HGB Ep. 585 - S.K. Pierce Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Bone Collector Caterpillar (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

The vast majority of caterpillars are herbivores. They can quickly consume all the leaves and blossoms of your favorite garden plant. There are some caterpillars however, that fall into the category of carnivorous, believe it or not. One of these carnivorous caterpillars is known as the 'bone collector caterpillar'. This interesting little fella is found on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Describing the insect as unique is an understatement. The caterpillar is a scavenger for the most part, but it is also known to be cannibalistic at times. Yes, they will also eat their own kind. This strange insect will pull its meals from spider webs. Sounds dangerous for the caterpillar, right? Well not entirely, the creatures disguise themselves with the cadavers of other insects that they find. This helps to camouflage them while pilfering their next meal from unsuspecting spiders. These carnivorous caterpillars happily feast on the leftovers that a spider has hanging around its web. The caterpillar's corpse costume hides them from the unwitting spider hosts. This newly discovered insect was happened upon by Dr. Daniel Rubinoff and his colleagues while hiking the Waianae mountains nearly 20 years ago. But only recently had an article published about it in April of 2025. At the time of its discovery, the group was searching for the Hawaiian case caterpillar who shares the same genus as the Bone Collector caterpillar. The Dr. stated, “We see this little, tiny sac covered in bug bits, and honestly, we weren’t sure what it was,” says Rubinoff. “And then we take it back [to the lab], and we realize there is a little caterpillar in there.” A caterpillar that masquerades in a macabre mask and gives us Buffalo Bill, Silence of the Lambs vibes, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Brahms Born

In the month of May, on the 7th, in 1833, composer Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany. Brahms composed over 200 songs in his lifetime including orchestral, choral, piano, symphonies and chamber works, including his German Requiem commemorating the death of his mother. In his early years, he studied music with his father who was a horn and double bass musician. By the age of seven, Johannes was sent for piano lessons with F.W. Cossel then, three years later, Brahm graduated to lessons from Cossel's teacher, Edward Marxsen. As a teen, Johannes earned money for his family by playing near the docks of Hamburg. He also spent time composing and giving recitals. In 1853, Brahms was recommended to composer Robert Schumann and the two struck up a friendship. Due to the praises of Schumann in a public article, Brahms became well known in the world of music. Brahms was influenced by composers like Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Wagner just to name a few. Though he never married and was not apt to showing his emotions in his personal life, his musical compositions displayed deep and emotional spectrums. Pieces would range from intense energy and drama, to impeccable lyricism. Despite not easily showing outward emotions, Brahms loved spending time with children and dogs. After his good friend Robert Schumann died in 1856, Brahms offered Clara Schumann, Robert's widow, emotional support and assistance. Although Johannes and Clara developed a strong connection historians debate whether or not they ever became more than that. In April of 1897, Johannes Brahms passed away from cancer of the liver, less than a year after the death of Clara Schumann.

S.K. Pierce Victorian Mansion (Suggested by: Missy Crawford and Brittany Cox) 

One can't miss the S.K. Pierce Mansion in Gardner, Massachusetts. This magnificent mansion is a huge Victorian that takes up the whole corner of West Broadway and Union Street. The grand exterior makes it very inviting, but the ghost stories connected to this place might just make you think twice before entering. There are those that claim this home is the second most haunted house in Massachusetts. Some owners have been chased out by spirits. There could be more than a dozen spirits here and one of them may be the furniture magnate for whom the house was built and named: S.K. Pierce. Join us for the history and hauntings of the S.K. Pierce Mansion.

Just last month, April 2025, the S.K. Pierce Victorian mansion was listed for sale. HGB clubhouse perhaps? It's a little steep at $1.2 million, but it has a fascinating history. The mansion is located at 4 West Broadway in Gardner, Massachusetts. Gardner was first settled by Europeans in 1764 and incorporated into a township in 1785. The town was named for Colonel Thomas Gardner, an American politician and soldier who was fatally wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Woodworking factories and sawmills were the initial industries and this would grow into a furniture manufacturing powerhouse that included twelve furniture factories. So many chairs were made here that Gardner became "The Chair City of the World." They averaged 1.2 million chairs a year. To recognize this, the town has a twenty foot chair monument. A little fun fact is that an employee of one of these furniture companies, Edward G. Watkins, created a time recording device in 1888 that was used to record employees work schedule. You know, a time clock. And it was because of this that we get our saying "punching the clock." Gardner became the City of Gardner in 1923.

We've talked in other episodes about lumber barons and robber barons. Perhaps there was such a thing as a furniture baron? Ok, so that's our creation, but if there was such a thing as a furniture baron, Sylvester Knowlton Pierce would have been one. I guess the term magnate fits better. Pierce was born in 1820 in Massachusetts and went by the nickname S.K. He married Susan Elvira Jackson in 1845 and the couple had one son in 1856 whom they named Frank. S.K. amassed a large fortune with his furniture empire and he decided it was time to build himself a home befitting his station in life.

Construction began on S.K.'s masterpiece of a Victorian mansion in 1873. Architects E. Boyden and Son designed the mansion in the Second Empire architectural style, so it basically looks like the Addams Family house. The current paint job is dark gray with black shutters, so that fits with that imagery perfectly. We're not sure what color it was originally. When the mansion was completed two years later, it was three stories tall and had a basement that had a tunnel that led across the street to a furniture factory. There were 26 rooms that included 10 bedrooms, a formal dining room, billiards room, two parlors, library and four bathrooms. S.K. spared no expense in the construction and he made sure the house was as modern as possible. There were two cisterns that collected rainwater from the slate roof, so the Pierce's had running water in the house. There was gas lighting and there were speaking tubes and electric bells for communication throughout the house. A dumb waiter could reach all three floors. The interior decor was gorgeous with 16 types of wood and hand-carved moldings and cornices, a walnut staircase, Tiffany glass everywhere, crystal chandeliers and massive doors that were nine-feet tall and constructed from solid black walnut. And when we say "solid" we mean solid. The doors weighed over five-hundred pounds apiece. A tower with a circular staircase led up to a widow’s walk,so the family had sweeping views of South Gardner.

Tragedy struck right after the Pierces moved into their dream home. Susan contracted a bacterial infection, that we have heard was the flesh-eating kind, and she passed away only a few weeks after moving into the house. S.K. grieved her for a year, but when a woman thirty years younger than his wife caught his eye, he got over his sorrow. This was Nellie West and he married her in 1878. They would have two sons together, Stuart and Edward. Together, the Pierces became the social hub of Gardner. They hosted P.T. Barnum and other prominent people in the area. After ten years of marriage, S.K. passed away in the house in 1888 and he left the house to Nellie who remained in it until her death in 1902. Then the house passed onto the three Pierce boys who fought over ownership of the house and the furniture business. Frank and Stuart finally gave up and left the house to Edward. The Freemasons used the house for meetings at this time and Edward hosted some famous people at the house including President Calvin Coolidge when he was a Senator for Massachusetts, Norman Rockwell and Bette Davis. Another tragedy for the Pierce family took place here when Edward's two-year-old daughter contracted a bacterial infection and died in the house. Not sure if it was the same kind that Susan died from. About that same time, The Great Depression began and it hit the furniture business hard. Edward couldn't keep up with the house, so he and his wife opened it as a boarding house. This part of the history is murky. The sensational stories claim that the place was a brothel that hosted gambling and drinking. A lady of the evening was said to have been killed here in what later came to be known as the Red Room. Of course, we found no newspaper accounts to support this.

A Finnish immigrant named Eino Saari was sleeping in his bed when a fire broke out in 1963. When the firemen arrived, they found a weird situation. Saari had been mostly consumed and the bed was badly burned, but the fire hadn't spread to any other part of the room. This sounded like a classic example of spontaneous combustion. A young boy drowned in the basement as well during this time. Many people had died here. Edward maintained ownership of the house until 1965, when he had to sell it out of the hands of the Pierce family and a good friend named Jay Stemmermen bought the house and allowed him to live at the house until he died in 1967. By the 1980s, Stemmerman had abandoned the house. Jay was an artist and he created some weird pieces while at the house that he left behind. Paintings depicted half-man, half-beast creatures. Other pictures depicted orgies.

The mansion was slated to be demolished in 1996, but fortunately, that didn't happen. The Victorian was bought in 2000 by Suzanne and Mark Veau (Vo) and they renovated the house. Weird stuff started happening in the house and they eventually invited TAPS to come investigate and after that, they decided to start hosting ghost tours of the house. They put the house on the market in 2007 when they divorced and had to keep reducing the price before anyone would buy it because of the haunted reputation. The couple who did buy it in 2009 had no idea about the hauntings. They just thought they were getting a great deal. Amityville anyone? LOL! Although we don't believe that house had any hauntings. Anyway, Lillian Otero and Edwin Gonzalez became the new owners. After they purchased the house in 2009, they had so many paranormal experiences that they moved out of the house. The couple claimed that the ghosts in the house were angry and threatening and that one of them had even possessed Lillian. They claimed the place had been their dream home, so something must have happened to them. We'll get more into their experiences in a minute. When the couple moved out, they handed the keys over to a woman named Marion to be the caretaker and despite new owners, she has remained the caretaker to this day.

The Dark Carnival is a circus-themed haunted attraction that was established in 2010 and provided high intensity scary shows across the state of New Jersey. They worked with top animators and prop masters in the haunt industry to keep their shows cutting edge. In 2015, they - and the "they" is Rob and Allison Conti - decided to go a different route and they acquired the S.K. Pierce Mansion from Edwin and Lillian and set about restoring it further. And Yes, Lillian and Edwin owned the house for seven years, but only lived in it for two of them. Their website says, "The Dark Carnival will open the Mansion to the public for overnight rentals for the brave souls who wish to experience the Mansion during it's darkest hours, and for historical ghost tours where guests can learn about both the positive and negative history of this home. During the Halloween season we plan to open the basement only of the Mansion (weekends only in October) for what will truly be a one of a kind SK Pierce themed Halloween attraction as it will be the only haunt in the country that combines the haunt industry and the paranormal industry. As guests travel through the bowels of the Mansion, they will encounter 30-35 of our trained actors, high end illusions and animations, and may even get a glimpse of the truly paranormal. Best of all, since this attraction is only in the basement, guests can have some scares in the spirit of the season without ever affecting the majesty of the main levels of this marvelous home."

And, whelp, that never seemed to happen. The website is set up for tours, so we believe they did offer those through the years. And now the place is on the market for over $1 million. Today, the house sits on .23 acres and has 9 bedrooms and 3.5 baths with that gray exterior adorned by black shutters. The listing agent isn't shy about the haunted reputation and is using that as an angle to sell the house. And there are many stories to back up those paranormal claims. Residents of the house and guests have all claimed to experience paranormal activity. Full-bodied apparitions were seen and furniture would move on its own. Disembodied chanting and voices have been heard. The screens have come flying off the windows. There have been foul odors and weird temperature changes. And probably the weirdest claim is a sound like a lion's roar, which could shake the house. Visitors claim to be pushed by something they can't see. One was almost pushed down the stairs and another felt as though something tried to force them out a third story window.

There are estimates of thirteen ghosts here with a few of them being identified. These include S.K. Pierce himself, Susan Pierce, Edward Pierce, a Pierce nanny named Mattie Cornwell, David - the red room strangler - and the prostitute he murdered in the red room, a young boy, a younger girl, Eino Saari and some unnamed dark entities in the basement. A neighbor living next door had seen lights turn on and off in the mansion when it was empty. The fire alarms would go off as well with no fire and she would see shadows moving inside. Clearly, Mark and Suzanne experienced some stuff.

Edwin Gonzalez knew in his gut that something was wrong with the house before they put in an offer in 2009. When he and Lillian toured the house, he felt a weird pressure in certain rooms and even became nauseous a couple times. He hoped it was just lunch because Lillian really loved the house. After they closed on the house and moved in, they met their neighbor and he asked them about their children. Edwin and Lillian were confused because they didn't have kids. They explained they had no children and the neighbor looked confused. He asked, "Who was the kid that I saw earlier in the house today?" Edwin asked, "What do you mean?" The neighbor explained that he saw a boy who was probably five or six years old looking out of one of the windows on third floor and then almost immediately that same boy was looking out of a window on the opposite end of the house. Edwin just said there was no way because only he and Lillian were in the house and that it would be impossible for anybody to move that fast in the house because that person would literally have to go through a wall to do it that fast. Lillian and Edwin didn't immediately think they had a ghost though. Maybe just a weird neighbor.

But it wasn't a weird neighbor who slammed one of the big doors downstairs in the middle of the night, awakening Lillian and Edwin. They would also hear loud knocking and the doorbell went off by itself later that week. Edwin worked from home and he made the former nursery his office. He was working in there late one afternoon when the image of a man appeared and rushed towards him. The vision was so real that Edwin threw up his hands to protect himself and squeezed his eyes shut. When nothing happened, he opened then and looked around the room and there was no one there. He checked the house and he was alone. It really freaked him out. He believed this was the spirit of Eino Saari. One morning Lillian was awakened and told by a voice to get up and get dressed and go into the basement and start digging. She dug around in the kiln and found a bone. Edwin had a doctor's appointment the next day and he took the bone with him. The doctor confirmed that the bone was human. It was the pelvic bone of a teenage female. The police came to investigate the house and took the bone. No one knows who the bone belongs to, but there is some lore that claims S.K.'s son had impregnated a servant girl and did away with her. Lillian and Edwin's stories and this discovery of bones led to a book written by Joni Mayhan entitled "Bones in the Basement: Surviving the S.K. Pierce Haunted Victorian Mansion."

This excerpt is from the first chapter of that book. (Read excerpt) 

Joni was a part of investigations in the house and during one they recorded this EVP saying "Franklin." (SK Pierce EVP Franklin) And they got this through the Spirit Box in the basement. (SK Pierce Ghost Box Devil) Is this confirming a demon in the basement? And there's this chilling EVP. (SK Pierce EVP Help Me) A female voice calling out for help? Joni told the Dark House Podcast during an interview that she felt the spirits turned negative on Edwin and Lillian because they weren't upkeeping the house. Once the current owners came in and started pouring money into repairs, the hauntings became much more friendly.

Ghost Adventures visited in 2013 on the invite of Lillian and Edwin. They caught the sound of several loud bangs that seemed to get progressively louder. Aaron was touched on the shoulder by something on the third floor and when he and Zak ask who is up there, they hear an audible "me." The 3rd floor X camera captures a ball of light that moves above the mirror and disappears into the room that Zak and Aaron are standing in front of. The Spirit Box says "he's here", "David?", "hi", "no", "not sure" and "Lillian." The only EVP they captured said, "go to sleep."

A woman named Jeanne visited the house in October 2022. She wrote on Facebook, "A tour was taking place while I was there. These were guided tours and they started in the basement & worked their way up. When I got home & looked at my photos, I could clearly see a man, with his hands behind his back, on the first floor. But, up on the 3rd floor, there was a young boy, pointing down to us. The tours were by group, guided and if they were only on the first floor, who is that young boy on the 3rd floor? You can see the man on the 1st floor window on the right. The boy is on the top floor, middle window." (We'll post picture.) There is clearly a little head up in that window.

Jason Hawes returned to the mansion in 2025. This was his third visit and he said he's always had activity there. Upon entering, Jason and his friend JV immediately heard a bang coming from the basement. They put a REM pod on the kiln. They hear a noise that sounds like a bunch of boxes falling over. And then an audible whisper. The REM Pod went off a minute later when they asked if the person who was hurt was there with them. They heard whispering again. They think they picked up the sound of a cat later and there are reports of a ghost cat. This was a really interesting investigation, especially with all the audible voices. The caretaker/manager that we mentioned earlier, Marion, shared a picture with the guys of a figure captured in a window and it sure looks like a woman. 

The Stromedy Channel on YouTube featured a tour of the house and Marion shared a picture of something taken down in the basement on there that we'll share on Instagram also. They used a phone app for a Ghost Box and got some interesting stuff that mostly felt negative telling them to leave and go and they felt like many spirits were trying to talk to them, but this one male spirit was in charge and not letting them. The group went upstairs and used a real Spirit Box and thought they were communicating with Maddie and the story they got was that Maddie was dragged out of this room, down to the basement and killed and that Sylvester is the bad guy in the house. They also did a sort of Estes Method, but not with noise cancelling headphones, so not sure I would trust this. But during that they got that this was a family secret and a son was involved. Something interesting did happen during this when they asked Maddie to give a sign. A chair in the corner started rocking on its own. There is nothing historically to back up this story, but maybe it was just hidden well and we do have this pelvic bone that was found. Where did that come from? We will warn you if you go to watch this video that they are part of this new generation of  YouTube ghosts shows and so the camera movements are very jerky and there is a lot of silly scared reactions to everything. 

This mansion is just glorious to look at and the fact that it possibly has spirits inside it, makes it even more enchanting. Many people have had experiences here. We hope that whoever buys it next, does indeed open it to the public as there had been a waiting list of over 3,000 people wanting to overnight at the place. Is the S.K. Pierce Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!