetts to Denver where he received his medical degree. Later, he moved on to the University of Kansas to become the Jayhawks athletic director and coach. Due to James Naismith's passion in physical education and his invention of the game of basketball, the sport was introduced at the Olympic Games of 1936 and according to the International Basketball Federation, over 450 million people worldwide take part in the sport today.

Historic Tampa Bay Hotel (Suggested by: Kathy and Gavin Thomas) 

The historic Tampa Bay Hotel is stunning and very different from its surroundings. Downtown Tampa Bay pierces the skyline with skyscrapers and other elements of the typical metropolis concrete jungle. The old hotel features Moorish and Turkish architecture. The minarets that grace several towers seem out of place on this coastal tourist destination. The hotel is now a part of a university campus and thus the interior has been altered greatly, but there is still enough of its past to call back to a bygone era of glitz and Victorian sensibilities. Including a few ghosts. Join us for the history and hauntings of the historic Tampa Bay Hotel!

Floridians know Plant City, Florida for its strawberries. The Strawberry Festival is held here for eleven days every February and March. A Native American village was once located here and it was  called Ichepucksassa, but by 1860 the name had changed to Cork in honor of the postmaster's hometown. When the South Florida Railroad arrived in 1884, the town was incorporated and renamed to Plant City for Henry B. Plant. Plant brought so much growth and success to the state of Florida that he was called the "King of Florida." This was probably much to the chagrin of Henry Flagler who was a rival and friendly competitor to Plant. That rivalry was to the benefit of the state as the men competed regularly to better each other when it came to building railroad lines and hotels.

Henry Plant was born on a Connecticut farm in October of 1819. He grew up in a Puritan family, mostly raised by his mother and step-father as he lost his father at the age of six to typhus fever. The disease also killed his sister. His first job was as a captain's boy on a steamboat and the ships he worked aboard traveled from New Haven to New York. One can imagine that seeing the big city after spending his early life on a farm really left an impression on him. Plant was really good at this shipping business and he worked his way up the ranks. He married Ellen Blackstone in 1842 and the couple would have two children, with only one surviving to adulthood.

In 1854, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia because Plant was elevated to management over the Adams Express Company's southern division. This meant he oversaw shipping between South Carolina and Georgia. The company was flourishing, but talk of war in 1861 made the company uncomfortable having a stake in the south. Henry proposed an option to the company. He told them he would gather investors and purchase the company and Adams Express agreed to sell. This was Plant's first of many companies that he would own. And while getting the company was great for Plant, his personal life took a hit when his wife Ellen died of tuberculosis shortly after the sell. Plant managed to keep the company prosperous through the Civil War and then he returned to New York.

Henry married Margaret Loughman in 1873 and he proceeded to get very involved with the railroad. He made investments here and there as he learned the ropes and in 1879 he purchased his first railroad and renamed it the Savannah, Florida & Western Railway. Plant continued buying lines and linking them and he worked his way down through Florida, reaching Central Florida in 1882. Here he formed the Plant Investment Company, known as PICO, and he brought on investors that included Henry Flagler. Flagler was also a board member of the company. By 1884, Plant had connected Tampa to the rest of the eastern seaboard, laying more than 1200 miles of tracks.

Clearly shipping was a big thing for Plant, but with that also came travel and tourism. So his next focus would be on not only making travel by steamboats and railway more luxurious, but he wanted to build grand hotels. Tampa seemed like a good place to focus his attention. Plant dug out the channel to create Port Tampa and made it a major transportation hub. This travel would include the Gulf and the Caribbean and Plant even got the mail contract for the West Indies. This network came to be known as the Plant System and was more successful than Flagler's efforts. Lumber, citrus, celery and phosphate industries flourished and Plany wooed to cigar industry to come to Tampa. Ybor City became its headquarters.

When it came to hotels, there was no stopping Plant. He built eight luxurious hotels in western Florida, rivaling Flagler's hotels on the east coast in places like St. Augustine. The first hotel he built was the Inn at Port Tampa in 1888. His finest and most opulent hotel would be the Tampa Bay Hotel. Before building the Tampa Bay Hotel, Plant needed some concessions from the city with the main one being a bridge. In order for the hotel to be linked to the downtown area, a bridge needed to be built across the Hillsborough River. The city agreed to build the bridge and Plant also managed to get them to agree to property taxes that would be under $200 a year. Construction began in 1888. The hotel would take two years to complete and cost $3 million including all the furnishings inside. The hotel was 1/4 mile long and covered 6 acres. Poured concrete was used and floors were reinforced with rails and cables.

Architect John A. Wood was hired by Plant to design and build the hotel. Wood began his career in New York. The design he came up with for the hotel is hard to peg down. The hotel is clearly Romantic architecture, which liked to blend older architectural styles like Gothic Revival. But its the presence of onion domes and minarets gave it a Moorish and Turkish feel as it reflected elements found on places like the Taj Mahal. The structure catches the eye as Kelly and I explain as we share about the first time we saw the hotel. The hotel has six minarets, four cupolas, and three domes. The hotel is graced with long verandas and the front entrance is really interesting because Victorian gingerbreading decorates the front. The western veranda opens up into the music room and grand parlor. Giant windows are how the veranda is connected and they were all open when we were there. The ceilings are domed and the music room has a small hardwood stage with balconies on each side. An orchestra regularly performed in here. Directly north of the main building was a dining room that could hold 650 people and it was considered the most elaborate room in the hotel. The room is ringed with carved mahogany balcony box seating and the ceiling is painted like a clouded sky. Eight course meals were served in the dining room. There was a billiards room, barbershop, beauty shop, shoeshine service, flower shop and all guest rooms had electricity and telephones and most had private bathrooms. There were 511 rooms when it opened in 1891. Florida's first passenger elevators were at the Tampa Bay Hotel. There were two of them and one still works today. 

The entire hotel, with its very long hallways, features Moorish archways in all openings. The interior was described as "a jewel casket into which has been gathered an infinite number of gems." There were Venetian mirrors, which still hang in the hallways and as Kathy pointed out, many dangerously face each other. At least dangerous in a hotel that is reputedly haunted because we know how those pesky mirrors can be portals and facing each other isn't great. The furnishings were as exotic as the exterior and sculptures were handpicked in Europe by the Plants. It always amazes us when we think about them shipping these things over from Europe.

The hotels vast grounds featured gardens and hosted croquet, tennis, shuffleboard and races. There was a golf course and the hotel offered diversions like fishing and wild game hunting. There were also carriages and bicycles for rent. Grand balls and concerts were hosted on the regular and tea parties crowded the vast verandas. The Tampa Bay Casino was also here and could seat 2,000 people for performances by John Philip Sousa and Sarah Bernhardt. The Casino had a spa and heated indoor swimming pool. The entire property boasted 21 buildings. It really must have been something to see and experience in its day.

During the Spanish-American War, the United States made plans to invade Cuba. Plant wanted Tampa to be utilized to carry this out and he sent his friend Franklin Q. Brown to Washington to show legislators how well Tampa would work as a port to launch the military campaign. This plan highlighted the Plant System, which was already running ships to and from Cuba and the port was linked to everywhere via the railroad. It really was a no-brainer and the Tampa Bay Hotel became the headquarters for the U.S. Army. Everyone connected to wars were brought here from war reporters to military officers to Red Cross personnel. Some of the military stationed here were Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. The grounds were used for battle exercises and Teddy had one of the grand suites for his stay. The war was often referred to as the "Rocking Chair War" in Tampa because people could see all the officers sitting on the veranda in rocking chairs discussing strategy. The war lasted for 10 weeks.

Plant died in 1899. There is a really cool sculpture and fountain at the entrance to Plant Park. Margaret Plant commissioned the piece after her husband died and its called "Transportation." The design features trains and ships and an eagle holding a strongbox with The Southern Express Company's logo. This sculpture was crafted from solid stone by George Grey Barnard. The sculpture is the oldest public art in the city of Tampa. Plant's heirs sold the Tampa Bay Hotel to the city in 1905. The hotel ran through 1930 and hosted well known people like the Prince of Wales, the Queen, Winston Churchill, Clara Baton, Stephen Crane and Babe Ruth who hit his longest home run during a spirng training game at the adjacent Plant Field. He also signed his first baseball contract in the Grand Dining Room. The reason the hotel closed was that the Great depression hit it hard. The beautiful building just sat vacant for three years and then in 1933, the Tampa Bay Junior College moved in. Suites were turned into classrooms and laboratories. The junior college eventually became the University of Tampa. When the city signed the lease with the college in 1941, it designated that the southeast wing would be reserved as a museum. This became the Tampa Municipal Museum that is today the Henry B. Plant Museum. The entire building is known as Plant Hall. *Fun Fact: The first internationally recognized black fashion designer was Ann Lowe. She had a dressmaking salon in Tampa from 1915 to 1927. She crafted a number of formal dresses for things like the Gasparilla Court. They have three of her gowns at the museum.*

It's good that they opened the museum because the upper floors that we ventured to retained none of their historic value. Just industrial carpet and paint. We were at the hotel to take part in what was dubbed Eerie Eving at the Tampa Bay Hotel. There was period lighting and decor with displays featuring Victorian practices around death, including burial and seances, and there were stories featuring monsters, crime and we were even graced by the presence of Edgar Allen Poe. As we ventured from room to room, we got to see various artifacts from the hotel's past and we learned that the conductor of the orchestra was Giovanni Tallarico who emigrated from Calabria, Italy to the United States. You've probably never heard of him, but you have heard of his grandson, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. A prominent picture features Tallarico with his orchestra in 1909. The family is made of a long line of musicians as Steven's dad also became a conductor with his own orchestra and Tyler learned how to play the drums so he could play in that orchestra. 

Our friends and Executive Producers Kathy and Gavin Thomas joined us and so, of course, we brought a few pieces of handheld equipment to do a little investigating because we had heard the hotel was haunted. The most prominent ghost here belongs to Henry Plant. He has been nicknamed "The Brown Man." People see his full bodied apparition and describe him as tall with long white hair and mustache and red eyes. He is in a brown suit, hence the name. A student was once rushing to her class when she turned the corner into one of those long hallways and she saw a tall man in a period brown suit at the end of the hallway. He was a bit shadowy and she couldn't make out the face because of a shadow cast by a wide brimmed hat he was wearing. She quickly realized that this was a spirit because she noticed that he was floating several inches off the ground. He raised his head and she swore that his eyes were glowing red. Then he disappeared. When she got to class late, she decided to tell the truth as to why she was late and the professor actually said that this wasn't the first time he had heard this excuse. And he believed it, so he excused her.

That woman was lucky as many stories claim that the spirit rushes people when it is acknowledged. He disappears just before he makes contact. Another student was studying one evening in an empty classroom and he heard the door creak open. He expected to see someone come in, but nobody entered and then he heard disembodied footsteps approaching him. The sound stopped just before he was reached. The student gathered his books and left quickly. People who work in the building don't make eye contact if they see the spirit to avoid having him rushing them and they tell visitors to do the same.

Another spirit here is said to belong to an actress named Bessie. And boy, have we heard this story before a few dozen times at different locations. Apparently she was staying at the hotel and caught her husband cheating with one of her castmates. When Bessie got back to her room, she killed herself, although some accounts claim she hanged herself at the Falk Theater and yet another says she took a swan dive to her death off the top of the ballroom. Now her spirit lingers in rooms at Plant Hall and is sometimes heard screaming. She is the lady in red because she is seen wearing a scarlet dress. There are also urban legends about students who have died and haunt the place. Tim and Terry were fraternity brothers who lived on the fourth floor of the hall when it was a dorm. They died within two years of each other. Their spirits are blamed for putting the Greek letters of their fraternity on one of the doors that is the employee entrance to the financial aid office.

Kathy told us that she had felt weird in a far back room, so we headed there to see what we would feel. (Kathy Room) So I usually don't feel stuff, but I immediately went dizzy when I crossed the threshold. And Kathy is sensitive and she felt nauseous. Kelly felt pressure for sure. There are many artifacts that are personal to the Plant family. Kathy had a spirit box app opened on her phone and she was getting words like (Kathy Words - hiding, mummy, painful, damnation) One case had a lock of hair from Amy Plant and Kelly had her EMF outside the case and it kept pegging to yellow. Then we went down to a room with a bunch of instruments in it. Kelly's EMF went to yellow and stayed. We had an interesting interaction then. (Whats the Box)

We entered what had been a gentlemen's parlor and later became the writing and reading room and Edgar Allen Poe shared some information with us. (Edgar) Loved how the picture was a scandalously clad woman and she basically was wearing pants and a low cut shirt. We didn't get much other than the EMF pinging a few times and some of those interesting words, but we definitely would love a chance to do a real investigation in the place where we could break out all the equipment. So we couldn't say for sure that the place is haunted, but plenty of other people think so. Here are some more stories.

A student named Davis Owens said, "Late at night it’s eerie, like someone’s watching you, especially by the mailroom where that hallway narrows on the second floor." Another student named Patrick Tretola said, "When we were coming down from the fifth floor, we felt a push." Other students claim that the building gets unnaturally cold. Theater professor Michael Staczar claimed that he had a very weird encounter and shared, “This cloud of mist… fog, and it was obvious that there was some kind of physical shape to it. And as soon as I saw it, it literally sucked into the wall,” he told an online reporter. “It wasn’t a trick in the light. It was very obvious that it was some kind of shape, a physical shape. There was a presence there… a faint outline of a human body.”

Tour guides in the city share on ghost tours that a student was trying to turn in a paper late, so they figured they would slide it under the door of their professor's office, which was in Plant Hall. The student slid the paper under, stood up and turned around and there standing in the hall looking on with disapproval was Teddy Roosevelt. The student ran screaming. 2Stoned2Feel9 wrote on Reddit, "Plant Hall is extremely haunted. I was in a sorority and always hated being in Plant for recruitment because we had to be there late at night and weird stuff always happened. Doors slamming with no one around, footsteps when you know nobody is upstairs, that sort of thing. I don’t remember a lot of specifics because it was 5+ years ago now, but I know that place gives me the creeps after dark!"

L. Powell IV wrote on the Southern Spirit Guide website in 2018, "I received an anonymous comment telling a chilling story. This has been edited for clarity. Several years ago, my husband and I were vacationing and visiting my sister in Florida. On one afternoon we were looking for something to do and my sister suggested we check out the Plant Museum in Tampa. My husband knew I loved architecture and especially grand,old, buildings. I was very excited. We went in and began walking around. I could just imagine what it must have been like in its heyday. I saw the grand staircase and couldn’t help but walk up several flights ahead of my husband. Then I came to a strange hallway that seemed out of place and as I started walking down the hallway, I felt uncomfortable and I felt just a little bit cold (I thought probably because of all the windows). I felt I had gone to a part of the building that was off-limits to the public and decided to turn back. My husband was still on the first floor. As I headed toward the top of the stairway of the third-floor landing, I felt that there was a young girl in a long, white dress nearby. I think I sensed her on the way up too, but I thought I must have quite a vivid imagination and tossed it aside. Then I reached the top of the stairway and looked down the 3 flights and I heard a man whisper, 'Go ahead, why don’t you just jump?' I ignored it and heard it again. 'Why don’t you just jump?' This scared the hell out of me. The railing I was clutching now seemed so flimsy and low to my body that I could easily fall right over. I felt dizzy and very frightened. I held the railing deliberately and I kept my grip all the way down until I made my way back to my husband. I told him, 'I want to leave this place, now!' In the car, on the way back to my sister’s house, I explained what happened. This experience has stayed with me for years even though I have put it out of my mind. Recently I saw something on TV today that reminded me of it again. That’s when I decided to look up the history of the Plant Museum and found this web site with the two things I remembered most; the grand stairway and that cold corridor. Does anyone know if, in the history of the hotel, did a young girl, maybe 12-14 years old, fall to her death there? Or commit suicide?"

This hotel is simply magnificent for just the architecture alone, but one can image a time when officers sat on rocking chairs on the veranda or women gathered around tables for tea parties. In the distance, one might here the sounds of the racetrack or hear croquette balls being hit. The Gilded Age really enjoyed itself in Tampa and perhaps that is why spirits linger. Is the Tampa Bay Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 562 - Andrew Low House

Moment in Oddity - Crowley Lake Columns (Suggested by: Ruth Dempsey)

Crowley Lake Reservoir, located in the Eastern Sierras in California, was completed in 1941. Shortly thereafter, strange columns were discovered on the eastern shore of the lake. They are said to remind one of Moorish temples with the columns rising 20 feet in height and their tops forming arches. Various theories as to how the columns came to be have been pondered over the years. Geologists from U.C. Berkley analyzed the Crowley columns using several methods to try to solve the mystery. The composition of the columns were found to consist of minerals that are fairly impervious to erosion. The area is believed to have suffered an enormous volcanic eruption that was greater than 2,000 times that of Mount Saint Helens back in May of 1980. It is surmised that the eruption created the Long Valley Caldera which surrounds the reservoir. The Crowley Columns, however they were formed, are majestic and unique and they certainly are odd.

This Month in History - Founding of Mission San Juan Capistrano

In the month of November, on the 1st, in 1776, Junipero Serra founded Mission San Jaun Capistrano in Orange County, California. San Jaun Capistrano was the seventh mission established out of the twenty one built by the Spanish in California. The building of the mission initially began in October, 1775. However, due to a Kumeyaay [KOO-Me-Eye] warparty attacking Mission San Diego, the soldiers at San Jaun Capistrano were ordered back to San Diego and the priests had to go with them. The purpose of the Spanish missions in California was to expand the territories of Spain as well as to spread Christianity to the indigenous Acjachemen (Ah-HAWSH-eh-men) of the area. The Spanish brought new ideas, technology, beasts of burden and livestock who multiplied and devastated the indigenous plants and animals of the California region. The Spanish also unintentionally brought diseases that were uncommon to the native people causing widespread outbreaks of pneumonia, tuberculosis, measles and syphilis. With the arrival of the Spanish, the indigenous people were forced to find new food sources and they were offered the option of joining the missions. To do so meant changing everything about their lives. They were required to change their culture, language, religion, clothing, food, and the list goes on. From 1770 to 1830, it is said that the native population declined by 74% due to these factors. The mission had begun its downswing in 1812 and in 1845, the Governor of Alta California, Pio Pico, sold Mission San Jaun Capistrano to John Forster who was the Governor's brother in law. The mission became a private ranch for the Forster family for the next 20 years. In 1850, California officially became a state and Catholic bishop, Joseph Alemany, petitioned to have all the missions returned to the Catholic Church. Today, Mission San Jaun Capistrano serves as a museum and the Serra Chapel inside of the property is used by the mission parish.

Andrew Low House (Suggested by: Bailey Landrum)

The Andrew Low House is located in Savannah, Georgia and is a beautifully restored 19th century home that sits in the heart of Savannah's historic district. A sculpted and well-cared-for garden leads guests to a door that opens in to a part of the history of a Scottish immigrant, Andrew Low, who left his mark on the city and also the woman who founded the Girl Scouts, his daughter-in-law Juliette Gordon Low. Now in the afterlife, it seems that both of these individuals are still connected to the house. On this episode, we are joined by our friends Bailey and Lizzie, who are not only tour guides in Savannah, but they've had their own paranormal experiences in the Andrew Low House.

Here is the transcript of our conversation:

Diane Student: Kelly, Bailey and Lizzie joined us on our Dixie House investigation, and they are joining us on this episode. They're tour guides in Savannah, Georgia, and they also host the podcast Knowmore, which is spelled KNOW. MORE. How are you 2 ladies doing.

Bailey Landrum: Good! How are you? We've been waiting for this.

Diane Student: Yeah, What the listeners don't know is that we had it scheduled once, and then we had Hurricane Helene and so we had to cancel, and then we scheduled it again, and then we had Hurricane Milton and had to cancel again.

Bailey Landrum: It's been both of us. Yeah.

Diane Student: Yeah, so it was kind of like crossing our fingers. Do we dare set another date, or are we gonna have another hurricane.

Bailey Landrum: It was. It was just luck of the draw.

Diane Student: Yeah, I'll say so. Both of you have been tour guides in Savannah, Georgia, Bailey. How long have you been doing that for.

Bailey Landrum: Since I moved down here. So about 3 years it was the 1st job I had, and I tried quitting it. I worked at a hardware store, but it just kept calling me back.

Diane Student: Nice. Love it. Very good at storytelling.

Bailey Landrum: Thank you.

Diane Student: And how about you, Lizzie? How long have you been doing? Tour guiding.

Bailey Landrum: Ghost. Thank you. You're welcome. I was about to complicate it, but it's okay. Now, when she feels all the hair on the back of her neck stand up as if someone was standing very close to her. But before Vanessa could turn around the group of guests, all just gasped and screamed. She turns around. Nothing!

Diane Student: Wow!

Bailey Landrum: Not the 1st time her group has done that to her, not just inside the house but Vanessa also used to work for our other trolley tour and the second stop was like the Colonial Park cemetery and she would tell the story about like a Mr. Baker story, and he's a guy he got beaten up in the cemetery. Yeah, and he haunts the cemetery. But there was one time she was telling that story, and sure enough, Mr. Baker just showed up behind her, and no one said anything. They just went like I don't know.

Diane Student: Good.

Bailey Landrum: The one getting sacrificed to the ghost, for no reason.

Diane Student: I've heard that story so many times from Tour guides when they're like, Yeah, I was telling the story. And then all of a sudden I noticed that my tour group, like their faces, all went, and I was like, I don't want to turn around and see what's behind me.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah, but that was the last story. But, as you can tell, the Andrew load is not a simple like, it's not a simple. Oh, there's kids walking to the walls, the dolls talk. It's something different for every person. And I think that's what kind of makes it so new, unique. And that's what this was such a fun episode to do, because it was a personal. It has my 1st ghost experience, and also some of Lizzie's. But it just holds a deep with the spiritual so friendly. You just hold a deep part in your heart.

Diane Student: Yeah. And there's so many different ones there that are manifest in different ways, different ways.

Bailey Landrum: Oh, yeah, something we don't even know about.

Diane Student: We need to get there. We need to get inside that now. Do they ever let people investigate there or.

Bailey Landrum: Unfortunately not. No, they're the Colonial dames are very very amazing women, but they have certain rules they have to follow for their society and whatnot, and also keep. Keep the museum up and running, and also keep the Feng Shui of it all. Yeah, but.

Diane Student: That's true. You don't wanna bring stuff in. That's not all. There.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah. And people have, and the house is not like it. No.

Diane Student: Gotcha.

Bailey Landrum: It's like, literally, there's times where, you know. Sometimes people have a ghost that follows them. And sometimes that goes. Man, this is nice. I think I want to stay here, and you can just feel the disturbance of the fort.

Diane Student: Across, the.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah. And I just know it's either Mary Mosiana or Mr. Miller going. No, you get out of here.

Diane Student: Out kind of like that. Get off my lawn. Speaking of the outdoors, I just saw that other picture Bailey that you sent that's taken the garden, but taken like from the front steps.

Bailey Landrum: Beautiful.

Diane Student: Down gorgeous. Not anything that I was able to appreciate. From the outer gate sidewalk area.

Bailey Landrum: That was one of the last photos I took of the house when I was touring there, and I'm like, I never get to see this, I'm going to take advantage of it.

Diane Student: Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Bailey Landrum: So much. And just to think that Juliet, like she sat up the stairs and probably set set on those steps and just enjoyed the view. It just kind of has a nice, like peaceful vibe to it.

Diane Student: Definitely, and you could see the lions there at the bottom of the stairs, too, just.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah.

Diane Student: Me. This is very cool.

Bailey Landrum: I heard a story. I don't know how true it is, but I want to believe it because it's cute. She, Juliet, we used to pet the lion's manes, but now we have sad faces on it, because she's not there anymore.

Diane Student: Oh!

Bailey Landrum: Yeah, but I don't know how true that is, but it sounds like something Juliet would do. She loved animals.

Diane Student: All right, Lizzie, you need to go pet their manes. Oh.

Bailey Landrum: Alright! Let's just go ahead and break the rules.

Diane Student: Inspired. What happened? It's like all smooth in this one area.

Bailey Landrum: No, actually, I actually technically had a breaker rule, but it was for the greater good. I had.

Diane Student: Now you are admitting this.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah, be careful.

Diane Student: On a recording.

Bailey Landrum: But also it's already documented. So it's it's fine. I had this one guest on my trolley, who
very much spirited, if I shall say. And he was like, I'm not feeling well inside the house doing. Do you mind? I stand out in the courtyard. I'm like, Yeah, that's fine. Just stay out there. Get some, you know. Fresh air, whatever. and next thing I know, I look out the window of the towards the garden. and there's just a man standing in the middle of it. I like in the front yard. Yeah, in the front yard. I'm like. Oh, my God! It's the guys run outside around the building, because, of course, I couldn't go through the front doors. and I've had to scold this man going. Please get out of here. He's like, well, it's so beautiful like it. There's no lights out. If you fall. That's on me.

Diane Student: Yeah. And when you said he was spirited I thought that maybe he consumed some spirits, and I thought you were gonna say, a whole nother thing.

Bailey Landrum: Oh, yeah, he wants feel of those kind of spirits. Yes. But yeah, it was just like a.

Diane Student: Okay.

Bailey Landrum: Thank you very much.

Diane Student: Doing to that beautiful garden.

Bailey Landrum: He's a happy, he's a happy spirit. He was very much the oh, yes. guarded. Yeah. Just taking in the whips like he did. He was like smelling the flowers. I'm like as much as I appreciate. You're not destroying this. You need to leave.

Diane Student: At least he didn't lose his spirits in that beautiful car. because that's where my head went.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah.

Diane Student: What a fabulous place! Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Thank you.

Bailey Landrum: And thank you for the museum. Of course, too.

Diane Student: Yes, absolutely. And I think it's great that even though they don't have people who investigate there that they're, you know, not like. Don't mention that we have some ghosts here, because some places, you know, are real worried about getting that word out right.

Bailey Landrum: There are some places like that in Savannah. It's like you're. I know you're haunted just the ground the way you look is haunted, but they're like, Nope, we're perfectly fine here. No spirits. It's like. It's okay.

Diane Student: And it helps with tourism. Really.

Bailey Landrum: It does. Yeah.

Bailey Landrum: Well, it's not for everybody pretty much. Yeah.

Diane Student: Wears, yeah, yeah.

Bailey Landrum: We're like New Orleans. Yeah.

Diane Student: Exactly. I mean, you just walk into the city, and you could just feel it.

Bailey Landrum: Yeah.

Diane Student: Alright. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to hooking up with you guys again in the future we'd love to do some investigating again.

Bailey Landrum: I know some places here in Savannah that's really fun to investigate. So if y'all ever come this way, we can do it.

Diane Student: Very cool. Sounds good.

The Andrew Low House is beautiful and has some very cool items inside. Could there be some ghosts inside as well? Is the Andrew Low House haunted? That is for you to decide!

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!