Moment in Oddity - Queen Elizabeth I's Dress
Textiles are very hard historic objects to preserve and retain through the centuries for obvious reasons. Moths, humidity and light can play havoc with cloth. But textiles are very important treasures to help us understand how a people lived: their culture, their wealth and their values. For some people like me, it's just really cool to be able to touch or see something that was worn by someone with historic appeal. Seeing something from the Victorian Era is pretty amazing. Imagine being able to see something dated to the time of Queen Elizabeth I! She reigned from 1558 to 1603. Anne Boleyn was Elizabeth's mother and she loved pearls, so when gowns were made for the queen, she always asked for pearls to be included. She had some elaborate gowns that were very unique and one dress was featured in a portrait of her named "Rainbow Portrait." The gown features fabric hand embroidered with forest animals, insects, flowers and a small bear. Eleri Lynn, a curator at the Historic Royal Palaces in England believes she has found part of that gown. This is an amazing piece because it was believed that none of Elizabeth I's dresses survived. The clothing of royalty was always made from the finer things, so many times these items would be repurposed or given away as gifts. The dress was given to a member of the court, but the queen was so vain, no one could be dressed as fine as she was, so known of her gowns could ever be worn. It is believed that the dress was cut apart by the new owner and made into an altar cloth for St. Faith's Church in Bacton, Herefordshire. The idea that a piece of cloth used for years to cover an altar would turn out to be part of the only dress belonging to Queen Elizabeth I to survive, certainly is odd!
This Month in History - Queen Elizabeth I Ascends the Throne
In the month of November, on the 17th, in 1558, Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne of England at the age of 25. Elizabeth was born to King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in 1533 and was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.The era of her reign would come to be known as the Elizabethan Era and it was a good time for England. She succeeded her half-sister Bloody Mary and was not one to force religion on her subjects. She did establish the Protestant church that would come to be known as the Church of England, however. She never married and became known as the Virgin Queen and was celebrated for that. She was cautious in foreign affairs, but did eventually find that she could no longer avoid conflict with Spain and led England to one of its greatest military victories with a defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. In her later years, she became severly depressed and eventually fell ill. She died on March 24, 1603 at the age of 69. Her coffin was carried at night on a barge lit with torches to Whitehall. Elizabeth's funeral would be a month later and her coffin was carried on a horse drawn hearse to Westminster Abbey.
Investigation of the St. Augustine Lighthouse
The St. Augustine Lighthouse is a location full of history, but it also has many stories of tragedy. The tower that stands there today is not the original lighthouse. There have been several towers through the centuries. The one built just prior to the current tower was closer to the sea and eventually fell into it, but not before tragedy hit. The tower that exists today was started in 1871 and was completed in 1874. That construction would leave another tragedy in its wake. Others would lose their lives here too. And in the wake of all of this, we have spirits. I've visited this location many times, but this would be Kelly's first visit and this would be the first time I would conduct an official investigation here. Join Kelly and I as we share the investigation of the St. Augustine Lighthouse!
I've told the story of the tragedies on previous episodes, but let's do a brief a recap. The original lighthouse here was built from wood and burned to the ground in 1586 when Sir Francis Drake attacked the settlement. Another wooden one was built and in the early 1700s it was replaced with the Old Spanish Watchtower, which was made from coquina. This tower would pass from the Spanish to the British and finally to the United States in 1821 as Florida passed from country to country. As I said earlier, it eventually fell into the sea due to erosion in 1880. A keeper, Joseph Andreu, and his wife Maria De Los Delores Mestre Andreu lived here before the Civil War. In 1860, Joseph was on a scaffold to whitewash the exterior of the tower.
The scaffold collapsed and Joseph fell more than 60 feet to his death.
Maria witnessed the whole thing and would take over for Joseph. She was the first female and the first of Hispanic descent to have that job. During the Civil War, a local harbor master named Paul Arnau and Maria removed the lens from the lighthouse to keep it from union soldiers and they buried it in the ground. Arnau was taken captive and under torture on a vessel, he revealed the location of the lens and the Union forces replaced it, so they could see the shipping lanes. Maria left after this and never returned.
The second tragedy involved Hezekiah H. Pittee, who was in charge of constructing the second lighthouse, and I'm sure nearly all of you are familiar with the story. His four children, Mary, Eliza, Keri and Edward, and a neighbor girl, who was African American, jumped into a supply cart and rode it down the rails to where the supplies were loaded and when they got to the gate, the cart flipped over it and down into the water, trapping the kids under it. Two of Pittee's daughters, Eliza and Mary, died and it is believed the African American girl did too.A construction worker saved Keri and Edward.
Listener Myra Wheeler had contacted me to let me know that she, her boyfriend Ken and her mother Mary - also a listener - would be in Florida and they were going to do an investigation at the St. Augustine Lighthouse. We were totally in! We went up to St. Augustine early and I took Kelly to the Pirate Museum. It's a great place full of history and memorabilia. Then we met up with Myra and her family at Harry's for dinner. This is one of the haunted locations in St. Augustine and one of my favorite places to eat for New Orleans style food. And then we were off to one of the handful of places I will say with no hesitation, is haunted: The St. Augustine Lighthouse.
Set the mood (Augustine Wind)
We started the investigation by climbing the 219 stairs to the top of the lighthouse. Certainly not one of my favorite places to be when it is windy or dark! They have redone the decor on the landings with new displays and one of the additions is a story about Smoky the cat. It would seem that a brother and sister once lived at the lighthouse and Smoky was the little girl's pet. Her brother decided one day to see if Smoky could float, so he attached a parachute to the cat and threw it off the top of the lighthouse. It did indeed float, all the way to the ground, and then the scared creature promptly ran off and stayed away for a few days.
The lighthouse has always held an allure for me and a spiritual connection. This is where I had my first real unexplained experience. I had heard what I thought was a ghost dog with my sister when I was a teenager, but this was really what I consider the real deal. And there was no need for any investigation equipment. It was special and always will be and it's why it's the story I share every time I'm asked to be on a podcast or speak about the paranormal. So I was not expecting for the Keeper's House to be the place where we had all of our experiences. We made our way down to the basement where Pete is said to reside. Did we catch an EVP? (Augustine EVP 1) Here it is amplified (Augustine EVP 1 amplified) It almost sounds like something repeating like "thank you, thank you." It's definitely a low class EVP. There were two other people in the basement, but they were being very quiet. Sometimes the smell of smoke comes from down here in the basement or outside. Pete was a keeper, Captain Peter Rasmussen and he was not allowed to smoke in the house by his wife, so some wonder if this is him sneaking a smoke down here in the basement.
We got the dowsing rods out to see if we had anyone with us and we got a yes and that it was a male entity. But that was about it for the basement. When I was on a tour here before, you might recall that one of the women on that tour got poked. So we decided to head upstairs to the first floor and we joined Myra and Mary who had already been having an interaction with at least one spirit. We sat down at the table with our EMFs. (Keeper's House 1) It was funny cause they had told the spirit they would leave and were getting ready to do that when we came along and then Mary ended up having to leave. We got a lot of interactions with the EMF detectors as we sat there. And using them and the dowsing rods, it seemed we were talking to the children who haunt the property. (Keeper's House 2) As we continued to press for more details, it seems that one of the Pittee girls was with us, Mary. (Keeper's House 3) We asked her some of the questions I like to ask inspired by listeners who have joined us on live feeds, for example temperature changes and whether they can leave an area. Mary interacted with the EMF detectors a lot. She would step away and shut down the lights when we would ask. (Keeper's House 4) Now as I listened back to what we recorded, I really wasn't looking for EVPs because of all the audio contamination. But I thought I heard something different in one part that I've pulled out to see what you think. (Augustine EVP 2) Then I've amplified the section (Augustine EVP 2 amplified) and I pulled it out alone (Augustine EVP 2 amplified solo) I think I hear yes or yeah to our question. To let you know how we are set-up here, I have a recording on catching everything and then I have a mini recorder that I do short bursts with. I started doing this at Villisca so we could see if we catch things in real time. So what I'm going to play here is us listening back to a short burst being caught on the recorder catching everything. (Keeper's House 5) Now I'm going to play for you the short burst from the little recorder in its original. (Augustine EVP 3) And now I'll amplify the section (Augustine EVP 3 amplified) and all by itself (Augustine EVP 3 amplified solo) I can't understand what it is said but it sounds like same voice and lilthy cadence)
We head back into the lighthouse and we think we start communicating
with the little African American girl that died in the accident too. Now
we know we have certain words we don't use anymore, but sometimes we
need to return to the vernicular of the time so we are going to use
"negro." (Lighthouse Girl) So apparently she didn't want us in there.
And sadly, there is really no record for her, so I couldn't find a name. Kelly and I do go back into the lighthouse and up onto a landing and get no interactions. We discuss the exchange again and this is when Kelly tells me that the feel of the dowsing rods changed. She felt as though someone were emphasizing that they were done with us. So we decide to leave the tower for good for the evening. Kelly explains it later to our group. (Lighthouse Girl 2) Then we talk to Mary about someone she was communicating all evening with and that was someone named Charles who had been at the lighthouse as a child. One of the guides let me take a picture with my phone of a picture she had found of Charles when he was a child. I'll put that up on Instagram. Why he has returned here, we'll probably never know. Here is Mary sharing about that and she has an EMF detector that was going off in regards to him. (Augustine Charles)
I kept hoping to see something manifesting as color. This is my focus with investigations now. But this area had quite a bit of ambient light and we needed somewhere darker. Kelly and I went to the parlor and this is where we had the more profound experiences. I didn't expect to have interactions with Joseph and Maria. These were more profound to us because Kelly could actually feel the difference in the rods between Joseph and Maria. Maria had a more delicate touch. In the audio, you will hear the clock on the mantle ticking. (Keeper's House 6) So you got touched Kelly? And it was interesting the exchange with Maria because she kept saying no to being the keeper after her husband, but seemed to indicate that she was an assistant. So I'm not sure what that was about cause that doesn't match the historical record.
On the most recent visit to the lighthouse for the Ghost Hunters, this is the new one with just Grant, there was a cupboard on one of the upper landings that opened on its own and hit the railing. We opened the cupboard and it did indeed hit the railing. Other than this, they really didn't have any experiences. We were really disappointed with this episode because they never even went into the Keeper's House and an interaction they got excited about happened out in the woods. We had a similar one, which I guarantee just sounded like an animal, probably a racoon or armadillo. We were chased out of the woods by the mosquitos. (Augustine Woods) Amplified sound (Woods Roar)
I've collected many ghost stories about the lighthouse over the years, many since the original episode we did on this location, Ep. 76.I'm going to share a story about the first caretaker who started on after the lighthouse became fully automated in 1955. His name was David Swain and this is from David Lapham's "Ghosts of St. Augustine." (p. 141-142)
Showing posts with label St. Augustine Lighthouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Augustine Lighthouse. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
HGB Ep. 300 - It's a Haunted Gay Life
Moment in Oddity - Whispers of Yellowstone Lake
Suggested by Carren Sanders
Science has been able to document and explain many weird atmospheric occurrences that have happened throughout the years, but when it comes to the Whispers of Yellowstone Lake, they have documented the phenomenon, but never explained it. The first reports of these sounds were collected in 1893 and published in Science Magazine by Edwin Linton. He had heard the strange noise himself twice. But accounts go back much further than that to the fur trappers and mountain men. For many years after Linton's article, nobody mentioned the sounds, but reports started again in 1924. Jack Haynes was a photographer and he was with a group in a boat on Yellowstone Lake early one morning. They all heard this low roar that got louder and rose in pitch and then faded, only to start up again from another direction. It happened a third time and all of this took place in less than a minute and then it was silent. People who have heard the Whispers say that they sound like these weird ethereal aerial sounds that mimic an electric harp and that they sound as though they are coming up out of the lake or that the sound is hanging over the lake. They are like a low hum that increases in decibels and it sounds almost as if the hums pass right over the person who hears them. It then fades away.. There have been several causes suggested over the years. Some say it is caused by swarming bees, but the sound is still around in the winter. Others believe it is just the wind blowing through the trees. A man named Ed Henry suggested that the weird sound was created by air currents created by the mountains and many agree. The sound is always heard when the lake is calm and early in the morning after an unusually cool evening. Whatever it is that causes the whispers, they certainly are odd! And here is a sample shared by the National Park Service!
This Day in History - Pulse Nightclub Massacre
In the month of June, on the 12th, in 2016, Omar Mateen, opened fire inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The Pulse Nightclub was opened in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler as a gay bar and nightclub that hosted various theme nights. This particular night happened to be Latin Night, so most of the victims were Latino. Mateen was a security guard who had been to the club a few times. He had sworn allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and a recent event in which the U.S. killed Abu Waheeb, the leader of the militant group Islamic State in Iraq, triggered him. That would not only make this a mass shooting and hate crime, but also a terrorist attack. The attack started around 2am with Mateen marching into the club carrying a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. An off-duty police officer working as security called in the police immediately. There was an initial engagement, but Mateen barricaded himself inside and created a hostage situation. He claimed to have explosives, which made the police more cautious about bursting in, but in actuality there were no explosives. At the time of the attack, this was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in US history. Today, it is still the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ community in US history. The Pulse Nightclub is now a memorial site and museum, slated to open in 2020.
It's a Haunted Gay Life
This episode is going to be a little different and why shouldn't it be since this is officially HGB's 300th episode! June 2019 marks a few things. I've been producing the podcast for exactly 4.5 years. We've hit a big episode number and have almost 4 million downloads of the podcast. And the month of June is gay pride and 2019 marks 50 years since the StoneWall Riot that started the big push for gay rights in America. This coming together of big milestones inspired this episode and what I will present here for your listening pleasure is a bit of gay history that has hauntings connected to it and after producing a haunted history podcast for this many years, I have changed my opinions, beliefs and practices in regards to the paranormal and will share that perspective. Plus, my top 10 most haunted places I've visited! Join me on an exploration into my haunted gay life!
For podcasters, big milestone shows usually mean rolling out a big topic. I struggled. What did I want to do? I haven't done Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum yet. How about Skinwalker Ranch? Or perhaps Raynham Hall in England? But these places have been done to death and I really enjoy doing the obscure places. But I wanted this episode to be different. I thought that I might share my top haunted locations based on my own experiences - and I will throw a few of those in - but this would be repeating things from other episodes. Almost like a review show. Then I thought about the fact that I've been doing History Goes Bump for a year now, on my own. I've settled into my own skin and realized that my views have changed from the very first episode. I listened to Episode 1 a few weeks ago and once again cleaned up the audio a little bit and added an intro disclaimer in hopes that people would not just listen to that episode and decide they didn't like HGB, but give it a chance as the production has drastically improved. As I listened, I realized that I had changed my mind on a few things and even more importantly, in the last four and a half years, I've had quite a few of my own experiences that I can't explain. I also got really inspired by a podcast I just binged. The latest season of Uncover by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is titled The Village and it explores the history of the Toronto Gay Village and unsolved murders of gay men and transsexuals that have happened there. That trip through history made me think of American gay history and my own. Things have changed so much. And wouldn't you know, as I explored the history, I found some haunts in some very important landmarks.
I turned sixteen in 1987. I guess that makes me a little old for some listeners as the vast majority of podcast listeners are millennials. While most teens at that age are concerned with passing their driver's license test, I was realizing what it was exactly that made me seem different then everybody else and it wasn't just that I wished I lived in the attic of the Addam's Family House while they all lived downstairs. I was gay. It amazes me as I sit back today and see that we live in a culture where people don't even have to claim a gender anymore and can love anybody they want to love. That wasn't the case when I was a teenager and it certainly wasn't for the decades before I came out to myself. There was a time when a relationship of mixed religious beliefs or races was taboo and even illegal. My how things have changed and I'm so happy for young people today. There are definitely still places where it isn't accepted and families that will still lay down judgement, but for the most part, we are pretty close to being where we should be.
I like to educate on this podcast, so let's take a trip back 50 years to one of the most momentous moments in gay history here in America. There was a time when not only was homosexuality considered a mental illness, it was illegal to practice. Come with me to The Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn got it's start in 1930 as a speakeasy located at 91 Seventh Avenue South. Vincent Bonavia was the owner, so it was known as Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn and its cover was that it was just a basic tearoom serving up light faire and some non-alcoholic beverages. It eventually was raided by prohibition agents, but it continued to operate. When Prohibition was repealed, Bonavia decided he wanted to move to a better location. There was a building on Christopher Street that had once been stables back in the mid-19th century. Bonnie's Stonewall Inn moved in there in 1934 and took up two storefronts, 51-53 Christopher Street. The bar and restaurant was very successful until the inside was gutted by a fire in 1964. The place needed somebody new to love it.
In walks the Mafia. They were all about making a profit and they saw a need in New York City for gay bars. So in 1966, three members of the Mafia refurbished the Stonewall Inn and reopened as a gay bar. At that time, it was the biggest gay establishment in the U.S. This not only made it popular with the gay community, but it put a big target on it for the police. It was customary for the New York Police Department to raid bathhouses and gay bars. Every establishment got hit at least once a month. The ludicrous rules in place at the time were that it was illegal for same sex people to dance close to each other, it was illegal to serve gay people alcohol and customers had to wear clothing specific to their genders. For example, a woman needed to wear three pieces of feminine clothing. A police raid usually happened early in the evening and if the bar was lucky, they would have been tipped off, so they could hide a bunch of liquor and continue business after the raid. The police would come in and turn on all the lights. Everybody would be lined up along the wall, verbally harrassed and they would have to present their IDs. If you didn't have ID or were a man dressed in drag or a woman dressed butch, you would be arrested. Bar employees would also sometimes be arrested.
By 1969, the gay community in New York had had enough. On June 28, 1969, the gay community would make their stand and their frustration would erupt in riots. At 1:20 in the morning, eight police officers raided the Stonewall Inn. They expected the typical subjugation, but the 200 patrons refused to cooperate. They were all informed they were under arrest, but the cops needed more paddy wagons. As they waited for the wagons, a crowd began to form outside and before long, it was ten times its original size. The wagons arrived and the first to be loaded was a lesbian. She pushed back and refused to get in the wagon and as she fought she was hit in the head with a billy club. She was picked up and thrown into the wagon. And that was all it took.
Some of the crowd pushed against the paddy wagon trying to tip it over, while others threw beer bottles and bricks at the other wagons. There were ten officers against a crowd of 600 and in a true twist of irony, they ended up seeking shelter in the very gay bar that they made unsafe for the gays. Despite this being their place to love and dance, the rioters turned on Stonewall and threw anything they could at the windows, from bottles to rocks to garbage cans. Attempts were made to bust down the doors. The Tactical Police Force was called in and they managed to squash the rebellion and arrested a bunch of people. The streets were cleared by 4am. Several people had been injured including four of the officers. Damage to Stonewall was devastating. Everything was broken.
This would not be the end to the riots. News spread quickly through Greenwich Village and riots occurred on the next five nights. Things quieted down and the raids stopped. The next year on June 28th, a parade was hosted marching from Greenwich Village to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. This would be the first gay pride march and they have continued in city's around the world all the way until today. I'll never forget my first pride parade. It was so much fun and even though at the time, the city of Denver only gave us access to one side of Colfax Avenue, we were able to celebrate, rather than hide who we were.
The Stonewall Inn did not go on however. It closed. And for the next twenty years, a variety of businesses used the building. There was a shoe store, a bagel shop and a Chinese restaurant. In the early 1990s, the block of Christopher Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues was co-named "Stonewall Place" and another gay bar named just Stonewall opened in part of the building where the original Stonewall had been. Through the efforts of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Things went well for the bar until 2006 when it closed again due to mismanagement and noise complaints. Another group of investors took over in 2007 and renovated the neglected club and was reopened as the Stonewall Inn in March 2007. It is still going strong today.
With this kind of history from Prohibition to the launch of a national push for human rights, it is easy to believe that some energy is inside this building and there are both patrons and employees who claim that Stonewall has ghosts.One employee said, "We think we have ghosts. Doors slam if no one is there, so we say there are two guys and one girl ghost upstairs. It's an ongoing, running joke." And the upstairs is indeed where most of the run-ins with apparitions take place. That's all I could find, but I'm sure if I ever got the chance to talk to employees there, I'd hear a lot more.
Harvey Milk's Old Castro Camera Shop
Harvey Milk was born on May 22nd in 1930 in Woodmere, New York. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who owned a department store. He worked in the store when he was growing up. It was also as he was growing up that he figured out he was gay. He attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany, which is now known as State University of New York. He studied math and history and became a writer for the school paper. Many of his columns featured commentary on diversity. When he graduated in 1951, he decided to enlist in the Navy and he was enrolled in officer training. He did well and ended up stationed as a diving instructor in San Diego. His naval career would come to an abrubt end when his orientation was discovered. He resigned at the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He decided to get a job as a teacher and did so working as a public school teacher on Long Island. He later would work as a stock analyst in New York City and then as a production associate for Broadway musicals. The Vietnam War would get him more active in politics and activism.
He eventually made his way to San Francisco in 1972 and opened up a camera store on Castro Street. The Castro District and gay culture go hand-in-hand. The Castro Street Fair has been hosted for 45 years and was started by Milk in 1974. He started it because of the discriminatory policies of local merchants who tried to block two gay men from opening a store. It was an offshoot of the Castro Village Association, the first US organization for gay businesses. The influence of the Castro Street Fair was much of why Castro transformed into the center of the LGBTQ community.
Milk went on to announce that he would be running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He lost the race, but he was now a prominent figure in politics. He ran again for the combined San Francisco City/County supervisor seat in 1975 and almost won. Mayor George Mascone appointed him to the city’s Board of Permit Appeals. This was a precedent and made Milk the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk ran for state assembly and lost, but this spurred him to champion an amendment that would replace at-large elections for the Board of Supervisors with district elections and he won his next race. He was inaugurated as a San Francisco City-County Supervisor on January 9, 1978. He became an advocate for many people, especially the gay community. He once said during a speech, "Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out." Many people hated Milk though and he received daily death threats.
Former city Supervisor Dan White was really angry. The bad blood between him and Milk went back to an early controversy over the building of a mental health facility for troubled youths. Both White and Milk opposed it, but then Milk changed his mind and voted against White who lost on the issue. White never forgot that and voted against every issue Milk supported after that. White would resign his seat on November 10, 1978 citing that the money was not enough to support his family. He then changed his mind, but the Mayor would not let him back. Now White hated Mayor Moscone too. On November 27, 1978, White managed to get into City Hall with a gun through a basement window. He went to Moscone’s office and killed him, then walked down the hall and killed Milk. White used the Twinkie Defense, which basically was claiming he had so much sugar that he had lost his sanity so he was not accountable for what he did. And it worked. He was acquitted of murder charges and given a lesser sentence for manslaughter. People rioted on Castro Street and set police cars on fire. The police in turn raided gay businesses and beat people.
Perhaps this is why Harvey Milk is not at rest. I mentioned that Milk opened up a camera shop when he first moved to San Francisco. This shop would become a neighborhood center. Milk's spirit is said to have returned here and taken up residence. Moviemaker Gus Van Sant definitely felt this was the case as he filmed the movie Milk. For the film, Van Sant recreated the former Castro Camera Shop in the gift store that took its place. He tells the following story, "The gift store owners were very into the legacy of the store and willing to let us close their shop down and move our set in. They had a mural of Harvey Milk. During a shot at night there was a take where we were using most of the room and there were three or four actors in the scene. Some people were sitting on the sofa which was outside of the shot and during one of the takes somebody walked in from outside and sat down on the sofa during the shot. After the shot was over and I yelled 'Cut,' he apparently got up and walked out. The actors were like, 'Did you see that guy?' I didn't see anybody, but they kept describing Harvey, so I figure it was the ghost of Harvey walking into the store for a brief second."
Milk would make another appearance via a Ouija Board in 2012. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to name a Navy vessel for Milk and it just happened to be his 82nd birthday. Supervisor Scott Wiener said, "LGBT people have always served in our armed forces. For many, many years, our community was hidden and oppressed in the armed services. Now, because of the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' our community can serve openly and proudly. We must support our LGBT soldiers past and present. I can think of no better way to do that than to name a vessel for a Navy officer who went on to become one of the most important civil rights leaders in history."
Another supervisor named John Avalos suggested they ask for Harvey Milk's opinion on a Ouija Board. He described what happened as, "We actually put our hands on the Ouija board and the letters g-o-o-d-r-i-d-d-a-n-c-e-d-a-d-t came out. We asked Harvey, and Harvey gave us these letters: 'Good riddance don't ask, don't tell.' It was quite clear that Harvey Milk would have been opposed to 'don't ask, don't tell.' I can honestly say that's one aspect of this resolution that's really valid."
Upstairs Lounge
Our final stop is at a location in New Orleans. This was a bar known as the Upstairs Lounge and it was located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. The tragedy that occurred here was made worse by the fact that this location had only one entrance and patrons had to climb up some wooden stairs to get to the bar. We need to go back to the summer of 1973 in June. The French Quarter has always been an open and party kind of place, but back in the 70s, gay people still needed to keep their gathering together underground. It was the last Sunday in June and was the final day of Gay Pride for the city. Such a celebration was new as Stonewall had only happened four years prior.
Happening at the same time in America was a not so well known targeting of gay churches. The Metropolitan Community Church, MCC, had been founded in 1968 by Troy Perry. MCC churches were starting in big cities, many of them having to share space at community centers or spaces. Earlier in 1973, a Nashville MCC was burned as well as the Los Angeles headquarters for the MCC. A fledgling MCC congreation in New orleans had asked the Upstairs Lounge if they could use the space for church services. Since the Upstairs Lounge was a gay bar, it was a no brainer and they said yes. The group would move services to their pastor's house just a couple weeks before the Upstairs Lounge would be firebombed, but this was still a spiritual center for them.
The afternoon of June 24th, the lounge hosted an all-you-can-eat buffet and free beer. Around 130 people attended. The beer ran out and only about 60 people stayed, mostly MCC members. They gathered around the piano and sang some songs together. At 7:56 pm, the buzzer downstairs sounded. This usually meant that a cab had come to pick someone up, but no one had called for a cab. One of the guys went to the steel door that led to the stairs leading downstairs and when he opened it, flames rushed inside the club. Someone has deliberately set the wooden stairs on fire. The bar was an immediate inferno and as I told you, this was the only exit. There were windows, but they were boarded up or had iron bars over them. There was no marked emergency exit. Some bars were far enough apart that a few people were able to squeeze through and jump down to the sidewalk.
The local MCC pastor was Rev. Bill Larson and he was at the lounge. He attempted to get through the bars and became stuck. He burned to death wedged in the window. This would become an image of the mass murder as his body remained in that window into the next day. A bartender named Buddy Rasmussen knew where the emergency exit was and he managed to get fifteen people out. One of those men, MCC assistant pastor George "Mitch" Mitchell, ran back inside to get his partner and both men ended up dying. Twenty-nine people died that night and three more would died later from their injuries. More people died that night then died when the entire French Quarter burned down in 1788. Not only was it troubling that someone would set out to burn a gay club and murder gay people, but the city had a very tepid reaction. It was as if no one cared. Descriptions of the aftermath were horrible and none of the coverage mentioned that this was a hate crime.People claimed it was God's judgement and a cab driver even said, "I hope the fire burned their dress off." Two days after the firebombing, the story disappeared from headlines. And to be honest, I knew nothing of this until I heard Mark Bologna cover it on his podcast "Beyond Bourbon Street"
Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, said of the victims, "We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar." As if gay people didn't carry ID or were unworthy of identification. Churches refused to host memorial services. Clearly, there are many reasons why spirits would be here in the afterlife. We have a painful death, murder and no justice because nobody was ever caught in connection to this crime. Not to mention the community's reaction. Several victims were dumped into a mass grave at a Potter's Field because their shamed families wouldn't claim the bodies.
The Upstairs Lounge was not rebuilt or reopened. There is a bar in the first floor under the lounge called The Jimani Bar. Patrons and employees all claim to have unexplained experiences. People feel as though they are being watched and that someone or something they can't see, is there. Disembodied voices are heard both in this bar and on the third floor. Voices are also caught on EVP and they have told investigators their names and that they don't want to be forgotten. Full-bodied apparitions have been seen walking on the second floor and in the kitchen area of the Jimani. And obviously, the vision of these ghosts is horrible as they are seen charred. The smell of smoke floats on the air and I can only imagine that occasionally there is another smell as well.
Gay history is important and I'm glad that I was able to share a few key pieces of that history. Are these locations haunted? That is for you to decide!
My Most Haunted 2019
I've been doing ghost tours since I was a kid. At this point, I've lost count of how many I have done. I've been going into haunted locations just as long, but for most of those years I was not actively seeking interactions. As we like to say around here, I didn't tempt the spirits. For those of you that have been on this journey with me - and that includes any of you that have binged the back catalogue - you know that I have been tempting the spirits more and more and starting here in 2019, I have been doing actually ghost hunting or investigations. What changed that got me doing that? Number one is that I really wanted to start getting my own answers. Number two is that I had been afraid to interact with the spirit world, partly because of my religious upbringing and partly because I didn't have a partner in crime to do it with. I wrote down a list of haunted locations that I have visited that have been discussed either on a regular episode or a BonusCast. These are places that I've actually been inside and wandered around a bit. I'm sure I've missed a few places or forgotten about some. I have 25 of them: Mammoth Cave, Mineral Springs Hotel, King's Tavern (Natchez), The Colosseum, Moses Cone Manor, Sorrel-Weed House, Driskill Hotel, Biltmore Estate, 1725 Captain Taylor House, Old Charleston Jail, Disneyland, Hotel Cassadaga, The Stanley Hotel, Queen Mary, Croke-Patterson House, Molly Brown House, Sugar Mill in St. Augustine, Cuban Club, Treehouse Bar in Orlando, Lillian Place House, Baker House, Waverly Hills Sanitorium, Lemp Mansion, Ripley's Odditorium and the St. Augustine Lighthouse.
Of those 25, I would say that in ten of them, I have had some kind of unexplained experience. So I guess that makes it easy to do a top 10 most haunted locations based on my experiences. But before I share that, I want to talk a bit about some of my beliefs that have changed. Obviously, I'm more open to tempting the spirits although I would say there are certain methods I'll never use...can you say Ouija Board? I used to really wonder about child spirits and I didn't think that a child's spirit would just be left here. But I'm not sure where I stand on what happens directly after we die, so it is possible in my mind that a child spirit might still be around. And the thing that has convinced me the most about this are the EVP of children I have caught myself. As for what a ghost is, I'm still open to ghosts being sourced from many things, but I lean most heavily on some kind of trapped energy. I think this is why the most common experiential thing we hear when it comes to the paranormal is that someone feels weird in some way.
10. King's Tavern
9. Croke-Patterson Mansion
8.Lillian Place House
7. 1725 Captain Taylor House
6. Treehouse Bar
5. Mineral Springs Hotel
4. Ripley's Odditorium
3. St. Augustine Lighthouse
2. Baker House
1. Waverly Hills Sanitorium
So I've done 300 episodes and way more locations than just that. Am I running out of material? No way! I've counted 200 locations on my suggestions list still left and you guys add to it consistently. Some of them don't have enough for a regular episode, but they make it into a BonusCast. And speaking of those, I have over 150 of those available and some of those have been my favorite to produce. So I can sit back at the end of this episode and declare, "It's a haunted gay life!" Or is it? That is for you to decide!
Suggested by Carren Sanders
Science has been able to document and explain many weird atmospheric occurrences that have happened throughout the years, but when it comes to the Whispers of Yellowstone Lake, they have documented the phenomenon, but never explained it. The first reports of these sounds were collected in 1893 and published in Science Magazine by Edwin Linton. He had heard the strange noise himself twice. But accounts go back much further than that to the fur trappers and mountain men. For many years after Linton's article, nobody mentioned the sounds, but reports started again in 1924. Jack Haynes was a photographer and he was with a group in a boat on Yellowstone Lake early one morning. They all heard this low roar that got louder and rose in pitch and then faded, only to start up again from another direction. It happened a third time and all of this took place in less than a minute and then it was silent. People who have heard the Whispers say that they sound like these weird ethereal aerial sounds that mimic an electric harp and that they sound as though they are coming up out of the lake or that the sound is hanging over the lake. They are like a low hum that increases in decibels and it sounds almost as if the hums pass right over the person who hears them. It then fades away.. There have been several causes suggested over the years. Some say it is caused by swarming bees, but the sound is still around in the winter. Others believe it is just the wind blowing through the trees. A man named Ed Henry suggested that the weird sound was created by air currents created by the mountains and many agree. The sound is always heard when the lake is calm and early in the morning after an unusually cool evening. Whatever it is that causes the whispers, they certainly are odd! And here is a sample shared by the National Park Service!
This Day in History - Pulse Nightclub Massacre
In the month of June, on the 12th, in 2016, Omar Mateen, opened fire inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The Pulse Nightclub was opened in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler as a gay bar and nightclub that hosted various theme nights. This particular night happened to be Latin Night, so most of the victims were Latino. Mateen was a security guard who had been to the club a few times. He had sworn allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and a recent event in which the U.S. killed Abu Waheeb, the leader of the militant group Islamic State in Iraq, triggered him. That would not only make this a mass shooting and hate crime, but also a terrorist attack. The attack started around 2am with Mateen marching into the club carrying a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. An off-duty police officer working as security called in the police immediately. There was an initial engagement, but Mateen barricaded himself inside and created a hostage situation. He claimed to have explosives, which made the police more cautious about bursting in, but in actuality there were no explosives. At the time of the attack, this was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in US history. Today, it is still the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ community in US history. The Pulse Nightclub is now a memorial site and museum, slated to open in 2020.
It's a Haunted Gay Life
This episode is going to be a little different and why shouldn't it be since this is officially HGB's 300th episode! June 2019 marks a few things. I've been producing the podcast for exactly 4.5 years. We've hit a big episode number and have almost 4 million downloads of the podcast. And the month of June is gay pride and 2019 marks 50 years since the StoneWall Riot that started the big push for gay rights in America. This coming together of big milestones inspired this episode and what I will present here for your listening pleasure is a bit of gay history that has hauntings connected to it and after producing a haunted history podcast for this many years, I have changed my opinions, beliefs and practices in regards to the paranormal and will share that perspective. Plus, my top 10 most haunted places I've visited! Join me on an exploration into my haunted gay life!
For podcasters, big milestone shows usually mean rolling out a big topic. I struggled. What did I want to do? I haven't done Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum yet. How about Skinwalker Ranch? Or perhaps Raynham Hall in England? But these places have been done to death and I really enjoy doing the obscure places. But I wanted this episode to be different. I thought that I might share my top haunted locations based on my own experiences - and I will throw a few of those in - but this would be repeating things from other episodes. Almost like a review show. Then I thought about the fact that I've been doing History Goes Bump for a year now, on my own. I've settled into my own skin and realized that my views have changed from the very first episode. I listened to Episode 1 a few weeks ago and once again cleaned up the audio a little bit and added an intro disclaimer in hopes that people would not just listen to that episode and decide they didn't like HGB, but give it a chance as the production has drastically improved. As I listened, I realized that I had changed my mind on a few things and even more importantly, in the last four and a half years, I've had quite a few of my own experiences that I can't explain. I also got really inspired by a podcast I just binged. The latest season of Uncover by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is titled The Village and it explores the history of the Toronto Gay Village and unsolved murders of gay men and transsexuals that have happened there. That trip through history made me think of American gay history and my own. Things have changed so much. And wouldn't you know, as I explored the history, I found some haunts in some very important landmarks.
I turned sixteen in 1987. I guess that makes me a little old for some listeners as the vast majority of podcast listeners are millennials. While most teens at that age are concerned with passing their driver's license test, I was realizing what it was exactly that made me seem different then everybody else and it wasn't just that I wished I lived in the attic of the Addam's Family House while they all lived downstairs. I was gay. It amazes me as I sit back today and see that we live in a culture where people don't even have to claim a gender anymore and can love anybody they want to love. That wasn't the case when I was a teenager and it certainly wasn't for the decades before I came out to myself. There was a time when a relationship of mixed religious beliefs or races was taboo and even illegal. My how things have changed and I'm so happy for young people today. There are definitely still places where it isn't accepted and families that will still lay down judgement, but for the most part, we are pretty close to being where we should be.
I like to educate on this podcast, so let's take a trip back 50 years to one of the most momentous moments in gay history here in America. There was a time when not only was homosexuality considered a mental illness, it was illegal to practice. Come with me to The Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn got it's start in 1930 as a speakeasy located at 91 Seventh Avenue South. Vincent Bonavia was the owner, so it was known as Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn and its cover was that it was just a basic tearoom serving up light faire and some non-alcoholic beverages. It eventually was raided by prohibition agents, but it continued to operate. When Prohibition was repealed, Bonavia decided he wanted to move to a better location. There was a building on Christopher Street that had once been stables back in the mid-19th century. Bonnie's Stonewall Inn moved in there in 1934 and took up two storefronts, 51-53 Christopher Street. The bar and restaurant was very successful until the inside was gutted by a fire in 1964. The place needed somebody new to love it.
In walks the Mafia. They were all about making a profit and they saw a need in New York City for gay bars. So in 1966, three members of the Mafia refurbished the Stonewall Inn and reopened as a gay bar. At that time, it was the biggest gay establishment in the U.S. This not only made it popular with the gay community, but it put a big target on it for the police. It was customary for the New York Police Department to raid bathhouses and gay bars. Every establishment got hit at least once a month. The ludicrous rules in place at the time were that it was illegal for same sex people to dance close to each other, it was illegal to serve gay people alcohol and customers had to wear clothing specific to their genders. For example, a woman needed to wear three pieces of feminine clothing. A police raid usually happened early in the evening and if the bar was lucky, they would have been tipped off, so they could hide a bunch of liquor and continue business after the raid. The police would come in and turn on all the lights. Everybody would be lined up along the wall, verbally harrassed and they would have to present their IDs. If you didn't have ID or were a man dressed in drag or a woman dressed butch, you would be arrested. Bar employees would also sometimes be arrested.
By 1969, the gay community in New York had had enough. On June 28, 1969, the gay community would make their stand and their frustration would erupt in riots. At 1:20 in the morning, eight police officers raided the Stonewall Inn. They expected the typical subjugation, but the 200 patrons refused to cooperate. They were all informed they were under arrest, but the cops needed more paddy wagons. As they waited for the wagons, a crowd began to form outside and before long, it was ten times its original size. The wagons arrived and the first to be loaded was a lesbian. She pushed back and refused to get in the wagon and as she fought she was hit in the head with a billy club. She was picked up and thrown into the wagon. And that was all it took.
Some of the crowd pushed against the paddy wagon trying to tip it over, while others threw beer bottles and bricks at the other wagons. There were ten officers against a crowd of 600 and in a true twist of irony, they ended up seeking shelter in the very gay bar that they made unsafe for the gays. Despite this being their place to love and dance, the rioters turned on Stonewall and threw anything they could at the windows, from bottles to rocks to garbage cans. Attempts were made to bust down the doors. The Tactical Police Force was called in and they managed to squash the rebellion and arrested a bunch of people. The streets were cleared by 4am. Several people had been injured including four of the officers. Damage to Stonewall was devastating. Everything was broken.
This would not be the end to the riots. News spread quickly through Greenwich Village and riots occurred on the next five nights. Things quieted down and the raids stopped. The next year on June 28th, a parade was hosted marching from Greenwich Village to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. This would be the first gay pride march and they have continued in city's around the world all the way until today. I'll never forget my first pride parade. It was so much fun and even though at the time, the city of Denver only gave us access to one side of Colfax Avenue, we were able to celebrate, rather than hide who we were.
The Stonewall Inn did not go on however. It closed. And for the next twenty years, a variety of businesses used the building. There was a shoe store, a bagel shop and a Chinese restaurant. In the early 1990s, the block of Christopher Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues was co-named "Stonewall Place" and another gay bar named just Stonewall opened in part of the building where the original Stonewall had been. Through the efforts of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Things went well for the bar until 2006 when it closed again due to mismanagement and noise complaints. Another group of investors took over in 2007 and renovated the neglected club and was reopened as the Stonewall Inn in March 2007. It is still going strong today.
With this kind of history from Prohibition to the launch of a national push for human rights, it is easy to believe that some energy is inside this building and there are both patrons and employees who claim that Stonewall has ghosts.One employee said, "We think we have ghosts. Doors slam if no one is there, so we say there are two guys and one girl ghost upstairs. It's an ongoing, running joke." And the upstairs is indeed where most of the run-ins with apparitions take place. That's all I could find, but I'm sure if I ever got the chance to talk to employees there, I'd hear a lot more.
Harvey Milk's Old Castro Camera Shop
Harvey Milk was born on May 22nd in 1930 in Woodmere, New York. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who owned a department store. He worked in the store when he was growing up. It was also as he was growing up that he figured out he was gay. He attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany, which is now known as State University of New York. He studied math and history and became a writer for the school paper. Many of his columns featured commentary on diversity. When he graduated in 1951, he decided to enlist in the Navy and he was enrolled in officer training. He did well and ended up stationed as a diving instructor in San Diego. His naval career would come to an abrubt end when his orientation was discovered. He resigned at the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He decided to get a job as a teacher and did so working as a public school teacher on Long Island. He later would work as a stock analyst in New York City and then as a production associate for Broadway musicals. The Vietnam War would get him more active in politics and activism.
He eventually made his way to San Francisco in 1972 and opened up a camera store on Castro Street. The Castro District and gay culture go hand-in-hand. The Castro Street Fair has been hosted for 45 years and was started by Milk in 1974. He started it because of the discriminatory policies of local merchants who tried to block two gay men from opening a store. It was an offshoot of the Castro Village Association, the first US organization for gay businesses. The influence of the Castro Street Fair was much of why Castro transformed into the center of the LGBTQ community.
Milk went on to announce that he would be running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He lost the race, but he was now a prominent figure in politics. He ran again for the combined San Francisco City/County supervisor seat in 1975 and almost won. Mayor George Mascone appointed him to the city’s Board of Permit Appeals. This was a precedent and made Milk the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk ran for state assembly and lost, but this spurred him to champion an amendment that would replace at-large elections for the Board of Supervisors with district elections and he won his next race. He was inaugurated as a San Francisco City-County Supervisor on January 9, 1978. He became an advocate for many people, especially the gay community. He once said during a speech, "Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out." Many people hated Milk though and he received daily death threats.
Former city Supervisor Dan White was really angry. The bad blood between him and Milk went back to an early controversy over the building of a mental health facility for troubled youths. Both White and Milk opposed it, but then Milk changed his mind and voted against White who lost on the issue. White never forgot that and voted against every issue Milk supported after that. White would resign his seat on November 10, 1978 citing that the money was not enough to support his family. He then changed his mind, but the Mayor would not let him back. Now White hated Mayor Moscone too. On November 27, 1978, White managed to get into City Hall with a gun through a basement window. He went to Moscone’s office and killed him, then walked down the hall and killed Milk. White used the Twinkie Defense, which basically was claiming he had so much sugar that he had lost his sanity so he was not accountable for what he did. And it worked. He was acquitted of murder charges and given a lesser sentence for manslaughter. People rioted on Castro Street and set police cars on fire. The police in turn raided gay businesses and beat people.
Perhaps this is why Harvey Milk is not at rest. I mentioned that Milk opened up a camera shop when he first moved to San Francisco. This shop would become a neighborhood center. Milk's spirit is said to have returned here and taken up residence. Moviemaker Gus Van Sant definitely felt this was the case as he filmed the movie Milk. For the film, Van Sant recreated the former Castro Camera Shop in the gift store that took its place. He tells the following story, "The gift store owners were very into the legacy of the store and willing to let us close their shop down and move our set in. They had a mural of Harvey Milk. During a shot at night there was a take where we were using most of the room and there were three or four actors in the scene. Some people were sitting on the sofa which was outside of the shot and during one of the takes somebody walked in from outside and sat down on the sofa during the shot. After the shot was over and I yelled 'Cut,' he apparently got up and walked out. The actors were like, 'Did you see that guy?' I didn't see anybody, but they kept describing Harvey, so I figure it was the ghost of Harvey walking into the store for a brief second."
Milk would make another appearance via a Ouija Board in 2012. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to name a Navy vessel for Milk and it just happened to be his 82nd birthday. Supervisor Scott Wiener said, "LGBT people have always served in our armed forces. For many, many years, our community was hidden and oppressed in the armed services. Now, because of the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' our community can serve openly and proudly. We must support our LGBT soldiers past and present. I can think of no better way to do that than to name a vessel for a Navy officer who went on to become one of the most important civil rights leaders in history."
Another supervisor named John Avalos suggested they ask for Harvey Milk's opinion on a Ouija Board. He described what happened as, "We actually put our hands on the Ouija board and the letters g-o-o-d-r-i-d-d-a-n-c-e-d-a-d-t came out. We asked Harvey, and Harvey gave us these letters: 'Good riddance don't ask, don't tell.' It was quite clear that Harvey Milk would have been opposed to 'don't ask, don't tell.' I can honestly say that's one aspect of this resolution that's really valid."
Upstairs Lounge
Our final stop is at a location in New Orleans. This was a bar known as the Upstairs Lounge and it was located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. The tragedy that occurred here was made worse by the fact that this location had only one entrance and patrons had to climb up some wooden stairs to get to the bar. We need to go back to the summer of 1973 in June. The French Quarter has always been an open and party kind of place, but back in the 70s, gay people still needed to keep their gathering together underground. It was the last Sunday in June and was the final day of Gay Pride for the city. Such a celebration was new as Stonewall had only happened four years prior.
Happening at the same time in America was a not so well known targeting of gay churches. The Metropolitan Community Church, MCC, had been founded in 1968 by Troy Perry. MCC churches were starting in big cities, many of them having to share space at community centers or spaces. Earlier in 1973, a Nashville MCC was burned as well as the Los Angeles headquarters for the MCC. A fledgling MCC congreation in New orleans had asked the Upstairs Lounge if they could use the space for church services. Since the Upstairs Lounge was a gay bar, it was a no brainer and they said yes. The group would move services to their pastor's house just a couple weeks before the Upstairs Lounge would be firebombed, but this was still a spiritual center for them.
The afternoon of June 24th, the lounge hosted an all-you-can-eat buffet and free beer. Around 130 people attended. The beer ran out and only about 60 people stayed, mostly MCC members. They gathered around the piano and sang some songs together. At 7:56 pm, the buzzer downstairs sounded. This usually meant that a cab had come to pick someone up, but no one had called for a cab. One of the guys went to the steel door that led to the stairs leading downstairs and when he opened it, flames rushed inside the club. Someone has deliberately set the wooden stairs on fire. The bar was an immediate inferno and as I told you, this was the only exit. There were windows, but they were boarded up or had iron bars over them. There was no marked emergency exit. Some bars were far enough apart that a few people were able to squeeze through and jump down to the sidewalk.
The local MCC pastor was Rev. Bill Larson and he was at the lounge. He attempted to get through the bars and became stuck. He burned to death wedged in the window. This would become an image of the mass murder as his body remained in that window into the next day. A bartender named Buddy Rasmussen knew where the emergency exit was and he managed to get fifteen people out. One of those men, MCC assistant pastor George "Mitch" Mitchell, ran back inside to get his partner and both men ended up dying. Twenty-nine people died that night and three more would died later from their injuries. More people died that night then died when the entire French Quarter burned down in 1788. Not only was it troubling that someone would set out to burn a gay club and murder gay people, but the city had a very tepid reaction. It was as if no one cared. Descriptions of the aftermath were horrible and none of the coverage mentioned that this was a hate crime.People claimed it was God's judgement and a cab driver even said, "I hope the fire burned their dress off." Two days after the firebombing, the story disappeared from headlines. And to be honest, I knew nothing of this until I heard Mark Bologna cover it on his podcast "Beyond Bourbon Street"
Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, said of the victims, "We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar." As if gay people didn't carry ID or were unworthy of identification. Churches refused to host memorial services. Clearly, there are many reasons why spirits would be here in the afterlife. We have a painful death, murder and no justice because nobody was ever caught in connection to this crime. Not to mention the community's reaction. Several victims were dumped into a mass grave at a Potter's Field because their shamed families wouldn't claim the bodies.
The Upstairs Lounge was not rebuilt or reopened. There is a bar in the first floor under the lounge called The Jimani Bar. Patrons and employees all claim to have unexplained experiences. People feel as though they are being watched and that someone or something they can't see, is there. Disembodied voices are heard both in this bar and on the third floor. Voices are also caught on EVP and they have told investigators their names and that they don't want to be forgotten. Full-bodied apparitions have been seen walking on the second floor and in the kitchen area of the Jimani. And obviously, the vision of these ghosts is horrible as they are seen charred. The smell of smoke floats on the air and I can only imagine that occasionally there is another smell as well.
Gay history is important and I'm glad that I was able to share a few key pieces of that history. Are these locations haunted? That is for you to decide!
My Most Haunted 2019
I've been doing ghost tours since I was a kid. At this point, I've lost count of how many I have done. I've been going into haunted locations just as long, but for most of those years I was not actively seeking interactions. As we like to say around here, I didn't tempt the spirits. For those of you that have been on this journey with me - and that includes any of you that have binged the back catalogue - you know that I have been tempting the spirits more and more and starting here in 2019, I have been doing actually ghost hunting or investigations. What changed that got me doing that? Number one is that I really wanted to start getting my own answers. Number two is that I had been afraid to interact with the spirit world, partly because of my religious upbringing and partly because I didn't have a partner in crime to do it with. I wrote down a list of haunted locations that I have visited that have been discussed either on a regular episode or a BonusCast. These are places that I've actually been inside and wandered around a bit. I'm sure I've missed a few places or forgotten about some. I have 25 of them: Mammoth Cave, Mineral Springs Hotel, King's Tavern (Natchez), The Colosseum, Moses Cone Manor, Sorrel-Weed House, Driskill Hotel, Biltmore Estate, 1725 Captain Taylor House, Old Charleston Jail, Disneyland, Hotel Cassadaga, The Stanley Hotel, Queen Mary, Croke-Patterson House, Molly Brown House, Sugar Mill in St. Augustine, Cuban Club, Treehouse Bar in Orlando, Lillian Place House, Baker House, Waverly Hills Sanitorium, Lemp Mansion, Ripley's Odditorium and the St. Augustine Lighthouse.
Of those 25, I would say that in ten of them, I have had some kind of unexplained experience. So I guess that makes it easy to do a top 10 most haunted locations based on my experiences. But before I share that, I want to talk a bit about some of my beliefs that have changed. Obviously, I'm more open to tempting the spirits although I would say there are certain methods I'll never use...can you say Ouija Board? I used to really wonder about child spirits and I didn't think that a child's spirit would just be left here. But I'm not sure where I stand on what happens directly after we die, so it is possible in my mind that a child spirit might still be around. And the thing that has convinced me the most about this are the EVP of children I have caught myself. As for what a ghost is, I'm still open to ghosts being sourced from many things, but I lean most heavily on some kind of trapped energy. I think this is why the most common experiential thing we hear when it comes to the paranormal is that someone feels weird in some way.
10. King's Tavern
9. Croke-Patterson Mansion
8.Lillian Place House
7. 1725 Captain Taylor House
6. Treehouse Bar
5. Mineral Springs Hotel
4. Ripley's Odditorium
3. St. Augustine Lighthouse
2. Baker House
1. Waverly Hills Sanitorium
So I've done 300 episodes and way more locations than just that. Am I running out of material? No way! I've counted 200 locations on my suggestions list still left and you guys add to it consistently. Some of them don't have enough for a regular episode, but they make it into a BonusCast. And speaking of those, I have over 150 of those available and some of those have been my favorite to produce. So I can sit back at the end of this episode and declare, "It's a haunted gay life!" Or is it? That is for you to decide!
Saturday, October 17, 2015
HGB Podcast Ep. 76 - St. Augustine Light Station
Moment in Oddity - Eilean Mor Lighthouse Mystery
In December of 1900, a ship was sailing to the Flannan Islands in the UK. It's mission was to bring supplies and a relief keeper to the Eilean Mor Lighthouse. The Island had been named for St. Flannen who had been an Irish Bishop because he built a chapel on the remote island. Other than the lighthouse keepers, the island was uninhabited. The ship arrived and docked and noticed something amiss right away. No one was at the dock to meet them. The relief lighthouse keeper, Joseph Moore, ascended the stairs that led up to the lighthouse and he had a feeling of foreboding. The fact that no one had responded to the blasting of the ship's horn was troubling. The door to the lighthouse was unlocked and the kitchen left evidence that the keepers had vacated quickly. There was half eaten food and a chair was tipped over. Two of the three oil skinned coats were missing. The kitchen clock had stopped. A search of the island was ordered, but no sign of the keepers was found. The head of the Northern Lighthouse Board Headquarters, Robert Muirhead, left for the island a few days later to investigate. The historic UK website describes what the investigation revealed:
This Day in History - The Battle of Neville's Cross
On this day, October 17th, in 1346, the Battle of Neville's Cross is fought. It was fought during the Second War of Scottish Independence. King David II led his band of Scottish troops into battle and they numbered between 10,000 to 15,000 men. King Edward III had violated the Treaty of Male, which had ended the Hundred Year War by bringing troops into Normandy. The French were beaten and so David II marshalled his troops. Unfortunately, he did not take advantage of the element of surprise he had and his troops took their time moving forward. They camped outside of the city on October 16th and the next morning a small scouting faction was sent out. They were met by the English forces and were nearly all killed. A couple were able to get away to warn David II. It was too late to reach a better position, The English had the upper hand. The battle was tough and two factions fighting with David II took heavy losses and finally took off, leaving him to battle with his troops alone. They had some success hitting the English flank, but eventually were beaten and David II was captured. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years. Lord Ralph Neville was one of the commanders of the English forces and he had a cross erected on the battlefield. That is where the battle got its name.
St. Augustine Light Station
The St. Augustine Lighthouse is actually a Light Station, meaning that the lighthouse is accompanied by several outbuildings. This is one of the tallest and oldest lighthouses in America. We visited with several History Goes Bump listeners to experience the Dark of the Moon Ghost Tour. While many families lived here without incident, there were a couple that suffered tragedy. And it is through those tragedies that spiritual energy seems to have continued on, even after all these years. We had what seemed to be an experience of our own. Come with us as we share that and the history and hauntings of the St. Augustine Light Station.
We have discussed the history of St. Augustine in a couple of other podcasts. Obviously, this is one of our favorite cities to visit. Here is a brief refresher on the origins of St. Augustine. The city was founded in 1565, making it one of the oldest cities in both North and South America. It is America’s oldest city. The city took its name from the day upon which the city was founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Festival of San AugustÃn. The city was originally founded to protect the Spanish trade route and the Castillo de San Marco was built to help facilitate defense with a small city cropping up nearby. St. Augustine found itself being constantly under assault.
It was decided that a watchtower needed to be built, so that the people of the city would know when they were going to be attacked. They chose the spot where the modern day lighthouse now stands. The tower was built from wood in the 1500s. Several times it had to be rebuilt because wood was a bad choice for material. Later it was decided that what was really needed was a lighthouse. In May of 1824, the Coquina built lighthouse lit its light for the first time. It stood for several decades as the shoreline washed slowly away. Joseph Andreu and his wife Maria De Los Delores Mestre Andreu lived here before the Civil War. Joseph met tragedy one day when he decided to paint the outside of the tower and he fell to his death. Later on in the podcast, we will play one of the guides describing this horrific event. Maria took over as lighthouse keeper in 1860. She was the first female and the first of Hispanic descent to have that job. During the Civil War, a local harbor master named Paul Arnau and Maria removed the lens from the lighthouse to keep it from union soldiers and they buried it in the ground. Arnau was taken captive and under torture on a vessel, he revealed the location of the lens and the Union forces replaced it, so they could see the shipping lanes. Maria left after this and never returned. Or perhaps she did in the afterlife.
By 1870, the government realized that the lighthouse was in danger and they began construction on the present day lighthouse in 1871, making sure to build a firm foundation in coquina. Iron and brick were used for the tower. The lighthouse was completed in 1874. It is St. Augustine's first and oldest brick structure still standing. Paul J. Pelz was the architect who designed the lighthouse. He also designed the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The lighthouse rises to 165 feet above sea level and contains 219 steps to reach the top. We climbed those steps both in the dark on the ghost tour and the next day when we returned in the light. The lighthouse is capped with a red lantern shaped dome that contains the original first order Fresnal lens. The lens is hand blown, stands nine feet tall and came from Paris, France. The lens was damaged in the 1980s by a vandal taking a potshot with a rifle. Head Keeper William Russell was the one to first light the torch in the lighthouse in October 15, 1874. So we were here 141 years after that event. The old watchtower was still standing nearby, but by 1880 it had been toppled into the sea.
The tower on the inside is illuminated by nine windows and there are eight flights of cast iron spiral stairs that end in platforms, so that people can rest. This would have been needed by the keepers who had to hoist a can full of fuel weighing 30 pounds, up those stairs every two hours. This is no longer necessary today because the lighthouse is fully automated with a 1,000 watt bulb lighting the original beacon of the Fresnal lens. But before automation, lighthouse keepers were needed. The brick lighthouse keeper house that still stands today, was built in 1876. It was triplex that held two families and a single lighthouse keeper assistant. The first family to live in the house was the Harn Family.
William A. Harn was originally from Philadelphia. He had served during the Civil War as Captain of the 3rd New York Independent Battery and fought in the battles at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. His military service is what probably led him to be the first keeper to wear a uniform. He arrived in St. Augustine with his wife Kate and six daughters. For twenty years, Harn served as Head Keeper at the lighthouse. In 1886, Harn documented an earthquake that rocked the lighthouse in August of that year. He thought the tower was going to fall over. During his tenure, fuel was switched from lard to kerosene.
The family had to deal with little amenities. Bathrooms were not inside the Keeper's house until 1907. Electricity was not installed until 1925. During World War II, the Coast Guard used the light station as a lookout and they built a garage where they could work on vehicles. Today, that building is used to help restore recovered nautical items and things damaged by water. By the 1960s, families no longer stayed at the station. The house was rented out and in 1970, it was nearly gutted by fire. Then it stood vacant for a while and was in danger of being bulldozed. In 1980, the Junior Service League of St. Augustine signed a lease and restoration efforts began. The Fresnal lens was first to be fixed. The rest followed and today the St. Augustine Light Station is a museum that hosts thousands of visitors.
The building that visitors enter through today was built to be a cottage for a keeper. The keeper who had it built was unwilling to live in the keeper's house because of all the unexplained activity going on in the house. It would seem that some of the keepers and some of their family members have decided to stay on at the light station in the afterlife. History Goes Bump, along with five of our listeners went on the Dark of the Moon Tour at the St. Augustine Light Station. Not only was the tour fun, but it was informative about the history of the location and had a couple of unique things about it. One was that we got to climb the lighthouse at night and view the city. The other was that we got to explore on our own for an hour or so. We've never been on a ghost tour that allowed that. The tour guides work for the lighthouse and so you know they care about the place and the funds go to keeping this wonderful piece of history alive. We had Dave and Ann Student with us, Julie Brammer, Jaran and Belle.
We're going to play several sound bites that we recorded that night, featuring some of the haunting stories. Before we started the tour, we were informed of a little issue with the women's bathroom. Apparently, it is haunted. One of the more famous stories about the lighthouse goes back to its initial construction. The construction supervisor was Hezekiah Pittee and he had his children at the site with him. A railcar had been rigged to serve as a way to move supplies. The children found it to be quite handy for play and they would ride the car along the rail to where it stopped near the ocean. One day the car did not stop like it normally did and it went flying into the ocean, trapping three young girls. Only one of them was rescued. She was a neighbor girl. The other two girls were Hezekiah's children. Later, men laying bricks along the scaffold would hear children laughing. They would scamper down to warn the kids not to play with the railcar and they would find no children anywhere. In the 1960s, a man had rented the keeper's House and invited friends to stay with him. They woke up that night and found a girl in an old fashioned dress staring at them from beside the bed. The girl smiled at them and disappeared. We hiked through a nearby woody area and tried to figure out where the railcar line would have been. A guide showed us a picture taken in the woods of a white figure.
The children are seen inside the lighthouse as well. Sometimes standing near the stairwell, wearing what people describe as old fashioned clothes. The guide showed us a picture of a shadow figure taken as it looked down over a railing. It was a very compelling picture.We wonder if perhaps the girls played a trick on us. We were mysteriously locked in the lighthouse while on free time. Denise left to go outside for a minute and when she came back, she couldn't open the door. Jaran and I tried opening the door from the other side, but it was locked tight. We thought the lock was broken and had automatically locked. A guide came with a key and informed us that the lock on the inside is not functional. It can only be locked from the outside with a key. How did that door lock itself? One of the guides also told us about muddy footprints that were left inside the Keeper's House. There were no barefoot children on the tour and the footprints would not wash away. They finally disappeared one day on their own. We saw the pictures of these as well.
As we mentioned earlier, a keeper named Joseph died while trying to paint the lighthouse. He is here and his wife Maria has returned here as well. The guides told us some personal stories in regards to this and also more details on the way that Joseph died. It was not pretty. He hit many things on the way down and someone in his family more than likely witnessed the whole thing. Their ghosts many hang out on the first floor. We went down into the basement and were told about another Keeper named Pete. Pete liked to smoke down here and occassionally the sweet smell of his tobacco can be detected. He likes to put pressure on men's chests and to touch ladies on the legs. We heard stories from both our guide and later, Julie and Diane spoke with another guide who told us some pretty strange occurences that have happened with Pete. He seems to be able to control EMF Meters.
Are the spirits of those who once watched over the lighthouse still here, continuing their watch in the afterlife? Are the ghosts of children playing in the woods and in the lighthouse? Were we locked inside the lighthouse by some weird happening with the lock? Is the St. Augustine Light Station haunted? That is for you to decide!
In December of 1900, a ship was sailing to the Flannan Islands in the UK. It's mission was to bring supplies and a relief keeper to the Eilean Mor Lighthouse. The Island had been named for St. Flannen who had been an Irish Bishop because he built a chapel on the remote island. Other than the lighthouse keepers, the island was uninhabited. The ship arrived and docked and noticed something amiss right away. No one was at the dock to meet them. The relief lighthouse keeper, Joseph Moore, ascended the stairs that led up to the lighthouse and he had a feeling of foreboding. The fact that no one had responded to the blasting of the ship's horn was troubling. The door to the lighthouse was unlocked and the kitchen left evidence that the keepers had vacated quickly. There was half eaten food and a chair was tipped over. Two of the three oil skinned coats were missing. The kitchen clock had stopped. A search of the island was ordered, but no sign of the keepers was found. The head of the Northern Lighthouse Board Headquarters, Robert Muirhead, left for the island a few days later to investigate. The historic UK website describes what the investigation revealed:
"Muirhead immediately noticed that the last few days of entries were unusual. On the 12th December, Thomas Marshall, the second assistant, wrote of ‘severe winds the likes of which I have never seen before in twenty years’. He also noticed that James Ducat, the Principal Keeper, had been ‘very quiet’ and that the third assistant, William McArthur, had been crying. What is strange about the final remark was that William McArthur was a seasoned mariner, and was known on the Scottish mainland as a tough brawler. Why would he be crying about a storm? Log entries on the 13th December stated that the storm was still raging, and that all three men had been praying. But why would three experienced lighthouse keepers, safely situated on a brand new lighthouse that was 150 feet above sea level, be praying for a storm to stop? They should have been perfectly safe. Even more peculiar is that there were no reported storms in the area on the 12th, 13th and 14th of December. In fact, the weather was calm, and the storms that were to batter the island didn’t hit until December 17th. The final log entry was made on the 15th December. It simply read ‘Storm ended, sea calm. God is over all’. What was meant by ‘God is over all’?"A box of ropes was found strewn across the rocks near the water and it was surmised that the keepers were trying to rescue the rope from the sea and a wave washed them away. But then why had the clock stopped in the kitchen? Was it such an emergency that all three keepers had to speed off leaving a chair on the floor? And why wasn't the third oil skinned coat used? And what of those entries with the bizarre weather revelations? Had some weird weather event only taken place on the island? Whatever happened, this mystery certainly is odd!
This Day in History - The Battle of Neville's Cross
On this day, October 17th, in 1346, the Battle of Neville's Cross is fought. It was fought during the Second War of Scottish Independence. King David II led his band of Scottish troops into battle and they numbered between 10,000 to 15,000 men. King Edward III had violated the Treaty of Male, which had ended the Hundred Year War by bringing troops into Normandy. The French were beaten and so David II marshalled his troops. Unfortunately, he did not take advantage of the element of surprise he had and his troops took their time moving forward. They camped outside of the city on October 16th and the next morning a small scouting faction was sent out. They were met by the English forces and were nearly all killed. A couple were able to get away to warn David II. It was too late to reach a better position, The English had the upper hand. The battle was tough and two factions fighting with David II took heavy losses and finally took off, leaving him to battle with his troops alone. They had some success hitting the English flank, but eventually were beaten and David II was captured. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years. Lord Ralph Neville was one of the commanders of the English forces and he had a cross erected on the battlefield. That is where the battle got its name.
St. Augustine Light Station
The St. Augustine Lighthouse is actually a Light Station, meaning that the lighthouse is accompanied by several outbuildings. This is one of the tallest and oldest lighthouses in America. We visited with several History Goes Bump listeners to experience the Dark of the Moon Ghost Tour. While many families lived here without incident, there were a couple that suffered tragedy. And it is through those tragedies that spiritual energy seems to have continued on, even after all these years. We had what seemed to be an experience of our own. Come with us as we share that and the history and hauntings of the St. Augustine Light Station.
We have discussed the history of St. Augustine in a couple of other podcasts. Obviously, this is one of our favorite cities to visit. Here is a brief refresher on the origins of St. Augustine. The city was founded in 1565, making it one of the oldest cities in both North and South America. It is America’s oldest city. The city took its name from the day upon which the city was founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Festival of San AugustÃn. The city was originally founded to protect the Spanish trade route and the Castillo de San Marco was built to help facilitate defense with a small city cropping up nearby. St. Augustine found itself being constantly under assault.
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| Gun shot aftermath |
William A. Harn was originally from Philadelphia. He had served during the Civil War as Captain of the 3rd New York Independent Battery and fought in the battles at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. His military service is what probably led him to be the first keeper to wear a uniform. He arrived in St. Augustine with his wife Kate and six daughters. For twenty years, Harn served as Head Keeper at the lighthouse. In 1886, Harn documented an earthquake that rocked the lighthouse in August of that year. He thought the tower was going to fall over. During his tenure, fuel was switched from lard to kerosene.
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| Lens Mechanism |
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| Fresnal lenses |
We're going to play several sound bites that we recorded that night, featuring some of the haunting stories. Before we started the tour, we were informed of a little issue with the women's bathroom. Apparently, it is haunted. One of the more famous stories about the lighthouse goes back to its initial construction. The construction supervisor was Hezekiah Pittee and he had his children at the site with him. A railcar had been rigged to serve as a way to move supplies. The children found it to be quite handy for play and they would ride the car along the rail to where it stopped near the ocean. One day the car did not stop like it normally did and it went flying into the ocean, trapping three young girls. Only one of them was rescued. She was a neighbor girl. The other two girls were Hezekiah's children. Later, men laying bricks along the scaffold would hear children laughing. They would scamper down to warn the kids not to play with the railcar and they would find no children anywhere. In the 1960s, a man had rented the keeper's House and invited friends to stay with him. They woke up that night and found a girl in an old fashioned dress staring at them from beside the bed. The girl smiled at them and disappeared. We hiked through a nearby woody area and tried to figure out where the railcar line would have been. A guide showed us a picture taken in the woods of a white figure.
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| Spiral staircase |
As we mentioned earlier, a keeper named Joseph died while trying to paint the lighthouse. He is here and his wife Maria has returned here as well. The guides told us some personal stories in regards to this and also more details on the way that Joseph died. It was not pretty. He hit many things on the way down and someone in his family more than likely witnessed the whole thing. Their ghosts many hang out on the first floor. We went down into the basement and were told about another Keeper named Pete. Pete liked to smoke down here and occassionally the sweet smell of his tobacco can be detected. He likes to put pressure on men's chests and to touch ladies on the legs. We heard stories from both our guide and later, Julie and Diane spoke with another guide who told us some pretty strange occurences that have happened with Pete. He seems to be able to control EMF Meters.
Are the spirits of those who once watched over the lighthouse still here, continuing their watch in the afterlife? Are the ghosts of children playing in the woods and in the lighthouse? Were we locked inside the lighthouse by some weird happening with the lock? Is the St. Augustine Light Station haunted? That is for you to decide!
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| Our group before the tour |
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| Here we all are on top of the lighthouse! |
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