HGB Ep. 572 - Seelbach Hotel

Moment in Oddity - The Skeleton Flower (Suggested by: Duey Oxberger)

There is a lovely little Asian plant that blooms early to mid summer. It is commonly known as the Asian umbrella leaf, umbrella leaf, or skeleton flower. The plant is native to Japan and can be found in the mountainous regions of both Japan and China.  They prefer cool temperatures and partial to complete shade and can be grown in zones 4 through 9. Its delicate white blooms with yellow centers do not look like anything too unusual. There is something that makes this plant very unique however. Any time the flowers become wet, they become transparent like glass, then, once they dry out, they return to their normal white color again. They are a lovely whimsical choice for the correct growing environments. They are a slow growing, deciduous perennial. We of course had to research these plants for home growing with a name like skeleton flower. Sadly, where we live in Florida, the summers are just too hot and humid which would stress these plants.  They can be ordered online for those avid gardeners who have the correct environment. These distinctive, delicate flowers that can turn to glass with some droplets of water, certainly are odd.

This Month in History - King Henry VIII Marries Anne Boleyn

In the month of January, on the 25th, in 1533, King Henry VIII married his second wife Anne Boleyn. During this time, Henry broke away from the Church and he declared himself the head of the Church of England. This allowed him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. Catherine of Aragon had provided King Henry six children, but only a daughter survived. Henry wanted a son and Catherine's longest living son had only survived 52 days. The divorce happened in January 1533 and shortly thereafter, Anne was married to the King. Her coronation would come in May of that year, but a male heir from her would never come to fruition. In 1536, Anne was arrested on false charges of heresy, adultery and treason. She was thrown into the Tower to await execution. She was executed on Tower Hill. Henry VIII also had the fifth of his six wives executed. In addition, King Henry imprisoned Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher of Rochester in the Tower and they were executed because they refused to acknowledge him as the head of the Church of England. Many people were arrested under his monarchy due to religious and political reasons. During his reign, the Tower of London would come to be known as the Bloody Tower. 

Seelbach Hotel

The Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky was so beautiful and iconic that it inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." Stepping inside the lobby, takes one back to an earlier time with its lavish decor. The Rathskellar down in the belly of the hotel gives flashes of the Prohibition era and it wouldn't be surprising to spy Al Capone sitting at a corner table. There are several ghost stories connected to this Louisville treasure that we will share with you here. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Seelbach Hotel.

I have been inside this iconic hotel several times. The first time was on a ghost tour. The second time, I met up with a fellow podcaster who was staying there and we did some exploring. This most recent time, Kelly and I decided that we couldn't pass up the chance to actually stay overnight ourselves. The lobby is breathtaking with its grand staircase, imported European marble, large murals and carved wood. The hotel sits near the West Main Street Historic District and at the time that Louisville was starting as a settlement, the state of Kentucky was still part of the state of Virginia. A rudimentary fort would be the first bit of civilization and was established by Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark in 1778. Louisville would receive its town charter in 1784 and was named for King Louis XVI, who had helped the United States defeat Great Britain during the Revolutionary War. Louisville became a main point of trade since it was near the Ohio River. The railroad arriving in the mid-1850s helped with that growth as well. 

The outbreak of the Civil War found Kentucky declaring itself neutral and it spent much of the war under Union occupation. After the war ended, Louisville experienced enough growth to become an economic powerhouse. The downtown was transformed with new buildings. And this brought entrepreneurs. Otto and Louis Seelbach were brothers who grew up in Frankenthal, Germany, which was a small town in Bavaria. Louis immigrated to United States in 1869, when he was seventeen. He traveled to Louisville to learn the hotel business. Louis settled into work at the Galt House Hotel and he saved up his money so that he could open the Seelbach Bar & Grill in 1874. The restaurant did very well and Louis used some of his money to bring his brother Otto to Louisville in 1891. Otto helped Louis to open the first rendition of the Seelbach Hotel above the bar and grill that same year.  

The brothers decided they wanted to build their own hotel and they chose a spot at the corner of 4th and Walnut Street to do just that. Walnut Street would actually change its name to Muhammad Ali Boulevard in 1978 in honor of the boxing great who grew up in Louisville. Construction on the hotel began in 1905 and was designed by W.J. Dodd and F.M. Andrews in a turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts architectural style. The goal was to give it a luxurious and opulent feel in the style of Parisian hotels. As we said, the lobby is just breathtaking and one reason is that it is topped by a vaulted dome of 800 glass panels. The floors and columns were formed from imported marble from Italy and Switzerland and this is trimmed with beautifully carved mahogany and bronze that has a Renaissance styling. On the upper walls encircling the lobby are murals featuring pioneer scenes from Kentucky's history that were painted by artist Conrad Arthur Thomas. He was most well known for his paintings of Native American culture. Turkish and Persian rugs were laid throughout. Guests exit the lobby via a grand staircase that leads to the mezzanine with elevators, a 3,400 square foot ballroom and the Walnut Room. The hotel also features conference rooms the Fitzgerald Suite, a Grand Ballroom, the Presidential Suite, the Seelbach Suite and 321 guest rooms. When the hotel originally opened, there were 150 rooms.
 
When the Seelbach had its grand opening in May of 1905, it was billed as "the only fireproof hotel in the city." Twenty-five thousand people attended the grand opening. The Seelbach brothers couldn't believe how popular their hotel had become and they decided that they should immediately start building a 154-room addition, which they began in the fall. In 1907, that expansion was completed and probably the coolest part of the hotel was added during that expansion, the Rathskeller. When Diane visited the second time, she did a live video for the Spooktacular Crew. We'll pull that and post it again on YouTube and Facebook. It was locked when we visited this time, so Kelly only got to experience it through windows, but it still is mind-blowing when viewed from the outside. The walls are decorated with rare Rookwood Pottery and this is the world's only room made with this pottery. The patterns were hand drawn on the soft clay before being fired. The zodiac is preeminent in this space. Not only is there a zodiac clock mounted outside of the Rathskellar, but all twelve zodiac signs are featured on the ceiling of the space. There are many pelicans found around the room and it is thought this was to symbolize death. This is an event space today and most likely hosted a variety of things in the past. Definitely a few gangsters here and there, which would have included Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz, who was known as the "Beer Baron of the Bronx." Another member of alcohol royalty would be George Remus, who was known as "The King of the Bootleggers" and he hailed from the mob in Cincinnati. 

Al Capone also enjoyed the Seelbach. His favorite spot was The Oakroom and he enjoyed dining in there and guests can still dine in a small alcove in the room. Capone also enjoyed blackjack, poker and bootlegging here. The room is gorgeous with lots of hand-carved American Oak paneling on the walls and columns. The large mirror in this room was a gift from Capone. This wasn't just from the goodness of his heart, but rather so that he could watch his back. This is a very male space and was meant to be that way. When the hotel opened, this was known as a gentlemen’s billiard hall and featured a private bar and card room. There are still cue racks on the south wall. The room also harbors a secret. There was an escape route for the gangsters. A boarded-up panel on the southwest wall hides what had been the doorway to a secret staircase that led to the Rathskellar, which led down to the Sub Basement and into a tunnel system with two exit paths leading into the city. 

There were many famous people who stayed here as well. Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald loved the Seelbach and he enjoyed bourbon and cigars while there. One time he had too much bourbon and was banned for a bit. He met some of the gangsters too and was very taken by George Remus whom many believe inspired the character of Jay Gatsby in his novel "The Great Gatsby." The Grand Ballroom was the backdrop for Tom and Daisy Buchanan's wedding reception in the book. The whole hotel really served as inspiration and the restaurant off the lobby features that with its name, Gatsby's on Fourth. They had a great breakfast buffet and our hostess Monica regaled us with ghost stories from her house. Carlos was great too - he was our waiter - and he said that he had worked there 24 years and never experienced anything weird. (Kelly comments on the staff.) Several US Presidents have stayed here including William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Billy Joel stayed here when he was on tour with Elton John and he played the piano and sang in the Old Seelbach Bar. Heather French Henry, Miss America 2000, held her wedding reception at the hotel. Two movies have shot at the location, "The Hustler," starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason and the 2013 movie "The Great Gatsby."

Louis Seelbach died in 1925 and Otto followed him eight years later. The Seelbach Hotel Company couldn't hold itself together and the children of Louis and Otto sold the hotel to Chicago-based businessman Abraham M. Liebling for approximately $2.5 million. He later sold to the Eppley Hotel Company, which owned properties throughout the Midwest. Sheraton Hotels bought the Seelbach in 1956 and eventually changed the name to the Sheraton Hotel. They later sold to Gotham Hotels in 1968 who returned the name to the Seelbach. Unfortunately, the economy took a hit in 1975, the company went bankrupt and the Seelbach closed. In the early 1980s, two other men H.G. Whittenberg, Jr. and Roger Davis, joined in a partnership with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to buy the Seelbach and they began an extensive renovation. This cost $28 million to complete. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought out both Whittenberg and Davis. A subsidiary of Radisson Hotels called the “National Hotels Corporation” then managed the Seelbach Hotel until Medallion Hotels, Inc., purchased the building in 1990. Medallion Hotels built the conference center. In 1998, Meristar Hotels and Resorts, bought the Seelbach Hotel. Investcorp International became the new owner in 2007. Rockbridge Capital bought it in 2017 and it is managed as "The Seelbach Hilton Louisville." 

 The Seelbach Hotel is not shy about their spirits. There are several here. The most famous ghost at the Seelbach is the Lady in Blue. This spirit is said to belong to 24-year-old Patricia Wilson. Her body was found in an elevator shaft on July 16, 1936. She gets her nickname from the clothes she was found wearing, a long blue dress. As to how she came to the bottom of the shaft, there are a couple of stories that are told. The first is a story of suicide. Patricia had either been estranged from her husband or gotten a divorce. The couple decided to try to work things out because they still loved each other, so they agreed to meet at the Seelbach. Unfortunately, her husband got in a car accident on the way to the meeting and was killed. Patricia was devastated. As to how she managed to kill herself jumping down the elevator shaft is anybody's guess. The more probable story was discovered by Larry Johnson, the hotel historian.

An article in a 1955 True Detective magazine tells a different story. This article was titled "Bluegrass Justice for the General." The general being referenced was General Henry Denhardt who had been in the Kentucky National Guard and had been a war hero. He had also been lieutenant governor of the state of Kentucky. The General apparently had been staying at the Seelbach where Patricia Wilson was working as a lady of the evening. Apparently, Wilson had joined a traveling salesman boyfriend to Louisville and he abandoned her there. She was destitute and turned to prostitution. The General got in an argument with Wilson and this was witnessed by a guest on the 8th floor. The guest decided to mind his own business and closed his door. Shortly after that, he heard a loud noise and a woman screaming. The guest ran out into the hallway and he saw the general running toward the elevator. It is thought the argument was over his lack of payment for services. Nothing ever happened to the General because nothing could ever be proven.

Larry Johnson is the hotel historian and he joined the Seelbach team as a bellman in 1982. He has written the definitive book on the hotel called, "The Seelbach: A Centennial Salute to Louisville’s Grand Hotel." He found out that Patricia Wilson's real name was Pearl Elliot. The General finally got caught over another crime he committed. He was engaged to a woman named Verna Garr Taylor. The couple were on their way for a shopping trip and got in an argument. The General pulled the car over and Taylor got out. He followed her and shot her to death and this time, a witness saw everything. This was a farmer and the General tried to tell him that his fiance had committed suicide, but the farmer knew better. The General was arrested and put on trial. He was staying at a hotel with his lawyer and they were outside talking when two of Verna Garr Taylor's brothers walked up to him and shot him to death.

On July 3, 1937, The Courier-Journal ran an article with the headline: 'Girl’s Death is Blamed on Denhardt.' The article reported, "Brigadier General Henry H. Denhardt was accused of causing the death of Miss Patricia Wilson, 25, whose broken body was found on the top of an elevator in the Seelbach Hotel, July 14, 1936. In a suit for $70,000 filed Friday in the Jefferson County court by Edward C. Langan, administrator for the girl’s estate.  The petition prepared by James T. Robertson, attorney, charges that General Denhardt assaulted, beat and bruised Patricia Wilson, causing her to fall down an elevator shaft in the hotel. Mr. Robertson said it was hoped that filing of the suit would be delayed until completion of the investigation and preparation of the case but the deadline for filing made it imperative that it be presented without further delay." Robertson had re-opened the case because he received several stories from clients who linked Denhardt to Patricia Wilson’s death. Since Denhardt was murdered, the case was never finished. So the final say was the coroner’s jury, which reported that Wilson had a fractured skull and two broken legs and was discovered by James Embry, an employee of the hotel. He told the coroner’s jury he first noticed a glove sticking out of the top of the dummy elevator that is used for carrying linen. In the end, the coroner’s jury ruled Wilson died due to her own carelessness and negligence.

Interestingly, Larry Johnson told Spectrum News, "I wrote my first book in 2005 on the Seelbach and put the Lady in Blue story in the book. A woman purchased my book and she gave my book to her father. She sent me an email and said, 'You won’t believe this. My father, who was 93-years-old, said I hope you don’t hold this against me, this was before I married your mother, but I think I know the Lady in Blue.' He told her about a house of ill repute and was introduced to this girl named Lucy in 1935 when he was stationed at Fort Knox.  He came back in 1936 with his unit at Fort Knox and went back to the house and asked for Lucy.  He was told that Lucy had died in an elevator shaft at the Seelbach Hotel."

Many staff members and guests have experienced unexplained things and seen actual apparitions. James Scott was working as a chef at the hotel in 1987. He was cooking waffles and omelets for brunch outside of the Oak Room and he had a clear view of the elevators. During a break, he saw a young woman with long dark hair in a long blue dress walk into the elevator. This wouldn't seem strange except the elevator doors were closed. He was unnerved and he called security. They checked the elevator and couldn't get it to work. Engineering came and pried the doors open and they got the elevator to come to the first floor and then it worked perfectly fine after that.  

A housekeeper named Sharon White saw the same woman stepping off the elevator on the eighth floor a few days later. The dress was of an earlier period. That elevator had broken down again and wasn't working, so she ran to tell security. There was no woman in a blue dress found anywhere. Staff at the restaurant reported seeing a woman who looked older, wearing very worn and ragged clothing, peeking from behind a mirror. Anytime an employee approached her, she would disappear. In 2004, a couple was staying on the 8th floor for their honeymoon. They awoke to find a strange man standing by the window. He was looking out at the city. The room got incredibly cold and then the figure disappeared. Other things that have happened include ghosts seen in mirrors, the faint scent of an old perfume, disembodied footsteps and disembodied voices.

A security guard named Patrick Rhodes is referred to as the "ghost whisperer" because the ghosts seem to like him. Many times when people have taken pictures of him on ghost tours, there are weird anomalies in the photos. A couple times could be explained away, but it happens a lot. Not just orbs, but streaks of lights and fuzzy distortions. Rhodes says that when he walks the property at night, checking doors and such, he whispers the Lord's prayer to himself to keep the spirits at bay. Especially near the Rathskellar.

So we had something weird happen during our Spirit Box session. I kept thinking I was getting these great multi-word answers. Here are a few. (Spirit Box I Love You) Same voice (Spirit Box See Them) (Spirit Box Something City) (Spirit Box Woman) But as I looked at the sound waves, they were all the same pattern in these sections and when I calculated the distance between each, the distance was the same. It was a pattern, which says to us, we were picking up either some kind of station frequency on that same part of the band or spirits were able to communicate on that certain band area.

The Seelbach Hotel is not to be missed. We honestly can't wait to stay there again, it was so magnificent. We didn't have anything we would define as ghostly activity, but many people have. Especially around the elevators on the mezzanine. Is the Seelbach Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 569 - Return to Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Moment in Oddity - The Origin of Times Square's New Years Celebration (Suggested & Written by: Dwight Shepherd)

Most holidays have traditions that grow up around them. Things that, over time, just become almost a natural and expected part of the holiday. Did you ever stop to think how some of these traditions got their start? Take New Years, and in particular, New Years Eve. I’m sure every one of you is familiar with the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  Most of us have probably watched it at one time or another.  For some, it’s just something that we do EVERY New Years Eve. A few of you may even have seen it in person in New York City. Over 1 million people do that each year. Worldwide, another 1 billion people watch it on TV. Did you ever wonder how all that got started? Well, would you believe that its very beginnings can be traced to a small cemetery in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee?  Indeed, that’s where it all began. The cemetery is First Presbyterian Cemetery.  For those of you not familiar with it, it’s located behind the Tennessee Theatre. Let's go back to the year 1869.  An 11 year old boy had to pass by it on his way home from his job at The Knoxville Chronicle, which was located over on Market Square.  There were no child labor laws then, so he got off work at midnight each night. This meant the area near the cemetery was very dark and deserted. There were stories whispered that at least one of the residents of First Presbyterian Cemetery didn’t always stay in his grave, or at least his spirit didn’t. So, many nights, this 11 year old boy stayed at work until daylight. Now there were no beds at The Chronicle. Heck, there wasn’t even an employee breakroom back then. So in order to be allowed to stay, this boy started “helping out” throughout the paper. He began to learn about all aspects of producing a newspaper.  His family moved away briefly the next year.  However, within another year they were back in Knoxville.  He was back working at The Chronicle, and back to learning and earning his keep overnight. By the time he was 19, he was capable of running a newspaper himself.  And he soon got that chance.  He heard that a newspaper in Chattanooga had gone bankrupt.  Through the help of family and friends, he was able to put together $250 to buy The Chattanooga Times in 1878.  He turned that paper around, and was soon making a profit.  As a side note, although it has since merged with The Free Press, that paper is still in business today. In 1886, a friend let him know that a paper in another city was close to going bankrupt, and was available for sale.  Coincidentally, it was also named The Times.  He was able to come up with the $75,000 to buy that paper.  He turned it around as well.  The job he did was so impressive that even today, the masthead of The New York Times continues to list Adolph Ochs as publisher. Now Adolph Ochs grew The Times so much that he had to have a new building constructed to house his paper.  That building is located at what is now called Times Square in New York in its honor.  To celebrate the completion of his new headquarters, Ochs had fireworks set off from the building on New Years Eve 1904.  It was so well received, that they began doing it every year.  In 1907, they began dropping a ball as part of that celebration.  It has taken place every year, except 1942 and 43, because of World War II. They say that truth is stranger than fiction.  The fact that way over 1 billion people celebrate New Years Eve having its beginnings because an 11 year old boy was scared to walk past a haunted cemetery in Knoxville at night certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Hank Williams Checks into the Andrew Johnson Hotel Before Dying (Suggested & Written by: Dwight Shepherd)

On December 31, 1952, Hank Williams checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel to wait out bad weather and by the wee hours of the morning, he was dead. The Andrew Johnson Building on Gay Street in Knoxville will soon be renovated into a mix of commercial/retail space, permanent residences, and overnight rental accommodations. For a number of years, it housed the Knox County School System Central Office.  Before that, it was something completely different.  It opened as a luxury hotel in 1928, and was at the time, the tallest building in Tennessee.  In the 1930s radio station WNOX broadcast from its upper floors.  Their Mid-Day Merry Go Round program featured live performances from a list of entertainers that soon would be among The Who’s Who of Country Music. In 1936, Amelia Earhart stayed here.  During an interview conducted here, she told a local reporter because of the nature of flying, she didn’t expect to die of old age.  She disappeared on her around the world flight a year later.  In 1943, Russian composer Sergi Rachrominoff stayed here while giving a concert at the University of Tennessee.  It would prove to be his last concert. He died three months later. On New Years Eve 1952, Hank Williams checked in here because bad weather had canceled his flight.  Williams, in addition to being a country music superstar, was also a legal morphine addict.  A back injury caused him so much pain that he actually carried a card that authorized doctors to give him morphine to control the pain.  Unfortunately, Hank was also an alcoholic.  Those two are not a good combination. After getting to the hotel, Hank told his teenage driver, Charlie Carr, to get him a bottle of whiskey and a doctor to give him a shot of morphine.  Folks at the hotel told him where he could find both. Now, naturally the doctor had never treated Hank before.  Exactly how he figured the dose of morphine, only he knew for sure.  Anyway, it couldn’t have mixed well with the alcohol. Later that evening, Hank’s manager called.  Hank was in no condition to talk to him, so young Charlie Carr took the call.  Hank was due for a concert in Charleston, West Virginia.  They couldn’t wait for the weather to clear.  They needed to get on the road and keep driving until either they came to an airport where they could get a flight out, or they reached Charleston by car.  At 10:45PM, the driver called the front desk.  They were checking out, and he’d need help getting his boss to their car.  Charlie pulled a 1952 blue Cadillac to the hotel’s side entrance.  Porters and bellmen who helped Hank to the car said he was unresponsive, except for a couple of coughing noises, and was cool to the touch. Charlie finally pulled over in Virginia, and flagged down a highway patrolman.  Hank Williams was dead at age 29.  Many people believe that he actually died at the Andrew Johnson in Knoxville.  It has been reported that on foggy New Year’s Eves, an old blue Cadillac can be seen circling the AJ Building. Maybe Hank hasn’t quite checked out yet.

Return to Waverly Hills Sanatorium

In April 2018, Diane visited Waverly Hills Sanatorium for the first time and several listeners joined her on a tour of the place. The group experienced some unexplained things and Diane has been dying to get back and show me the place. Covid thwarted our plan to investigate privately with a group of listeners in April 2020. So, with an unexpected trip to Louisville in December 2024, we couldn't pass up a chance to do a tour. Gargoyles maintain sentinel duty atop the imposing structure of the sanatorium. Are they keeping ghosts locked inside or protecting the interior from spirits? It's hard to say. Perhaps a little of both as Waverly Hills Sanatorium quite possibly is one of the most haunted locations in America. Join us for this return to the history and hauntings of Waverly Hills Sanatorium!

Most people are probably unaware that Tuberculosis still kills over one million people every year. This isn't just a disease that ravaged people during the early 1900s. The disease was often referred to as Consumption because it seemed to consume the afflicted individual. Others called it the "white death." This disease was highly contagious and there was no cure. The city of Louisville was hit with the highest case load in the country by 1900 and they needed a place that could not only get the sick away from the rest of the population, but make sure the sick got the three main forms of treatment being used for TB: nutrition, fresh air and sunlight. Waverly Hills Sanatorium would become that place.

Waverly Hills sits on a spot where a school once stood. Major Thomas H. Hays had bought the land in 1883 with the goal of building a school for his daughters to attend. That school was just a one room school house that was located on Pages Lane. Lizzie Lee Harris was hired to be the teacher and she named the school "Waverley School" after some novels named "Waverley Novels." Major Hays followed suit and named the property "Waverley Hill." The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name after purchasing the land and opening the Sanatorium. The original sanatorium that they built was not the large structure that stands today. The first was a framed building with a hipped roof and only had two stories. It could accommodate around 40 to 50 patients. The climate of Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, was conducive to the spread of TB and by the early 1900s, the county was hit hard. The original hospital was ill equipped to handle the amount of patients that would be flooding in. The city of Louisville started to plan a new hospital in 1911.

The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a new hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. In order to start the building, the patients from the City Hospital had to be moved to tents set up on the grounds at Waverly Hills. The new pavilion was finished in 1912 and could care for another 40 patients. A children's pavilion was added as well for both sick kids and the children of patients. The plan for Waverly was to continue adding buildings and it eventually became like many other TB properties. These properties would become self-sufficient mini cities with their own water treatment facilities, post offices and growing their own food. Waverly followed the same pattern. But eventually, there was a desire to build a larger structure and that is the building that still exists today

Construction began in March of 1924 on the brick, five-story gothic styled building. It was designed by architect James J. Gaffney. The sanatorium would be able to house up to 400 patients. It was designed to provide a variety of treatments and was considered state-of-the-art at the time, despite the fact that many of the treatments they used for TB, we would consider barbaric. The facility officially opened on October 17, 1926. One of the treatments offered at Waverly Hills was time out on the Solarium.These were large patio areas on the outside of each floor where patients would sit for hours to take in the fresh air and enjoy the peace of the wooded area that surrounded the sanatorium. There was an audio system set up where patients could listen to music and the radio station broadcasting from within Waverly Hills. Our tour guide said it was like the first iPod. Some patients would be left out here up to 13 hours and there are even photos that show that some patients would actually be covered in snow. For this reason, the first electric blankets were used here. Another treatment was time in the sunroom, which was a room with heat lamps that were to provide a feeling as though being in the sun. The more barbaric treatments included electric shock for people with TB of the brain and surgical procedures to remove ribs and muscle. One of the worst treatments was a process where a lung would be deflated because TB needs oxygen to survive. This treatment did help some people, but mainly ended up killing people.

The facility served as a tuberculosis hospital until 1961. In 1943, streptomycin was discovered and it proved to successfully treat TB. This eventually would make Waverly Hills obsolete and so it did close in 1961 with any patients still remaining being transferred to Hazelwood Sanatorium. The following year it reopened after renovation as WoodHaven Medical Services, a geriatric facility for people with mobility issues and dementia. This facility ran until it was closed by the state in 1981. This was supposedly due to patient neglect. Simpsonville developer J. Clifford Todd bought the hospital in 1983 for $3,005,000. Todd joined forces with architect Milton Thompson and the men planned to convert it into a minimum-security prison for the state. Waverly is surrounded by a neighborhood and obviously, these people were not about to allow a minimum security prison in their backyard. The men switched to a plan to build apartments, but that fell through as well.

Robert Alberhasky bought the property in 1996 with the hope of turning it into an arts and worship center. He wanted to also build a replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue that is in Rio de Janeiro. This statue was going to be 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide and placed on the roof of the sanatorium. Donations fell through and the project was cancelled the following year. Tina and Charlie Mattingly then bought Waverly Hills in 2001. The Mattinglys hold tours of Waverly Hills and host a haunted house attraction each Halloween, with proceeds going toward restoration of the property. Restoration is going well, but is slow. The rooms that we saw that were restored looked great. Waverly Hills Historical Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

It is no secret that Waverly Hills is haunted. And while I generally leave it up to you to decide if a place is haunted or not, I can tell you that I believe something I cannot explain is going on in this building. Thousands of people have had experiences here, including us. The smell of fresh baked bread has come from the former kitchen. Many ghost hunters claim that the ghost of a small boy named Timmy roams the halls. There are no records of a Timmy at the sanatorium though. The creepiest story in connection to Waverly is that of The Creeper. The Creeper is a dark and terrifying entity that crawls along the floors and the walls and many believe it is demonic in nature. Others believe it’s a human spirit that's been twisted by the trauma of tubercular death. People who see it are filled with dread.

The refrigeration room has child ghosts that like to play Hide and Seek. A group investigating in here once caught an EVP on a phone. You can hear the guest say "Ready or not" and then a child's voice responds "Here I come."  Apparently, the refrigerators were sometimes used for more than just food. The vegetables and meat would be pulled out and replaced by bodies. People who are closed up in the unit routinely feel their hair being pulled or the shirts being tugged upon. Children also haunt the former cafeteria and are sometimes joined by a ghost cat. People feel it rubbing up against their ankles.

The Cult of Weird website reported the following experience, "As we continued our conversation I began to notice a small orb-shaped pinpoint of light moving across the second floor solarium. It was the size of a firefly but a blue-white color, and it would disappear only to reappear with perfect timing in every other window. My companion asked if I could see a blue light. I said that I could. We watched as it traveled the entire length of the west side of the building heading east. At first it appeared as if it was inside the building, but as it progressed it moved up above the solarium windows in front of the exterior brick. When this happened it became two separate identical points of light, spaced so closely they almost touched each other. When the light neared a bend in the building—the sanatorium is roughly question mark shaped—we lost sight of it. The light(s) traveled roughly 350 feet in approximately 10 seconds."

Diane visited with a bunch of listeners in April 2018 and we couldn't pass up the chance for Kelly to get to see it when we drove to Louisville for Jerry Paulley's memorial service. We were joined on the tour by Bailey Landrum and her friend Ellie. We started the tour where the cafeteria, kitchen and bakery were once located. We then went to the former chapel on an upper floor. There we were shown a picture captured on an investigation in 2003 by a staff member who has worked at Waverly Hills for 21 years and the picture features two guests standing in front of a window in the chapel and there is the head of another person between them. This was someone who was not standing there for the picture. And being that this was the third floor, it couldn't have been someone standing outside. And there was no glass in the windows in 2003, so it wasn't a reflection of someone else in the room.

There was a woman who had lived at Waverly Hills named Lois. She passed away here in a room that guests visit on the tour. Lois was only 28 when she died from TB in 1956. She had been pregnant when she got to the sanatorium, so when it was time to give birth, she was taken somewhere else to give birth and then brought back. Lois never got to touch her son that she gave birth to. She suffered from TB for 8 years and spent all of those at Waverly. Her sister, Audrey, also had the dreaded disease and joined her in the room. She managed to recover and lived to be in her 90s. Investigators have picked up EVP of a female voice saying "Audrey" as though Lois is searching for her sister. A flowery smell is sometimes detected and she likes to play with people's hair. We didn't get any activity here, but we were told that Ghost Hunters saw a full-bodied apparition here when they investigated. Our guide Kristal saw her only apparition near this area. (Kristal Experience)

Our tour group in 2018 had an amazing group experience at the elevator shaft on the third floor. A homeless man and his dog were thrown down to the bottom of this shaft and reports claimed that it had been a ritualistic murder. The homeless man had lived in the building for quite some time and he was very protective of it. As the tour guide was telling us this history, Diane clearly heard a dog whimper. She thought perhaps it was the power of suggestion until the tour guide asked if we all heard it and everybody said yes. Then a little bit later there was another whimper followed by a door slam. And we again heard the dog whimper a third time before we left the area. It was clear. It was audible. Diane had no doubt that the ghost of a dog had joined us...or at least a residual whimper. This time around we didn't get any activity, but were told about the ball moving down the hall on the Ryan and Shane Unsolved Buzzfeed Show. The ball went down the hallway and then turned the corner by itself, as if a dog was carrying it and we were also told that Tina once saw the apparition of a dog lying down in the hallway and then it disappeared. Then our guide shared this audio with us. (Dog Audio)

Diane had a guide tell her about an experience he had on the fourth floor. A group had arrived in a chauffeur van and the driver had joined the tour. The driver was bringing up the rear with the guy telling Diane the story and they distinctly heard the sound of dance music floating up the hall and they also could hear the sound of feet dancing on the floor. The fourth floor is probably the most haunted floor and is very creepy. People often feel uneasy and nauseous on this floor and it is cloaked in darkness with just a hint of ambient light. To get to the floor, you go through a metal door and the guide told us about some teenagers who were ransacking the place and they got locked in by something. They had brought an axe with them and tried to open the door with it, but had no luck. The marks in the door are still there. Whatever is on this floor does not seem to be human. There are supposedly shadow figures everywhere poking out of doors. We thought we saw a child ghost peeking out of a room several times. We went into a room that was used for the surgery and it was here where many people suffered and died from various experiments to ease their symptoms. A person in our group captured a weird picture of Bailey in here. And Kelly felt weird in here with tightness in her chest. 

The fifth floor opens up onto the roof. A nurse supposedly hanged herself in the center room. She had fallen in love with a doctor who was married and carried on an affair with him. She discovered she was pregnant and she told him about it. He rejected her and in her dismay, she committed suicide. Some stories claim that she lived in Room 502 and hanged herself there, but guides believe she hanged herself in the public area. We're pretty sure that is the truth as we were told a story about a man who visited and told the guides that he was 8-years-old when he came to the sanatorium with his mother who was a nurse and they walked off the elevator and into that open area and discovered the nurse hanging. Kristal pointed out that she didn't think it was a suicide because what nurse would hang herself near the children's wing, which was on the fifth floor. She thinks its possible that an orderly was asked to take the nurse out on behalf of the doctor.

The Morgue Wing has a cafeteria above it and in order for a patient to eat in the cafeteria, they had to get dressed. They couldn't enter in their gowns. There was a morgue slab still in the morgue that could hold three bodies. Only the bottom one can still hold any weight and many times, investigators try out lying down in that bottom one and being left for awhile. We were told on the tour about one woman who decided to do this and when her team returned 30 minutes later, she was curled up in the fetal position at the back of the slab. This was shared on TripAdvisor, "I got away from the other folks and did my own thing. I laid on the bottom morgue slab, hoping to get touched. But didn't. Later, I did a flashlight session with a female in the shock therapy bedroom while sitting on the bed and she answered questions by making the flashlight turn on. THEN, I went down the Death Chute alone - a 500 ft walk down in complete blackness. I could hear footsteps behind me but when I turned to take a picture, there was no one there. I turned on my FLIR and have two videos of an entity which followed me down the Death Chute and then led the way back up. It even played with my hair!" What that person meant by Death Chute is the infamous Body Chute. It was out last stop.

The creepiest location at Waverly Hills has to be the Body Chute. This is a long chute that went downhill a very long way and has 145 concrete stairs next to it. A track system would carry the bodies to the bottom where families could pick up the bodies or the local funeral parlor would collect them. The reason this was used was because so many people were dying, the administrators were worried that it would depress the patients and they would give up their fight and all hope when they saw so many of their compatriots die. The chute is dark and it smells. When Diane took the tour in 2018, the guide shared a story about an experience that she had at the Body Chute. She was giving a tour and had her back to the chute. She noticed that several people in her group were getting startled looks on their faces and one of them told her to turn around. When she did, she saw a white misty figure at the bottom of the Chute. She has experienced enough at Waverly Hills that she thought to herself, I'm okay as long as that just stays where it is. When she turned back around, she saw that her entire group had run away. She turned around again to see why they had run and the white figure was running straight at her. People report hearing screams and cart wheels on investigations. Kristal has seen someone get scratched on their abdomen here. A SWAT team has run out of the Body Chute they were so scared. Green orbs with faces have been captured in pictures. We had an experience there on this tour too. (Body Chute Sound) (Body Chute Amped) (Body Chute Full Audio) At the end here you hear that Kelly and I heard totally different sounds.

Visiting Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an experience that every paranormal enthusiast needs to have. Are the former patients and staff still wandering the halls in the afterlife? Is Waverly Hills Sanatorium haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 464 - White Hall of Kentucky

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Moment in Oddity - White House Raccoon

Many people enjoy trying unusual cuisines that can be often times, considered exotic. Whether it's trying escargot, frog legs or something similar. However, a meal consisting of raccoon as the main course would surpass the usual 'exotic' label. Back in the 1920's, during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, many farmers would send various things to the White House to be served for the President's Thanksgiving meal. One such farmer from Mississippi sent a live raccoon. The President and First Lady could not fathom making a meal out of the creature and decided to keep the raccoon as a pet. The female raccoon was thereby named Rebecca, and for Christmas, received an embroidered collar inscribed with "White House Raccoon". Rebecca was allowed to roam the White House, sometimes getting into mischief as only a raccoon could. She was known to occasionally unscrew lightbulbs, dig into houseplants and open cabinets. When outdoors she would walk on a leash and she had her own treehouse built on the grounds. Rebecca even enjoyed participating in events like the White House Easter egg roll. The procyonid (pro-seeo-nid) was clearly very loved by her family with the Coolidge's even bringing her on vacation with them when they traveled to the Black Hills. Consuming a meal of raccoon may be considered odd to some, but having a raccoon as a White House pet, most certainly, is odd.

This Month in History - Birth of Marie Tussaud

In December, on the 1st, in 1761, Anna Maria Tussaud was born in Strasbourg, France. Tussaud's father passed before her birth and when she was six year's old her mother moved them to Switzerland. Once there, they moved in with a local doctor with Marie acting as a housekeeper. The doctors name was Philippe Curtius (cur-she-us) and Tussaud called him Uncle. Curtius had a talent for wax modeling, eventually moving to Paris in 1765 to establish a Cabinet de Portraits En Cire (seer 'sir' French). Marie and her mother joined the doctor in Paris a year later and she began learning from her 'uncle', the art of wax modelling. She showed promise and in 1777, she created her first wax figure in the likeness of Voltaire. In 1794, when Curtius died, he left his collection of wax works to Tussaud. In 1802, Marie began touring her art, but with little success, left for Edinburgh in 1803. In 1835, after touring Britain for 33 years, Tussaud established her first permanent exhibition on Baker Street, on the upper floor of the "Baker Street Bazaar". Marie Tussaud died in her sleep in London on the 16th of April in 1850 at the age of 88. The museums that her wax creations inspired now number over twenty, world wide.

White Hall of Kentucky (Suggested by: Angela Gabhart) 

White Hall State Historic Site is located in Richmond, Kentucky, the Bluegrass part of the state. The site features the former home of one of the most reviled and celebrated men of his time, Kentucky legislator Cassius Marcellus Clay. He was a newspaper editor, politician, soldier and Southern emancipator. The mansion dates back to 1799 and is today a museum with a few spirits. Join us as we explore the life of Clay and the history and hauntings of White Hall!

Richmond, Kentucky is the state's sixth largest city and home to Fort Boonesborough, which is named for Daniel Boone who set up the settlement with his group of men in 1775. This was the second settlement in Kentucky. It is said that this area of Kentucky is where "the rolling hills of the Bluegrass meet the foothills of the Appalachians." That is probably what brought many of the indigenous people here to hunt and live. Unknown groups were here for thousands of years, followed by the Shawnee, Cherokee and Wyandotte. The city of Richmond was officially founded in 1798 by Colonel John Miller who came to the area for the water. The name was inspired by the city where Miller was born, Richmond in Virginia. Richmond became the county seat for Madison County. During the Civil War, the Battle of Richmond was fought here on August 30, 1862 and the Confederates pounded the Union in a very lopsided win. This helped to bring the state of Kentucky under Confederate control and by September 2nd, the capital of Kentucky, Frankfort, fell. This was the only Union capital to fall to the south during the war. One of the most well known figures from this town would be a member of the politically prominent Clay family.

In the 1800s, holding to abolitionist views wasn't popular in the South for obvious reasons. Cassius Clay was a man who believed strongly in emancipation and he was even open to a street fight or two against anyone who didn't approve of his convictions. Clay was no stranger to fights and he was no stranger to scandal. Cassius Marcellus Clay was born on October 19, 1810 to Green Clay, who was a cousin to Senator Henry Clay. Green Clay was one of the wealthiest men in Kentucky and owned a large plantation with slaves. He also owned taverns, distilleries and ferries and served in the Kentucky General Assembly. Clay County, Kentucky is named for him. Cassius was deeply affected by something that happened in his youth on his father's plantation. He already didn't approve of his father owning slaves. One of the young enslaved girls named Mary was a playmate for him. A cruel overseer threatened her once and she stabbed him to death out of fear. People claimed it was self-defense and she was acquitted by a jury of white men, a testament to the real danger she had been in. However, that didn't stop Cassius' brother Sidney from selling Mary down the river and the young boy carried that experience with him. He was devastated.

Cassius grew into a strong, very tall and good-looking man who excelled at sports. He attended Transylvania University and then Yale College. It was here at Yale in 1832 that Cassius heard abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison speak. This inspired Clay to pursue joining the anti-abolitionist movement that was growing in America. The only part of the movement he didn't embrace was an immediately abolition to slavery. He felt that using the political system to gradually change things would work best. This is what made him an emancipator rather than an abolitionist. Clay married Mary Jane Warfield in 1833 and they had ten children with four of them making it to adulthood. Mary Jane would leave Clay after 45 years of marriage and he divorced her for abandonment. She left because of his numerous infidelities, one of which lead to him fathering a son with another woman, whom he later adopted officially. 

The next marriage for Clay would be even more scandalous. In 1894, Clay married Dora Richardson, an orphaned girl. And yes, we are using the term "girl" for a reason because it is thought that Dora ranged anywhere from 12 to 16 years of age. That's already a lot to stomach, but here's the real kicker, Clay was 84-years-old! The sheriff brought a posse  to Clay's house to rescue Dora, but she told them all that she was willingly there. She may have done this for their own protection because it is said that Clay had a loaded cannon near the doorway that he was ready to fire. He and Dora would divorce after four years of marriage. Clay was a fiery man, even in his eighties, and he not only proved that with the cannon story, but when he was 89, three men broke into his house intent on robbing him. Clay defended himself with a knife and left one man stabbed to death in the library, another dead in the ice house where he had bled out and a third went screaming into the night. Clay died in 1903 at the age of 92 from natural causes.

The Clay family was very involved in politics. Cassius himself served three terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives and helped start the Republican Party. His emancipation activism made him many enemies and in 1843, a man named Sam Brown tried to assassinate him. Brown shot Clay in the chest and despite being wounded, Clay pulled out his Bowie knife and took off Brown's nose ear and removed one of his eyes. Cassius decided to start a paper in 1845 called True American and this featured news and articles on emancipation. The office was in Lexington, but after numerous death threats and a break-in that resulted in his printing equipment being stolen, Cassius moved the newspaper office to Cincinnati, Ohio. When Abraham Lincoln ran for the Presidency, Clay backed him and befriended him. After Lincoln won, he appointed Cassius as Minister to the Russian court in St. Petersburg in 1861. It would be in Russia that he would father that illegitimate son. 

Clay was key in getting Russia to back Union forces during the Civil War. This kept Britain and France from backing the Confederacy. Clay was also key to Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln had asked Clay to serve as a Major General for the Union and Clay refused to take the commission unless Lincoln freed the slaves in the Confederacy. Lincoln asked him to see how Kentucky felt about emancipation. Clay returned to D.C. and Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Clay returned to Russia in March of 1863 and stayed there until 1869. During his tenure, he negotiated the purchase of Alaska. Clay left politics and disapproved of reconstruction. He supported Democrat candidates for awhile and then returned to the Republican Party and was even elected president of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention in 1890. Laura Clay was one of Cassius' daughters. She was a big proponent of women's suffrage and states' rights. And even more incredibly, she was the first woman to be nominated for U.S. President by a major political party.

Now many listeners are probably wondering about that Cassius Clay name and its connection to boxing legend Muhammad Ali. The name does come from this Clay. Herman Heaton Clay had been a descendant of African-American slaves and he named his son Cassius Marcellus Clay in honor of the emancipator. That Cassius gave his son the same name and he would later change his name to Muhammad Ali after his conversion to Islam. 

Green Clay built a home in Richmond, Kentucky on rolling farmland in 1798 and he called it Clermont. This was built with slave labor and out shined the log cabins that most people in the region owned. The house was designed in the Georgian architectural style and had seven rooms and covered 3,000 square feet. The first floor had a large hall on one side and a dining room and parlor on the other side. The upstairs had four bedrooms with fireplaces. The house also had an attic and a basement. Cassius Clay inherited the property and he thought of his father's home as the "old building." In the 1860s he did a major renovation to the house, which was a huge expansion. This was constructed above and around the Clermont and was also done in brick with elements of Georgian and Italianate architecture. The architect was Thomas Lewinski and built by John McMurty. This rebuilt mansion covered 10,000 square feet and expanded the seven rooms to 44 rooms and had central heating and indoor plumbing. The central heat came from two basement fireboxes. The water for the bathroom was collected from rainwater on the roof and piped to the bathroom, which had a bathtub made from a hollowed-out poplar tree that was lined with copper. 

White Hall was put up for auction and Clay's grandson, Warfield Bennett, bought the mansion, but over the years it fell into neglect. Tenant farmers used it for storage, with total disregard to the beautiful home. They used the house to store hay bales and the roof eventually caved in allowing the elements into the house. The home was donated to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1968 by descendants of the Clay family. Kentucky First Lady Beula C. Nunn oversaw the restoration and it was dedicated on September 16, 1971. White Hall is today a museum and event venue, now managed by Eastern Kentucky University. It's a favorite spot for weddings and sometimes an extra uninvited guest pops up in wedding photos. These guests aren't alive either. White Hall is reputedly haunted.

There are tales of women in black here, as well as the spirits of children. There are many nose pictures here. People smell rose perfume, cigar smoke, burning candles and brandy. So clearly, Mr. Clay liked a brandy with a cigar. And the candle smell probably goes along with people claiming to see candle lights around the perimeter of the house and moving through the house. Sometimes music from a piano or violin is heard and there is no known cause for it. Lights get turned off and on in rooms that are unoccupied and disembodied footsteps are heard. Unseen dinner parties take place in the dining room.

Keven McQueen, a former guide at the house, wrote about this in his 2001 book Cassius M. Clay: Freedom's Champion, "The ghosts of White Hall appear to have a certain fondness for playing tricks with the lights. When restoration began on White Hall in the later 1960s, a trailer was placed near the house for the guards to stay at night. Reportedly, almost every night, the guards would watch a single ball of light moving from window to window in the second-floor master bedroom." McQueen also wrote, "Often the strong smell of pipe smoke or perfume will come seemingly out of nowhere, fill only a particular room or two, then abruptly disappear without fading away."

Former Park Manager Kathleen White told The Lane Report in 2007, "There’s something that goes on here,” White said. “I hesitate to say it’s haunted because it’s all in how you view it. But there are things I’ve seen, things I’ve heard, smells I’ve smelled out of the ordinary that I cannot explain." Many employees have seen the Lady in Black and some even claim that she was actually wearing blue. One employee said that he had seen the end of a hooped, black gown turn a corner and disappear down the stairs to Green Clay's room. Other employees have seen different colored dresses, which makes one wonder if this is like an aura.

Patti Starr is a Certified Ghost Hunter, researcher, lecturer, teacher and tour guide with decades of experience under her belt. She runs the Bardstown Ghost Trek and has investigated White Hall many times. One evening she was at the house taping for Halloween with a Lexington news team when they picked up a voice saying "I'm ready, Clay." Patti believes this may have been one of the robbers that Clay faced off with in the mansion. The cameraman was pretty freaked out by this. Starr writes about the house in her 2010 book Ghosthunting Kentucky and her first time visiting in 2001, she thought she saw someone in an upstairs window looking out at her as she got out of the car. She found out that no one was in the house, but many people have seen the same thing as her. Former tour guide Charles was taking a group through the house and he told Starr that he was explaining the plumbing to the guests when he glanced up and saw the form of a woman on the third floor landing. He could see her from the neck down. She was wearing a white blouse and a navy blue hooped skirt. He could see right through her.

Guides usually dress in period clothing. One day, two of them were playing around on the stairway when they saw a man walk into one of the bedrooms on the second floor. He turned and looked at them before disappearing beyond the doorway. He was wearing older clothing, so they at first thought it was another guide. They went downstairs and mentioned that they saw a male guide go into a bedroom on the second floor and the other guides looked around and said that no one was missing. A couple of the employees went upstairs and found no one. A woman named Misti Dawn got married at White Hall and she and her husband Tommy had pictures taken while posing inside. In one picture, it looks as though a white apparition is hovering above them. They shared the picture with Starr and its a very interesting photo. 

White Hall was the home of a man who was a bigger-than-life character, so its not surprising that he might still be hanging around in the afterlife. His first wife loved this home and probably wasn't happy to lose it in the divorce. Has she returned as a spirit? Is White Hall haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 446 - Southgate-Thompson House

Moment in Oddity - The Leatherman (Suggested by: Mike Rogers)

The Leatherman was a famous vagabond who wore a hand made leather suit including his clothes, shoes, scarf and hat. He traveled regularly between the Connecticut River and the Hudson River from approximately 1857 to 1889. This mysterious man walked a route of 365 miles year after year and was believed to be a French Canadian. Although he was fluent in French, when spoken to he would rarely reply with anything but a grunt or gesture. He would generally return to the towns along his path every five weeks. Residents often considered it an honor that he would chose to accept food and supplies from them, often eating the offerings on their doorsteps. Ten of the towns he traveled through passed ordinances exempting the Leatherman from the state "tramp law" passed in 1879. Despite surviving foul weather and frostbite with all ten fingers and toes intact, his final demise was due to cancer of the mouth because of years of chewing tobacco use. His body was found on March 24, 1889 in Mount Pleasant, New York. He was buried in Sparta Cemetery, on Route 9 in Ossining, New York with his original tombstone reading as follows: FINAL RESTING PLACE OF Jules Bourglay OF LYONS, FRANCE "THE LEATHER MAN" who regularly walked a 365-mile route through Westchester and Connecticut from the Connecticut River to the Hudson living in caves in the years 1858–1889. On May 25, 2011 the Leatherman's remains were exhumed to be moved to a different location within the cemetery. With this exhumation no remains were found so only coffin nails and soil were reinterred within a pine box and the new tombstone simply reads "The Leatherman". Although the original tombstone bared the recorded name of Jules Bourglay, researchers and the death certificate still list this man as "unidentified". A man trekking 365 miles continually for 31 years through harsh weather and being welcomed as an honored guest while barely speaking a word, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex Discovered

In the month of August, on the 12th, in 1990, the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex was discovered in South Dakota. This is a fairly recent bit of history, but its cool so we wanted to share it. The incredible find was at the hands of fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson who saw three huge bones jutting out of a cliff. Hendrickson worked for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research and they paid the man who owned the land, Maurice Williams, $5,000 so they could excavate what turned out to be the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered. The Institute planned to build a non-profit museum to display the fossil they named Sue, in honor of the discoverer. They were stopped in their tracks by the U.S. government who sued claiming that the bones had been on federal land. It was found that Williams had traded his land to the Cheyenne River Sioux to avoid paying property taxes and the deal with the Institute was declared invalid. Sue was sold at public auction for $8.36 million to Chicago's Field Museum. Scientists found that the bones were so complete and well-preserved that they were able to find out more about the dinosaurs. One of those things was that Sue had a wishbone, meaning their theories that birds are a type of living dinosaur might just be true.

Southgate-Thompson House

The first image we saw of this place featured this grande dame of a home at night with uplights illuminating the front. With its concave mansard roof and center three-and-a-half-story tower, we could imagine the Addams Family feeling right at home within the walls. For 200 years it's sat above Newport, looming down over the Ohio River. Today, it is a music venue and place for the arts. Stories claim there are at least three spirits in this house. The city of Newport itself has ties to gangsters and a few other haunted places as well. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Southgate-Thompson House and Newport, Kentucky!

Newport, Kentucky is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers and is today known as an entertainment hub for northern Kentucky. The area was first settled by James Taylor, Jr. in 1791. The official founding of the town came in 1795 and was named for Admiral Christopher Newport who was the commander of the first ship to reach Jamestown, Virginia. One might wonder why they would choose a name connected to Virginia. Taylor's home state was Virginia. The Newport Barracks was established in 1803 and was a center of activity during the Civil War for both sides. Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and Union General Ulysses S. Grant all served tours of duty at the Newport Barracks. The Campbell County Courthouse went up and eventually became the site of public hangings in the late 1800s. Newport grew so much that by 1900, it was the third largest city in Kentucky. The city was the place to be for speakeasies and illegal alcohol during Prohibition and earned the reputation of being called "Sin City." Gangsters loved this place and some of the main mobsters here were Moe Dalitz, George Remus, Dutch Schultz and Pete Schmidt. A flood wall was built in 1948 because of a catastrophic flood in 1937 that flooded much of the city. There are many bridges in the town that were built to connect to neighboring communities. A little fun fact about the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge is that it is nicknamed "Big Mac" bridge because of it resembles the McDonald's arches.

Richard Southgate was born in 1774 to Captain Wright Southgate and his wife Mary in Manhattan, New York. The Southgate family name came from the ancestors who had been keepers of the south gate in London, England. Richard went to William and Mary College to study law and had the opportunity to hear at the bar men like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He moved to Newport in 1795 and was licensed to practice law in 1797. A few years later, he got involved in politics and was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1803. He then moved on to the Senate for many years. He married Anne Winston Hinde in 1799, who was the daughter of revolutionary war officer Dr. Thomas Hinde. They had eight children and they all lived to adulthood. Squire Grant purchased 1000 acres of land from a William Kennedy in August 1796. This was on the east side of the Licking River. He assigned the land to William Mosby Grant, who, the next day assigned it to Richard Southgate. The Southgates originally built a log house on the property.

Southgate was prosperous enough by 1814 that he was able to build his family a mansion to replace the original house. Construction took until 1821 to complete the house at 24 East 3rd Street. At the time that construction commenced, there were British prisoners at the Newport Barracks who had been captured during the War of 1812. It is believed that some of these prisoners were brought to the property and used to help build the mansion. The entire Southgate property took up a complete city block. The mansion was three stories tall when completed. The first floor had a parlor, library, and dining room. The second floor had bedrooms and ladies’ sitting rooms. The third floor had more bedrooms. The basement had storage and the ballroom. The Southgates enjoyed entertaining people and even hosted future president Abraham Lincoln and a company of soldiers who would fight under Captain Sherman in the Battle of San Jacinto for Texas independence. 

Southgate died on July 24, 1857 at his mansion. He was eighty-three years old and had endured a long illness. Southgate House was passed on to his eldest daughter Frances Mary Taliaferro Parker. Frances and her husband added the entrance tower to the house, as well as the widow's walk and the mansard style roof. Frances bequeathed the house to her eldest daughter, Julia Thompson, in 1869. Julia had married James Thompson in 1855 and they had a son named John. James had attended West Point and graduated in 1851. He went on to become a colonel for the Union during the Civil War. John would follow in his father's footsteps and attend West Point as well, graduating in 1882. He became a 2nd Lieutenant and was assigned to the army Ordinance department in 1890. He later served during the Spanish-American War and got very familiar with the Gatling gun. Automatic firearms fascinated him and he decided to focus on that and became a famous weapons inventor. He helped develop the Springfield 1903 rifle used in World War I and the .45 caliber Colt 1911.

But Thompson's most famous invention was the Thompson submachine gun, which we all know more commonly as the "Tommy Gun." He developed this after World War I and while it was popular with the military during World War II, it was more popular with gangsters. Crime gangs in large cities in the 1930s were able to outgun the police, who eventually started using the guns too. Outgunned, police forces also began using the weapon. John Thompson retired from the military in 1914, after thirty-two years of service. He was buried at West Point when he died in 1940. The Southgate House was sold to Fannie and Lewis Maddux in 1888, so it was no longer in the Southgate/Thompson Family anymore. In 1894, the first meeting of The Keturah Moss Taylor Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was held at the house. The Knights of Columbus of Campbell County purchased the mansion in 1914. They restored the house and after a fire in 1948, they added a brick porch and a large backroom. A balcony overlooking the basement was also added and this allowed people to overlook the main stage that was installed in the basement. The Thompson House has maintained much of this look from the Knights tenure. 

The Thompson House is today a music venue where up and coming rock and roll bands or musicians perform and even some well known acts perform here. The former ballroom has a horseshoe balcony around it and it is said that all the seats have a great view of the stage from either the balcony or main floor. The first floor was converted to the bar and billiards rooms, known as June's Lounge.  The second floor was converted to a smaller stage for concerts known as The Parlour. The third floor hosts an art gallery. The house is also popular with paranormal enthusiasts Rarely a week goes by without some kind of unexplained activity. Both guests and employees report many experiences and the most common accounts shared entail the movement of inanimate objects. Decorations move along the floor and walls. The bar is probably the most active with these sorts of things as glasses rattle regularly and move across the bar and liquor bottles shake and move. A couple were hanging out in June’s Lounge when a beer slid across the table and ended up in the lap of the young man. Disembodied footsteps and voices are heard as well. And the front door has a way of opening and closing by itself. A piano at the venue likes to play itself when nobody is nearby and knocking is heard on the walls.

People who have had experiences claim that there are three entities in the house. We have our very common Confederate Civil War soldier. During the Civil War, Newport was a gateway to the South. The Newport Barracks was controlled by the Union, but loyalties were divided in the city. Where the barracks used to stand is now General James Taylor Park and it is only a half mile away, so its possible that a soldier spirit could have wandered over from there. During the war, the barracks also served as a hospital and some of the worst casualties from the Battle of Shiloh were brought here. This ghost has made many appearances all throughout the house and has even manifested so well that people have conversations with him thinking that he is just dressed up in a costume. He seems to have a particular fondness for the men's bathroom on the first floor. A man's disembodied laughter is attributed to him too.

Another of the spirits seems to belong to a six-year-old boy. It is claimed that he died in the house, but we have no name for him, so this can't be verified. We only know for sure that the man who built this house died inside of it. The boy runs and plays throughout the house and when people try to chase him down, he disappears.  

The most well known apparition here belongs to a ghost everyone calls Elizabeth and there is an unverified legend connected to her. People believe she was a woman who worked in the house for either the Parkers or the Madduxs. She was married to a man who worked on a riverboat on the Ohio River. The widow's peak on the house gave her a vantage point that she could see the boats down on the river and many days she would find herself up there gazing down on the boat here husband was aboard. One day there was a horrible explosion aboard that riverboat and Elizabeth, unfortunately, witnessed that. The legend ends in tragedy as most do. She was so distraught knowing that there was no way he could have survived, that she hung herself right there in the house. What she didn't know was that her husband had been held up by something in the city that caused him to run late and he was unable to get on the riverboat before it left port, so he had survived. It is more probable that any female spirit here would actually belong to Francis Parker. She had lived here a long time, may have died in the house and loved the house enough that when she bequeathed it to her daughter, she specified that she would be allowed to live in the house until her death. The spirit is thought to be the one that opens and closes the door, as though she is going out for an evening walk. One of the most dramatic stories features a Christmas tree that was set up in between some French doors. This tree was pushed across the floor four feet and left in a corner of the room, without an ornament out of place.

Newport, Kentucky has enough haunts that they have offered ghost tours during the Fall season. We haven't heard any stories about the former Newport Barracks, but it would be a location we would definitely check out. Another spot that has activity for good reason is the memorial known as the World Peace Bell. This is the world's largest free swinging bell and weighs a whopping 66,000 lbs. and measures 12 feet in diameter and 12 feet high. The ring of the bell is described as powerful and awe-inspiring. And while it is meant to be a symbol of peace, spirits are not at peace here. The bell sits atop a former graveyard. One that only had the tombstones moved and not the bodies. The city didn't find out this little "fun fact" until they started digging to install the memorial and workers found bones. Newport was left with a challenge. How in the world could they match up bones with the tombstones that were moved to Evergreen Cemetery in Fort Thomas? They decided to just leave the remains here. So many times, people have had a feeling of unease at the memorial. 

The Newport Syndicate features dining, banquets, entertainment and a Gangster Tour. This was originally the Glenn Schmidt Playtorium, which housed a bowling alley, restaurant and casino. This was owned by local gangster Pete Schmidt who named it for his son Glenn. Schmidt also owned the Glenn Hotel where he ran a distillery out of the basement until police busted that up. After getting out of jail, he opened a casino in the hotel and called it the Glenn Rendezvous. The Cleveland Syndicate wanted to run all the crime in the city, so they offered Schmidt a deal on the hotel, which he refused. He then opened the Beverly Hills Club, which was bigger and better and when he wouldn't sell that to the Cleveland Syndicate, they burned it down. The Playtorium not only had the legal fun, it also catered to prostitution and illegal booze. It was rumored that Schmidt tortured and killed a member of the Purple Gang at the Playtorium. The Purple Gang was also known as the Sugar House Gang and they were out of Detroit. These were mostly Jewish gangsters who were hijackers and bootleggers. It was rumored they took part in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The place was remodeled in the 1990s and became the Newport Syndicate and people claim it is haunted. There have been dozens of sightings of an apparition wearing a black suit and fedora. Many times, this ghost is acting as a Peeping Tom in the women's restroom. Stories about this spirit go all the way back to the 1960s, when a waitress reported that she was pushed into the sink while in the bathroom. She looked in the mirror and saw this fedora wearing man just before he disappeared.

Melissa Reinert took the ghost tour in 2016 and wrote about it in an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. She wrote, "Our guide shared the story of a psychic who had taken the tour a few years back. When he reached this corner of the alley he kept saying, 'So many, so many, so many.' When she asked what he was talking about, he replied that looking out the windows of the buildings on either side of the alley were all those who had witnessed mob-related murders that occurred just up the street at Sixth and Monmouth. There were eight murders on that corner and no one was ever brought to justice for any of them. Their souls, the psychic said were stuck there because of guilt."

If all this isn't enough hauntings for you in Newport, Bobby Mackey's Music World is just five miles down the road. Are these places, especially the Southgate-Thompson House haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 442 - Wheeldon Manor

Moment in Oddity - The Legend of Taimur's Curse (suggested by Paolo Jay)

Taimur or Timur was a Turko-Mongol conqueror who brought most of the Muslim-ruled parts of Central Asia and India under his control in the 14th century. When he died, his body was embalmed and ceremonially buried in his capital, Samarkand. In 1941, Joseph Stalin sent a Russian anthropologist, Mikhail Gerasimov, to exhume Taimur's body to study it. Stalin wanted to use the body to make a replica of what Taimur looked like. When word spread of the Russian plan, local Samarkands warned the anthropologist of a terrible curse attached to Taimur's grave. Of course Gerasimov labeled the curse 'mumbo jumbo'. Once the grave was located, the anthropologist exhumed the body and found a curse inscribed inside the tomb that read, "Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader even more terrible than myself." The curse was dismissed and Taimur's body was taken to Moscow. Within three days Hitler launched his surprise attack on Russia which took approximately 30 million Russian lives. As the Germans continued advancing, the anthropologist began to worry about the curse and shared his thoughts with Stalin. Being a deeply superstitious man, the dictator arranged a special aircraft to fly Taimur’s body back to Samarkand, where they gave it a reverential re-burial. A few weeks later, the tide of German invasion suddenly turned and the Russians were victorious at the Battle of Stalingrad. Today, Taimur's tomb in Samarkand is an important tourist attraction. So what about this curse? Is it real or is it just a legend followed up by some strange coincidences? Whatever the truth, the story of this curse certainly is odd. 

This Month in History - 24 Hour Power Outage in New York City

In the month of July, on the 13th, in 1977, New York City dealt with a power outage that lasted over 24 hours. At 8:37pm EDT a lightning strike hit the Buchanan South substation on the Hudson River. This in turn tripped 2 circuit breakers. The location was currently used to convert 345,000 volts from a nuclear generating station to a lower voltage for commercial use. Shortly after, there was a second lightning strike which caused the loss of two 345kV transmission lines as well. Then at 8:55pm there was a THIRD strike, this one occurring at the Sprain Brook substation in Yonkers that took out another two critical lines. During all of this, Con Edison had to  manually reduce the load on another local generator at their East River facility, due to problems at that plant. This made an already dire situation even worse. Throughout the evening, Con Edison continued to be asked to reduce loads from working stations due to thermal overloads and continued trips and drops in service. Con Ed could not generate enough power within the city, and the three power lines that supplemented the city's power were overtaxed. Just after 9:27 p.m., the biggest generator, Ravenswood Generating Unit No. 3 (also known as "Big Allis"), shut down and with it went all of New York City. The blackout occurred at a time of severe financial crisis as well as fear of The Son of Sam in the city. The 1977 blackout resulted in citywide looting and other acts of criminal activity, including arson. They say that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place but New York City had the bad fortune of being struck 3 times that evening, resulting in a darkened city that is known for its nightlife. 

Wheeldon Manor (Suggested by: Cara Danelle)

Wheeldon Manor in Kentucky has stood for over 100 years and has played a variety of roles. Some of them as mundane as a post office and others along criminal lines featuring gang activity and a brothel. It's final function has been as a paranormal hotspot. Military Veterans Paranormal has investigated the location many times and founder Mellanie Ramsey joins us to share what she has found out about the history and the unexplained experiences that they have had there. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Wheeldon Manor!

Central City is located on the Green River in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. The town was first known as Morehead's Horse Mill, named after an early settler to the area, Charles S. Morehead. He had built a steam-powered grist mill here. The name changed to Stroud City in 1873 when it was officially incorporated. This was in honor of John Stroud, a local landowner. A large mining business in the area was Central Coal and Iron Company and the city was eventually named Central City for that in 1882 and that one stuck. The town became an important regional hub for the railroad, which continues today. One of the rail lines actually passes by Wheeldon Manor.

*Rabbit Hole* In the interview with Mellanie that we are going to share in a moment, we discuss this idea that rail lines seem to have a connection to the paranormal. This theory first caught our attention on an episode of Kindred Spirits and an experiment Adam and Amy did with a railroad crossing and they got an amazing interaction. Then when we investigated the Villisca Axe Murder House, in the wee hours of the morning, just as dawn was breaking, the sound of a train passing nearby could be heard. At the same time, Kelly and I saw white streaks near the ceiling after I saw some kind of weird purple swirling anomaly. I wondered if the train had something to do with it. In 2011, Ghost Hunters Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson were interviewed by HuffPost and they said, "One thing we found is that you find more paranormal activity around flowing streams of water, railroad tracks and places with high limestone deposits." And there are, of course, numerous tales of ghost trains. Is there anything to this? We'll never know, but it is interesting!

The name Wheeldon Manor sounds quaint, like a fancy apartment building or old Victorian home. This location is a 23,000 square foot rectangular, multi-level brick building that basically covers the block. This was the perfect spot for a variety of businesses from a dealership to boarding house to apartments. Mellanie Ramsey joins us to share more. (Ramsey Interview)

Keith Fournier of Night Stalkers Paranormal Research said of Wheeldon Manor, "This place is a paranormal investigators dream!" In 2014, that haunted house Mellanie referred to was started, known as Sinister on Center. But before that, the owner had many of his own experiences. In 2013, the SURF KY website ran an article about Wheeldon Manor. The owner at the time was Jason Dillihay who purchased it in 2003 and rented apartments out of it. He was a skeptic when he first moved into 102 Center Street and shared an apartment with his wife. Dillihay told the website they experienced many weird things. "I had numerous complaints [from tenants], but I just always brushed them off. I just really didn't believe it until I lived here myself. My wife, Emily, first noticed smells, movements and other occurrences. Of course it was always when I was not home. She saw her purse straps move one day. Then the curtains, which were closed, opened wide by them self. She would see shadows and feel someone was standing right behind her. I would come in from work and she would tell me about it. But I was always, well, skeptical. It took a while, and it started ramping up. When I started believing was, one night while she was doing dishes. I went down to get something out of the car. I came back in, and she was calling 911. She said, 'I was doing dishes and I could see someone behind me.'

His wife went on to say that she felt something wrap around her and then something she couldn't see breathed in her ear. Dillihay says he told his wife, "I don't understand why it only messes with you when I'm not here. When I said that, it was like a train locked up its brakes on the tracks. There was screeching, grinding, metallic sounds. It kept getting louder and louder, circling the whole apartment. Then it was like the sound of someone running as hard as they could, into the closed door of our apartment. When that happened, the sound stopped cold. Nobody else in the apartments heard it. Nothing was there. My wife said, 'I told you so'... and I didn't argue. That's when we moved out." Dillihay also commented that tenants reported experiencing stuff too. "One of the last people to move out said they say a little girl running down the hall. One family that had a little boy with toys scattered all over the floor, and when he was not home, they could see and hear a small child sometimes sitting, playing with his toys." The spirit of an elderly man was seen in one room and an older female in another.

Western Kentucky Paranormal Investigators did some research at the building in 2013 and the co-founder Cameron Hesson said the city told them that 19 people had died in the building. Hesson told SURF KY,
"We have captured some pretty good evidence from this building. We're not a huge fan of 'orbs', aka paranormal balls of lights floating in midair, but we have captured some video evidence here in the back hallway. The camera was facing down the hall. We heard a loud noise and asked, 'Is anyone down here?' About that time there was another loud knock and a brief flash of light, like someone turning a flashlight on and off quickly. We stopped the video, and analyzed it frame by frame. It does have the characteristics of an orb."

 Wheeldon Manor sounds like an interesting place. Is it haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 415 - The Ramsey House

Moment in Oddity -The Great Windham Frog Fight (Suggested by: Bill Richardson)

In May of 1754, the French and Indian War broke out and tensions were running high all throughout New England. That summer, something peculiar occurred in the town of Windham, Connecticut. In the middle of the night, residents were awakened by a horrifying scream. Not just a scream. A shrieking roar. There were many voices in the sound. Some thought it was an attacking group of Native Americans. Others thought enemy forces were coming. Windham's militia leader, Eliphalet Dyer, called the militia to form. They fired their muskets into the darkness until daylight broke. Then a scouting group was sent out to see how successful they had been. What they found were hundreds of bullfrog bodies laying belly up everywhere. A large group of bullfrogs had descended on a large puddle, which is all that remained of a pond on Dyer's property. The people of Windham realized that the cries they heard were bullfrogs crying out for water. The incident is known as the Great Windham Frog Fight. Three ballads were written about it and even an operetta was performed in 1888. The Windham Bank even issued banknotes with an image of a frog standing over the body of another frog and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Debuts

In the month of December, on the 12th, in 1967, the movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" debuted. The movie starred Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as the parents of Katharine Houghton's character, Joanna Drayton. This was the last film Hepburn and Tracy made together. It was a pivotal film for its time because it showcased an interracial couple in a positive light. This was a romantic comedy-drama from director Stanley Kramer and Sidney Poitier starred as Joanna's fiance. In 1967, interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states until the Supreme Court passed anti-miscegenation in June of that year. In 2017, the film was added to the National Film Registry as being culturally, historically and aesthetically significant. Joanna's parents disagreed with each other about how they felt about the relationship. Poitier's character tells the  parents he will leave the relationship unless the couple gives their blessing. Joanna invites her future in-laws to dinner and they are shocked to find out that their son is engaged to a white woman. In the end, both sets of parents support the marriage.

 The Ramsey House (Suggested by: Tammie Burroughs)

The Ramsey House has also been known as Swan Pond and is located in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was built by a prominent man in the town, Colonel Francis Alexander Ramsey in the late 1700s. The house has a unique stone look to it and was the main home on a plantation that was held by the Ramseys until the Civil War. Today, it is a historic museum on 101 acres that includes gardens and a visitor center. And apparently this is still home to several family members in the afterlife. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Ramsey House!

Knoxville, Tennessee is located at the headwaters of the Tennessee River in the heart of the Great Valley of East Tennessee that was once the hunting grounds of the Cherokees. A burial mound is evidence of an even earlier indigineous group James White founded the town in 1786 and he built several cabins and a fort he named White's Fort. The Knoxville name came in 1791 and the city grew quickly becoming the first capitol of Tennessee. Early on the town had seven taverns and no church, so that tells you a little something about how raucous it could get around there. The railroad and river made Knoxville into a distribution center. The city found itself split during the Civil War and was occupied at different times by both the Confederacy and the Union. The University of Tennessee was founded here as well, starting as Blount College. Francis Ramsey would move here and build his home.

Francis Alexander Ramsey was of Scotch-Irish decent and was born in Pennsylvania in 1764. He joined the cause during the Revolutionary War, fighting alongside General George Washington and working his way up to Colonel. When he was nineteen, he set his sights on East Tennessee and relocated to Greene County. Ramsey joined an exploration group that included James White to search out new areas of settlement and he helped found Knoxville. On one of the trips to the area, Ramsey found a pond that had been dammed by a beaver and it was full of fish. He named the pond Swan Pond and asked for a land grant in 1786. He served as an official with the early State of Franklin that failed in 1788. Ramsey would continue his work in the government of the Southwest Territory and the State of Tennessee, which earned statehood in 1796. 

In 1789, Ramsey married Margaret McKnitt Alexander, whom everybody called Peggy. In 1792, he decided it was time to move Peggy and their children to Swan Pond and they built a log cabin to live in while the mansion was being constructed. The mansion was completed in 1797. During the construction, Ramsey had the pond drained because he was worried about malaria. Possibly a bit of precognition because malaria would be what eventually took his life. Architect Thomas Hope designed the house. Construction began in 1795 and local pink marble was combined with blueish-gray limestone was used as the main material. The house is two stories and done in the Late Georgian style. This included hand-carved cornices and window arches that have nine narrow stones each. The kitchen is attached to the main house via a dogtrot, which is a breezeway between two wings of a house. The house has six fireplaces, but only three chimneys. This was the first house in Tennessee to have an attached kitchen.

The interior is similar to many historic mansions with a front door that opens into a hallway with a dining room on one side of the hallway and a parlor/library on the other side. There are two bedrooms on the second floor and mysteriously, there is another door on the second floor that is an entrance. There are two stories on the kitchen wing. We don't know this for certain, but the house slaves probably lived on the second floor of the kitchen wing. The Ramsey slaves didn't work the land. They had indentured servants from the North for that. 

Peggy didn't get to enjoy the house for long. She died in 1805 at the age of thirty-nine. In 1806, Francis married his second wife Ann Agnew Ramsey. She died in 1816. In 1820, he married for the third time to a woman named Margaret Christian Russell. This was also her third marriage. Francis died that same year from malaria. Five months after his death, Margaret gave birth to their son, Francis Alexander Ramsey, Jr. Ramsey had three other children that made it to adulthood: James Getty McCready, William Baine Alexander and Eliza Jane. Another son, who had also been named William Baine, died when he was eight years old. Eliza Jane became one of the few women in the area to be college educated. William became Knoxville mayor and later the Secretary of State. 

James became a doctor and wrote “The Annals of Tennessee,” which was a historical documentation of the state’s early years. He also founded the East Tennessee Historical Society and established the region's first medical society. James also got into banking and became president of the Bank of East Tennessee. It was in this position that James got into some trouble. Parson Brownlow was publisher of the Knoxville newspaper and he accused the bank's directors of defrauding clients of the bank. He also accused James' son John of creating false pension funds for employees and Brownlow described him as "a few degrees removed from an idiot." The accusations really hurt the family and cost James' son the district's Congressional seat.

James and William both lived in the house at various times up until the Civil War. They supported the Confederate cause and when the Union took the city of Knoxville, they burned James' house, Mecklenburg. It is believed that Brownlow convinced the Union to do this. He not only was a anti-secessionist, but James' son John had Brownlow arrested on charges of conspiracy to burn railroad bridges and he pushed for him to be hanged. The Confederate Army was worried about backlash, so they didn't do that. After James' house was burned, he lost his spirit and the Ramsey family left the city for South Carolina. The Ramsey House was sold in 1866 by a Ramsey grandson, who shared the same name as his grandfather, to a man named William Spurgien. The house started to fall into disrepair after that. In 1927, the Bonnie Kate Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a historical marker at the Ramsey House in honor of it being James Ramsey's birthplace. The Historic American Buildings Survey documented the house for a decade. Despite this attention, it wouldn't be until 1952 that the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities would purchase the house.

The APTA began the process of restoring the house. They started with the windows and roof and then restored everthing else to its former glory. They also hauled an old log cabin onto the property to represent the first Ramsey home. They filled the house with period furnishings that included two original Chippendale chairs given to Francis Alexander Ramsey and his wife, Peggy, as a wedding present. In 1969, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today, it is a museum that also hosts weddings and other events. 

At Halloween, the house has hosted an event called "The Spirits Within." And for good reason because apparently this house is haunted. There are stories of a Revolutionary soldier walking by a window and members of the Ramsey household continue to live here in the afterlife. The house was formally investigated and had a documentary produced about the findings. This investigation took place in May of 2013. J-Adam Smith and Lindsey Whatley of Haunted Knoxville Ghost Tours conducted the paranormal investigation and Patrick Watson of Mapletree Productions produced the documentary. It is called, "Historic Hauntings - A Paranormal Study of Ramsey House." The film features Smith and Whatley communicating with spirits in the second-floor master bedroom with a flashlight. They ask the spirits to turn on the flashlight and it blinks several times on its own. They also play several EVP that they captured. 

Kelley Weatherly Sinclair was the Executive Director in the house in 2019 when WATE 6 visited for a Halloween segment. She told the reporter that they have experienced many things in the house. "It can be anywhere from seeing a shadow walk by to hearing footsteps. There are several that we think we have identified. One is Billy, the 8 year-old. Another is Anne, Francis' second wife. Another we think is Reynolds and another one is Seth. And those are all different walks of life: a child, a mother, a grandfather and we think one of the slaves that was here."

Sue Jones was a museum assistant and she said, "I heard the guy in the other room go, 'Oh my.' I go 'What's the matter?' 'Well, somebody just swore at me.' I said, 'Oh that's just Seth. Don't worry about it.' So we go, 'Seth, what do you want?' And the box said 'stairs' so we all go over to the stairs." Those stairs are the ones that lead up to a dormitory, but no one ever goes up there anymore. The door there will shut on its own and Seth has something to say. Jones also said that Billy has occasionally tapped her on the arm to let her know he is there.

Cars driving past the house when it is closed have called saying that they think someone has broken in because they'll see a figure looking out of a window. After the security company received calls four times for the same thing and each time finding nothing and no one at the house, everyone finally had to admit it was a spirit. The spirit is described as a tall, thin woman with her hair up in a bun. They believe this is the second wife of Colonel Ramsey, Anne. There are also descriptions of a woman in black looking out a window. Not sure if this is the same entity.

The Ramsey House is a very unique looking home. A definite one-of-a-kind. Is the Ramsey House haunted? That is for you to decide!

Another interesting haunted location in Knoxville is a bridge. This isn't like the Cry Baby Bridges all over the country. The Gay Street Bridge crosses the Tennessee River. It was completed in 1898 and is the oldest vehicle bridge in the city. The bridge was designed by Chief Engineer Charles E. Fowler with a steel spandrel-braced arch and a concrete deck. The deck is 42 feet wide with two vehicle lanes, although when it was first installed, it had trolley tracks. Those were removed in 1938. This was a challenging spot for a bridge. There had been four other bridges here previously: a temporary pontoon bridge, a stone bridge washed away by a flood, a covered bridge blown down by a tornado and a wooden Howe truss bridge that was demolished when the Gay Street Bridge was completed. During the construction of the final bridge, the plans had to be altered because getting materials was hard during the Spanish-American War. Major repairs were performed from 2002 until 2004.

One of those repairs was to the electrical system on the bridge because it seemed something was haunting the bridge. The story goes that in 1815, on one of the previous bridges, a man was running from a lynch mob. We're not sure what he did, but he ended up falling off the bridge. And for that reason, he haunts the bridge and usually shows his presence by playing with the electricity. The third light on the bridge has continually gone out for over one hundred years. The city has tried different methods to keep the light from going out, but nothing has ever worked. They rewired everything when they made the major repairs, but it still goes out to this day and even when it doesn't go out, it flickers.  The light likes to flicker especially when tours go by and talk about it. 

And not too far from the bridge is Knoxville's City County Building. The structure is located at 400 Main Street. Knoxville was a rough city at one time and the Old City area was full of saloons, brothels and crime. The area where the building sits was once the site of hangings. That past has left a residue. People see shadows around the building and doors inside the building slam open and closed on their own. Disembodied footsteps are heard. It's unnerving enough that people dislike working there at night. 

Haunted Knoxville Ghost Tours