HGB Ep. 612 - Haunted Historic Cary Homes

Moment in Oddity - Raining Meat (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

We have all heard bizarre stories of strange objects falling from the sky. From frogs, to fish, to sharks. Umm, hello, Sharknado? Typically these strange occurrences are attributed to waterspouts picking up the critters and then depositing them, sometimes miles away. Even Diane once had the experience of a fish falling out of the sky and landing right next to her. Although that was one fish and I am sure that the bird of prey that dropped it was ticked about losing its lunch! Back in March of 1876 there was a very strange event that occurred over Olympia Springs in Bath County Kentucky. According to a New York Times article, chunks of meat showered down on Allen Crouch's property as his wife was outdoors making soap. Mrs. Crouch stated that, "The sky was perfectly clear at the time and the meat fell like large snowflakes." Most of the pieces were around 5x5 centimeters. The following day, two men showed up to taste the meat-rain, even though much of it was spoiled by this time. The unidentified men proclaimed that the meat had either the flavor of venison or mutton. Pieces of the meat were preserved. A few months later, a report was published in Scientific American, that the substance was actually nostoc which is a type of cyanobacteria that can float in the air, unseen until it rains. It then swells up forming a jellied mass and falls to the earth. It is also known as 'star jelly' and 'witches butter'. However, once nostoc takes on its gelatinous form, it has a green color to its mass as it is a blue-green algae. It does not resemble meat. In addition, Mrs. Crouch had stated that it was a clear day, no rain involved. The man that declared the 'meat snowflakes' as being of cyanobacteria origin also shared samples with a histologist who said it was likely the lung tissue of a human infant or a horse! Seven samples were examined. Two were determined to be lung tissue, three were muscular tissue and two others consisted of cartilage. Ultimately, Dr. Kastenbine wrote in an 1876 edition of the Louisville Medical News, that the creation of the meaty shower was projectile vulture vomit. Vultures can often eat up to 20% of their body weight when given the opportunity. It has been recorded that they can projectile vomit up to 10 feet in distance and have been known to do so when startled as a defense mechanism, or when needing to take sudden flight or gain altitude. Whatever the reason that created this event, chunks of meat raining down onto the earth not only is disgusting, but it certainly is odd. 

Haunted Historic Cary Homes 

Cary is a town west of Raleigh in North Carolina that routinely shows up on lists as a desirable place to live and is known as the gourd capital. Railroad companies found it desirable too and this became a town built by the railroad. Cary also was a center of manufacturing with many factories opening up. The town attracted all types from robber barons to bootleggers and some of their historic homes still remain and feature ghost stories and legends. Join us as we explore the histories and hauntings of these Cary homes! 

Cary, North Carolina got its start as a railroad village. The Tuscarora and Catawba people lived on the land until European settlers came to the area. Disease decimated the Native Americans numbers. A man named John Bradford set up a homestead and called it Bradford's Ordinary. He built an inn and opened it in the 1750s. Two other men owned land in the area and their names were both Nathaniel Jones. By the early 19th century, the settlement had a gristmill and sawmill and in 1854, the North Carolina Railroad came. This would be the year that Bradford's Ordinary would become an official town under a man named Allison Francis Page, or Frank Page, who named it Page's Station. He is considered the founder of Cary and he added another sawmill and a general store and built his home that he named for himself, Pages. When Page opened the post office in 1856, he named the town Cary for Samuel Fenton Cary, the head of the Sons of Temperance in the state. The population didn't really grow until after the Civil War and most of this centered around the railroad. There were a few factories opened as well and the town was incorporated in 1871. Since Page believed in temperance, as port of the incorporation, it was written into Cary law that no whiskey couldn't be sold in town and most other spirits were added in 1889. The prohibition law would remain until 1964. This left the city wide open for bootlegging, which was rampant. And it had its share of shootouts. But the city also became an educational hub. The Research triangle Park was a place where IBM established a strong presence in 1965. And for our gamers, you've probably heard of Epic Games behind little games like Fortnite, they are headquartered in Cary. Many successful men came to Cary to build their factories and they also built their homes. 

The Cotton House

We'll start with the Cotton House because...beer. The Cotton House Craft Brewers call the Cotton House at 307 S. Academy Street home now. This had once been known as the Pasmore House because William Pasmore had it built in 1900. He had married Cassandra Wilson in 1856 and they had seven children. Two tragic deaths occurred here involving William's daughters. The second death was horrific. Stella died in 1906 at the age of 31 from typhoid. She was a beloved teacher at the Cary High School. 

In 1902, Mary Pasmore was 42 years old and the Roxboro Courier reported, "Awful Death in Flames. Raleigh, N.C. Sept. 5th. Miss Mary Passmore, aged 42, of Cary, suicided last night by burning. She was found wrapped in flames in an outhouse and died at eleven o'clock last night. She declared before she died that she set fire to herself because she was tired of living." William himself died in 1901 at the age of 63, so he didn't have to experience his daughters' deaths. Imagine his poor wife. Later, his son William would be arrested for public intoxication in Cary, which took some effort since it was a dry town. The house eventually became a boarding facility for some of the very first students at Cary High School. In 2018, the brewers had a name, but not a house, until they found the Pasmore House. They renamed it and renovated into a tap room and brewery. Two of the original fireplaces were exposed and they added a 25-foot Prohibition-era bar with an Italian marble top. Walnut fixtures hang from the ceiling and the bar back and tap handles were all fashioned by local carpenters and woodworkers. There is also a 1910 piano on the premises. People claim that there are spirits left over from the school boarding house days and perhaps even the Pasmore daughters are here. 

Katherine Loflin is a historian in the town, has written the "Hidden History of Cary," and hosts the ghost tours in town on a trolley. She has brought guests through the Cotton House on tours and says that on those tours they have captured audible word responses. Disembodied footsteps are heard and employees and patrons have reported seeing full-bodied apparitions. We should mention that the street the brewery is on, Academy Street, has the apparition of a horse connected to it. This horse is also heard on the nearby Ambassador Loop near the Page-Walker hotel. It isn't aren't often seen, but people hear the ghost galloping and it is thought to be connected to the Civil War. Peggy Van Scoyoc write in her 2006 book Just a Horse Stopping Place, “this horse could be heard coming up that street galloping and just going as fast as he could go, but nobody would ever see any horse.”

The High House

Unfortunately, the High House no longer stands, but may still have a female apparition hanging around the site. The house had stood on the left side of High House Road and was built by Tingnal Jones sometime between 1760 and 1765. The house stood two stories and had high ceilings. Fanning Jones inherited the house from his father Tingnal and he lived in it until 1822. He sold it to a Raleigh lawyer named Nathaniel Green Alford in 1833. The Williams family owned it next and when they moved out in early 1900, the house was left abandoned. There is no record of it after 1930 and we could find nothing about a demolition record. The house seems to have just disappeared, but more than likely just collapsed. Leander Williams had been born in the house in 1883 and he told his daughter Margaret of a dream he had. This dream was about valuables being buried in the hearth of the house and apparently his mother had the same dream. So they returned to the high House that they had abandoned and found the hearth torn apart. As to where this treasure had come from, perhaps it was from an earlier occupant. Fanning Jones was considered a scoundrel in Cary. He was on the side of the Tories during the Revolutionary War and he put together a group that murdered and pillaged. So perhaps this was some of his loot. Hauntings were reported about the house dating back to the Revolutionary War. The ghost of a woman was seen in the house and walking around outside of it. One of the legends told about her is that two men were in love with her and one day, one of them killed her in a fit of rage during a fight. Another legend claims that the woman is Fanning Jones' wife. She died a few years after their marriage in 1799. The Raleigh Register reported on September 8, 1806, that she was found "in a grove far from the house, depraved of all reason, where it is supposed she had been praying (having been very religious for some time past). She remained in the deplorable condition till her death on July 27, 1806." Robert Hoke Williams wrote of his father's experience with the female ghost and this is shared in a document called "The Ghost of High House" available from the AAFA Library. (Document) 

The woods where High House had stood had ghost stories connected to them as well. An 11-year-old boy reported in the 1860s that he saw a woman wandering in a field in broad daylight and she was heading towards the house. He assumed it was his mother returning from church, so he ran to the house to greet her and found no one in the house. His parents didn't return until later in the day. And in the 1870s, a young girl was staying in the house and awoke at night and asked her dad for water. He took her out onto the front porch and handed her the water dipper. She looked past him with wide eyes and started screaming. The father turned to see a woman standing very still in the dark front yard and the feeling he got was of something not human. They rushed back into the house for fitful sleep and left early the next morning for Raleigh. This female ghost appeared to three generations of the Williams family and is still seen in the Black Creek Greenway to this day.

Nancy Jones House

The Nancy Jones House is located at 9321 Chapel Hill Road and was built in 1803, making it the oldest known residential structure in Cary. Where it stands today is not where it started. It was moved in 2021. The two-story house was built in the vernacular Federal style architecture with chimneys on both sides and a one story addition on the back with the kitchen. The rear second story was a later addition as well. The double-tier Italianate-style front-gabled porch was added in 1880. Four of the rooms had Federal-style three-part mantels with reeding. The walls had paneled wainscot and flush-board sheathing and the floors were made from heart of pine. Many rooms in a Federal style house were called shed rooms, which means they functional rooms like a laundry room or kitchen which were typically found at the back of the house. They were usually very simple. This was built by Henry and Nancy Jones to run as a tavern and stagecoach stop, but probably not an inn, so they lived in the house as a residence. The land underneath had been owned by Henry's father, Nathaniel Crabtree Jones. Fun Fact: There were so many Nathaniel Joneses in the area that they all took to having middle nicknames to identify themselves, so there was also a Nathaniel White Plains Jones. And another interesting fact is that there was a practice where fathers would let their sons build on land they owned, but wouldn't give the land to their sons until their death and this was done to convince sons to stay close to home and not "Go West, young man." Henry had been previously married and had a daughter named Eliza. He and Nancy would have five children together. Henry died in 1841 and Nancy continued to run the business and live in the house for another 30 years, so that is why it carries her name. 

By the Civil War, the area around the tavern was called Jones Station. Union troops camped out on the property as they went to and from Bennett Place in Durham. Sherman's troops marched through North Carolina and they Raleigh to Jones Station. North Carolina governors would stay here and President James K. Polk once stayed as well. Nancy's youngest son Adolphus wrote to his half-sister Eliza in 1874, “Mother will be 91 years old in a few days… She retains the faculties of her mind pretty well but her physical powers are gradually giving way. She walks about the yard and garden – sometimes she walks over to a near neighbor’s house.” 

Nancy died in 1876 and Adolphus inherited the house and he opened it as a school. Adolphus later sold to S.R. Horne and then the house passed through several hands. The Heater family lived in the house during the Great Depression and when their well drilling business went bankrupt, they sold the chandeliers from the house. Thomas and Audrey Stone owned the house from 1935 until 1991, when Audrey passed away. She put forth the effort to get the house on the registry of historic places in 1984. She welcomed people for tours as well. Other families lived in the house. Kent Henley rented it in the late 1990s. Then Sri Venkateswara Temple owned the property. The town of Cary got ownership of the house in 2019 and moved it in 2021. It is still undergoing renovations to be used as offices. Peach brandy was very popular in Cary and Henry Jones apparently made his own and he wrote in a letter to his daughter Eliza in 1836, "You wish to know my method of making Peach wine; In the first place I beat and press the peaches as late in the Evening as possible in Order to give the liquor as little chance to ferment as possible, which it will be sure to do in warm weather, next morning have a good clean tight Barrel ready, with about Eight gallons of Brandy in it before you begin to put in the peach Juice…” The letter goes on after more explanation to say, “I never added Sugar to any I ever made, but am Satisfied it would be the best, say one pound to 10 gallons I think would be enough…".

Margaret Heater always maintained that the house was haunted and she had many experiences in the house when living there. She claimed to hear disembodied footsteps and when she would yell for her father to help her, he would look around for whoever had been walking around and never found anyone. The Heater family also couldn’t keep the doors locked. They would lock everything up tight at night and find the doors unlocked in the morning. Families that lived in the house after the Stones claimed to hear strange noises they couldn't explain and disembodied footsteps. Kent Henley heard the strange creaks and such as well, but he always maintained it was just the wind.  

The Matthews House 

The Matthews House is located at 317 W. Chatham Street and is this large beautiful white house with black shutters that was built in 1915 by lumber magnate Joseph Cephus Matthews. After the house was no longer a private residence, it hosted several businesses including a floral shop, dress shop and a salon. Carroll and Sheila Ogle bought the house in the early 2000s and they refurbished the house to be an events center, specifically for weddings. They added a Grand Ballroom and a commercial kitchen. Carroll passed away and Sheila eventually sold the house in 2016 to the Chung family who renovated the house further and continued the wedding business and they partnered with Southern Harvest Catering.

Paranormal Investigator Katherine Loflin told the News Observer in 2023, “We think we get a lot of Bob. Bob seems to have stuff he wants to tell us.” Her group, City Doctor Productions, believes that they contacted up to 50 spirits during one ghost hunt at the house. The Bob that she was referencing was Bob Strother, a prominent resident in the town who ran a floral shop and was known for his Christmas decoration displays. He died in 2019The News Observer joined the investigators and reported, "Upstairs in the master bedroom, Al Parker had volunteers try out the spirit box, which involves wearing headphones tuned to a rapidly changing AM/FM receiver flicking through stations every half-second. For this otherworldly exchange, Parker fired off questions while the volunteers, headphones on, barked out whatever words arrived through the airwaves - radio or spectral. Is anybody here with us right now? Robert was the answer. Is that Bob Strother? Bob, are you here with us tonight? Escape was the answer. How many people are here with you? 51 came the answer. Does it bother you that we’re here?" During a previous investigation, the investigators got the following words during an ESTES Method session: smoke, fire, powers that be and rip-off. Katherine Loflin wondered what these words could mean and when she dug into the history, she found out that Bob had planned to buy the Page House and renovate it in 1971, but he was unable to do that because the house burned to the ground. A caretaker at the house was to blame as he tried to extinguish a small fire started by a spark with a rag that he dropped on a can of gasoline. But Bob actually believed that the fire had been set on purpose by some people who didn't want him controlling what they felt was the historic heart of the town and he told this to the Cary Historical Society during an interview he did with them. Loflin said, "Until somebody acknowledges that Bob got a little screwed, that might be why Bob’s sticking around." 

One of the other spirits here is a little girl named Janelle and she seems to be connected to a painting of what is believed to be her and this painting has a tendency to fall off the wall on its own. Loflin has been trying for several years to get to the bottom of who this little girl is and we hope one day that she is successful.

Old houses always seem to have interesting stories. Cary's historic homes have interesting stories and could quite possibly be haunted. Are these historic Cary homes haunted? That is for you to decide!