Moment in Oddity - Arrow Injury Saves Woman's Life (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)
A Texas school teacher by the name of Donna Barbour had an incredibly fortunate accident back in April of 2012. Mrs. Barbour was an avid gardener and after the stresses of spending her day teaching 20 young children, she liked to unwind in her garden. As dinner time neared, Donna stopped tending her garden to fire up the barbecue for herself and her husband. Suddenly, she felt like she had been hit by a baseball bat in her neck. She was startled and reached up to her neck, shockingly she discovered that she had been shot with an arrow. Panicking, Mrs. Barbour ran indoors to find her husband who had been speaking on the phone with their daughter. Mr. Barbour managed to stop Donna from frantically running around and convinced her to lie down while he called emergency services. The wayward arrow that Donna had been shot by came from a neighbors home where the son had been practicing with a compound bow. Donna was life-flighted to the nearest trauma hospital. The fact that she was still alive was a miracle. The arrow had narrowly missed both her carotid artery and jugular vein. She underwent a 2 hour emergency surgery to remove the arrow from her neck. The next morning she awoke with her family by her side, but that wasn't the end of her miraculous survival story. When her surgeon came to check on her, he delivered the news that her CT scan the day before revealed a brain tumor. Although thought to be benign, it needed to be removed because if it were left to continue growing, the tumor would cross the midline of Donna's brain, causing a massive stroke. A neurosurgeon performed the tumor removal surgery successfully. After the surgery, Donna Barbour underwent annual MRIs to ensure that the tumor had not grown back. In April of 2015, Mrs. Barbour received a call to schedule a doctors appointment to discuss her recent MRI results. The MRI revealed that there was no new tumor discovered, but that she had a brain aneurysm. Three months later Donna underwent surgery for the aneurysm and upon doing so, it was discovered that the aneurysm was on the brink of rupturing, which would have proven fatal. To survive being shot in the neck by an arrow is a miracle. But the injury leading to the discovery and treatment of a potentially deadly brain tumor and then a fatal brain aneurysm, certainly is odd.
Railroad House Inn and Shank's Tavern (Suggested by: Kay Eberhart)
The Railroad House Inn celebrated its bicentennial in 2023. Through those 200 years, the inn has witnessed a lot of history in Marietta, Pennsylvania. The oldest continuously operated bar in all of Lancaster County, Shank's Tavern, is also in Marietta. Both of these historic locations are reputedly haunted. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Railroad House Inn and Shank's Tavern.
Robert Wilkins was an Indian trader and he bought 300 acres along the Susquehanna (suss-kwuh-HANN-uh) River in 1719. He sold this property to Rev. James Anderson whose son set up a ferry across the river and the river trade industry was strong here. Eventually James Anderson IV and James Cook established the towns of New Haven and Waterford. In 1812, these two became one and it was named Marietta after the two men's wives, Mary and Henrietta. The residents raised two companies to fight in the War of 1812. The early years were tough with slow growth and an economic crisis. The 1870s would see the end of the river trade. Timber and iron became the main economic engines of Marietta after that. The town has a dense concentration of historic Federal and Victorian homes and buildings. One of these buildings sits at the corner of Front and Perry, the Railroad House. The Railroad House Inn got its start as a boarding house when it was built in 1823. The building was made from red brick and stands three stories tall with a balcony on the second floor and a veranda on the first floor. There is a touch of gingerbreading to the porch. The inn sat across from the train station that was built in 1820. This provided accommodations for canal traffic before the railroad came to town. The Marietta Railroad Company was formed in 1832 to help construct a railway from Marietta to a spot near Columbia. The railroad would become a boon as Columbia, Marietta, and Wrightsville would start producing pig iron, which hadn't been successfully manufactured in this country before 1840. The Reading and Columbia Railroad purchased the Hanover Junction and Susquehanna Railroad after they declared bankruptcy in 1880 and this became the Reading, Marietta, and Hanover Railroad. The first Reading locomotive came to the area on April 19, 1883. There were great hopes that this railway would have routes to New York City and Washington, D.C., but the Columbia Bridge burned and those dreams were dashed. The line was eventually abandoned in 1930. Today, the station is a visitors center and trailhead station along the Northwest Lancaster County River Trail.
There have been several owners and name changes through the years. This was a boarding house and a tavern referred to as Depot House and then it was the Railroad Hotel. Thomas Scott was owner of the inn in the late 19th century.
Scott was an American industrialist and railroad executive, so it was fitting he would become owner of the Railroad House Inn. Scott had been born in 1823 to a father who was a tavern keeper. He quit school at the age of ten and worked as a handyman and his work at a general supply store taught him about running a business and he pursued a couple of small business ventures in his early 20s. At 27, he got involved in the railroad and worked his way up from station agent to general superintendent to Vice President of the Philadelphia Railroad. Scott was described as being daring and operated in ethically gray areas sometimes to turn a profit. During the Civil War, he accepted a special commission in which he was placed in charge of railroad and telegraph lines for the Union and he worked to build a railroad through Washington, D.C. as an assistant to the Secretary of War. After the war, he continued to work in transportation and his employment practices that included cutting the pay of railroad workers in Pittsburgh heavily, led to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Scott said that the strikers should be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." This led to him being referred to as one of the first robber barons of the Gilded Age. His business never recovered from the strike and he had a stroke in 1878, ultimately dying in 1881.
Mrs. Bell ran it as a boarding house again in the 1940s. There was a time it served as a private residence. Architect John DeVitry purchased the building with a man named John Westenhoefer and they hand dug the cellar to create space for what would become a 60s-era coffee house. This later became a disco in the 1970s.
In 1989, Richard and Donna Chambers bought the Railroad House and hey had a dream that they could turn the old hotel into a beautiful Victorian restaurant and bed and breakfast. And they did just that, running it into the early 2000s. Eric Farr and Tracy Beam bought it in 2008 and they operated it until 2015. Freddy States and Joey Bowden became co-owners of the restaurant portion in 2015 and they acquired the rest of the building in 2020. Bowden had been the former manager of the Bull’s Head Pub in Lititz and States had been co-owner of McCleary’s Pub. The men took advantage of the shutdown during the pandemic to make repairs and restore the building. The only thing not made-over was the main-floor bar and dining rooms and the inn and restaurant was reopened in the fall of 2020. That bar has Victorian charm with a beautiful fireplace and hardwood floors and the adjacent dining room has a steampunk theme. Another dining room, the Brodbeck Room, has a traditional Colonial feel with exposed beams, a cooking hearth, lighting fixtures and furnishings that contribute to the atmosphere. The original summer kitchen became a private dining room that can accommodate 15 to 20 guests. The Perry Street Cellar features craft beer, pub fare and musical entertainment. There is an outdoor patio as well. The inn specializes in what they call Micro-weddings. Joey said, "We’re unique. We were doing micro-weddings before the concept even existed.” The carriage house became the wedding venue. There are nine rooms in the inn with full bathrooms and luxury linens.
The building has managed to stand through two major floods, one in 1932 and the other in 1976. Tropical Storm Lee hit in 2011 and waters from this, inundated the cellar and first floor. The cellar sustained the worst damage, as the muddy river water impacted everything. The inn also survived a visit from Jane Fonda when she came through in 1972 protesting the Vietnam War. The coffee house had a psychedelic vibe at the time and welcomed her.
And speaking of psychedelic, there seems to be some former guests and a former owner who are still here at the inn in the afterlife. So, if you book a room, you may get a ghostly visitor. One of the spirits here may be former owner Thomas Scott. Interestingly, everything we saw in our research reported that Scott died in 1881, but when owners Richard and Donna Chambers were renovating, they found an invoice for a keg of beer and a case of wine dated May 17, 1900 and signed by Thomas Scott. One has to wonder how this could be if he were dead in 1881. Did his ghost sign off on the order? A waitress had gone down into the basement to retrieve something and she saw a man sitting at the bar and as she passed by, he spoke to her saying “Hello.” She turned to reply and the man was no longer there. Could this have been Scott? Perhaps, but there are other ghosts here.
Room 6 is said to be one of the most haunted at the inn. Guests have reported hearing the sounds of banging coming from within its walls. It is believed that someone shot themselves in this room. Cold spots have been felt and a presence is sometimes felt. That presence sometimes sits down on the bed. In Room 8, people have reported a figure at the end of the bed.
There is a spirit here named Anne Marie and a couple back stories are told about her. The first is that she lived next door and she tended the garden, ensuring there was a bounty to serve in the restaurant. Many eligible young men would come through and she fancied eventually marrying one of these men, but that never came to fruition. So its said that is why she appears only to single men and she likes to flirt with men. Anne Marie has been seen walking around the gardens in a Victorian dress and men have seen her on the outskirts of the Biergarten - she knows where to find the men. But she also is thought to haunt Room 6. Another story claims that she was left broken-hearted and may have been the one to take her own life in the room. She has been seen looking out the window and softly crying as though she is seeking her lost love. Some people refer to her as the white lady or lady in white. Only one woman has ever reported seeing or interacting with Anne Marie.
One of the stranger claims people have made is that they hear the sound of a typewriter in a room that has no typewriter. Disembodied footsteps are heard throughout the building and cold spots and winds are felt.
An employee named Jean Adams spent a night alone in one of the rooms. She was in the bed and felt a presence get in the bed with her. It didn't feel threatening, but it did make her uneasy. Jean thought she heard a voice in her head say "Move over, you’re taking up all the room." She decided to move over and the uneasy feeling left her. Another employee decided to take a nap in the TV room upstairs and she heard the door open and felt an unseen presence as if watching her. A former chef at the restaurant got the scare of his life when he came out of the kitchen and noticed that his reflection in the mirror which hangs over the bar wasn't alone. There was a little girl in a Victorian dress staring back out of the mirror at him. He quickly turned around to see if there was a child behind him and there wasn't and when he looked back at the mirror, she was gone there too. This chef saw that little girl again one day as he walked past the stairway which leads to the second floor. He saw her out of the corner of his eye. A second look revealed an empty staircase.
Spirits don't just stick to the main building. The summer kitchen has a weird experience that was reported. A couple was staying in the one-bedroom loft and the wife awakened in the middle of the night and saw an elderly woman sitting in a rocking chair, knitting. She turned to wake up her husband and when they both looked back in that direction and the scene had disappeared. We word it that way because the rocking chair was gone now too. And there was no rocking chair in that room. So the spirit brought its own chair, which makes us think this was residual. Another couple was staying several months later and reported the same thing to management.
Dark Whimsical Ghosts did an investigation in 2024 and here is one of the exchanges she had. (Innocent Spirit Box) So interesting to get both Innocent and Trapped. So does this spirit feel trapped in the room or at the inn? Then it was like to spirits were talking to each other. A female voice said "Patience" and a loud male voice said "Disagree." At this same time, an orb floated through the screen. Then there was these two "pleases" that came through the box, and they were unusual because the one was loud and firm, while the second sounded like it was whispered, but the voice was the same. (Please Spirit Box) Did another ghost tell them to speak softer? They had a cat shaped REM Pod that plays music when it goes off and it did go off on command. So they had a couple of interesting little things happen, but nothing that would have me convinced that this place is really haunted.
Just a couple blocks down Front Street is Waterford Avenue. Shank's Tavern is located here. Retired riverboat captain James Stackhouse opened a tavern on the corner of South Waterford and West Front streets in 1814, so this location predates the Railroad House Inn. This is one of the oldest continuously running taverns in the commonwealth. Stackhouse called his establishment The Compass and the Square, most think as a nod to navigation on the waterways. It later became Hauer House and then Maulick's, named for local brewer Ernest Maulick. A speakeasy ran here in the 1920s and when the bar was warned that the police were coming, liquor was moved next door until the coast was clear. Right before Prohibition came to its end, John and Kathryn Shank bought the property and named it Shank’s Tavern. The tavern has remained family owned with Bob Shank as the current owner. He is the grandson of John and Kathryn. Shank's got in on craft brewing right when it started in the 1990s. They have a constantly rotating selection of beers on tap as well as a selection of hard liquor. The restaurant serves up salads and sandwiches and market-fresh produce as well as theme nights like Seafood Night on Fridays and Beef on Weck Thursdays. Beef on Weck is an iconic Western New York sandwich, particularly famous in Buffalo, featuring thinly sliced, rare roast beef piled high on a "kummelweck" roll. Kummelweck is a crunchy roll topped with kosher salt and caraway seeds. The sandwich is usually served with horseradish and a side of au jus. The tavern has stayed much the same as it has survived a couple of centuries of floods, the Great Depression, Prohibition, wars and much more. The original tile floors, fireplace, and wainscoting still remain. Bob Shank freely admits that the place has ghosts.
There is the Lady in Black who is often seen standing in the upstairs window, looking down at the street. She likes to hang out near the ladies' room and hovers at the top of the stairs. Barb Hauer ran the tavern from 1865 to 1885 and people think this may be her. The black in her name comes from the black dress she is seen wearing.
Bob grew up in the old hotel portion that had been turned into apartments. he said that he and his brother had strange experiences on Sundays when the bar was closed and everything was quiet. They called these "Sunday Night Terrors." Bob and his brother would hear people talking that weren't there. The cigarette machine would work all on its own. They even heard dimes being dropped into the payphone as though someone were making a call even though no one was standing at the phone. Bob told Uncharted Lancaster, "One night, the silence was shattered by three heavy knocks on their bedroom door. When the boys looked beneath it, no feet or shadows were visible. Their mother checked—doors locked, no one there. But the moment she returned to her room, something slammed against the boys’ door so violently it split the wood and sent coat hangers flying across the room." Bob also said of a neighbor, "One neighbor, Jack Fry, had a ghostly encounter so terrifying it kept him from entering the bar for 35 years. He described seeing two headless, floating apparitions enter through the door. As they passed through, the katydids outside went silent. The world held its breath. Then the spirits retreated, and the night sounds returned all at once. Fry never forgot it."
Patrons have felt something unseen touch them and grasp their hands. Phantom laughter is heard in the stairwell. A bartender saw a half-bodied figure in the kitchen. Booming noises are heard that have no origin and doors slam all on their own.
Marietta, Pennsylvania is a charming river town that owes a lot to its former days when the railroad was the core of the town. Like many historic downtown areas, bars and restaurants continue to be the anchors and it would seem that these two locations have some unseen patrons. Are the Railroad House Inn and Shank's Tavern haunted? That is for you to decide!
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