HGB Ep. 644 - Amargosa Hotel and Opera House

Moment in Oddity - 40 Acre Bog Island

In the state of Wisconsin, there is a beautiful lake called Lake Chippewa. This is an artificial lake created by the hydroelectric Winter Dam in northwest Wisconsin. The dam was completed in 1923, and over time, unusual islands were created due to the damming. The largest of these islands is called the Forty Acre Bog. When Winter Dam became part of the landscape of the Chippewa River and the Chippewa Lake was created, a large area of submerged peat beds and decaying plant matter detached from the lake bed floor and floated to the water's surface. Over decades, seeds deposited by the wind and birds germinated on the floating blankets of peat. Gradually, grasses, shrubs and even trees took root, interlocking together, bit by bit, growing larger and larger and stronger and stronger. Some bog islands are home to 40 foot Tamarack trees. The creation of these islands is strange enough but these floating masses have another unique feature. Because the Bog Islands are not attached to the bottom of the lake, they drift around Lake Chippewa. The large mature trees act as sails catching the wind. Due to the mobility of the islands, there are times when they block boating navigational routes, especially near a bridge that connects the lake's east and west sides. The community needed a solution and they came up with 'bog pushers'. The islands are protected ecological habitats, so when an island impedes waterways, multiple boaters known as 'bog pushers' gather to join forces and relocate the islands to less interruptive positions. The 40 Acre Bog is the most commonly moved, due to its size. The task requires coordinated efforts by multiple boaters using their engines and favorable wind currents to push the bog islands to their preferred locations. The job can take anywhere from 25 to 50 boats, working in unison. Islands that float around a lake like bumper cars and that can be moved by boats, certainly is odd.  

Amargosa Hotel and Opera House (Suggested by: Anna Frias)

Out among the bleached bones of Death Valley National Park sits a quirky little building known as the Amargosa Hotel and Opera House. Death Valley features salt flats and ancient lakes with jagged rock formations and several ghost towns. It really resembles a place where things go to die. And thus, it is a haunted landscape. Join us as we explore the haunted Amargosa Hotel and landscape of Death Valley.

Death Valley National Park fosters intense feelings of isolation. The landscape is very silent and unforgiving. Hundreds of people flocked to the region with dreams of fortunes found in mines. Death Valley Junction is a tiny unincorporated town and as Editor-at-Large of the SFGate, Andrew Chamings, put it in 2022, "is both the lowest land in America and the hottest place on Earth." Long before the town was founded, the Timbisha Shoshone were here and they called it Tumpisa, meaning rock paint. A 19th century gold rush brought prospectors and by 1849, people were calling the foreboding landscape Death Valley. Some gold and silver was found, but the most long-term thing of value would be borax. Borax was mostly harvested as a surface crust in Death Valley and is technically known as sodium borate. Surely the listeners have heard of Borax, which is a commercial cleaning agent. Borax is also used in the manufacture of glass fibers and as an antiseptic. Throughout the 1880s, 20-Mule Teams would transport the borax to Mojave, California. The borax was originally found by prospectors Aaron and Rosie Winters in 1881 and William Tell Coleman founded the Harmony Borax Works. He is the one who devised the mule team transports, which consisted of two box wagons and a water wagon that were pulled by 18 mules and 2 horses. Coleman's business collapsed in 1888, but Frank M. "Borax" Smith acquired Coleman's holdings in 1890 and he formed a new company named Pacific Coast Borax Company. Frank became the Borax King and he had major holdings in California where he would move most of his efforts after the Death Valley borax was gone. One of the mines in Death Valley was the Lila C. and when the railroad came to the area it built a spur to the mine. 

This inspired the founding of a town, which Robert Tubb and his wife Shotgun Kitty did in 1907. The Tubbs opened a saloon, store and brothel in the town they called Death Valley Junction. Kitty's real name was Kathryn and she found herself married to Robert after placing an ad for herself about being a mail order bride. Robert saw the ad and took her up on it. She was 16 and he was 34. Kitty helped Robert run everything about their little business. She served food in the saloon, ran the grocery store and was the madame for the brothel. Kitty's nickname came from the fact that she never went anywhere without her shotgun. It is said that she was a crack shot. 

Hattie Cook and Nel Hoff opened another saloon in town in 1909 and this one was scandalous because women were allowed - obviously, since it was run by women. Hattie tended the bar. Their liquor license was eventually revoked later that year. Women continued to contribute to Death Valley Junction through the years with a widowed Abbie Pierce opening a store, hotel and restaurant in 1916 and Winnie Corkill - for whom the Corkill Hall was named - came to town with her Borax Company executive husband in 1915 and she brought her piano, which she happily played at all social events. The Death Valley Railroad started operating between Daeth Valley Junction and Ryan, California, which helped it to grow. The Pacific Coast Borax Company decided to start building in the town and architect Alexander Hamilton McCulloch was tasked with designing a civic center. McCulloch came up with a U-shaped design that would put the three sides of the building around the town square. This was done in the Spanish Colonial style and the building was made from adobe. Inside the civic center there was a store, an employee dorm, offices, a hotel with 23 rooms, a dining room, a gymnasium, ice cream parlor and billiard room. There also was an opera house added at the northeast corner that was called Corkill Hall. This became a town center for meetings, church services, dances and movies. 

Pacific Coast would eventually merge with another company to become US Borax and today, it is known as Rio Tinto Borax. In 1927, borax mining moved from Death Valley to Boron, California and the miner's living quarters were converted into a hotel. Railroad operations ceased in 1928 and the town went into decline. 

The former civic center now sat mostly empty and a woman named Ettie Lee purchased Death Valley Junction with the hope of opening the hotel as a retirement home. The property was in a terrible condition. She had owed $170,000 on the property, so she went to court to fight to bring that amount down because the property wasn't worth that and she won, having to just fork over $7,000 to pay off the debt on the town. And then came the final woman who would leave an indelible mark on this place, Marta Becket. Marta was born in 1924 in New York City where she took ballet lessons as a teenager. She loved it and decided to make dance her life and she was accepted on the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall. Becket also performed several times on Broadway and she started a one-woman show that she took on a nationwide tour. This wasn't a grand tour, she performed at school auditoriums and at small theaters. In 1967, she and her husband were traveling for one of these tours when one of the worst things that could happen while driving through Death Valley happened. They got a flat tire. They were fortunate that they were just outside Death Valley Junction and that it had a gas station. They limped the car into town and Becket's husband started repairing the tire. Marta wasn't much for working on cars, so she decided to explore this little rundown town. She spied Corkill Hall and took a peek inside. The building was abandoned and pretty decrepit, but Marta's little heart went pitter pat. In her mind's eye she saw her own private theater. She immediately fell in love with the place and told her husband that she wanted to make this their home. He agreed and so she hunted down the owner and asked if she could rent the hall. He agreed and charged her $45 a month and told her she needed to take care of any repairs. 

Now, the reason Marta's heart went pitter pat wasn't just because she wanted her own theater and private stage, but she had visited a fortune teller in Manhattan and she told Becket, "You will be leaving New York and move to a very rural place. And you're going to do the best work of your life." 

Becket and her husband moved and soon got ownership of the hall. They renamed it the Amargosa Opera House in honor of the nearby Amargosa Valley. They set to making repairs and renovating and prepared for Marta's first performance. And then a terrible flood came through and the newly painted white walls were ruined. So Marta decided to paint an audience on the walls. She knew this might be the only audience she would ever have. It would take her 6 years to complete painting the walls from floor to ceiling with a variety of people seated as if in box seats. She started with a queen and king in the top center and added nuns, monks, ladies of the evening and a variety of other people, as well as two of her cats. Sixteen ladies on the ceiling play antique instruments. Even with the walls unfinished, Becket decided to schedule her first performance there in 1968 and twelve people showed up. There must have been some intrigue about this woman and her opera house because in 1970 two of the attendees to a play were from the National Geographic. So Marta got some free coverage and she was off and running. 

The opera house was a popular stop in the desert and even famous people like Ray Brabury and Red Skelton popped in to watch a performance. And even if there was no audience, Marta still went on - she always had her wall audience. Marta would say, "While you have time left, find a place where you can live out your dreams. Even if it is on top of a mountain or in the middle of a desert." She performed at her theater for 40 years. 

A Las Vegas Sun article from 2005 reads, "The first glimpse audiences have of Marta Becket is that of the 81-year-old entertainer walking onstage wearing a black dress with a red feather boa. With her face painted, her eyes intense and her dark hair pulled back, her mere presence is theatrical. Immediately, she breaks into song. She moves in a circle, then grabs a tambourine and introduces 'Masquerade,' a show she wrote, produced and choreographed. 'I've always felt that I should be someone other than me,' she sings. 'I need to escape for a day.' The lyrics are a perfect reflection of the tireless artist, who has lived for nearly 40 years in Death Valley Junction." Becket gave her final show on February 12, 2012 at the age of 87. The theater still had performances and Marta would watch from the same seat every night. She passed away at her home in Death Valley Junction in 2017 at the age of 92. She had formed Amargosa Opera House, Inc. in 1974 as a non-profit and it continues to run the opera house today. Her dress and flowers now permanently sit on that chair that she sat in to watch performances. The hotel also rented out rooms during Marta's tenure and still does today, featuring 16 rooms with no phones or TVs. Marta painted murals throughout the hotel too that remain. The guest dining room is painted in trompe l'oeil (tromp ah loy) style depicting a Spanish courtyard. Room 22 was Red Skelton's room when he would come and there is a mural of a ballerina dancing on a ball while acrobats perform. They use BORAX in their laundry, of course. There is a campground across from the hotel for RVs and tents, but there are no hook-ups and the toilets are port-a-potties. 

There are many hauntings connected to the hotel and opera house. Marta had two husbands, both named Tom. The first Tom eventually left her after they moved to Death Valley Junction. Her second husband was Tom Willet, a comedian who joined her on stage until his death from a stroke. His spirit has been seen in the theater, usually sitting in a seat watching performances. A cat spirit also haunts the theater and it used to interrupt Marta's performances. People have seen this ghost cat wandering around. Shadow figures are seen dancing across the stage. 

There is one area of the hotel that has been left unrenovated and everyone calls it Spooky Hollow. Many strange things happen in this area and that is probably because it was once used as a hospital and morgue. The dining room harbors audible voices of a group of people. There is also the high pitched voice of a woman. A story claims that a young girl drowned in a bathtub in Room 24 in 1967. People staying in this room claim to hear a child crying, even when no child is staying at the hotel. These cries are usually heard at night. A malevolent spirit hangs out in Room 32. This had been the mine bosses room and he wasn't a nice guy apparently. The most haunted room is said to be Room 9. The doorknob will often turn on its own and people claim to wake up in the middle of the night and feel something holding down their legs and feet. The sounds of a child giggling and running down the hall are heard outside this room too and when guests look out, they see nothing. Several guests have been so spooked by activity that they have packed their bags in the middle of the night and left. The scent of lilacs is smelled in the hallways on occasion. Ghost Adventures investigated here in 2010. Aaron claimed in the middle of the day that while in spooky hollow, he saw a full bodied apparition of a painter. The crew heard strange noises like screaming, banging, doors Creaking, moaning and doors slamming. They caught the following EVPs: "Do We Have To?", "All The Lights Are Off", "Behind You", "It Was Fun", "I Seek Help", "Dammit", "Need Some Help", "No One Cares!" The thermal camera captured a red figure in the doorframe leaving a room. There was a distinct nose, chin and lips. Room 9 mysteriously became locked and they checked both doors, and both were locked, when they came out, the main room 9 door was unlocked. Zak also claimed to get possessed here. *eye roll*

AliceInBondageLand wrote on reddit last year, " I was having trouble sleeping, while being the only guest at the hotel (the staff goes home at night). It was feeling spooky but relatively safe, because I have a huge dog. At midnight, I had the strange feeling that I should go "wish Marta goodnight" in the main lobby (where her portrait hangs). I was hoping that would help me finally be able to go to sleep. When I got there, I heard a very strange series of noises coming from somewhere inside the building. I followed the noises into the the public women's bathroom of the lobby. All of the lights were off but the HOT WATER tap in the left sink was on FULL BLAST. The plumbing in the building is very very very old and you can literally hear it when someone turns on the water anywhere, if you are paying attention. There is no way there could have been that much water flowing without being noticed. I was the only living person in the building since 8pm. I was the only guest and I didn't use the public bathroom at any time during my stay. I fully believe that the tap was turned off until I reached the lobby and said goodnight to the "artist in residence". Should I have left the hot water on to steam up the windows and wait for a message, like in the movie Ghost? I also had several dreams that night, which turned out to be true. For example, I had a nightmare that a stray cat came into my house and beat up my cats... when I returned home from vacation, there was an extra cat that had snuck into my house! The catsitter didn't know it wasn't my cat, so she just kept feeding him."

Nevada Jack made a great video about the place last year and he said, "After packing the car using the exterior door and filming the outro, I returned to the room to double check that I had everything before dropping the key off at the front desk. As I stepped inside, I heard faint voice mumbling sounds on the other side of the door in the hallway. Assuming it was other guests, I thought nothing of it. But just in case, I turned on the camera." He stuck the camera out in the hall and there was no one. Then he walked down the hall, both ways. He's the only person in the hotel. There was nobody outside either. 

Death Valley National Park was established as a National Monument in 1933 and became a National Park in 1994. It measures 1.3 million acres. Parts of the Harmony Borax Works are here today. Death Valley is said to harbor "interdimensional beings" and Native Americans say there are skinwalkers here.  There are many ghost towns that dot the land. One is Skidoo Ghost Town. The site was active from 1906 to 1917 and produced 75,000 ounces of gold. The name was inspired by the slang phrase "23 skidoo" which meant that a gold rush was fast. Today, it is just crumbling ruins and mine shafts. The town was famous for being the site of the only hanging in Death Valley and this man was hanged twice for the benefit of photographers. His name was Hooch Simpson and he killed a banker during a robbery. After the town hanged him and buried him, the photographers came along and were bummed they didn't get pictures. The town folk dug him up and hanged him again. Then, the town doctor cut Hooch’s head off because he wanted to see if he had syphilis because the man had once been a respectable member of society who seemed to lose his mind. Now the headless ghost of Hooch Simpson supposedly still wanders the area, probably looking for his head.

Death Valley has a creepy name. Is it a creepy place? The Amargosa Hotel and Opera House has such an interesting look and history. Is it haunted? That is for you to decide!  

HGB Ep. 643 - Haunted Middletown

This Month in History - The Birth of Peter Paul Rubens

In the month of June, on the 28th, in 1577, Flemish Baroque painter, Peter Paul Rubens was born. He was born to his Antwerp refugee parents in modern day Germany. His family was of the well-to-do bourgeois class with many members owning and operating grocery shops and pharmacies. Artistic as a child, Rubens began formal training at the age of 14 through apprenticeships under established Antwerp masters Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. At the age of 21, Peter was accepted into the Guild of Saint Luke as an independant master. By the age of 23, Rubens had traveled to Italy to hone his craft by studying classical antiquities and Renaissance masters. He quickly became the court painter for the Duke of Mantua. While in Italy, he studied artists like Titian, Caravaggio and Michelangelo, and in the process, was introduced to rich color palettes and dramatic renderings. By his return to Antwerp in 1609, Rubens had begun developing his signature Flemish Baroque style. Peter Paul Rubens does not have a single painting that he is most famous for, but instead is known for his multiple celebrated masterpieces that include a variety of religious, mythological and historical pieces of art. He produced approximately 1,400 paintings during his lifetime and became the most celebrated artist in Europe during the 17th century. 

Haunted Middletown

Middletown is located in the state of Connecticut and was once a prosperous port. Wesleyan University is here and it has a couple of haunted locations, including the historic Samuel Russell House. There are several other haunted locations in the town and an awful murder has left behind spiritual residue. Join us for the history and hauntings of Middletown. 

Some of the earliest people on the land that would become Middletown along the western bank of the Connecticut River where the Wangunk (wang gunk), a tribe of Algonquian-speaking Native Americans. In 1650, the first settlers, who were Puritans, came from nearby Connecticut colonies in 1650 and the General Court of Connecticut established the town of Mattabesett in 1651. They renamed it Middletown in November of 1653 because it was in the middle, between Windsor and Saybrook on the Great River. The soil here was rocky and tough to work, so life was hard and became tougher when the Pequot and Mohegan tribes arrived. The people of Middletown thought of the Mohegan as being "destroyers of men." Between the fighting between the Native tribes and smallpox wiping out many people, the indigenous people had their numbers dwindling so much that they sold off most of their land to the colonists. The town thrived and by the time of the American Revolution, Middletown was a huge and prosperous port. This meant it was key to the slave trade as well and by 1756, Middletown had the third-largest African slave population in the state of Connecticut. After the war, Connecticut abolished slavery. The port suffered economically during the War of 1812 because of trade restrictions and never recovered. Wesleyan University was established in 1831 and it became one of the United States' leading liberal arts universities. 

Wesleyan University

The University was founded in 1831 by Methodist leaders and citizens of Middletown and had 48 students as their first class. There were also three professors, a tutor and a president. Tuition was $36 per year. The school was obviously named for John Wesley and that first president was Willbur Fisk, which pushed for a unique model that was a break from traditional European models of educating. These traditional models were about classical studies. Fisk wanted to have modern languages, literature and natural sciences. 

Women were allowed to come to the college in 1872, but by 1912, the University was exclusively male again. And the reason why they did this was because so many women wanted to enroll that they thought the university would become entirely female. In 1937, the University became independent of the Methodist church. In 1970, the University was opened to women again. From 1888 to 1890, future President Woodrow Wilson taught history and political economy here. The campus covers 360 acres and has over 340 buildings. Several large buildings were former private residences and one of these is the Russell House. The Samuel Russell House was built in the Greek Revival style for Samuel Russell in 1828. This is one of the finest Neoclassical mansions in the northeast and is located at 350 High Street. Russell was born in 1789 in Middletown. For those of you interested in secret societies, his cousin William Huntigton Russeel founded Skull & Bones at Yale University. Samuel had a tough start to life. He was orphaned by the age of twelve and received no inheritance. He was unable to go to college, so he decided to become an apprentice and he learned under a maritime trade merchant. Russell became a trading representative of the Providence, Rhode Island firm of Edward Carrington & Company and he traveled to China. Eventually, he founded the trading firm of Russell & Company in Canton, China and he made a fortune between 1818 and 1831. Now, we would love to tell you that this was in goods like furniture and art and such, but it wasn't. Russell was importing Turkish and Bengal opium into the port of Canton. He was exporting fine teas and silks to Europe and the United States, but clearly, the opium was his money maker. While the house was being built, Russell was in Canton, so he left the management of the build to his second wife Frances. His first wife, Mary, had died at the age of 23 and Frances, her sister, stepped in to take care of the Russell's two children. Russell married Frances in 1825. He came back to Middletown in 1831 and he lived in the mansion until his death in 1862.

The Russell House was designed by architect Ithiel Town and built by David Hoadley of Curtis and Hoadley. Town was a big proponent of the Greek Revival style and Roger Hale Newton writes in his book "Town and Davis, Architects" that the Russell House was "indicative of the hand of Town in its undeniable sophistication." A professor named Talbot Hamlin says the house was "in the richest Greek vein" and "its Corinthian columns and open plan are urban and magnificent rather than in the simple old tradition." 

On its basic level, Town was trying to create an imposing Greek temple with an interior plan suited to living and entertaining on a grand scale. And he really did seem to accomplish this with six full-height Corinthian columns supporting a heavy entablature and low flushboarded pediment. Pilasters support a high entablature over the double entrance door that is surrounded by side and overlights whose frames are decorated with fretwork. Stucco was made to look like large-block ashlar and was put over the brick masonry walls. The foundation was made from brownstone and there is a gabled roof. The rear portico was enclosed in 1855. A two-story north wing was added at that time too. Formal gardens were planted on the grounds. The interior has a spacious center hall with two rooms on either side and a stairway with a landing at the end of the hall. The walls were painted using Trompe-l'œil (Tromp olay), which is an artistic technique that creates a kind of optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional space, so the walls look like they have paneling on the walls even though they don't. The fireplaces are breathtaking with Ionic columns on the sides holding up the mantelpieces and the fireplaces are made from marble. This mansion established a standard of luxury and elegance in Middletown. The house was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2001. In 1937, Wesleyan University bought it and the mansion now houses the Department of Philosophy. 

Students claim to hear doors slamming on their own and they have seen the full-bodied apparition of a woman wandering the halls. The University isn't shy about the Russell House being haunted. They released a video on the Wesleyan YouTube channel in 2014 that included tales about the spirits. 

Public Safety (Psafe) officers were interviewed and they shared getting odd feelings in the house and hearing strange sounds and disembodied footsteps. One of the PSAs said, "I had to go down in the basement and while I'm in the basement I hear all the noises upstairs and I know for sure I was the only one in the building. Sometimes you hear footsteps going up the stairs, but you're the only person in the building and then you'll stop to make sure you know you're not freaking out, that it's not your footsteps echoing but no you'll hear like another like three, four, five more footsteps. When I set the alarm, if somebody was in there, the alarm would go off and there's been many nights that I've heard things that sound like a person but the alarm never goes off. One time, I try to you know test my nerve and you know say, was anyone here and I just only heard something fall. So ever since that day, I haven't done that. I just go there and do what I have to do and try to get out." The Thames Society of Paranormal Investigation did an overnight at the house and during the night, the cameras moved side to side on their own and footsteps were heard in the upstairs floors when no one was walking up there. These were also caught on video. Then the investigators asked if the spirits could knock on something and they did. 

The Russell House isn't the only place that is haunted on the campus. The Anthropology Building on High Street has featured some experiences. The administrative assistant for the Anthropology Department is Donna Rak and she happens to be a psychic medium. She talked to Spencer Arnold who interviewed her for the The Wesleyan Argus in 2019. 

Arnold wrote, "She mentioned that she used to have a phone on the wall that would ring spontaneously, and when she picked up, no one was there. She called the phone department only to be told that there was no phone number associated with the phone on the wall. Additionally, a book on the rituals of East Timor would be pulled out on the shelf when no one claimed to have gotten it out. Shortly after, the department decided to clear out the attic of the building only to find a skull. While it’s fairly routine to discover a skull within the anthropology department, this one was actually unregistered, and they discovered that it had been dug up from one of the cemeteries. The skull was removed, and according to Rak, the book never moved and the phone never rang again."

Spiderweed Preserve

The Spiderweed Preserve covers 157 acres and has a 2.7 mile loop trail. About a half mile into the hike, one will find the stone ruins of the former summer home of Helen Lohman. She had donated the property to the Nature Conservancy over half a century ago. The home had once been  two stories, but only has three outer walls that remain. People claim to run into dark energies here and the stone ruins have left people feeling as though they are being watched and feeling cold spots. 

Harrie's Jailhouse

Harrie's Jailhouse is a restaurant located at 53 Warwick Street. This was opened by Carrie Carella and Heather Kelly of NoRA Cupcake Company and that's where the name Harrie comes from. The pub-style restaurant features gourmet sandwiches, bar snacks, and signature cocktails with a nod to the building’s history, such as The Capone and The Pen. Before this restaurant, another restaurant called Bread and Water was here, but a kitchen fire shut it down. The building is the historic 1850s Pameacha Jail that housed 12 cells. The Alms House was right next door. Like many old jails, the warden lived at the jail with his family. These quarters were at the front of the building. His wife cooked for the prisoners. Later this became the home of Leo B. Santangelo, who was the first Italian mayor of Middletown. The place is said to be haunted and Ghost Hunters investigated during Season 11. They caught an EVP of a child saying, "Let's play dress up." Patrons and ghost hunters believe the former holding cells are haunted by the friendly ghost of a little girl named Sarah. Sarah could be one of the 100 orphans that were housed in the attic of the Alms House. Heather Kelly said she has definitely felt and heard things, but she hasn't seen a ghost there. 

The Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane 

The hospital was opened in Middletown in 1868 and was the first public mental healthcare facility in Connecticut. The hospital grounds were designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, and the initial buildings were designed by Frederick Clarke Withers. 

In 1878, the Connecticut Valley Hospital Cemetery was established where those who were buried there only had numbers to mark their headstones. There are believed to be around 1,700 people buried here. Burials ended in 1957. By 1896, four groups of buildings had been built, making this one of the largest asylums in America. There are 80 structures on the property today that is laid out over 650 acres. Today, it is known as Connecticut Valley Hospital and is still a psychiatric care facility, operated by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. The surrounding woods and abandoned buildings have been explored by urban explorers who have reported seeing phantom figures and hearing disembodied voices. The cemetery is thought to be the most haunted location and that could be because only a handful of the burials have been connected to the person who was buried beneath a number.

The Murder of Lavinia Bacon

Lavinia Bacon was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe we should say she was in the right place because she was inside her home. A place she should feel safe. On the morning of September 24, 1843, Lavinia woke up feeling ill, so she sent her husband and three children off to church without her. 

The family were living in a home built in 1760 by her husband Ebenezer's ancestors. This home still stands on Country Club Road. There was a farm nearby where Lucian Hall, a 26-year-old farm laborer, and his wife were living. Lucian was a never-do-well and had already spent time in jail for burglary. Since it was Sunday morning, he assumed the house would be empty with everyone at church. He climbed through an open window and started rifling through a desk, which got Lavinia's attention. She entered the room, surprising Lucian who decided he had to kill her because she recognized him. He grabbed a large butcher knife and stabbed her multiple times. Lucian stuffed the cash he found in the desk into his pockets and ran from the house, finding a barn to hide in. Two local drunks named William Bell and Bethuel Roberts were arrested because they were near the house. Several witnesses did come forward to say that they had seen Lucian Hall near the Bacon farm on the morning of the murder. All three men were put on trial and Lucian had some kind of crisis of conscience and told his lawyer that he couldn't let two innocent men go to the gallows. He made a full confession and was sentenced to be hanged on the afternoon of June 20, 1844, at the Middletown jail. Right before this, there had been a campaign to ban public executions and so a 15-foot wall was placed in front of the gallows and hall was only attended on the scaffold by local Episcopal and Baptist clergy. After the trap was dropped and Lucian was pronounced dead, the sheriff allowed the crowd to parade by the corpse while a military band played "Yankee Doodle Dandy." After the murder, claims of the house being haunted began. Through the decades, tenants of the house have claimed to hear disembodied footsteps at night, especially on the stairs and there have been sudden drops in temperature. A liquid that is the texture of blood has dropped from the ceiling and even outside from the roof. 

Indian Hill Cemetery

Indian Hill Cemetery is said to be the most scenic and serene area in Middletown. The cemetery was founded in 1850 and was a part of the Rural Cemetery Movement. It is filled with trees and winding pathways, as well as the burials of some of the descendants of the first settlers. This is located on a hill adjacent to Wesleyan University. 

Before the cemetery was here, the Wangunk people had built fortifications on the hill. Eventually settlers got the land and they made it their cemetery, where the elite of the city wanted to be buried. In 1867, a chapel was added to the cemetery. This was a gothic revival brownstone that was built by the wife of Samuel Russell in his memory. The original bell was forged at the Troy, New York Meneely Bell Foundry in 1868 and is still in the chapel's belfry. There are Connecticut politicians buried here including Governors and William Manchester. Manchester enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II and fought in the Battle of Okinawa. He became a journalist and wrote a three-part biography trilogy about Winston Churchill. Manchester also wrote a book with a detailed account about the assassination of JFK. He concluded that Oswald acted alone, but he had been commissioned by the Kennedy family. Jackie actually filed a lawsuit to prevent its publication even though she had authorized it. They settled the suit in 1967. He died in 2004 at the age of 82. 

There is another grave for Little Johnny that is dated to 1870. Johnny was quite young when he died and his parents couldn't afford much for a memorial so there is a little brownstone headstone with the words "Little Johnny" and nothing more.  

Stewart Alsop was a prolific political writer who had been born in 1914. He was a grandnephew of Teddy Roosevelt and graduated from Yale University in 1936. He enlisted in the British Army because his high blood pressure wouldn't let him join the US Army, but he eventually transferred to that and did missions in France for which he won the Croix de Guerre (Quwah du gar "like gary") with Palm. The French Cross. After the war, Alsop became a reporter and he partnered with his brother in writing a syndicated Washington column for The New York Herald Tribune. In 1962, he became a contributing editor for national affairs for The Saturday Evening Post. Later. he became the magazine's Washington editor. Alsop was diagnosed with an unusual form of leukemia and it eventually killed him. He wrote a memoir about his battle called "Stay of Execution" in 1973. Alsop wrote at the end of that memoir "a dying man needs to die as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist." Towards the end of his battle, he asked the doctor if he could be given something other than morphine because of the sedative effect. The doctor suggested heroin. he died in 1974 at the age of sixty. Dr. Joseph Barratt is buried here and he was described as a complicated man. That's a nice way of saying mentally ill. He had been a physician, botanist, and geologist. Some fossilized remains were found in the Portland brownstone quarry and Barratt was sure they were dinosaur footprints. he held onto that belief for 30 years, even though no paleontologists agreed with him. He took to asking random people on the street to lay down on the sidewalk so he could compare the indentations with the human figure. By1880, he had been committed to the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane. Barratt died there two years later. His friends paid for his monument and chose a brownstone from the quarry with a dinosaur footprint and had the following inscription put on it, "The Testimony of the Rocks." 

People who visit the cemetery claim that they hear disembodied whispers and they have seen shadowy figures wandering the grounds at dusk.

Middletown is one of the earliest settlements in America with one of the more prestigious universities in the country. Are these locations in Middletown haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 642 - Zener Cards, the CIA and Psychic Phenomenon

Moment in Oddity - 1986 Concept Car (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

So many of us watched The Jetsons cartoon back in the day as kids. The idea of flying cars was something we thought would already be happening in our current times. There was an interesting concept car that was debueded by Oldsmobile in partnership with the design firm Italdesign at the 1986 Turin Motor Show. This one-of-a-kind Oldsmobile Incas was the brain-child of Giorgetto Giugiaro (jor-JET-toh jew-JAHR-oh), an Italian automotive designer who was named Car Designer of the Century in 1999. Car consumers who wanted more of an aircraft cockpit type feel, would have been very excited about the Oldsmobile Incas concept car. Instead of having a conventional round steering wheel, this car featured a two-handled aircraft styled yoke. Everything that you would normally find on a traditional dashboard were located on the yoke handlebars. There were multiple buttons and dials found on the yoke for things like the climate control, radio, automatic transmission, windshield wipers, horn, lighting, and cruise control. The only exception to the button ladened design, were the turn signals, which were found on a traditional stalk sticking out from the left side of the yoke. To enhance the cockpit feel, the vehicle also sported gull wind/scissor hybrid doors. In addition to the Incas' unique steering yoke and doors, the vehicle also was equipped with a quad-turbocharged engine and all-wheel driving specs.  Although this concept car was not made for mass production, its fighter-jet style canopy, gull wing doors, and aircraft style steering wheel certainly made it odd.  

Zener Cards, the CIA and Psychic Phenomenon

Anyone who has followed and listened to History Goes Bump for any amount of time knows that we consider ourselves open-minded skeptics when it comes to paranormal activity. Particularly the kind of activity connected to psychics. When science gets involved in the paranormal, it lends it some credibility. Parapsychology became a part of college curriculum and at that same time, scientists and government agencies also started paying attention to psychic phenomenon. Intelligence organizations even tried to use it to spy on other countries. On this episode, we are going to look at one of the main tools used to test psi abilities - Zener Cards - and wind our way through the history of parapsychology and some of the famous names connected to this and operations like Project Stargate. 

Years of researching stories and then conducting our own investigations has left us both leaning more towards believers than skeptics. But when it came to psychic phenomenon, I had been pretty hardcore skeptic. Then I met Kelly and a few of you listeners who have abilities and then even experienced my own bits of synchronicity and premonitions and sensitivities, and I really had to reevaluate what I thought about psychic phenomenon. And I have become a true believer that there really is something to this sixth sense. And just like how having the government talking about UFOs and UAPs and aliens has made it "okay" to believe that we humans are not alone in this universe, its the government's admissions about research into psychic phenomenon that has made that something that is more openly talked about as well. The term MKULTRA just rolls off people's tongues today like they are talking about a typical historical event. Delving into the human brain and mind has been an important thing to not only our intelligence services, but the intelligence servies of many countries. I picked up this book that looked really interesting to me and it blew my mind to read about the history of research and testing of psychic abilities. That book was written by Annie Jacobsen and is titled "Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis." Jacobsen isn't just any author. She's a Pulitzer Prize nominated author. She isn't considered a quack and she comes at the topic just like we come at paranormal activity, with an open-minded skepticism. This episode was inspired by this book and our own personal experiences. We want to begin with talking about Zener cards because these are a symbol of the legitimacy that the scientific community and the government have given to psychic phenomenon.

Karl E. Zener was born in 1903 and considered a visionary in the field of extra-sensory perception or ESP. His higher learner began at the University of Chicago and ended with a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1924. He was a fellow with the United States National Research Council at the University of Berlin for a year after that and then he taught as a professor at Princeton University for a year. 

And then everything changed when he took up what would be a lifelong post with Duke University. It was here that he met J.B. Rhine and the two became colleagues in the pursuit of studying ESP. J.B. Rhine had been born in 1895 and came to this place through a different process. While Zener was classically educated in psychology, Rhine had studied botany and received his PhD in that in 1925. He had a stint as a Marine for a bit before that. Rhine had studied at the University of Chicago and author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had come through on a tour and given a lecture at the university in 1922. Rhine and his wife had attended and were mesmerized as Doyle talked about the scientific proof of communication with the dead. Rhine later wrote, "This mere possibility was the most exhilarating thought I had had in years." Rhine held onto this fascination and studied for a year at Harvard under Professor William McDougall for a year. When McDougall left to go to Duke University in 1927, Rhine followed him so that he could work under him. And thus was born parapsychology. 

So Rhine and Zener started working together and devising ways to test ESP. Early tests used a standard deck of cards, but then the men decided to design their own set of cards, which Rhine dubbed Zener cards in honor of his colleague. These were a deck of 25 cards with five sets of just five symbols. The cards had an abstract blue pattern on the back and the symbols were printed on the front in black on a white background. These shapes were a circle, a cross or plus sign, three wavy lines, a square and a five-pointed star.

These Zener cards are still used today for testing and Annie Jacobsen mentions them often in her book. How these experiments were conducted is that the researcher would shuffle the deck and pick one card, then observe the card for a minute, ask the psychic what symbol was on the card and then record the answer. While these early tests in the 1930s were just done in a standard room, in the 1950s, a Faraday cage was used. This takes us to Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Massachusetts. This is a medieval-style seaside castle built by Jack Hammond. Hammond was a well-respected inventor (he invented the radio-controlled torpedo) and very rich man who was a member of the Round Table Foundation. This foundation was funded by Joyce Borden - yes of the dairy family - Alice Astor and Marcella du Pont and started by Dr. Andrija Puharich. The purpose of the foundation was to explore ESP. Puharich had been a medical doctor who was always fascinated with mind-to-mind communication. His goal was to merge medicine and mysticism and eventually he would get really into mushrooms and how they could expand the mind. Puharich wrote, " Watch long trails of birds in migration, the unerring return of the homing pigeon, the struggle of the fish going upstrem to spawn, the orderly movement of armies of ants, the pecuniary nature of the bee. The answer to these many questions, I am convinced, lie in the nature of the nervous system. A sensitivity to forces, some of which we already know, and most of which are unknown. I have wondered at the clairvoyance of the mind that can break loose from the shackles of conformity and 'facts' and can give us the philosophy of Plato, the universe of Newton, the spirit of Christ, and the psychological insight of Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, William James and Kalil Gibran. The deep study of this problem is my life's work." When Puharich and Hammond started working together, they decided to build a Faraday cage in Hammond Castle to conduct their experiments. Hammond knew about this kind of cage because he had been good friends with Nikola Tesla.

Tesla had told Hammond that he thought ESP traveled on extremely low frequency (ELF) waves. To give you an idea of what these are, they are generated by thunder and lightning storms. A Faraday cage shields anyone inside of it from all electro-magnetic waves except ELF waves. The thought was that the cage would enhance psychic abilities. 

The cage they built was from floor to ceiling, made entirely of metal and it was lined with copper mesh. Hammond Castle today has recreated this cage and has artifacts from the experiments conducted there. Their first experiments were with an Irish psychic named Eileen Garrett, whom may be familiar to some of you listeners as she frequently worked with Hans Holzer. At the end of their experiments, Hammond concluded that ESP was not transmitted over electromagnetic frequencies, since Garrett could still communicate with the science team telepathically while she was in the cage. Basically, Garrett proved to be the real deal and ELF waves should be the focus. (Troy Taylor excerpt) The experiments with Zener cards conducted by these two men and by Rhine and Zener were very successful, with one Duke divinity graduate student named Hubert Pearce making 25 consecutive correct guesses, which was a full run of the Zener deck. (pg. 199 Putnam) But over time these experiments were discredited because people pointed out that cards were used by magicians for playing tricks and could be manipulated and that shuffling cards was a poor way of getting a random distribution of symbols. Scientists claimed that what Rhine was doing wasn't science and that he was just a scientist who deeply believed in some quasi-science and that he had a bias. It's always interesting how bias is accused of only going one way. Surely scientists who give ESP no chance are biased in their beliefs as well. The stats for Zener cards goes something like this: Probability predicts these test results for a test of 25 questions with five possible answers if chance is operating: 79.3% of people will get between 3 and 7 correct, 10.9% will get 8 or more correct, one person in 73,700 will get 15 or more correct, one person in 5.16 billion will get 20 or more correct, and one person in 298 quadrillion will get all 25 correct. 

Regardless of what other scientists thought, an entity that was very interested in the results that Rhine, Zener and Puharich got, was the United States Department of Defense. Jacobsen saw declassified documents that revealed that the Army started working with Rhine's Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory in 1952. They weren't as interested in how these abilities worked as they were in how to enhance and control the psi abilities. 

These early studies with the military were with dogs and then homing pigeons and finally cats. Meanwhile, Dr. Puharich was giving briefings at the Pentagon to the Advisory Group on Psychological Warfare and Unconventional Warfare. During the Cold War, our military and intelligence services had discovered that the Soviet Union was working heavily with psychic phenomenon. They were trying to find ways to not only counter whatever the Soviets were doing, but to also wage their own psychic war.  To enhance ESP, the CIA was looking to find hallucinogenic mushrooms and the code name for this was MKULTRA Subproject 58. When Puharich became disillusioned with the military and CIA and went to his Round Table Foundation work, the FBI began spying on him. Puharich would later come back to the CIA for a government research contract when he happened upon an Israeli paratrooper who demonstrated some amazing psychic abilities, Uri Geller. Uri Geller is a conundrum. He was able to bend spoons and start stopped watches with his mind, read the contents of sealed envelopes, see things while blindfolded and control the thoughts of others. These are all tricks that are performed by mentalists and magicians. Why wouldn't Geller just claim to be someone like Houdini? Why was he persistent in claiming he had psi abilities? Was it because he was the real deal? For me, I had always thought Geller was just a very charismatic mentalist. But after discovering in Jacobsen's book how much Geller was used by the military and intelligence services and what he was able to do for them, I found myself wondering if Geller really had some abilities. Geller came onto the scientific scene when Parapsychologists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ studied him at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). This testing was spurred by Puharich going to the CIA and telling them about Geller. The CIA wanted him tested thoroughly and the SRI is who they trusted to do the testing. The CIA was also trying to distant themselves from Puharich. This went all the way to the top. The decision to do the testing was made by CIA director Richard Helms.

SRI was founded in 1946 to do research and development for commercial businesses and government agencies. They did a ton of stuff that had nothing to do with psi research, like developing technicolor, robots and even inkjet printing. In 1972, Puthoff and Targ were interested in investigating remote viewing and they not only worked with Geller,  but also a writer/artist named Ingo Swann and military intelligence officer Joseph McMoneagle. The US intelligence community funded their research until the mid-1980s.

Uri Geller was born in Tel Aviv in 1946 and his abilities first appeared when he was seven, according to his mother. His father gave him a watch and it immediately stopped working when he put it on. His parents replaced it a little later and this watch to, stopped working when he put it on. As a teenager, he was sent away to boarding school and it was there that he started bending spoons and keys. He befriended a man who was a martial arts instructor and showed him his abilities. This man taught him martial arts and one day Uri said to him, "Yoav, I can read your mind and I know you are an Israeli spy." The man was shocked that a 14-year-old had blown his cover. Geller joined the military with the hope of working for Mossad one day himself. He was injured during the Six-Day War and was reassigned to a government run youth camp where he entertained the kids with his telepathy. Through this, he got his first paid performance at one of the kid's schools. Then he was off and running in night clubs. When people asked how he did his tricks, he always maintained that they were real. Legal scholar Amnon Rubinstein met Geller shortly after hosting a show on psychics. He was very skeptical of the ability and Geller asked him to pick a number between 1 and 100,000. Rubinstein chose a number and said it aloud. Geller opened his palm and there written in black ink was the very number Rubinstein had said. He believed that Geller had put the number in his mind. Rubinstein started testing Geller in his home and he became a true believer. He said, "He could somehow plant a thought right in our mind. To me, this is so much more significant than spoon bending. This is a single phenomenon that casts doubt on many of the foundations of our rational world." Puharich had tested Geller for a few weeks before bringing him to America and declassified documents reveal that Puharich told the CIA that he and an Israeli officer had witnessed Geller "breaking a gold ring held in another person's clenched fist; concentrating on a pair of bimetal-type thermometers, and selectively making the temperature rise 6 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit on one or the other instrument; starting broken clocks and watches solely by concentration; moving the hands of a watch forward or backward without any physical contact with the watch and telepathy with 90% accuracy in telepathy tests where Dr. Puharich would think of a 3-digit number."  

In 1972, Geller arrived at SRI and he would join forces with Ingo-Swann in testing. The results were dubbed the Swann-Geller Phenomenon and started twenty years of classified government research into ESP and psychokinesis. Geller was tested with dice  and had statistically significant results. Each of eight times he was asked what number was facing up on the dice in a box, he got the right answer. He did the same thing with objects placed in film canisters and got all twelve without error.

(pg. 147) CIA officer Kit Green seemed to believe in Geller's ability.  Other scientists involved in the experiments claimed that they were conducted in a slipshod way and not held to proper scientific standards. But again, we are talking parapsychology, which is really hard to prove scientifically. We commend them for trying at least. And one of the things they say a lot is that the parapsychologists were biased because they believed in paranormal stuff, but the same could be said the other way. The scientists were biased to not believe. 

Ingo Swann was skilled at psychokinesis and Puthoff and Targ brought him to a magnetometer to see if he could make the readouts change. The readouts did show fluctuations, but the man who built the machine said that the results were in no way unexpected outside of normal parameters. Swann would coin the term "remote viewing" and he first demonstrated it at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York doing ceiling tray tests. These were high up in the room and so Swann would have to leave his body to see what was in the tray. And he would do just that, over and over, drawing what he saw in the trays. 

Swann started remote viewing using coordinates, meaning that he would be given a set of coordinates and tell the researchers what was there. (pg.155) Pat Price was another man with psychic abilities brought in to try remote viewing. He was a former police officer in Burbank, California and had been a Scientologist. He would become a main figure in the CIA's psychic research and was probably their best and most accurate psychic. Price also tried the coordinates thing and Puthoff gave him the coordinates that Swann had been working with. (Pg. 157)

This remote viewing project by the CIA was called "Project Stargate. It ran for two decades before being shut down in 1995. A statistician named Dr. Jessica Utts evaluated the declassified data and concluded that the subjects scored roughly 5% to 15% above chance. Which isn't nothing. The CIA concluded that the data defied randomness, but because it was inconsistent and unreliable, psychic powers wouldn't be of much use to military intelligence operations. 

The project did have a big success that is not easily explained away. In 1976, a young administrative assistant named Rosemary Smith was recruited by the project director Dale Graff. She was able to psychically locate a lost Soviet spy plane. (pg. 212) 

Rhine and other scientists weren't ever able to explain ESP and other forms of psychic phenomenon. That continues today, but that doesn't mean that these effects and abilities are not happening. All of this research and these experiments definitely proved that something unexplainable was and is happening. Is this paranormal? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 641 - Haunted Turkiye

This Month in History - Federal Trial of Susan B. Anthony

In the month of June, on the 18th, in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was sentenced to pay $100 and court costs, following her conviction for illegally casting her vote in the November, 1872 Presidential election. The election was held in Rochester, NY, and Anthony along with 14 other women successfully registered and subsequently cast their ballots. She was arrested two weeks later after a federal supervisor filed charges against her. She was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal on a warrant accusing her of voting without having the lawful right to vote. The federal trial took place at the Ontario County Courthouse in Canandaigua, NY. During her trial, federal Judge Ward Hunt strictly directed the jury to return a guilty verdict without allowing the jury to deliberate. Anthony had argued that the newly ratified Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges or immunities" clause granted all citizens, including women the right to vote. After her sentencing, Anthony famously declared, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty". Judge Hunt deliberately never took Susan B. Anthony into custody, thus denying her the ability to appeal her case to the Supreme Court. 

Haunted Turkiye (Turkeyay)

The country of Turkiye is a fascinating place as it has such strong connections to many different religions. This is a truly spiritual place with many of the early Christian churches being founded here. All seven of the churches from Revelation were located in Turkiye. Fascinating and mystical places like Gobekli Tepi are here. There are abandoned cities, some of them underground. And there are plenty of legends and ghost stories. Join us for the history and hauntings of Turkiye.

I went on a Mediterranean cruise in 2014 and there was a stop in Turkiye, which I figured would be my least favorite and it turned out to be almost my favorite. The Acropolis in Athens beat it out, but just barely. That really surprised me. I visited the ancient ruins of Ephesus and Mary's House, where tradition holds that the Apostle John brought Jesus' mother to live out the rest of her days. Then I visited the Turkish market where I fell in love with the rugs and glass lights they made there and ended up splurging on a rug. Turkiye has a vast history. Türkiye is often called the "cradle of civilization." There were ancient civilizations like the Anatolians, but even before that were hunter-gatherers who built Gobekli Tepe - at least according to many historians, but please, nobody knows who built these structures. They date back almost 12,000 years. Empires rose up here and fell like Hattians, Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantine, Seljuks and the Ottomans. Key moments include Alexander the Great conquering the region and integrating it into the Greek Empire. Emperor Constantine would take the region for Rome and he founded Constantinople in 330 AD that is today Istanbul. Suleiman the Magnificent would rule the Ottoman Empire and expand it across three continents, making it a superpower. That empire would crash during World War I and today, Turkiye is a secular republic, although it does seem to have been moving towards Islamic Authoritarianism in the last few years. So many cultures have come through here, so it isn't surprising that there are strong spiritual connections and ghost stories. Muslims, of course, believe in the Jinn. There are different classes of Jinn. One of these, the Arabs call gul (gool), the Persians call it gul-i biyaban (gool-ee bee-yah-bahn) and the Turkish people call it gulyabani (goo-lee-ah-bahn-ee). This is a demonic figure that lurks in graveyards consuming the dead and shape-shifting. They like to deceive and then eat travelers. Some texts describe the creature as "the manifestation of fear in darkness." I'm sure we don't need to point out that gul became ghoul in the West. The Gulyabani is often depicted as an obstacle or an enemy  that hinders the soul’s spiritual journey. What does this thing look like? It is pale skinned with prominent bones and a terrifying face that has a threatening expression. And it has sharp teeth.

Kayakoy (KAH yah koy)

(Kelly) Kayakoy is a mysterious abandoned village near the town of Fethiye (fee thigh), which is a beautiful port city. Early settlers here included skilled oracles and seers. There are these monumental tombs carved directly into the soft limestone in the 4th century BC. The tombs were carved high above the ground because there was a belief that winged creatures guided the dead in the afterlife and so the tombs needed to be high above the ground to bring the spirits closer to the heavens. 

Kayakoy was known as Livissi, which was a Greek Orthodox town that flourished during the late Ottoman period and grew to a population of 6,000. There were 500 stonehouses in the village, as well as two churches, schools, artisan workshops and several chapels. In the 20th century, there was unrest with the Greco Turkish War that lasted from 1919 to 1922. A treaty at the end forced a population exchange between Greece and Türkiye. When the Greeks left, the Muslims were supposed to move into the homes, but they chose not to. The land started to take back the village and today, the ghost town is an open air museum. Tourists have reported seeing shadow figures on occasion. Legend holds that the Muslims decided not to live in the village because they believed the hills were infested with the ghosts of the Greek inhabitants who were massacred or died in forced labor camps. 

Cemil Molla Mansion (Jeh-meel Moh-lah)

Cemil Molla (Jeh-meel Moh-lah) Mansion is in Kuzguncuk (KOOZ-goon-jook) and is a beautiful example of 19th century Ottoman architecture. This was built by the Minister of Justice at the time, Uryanizade (oo-ryah-nee-ZAH-deh) Cemil Molla (Jeh-meel Moh-lah) Effendi, and was completed in 1886. The mansion was built from wood and Cemil Molla worked as both architect and foreman on the house. The ceilings were embellished with gold leaves and the bedroom windows had stained glass. The dining rooms had private cigar and smoking rooms. And, of course, it had a beautiful white marble Turkish bath. People who saw it, jokingly called it the eighth wonder of the world. It even had an underfloor heating system. And even more amazing, Cemil Molla pioneered a first for the area by bringing in a diesel engine generator so he could have electricity and central heating. This was the first house in the region to have a telephone as well. Cemil Molla died in 1941 and his family had to sell the White Castellated Mansion. MESA Holding purchased the mansion in 1986 and it was restored in 2004. 

(Kelly) There were stories that the mansion was cursed and one family that lived in it had accidents and disasters that left them no choice but to sell the property. Another family also suffered bad luck with a father and son having their relationship sour and their business started doing poorly and it only got better when they left the mansion. The renovations in 2004 took longer than expected because workers started to experience paranormal things that scared them enough to put down their tools and flee the mansion. They claimed to have objects go missing, to hear mysterious sounds and to see full-bodied apparitions.

Ciragan Palace 

Ciragan Palace (see ruh guhn) was constructed in the 19th century during the Ottoman Empire for Sultan Abdulaziz. Before the palace was here, this was the Kazancıoğlu (kah-ZAHN-juh-oh-loo) Gardens, which was an imperial garden. Sultan Murad gifted the land to his daughter in the early 1600s and the first imperial structure was built. Several decades later Sultan Ahmed III was ruling the empire and his daughter's husband was Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha. He built the next structure here for his wife and he called it Çırağan (see ruh guhn) Yalısı. Ciragan (see ruh guhn) means torch or emitting light, which was reflective of the torch-lit tulip festivals of that time. These were hosted in the palace gardens. The Sultan was invited often to visit the mansion and he would bring his Imperial Harem with him. Sultan Mahmud II ruled from 1808 to 1839 and ordered the building of the first large palace on the grounds after the other mansion was demolished. This was built in the Classical style out of wood. The Sultan died before it was completed. His son completed the construction and he lived occasionally in the palace, but eventually had it demolished to build an even grander palace. But like his father, he didn't live to see the completion, so his brother Sultan Abdulaziz finished it in 1871. This palace was a masterpiece with doors regarded as exquisite works of art, made from wood and mother-of-pearl. French Empress Eugenie visited in 1869 after the Sultan visited her in 1867. There were rumors that the two might be in love. Sultan Abdulaziz liked animals, especially tigers and lions and he added "deer-house" and "lion-house" to the property. A French sculptor made custom bronze and marble statues and vases. A fire in 1910 damaged the palace. The basic shell of the palace was rebuilt in 1987 and turned into the present day hotel, which opened in 1991. The facade was preserved to appear much as its original form. 

(Kelly) What brings this location to our list are the strange and dark circumstances around the death of Sultan Abdulaziz. No one can agree if it was suicide or an assassination. The Sultan had been discovered on June 4, 1876 in a pool of blood on a chaise with his wrists slashed. 

The Sultan had been a strong ruler and there were members of the court that sought to have him removed. Two of them were the reformist grand vizier Midhat Pasha and the Chief of Staff Huseyin Avni Pasha, and they led a coup against the Sultan a few days before his death. They put the Sultan under guard and replaced him with his nephew, whom they believed they could control. The morning of June 4th, the Sultan prayed and then asked for a pair of scissors so he could trim his beard. His mother, the Queen Mother, sent her embroidery scissors to him. He was found nearly dead later. Now, if he had just been found with slit wrists, we might go with the unaliving himself, but there was something else that had happened here. He had one side of his beard torn, his teeth broken, and a dark bruise marked his chest. Helped was delayed to make sure the Sultan passed. The body was concealed in curtains that had been torn down and wrapped around it and then doctors were found who would declare the death by suicide. The Queen Mother never believed her son committed suicide and the Sultan's daughter claimed she witnessed her father's murder. It is said that a confession claimed, "Fahri Bey...held back his arms. Haji Mehmet and Algerian Mustafa sat on their knees. And I cut his veins in his left arm as deep as I could with a pocketknife. I pierced his right arm in several places with the knife." 

(Kelly) The Sultan was most certainly assassinated and that is why he may be haunting the hotel. Guests claim to see his full-bodied spirit walking the halls. The lights turn on and off by themselves and doors open by themselves. Disembodied footsteps are heard as well.

Derinkuyu (deh-rin-KOO-yoo)

Derinkuyu is an underground city in Cappadocia (ka·puh·dow·shuh) carved into the soft volcanic rock that has 18 levels of tunnels. The bulk of the city is thought to have been built by the Phrygians, who were skilled Iron-age architects. People chose to live in underground areas here for safety and this particular city had 20,000 residents who thrived. They grew food, made wine and raised cattle and children. These were great spots for protection because doors between each of the eighteen levels were blocked with half-ton circular boulders that were only moveable from the inside. The city was accidentally rediscovered in 1963 when a local resident renovating his basement broke through a wall. The former residents ended up fleeing after the Greco-Turkish War. Stories of hauntings were rumored to take place down here for decades. An original team of archaeologists who excavated the city became lost in the passageways of the ancient city and they believed this was caused by something unseen. The entire crew was said to never be the same after this experience. When the site opened to tourists, they began reporting strange shapes and shadows. The air would feel heavy and they felt as though they were being watched. Disembodied voices have been heard.

Hagia Sophia (AH-yee-uh) 

(Kelly) The Hagia (AH-yee-uh) Sophia is a world-renowned architectural and historical landmark located in Istanbul with 1500 years of history behind it. This was first a church built in 360 during the reign of Emperor Constantius II. This church was destroyed during the Nika Riots and so Emperor Justinian I commissioned a new cathedral that was completed and consecrated in 537. 

The style was Byzantine and featured mosaics and marble pillars and tile floors that are really something to see. There was an Imperial Door for the Emperor's exclusive use. This had a grand dome that collapsed several years later during an earthquake, but was replaced. The cathedral was sacked and looted during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The cathedral was converted to Roman Catholic at that time and this lasted until 1261. At the Ottoman Conquest in 1453, the cathedral was converted into a mosque. Minarets were added to it over the next few years. A restoration was performed in 1847 and Byzantine mosaics were uncovered. By 1934, the building had been secularized and opened as a museum, and it ran as that for much of the 20th century. In 2020, this became an active mosque once again, but visitors are invited to explore during non-prayer times. The various bits of history seem to have led to unsettling experiences. The atmosphere seems to change in the evenings. Legends claim that ghostly monks are forever trapped in their Earthly duties. People claim to see these ghosts floating through the galleries and some visitors claim to hear faint chanting and forgotten tongues echoing through the halls. There are crypts beneath Hagia Sophia that feature strange lights flickering in the darkness and cold spots. People believe there are restless spirits down there. 

Basilica Cistern 

Basilica Cistern is a marvel of Byzantine engineering that was built underground in Istanbul. Emperor Justinian I undertook the building of the cistern in the 6th century. He had just finished up leading his troops in killing 30,000 rioters and burning parts of the imperial city. This was called the Nika Revolt. The cisterns were built as part of the rebuilding efforts in the aftermath and were meant to supply water to people living in Istanbul. The cistern is made up of 336 30-foot columns with ancient carvings on them in 12 rows and this held up to 100,000 tons of water. Two of the carvings feature Medusa, one that is sideways and the other is upside down. 

(Kelly) People get an ominous feeling in the cisterns and shadowy figures are seen. Someone posted pictures to Reddit of pictures they took in the Cistern in 2020 and there is an interesting picture of a figure that has no legs. 

The Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center 

The Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center was founded in 1997 and is housed in the Ottoman Bank Museum, which is the former Ottoman Bank headquarters. There is a violent history connected to this building. On August 26, 1896, 28 Armenian revolutionaries seized the bank because they wanted to draw international attention to the Hamidian massacres. These were a series of mass murders of the Armenian and Assyrian populations in the Ottoman Empire between 1894 and 1896. There were an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 deaths and 50,000 children were left orphaned. A fierce 14-hour shootout took place between the heavily armed revolutionaries and bank guards, resulting in the deaths of several people, including the revolutionary leader, Papken Siuni. 

(Kelly) And then like something out of the movie "V For Vendetta," in 1903, a group of young anarchist revolutionaries tunneled under the bank and detonated explosives. This damaged the building, but didn't kill anyone. People working here say they hear footsteps in empty rooms, as well as disembodied voices. Some visitors claim to have seen figures of old bank workers still doing their jobs.

 The Maidens Tower

(Kelly) The Maiden's Tower is also known as Leander's Tower and is a lighthouse on a small islet in the Bosphorus Strait. This was built in 408 BC and served as a custom station for ships coming through the strait. During the Byzantine era, it was rebuilt and used as a defense tower. Chains were stretched between this and another tower to control boat traffic. In 1453, it was destroyed as the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople. Sultan Mehmed II rebuilt it and it was used as a military base and lighthouse. During a cholera epidemic in the 1830s, a hospital was established on the island to quarantine the sick. It did little good as 30,000 people died from cholera. Today, it is a museum with a pastry shop. 

So why is this called the Maiden's Tower? There is a legend that a Byzantine emperor had a beautiful daughter and he had been told by a seer that a snake would bite his daughter and she would die. This was to happen on her 18th birthday. So he put her in the tower in the middle of water where he assumed no snake would be able to reach her. On her birthday, he brought her a basket full of fruit. He was unaware that a venomous snake was in the basket. As she reached for an apple, she was bitten and she died in her father's arms. There is another story that claims that a nun named Hero lived in the tower. She was forbidden to be with a man. A young Byzantine soldier named Leander saw her at a festival and he fell in love. He talked to her and asked if he could see her again and she invited him to meet at her tower. Leander started coming to the tower every night. Hero would light a fire on top of the tower to guide Leander through the water. No one knew of their love or these visits. Then one night, there was a storm and Leander drowned in the waves and his body washed up on the shore of the island. When Hero saw him, she was overcome with despair and threw herself from the top of the tower. People claim that as night falls the anguished cries of either the nun or the emperor's daughter can be heard. Keepers have reported strange occurrences like lights flickering on and off without explanation. Disembodied whispers are heard and ghostly figures are seen peering from the windows before vanishing.

Perili Kosk (peh-REE-lee KOSH-k)

The Yusuf Ziya Pasha Mansion in Istanbul is referred to as Perili Köşk, (peh-REE-lee KOSH-k) which means "The Haunted Mansion." This is a 9-story red brick mansion that was built in 1911 for Yusuf Ziya Pasha, who was an Ottoman politician and government minister. He also served as the Ottoman ambassador to the United States from 1910 to 1914. Today, the house is the headquarters of Borusan and the Borusan Contemporary Art Museum. He died in 1929. And that's when the ghost stories started. Rumors claimed that Pasha had been a jealous man and that designed the mansion as a type of prison for his young wife. She was kept locked away from the world here. When he died, he asked that his tomb in Egypt be built using some of the red bricks from the house, specifically, the ones used to build the tower he had locked her inside. The building stood as an empty, hollow shell for 80 years. While it stood empty, passersby reported seeing a woman in a window with long hair. The figure would wander the empty building. Security staff and people brought in to work on renovations and such said that they heard piano music echoing through through the walls, particularly at night. There was no piano in the building. Mirrors also revealed a woman. In the 1990s, people inside the house claimed that a woman in period clothing would appear in the mirrors. 

(Kelly) During renovations, three secret floors were discovered hidden deep underground that were not part of any known original plans. The mansion is now a headquarters for a major company, but that hasn't stopped the stories. People still claim to see a woman looking out a window.

Kucuksu (KYOO-CHOOK-SOO) Pavilion

(Kelly) The Kucuksu Pavilion was like a summer cottage or hunting lodge for Ottoman sultans. Of course, it looks nothing like either of these, but this beautiful building was used for short stays while hunting or traveling to the country. 

The building was commissioned by Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid and designed in the neo-baroque style. It was completed in 1857 and had a basement with two-stories above and an interior design like a traditional Turkish house. A central hall was surrounded by four corner rooms. The basement had the kitchen and servant's quarters. The interior also had crystal chandeliers, specially woven carpets and Italian marble. The palace was restored in 1944 and opened as a museum. Visitors report lights flickering and an oppressive chill. The sounds of faint laughter have echoed from empty rooms. There are those who believe that a maid died tragically here and it is her restless spirit wandering the Pavilion at night. 

Topkapi Palace

This was an Ottoman Imperial Palace that served as the main residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans. There were opulent pavilions, a jewel-filled Treasury and a sprawling Harem. Mehmet the Conqueror built the first stage of the palace shortly after the Conquest in 1453 in the Baroque style. He made this his main resident and lived there until his death in 1481. Sultans lived here until the 19th century. The Palace includes a First Court, a Second Court with a beautiful park-like setting, the Harem Section with six floors where as many as 300 concubines might live, a Third Court, Imperial Treasury and Fourth Court. There are also smaller buildings. The name Topkapi means "Cannon Gate." Through the years it lost prominence and when the Ottoman Empire ended, the government transformed Topkapi into a museum. Visitors can tour many of the hundreds of rooms. Visitors say they see ghostly figures moving through the long corridors. There have been cold spots and breezes felt. Strange lights are seen and disembodied whispers are heard. A woman in period clothing is sometimes seen. Occasionally people have claimed to feel something brush against them or touch them. A story claims that a sultan was betrayed and poisoned and his ghost is rumored to wander the gardens. 

Bodrum Castle 

The Bodrum Castle is a Gothic castle located on a small rocky peninsula on the west coast of Anatolia. This was built in 1404 by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, also called Knights of St.John, Knights Hospitallers and Knights of Rhodes. Construction workers were guaranteed a reservation in heaven. Green volcanic stone and marble were used in the construction. There were several towers that each had their own style and represented their own language. The knights lived here for almost 120 years until Suleiman I (Suleiman The Magnificent) defeated them in 1522. During the Ottoman Period, the Bodrum Castle was used as a small garrison base and in 1895 it was transformed into a prison. The castle was damaged during the 1st World War, when a French battleship bombed it. Prisoners inside had to evacuated. When the Italians invaded Bodrum, they used the castle as their headquarters. The Turkish War of Independence drove the Italian military forces out in 1921. During World War II, the castle was a military base again. Today, the Bodrum Castle is home to the Museum of Underwater Archaeology and is one of the most significant Underwater Archaeology Museums in the world. The knights had placed hundreds of painted coats of arms and carved reliefs on the walls above the gates and 249 separate designs still remain. The Muslims added a minaret to the chapel and a Turkish bath was also added. 

Visitors claim to hear the sounds of battle, especially swords clashing. Shadowy figures have been seen as well as full-bodied apparitions of knights. Legend has it, a knight betrayed during the Ottoman siege still guards the chapel, forever pacing, his sword drawn. Locals also tell of a veiled woman seen near the old well at dusk—some say she was a prisoner who vanished without a trace.

Gobeckli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe is a Neolithic archaeological site in Upper Mesopotamia. No one knows exactly the purpose of this site, but it was said to have been built over 11,000 years ago and was probably some kind of temple or at least had a spiritual connection. There are these massive stone pillars that are adorned with cryptic carvings of animals and symbols within these circular structures. What makes this really unusual is that history tells us that pottery and writing hadn't been developed yet. And the weird thing about this site is that it was completely buried. Some civilization buried the thing - why? Domestic structures found in the area support that people weren't nomadic here, that they settled. And as is the case with monoliths around the world, historians and archaeologists are left to guess as to how people moved the pillars into place. And most of the structures are very phallic looking - being these giant Ts. The Vulture Stone is the most intricately carved structure.  

(Kelly) People who visit or work on the site say that there is an overwhelming sense of being watched even when standing alone in the desolate expanse. Some claim to feel vibrations beneath their feet as if something stirs in the earth. Strange lights have been reported hovering above the site and then they vanish without a trace. Was some kind of ancient force summoned here? 

Turkiye is a wonderfully unique and fascinating country. This is reflected in its legends. Are these locations in Turkiye haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 640 - The Life and Afterlife of Johnny Horton

Moment in Oddity - Snake Oil

Most people recognize the American English idiomatic term of 'snake oil' as being synonymous with fraudulent products, services or deceptive rhetoric. The origination dates back to the late 19th and early 20th century in reference to fake 'miracle cures' that traveling salesmen would offer to the public. The term really took off due to 19th century Chinese immigrants who were working on the American transcontinental railroad. The snake oil they introduced to Americans came from Chinese water snakes. The snakes were rich in omega-3 fatty acids which were very effective in treating joint pain. During the 'Salesman' Era of the 1890s, the most famous snake oil peddler was Clark Stanley, also known as the 'Rattlesnake King'. His snake oil was quickly purported as the 'cure all' for any ailment. 'Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment' debuted at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. To increase profits and minimize costs, Clark Stanley eliminated the use of any actual snake oils in his products that he sold. In 1915, a government analysis of his product revealed that it contained mineral oil, beef fat, chili pepper and turpentine. With the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, in 1906, legislation began mandating that all labels were required to be accurate. When Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment was found to be 'mislabeled', he was fined $20 and the term 'snake oil salesman' was solidified as an alias for fraudster salesmen and products. Snake oil being known as a good cure all and then becoming a product for hucksters to make all sorts of false claims about, certainly is odd.

Life and Afterlife of Johnny Horton 

Many of our listeners have probably never heard of Johnny Horton, but he was one of the best and most popular honky tonk singers during the late 1950s. His specialty were historically inspired songs. Johnny tragically died young in an accident and there is a chilling legend connected to that death. He had a premonition that came true. That wasn't the only paranormal thing. Horton may have come back. Join us for the life and afterlife of Johnny Horton.

[The song of his that I know best is "Honky Tonk Man" because Dwight Yoakam remade it. Kelly knows "The Battle of New Orleans" best. That has 57 million plays at Spotify.]

John Gale Horton was born in 1925 in Los Angeles, California, the fifth child of John and Claudia Hort. At this point, there were four Johns in the family, so he was called Gale. Gale's parents were both musical, playing guitar and piano and his mother actually gave music lessons to children for money on the side. Gale was the baby and doted on, but sometimes his siblings were upset about having to watch him and one time, he fell face first into a canal when he was three and he nearly drowned. Fortunately, one of his sister's finally paid attention and saved him. The family headed to Texas after having a tough time making it in California. One of the Horton's said their car, strapped down with everything they owned, resembled something out of "The Grapes of Wrath." The Hortons wouldn't settle long in Texas as the Great Depression and bad weather made farming in the state difficult. The family began moving back and forth from California to Texas often, because they were sharecroppers. The whole family got into music, playing various instruments and singing gospel and country tunes. When Gale was in his early teens, his father became an alcoholic and he would often have to babysit him. When his parents would head off to California seasonally, Gale started staying behind in Texas with family. Gale graduated from high school in Gallatin, Texas in 1944. He had been really good at basketball and earned a basketball scholarship that he used to attend Lon Morris Junior College in Jacksonville, Texas. Johnny transferred to Seattle University and then Baylor University in Waco, but his father's drinking was becoming more of an issue and he quit to take care of his mother, traveling to and from California with her. 

Gale got very interested in fishing and he started traveling around doing that, going as far as Florida. It was during these travels that Gale started writing songs. His brother Frank was also a song writer and the two supported each other in their efforts. Frank had set himself up in California and Gale joined him there and he found work in the mail room of Selznick International Pictures. This was the motion picture studio founded by David O. Selznick in 1935. "Gone With the Wind" came out of this studio.

At least, that is what everything says online and even a book about Horton, but that studio dissolved in 1943. It reconstituted as Vanguard Films, so that is probably where Gale was working because he was working there in the late 1940s. What matters about this point in his life is that he met a secretary at the studio named Donna Cook. She was immediately taken with him because he was handsome and nice - a good country boy. The couple began dating and Gale moved in with her and her mother. In 1948, Gale headed to Seattle University with his brother Frank to study geology, but Gale dropped out mid-semester. He decided to find adventure in Alaska and headed there to do construction and fish. he absolutely loved fishing. This stint would inspire him for future songs and he did do a lot of song writing in Alaska. Gale had never performed for anyone but family, but in Alaska, he started singing in a cafe. Alaska was fun, but the cold got to him and conditions were dangerous and he was expected to work no matter what, so he headed back to Seattle. And it was about this time that Gale started going by Johnny. Johnny had a sister named Marie and she heard about a talent contest being sponsored by local radio station KGRI in 1950. He won it, of course, that boosted his confidence and awarded him a tall ashtray. Frank often spoke of Johnny's natural charisma and Kelly Hagy wrote in her book "Finding Johnny Horton" that Frank said, "The most positive person I ever knew was John. John didn’t have a negative bone in his body. When he wanted to do something, he just did it. He loved everybody and if he didn’t, he would just grin at you. You would just instinctively like him. He had that ability and way about him." 

Johnny won another talent contest, did a commercial and earned his own show on KLAC about fishing called "The Johnny Horton Show." A music promoter named Fabor Robison took Johnny under his wing and took Johnny's show out to the public, calling him "The Singing Fisherman" and getting gigs singing at grand openings and in parking lots. 

Johnny's brother Fred put together some demos and Johnny was signed by the Cormac record label and they helped Horton record 10 singles before they folded in 1952. Faber Robison formed Abbott Records and the master recordings went to that. Johnny finally married Donna Cook in January of 1952. He was 26 and she was 24. Every country singer wanted to be on the Grand Old Opry, but it wasn't easy to break into that. The Louisiana Hayride featured acts and singers that wouldn't usually fit on the Opry, but if a performer hit it big on the Hayride, the Opry wanted them. Hoss Logan was the show's producer and emcee and when he heard Horton, he immediately liked him because he was distinctive. Horton was invited to perform on The Louisiana Hayride and he did just that in May of 1952. The audience loved him and wanted more, so Johnny moved to Shreveport so that he would be available to make appearances every Saturday night. Donna readily made the move with him and tried to be supportive, but she saw something in Faber see didn't like. Based on our research, Faber Robison was Johnny Horton's Colonel Parker, taking a huge bulk of earnings for himself. Robison also insisted that the couple hide that they were married.

The next big move in Johnny's life was getting signed with Mercury Records and he began recording for them with his first song being "First Train Headin' South" with B-side "(I Wished for an Angel) The Devil Sent Me You." That first song got good reviews. The band that backed him up on the recording was invited to tour with him and they took on the name The Singing Fisherman and the Rowley Trio. They would eventually become Johnny Horton and the Roadrunners.

Now Donna wanted to be supportive of Johnny's musical career, but no one would blame a woman for getting sour on it when your husband's manager treats you like crap and Johnny is fine with pretending he isn't married and having the ladies hang on him. He was off doing gigs a lot as well. This wasn't what Donna signed up for when she agreed to marry Johnny. This wasn't what she wanted out of a marriage. So Donna moved back to Los Angeles and asked Johnny for a divorce, which happened some time in early 1953. That same year, in January, Hank Williams had died. He left behind his widow Billie Jean Jones. On September 26, 1953, Horton married Billie Jean Jones. The couple would have two daughters, Nina and Melody. Robison didn't like the idea of Johnny getting married again and the two men parted ways. No one is sure who instigated the split. Some say Robison moved onto Jim Reeves who was a bigger star and others think Johnny got tired of Robison stealing money from him. Horton also parted ways with his back-up band, but he continued to appear occasionally on Louisiana Hayride. Kelly Hagy writes in Finding Johnny Horton, "While traveling for shows, they [fellow singer Claude King and Horton] would usually be out of money so meals consisted of sitting under a shade tree and eating Beanie Weenies. King described Horton as someone who embraced living and said Johnny could talk to a total stranger and they would give him anything he asked. He also remembered Horton having a strong interest in religion, and though he studied the subject, he 'hadn’t made up his mind.' 'He asked me one day what I thought about the way the world was going and all,' said King. 'And I said, ‘Well, it doesn’t look like it’s getting any better.’ He said, ‘Well, you know what I think? I think that it’s getting to the point, and it’s going to be to the point, [where] the whole world is going sex crazy. I think everything is going to be about sex in the future.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ But he was right about that.'” 

Johnny's contract with Mercury expired in late 1954 and he got a one-year contract with Columbia Records. Horton traveled to Nashville in a borrowed car for his first recording session and he decided to take on more of a rockabilly style after becoming friends with Elvis Presley. He also started wearing a hat all the time because he was losing his hair and was very self-conscience about that. 

Columbia Records had told Johnny that he had two chances to make a hit record or his contract would end, so this recording session in Nashville was really important. On the way to Nashville, Johnny stopped by where Elvis was living and asked if he could borrow his bassist. Johnny recorded four songs on the first day in the studio and one of those songs was "Honky-Tonk Man." This would become a hit for Johnny and he was joined on that recording by Grady Martin, Harold Bradley and Elvis' bassist Bill Black. Billboard reviewed the song in their March 10, 1956 issue and they wrote, "The wine, women, and song attractions exert a powerful hold on the singer, he admits. The funky sound and pounding beat in the backing suggest the kind of atmosphere he describes. A very good jukebox record." The song peaked at number 9 on the Hot Country Songs. One of Johnny's friends and bandmates was Tillman Franks and he would sign a contract with Johnny to be his manager in 1957. Franks got lots of bookings after Honky Tonk Man and before long, Johnny had another television series that broadcast on Monday nights and was called "Horton's Hoedown." That venture didn't last long because one night the announcer was losing his voice so he asked Johnny to read a commercial. And this is what Johnny said, "Friends we are really proud to be sponsored by Holsum Bread. Holsum Bread is wholesome. That is why they call it Holsum. I want to tell you, friends, I eat Holsum Bread, and my manager, Tillman Franks, eats Holsum Bread. And what we like about it is that it is never touched by the baker's hands. They mix it with their feet." Well, the woman who owned the station called Franks and told him she didn't appreciate that sponsor read and that she would prefer they not appear again on the show. Franks told her they were going on tour anyway. And that was the last of TV for Horton.

Johnny was crossing over from country to pop and a fellow musician pointed out that he couldn't be wearing a cowboy hat while performing pop, so he helped Johnny get his first hairpiece. Johnny had another hit with "Springtime in Alaska," which was quickly eclipsed by probably his most successful song of all time, "The Battle of New Orleans." This was written by Jimmy Driftwood and was awarded the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. The song was awarded the Grammy Hall of Fame Award and in 2001 ranked number 333 of the Recording Industry Association of America's "Songs of the Century." 

The last songs that Johnny recorded before he died were for the 1960 John Wayne movie North to Alaska and that was the title song "North to Alaska" and "Sink the Bismarck." Despite his success, Johnny never really made much money. He would stop by his parents' place occasionally and give them a few dollars. His mother said that they were always so happy to see their "sweet boy." The success of Battle of New Orleans did allow him and Billie Jean to buy their dream home. But they almost went bankrupt a bit after that. Before we talk about the crash that took Johnny's life, we need to talk about his premonition. Kelly Hagy writes in Finding Johnny Horton, "Horton didn’t always explore his interest in the supernatural while on the road, mostly because he didn’t talk about it with everyone. However, Johnny Cash was one of the few people with whom he could confide. “He and Cash were involved in—and I don’t know what you would call it, and I don’t know how long it lasted—Spiritualism maybe?” said Jerry Kennedy. “I remember vividly up in Canada one night we went to a medium’s house where they were going to have a séance. And I was curious. I grew up Baptist, so I was kind of weirded out. That was not something that I ever heard anything about when I was a kid. “I went to this thing with Johnny and Cash, and someone else, maybe Tillman, I can’t remember. It was in someone’s garage apartment behind this house. I can’t remember which city this was. It bothered me. And I don’t know how serious Johnny was about that, how long it lasted, exactly what it was all about." Well, we think Johnny probably was pretty serious about this stuff because he predicted his death. He told his friend Merle Kilgore that he was going to die in a crash with a drunk driver. He then made a pact with Kilgore that he would send a message from beyond the grave if the vision came true. He also gave Kilgore his beloved stage guitar.

On November 5, 1960, Johnny was driving his Cadillac in the wee hours of the morning - around 1:30 a.m. He was driving back to Shreveport, Louisiana after performing in Austin and he had band mates Tillman Franks and Tommy Tomlinson with him. The group was on Highway 79 near Milano, Texas when 19-year-old Texas A&M University student, James Evan Davis, hit them. 

Davis had been coming the opposite direction and crossed the center line and hit the Cadillac head-on. Horton was thrown from the vehicle and suffered severe head injuries. He died on the way to the hospital. Franks suffered head injuries and Tomlinson had to have his leg amputated. Davis walked away with a broken ankle. He had been heavily intoxicated. Johnny's funeral was held in Shreveport on November 8, 1960 and Johnny Cash performed one of the readings, choosing Chapter 20 from the Gospel of John (Resurrection of Jesus). Cash took Horton's death very hard. When he heard about the accident, he locked himself in a hotel's barrooms and cried he later dedicated his rendition of "When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)" to Horton on his album 2006 album "Personal File," which was released posthumously. Also on that album was a song the two wrote together called " Girl in Saskatoon." Horton was buried at Hillcrest Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Haughton (haw ton) in northwestern Louisiana.

So, did Johnny return in the afterlife? It seems he did and that he may haunt a couple of places. Before we explore those, we wanted to share some unique coincidences between Hank Williams Sr. and Johnny Horton. Obviously, both men had been married to the same woman: Billie Jean Jones. This was both men's second marriage. Horton heard about Hank’s death while driving near Milano, Texas–where he would die in 1960. Both of the men had their final shows at the same location, the Skyline Club in Austin. Hank died in the back seat of a Cadillac and Johnny was driving a Cadillac the night of his death. 

Johnny's friend Merle Kilgore was no slouch in the world of music, especially country music. He wrote "Ring of Fire" with June Carter Cash for Johnny Cash. (A little paranormal side note on that song is that Johnny Cash had a dream about the song in which he was backed up by a mariachi band. He went with it and created something not heard before this, making it a musical masterpiece. Kilgore embraced the paranormal as well, he wrote the song "The Bell Witch." Anyway, Kilgore was visiting a radio announcer named Bob Lockwood a few years after Johnny Horton's crash. Lockwood was calling a ball game and needed something to kill some time, so he introduced Kilgore to the audience and said that he had just finished writing a song that was recorded by Johnny Cash and they were going to play this new tune. Obviously, this was "Ring of Fire." After they played the song, they received a bizarre phone call. There was a woman on the other end and she claimed to be a medium from a spiritualist group in Greenwich Village, New York. The group had met the night before and held a seance with a Ouija Board. They connected with a spirit that identified itself as a cowboy named Wharton. Then they got another name through the board: Merle Kilgore. Nobody in the group recognized the name, but now the medium had heard Merle on the radio. She went on to say that she received a message from the spirit. That message was, "The drummer is a rummer and he can't keep the beat. Lockwood had no idea what this meant, but he saw a stunned look on Kilgore's face. Kilgore told him that he and Johnny Horton had made this pact and that like Houdinin did with his wife, they had a coded message that Horton would give him from beyond the grave. This was THAT message!

One of the places Johnny Horton haunts is the Texas highway where he tragically died. This was on the Highway 79 bridge and motorists and truckers have all claimed to see the spectral outline of a Cadillac. Some just see the headlights coming at them and then nothing. This happens most often on foggy nights. 

The last place he played, The Skyline Club, is also another place where his apparition has been seen, although this is now a CVS. That evening, Johnny refused to go in the bar because he believed so strongly that a drunk was going to kill him that night. People took to claiming the place was cursed because both Williams and Horton died after performing here. Johnny is also said to haunt his final resting place at Hillcrest Memorial Park. Fans and ghost hunters frequently report experiencing cold spots, hearing faint acoustic music or feeling his presence near his grave site. A story has circulated in trucking and CB radio subcultures that Horton's ghost has occasionally been heard breaking through on CB frequencies in the Deep South, transmitting cryptic messages or singing snippets of his hit songs like "North to Alaska."

Johnny Horton was another talent lost way too young. There were so many more songs for him to sing. Did he really know that he was going to die? How was he able to be so specific? Did he send a message from beyond the grave and does he haunt these various locations? That is for you to decide!