HGB Ep. 653 - The Life and Afterlife of Jimi Hendrix

This Month in History - The Lawrence Massacre

In the month of August, on the 21st, in 1863, about 450 irregular Confederate raiders attacked the pro-Union town of Lawrence, Kansas. The bushwhackers were led by William Quantrill, with the group being known as 'Quantrill's Raiders'. They were a brutal party of men that operated along the Missouri-Kansas border. The band of partisan rangers were created to fight Union forces and pro-Union civilians using ruthless tactics. Some of the more infamous members were the future outlaws, Frank and Jesse James, as well as Cole Younger. The notorious Confederate guerrilla group targeted Lawrence, Kansas due to the location being a center for anti-slavery Jayhawkers, and also a Union stronghold. This attack became known as the Lawrence Massacre. It resulted in the deaths of roughly 150 men and boys, as well as the burning of much of the town. The raid led Union authorities to issue the General Order No. 11. This determined the fundamental rules governing the actions of military sentries, covering duties, safety, and conduct. The order forced the depopulation of rural areas in several pro-Confederate counties in western Missouri to cut off support to the guerrillas. The U.S. Army also built temporary military posts around Lawrence to protect the area. Despite the immense devastation, the surviving residents of Lawrence refused to abandon the settlement. Instead, they rallied and rebuilt their city. 

The Life and Afterlife of Jimi Hendrix 

Jimi Hendrix was one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. His band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was just that, an experience. They blazed a path through music like none other with Jimi leading as band conductor, conjuring music magic. Hendrix music genius burned intense, but not for long as he entered the storied 27 Club when he died at the age of 27. Many claim that Jimi's spirit continues on in the afterlife, haunting several locations. Join us for the life and afterlife of Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix was born as Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942 to James Allen Hendrix - who went by Al - and his wife Lucille in Seattle. The couple had married on March 31, 1942, three days before the senior Hendrix was sent off for basic training after being drafted into the Army during World War II. Johnny was born eight months later. The military didn't allow Al to go see his newborn son. As a matter of fact, he wouldn't meet Jimi for three years and Lucille struggled to raise Jimi on her own. She gave him to family members for those first couple years. In 1946, Hendrix's parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix to give him his father's first name and his uncle's first name became his middle name. 

These early years for Jimi Hendrix were tough with his dad unable to find good work after getting out of the Army. Both Al and his wife Lucille were alcoholics. This led to violent fights that would have little Jimi hiding in his closet. Jimi was joined by four younger siblings: Leon, Joseph, Kathy and Pamela. 

Joseph, Kathy and Pamela were given up to the foster system and adoption. Leon was bounced around quite a bit as well, occasionally being reunited with Jimi who obviously lived in constant fear of separation from Leon and his parents. Jimi would later tell a girlfriend that he had been sexually molested by a man in a uniform, so he had that on his plate as well. When he was nine, his parents divorced and Leon and Jimi went to Al. It was at about this time that Al started noticing that Jimi had a serious interest in music. Young Jimi would sit on the end of his bed and as Al shared, "I used to have Jimmy clean up the bedroom all the time while I was gone, and when I would come home I would find a lot of broom straws around the foot of the bed. I’d say to him, `Well didn’t you sweep up the floor?’ and he’d say, `Oh yeah,’ he did. But I’d find out later that he used to be sitting at the end of the bed there and strumming the broom like he was playing a guitar." Jimi was interested in B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Holly, and Robert Johnson. Al found an old one-string ukulele and he gave it to Jimi, so he had something better to strum. Al saved up some money and in the summer of 1958, he bought a five-dollar, second-hand acoustic guitar from a friend. Jimi practiced on it and learned some licks from a guitar playing friend named Billy Davis and then joined his first band, which was named The Velvetones. The acoustic guitar was hard to hear over the rest of the band. Jimi decided to leave the band a pursue his own interests.

The year 1958 would also bring the death of Jimi's mother from cirrhosis. He was fifteen at the time. His father poured him and his brother Leon some whiskey and told them that was how men dealt with loss. A little later, Jimi started begging his dad to buy him an electric guitar. At first, Al refused, but he finally relented and bought a Supro Ozark 1560S. Jimi then joined The Rocking Kings.

That electric guitar ended up getting stolen backstage a few months later, but Al was so proud of what his some was doing, he bought him another guitar, a red Silvertone Danelectro. When Jimi wasn't playing, he was getting himself into a bit of trouble. His friends liked to hotwire cars and he was caught in stolen cars twice. The authorities told him that he had two choices when he was 19. He could go to jail or he could join the Army. He opted to enlist in the United States Army in 1961. Jimi did well and in November 1962 earned the right to wear the “Screaming Eagles” patch for the paratroop division. Music was still his thing while he was enlisted and at Fort Campbell in Kentucky he Jimmy formed The Casuals with bassist Billy Cox. Jimi wrote his dad about his experiences at Fort Campbell, "There's nothing but physical training and harassment here for two weeks, then when you go to jump school...you get hell. They work you to death, fussing and fighting." Then came a parachute jump that didn't go well and Jimi broke his ankle. The injury was bad enough that he was medically discharged. At least according to some reports. There doesn't seem to be any official records reflecting this and there are other stories that he was discharged because his platoon sergeant, James C. Spears, filed a report that said, "He [Hendrix] has no interest whatsoever in the Army...It is my opinion that Private Hendrix will never come up to the standards required of a soldier. I feel that the military service will benefit if he is discharged as soon as possible."

Whatever was the true story, Jimi was out of the army. Billy Cox was a fellow service member who had been in The Casuals with Jimi and when he was discharged, he joined up with Jimi and they reformed the group and changed the name to King Kasuals. 

They performed in Tennessee and while there, Jimi saw a guitarist playing with his teeth. After watching another guitarist do the same thing, Jimi took it up. He said of this, "The idea of doing that came to me...in Tennessee. Down there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There's a trail of broken teeth all over the stage." For some time, the group played small venues for very little money and then they decided to head to Nashville and they set themselves up on Jefferson Street, which at the time was the heart of the rhythm and blues music scene and where the black community gathered. The street served as a legendary stop on the "Chitlin' Circuit" and a place that began to fuel the Civil Rights Movement. The Jefferson Street Sound Museum's website shares, "Retail, restaurants, pharmacies, funeral homes and churches were opening on Jefferson. You could be born, marry, raise your family, and be buried without ever leaving your Jefferson Street neighborhood." Locations like The Silver Streak ballroom featured Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald and the Blue Room at Del Morocco had Little Richard, Ruth Brown, Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald performed here as well. The Golden Age of Jefferson Street lasted from the 1930s until 1965. The King Kasuals had a brief residency at Del Morocco.

Jimi needed extra money and he worked as a session guitarist under the name Jimmy James for acts like Ike and Tina Turner, Sam Cooke, the Isley Brothers, and Little Richard. Jimmy parted ways with Little Richard to form his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, shedding the role of back-line guitarist for the spotlight of lead guitar. 

In 1964, Jimi decided to break out on his own and he ended up in Harlem. There he met Lithofayne Pridgon who went by Faye. The two started dating and with Faye's connections to the music scene in Harlem, he made some friends. Faye encouraged him to compete in an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater in February 1964 and he won first prize. Shortly after that, Ronnie Isley gave Hendrix an audition and the Isley Brothers asked him to become their guitarist. He toured with them for most of 1964 and then jumped to Little Richard's touring band. It would be during a performance with Little Richard's band on Night Train in July of 1965 that Hendrix would have his first live footage of him performing. Later that month, Little Richard's brother Robert would fire Hendrix for tardiness, wardrobe and the way Jimi conducted himself on stage. Hendrix joined Curtis Knight and the Squires and played with them for eight months. Hendrix got a recording contract with Sue Records that lasted for two years, but before it was over he signed a three-year contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin. This would cause legal problems for Hendrix later. 

In 1966, Hendrix moved to Greenwich Village and he played the rounds of smaller venues there. During a July performance, he met the Animals’ bassist Chas Chandler during a performance at Caf‚ Wha? and he was impressed with Jimi’s performance. In September, Chandler returned and signed Hendrix to an agreement that would take him to London to form a new band. 

It was at this time that Chandler had Jimi change his name to the J-I-M-I spelling. Drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding were brought on board and the Jimi Hendrix Experience was born. London fell in love with the group and they soon became the talk of the town. Jimi had formed his style and material shortly before this in a short lived group he put together called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. This style was described as mesmerizing and would become his trademark. The Experience recorded their first single, "Hey Joe" and it spent ten weeks on the UK charts, topping out at spot No. 6 in early 1967. This gave the band the encouragement they needed to record a full-length album, which would be "Are You Experienced." This was a psychedelic musical compilation with the tracks “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Foxey Lady,” “Fire,” and “Are You Experienced?” Purple Haze opens the album with those first strums of the signature Hendrix chord on the electric guitar and before long you are kissing the sky in a purple haze. This isn't about drugs although many people assume it is. Rather, it's a dreamlike love song. The song is from the perspective of a man infatuated with a woman to the point of being dazed and confused. The descriptor of purple haze probably was inspired by the science fiction he liked to read. A Philip Jose Farmer story called "Night of Light," Farmer describes sunspots that produce a purplish haze that has a disorienting effect on people. Purple haze also appears in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Purple Haze would be the second single released by The Experience. 

Some of the inspiration for the love songs on the album, specifically "Foxey Lady," came from writer Kathy Etchingham whom Hendrix met in London and the couple dated for nearly three years. This would be his most significant relationship. When they met in 1966, she was a DJ in London and knew everybody there was to know in music at the time like The Beatles and The Who. The couple drifted apart at the end of 1968.

Hendrix second album was "Axis: Bold as Love" dropped in 1967 and is lauded for its melodic guitar work and revealed that Hendrix was a poetic genius of songwriting. "Castles Made of Sand" really reveals this. The album is a psychedelic and funk trip that generated controversy over its album cover featuring Hindu religious iconography. That imagery actually was not from Hendrix and he publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with it. The album was certified platinum and is ranked number 92 on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." Hendrix returned to America in June 1967 and performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival. His performance of "Wild Thing" drove the crowd nuts and from then on, The Jimi Hendrix Experience became one of most popular and highest grossing touring acts in the world. The iconic image of Hendrix setting his guitar on fire and conjuring flames from it came from this festival. Rolling Stone's Alex Vadukul wrote of this moment, "When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival he created one of rock's most perfect moments. Standing in the front row of that concert was a 17-year-old boy named Ed Caraeff. Caraeff had never seen Hendrix before nor heard his music, but he had a camera with him and there was one shot left in his roll of film. As Hendrix lit his guitar, Caraeff took a final photo. It would become one of the most famous images in rock and roll." 

Back here in America, Jimi built himself a studio in New York City named Electric Lady Studios. The album "Electric Ladyland" dropped in 1968 and would be Jimi Hendrix's third and final studio album and it is considered his best. This was a double LP and the top single off of it is a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower." This would be The Experience's only number one album. 

The demands of touring and studio work really took a toll on The Experience and by 1969 the band had disbanded. The band members were tired of Hendrix's unpredictable work ethic and he could be a tyrant in the studio wanting everything his way. The band had mostly just become a back-up band and they wanted more. There last performance together was at Barry Fey's Denver Pop Festival hosted at Mile High Stadium. The show got crazy with police having to use tear gas on the audience and fans nearly crushed a rental truck that had to carry the band away. The break-up wouldn't hurt Hendrix at all. He was the world's highest-paid rock musician at that time. In the summer of 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was hosted and Hendrix headlined the line-up. Jimi was joined by Mitch Mitchell, Billy Cox, Juma Sultan, and Jerry Velez. He was apprehensive about playing when he heard how large the crowd was because he liked to play in more intimate settings. The mud-soaked audience loved the performance.

Hendrix formed a new band with bassist Billy Cox and Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles and they called themselves the Band of Gypsys and they did four New Year’s performances that were compiled and later released on the1970 album Band of Gypsys. Billy Cox stuck around and Mitch Mitchell came back and the Jimi Hendrix Experience was reborn. 

There were some bad feelings about this because Noel Redding had not been told that Jimi had no intention of having him in the re-formed Experience and so he showed up in NYC expecting to participate in rehearsals and was told Billy Cox had replaced him. Redding had every reason to be shocked as he had just been interviewed by Rolling Stone with both Hendrix and Mitchell and they talked about how they were re-forming. Albums have been released posthumously. One of the best that reveals the direction that Jimi was probably heading was "Blue Wild Angel at the Isle of Wight." This was a live album released in 2002. It's a great listen and Hendrix almost sounds like he has a bit of an English accent he has adopted. One of my favorite performances of Hendrix is his "Star Spangled Banner" at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. It's cool how he wove in pieces of "America the Beautiful" and "Taps" in the feedback and distortion he played. Woven through all of this success was a demon the Hendrix couldn't beat. He started off like his parents in 1962 with alcohol. Alcohol was described as the scourge of his existence. It would drive him to occasional outbursts that could get violent. Pot, hashish, heroin and amphetamines were other drugs he used throughout the 1960s, with a little cocaine here and there. There are discrepancies as to when Hendrix first took LSD, but there is no doubt that he was on it at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Kathy Etchingham wrote of his use of LSD, "Like most acid-heads, Jimi had visions and he wanted to create music to express what he saw. He would try to explain this to people, but it didn't make sense because it was not linked to reality in any way." Some intoxicated outbursts got him arrested and he even once hit a girlfriend above the eye with a vodka bottle and she needed stitches. It would be these drugs that were blamed for his death.

The standard narrative around Jimi's death is that he overdosed on drugs, which caused him to choke to death on his own vomit. But many people dispute this as the cause. The main witness to everything was a German artist named Monika Dannemann (DAHN eh mehn). On September 17, 1970, Hendrix was staying with her at her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel in London. Dannemann made dinner for the couple and they shared a bottle of wine at 11 pm. Jimi wanted to go to a party at a friend's house, so she drove him there around 1:45 am. After about an hour, he called her to come pick him up and the two arrived back to her apartment at 3 am. They stayed up and talked until around 7 am and then decided to get some sleep. Dannemann said she thought that Hendrix took around nine Vesparax sleeping pills.  Dannemann woke up around 11 a.m. and found Hendrix unconscious and unresponsive, but still breathing. She called for an ambulance at 11:18 am, and it arrived nine minutes later and they took Hendrix to St Mary Abbots Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m. on September 18th. An autopsy by Coroner Gavin Thurston revealed that Hendrix had aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. But he ended it with "insufficient evidence of the circumstances." This left an open verdict. Hendrix embalmed body was flown to Seattle and funeral services were held at Dunlap Baptist Church with his body being interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Renton, Washington where his mother was buried. He was exhumed and reburied under a better memorial in 2002. His father and step-mother were buried in the vault there with him.

But not everybody believes that Hendrix died from an accidental overdose. With an open verdict on the autopsy, it left doubts. Then Dannemann’s story changed multiple times with changing timelines, inconsistencies and conflicting statements. The paramedics who responded to her call said that she wasn't in the apartment when they arrived. 

There seemed to be a significant delay of several hours before emergency services were contacted. Kathy Etchingham disputed claims Dannemann made about her relationship with Jimi. Dannemann claimed they were engaged. A friend named Philip Harvey had been talking to Jimi at the Samarkand around 10 pm when Dannemann stormed out of the place screaming that she was leaving. Hendrix followed after her wondering what was going on and the couple fought outside, making a scene. Harvey went out and asked them to come inside and Dannemann told him to mind his own business. He said, "At around 10:30 p.m. Jimi came back into the house alone and walked into the reception room. … He apologized profusely for Monika’s behavior and said that she was very embarrassed. He said he didn’t really know what was wrong with her but she had obviously had too much to drink. He said that Monika refused to come back into the house and that, as he couldn’t abandon her, he would have to leave with her. … Monika was still screaming at Jimi as they left and she did not say a word to me. The time was about 10:40 p.m.” How could she be making dinner for him and drinking wine at 11 pm if they had already left? A woman at the party named Angie Burdon wrote a letter to Kathy Etchingham that said, "That chick [Dannemann] came back about half an hour later. Jimi got Stella [Douglas] to put her off. She called up on the intercom. She came back again. Jimi put her off his time. By then he seemed quite uptight. I know Jimi, so I knew what he was feeling. She came back again. He got angry because she wouldn’t leave him for long enough. In fact, she was begging him...He asked Stella again to put her off. Stella was rude to her, and the chick asked to speak with Jimi. Well, when he finally got to the intercom, he mumbled something, and then without saying anything, just got into the lift and split. That was around 3 a.m." 

The picture we are getting here is that Dannemann is unreasonable and extremely jealous, thinking that she and Jimi have some kind of relationship that they do not have. Some people claim she was simply an employee who assisted him by driving him places. A breakdown of Jimi's last few hours reveals inconsitencies in Dannemann's version of events. 

After getting back to her apartment, she said she made a tuna fish sandwich for Jimi. The autopsy only revealed long grain rice in his stomach from a vegetarian meal served to him at the party. There was no tuna in his stomach. The coroner based the time of death at 5:30 am because of the level of digestion of the rice. At 6:30 am, Dannemann starts making calls to friends, the first a woman named Alvenia Bridges who isn't available. She then calls Eric Burdon who said in an interview later that “It was still dark” when he got the call and that Dannemann was distraught because she said Jimi was unconscious and she couldn't wake him. Burdon tells her to call an ambulance. He then said, "She argued about it, saying that there were incriminating things in the flat, which I guess she took care of." In a deposition, Dannemann claimed that Jimi was awake at 7 am and that she took a sleeping pill and went to sleep at that time. She claimed to awaken at 9 am. 

A former roadie of The Animals who was friends with Hendrix, dashed off to a hotel called the Cumberland where he thought Hendrix was staying because he had heard Jimi was having trouble. This was between 8 and 9 am. When he doesn't find Jimi, he heads over to Burdon's hotel and hears him on the phone with Dannemann telling her to call an ambulance at 9:30 am. So we have a timeline issue here. It wouldn't be dark at 9:30 am, so was Burdon misremembering? 

Mitch Mitchell is told Jimi is dead at 9:30 am, but he hasn't been to the hospital yet. Dannemann claims to awaken at 10 am and she leaves to get cigarettes with Jimi sleeping soundly. So she couldn't be on the phone with Burdon and him telling her to call an ambulance at 9:30 am. Unless she's lying about her timeline. On the day Hendrix died, Dannemann told the police she woke up at 11 am and Jimi had vomit on his face and she couldn't wake him up. She retracted that in a 1994 deposition in Seattle. We know for sure that an ambulance was called for at 11:18 am based on phone records. The ambulance arrives at 11:27 am. Dannemann reports that the paramedics check vitals and say everything is fine, nothing to worry about. The paramedics remember the event quite differently. One said, "It was horrific...He was covered in vomit. There was tons of it all over the pillow – black and brown, it was. His airway was completely blocked, all the way down. His tongue had fallen back...John ran up and radioed for the police. He got the aspirator too. We felt his pulse between his shoulders, pinched his ear lobe and nose, shone a light in his eyes. But there was no response at all. I knew he was dead as soon as I walked in the room." The other paramedic said, "I knew it was hopeless. There was no pulse, no respiration. We knew he was gone...But we are not doctors. It’s our job to keep trying until we get him to the hospital. As soon as the police arrived, we were off. When they arrived, the door was wide open and no one was with Hendrix. The vomit was dry, so they figured he had been dead quite a while. 

Now why would somebody lie about these events? Could Hendrix have been murdered? Some people think that is the case. Brad Schreiber co-authored the book "Becoming Jimi Hendrix" and he thought that Hendrix was murdered and claimed evidence suggested large amounts of red wine were forced down his throat, and the wine filled his lungs, leaving little in his stomach. 

Did Dannemann kill him in a jealous rage? Some people think it was his manager, Mike Jeffrey, who was facing financial ruin. He may have owed the mob money and so he decided to cash in on Hendrix's life insurance. A roadie named James “Tappy” Wright said that Jeffrey had confessed to him that he arranged Hendrix’s death. What is the truth? We'll probably never know. Maybe that's why his spirit is hanging around. We will say that the sleeping pills were from Germany with German directions, so if Hendrix helped himself to them, he didn't know how much he was taking. And if he was already drunk or high, his judgement would be marred. Jimi Hendrix had a strong connection to the paranormal. He seemed to have a premonition about his own death. He knew he wasn't going to live a long life. He knew he would never see 30-years-old. Hendrix seemed to carry a sense of doom and he liked to call himself Jinx Hendrix. Some of his lyrics also reflected his sense of an early death. 

Hendrix actually had encounters with UFOs. Jimi and his brother Leon claimed they saw a UFO with pulsating lights over their home state of Washington when they were young boys. Another experience was in 1965 when he was a member of Curtis Knight and the Squires. The group was stranded in a blizzard near Woodstock, New York when they saw a glowing cone-shaped UFO land nearby. The UFO had a door that opened up and out walked a tall, yellow-skinned being that radiated heat. The heat melted the snow and they were able to get their van out of the snow. Knight said that Hendrix claimed to have a conversation with the alien telepathically and that he thanked the being for its help. Or were they just all on some acid trip? 

Electric Lady Studios was Hendrix's beloved studio in Greenwich Village. It started as a nightclub called The Generation that hosted Big Brother & the Holding Company, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Dave Van Ronk, and Sly & the Family Stone. When it closed, Hendrix wanted to buy it and reopen it as a club, but a couple of advisors suggested that he convert it into a professional recording studio. The studio was unique in that it was the only one owned by an artist at the time. Today, it is considered hallowed ground for recorded music. The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, and Patti Smith all had sessions here in the 1970s. Modern sessions include Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar. Jimi is said to still be here. Staff have claimed through the years that the televisions will suddenly go to static. They have heard doors slam on their own and heard disembodied footsteps. A shimmering figure has been seen. Michael Brauer is a Grammy-winning mixer and he told the New York Post in 2024, "Pretty much every assistant I know has had some kind of sighting late at night when they are alone." He thought his assistant had walked into the lounge and he said, "I called out to him because I needed him to patch something, but he didn’t respond. I called out again, nothing, so I got up and as I was heading to the door, [my assistant] came walking in from the other direction. I [investigated] the live room; it was empty. My assistant had been in the bathroom." Nearly every artist who has recorded here from the 1970s until now, claims to feel Jimi’s presence guiding them. 

The Handel Hendrix House is located at 23 and 25 Brook Street in London. This is where Jimi lived while in London from 1968 to 1969. This is two houses separated by a wall. Hendrix lived in the upper floor of 23 Brook Street and 200 years previously, Handel lived in 25 Brook Street. Today, this is a museum featuring live music and tributes and displays to both musicians. It was here that Hendrix met the ghost of Handel. A legend claims that Hendrix was brushing his teeth one night and he saw Handel’s ghost in the mirror. Rather than feeling fear, he felt inspired. 

Jimi Hendrix has an amazing grave at Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton. It features a towering marble dome gazebo. There are several engraved granite tombstones around the burial. People leave flowers, guitar picks and incense. Ghost hunters have attempted to contact Hendrix’s spirit using EMF detectors and spirit boxes and some interesting things have come through. Speaking of trying to contact Hendrix, Guitar World magazine and ABC’s Good Morning America staged a séance on the 23rd anniversary of his death in 1993. They had an amulet that was formed from some of Hendrix's hair and one of his Flying V guitars to use as trigger objects. No answer seemed to come from Hendrix. A bronze statue of him on the Isle of Wight is said to have Hendrix's music sometimes playing around it from the beyond.

There is no doubt that Hendrix was a master of funk grooves. His playing and production was innovative and has inspired scores of musicians. He died far too young. Is that why his spirit might still be hanging around? Is Jimi Hendrix hauntings these various locations? That is for you to decide. 

HGB Ep. 624 - Haunts of Fredericksburg, Virginia

Moment in Oddity - Situs Inversus

We recently lost a wonderful actress, Catherine O'hara. While her body of work is expansive, there are some roles that she is best known for. She played Kevin's mother in Home Alone 1 and 2, Cookie Fleck in Best in Show, Sheila Albertson in Waiting for Guffman, Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice 1 and 2 (and who can forget the scene in the first Beetlejuice when she starts singing the Banana Boat Day-O song). She was also the original speaking and singing voice of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas, along with so many other memorable characters that she played during her lifetime. But one thing she is not well known for, is the fact that she had situs inversus which was discovered prior to 2020. Situs Inversus is a rare, typically harmless, genetic condition where a person's organs in the chest and abdomen cavity are flipped to the opposite side than a typical human. There are variances to the condition. Situs Inversus Totalis is a complete and total reversal of all thoracic and abdominal organs. While Dextrocardia, is specific to just the heart being located on the right side of the chest. Most affected people live a normal life and are often not aware of their condition unless they have had a chest x-ray, abdominal ultrasound, CT scan or MRI. Situs Inversus affects 1 in 10,000 people. Once a person is made aware of the condition, most decide to wear a medical alert bracelet or necklace in case of a medical emergency. While nearly everyone who has had this opposite organization of organs has lived a healthy long life, it certainly is odd! 

Haunted Fredericksburg, Virginia

Fredericksburg in Virginia has seen a vast amount of American history with roots reaching back to the 17th century. There are centuries old buildings here and blood-stained battlegrounds that lend themselves to paranormal activity. Many locations in the city have ghost stories connected to them. Join us for the history and hauntings of Fredericksburg, Virginia. 

The canal that runs through downtown Fredericksburg is a favorite spot for people to jog and bike along. The canal holds a significant place in the local history, not only as a part of the mill industry, but Fredericksburg found itself in a precarious position during the Civil War as a prominent port that sat midway between the capitals of the North and the South. Two Civil War battles would be fought here. This area of the Piedmont was first inhabited by a Siouan-speaking tribe called the Manahoac. This strategic place for the indigenous people would also be strategic for the colony of Virginia. A fort was established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1676 along the Rappahannock River. The town of Fredericksburg was founded several decades later in 1728 and named for the Prince of Wales, Frederick. George Washington's family moved to a town across the river from Fredericksburg in 1738 and his mother Mary would eventually move to Fredericksburg later. As a matter of fact, her home here still stands and is one of the haunted locations we'll talk about a bit later. Naval war hero John Paul Jones also called this city home, as did President James Monroe. After the war, Fredericksburg lost a chunk of its population, but it still remained a center of trade, finally incorporating in 1879. Today, tourism is one of its key economic engines and GEICO's headquarters is here! Fun Fact: Musician Link Wray invented the power chord of modern rock guitar in Fredericksburg.

The Battle of Fredericksburg

There were two battles in Fredericksburg. The second one is nicknamed the "forgotten battle of Fredericksburg." The more well known first battle took place from December 11th to 15th, 1862 and had General Ambrose Burnside leading the Union forces and Robert E. Lee leading the Confederate forces. This would be one of the largest battles - with 200,000 combatants - and deadliest of the Civil War. 

The Battle of Antietam had taken place before this and Union General McClellan had failed to pursue General Lee so he was removed from command of the Army of the Potomac. When Burnside became the replacement, he knew he needed to come up with an amazing plan to get to Richmond before General Lee. When he surveyed the route, Burnside decided that going toward the lower Rappahannock River was the best idea and then he could cross the river and get into position. There, he would cross quickly and position himself between Lee and the direct route to Richmond. The plan had great promise, but, to accomplish it successfully, speed was essential. General Burnside's group of 100,000 men arrived on November 15th. They found the bridges all destroyed, so they ordered pontoon bridges to be sent, but they were delayed until November 25th, giving the Confederacy time to prepare.

This would prove very beneficial to the Confederate side. Union engineers attempted to assemble the bridges, but Confederate snipers made it hard to get the work done. General Burnside decided to shell Fredericksburg and he hit it with 150 Federal guns. They did a lot of damage and the engineers got back to their work, but eventually the Confederate riflemen started shooting again. 

Burnside needed a new plan, so he sent a regiment with men from Michigan and Massachusetts to row across the river and stop the snipers. They managed to cross under fire and drive the snipers away. On December 12th, Burnside got the rest of his army across the river. They occupied Fredericksburg and Burnside plans to have 60,000 men in Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin’s Left Grand Division to crush Lee’s southern flank. That flank has General Stonewall Jackson heading it up and the initial assault on him is successful. But then both sides suffer heavy losses in what was called the Slaughter Pen. The Slaughter Pen Farm is a 208 acre area on the southern end of the Fredericksburg Battlefield. The Union was gallant, but outnumbered. Burnside had said of his plans, "I wanted to obtain possession of that new road, and that was my reason for making the attack on the extreme [Federal] left." This road that he spoke of had been built by the Confederates to connect the two wings of the Confederacy. Burnside hoped that cutting this road in half would disorganize Lee's side and they could pursue them and cut them off from Richmond. However, the Union was unorganized and orders were misunderstood and Stonewall had a powerful counterattack. The Union put forward only a fraction of what was needed. There were 8,200 Union to 38,000 Confederate. The Federals ended up in an open plain as easy targets and they eventually made there way into the woods, but Lee's best men were there to meet them.  

By 3pm on December 13th, the fighting at the Slaughter Pen was over with 5,000 soldiers dead and neither side had gained anything. Another area on the battlefield that had intense fighting was the Sunken Road. This lane had been a simple wagon road that had been worn down into a trench from all the years of use. It sat at the base of five hills known as Marye's Heights and Confederate General James Longstreet had his group of men here. Fighting at this location began around noon. 

Union General Edwin V. Sumner initiated repeated attacks on the Confederate lines. The Sunken Road that the Confederates were on gave them the ability to beat back each assault as it came and despite seven Union divisions trying to make 14 charges, none of them was able to enter the Sunken Road. Nearly 1-in-3 Federal soldiers became a casualty at Marye's Heights. General Lee was appalled by the carnage and he said, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it." The armies stayed where they were on December 14th and there was a lull in the fighting. General Lee allowed Burnside to attend to his wounded that day. Burnside told his generals that he wanted to retreat back over the river the following day, but they opposed this decision and said that they felt they should remain in the town and prepare another thrust. Almost as sign, the Northern Lights made an unexpected appearance over Fredericksburg that evening. Burnside knew as he surveyed the damage dealt to his side that this was a Confederate victory. The following morning, he instructed his troops to retreat across the Rappahannock. There were 18,500 casualties with 12,500 on the Union side and 6,000 on the Confederate side. Six weeks after this bitter loss at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln removed Burnside from command and appointed Maj. General Joseph Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac. This win gave Lee a big boost and he went on to victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863.

We want to share an interesting side note to this battle Pvt. George Heiser of the 136th Pennsylvania was a prisoner of war after the battle because he refused to leave a wounded comrade. Heiser survived this battle and a stint as a prisoner of war at Libby Prison. He would later participate in memorial parades through the years and opened up a store in Johnstown Pennsylvania and he was very generous letting people take what they needed and paying later, He and his wife would be swept away and killed in the Johnstown Flood in 1889.  

The Second Battle of Fredericksburg took place on May 3, 1863. General Lee had left Fredericksburg for Chancellorsville at this point and left Major General Jubal Early in charge. He was joined by other brigades bringing the Confederate side up to 12,000 men and they had 45 cannons. Major General John Sedgwick was leading the Union and he had a force of 27,000. Sedgwick's plan was to attack both ends of Marye's Heights, but a canal and stream were in the way, so he decided to hit the center. The initial assault was repelled, but a second one drove the Confederates off the ridge and they retreated to Lee's Hill. They tried to make a final stand and were defeated again so they ran southward. There were 700 Confederate casualties and 1,100 Union and the Union held Fredericksburg. Union General Joshua Chamberlain had a real way with words and he wrote many letters home. We want to share this excerpt from one of his letters, "At last, outwearied and depressed..." (Pg. 203) Many historians have wondered why Burnside sent wave after wave of troops up against the stone wall that the Confederates were barricaded behind at the Sunken Road. This had nearly been a massacre. The Sunken Road is the most haunted section of the battlefield. Visitors claim to hear the distant echoes of war cries and sounds of battle. And much like Gettysburg, people see ghostly soldiers marching in formation and even fighting each other and ghostly horses sometimes thunder across the field. 

Just up from the road, Marye's Heights gives a feeling of dread and has the apparitions of soldiers and spectral lights. The smell of gun powder can be strong at times. Cold spots have been reported along the stone wall. Some have claimed that the aurora borealis appearing as the two sides buried their dead in the field was a paranormal event. Away_Meringue wrote on Reddit, "When I moved here from Alexandria in 2018 I felt a very strong supernatural pull. I was coming down the road around twilight and saw a Confederate soldier figure standing under a tree behind one of the old battlefield fences."

Rising Sun Tavern (Suggested by: Kim Harmon)

The Washington Heritage Museums include three of our haunted locations: Rising Sun Tavern, Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop and the Mary Washington House. President George Washington’s youngest brother was named Charles. When he reached adulthood, he inherited 750 acres of land in Spotsylvania County, Virginia from his father who had died when he was five-years-old. He purchased two lots in what was the county seat at the time, Fredericksburg, and he built a home for himself there in 1761. This was a wood frame, one-and-a-half story building covered with broad hand-beveled clapboards. There was a gabled roof with three tiny dormers and several chimneys. There was a large ballroom that would burn down later and a banquet room with a paneled corner fireplace and built-in cupboard. The home hosted a Peace Ball celebrating the victory at Yorktown in 1781. Charles Washington would live there with his family until 1781 and was sold to a Larkin Smith in 1791 who sold it again in 1792 to Colonel Gustav Wallace. 

Wallace rented the building to John Frasier who opened it as a tavern he called the Golden Eagle in 1793. This operated for 35 years, but John would die just a few months into running the tavern. The post office was also located here. Preservation Virginia acquired the Rising Sun Tavern in 1907 and completed a series of restorations that included the front porch and the original railings from the 18th century bar were found under the plaster and the entire bar was rebuilt. Chair rails, cornices, paneled wood and fireplaces and the unique stairway were all repaired and painted in their original colors. 

The ghost that hangs out here is said to be the first proprietor, John Frasier. Frasier died in 1793 after going upstairs and taking a nap. He has stayed on to watch over the tavern in the afterlife. His spirit is said to move items around, he likes to play with the lights and staff and visitors have all heard his laughter and some even say they have seen his apparition. His disembodied footsteps are heard upstairs. An employee was going upstairs and she heard the disembodied footsteps and she scolded John for scaring her and she felt a tug on her dress. Tricorne hats in the gift shop have been found aligned in the middle of the floor. Wilson was an employee and he said one night they were closing up and they put the bar that they placed across the front door in its place and when they turned around, they heard a loud clunk behind them and the bar had flown off from the door and just landed a couple inches right behind Wilson and his fellow tour guide. He didn't believe in ghosts until he started working here. Some people also claim that John's wife Elizabeth is here too.

Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop

The Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop is located at 1020 Caroline Street. The house was built in 1772 as a home and apothecary for Dr. Hugh Mercer. He had left Scotland after the Battle of Culloden and settled in Pennsylvania. While there, he got involved in the French and Indian War and met Colonel George Washington who encouraged him to move to Fredericksburg to open a practice. More than likely because his mother lived there. Mary Washington would be one of Dr. Mercer's patients. He used a variety of remedies including leeches, lancets, snakeroot, and crab claws. The practice ran for 15 years and then Dr. Mercer joined the Revolutionary Army and he died as a Brigadier General at the Battle of Princeton. Preservation Virginia took ownership of the house and restored it and then passed on ownership in 2013 to the "Washington Heritage Museums" group. Docents give guided tours of the first floor and visitors can tour a self-guided tour of the second floor and gardens on their own. Staff has reported some strange things happening in the museum. There is a child ghost here. A guide once saw the single bare foot of a child going up the stairs. 

Mary Washington House

The other museum that is part of this collection had belonged to George Washington's mother. The Mary Washington House is located at 1200 Charles Street. Mary had moved to Fredericksburg to be near her children, Charles and Elizabeth. Her son George bought this house for her in 1772 from Michael Robinson because it was near Elizabeth's home, Kenmore Plantation. The wooden house was originally a three-room cottage with a detached kitchen. There was a bedroom upstairs for guests that is referred to as the George Washington Room. One bedroom downstairs was Mary's bedroom and then she had a room for entertaining. 

Mary would spend the last seventeen years of her life in the house. Her youth had been tough. Her father died when she was three and by the time she was thirteen, her mother and step-father had also passed, so she was an orphan. Mary met the widower Augustine Washington when she was 23 and the two married in 1731. The couple would have six children. Augustine died in 1743 and Mary would never remarry. (This wasn't because she was heartbroken - explain the law at the time.) Before she died from breast cancer in 1789, she got to witness her son lead the Continental Army to victory and become the first President of America. Many famous people visited Mrs. Washington, and a legend claims one of these people was General Lafayette who came by the home seeking a visit with Mrs. Washington during the Revolution and he found her working in her garden. The President-to-be came to this home to receive his mother's blessing before attending his inauguration in 1789. Mary's granddaughter Betty moved into the house with her husband after Mary died. They added a central hall, a fancy parlor with carved woodwork and added additional rooms to the upstairs. The couple had seven children and two of them died in the house as infants. In 1806, the first Presbyterian minister in the town moved into the house and he also ran a boys' school out of it. A north wing was added to the house at that time. He lived at the house for 34 years. The house then was divided into a duplex. Jane Dickenson bought the house and lived in it during the Civil War. She nursed Confederate wounded there. A Union cannonball struck the house in the attic. Dickenson left in 1864 and the house became a hospital for the Union. The bodies of six Union soldiers were buried in the backyard.

Preservation Virginia acquired the Mary Washington House in 1890, saving it from being disassembled and shipped to the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. They restored the house and opened it as a museum in 1900. In 2012, the Washington Heritage Museums would acquire the house. Starting in the 1970s, ghost stories started to be told about the house. Mary never left her final home it seems. Her apparition has been seen tending to the garden. She is sometimes seen sitting by a window and people claim to hear the rustling of a dress. The hem of a petticoat has been seen swishing past a door. It is also thought that there is some activity from formally enslaved people who had worked here and maybe even a couple of boys from the boys' school days.

Michelle Hamilton is the manager of the Mary Washington House and she wrote the book "Ghosts of Fredericksburg." She said of the ghost at the house, "It's very gentle. It is very like a tea drinking spirit in here and usually pulls pranks. Things get knocked off the shelves in the gift shop and papers on my desk get messed up every once in a while. A former employee had her soda bottle turned upside down on her desk. It's just very gentle, very playful and very whimsical. We once heard this giant slamming sound coming from upstairs. I realized I have to be the brave one to go upstairs. I'm like, okay guys whatever you've done you better put it back." She wrote in her book (pg. 21 and 23)

Richard Johnston Inn 

The Richard Johnson Inn is a bed and breakfast located at 711 Caroline Street. John Taylow had been an original signer of the Declaration of Independence and he built the original row house here in 1770. This row house was combined with the row house next to it to make it a larger house. A kitchen house was in the courtyard and there were slave quarters. The inn is named for the man who bought it in the early 1800s, Richard Johnston, who served as the mayor of Fredericksburg from 1809 to 1810. There was no running water or central heat in the house until after the 1930s and by 1970, it was in such a state of disrepair it was only good for use as a warehouse. A man named Hunter Greenlaw bought it in the 1970s and renovated the property into office space, a restaurant and shops. Greenlaw sold it in 1986 to Libby Gowin, who turned the home into The Richard Johnston Inn that it is today. The tradition of running it as an inn continued in 1993 when Susan Thrush bought the property. L&L Hospitality bought it in 2001 and did some modernization and continue to run it today. The house survived the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, only suffering minor fire damage during the Civil War. The inn being over 245 years old, lends itself to ghosts stories and there are said to be multiple spirits here. There is at least one child spirit and it has been heard talking and laughing. The most well known spirit is a former enslaved man named Toby who was tasked with keeping the eleven fireplaces clean. When he is around, people smell the scent of smoke. 

There are stories of Confederate sharpshooters firing from the windows during the Battle of Fredericksburg and there could be spirits connected to that. legatedomitor wrote on Reddit, "The Richard Johnston Inn downtown Fredericksburg is very much haunted. I was in there doing work along with another person. My coworker kept asking who was watching us and following us around. Asked the employee on duty and was advised no one was staying at the inn, the figure pretty much stayed staring and following us until we were gone. Not threatening just very very weird, cold spots randomly in there too."

The Chimneys

It is uncertain who originally owned The Chimneys. Scotsman John Glassell was a local merchant and he is credited with building The Chimneys, located at 623 Caroline Street, and named for the chimneys on either side of the house. He arrived in Fredericksburg in the 1770s and purchased land from Englishman Charles Yates. Some historians believe that Yates actually built the house, which is estimated to have been built between 1771 and 1773. Yates had been a Mason and would've had the skills needed for the meticulous craftsmanship found inside the house. Whatever the case, when the American Revolution started, Glassell headed back to Scotland in 1775 because he was a loyalist and he never returned. He turned the house over to William Glassell who he had given power of attorney. The house was two stories, built in the Georgian style and framed with mortise and tenon joints, secured by hardwood pegs. The hipped roof was designed after the construction of ship hulls at the time and is was supported by three heavy king post trusses. The interior featured a central hall plan with two rooms on each side of the hallway. There was decorative carving on the woodwork of the moldings, paneling and mantelpiece. 

The house changed hands throughout the 1800s and no one knows for sure who started calling it The Chimneys. President Chester A. Arthur's wife, Nell, had lived in the house when she was a child. The president of the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation bought the house in 1966 and rented it out until the foundation turned it into a museum and office space in 1975. A man named William Vakos purchased and renovated it in 1982 and he opened it as a restaurant. In 1985, Robert Mitchell III became the new owner and he held onto it until 2000, when Tommy Mitchell bought it. In 2014, The Chimneys opened as Billikens Smokehouse, a family-owned BBQ restaurant with great food, live entertainment and stunning views. 

Billiken is not a family name, so we had to ask, what is a billiken and the restaurants website says, "The Billiken is believed to be the creation of Ms. Florence Pretz, a Kansas City art teacher and illustrator. In the early 1900s, she dreamed of this whimsical figure and brought it to life. Ms. Pretz initially produced the Billiken as coin banks and statuettes, later expanding to dolls. This charming good luck symbol quickly became a national craze, with its likeness appearing on everything from postcards to hood ornaments. Around 1908, the Horsemen Doll Co. manufactured the Billiken doll, selling an impressive 200,000 units within the first few months. During the Great Depression, the Billiken gained a reputation as a beacon of good fortune. Poems were written celebrating the luck he brought to those who owned him. Described variously as a fairy, an imp, a charm, and even a god, the Billiken’s appeal transcended borders. In China, he is known as the “God of Things as They Should Be,” and he has left his mark in places as far-flung as Alaska and Canada. The Billiken exists to amuse, make you laugh, and bring you luck and happiness. Most importantly, he invites you to ask the timeless question: What is a Billiken?" 

Patrons and staff have claimed to hear strange sounds, they feel cold spots, door knobs turn on their own and rocking chairs rock on their own. The spirit of a young boy is said to haunt the house and he was seen by a woman who was putting her son to sleep. She thought his friend who was laying in the bed with him was over for a sleepover and that her husband hadn't told her about it. She put both boys to sleep and then asked her son who the boy was the next morning. her husband had no idea what she was talking about and her son had no idea who the boy was either. 

There may be a couple of female ghosts as well. One of these female ghosts was seen by a family living in the house in the early 1800s. She was a full-bodied apparition and she was playing a harp in the house. She also joined a little girl sitting at a piano playing, several years later. Author Mark Nesbitt claims to have interacted with the spirit of a former enslaved man named Nicodemus. He was coming through the Underground Railroad in Fredericksburg, but was left behind and died in a fire while he waited for a fellow traveler to return for him. Nesbitt had been accompanied by a medium named Julie Pellegrino and she is the one who relayed this information. 

Chatham Manor 

Chatham Manor is located at 120 Chatham Lane and was completed in 1771. It was designed in the Georgian architectural style and was constructed for farmer and statesman William Fitzhugh. He had named his house for his friend William Pitt who was the Earl of Chatham. The plantation stretched over 1,280 acres and included an orchard, mill, slave quarters, a dairy, barns, and ice house, stables and a race track for horses. Fitzhugh regularly raced his horses here against his neighbors. Chatham had a slave rebellion in 1805. Tired of being abused, the slaves overpowered the overseer and a couple other men and whipped them. An armed posse arrived at the plantation later in the day and they killed three slaves and deported two others. Fitzhugh decided to sell and he sold the property Major Churchill Jones. His brother William inherited the property when Churchill died and he deeded the property to his eldest daughter Hannah Jones Coalter as a wedding present in 1825. Hannah had always wanted to free her slaves, so she set up her will to manumit her 93 slaves. Manumit meant that the slaves were freed, but that there was an arrangement as well. The slaves could decide to remain enslaved in the state of Virginia or they could be freed with enough money to help them get established in another state. They had to leave Virginia if freed. Hannah's relatives sued and claimed the Dred Scott decision meant that slaves couldn't make that kind of decision. A local court said the slaves could be freed, but the Virginia Supreme Court divided and the relatives won. The property was sold to Hannah's younger sister Betty and her husband J. Horace Lacy in 1848. 

Lacy joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War and rose to the rank of major. When the Union came to Fredericksburg, they took over Chatham Manor and forced Betty and the children to leave.

The property served as a U.S. Army headquarters and later became a Union hospital. After the war, the house fell into disrepair and the Lacys had to sell it to pay taxes in 1872. The property had several owners, but no one did anything with it until General Daniel Bradford Devore and his wife Helen bought the manor in the 1920s and they renovated it and made the place into a real showpiece. They added a beautiful English-style garden. In 1931, General Motors executive John Lee Pratt and his wife, purchased the Chatham estate. Upon Devore's death, the estate was willed to the National Park Service in 1975 and now serves as the headquarters for the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. It sits on only 85 acres now and offers tours of five rooms that were turned into a museum. The property has the distinction of being visited by both President Washington and President Lincoln. 

The ghost story here is about a lady in white. Her story goes all the way back to Fitzhugh's ownership. She was a young woman when she visited the manor. This woman hadn't come because she wanted to, but because her father had sent her away from England because she had fallen in love with the wrong young man. He hoped to break them up. However, the young man had followed her across the ocean and he met up with her at the manor. During their meeting, they discussed eloping. A servant heard the plans and reported them to a guest at the house, General George Washington. Washington agreed to stop the elopement, so when the young woman climbed out of her window, she found Washington waiting for her. The girl was sent back to England and forced into another marriage with a boy from the right side of the tracks with the right bank account. Before she died on June 21, 1790, she vowed that she would return to Chatham Manor each year on the anniversary of her death. Many visitors to the manor have claimed to see the glowing lady in white. She is usually seen wearing a white period dress. She made her first appearance on her death. Legend claims that she actually appears every seventh year on June 21st. She is normally seen walking a path along the river and she seems to be looking or watching for someone.  

Fredericksburg has a history intertwined with the Antebellum period and the Civil War, which seems to feed the paranormal side of things. Are these locations in Fredericksburg haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 621 Haunted Sydney, Nova Scotia

This Month in History - National Bird Day (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

In the month of January, on the 5th, every year since 2002, the United States has celebrated National Bird Day. This annual observance focuses on bird conservation and appreciating avian wildlife through activities like birdwatching, education, and improving habitats. This year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City posted an interesting bird related article to commemorate the date. The topic was about a rock crystal figurine from Nuremberg, Germany that dated to the 1500s. This figurine featured a pigeon with ruby eyes and silver guilded legs and collar. The Met article posed a very interesting question: "How many cows would this statue be worth in the 1550s?" Now, of course, this sounds like a preposterous question in 2026, but cows had a very high value at that time. One cow at that time was worth approximately 175 grams of silver. The answer to the question was that the little statuary was more than likely valued at roughly 275 cows. As for the value of seeing a bird that you haven't seen before and can now add to your life list - and surely you must have a birding life list - that is priceless!

Haunted Sydney, Nova Scotia

Sydney, Nova Scotia's historic North End has a haunted reputation. Many of the buildings here have stood for more than 100 years and a handful are now museums. The Cossit House is one of the oldest houses on Cape Breton Island and haunted by its former occupants. The same is true with the Jost House. There are also a couple of haunted churches of all things. And the nearby Fortress of Louisbourg endured a couple of sieges and is today a National Historic site with several ghosts. Join us for the history and hauntings of Sydney, Nova Scotia. 

The British founded the city of Sydney in 1785 on the east coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.  Today, it has been absorbed into the regional municipality, but it once was the colonial capital of Cape Breton Island. The capital moved to Halifax - a location we covered in Ep. 423. Sydney was named in honor of Thomas Townshend who was the 1st Viscount Sydney. He was serving as the Home Secretary in the British cabinet at the time. The city was incorporated in 1885. Beginning in the 20th century, the region's biggest employer would be the steel industry and Sydney would be the base of North America's main steel mills. That steel would eventually nationalize and the population of the city would shrink and today tourism is its top industry and cruise ship facilities were constructed. Fun Fact: The world's largest fiddle is here on the waterfront. And there are several haunted locations in the city that we are going to explore. There is a historic murder case that took place in North Sydney. John Flahaven was killed in the early morning hours of October 16, 1832 by two English sailors. These sailors were Reuban Easman and William Johnston and they had taken shelter in the Flahaven's barn. While the men were there, John's wife Charlotte became taken with Johnston and the two had an affair. The couple decided that John needed to go, so Reuban and William devised a plan. They let one loose one of the Flahaven's cows and when John went out to retrieve it, the men were waiting in ambush for him. The murder was discovered because the men did a bad job of burying the body and left a hand sticking up out of the ground. The three were arrested and found guilty of the murder and sentenced to be hanged. They were kept at a jail that is now the basement of a private home at 25 Charlotte Street. Their spirits are thought to still be down in that basement and thre are some people who claim they haunt the whole neighborhood because wood that was used to build some of the houses was actually used to build the gallows that were at Victoria Park first.  

Cossit House Museum (Suggested by: Stephen Weiss)

The Cossit House was built in 1787 by Reverend Ranna (Rene) Cossit for his family. Cossit had actually been born in Connecticut to a French family that came to America in the early 1700s. He decided to go into ministry and was ordained in 1773 and he married Thankful Brooks from New Hampshire. The couple decided to settle in New Hampshire and they had seven children there. They would add six more later. 

Despite being loyal to the British, the Cossits remained in New Hampshire during the American Revolution. In 1785, Rev. Cossit was offered a ministry position in Sydney and he moved his family there in June of 1786. No parsonage was offered to him and that is why he ended up building the house at his own expense. And he also had to build the church, which wasn't finished until 1805. The British government did cough up 500 pounds for the church. The house was pretty big for the time and designed in the Neoclassical Georgian architectural style. This was a one-and-one-half story wood home built from local timbers with a rubble stone foundation and gabled roof. The interior was a central hallway plan. After years of ongoing political conflict that Cossit found himself in the middle of, he resigned from the Sydney mission in July 1805. He moved onto an appointment to Yarmouth and that is where he died in 1815. His wife Thankful had preceded him in death in 1802 while giving birth to their thirteenth child. A John Lorway bought the house in 1826 and then the Cossit House passed through various owners through the years. The Old Sydney Society partnered with the Nova Scotia Museum and the Provincial Government and they refurbished and staged the house as it would have been in the late 1700s and opened as a museum in 1977.  In 2008, the entire area around the house became part of a Heritage Conservation District, which includes a seven block area with 100 buildings.

There are claims that the house is haunted. Reverand Cossit liked to smoke a pipe and people catch the scent of pipe tobacco. Female visitors have often also reported the feeling of a little hand grabbing their hand. Cold drafts is another claim, especially near the stiarway. Suffling footsteps and laughing and giggling from upstairs have also been heard. 

Old Sydney Society employee Breagh MacDermid had said she had a unique experience with a medium when in the Cossit House. She told the Saltwire website, "A medium came from off the ship and she started crying when we went into the kitchen. She actually started speaking to me as if she was Thankful Cossitt and she kept crying and telling me how sad she was and stuff like that. I couldn’t stop thinking about it — I still can’t stop thinking about it, a week later. It was so sad and so heartbreaking." Haunts From The Cape investigated in 2017 and they reported, "Last year, with the help of Joyce Rankin of the Old Sydney Society, we encountered a negative force that wanted us to leave. The more we pushed it, the angrier the responses got." They have a video on YouTube and indeed the Spirit Box says to "leave" and they ask why they should leave and the answer is "not safe" and when they ask if they are making them uncomfortable, there was a clear "yes." 

Jost House Museum

The Jost House is one of the oldest wooden structures in Sydney and was built in 1786 in the Neoclassical style. The house was similar to the Cossit House in that it was also one-and-a-half stories and had a gable roof. In 1900, the roof was raised and changed to a low pitch roof to increase the number of bedrooms. There were two chimneys, with one servicing three fireplaces including a beehive oven in the basement. 

Sparrow only lived here until 1787. The next owner was Halifax merchant Thomas Jost, for whom the house is named. He bought the property in 1836 and the house stayed in the Jost family until 1971. Jost opened a general store in a corner room of the house, which was open until 1850. Then he opened a new store behind the house and Jost was considered one of the more important businessmen in the city of Sydney. The Old Sydney Society bought the house in 1991 and they restored it and opened it as a museum with artifacts from the Jost family and other collections put together by prominent Cape Bretoners like Dr. J. Esmonde Cooke’s collection in our Apothecary room featuring an assortment of medicinals and apparatus used in the making of medicine in the early 20th century. The Marine room reflects the maritime heritage of the city. There have been several ghosts spotted here, including a little boy in the basement. He is mischievous and once stole an earring from an employee and he locked another employee in a cabinet. A woman in blue has been seen on the staircase and people think that this is Joan Harris who was a well loved in the town that helped develop cruise ship visits to the town and who is primarily responsible for the museum's creation. Two women haunt the upstairs Victorian Room. Books have gone flying off of shelving.

St. Patrick's Church Museum

St. Patrick’s Church was founded as a Roman Catholic Church in 1828. A balcony was added in 1850 to help with the growth of the population, but eventually, a new church ha to be built. A Lebanese group took over the church and worshipped there until 1950 and then the Old Sydney Society took over the church and began restoring it in 1966. They reopened it as a museum. 

St. Patrick's Church Museum has a market bell hanging on the museum's first floor and legend claims that if the bell rings three times, the door to the upstairs belfry will open on its own. Old Sydney Society employee Breagh MacDermid told the Saltwire website, "There is a ghost at St. Patrick’s but he’s pretty jolly. All he’ll do is run across the balcony and then if you ring the market bell three times, he’ll open the belfry door. A lot of people like to do that on the tour and he almost always does." 

St. George's Church 

St. George's Anglican Church is the oldest building on Cape Breton Island and was built in 1785. The church was originally a small stone building in the Gothic Revival style with three circular windows on two sides. In 1853, a chancel and vestry were added, but just a few years later it was decided to rebuild the church, so it was torn down to its foundation. It was built again in the Gothic Revival style and the windows were changed to a pointed style and made from stained glass. A stone tower and spire were added in 1888. The interior has wall-hung headstones, memorial tablets, memorial stained-glass windows and a Casavant organ. The grave markers in the cemetery are made from limestone and sandstone. The church received a Royal Pew in 1854 meaning that it was an official place of worship for members of the Royal Family. 

Even though it is a church, this is said to be the most haunted location in Sydney. The local ghost tour always makes sure to stop by the graveyard. The legend connected to the church claims that a male ghost wanders the cemetery, especially at night. He is referred to as the pacing apparition. It is believed he is searching for a final resting place next to his family as he was denied burial here because he had committed a monstrous crime.  

Fortress Louisbourg 

The French were the first Europeans to settle Cape Breton Island. In 1713, they built a naval support base in the harbor, which they quickly abandoned after it froze over. They chose another spot for a new winter port that was well protected and free of ice and they called it Havre Louisbourg (Av-ruh Loo-ee-boor) after King Louis XIV.This fishing port became a major commercial port and fortifications were built around the town totaling two-and-a-half miles of wall. Four gates granted access to the town. The Fortress of Louisbourg wasn't very strong as it was built on a low-lying area and all its defenses were to the sea, so there was no protection for land assaults. The finest hospital in North America was here in the 1700s. During the War of Austrian Succession in 1745, the British beseiged the harbor and captured it, but they returned it to the French after the war. Around 500 British and colonial forces and approximately 300 French troops were killed or wounded during that siege. The French and Indian War began after several skirmishes between the French and American colonists escalated. That war broadened into the Seven Years' War and the British again laid siege to Louisbourg in 1758. This lasted for six weeks before the French surrendered with 172 British killed and 300 wounded and an unknown amount of French casualties. The British took over the fortress and launched the Siege of Quebec from there. The French soldiers and inhabitants were sent back to France and then the British began demolishing the town. The process took six years. The British kept a garrison at Louisbourg until 1768. For more than 150 years, the site remained rough and mostly forgotten.

In 1920, the fortress became a National Historic Site. The Canadian government undertook a massive restoration effort in 1961 to recreate Louisbourg as it had been in 1744. Sixty buildings were built and also two bastions. One of these reconstructed buildings was the Military Chapel. The site is operated by Parks Canada and offers self-guided and guided tours, demonstrations and re-enactors.

Many battles were fought here and many lived were lost, so its not surprising that there are rumors of hauntings. There are bodies still buried in the ground in places. A couple who was staying overnight on the grounds one night, fled in the middle of the night because they had become so scared. There are tunnels on the property where apparitions have been seen and EVPs have been recorded. People have also been pushed by unseen forces. One of the most seen ghosts is a French soldier who seems to be on patrol near the ​King's Bastion​, usually on foggy nights and his uniform seems to be ragged and he seems to be very sad. A young drummer boy was killed during a battle and the sounds of drumming is sometimes heard. There is a White Lady here as well. Visitors and staff tend to see her around dusk walking the ramparts and she sometimes wails. People assume that she had been the wife of a soldier or officer who had died at the fortress. 

The Lartigue House was owned by Joseph Lartigue and his Basque wife Jeanne. They came with the first settlers from Newfoundland and Joseph worked as a fisherman and trader, but eventually he worked in public office, serving on the Superior Council and then as town magistrate. They built the house in 1734 on a rubblestone foundation with a timberframe. Part of the house was used as a courtroom. The couple raised twelve children in the house. Jeanne stayed on in the house until her death in 1763, so she was there for the founding and the fall. There are claims that disembodied footsteps are heard upstairs.

The Duhaget Property was owned by garrison officer Robert Tarride Duhaget who had been born in the south of France. The house was built in 1737 with beveled board siding. Robert married Marguerite Rousseau de Villejouin and the couple hoped to fill their large home with children, but they remained childless. Duhagets health failed in 1757 and he returned to France where he died. Staff report seeing shadow figures on the stairs. One time, someone tripped on the stairs and was falling when an unseen force propped them back up so they didn't fall. A presence at the house has been talked about for 50 years. Fortress of Louisbourg events co-ordinator Kyle Allen, told the saltwire website, "There was one year with the curatorial department and I was one of the people that was responsible for setting up and dismantling the period displays and things like that during the spring and winter. I was working in the Duhaget residence hanging a curtain on the second floor and I clearly heard footsteps in the attic. I looked up the stairs and the padlock was on the one door that leads into the attic so nobody could have been in there, but it was clearly footsteps."

Michel Rodrigue was a seaman who sailed up the Saint Lawrence with French and West Indian goods to trade for flour and vegetables in other parts of Canada in the 1730s. He raised five children in the home with his wife Marguerite, who was the daughter of Joseph Lartigue. He lead a militia during the Siege of 1745 and after the town fell, he went back to France. Troy Allen was a longtime employee and he was once in the Rodrigue property closing up the building and making sure no one was inside when he looked out a window to the building across the street and there was a face staring at him from a window. He proceeded to the next window and when he looked at that window the same face was still across the street staring directly back at the same spot he had just been previously in the proceeding window. 

The Military Chapel was a central religious building within the King's Bastion and featured the patron of St. Louis IX. Governor Duquesnel was buried in the chapel. Barracks were also inside and government functions were carried out here as it was the most fortified part of the fortress. A psychic in the chapel once sensed negative energy in the attic of the chapel and an investigator's camera died inexplicably. Kyle Allen told a story about an experience his father had here. He said, "Another story, my father worked here in the ’70s and ’80s. In the 1970s, our military chapel burnt due to an electrical fire and he was cleaning out the smoke and soot damage out of the rooms adjacent to the chapel. He was cleaning out one room, moving everything into another room, cleaning that one, moving it all back. At one point, he sees this ball of beeswax floating into the next room. So he thought the smoke had gotten to him, went outside, found another staff person and they went back up. Here in the room that he was cleaning, you could clearly see on the table the outline of the beeswax because there was no soot underneath where the beeswax was sitting. Forty feet away is where the beeswax was sitting on another table. They lifted it up, nothing but soot underneath the other table where it ended up, and the only mark on the beeswax was where they had just touched it. So there’s always things that are unexplained." Unexplained knocks and bangs are often heard.

Sydney is the largest urban area on Cape Breton and the heart of the waterfront. This has become a popular cruise ship stop and tourist destination and if you are into ghosts, this would be a great spot for it. Lots of old buildings with unexplained activity inside possibly. Is the city of Sydney in Nova Scotia haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 563 - Historic Tampa Bay Hotel

Moment in Oddity - Mongolian Death Worm (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

The Gobi Desert is located in Southern Mongolia and Northwestern China. The land is stony and is almost waterless, save for some salt marshes. It is an extreme desert with temperatures ranging from -40 F in the winter and climbing to 113 F in the summer. Various animals call the desert home, ranging from camels, gazelles, wolves and snow leopards just to name a few. There is a most unique creature however that also calls this desert home. The Mongolian Death Worm. The worms are said to look like a sausage and range from 2-5 feet in length. Mongolians say that the death worms are able to kill from a distance by spraying venom at its prey or by means of an electrical discharge. The locals call it olgoi-khorkhoi which roughly translates to, "large intestine worm". It is said that there is no discernable head or tail and that the creature lives underground most of the time with the exception of summer when the creatures rise out of the sand to attack and kill. Their diet consists of prey based upon the size of the death worm. Prey items range from lizards and Fennec Foxes all the way up to villagers and camels when the worms are full grown. The bright red worms are feared by Mongolians and in the region, everyone knows someone who has encountered the terrifying creatures. This deadly cryptid has been entrenched in Mongolian folklore for centuries. Whether a mythical creature or not, the Mongolian Death Worm certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Inventor of Basketball Born

In the month of November, on the 6th, in 1861, James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball was born. He was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain and sports coach. Prior to inventing the now beloved game, Naismith studied and taught physical education at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in 1890 and in 1891 he invented the game of basketball. His brainchild came about due to the need to keep athletes in good shape during winter weather where outdoor winter exercise was more difficult. In 1894, he wrote the first "Basket Ball" rule book (so spelled at the time). Naismith then moved from Massachusetts to Denver where he received his medical degree. Later, he moved on to the University of Kansas to become the Jayhawks athletic director and coach. Due to James Naismith's passion in physical education and his invention of the game of basketball, the sport was introduced at the Olympic Games of 1936 and according to the International Basketball Federation, over 450 million people worldwide take part in the sport today.

Historic Tampa Bay Hotel (Suggested by: Kathy and Gavin Thomas) 

The historic Tampa Bay Hotel is stunning and very different from its surroundings. Downtown Tampa Bay pierces the skyline with skyscrapers and other elements of the typical metropolis concrete jungle. The old hotel features Moorish and Turkish architecture. The minarets that grace several towers seem out of place on this coastal tourist destination. The hotel is now a part of a university campus and thus the interior has been altered greatly, but there is still enough of its past to call back to a bygone era of glitz and Victorian sensibilities. Including a few ghosts. Join us for the history and hauntings of the historic Tampa Bay Hotel!

Floridians know Plant City, Florida for its strawberries. The Strawberry Festival is held here for eleven days every February and March. A Native American village was once located here and it was  called Ichepucksassa, but by 1860 the name had changed to Cork in honor of the postmaster's hometown. When the South Florida Railroad arrived in 1884, the town was incorporated and renamed to Plant City for Henry B. Plant. Plant brought so much growth and success to the state of Florida that he was called the "King of Florida." This was probably much to the chagrin of Henry Flagler who was a rival and friendly competitor to Plant. That rivalry was to the benefit of the state as the men competed regularly to better each other when it came to building railroad lines and hotels.

Henry Plant was born on a Connecticut farm in October of 1819. He grew up in a Puritan family, mostly raised by his mother and step-father as he lost his father at the age of six to typhus fever. The disease also killed his sister. His first job was as a captain's boy on a steamboat and the ships he worked aboard traveled from New Haven to New York. One can imagine that seeing the big city after spending his early life on a farm really left an impression on him. Plant was really good at this shipping business and he worked his way up the ranks. He married Ellen Blackstone in 1842 and the couple would have two children, with only one surviving to adulthood.

In 1854, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia because Plant was elevated to management over the Adams Express Company's southern division. This meant he oversaw shipping between South Carolina and Georgia. The company was flourishing, but talk of war in 1861 made the company uncomfortable having a stake in the south. Henry proposed an option to the company. He told them he would gather investors and purchase the company and Adams Express agreed to sell. This was Plant's first of many companies that he would own. And while getting the company was great for Plant, his personal life took a hit when his wife Ellen died of tuberculosis shortly after the sell. Plant managed to keep the company prosperous through the Civil War and then he returned to New York.

Henry married Margaret Loughman in 1873 and he proceeded to get very involved with the railroad. He made investments here and there as he learned the ropes and in 1879 he purchased his first railroad and renamed it the Savannah, Florida & Western Railway. Plant continued buying lines and linking them and he worked his way down through Florida, reaching Central Florida in 1882. Here he formed the Plant Investment Company, known as PICO, and he brought on investors that included Henry Flagler. Flagler was also a board member of the company. By 1884, Plant had connected Tampa to the rest of the eastern seaboard, laying more than 1200 miles of tracks.

Clearly shipping was a big thing for Plant, but with that also came travel and tourism. So his next focus would be on not only making travel by steamboats and railway more luxurious, but he wanted to build grand hotels. Tampa seemed like a good place to focus his attention. Plant dug out the channel to create Port Tampa and made it a major transportation hub. This travel would include the Gulf and the Caribbean and Plant even got the mail contract for the West Indies. This network came to be known as the Plant System and was more successful than Flagler's efforts. Lumber, citrus, celery and phosphate industries flourished and Plany wooed to cigar industry to come to Tampa. Ybor City became its headquarters.

When it came to hotels, there was no stopping Plant. He built eight luxurious hotels in western Florida, rivaling Flagler's hotels on the east coast in places like St. Augustine. The first hotel he built was the Inn at Port Tampa in 1888. His finest and most opulent hotel would be the Tampa Bay Hotel. Before building the Tampa Bay Hotel, Plant needed some concessions from the city with the main one being a bridge. In order for the hotel to be linked to the downtown area, a bridge needed to be built across the Hillsborough River. The city agreed to build the bridge and Plant also managed to get them to agree to property taxes that would be under $200 a year. Construction began in 1888. The hotel would take two years to complete and cost $3 million including all the furnishings inside. The hotel was 1/4 mile long and covered 6 acres. Poured concrete was used and floors were reinforced with rails and cables.

Architect John A. Wood was hired by Plant to design and build the hotel. Wood began his career in New York. The design he came up with for the hotel is hard to peg down. The hotel is clearly Romantic architecture, which liked to blend older architectural styles like Gothic Revival. But its the presence of onion domes and minarets gave it a Moorish and Turkish feel as it reflected elements found on places like the Taj Mahal. The structure catches the eye as Kelly and I explain as we share about the first time we saw the hotel. The hotel has six minarets, four cupolas, and three domes. The hotel is graced with long verandas and the front entrance is really interesting because Victorian gingerbreading decorates the front. The western veranda opens up into the music room and grand parlor. Giant windows are how the veranda is connected and they were all open when we were there. The ceilings are domed and the music room has a small hardwood stage with balconies on each side. An orchestra regularly performed in here. Directly north of the main building was a dining room that could hold 650 people and it was considered the most elaborate room in the hotel. The room is ringed with carved mahogany balcony box seating and the ceiling is painted like a clouded sky. Eight course meals were served in the dining room. There was a billiards room, barbershop, beauty shop, shoeshine service, flower shop and all guest rooms had electricity and telephones and most had private bathrooms. There were 511 rooms when it opened in 1891. Florida's first passenger elevators were at the Tampa Bay Hotel. There were two of them and one still works today. 

The entire hotel, with its very long hallways, features Moorish archways in all openings. The interior was described as "a jewel casket into which has been gathered an infinite number of gems." There were Venetian mirrors, which still hang in the hallways and as Kathy pointed out, many dangerously face each other. At least dangerous in a hotel that is reputedly haunted because we know how those pesky mirrors can be portals and facing each other isn't great. The furnishings were as exotic as the exterior and sculptures were handpicked in Europe by the Plants. It always amazes us when we think about them shipping these things over from Europe.

The hotels vast grounds featured gardens and hosted croquet, tennis, shuffleboard and races. There was a golf course and the hotel offered diversions like fishing and wild game hunting. There were also carriages and bicycles for rent. Grand balls and concerts were hosted on the regular and tea parties crowded the vast verandas. The Tampa Bay Casino was also here and could seat 2,000 people for performances by John Philip Sousa and Sarah Bernhardt. The Casino had a spa and heated indoor swimming pool. The entire property boasted 21 buildings. It really must have been something to see and experience in its day.

During the Spanish-American War, the United States made plans to invade Cuba. Plant wanted Tampa to be utilized to carry this out and he sent his friend Franklin Q. Brown to Washington to show legislators how well Tampa would work as a port to launch the military campaign. This plan highlighted the Plant System, which was already running ships to and from Cuba and the port was linked to everywhere via the railroad. It really was a no-brainer and the Tampa Bay Hotel became the headquarters for the U.S. Army. Everyone connected to wars were brought here from war reporters to military officers to Red Cross personnel. Some of the military stationed here were Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. The grounds were used for battle exercises and Teddy had one of the grand suites for his stay. The war was often referred to as the "Rocking Chair War" in Tampa because people could see all the officers sitting on the veranda in rocking chairs discussing strategy. The war lasted for 10 weeks.

Plant died in 1899. There is a really cool sculpture and fountain at the entrance to Plant Park. Margaret Plant commissioned the piece after her husband died and its called "Transportation." The design features trains and ships and an eagle holding a strongbox with The Southern Express Company's logo. This sculpture was crafted from solid stone by George Grey Barnard. The sculpture is the oldest public art in the city of Tampa. Plant's heirs sold the Tampa Bay Hotel to the city in 1905. The hotel ran through 1930 and hosted well known people like the Prince of Wales, the Queen, Winston Churchill, Clara Baton, Stephen Crane and Babe Ruth who hit his longest home run during a spirng training game at the adjacent Plant Field. He also signed his first baseball contract in the Grand Dining Room. The reason the hotel closed was that the Great depression hit it hard. The beautiful building just sat vacant for three years and then in 1933, the Tampa Bay Junior College moved in. Suites were turned into classrooms and laboratories. The junior college eventually became the University of Tampa. When the city signed the lease with the college in 1941, it designated that the southeast wing would be reserved as a museum. This became the Tampa Municipal Museum that is today the Henry B. Plant Museum. The entire building is known as Plant Hall. *Fun Fact: The first internationally recognized black fashion designer was Ann Lowe. She had a dressmaking salon in Tampa from 1915 to 1927. She crafted a number of formal dresses for things like the Gasparilla Court. They have three of her gowns at the museum.*

It's good that they opened the museum because the upper floors that we ventured to retained none of their historic value. Just industrial carpet and paint. We were at the hotel to take part in what was dubbed Eerie Eving at the Tampa Bay Hotel. There was period lighting and decor with displays featuring Victorian practices around death, including burial and seances, and there were stories featuring monsters, crime and we were even graced by the presence of Edgar Allen Poe. As we ventured from room to room, we got to see various artifacts from the hotel's past and we learned that the conductor of the orchestra was Giovanni Tallarico who emigrated from Calabria, Italy to the United States. You've probably never heard of him, but you have heard of his grandson, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. A prominent picture features Tallarico with his orchestra in 1909. The family is made of a long line of musicians as Steven's dad also became a conductor with his own orchestra and Tyler learned how to play the drums so he could play in that orchestra. 

Our friends and Executive Producers Kathy and Gavin Thomas joined us and so, of course, we brought a few pieces of handheld equipment to do a little investigating because we had heard the hotel was haunted. The most prominent ghost here belongs to Henry Plant. He has been nicknamed "The Brown Man." People see his full bodied apparition and describe him as tall with long white hair and mustache and red eyes. He is in a brown suit, hence the name. A student was once rushing to her class when she turned the corner into one of those long hallways and she saw a tall man in a period brown suit at the end of the hallway. He was a bit shadowy and she couldn't make out the face because of a shadow cast by a wide brimmed hat he was wearing. She quickly realized that this was a spirit because she noticed that he was floating several inches off the ground. He raised his head and she swore that his eyes were glowing red. Then he disappeared. When she got to class late, she decided to tell the truth as to why she was late and the professor actually said that this wasn't the first time he had heard this excuse. And he believed it, so he excused her.

That woman was lucky as many stories claim that the spirit rushes people when it is acknowledged. He disappears just before he makes contact. Another student was studying one evening in an empty classroom and he heard the door creak open. He expected to see someone come in, but nobody entered and then he heard disembodied footsteps approaching him. The sound stopped just before he was reached. The student gathered his books and left quickly. People who work in the building don't make eye contact if they see the spirit to avoid having him rushing them and they tell visitors to do the same.

Another spirit here is said to belong to an actress named Bessie. And boy, have we heard this story before a few dozen times at different locations. Apparently she was staying at the hotel and caught her husband cheating with one of her castmates. When Bessie got back to her room, she killed herself, although some accounts claim she hanged herself at the Falk Theater and yet another says she took a swan dive to her death off the top of the ballroom. Now her spirit lingers in rooms at Plant Hall and is sometimes heard screaming. She is the lady in red because she is seen wearing a scarlet dress. There are also urban legends about students who have died and haunt the place. Tim and Terry were fraternity brothers who lived on the fourth floor of the hall when it was a dorm. They died within two years of each other. Their spirits are blamed for putting the Greek letters of their fraternity on one of the doors that is the employee entrance to the financial aid office.

Kathy told us that she had felt weird in a far back room, so we headed there to see what we would feel. (Kathy Room) So I usually don't feel stuff, but I immediately went dizzy when I crossed the threshold. And Kathy is sensitive and she felt nauseous. Kelly felt pressure for sure. There are many artifacts that are personal to the Plant family. Kathy had a spirit box app opened on her phone and she was getting words like (Kathy Words - hiding, mummy, painful, damnation) One case had a lock of hair from Amy Plant and Kelly had her EMF outside the case and it kept pegging to yellow. Then we went down to a room with a bunch of instruments in it. Kelly's EMF went to yellow and stayed. We had an interesting interaction then. (Whats the Box)

We entered what had been a gentlemen's parlor and later became the writing and reading room and Edgar Allen Poe shared some information with us. (Edgar) Loved how the picture was a scandalously clad woman and she basically was wearing pants and a low cut shirt. We didn't get much other than the EMF pinging a few times and some of those interesting words, but we definitely would love a chance to do a real investigation in the place where we could break out all the equipment. So we couldn't say for sure that the place is haunted, but plenty of other people think so. Here are some more stories.

A student named Davis Owens said, "Late at night it’s eerie, like someone’s watching you, especially by the mailroom where that hallway narrows on the second floor." Another student named Patrick Tretola said, "When we were coming down from the fifth floor, we felt a push." Other students claim that the building gets unnaturally cold. Theater professor Michael Staczar claimed that he had a very weird encounter and shared, “This cloud of mist… fog, and it was obvious that there was some kind of physical shape to it. And as soon as I saw it, it literally sucked into the wall,” he told an online reporter. “It wasn’t a trick in the light. It was very obvious that it was some kind of shape, a physical shape. There was a presence there… a faint outline of a human body.”

Tour guides in the city share on ghost tours that a student was trying to turn in a paper late, so they figured they would slide it under the door of their professor's office, which was in Plant Hall. The student slid the paper under, stood up and turned around and there standing in the hall looking on with disapproval was Teddy Roosevelt. The student ran screaming. 2Stoned2Feel9 wrote on Reddit, "Plant Hall is extremely haunted. I was in a sorority and always hated being in Plant for recruitment because we had to be there late at night and weird stuff always happened. Doors slamming with no one around, footsteps when you know nobody is upstairs, that sort of thing. I don’t remember a lot of specifics because it was 5+ years ago now, but I know that place gives me the creeps after dark!"

L. Powell IV wrote on the Southern Spirit Guide website in 2018, "I received an anonymous comment telling a chilling story. This has been edited for clarity. Several years ago, my husband and I were vacationing and visiting my sister in Florida. On one afternoon we were looking for something to do and my sister suggested we check out the Plant Museum in Tampa. My husband knew I loved architecture and especially grand,old, buildings. I was very excited. We went in and began walking around. I could just imagine what it must have been like in its heyday. I saw the grand staircase and couldn’t help but walk up several flights ahead of my husband. Then I came to a strange hallway that seemed out of place and as I started walking down the hallway, I felt uncomfortable and I felt just a little bit cold (I thought probably because of all the windows). I felt I had gone to a part of the building that was off-limits to the public and decided to turn back. My husband was still on the first floor. As I headed toward the top of the stairway of the third-floor landing, I felt that there was a young girl in a long, white dress nearby. I think I sensed her on the way up too, but I thought I must have quite a vivid imagination and tossed it aside. Then I reached the top of the stairway and looked down the 3 flights and I heard a man whisper, 'Go ahead, why don’t you just jump?' I ignored it and heard it again. 'Why don’t you just jump?' This scared the hell out of me. The railing I was clutching now seemed so flimsy and low to my body that I could easily fall right over. I felt dizzy and very frightened. I held the railing deliberately and I kept my grip all the way down until I made my way back to my husband. I told him, 'I want to leave this place, now!' In the car, on the way back to my sister’s house, I explained what happened. This experience has stayed with me for years even though I have put it out of my mind. Recently I saw something on TV today that reminded me of it again. That’s when I decided to look up the history of the Plant Museum and found this web site with the two things I remembered most; the grand stairway and that cold corridor. Does anyone know if, in the history of the hotel, did a young girl, maybe 12-14 years old, fall to her death there? Or commit suicide?"

This hotel is simply magnificent for just the architecture alone, but one can image a time when officers sat on rocking chairs on the veranda or women gathered around tables for tea parties. In the distance, one might here the sounds of the racetrack or hear croquette balls being hit. The Gilded Age really enjoyed itself in Tampa and perhaps that is why spirits linger. Is the Tampa Bay Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!