HGB Ep. 575 - Haunted Wall Street

Moment in Oddity - Bog Butter

Michael Boyle is a farmer in CO Donegal, Ireland. While excavating a drainage area on his farm, something strange was sighted. The object did not look natural. They proceeded to remove the item out of the peat bog. Immediately Michael smelled what he stated was a cheesy like butter scent. As it turns out, he had just unearthed an artifact known as 'bog butter'. This is an antiquated method of preserving dairy or animal fat. Cool, oxygen-poor depths of Ireland's peat bogs proved to be an excellent way to preserve the butter. It is not unusual to find bog butter in both Scotland and Ireland. The practice dates back to the Iron Age but has even been used as recently as the 19th century. This particular chunk of bog butter may just be the largest ever found in Ireland weighing in at about 50 pounds. Paula Harvey, an archaeologist who inspected the site where the butter was found and even tasted some of it stating, "It does taste like butter, unsalted butter at that. I had a sliver and I'm still here to tell the tale". The bog butter is being analyzed by experts at the National Museum of Ireland. There is optimism that the butter will eventually be displayed locally at the Kilclooney Dolmen Center. We love butter but cannot imagine consuming something that has potentially spent hundreds of years in a peat bog. In our opinion, bog butter certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Charles Darwin Birth

In the month of February, on the 12th, in 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born. His grandfather and father were doctors. His father's domineering  insightful medical observations taught Charles much about human psychology. As a teen, his choice of studies were not popular in the English public schools. His father considered Charles a degenerate with his only interests being game shooting. Because of this, his father sent him off to study medicine at Edinburgh University. Darwin was influenced by freethinkers at a young age which sculpted his radical views of the world. This led him to becoming the English naturalist, geologist and biologist that the world knows recognizes him as today. He is most well known for his theories on evolutionary biology. For the time, his suggestions that animals and humans shared common ancestry were shocking to the religious Victorian community. However, his beliefs were quite interesting to the growing numbers of professional scientists. At the time of Charles Darwin's death, his theories on evolution had extended throughout the world of science, literature and even politics.

Haunted Wall Street

The name "Wall Street" immediately brings images of financial markets, the stock exchange, ticker tapes and a giant bronze bull, but Wall Street was originally a wall that formed the northern boundary in the 17th century of what would become New York City. Eventually, the area near this wall would become the heart of America's financial district. Wall Street has inspired books and movies and led to probably hundreds of suicides. It's not surprising that Wall Street would have its share of haunts because not only is the Stock Market a volatile thing, but the financial district has a gory past. Join us for the history and hauntings of Wall Street.

The Financial District is located in lower Manhattan and is often referred to as FiDi. It's northern border is City Hall Park, which had been the site of public hangings in the 1800s. And even before that, during the Revolutionary War, patriots were held in two jailhouses that were here and many were starved, died of sickness or were hanged. Their bodies were buried in the park and it is thought many of those bodies still remain there. At the foot of Wall Street, near the water, a slave market had sold men, women and children into bondage in 1736 making New York, at the time, the second largest slave-owning port city. There was even a slave rebellion here in 1741 and over 100 men were captured and imprisoned in the dungeon that had been located in the basement of British City Hall, that is today known as Federal Hall National Memorial. Many of the prisoners were executed. And just steps away from the New York Stock Exchange is the famous Trinity Church, whose graveyard was founded in the 1690s. Many, many people were buried here and it got to the point where the sexton buried people on top of each other or he dug up bones and put them in the charnel house, so that he could bury a fresh body. There are probably 120,000 people buried here and quite a few are probably unhappy about being moved or covered over.

But what the Financial District is really known for is money. The New Amsterdam settlement that was founded by the Dutch in 1624, would be anchored in the future Financial District. The main economy in the beginning was fur trading. The original name of Wall Street was Het Cingel, meaning "The Belt." The British would take over New Amsterdam in 1664 and rename it New York City. The Compromise of 1790 established Wall Street as the financial capital of the US. The Buttonwood Agreement was signed by 24 stockbrokers in 1792 and this founded the New York Stock Exchange. The first skyscrapers in New York City would be built in the Financial District and Bowling Green would become a residential section with the worst housing conditions in the city. Manhattan is set upon solid bedrock, so building huge structures here made sense. 

The first skyscraper would be the Tower Building, which stood eleven stories and was designed by Bradford Lee Gilbert. This was the first building to have a steel skeleton and was completed in 1889. And how did Gilbert come up with such a design? Well, he asked himself, why couldn't we turn a railroad bridge on its end and build further up into the sky? The Tower Building was demolished in 1914. Eventually Wall Street would become home to the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank, NASDAQ, and dozens of banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, trust companies and securities dealers. Wall Street has been a route to quick riches and devastating losses like the stock market crash of 1929. With a history like this, it isn't surprising that this section of Manhattan is crawling with ghosts.

Charging Bull and Bear Statues

Let's start with a couple of well known statues set up on Wall Street, the Charging Bull and the Bear with its threatening paw. People wait in long lines to snap a selfie with the Charging Bull bronze sculpture that sits in the heart of the financial district. We know because we did. The sculpture weighs over 7,000 pounds and was created in 1989 by sculptor Arturo DiModica. For tourists who visit at night, they might get more than they bargained for. There are claims that the bull's eyes glow green and this is an otherworldly greenish glow. There is sometimes even a low growling sound. It is said, according to legend, that the bull seems to awaken in this way when the market is bearish. And that brings us to the Bear statue a short distance from the bull. The Bear is bad luck in the Stock Market, meaning things are going down. Something described as a spectral chill eminates from the Bear statue during a downturn in the market. Even on hot summer days, people claim to feel this "financial frost." The full-bodied apparitions of two men, in business suits of an earlier period, have been seen near the statues and they seem to be in a duel with each other. In Lee Brickley's The Ghosts of Wall Street: Paranormal Activity in the Financial District He shares the experiences of seasoned trader Martin Weller who recalled looking down from his offices above the statues one night and "he noticed the figures wrestling by the statues. Startled, he watched as their struggle intensified, their translucent forms flickering in the moonlight. 'I've seen market volatility, but never like this," Weller recalls. 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was as if the market's struggle had taken a physical, or rather, spectral form.' A night watchman named Benjamin Strauss shared with Brickley, "The figures seemed to be absorbed by the Bull and the Bear. Their forms shimmered for a moment and then disappeared, swallowed up by the bronze beasts. It was as if the spirits of the market had become one with these symbols of financial power and uncertainty." Are the bear and bull harbingers of what is to come for the Stock Market?

Federal Hall

As we shared earlier, Federal Hall was the home of a prison during the Slave Rebellion. It is located at 26 Wall Street and was fashioned in the Greek Revival style, designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, and completed in 1842 to serve as the Custom House. Before that,  John Damen's farm had been here and he sold the land to Captain John Knight in 1685 and eventually it ended up in the hands of the Mayors of New York. The first structure built here would become City Hall and was designed by James Evetts. It served its purpose from 1699 to 1703. There was a library, firehouse and debtors' prison here as well. In 1765, the building was renovated with a third story being added. French architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant was commissioned to do another remodel to the building to make it more American after the Revolutionary War and he added Georgian styling. In 1789, the building was renamed Federal Hall to reflect that New York was the first capital of America. President George Washington took the oath of office here and the Bill of Rights was drafted in the building. This building would house New York government offices when the capital moved to Philadelphia and when the New York City Hall was completed in 1812, Federal Hall was demolished. It was replaced by the Custom House, which later became the Subtreasury, which held millions of dollars worth of gold and coins. 

When the Federal Reserve Bank was opened in 1920 the Subtreasury was moved there and the building served a variety of purposes including a passport office. For the most part, much of the building was vacant and this was because nothing could be decided how to use it and most everybody was against demolishing it because of its historical value. During the New York World's Fair it held exhibits about finance and then after a fight and raising of private funds, it was decided to open the building as the National Memorial it is today. The selling of war bonds and blood drives were hosted during World War II. After 9-11, 300 members of Congress held a session here for the first time since 1790 to show support for New York City and solidarity to the country. Extensive renovations were done to the building right after that too as cracks and other long term damage were exacerbated by the collapse of the Twin Towers. The place has seen a ton of history. 

Visitors and staff claim to hear disembodied voices and they have seen full-bodied apparitions, one of whom is said to be George Washington. This could be residual as it is often seen near the spot where he took the oath of office. A security guard was locking up one night when he saw a figure out of the corner of his eye and he turned to tell the person that they needed to leave when he was astonished to see a stern looking man wearing Colonial period garb. He then watched as the figure disappeared into the shadows. Visitors feel a chill near the spot of the oath taking and near Washington's statue. They claim to feel as though they are being watched. Some people even claim to see Martha Washington hanging out with her husband. And Alexander Hamilton might be here as well. He had been the first Secretary of the Treasury after all. A janitor thought he was alone in the building when he heard loud footsteps on the marble floor approaching him. They sounded as though they were behind him and when he turned around, there was no one there. Books in the library end up on the floor and objects have been known to move around. Investigators have captured EVPs saying "I solemnly swear." Colonial attired individuals are also seen outside of the building. 

J.P. Morgan Bank Building

The mysterious J.P. Morgan Building is located at 23 Wall Street and that is what everyone calls the building, 23 Wall Street. This is a four-story building that became home to the most influential financial institution in America during the late 19th century. It started as a partnership between Anthony J. Drexel and J.P. Morgan Sr that was named Drexel, Morgan & Co. Drexel died in 1895 and his name was dropped. The bank had been housed inside the Drexel Building, which Morgan felt was too small and after much wrangling, he finally got the Drexel family to sell it to him and he demolished it, replacing it with the building that stands today. Architects Trowbridge & Livingston were hired and the cornerstone was laid in 1913 by J.P. Morgan Jr. His dad had died before the building could be started. The new bank opened on November 11, 1914. The building was damaged in the Wall Street Bombing of 1920 that killed 38 people, including a Morgan employee. This would remain the House of Morgan until 1988. The building was later owned by Africa Israel, an international investment firm, and then the China International Fund and Sonangol Group. There was fighting, lawsuits, a Blink Fitness Chain leased basement space and then a 99-year lease was signed by Jack Terzi of a holdings company who defaulted and now the building stands empty. 

The spirit that haunts the location is none other than J.P. Morgan himself. Years ago, a maintenance worker was working late at night and he was cleaning a boardroom when a strong chill came over him. He felt like something was behind him and he spun around and saw a ghost sitting at the head of the table. It seemed to be looking at a ledger. He felt the ghost looked like Morgan because it had a bushy moustache. The spirit faded away. Sounds like something residual. A security guard watched a figure stride through the entrance hall one evening. This figure was wearing a suit from an earlier time, but he still thought it was a real person, so he called out because they weren't supposed to be in the building. This man turned and looked at him and the guard had no doubt that it was the long dead Morgan. The ghost then disappeared. This crazy account was shared by Lee Brickley in his book, "A group of financial analysts working late one night. They were huddled over spreadsheets in a conference room when they heard the unmistakable sound of a gavel striking wood, echoing through the silent building. Venturing into the main hall, they were stunned to see a spectral figure, standing at the podium, presiding over an invisible audience. As they watched in disbelief, the figure turned to them, revealing the familiar countenance of J.P. Morgan. The ghostly financier then vanished." Morgan may not be the only ghost here. Other employees claim that victims of the bombing in 1920 haunt the building and have been seen in period clothing and their disembodied footsteps are heard. One female custodian claimed that something brushed her cheek one evening.

Trinity Church

With 120,000 bodies in the cemetery, it's no surprise that the church is said to be haunted. The church is located at the Broadway and Wall Street at 89 Broadway. Anglican services had been held in the colony's fort chapel in the late 1600s and the members wanted to have their own building, so they petitioned New York's Royal Governor and he gave them a charter. The first Trinity Church was built in 1698 and faced the Hudson River. In 1705, the church was given 215 acres and this provided room for a cemetery. The Great Fire of 1776 destroyed the church. The second church was finished in 1790 and was wider and longer and faced Wall Street. President George Washington was at the consecration ceremony. He not only attended the church, but so did Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. This church had to be demolished when heavy snow caved in the roof in 1839. British architect Richard Upjohn designed the current church in the Neo-Gothic style and it was opened in 1846. The grand steeple rises 281 feet and this made it the tallest building in the United States until 1869 and it was the tallest building in new York City until 1890. The parish has existed for over 300 years.

The church's offices are located behind the church at 68-74 Trinity Place and there is a pedestrian bridge to Trinity Church. Apparently, employees had many experiences with ghosts in their offices and many of these experiences were shared by a man named Jeremy Sierra on the church's blog. A woman named Rita saw a ghost in period clothing with a big-brimmed hat on the fourth floor in a storage room and then she saw the same ghost at a later date, peering into her office. Two other employees saw this same spirit on the 10th floor another time, peeking around a corner. In the archives, a box of note cards threw itself off of a shelf as an archivist watched. Alexander and Eliza Hamilton are buried in the cemetery and Hamilton has been seen near his grave. He also hangs out at City Hall Park. An inventor named Robert Fulton has been seen wandering around the churchyard with a model of his steamboat named The Clermont. Comedian Adam Allyn is buried here and people swear they hear laughter coming from his headstone. And why not throw in Captain Kidd who haunts everywhere. He apparently provided a winch to raise the stones for the church steeple and he wanted to be buried there. He died in London, but somehow his spirit made his way here and walks the churchyard. 

There is a Lady in White that wanders in the churchyard. She wears a colonial-era style white dress and large bonnet. The bonnet hides her face, but people can feel the sorrow coming from her. Lee Brickley shares, "John, a Wall Street banker who lives nearby, recounted his encounter with the apparition. 'I was walking my dog in the churchyard one morning, just as the sun was beginning to rise. Suddenly, I saw this woman standing by one of the gravestones. She seemed so out of place, like she had stepped out of another time. I approached her to see if she needed help, but as I got closer, she simply vanished into thin air. I was left standing there, utterly baffled.'" And a man in a military uniform has been seen. Brickley shares this, "Samantha, an executive at a nearby investment firm, had a chilling encounter with the spectral soldier. 'I was leaving the office late one night when I saw this figure standing by the churchyard wall. I thought it was a reenactor or something, but as I got closer, I realized there was something off about him. He was transparent, like a mirage. I tried to speak to him, but he didn't respond. He just stood there, staring out into the distance. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. I was left there, standing in the cold, unable to shake off the eerie feeling that I had just witnessed something supernatural."

The Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange started in 1792 with the Buttonwood Agreement that was signed by 24 stockbrokers. It was called Buttonwood because it was signed under a Buttonwood tree. Stock trading was informal in the early years. Deals were made in coffeehouses and taverns. A formal organization was created in 1817 and an NYSE Board was formed. A constitution was also written to govern trading. A room at 40 Wall Street was rented so the brokers had a place to gather twice a day. They had a list of 30 stocks and bonds at the time. As the United States grew, more and more bonds were added to finance infrastructure. Stocks were issued by railroads, insurance companies and banks. By 1865, there were 300 stocks and bonds and the Exchange bought a permanent home on Broad Street. Roaming the trading floor would soon follow and continues to this day. The stock ticker was introduced in 1867 and this made stock trading even easier. The opening and closing bell started in the 1870s and the original bell was a Chinese gong. 

Telephones came to the Market in 1878 and by 1886, trading volume hit 1 million shares. The NYSE moved to a new building with a bigger trading floor in 1903 that was designed by George B. Post. This is located at 18 Broad Street and features a Beaux Arts style with large colonnades holding up a pediment featuring commerce and industry. The interior was grand with large windows, Georgian marble walls and gilded ceiling. The gong was replaced with a brass bell at that time too. This was the first air-conditioned building in North America. There also was this new fandangled pneumatic tube system. October 24, 1929 brought the market crash that led the nation into the Great depression. The Exchange and Market recovered post World War II and during the war, women worked on the trading floor for the first time. Technology throughout the decades has improved the Stock Exchange. An additional stock trading floor is located at 11 Wall Street and is called The Garage.

Traders and employees have reported unexplained sounds and shadowy figures. There are employees who have reported seeing a group of traders dressed in period clothing gathered around what probably was ticker tape, talking excitedly. A ghostly figure has been seen near the "Bell Podium," wearing a suit from the early 1900s, looking very sad. When approached, it disappeared. A maintenance worker was fixing an electronic ticker one night when he was startled by a hand touching him on the shoulder. He turned around wondering who else was in the empty building and saw that it was a man in a period suit standing there. The man pointed at the ticker machine and then evaporated. The machine began working instantly. And speaking of a ticker tape machine, there was one that would turn itself on at night and started spewing tape even though it was unplugged and hadn't been used for a couple years. This happened several times and even crazier, the numbers on the tape were clearly from a bygone era. And the spirit of a janitor has been seen in the building and it is believed the ghost belongs to a janitor who hanged himself in the building during the Great Depression.

The Hamilton Custom House 

The Hamilton Custom House is today the National Museum of the American Indian located at 1 Bowling Green. This is a gorgeous seven-story building in the Beaux-Arts style that was decorated by 12 artists with Corinthian colonnades, sculptures and nautical motifs. The four sculptures that grace the entrance were designed by Daniel Chester French and are titled Four Continents, representing Asia, America, Europe and Africa. At the top of the main entrance is a keystone that depicts the head of Columbia. The columns are topped with carved heads of Hermes and there are twelve statues that personify seafaring nations. There is a ton of symbology around this building! The interior has murals by Reginald Marsh, Multicolored mosaics, bronze gates leading to a passageway to the Great Hall and there is a large rotunda. There is marble everywhere.

The main spirit seen here dates back to the early 20th century and is thought to be a customs officer based on the uniform he wears. The full-bodied apparition is seen walking in the corridors as if on patrol. A female employee told Brickley, "I was alone in one of the galleries one evening when I saw a man in an old-fashioned uniform walking towards me, I was startled but assumed he was part of a historical reenactment. I began to ask him about his uniform, but before I could finish my question, he vanished. It was as if he walked right into a wall." A legend claims that a customs officer was accused of embezzling and he subsequently killed himself. A visitor claims to have heard a voice whisper in her ear, "I didn't do it." Is this his ghost? There are also people who claim to not only see individuals in the building late at night when they look from outside, but guards claim to hear the bustling noises of business even though the place is empty. The people looking in from outside know its strange because the employees inside are all wearing period clothing.

The Woolworth Building

The Woolworth Building is an iconic building located at 233 Broadway. The architect was Cass Gilbert and the architectural style is Neo-Gothic and because it looks like a cathedral, it was nicknamed "The Cathedral of Commerce." Some of the decor was inspired by the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. The first four stories are surfaced in limestone and the rest of the building has limestone-colored and glazed terracotta panels in shades of blue, green, sienna and rose. The structure rises 792 feet into the air and was the tallest building in the world until the Chrylser Building was completed in 1930. The interior features a glorious lobby with ceiling mosaics, veined marble from the Greek island of Skyros, gold-leaf decorations and grotesques. The basement features a pool. The Otis Elevator Company supplied the elevators, capable of traveling 700 feet per minute. The Woolworth Building is named for F. W. Woolworth who immigrated to the US in 1886.Everyone is familiar with what made him a success: The Five and Dime! Woolworth made a deal with banks to get financing. He contributed $1 million and the bank put in $500,000 and signed a 25-year lease for several floors of the building. Construction was completed in 1913 and a grand opening dinner was held. Woolworth died in 1920 and his heirs sold the building in 1924. The 1970s brought extensive renovations and today the building has both commercial leases and residential condominiums. The penthouse is going for $79 million. 

Ghost stories have haunted the Woolworth Building since its opening. The elevators moved between floors without riders. The lights flickered or turned themselves on and off. A female ghost in a period dress is seen in the lobby. She seems to be full of melancholy and is probably residual since it doesn't interact with people. A ghostly maintenance worker has been seen for decades and seems to be going about his duties and usually has a toolbox with him. And a former boardroom seems to host ghostly gatherings. An employee heard the faint sounds of laughing and music coming from down the hall and when she got near the boardroom, she was sure there was a group of people in there, but when she opened it , the room was empty. And there's this weird account from Brickley, "Another intriguing account comes from Jonathan, a security guard who had a close encounter with the building's spectral tenants. Late one night, while making his rounds, he saw a light flicker on in one of the upper-level offices. Upon investigating, he found an elderly man, dressed in an early 20th-century business suit, engrossed in examining a set of blueprints spread out on the office desk. Startled, Jonathan challenged the man, only to see him disappear right before his eyes. The blueprints, however, remained on the desk, tangible proof of the spectral visitation. The blueprints were, in fact, original plans of the Woolworth Building, kept secure in the building's archives."

The Federal Reserve 

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is located at 33 Liberty Street and rises fourteen stories, but also has five stories going underneath the ground. Architects York and Sawyer designed the building to resemble Italian Renaissance palaces and Samuel Yellin constructed the decorative ironwork. The facade is made from limestone and sandstone. The interior has vaulted ceilings covered in Guastavino tile. The basement houses the massive three-story gold vault that sits right on top of Manhattan's bedrock. There is 6,331 metric tons of monetary-gold reserve in that vault. There are six other vaults in the basement full of money and securities. Construction began in 1919 and was completed in 1924. The building was expanded in 1935. The Federal Reserve Bank in New York is one of twelve in the country created when the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. 

The labyrinth of corridors within this large bank plays home to a phantom banker. Many employees have seen this banker wearing a early 20th century suit. He likes the old vaults according to a security guard named Marcus. Marcus told Lee Brickley, ""I was doing my rounds late one night when I saw him. He was standing near the old vaults, looking as real as you or me. But when I approached him, he simply vanished." There is also a female ghost that weeps. Employees hear soft sobbing and sometimes see this ghost wearing an early 20th century dress. Nobody knows who this woman could be or why she is crying inside the Federal Reserve.

Battery Park

We visited this park on our visit in 2020, so that we could get a picture of the Statue of liberty, which can be seen from the park. This is the gateway to Ellis Island and the Statue. The Lenape and Munsee tribes used the Battery area for hunting and fishing. Eventually Fort George would be located at The Battery and it remained until it was destroyed in 1790. It was decided to change the grounds into a public promenade. But the threat from Britain wasn't gone so in 1807 Castle Clinton was built at the Battery as a circular sandstone fort. This still stands today and is now a National Monument. The fort never saw any battle and was converted into a 6,000 seat entertainment venue and the name was changed to Castle Garden. In 1855, it became an immigrant processing depot. By 1896, this became the first New York Aquarium and remained that until 1941. The fort was renovated and reopened in 1975 and since 1985 it has served as a visitor center and launching point for ferries to the Statue of Liberty.

Spectral soldiers are seen here and unexplained lights appear. Glowing orbs have been photographed. The soldiers usually appear in the park at night and are dressed in Revolutionary War uniforms. The group of soldiers seems to be residual as they follow the same route. Brickley shares the experience of a Wall Street trader named Robert, ""I was strolling through the park, lost in thought. Suddenly, the air grew cold, and I heard a faint sound of drumming, growing steadily louder. It was as though an invisible army was marching towards me. Then, out of the mist, a group of soldiers appeared. They were translucent, almost ethereal, and were marching in formation. I could see the pain and determination in their eyes as they passed through me, leaving me chilled to the bone. They disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared, leaving nothing but the echo of their spectral march in their wake." A female in period clothing from the Victorian era has been dubbed the Phantom Picnicker and she has been seen by security guards and visitors sitting on a park bench. She has the scent of lavender perfume around her. And the park has a ghost dog has been seen playing and barking and then disappearing.

Fraunces Tavern

Fraunces Tavern is said to be one of the most haunted bars in NYC. The original structure was built by the DeLancy family in 1719 at 54 Pearl Street and was either their private residence or a rental property. A man named Samuel Fraunces bought the building in 1762 and opened its as a tavern named Queen's Head Tavern. During the Revolutionary War, Fraunces left the tavern to his Loyalist son-in-law to run while the British had control of New York. Later, this place became popular with patriots like the Founding Fathers and George Washington set it up as a pseudo headquarters. As a matter of fact, George Washington gathered a group of his officers here on December 4, 1783 to thank them for their service in the recent defeat of the British. He then bid them farewell as he headed home. The museum above the still working bar has a first-hand account of this farewell and has many tributes to Washington and the Founders. The Department of Foreign Affairs worked out of the building from 1785 to 1788 and then it became a tavern again. The tavern became a boarding house in 1798 and ballerina Anna Gardie and her husband lived there and both were stabbed to death in what was ruled a murder-suicide. Serious fires almost destroyed the building three times. In 1900, the building was almost demolished, but the Daughters of the American Revolution saved it. They restored it to its 18th century appearance. It reopened in 1907 as a museum and restaurant. In 1975, four people were killed here in a bombing. In 2019, the building celebrated 300 years of existence. 

The place just has to be crawling with spirits then, right? A bartender tells the story of a woman who worked at the bar and was closing up when evening and she passed out. When she came to, she claimed that a man appeared out of nowhere and walked up to her and then her lights went out. When the CCTV camera was checked, she had been alone in the bar. A night porter heard what sounded like a party going on, with clinking glasses and chattering. Staff members have reported hearing voices and unexplained temperature changes. The spirit of an elderly woman in colonial garb is sometimes seen. And Brickley reports in his book, "Perhaps the most infamous spectral resident of Fraunces Tavern is a gentleman known only as the "Dandy." Dressed in late 18th-century fashion, complete with a powdered wig and a tricorn hat, the Dandy is known for his flirtatious interactions with female staff and patrons. He is often seen winking or tipping his hat before vanishing into thin air. The Dandy's flirtations aren't limited to visual encounters. Several women have reported feeling a light touch on their shoulders or a whisper in their ear, only to turn around and find no one there. Over the years, the Dandy has become something of a spectral celebrity, his antics adding an element of playful mystery to the tavern's ghostly lore. One unforgettable encounter with the Dandy was experienced by Sarah, a server at Fraunces Tavern. One busy Friday evening, as she was carrying a tray of drinks to a table, she felt a distinct tap on her shoulder. Assuming it was a customer trying to get her attention, she turned around, but found no one behind her. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure in colonial attire standing by the bar. He winked at her and lifted his hat in a courteous greeting before dissolving into the bustling crowd. Sarah was left standing in awe, her tray of drinks momentarily forgotten."

Clearly, Wall Street isn't just a place that is home to lots of money. Are there spirits hanging around in the Financial District? Is Wall Street haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 512 - Old Stagecoach Inn

Moment in Oddity - Cannibalistic Funerals

Over the years we have covered different funerary practices, some heartwarming and others that are a bit bizarre. One such practice that falls into the latter category was performed by a group of prehistoric people called the Magdalenians. This ancient society practiced cannibalism as part of their funerary rituals. The Magdalenian remains being studied lived between 11,000 to 17,000 years ago in Northern and Western Europe. There were 25 sites where funerary behaviors were identified, 13 of which had evidence of cannibalism. Researchers say that based on the evidence found, it appears that the behavior was indeed funerary in nature, rather than supplemental to their diet. As could have been the case due to a harsh winter or something similar. The dead were clearly consumed and even the bones of the deceased were fashioned into usable items. Larger bones were found to have been broken open to access the marrow. Although evidence shows that the culture consumed large animals like deer and horses, the remains of the humans show careful preparation and even engraving on some of the bones found. From society to society there can be a wide variety of funeral practices observed, however consuming a deceased family member, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - First Patented Bra

In the month of November, on the 3rd in 1914, the United States issued a patent for the first over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder. Our female listeners probably look forward to getting home at the end of a long day and removing this article of clothing. However, during the early 19th century the corset was the usual undergarment women still needed to wear. 19-year-old socialite Mary Phelps Jacob first created a bra to avoid wearing her corset. During the time, corsets were incredibly uncomfortable not only due to the tightness hindering breathing but the garment also limited the wearers freedom of movement. Once the bra was created, most women just wore them around the house after removing their corsets. However, once World War I began the call for metal needed in the war efforts, the metal previously used in the restricting corsets was pulled for the military needs. At that time the bra really took off. Well, we still like to take them off after a long day, but just think about the corset alternative. Mary Jacob, who changed her name to Caresse Crosby, never did gain a large profit from her creation. She sold the patent to The Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut for the current equivalent of $21,000.

Old Stagecoach Inn

Stagecoach stops have a knack for being haunted. This isn't surprising due to the amount of activity that these locations experienced throughout history. The stagecoach was the best form of transportation across land before the railroad stretched across America. The Old Stagecoach Inn in Vermont served as a stagecoach stop as well as a tavern. Eventually, the building became a private residence and a former owner named Margaret Spencer might still be here in the afterlife. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Old Stagecoach Inn! 

Do you know why a stagecoach had that name? Because they traveled in "stages" of 10 to 15 miles. The Old Stagecoach Inn is located in the center of Waterbury Village in Vermont. In 1763, the land that would become Waterbury was granted by a charter from King George III through Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. This was the Winsooki River Valley, which had been home to the Mohican and Pennacook people, tribes that were Algonquian-speaking. James Marsh was the first white settler in the area, but he was soon joined by other settlers who named the town after their original hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut. This was a strategic location for travelers going from Montpelier to Burlington or from the Mad River Valley to Stowe. Waterbury would be a perfect place for a stagecoach stop and Waterbury's first lawyer, Dan Carpenter, set out to do just that. Or it could have been a man named Mr. Allen. Or was it Mr. Parmalee? Tracking down who built this location is difficult. 

Whoever the original owner was, it is clear from paperwork that construction was done by Horace and Henry Atkins and it was completed in 1826. This ran as a a tavern and inn that was quite plain and done in the Federal style. The Main Street was turned into a toll road because of all the travel and was named the Winooski Toll Road. There was an Anti-Masonic Movement that started in 1826 and it formed America's first third political party, the Anti-Masonic Party. The catalyst for the movement was the disappearance of William Morgan who had been a bricklayer. Morgan had belonged to the Masons and apparently had written a book revealing many of the organization's secrets. Members were sworn to secrecy so this was big no-no. No trace could be found of Morgan and rumors started circulating that the Masons had murdered him. The Anti-Masonic Party put up their first presidential candidate, William Wirt, in 1831 and he managed to only win the state of Vermont. The party declined after that, but this win is an indication of how unwelcome Masons were in Vermont. So for them to have a meeting, they had to seek out back rooms in place like taverns. So the Old Stagecoach Stop became their meeting location. This was the King David Lodge.

By 1848, stagecoaches were giving way to the railroad, which arrived through central Vermont that year. There were still people taking the stagecoach on north and south routes though. The railroad was a boom for Waterbury, which attracted people who needed a place to stop on their way to new hotels being built in the mountains at Stowe, Vermont. There was a stable barn in back that had been painted lead black for a time, possibly in mourning for President Lincoln. In 1898, the electric trolley came to town and that was the last nail in the coffin for the stagecoach. It was out of business after that. The trolley would run until 1932, when people started using automobiles mostly.

A family named the Carpenters had owned the Old Stagecoach Inn for a time and they sold it to the Henry family who were very prominent in Waterbury and it came to be known as the Henry Farm. By 1890, the inn was mainly known as "Miss Annette Henry’s Home" because she kept the inn as a residence. Annette had been born in Waterbury as Margaret Annette Henry in 1850. Most people called her Nettie. Her family was very wealthy and she was described as high spirited and she was quite the character. She always wore her hair up in a bun, revealing her high cheekbones. She was very different than most women in town. Nettie loved to smoke cigarettes, which at the time was considered a sin in the town. She would often have her chauffeur take her for long rides so she could smoke in private. He claimed that she also seemed to like to chew tobacco and he often would notice tobacco stains at the corners of her mouth. Later in life, she lost her hearing and would carry an ear horn so she could hear people. She also wore a dark celluloid eyeshade in her elder years. So you can imagine she was quite the sight.

In 1903, Nettie married a rubber baron named Albert H. Spencer. The wealthy couple not only had the Waterbury inn, but also a house in Newport, a suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City and apartments in Paris and London. They decided to refresh the inn and update the look. The narrow profile of the Federal style was kept, but Queen Anne Victorian elements were added like a gable above the roof line, clapboard sheathing and a decorative chimney. The couple also added a third floor for an upper floor apartment, stained glass around the windows, a framed tapestry in the front hall and wood paneling throughout. The couple meant to keep the house as a private residence, but they were rarely there and eventually it reverted back to a hotel. In 1907, Albert Spencer died in London and rumors started swirling about Nettie Spencer's life. People claim that she and Albert had been having an affair before they married and a child was born out of wedlock. When Nettie returned to Waterbury, the local women snubbed her a bit perhaps being jealous over her having become a part of international high society. Some stories claimed she was active in bootlegging when Prohibition started.

One might think that Nettie caused some of her own troubles as well by flaunting her automobiles around town. One was a Lincoln Phaeton, which is an extraordinarily cool looking car. If you aren't familiar, it looks a lot like Cruella Deville's vehicle. And she made sure that it got noticed because she regularly told her driver to "Step on it!" If he responded that it wasn't safe for them to drive so fast, she would retort, "I’m paying you to drive the way I want." And she always made sure that he stopped before they got too close to the railroad overpass when a train was coming through because she didn't want to "get any of that shit on the car" referring to the smoke and cinders. Nettie was domineering and tight with her money - let's just call her thrifty - but she also could be generous as long as people followed her directions to put the money in the bank "immediately." A woman who had been a little girl in the 1930s remembered calling on Mrs. Spencer to see if she would buy bags of candy to fund a club she belonged to and Mrs. Spencer had invited her in to sit in a gold chair. Apparently, Nettie often invited the young girls in town to sit in her gold chair that many were lead to believe was solid gold. They all commented that it was like sitting on a throne. 

In November 1927, the Great Flood of Vermont occurred and hit Waterbury fairly hard. Three days of rain caused the Winooski River to flood and it was so powerful that it carried away barns, bridges, livestock, houses and even railroad tracks. Waterbury had a flood plain which helped, but houses in lower lying areas were carried off and debris piling up on one end of Main Street cause much of the property there to flood. At the Old Stagecoach Inn, waters rose to the second level, but the house survived and was repaired. It took months for the rest of the town to recover and for bridges to be rebuilt.

By the end of World War II, Nettie was approaching 100 years of age and her mind was starting to go. She needed constant supervision. A night nurse who took care of Mrs. Spencer said, "She had two favorite pastimes—singing hymns and smoking. We would share a hymnal, rock and sing with gusto for ten or fifteen minutes. She would then have a cigarette or two, and we would start all over again. She would smoke her cigarette down to the very tip and then flick it as far as she could. It delighted her to see me scamper after it. It was an old house, and I was afraid of fire. I would rush and pick up the butts and place them in a saucer. She, however, thought I was collecting them to take home to my husband and accused me of it nightly." Eventually, the need for constant care lead to Nettie moving to a nursing facility in Massachusetts. She died there in 1947 and was brought back to Waterbury where she was interred in the Spencer Mausoleum at Hope Cemetery.

Nettie's former home and undergone many changes through the years, not only to the architectural styling, but also the grounds. Much of the land that the former farm had sat upon had been sold. C.B. Norton bought the property in 1948 and used it for two businesses. He ran his office for agricultural implements  out of the house and then he and his wife rented out rooms, some of which they had converted into apartments with their own kitchens and bathrooms. Mr. Norton died in 1972 and the place basically became a run-down boarding house with many of the clientele being mentally ill people who were getting out-treatment from the nearby asylum. This was the Vermont State Asylum for the Insane and was also known as the Waterbury Asylum. It was built in 1890 by several architects in three styles: Late Victorian, Colonial Revival and Classical Revival. This facility was built to alleviate overcrowding at the Vermont Asylum for the Insane in Brattleboro, Vermont. Waterbury Asylum was originally intended to house the criminally insane, but through the years started allowing people with addictions and other mental illness to be admitted. One of the longest running superintendents was Dr. Eugene A. Stanley who was a big proponent of eugenics and he supported forced sterilization. The term "Waterbury" was used as a derogatory term for years to indicate that someone was acting insane. The hospital closed in 2011.

Mrs. Norton tried to do her best after her husband passed to keep the boarding house going and she eventually was forced to sell what little land was left on the property. Mrs. Norton passed away in the early 1980s and the once grand home was a wreck leaving the town wondering what to do with the property. They knew they didn't want to demolish it because of its historical value, but finding someone who not only had the money to refurbish, but also wanted to refurbish wasn't easy. That is when Bostonians Kimberlee and James Marcotte found out about the property. Kim had grown up in Waterbury ans was very familiar with the location. They decided to renovate the building into a country inn and take it back to its former glory. Jim was well-suited for the job as he was a contractor that specialized in restoring old houses. Kim was a decorator, which was a plus. The couple partnered with the Historical Society and got a small business loan and set about to restore the place in 1985. They gutted a first floor room and transformed it into a library and bar. The stable barn and back house were transformed into five efficiency suites for long-term stays. A commercial kitchen was added and original handhewn beams were exposed. Period antiques were added along with crafted knicknacks. It took two years to complete and opened for business in 1987.

There was a lot of hope for success here, but the recession in the 80s and a need for the Marcottes to split their time between the inn and their business interests in Boston caused the couple to shutter the business in 1992. The inn stood empty for over a year. Another ray of hope came in the form of a father and son, John Barwick and John Barwick, Jr. They both were businessmen in New York City looking for a more relaxed way of life. When they approached the Small Business Administration to say they wanted to take over the inn, they were met with skepticism. They had no experience as innkeepers. The SBA finally agreed and the sale was closed on September 2, 1993 and the Old Stagecoach Inn opened for business again on September 25, 1993. The father and son had filled the place with antiques they had collected over 50 years and they opened at prime time, foliage season. That first month was a booming success. The inn runs primarily as a bed and breakfast and all the reviews we read rave about the gourmet breakfast, service and the rooms. The Barwicks were able to buy back the original expanse of land in the rear of the property adding to the beauty of the property. This is the perfect place for hosting private luncheons, parties and weddings.

And this is a location that isn't shy about their haunting. They proudly talk about it on their website and they provide journals for guests to write down their experiences. John Barwick wasn't much of a believer when he bought the place, but he is less skeptical now. There are claims that a rocking chair will rock on its own, sometimes in what appears to be an agitated manner. Furniture moves on its own. Housekeepers claim to get help from someone unseen who strips the beds and neatly folds the sheets. Despite the help, some of the cleaning staff is reluctant to work alone upstairs. A paranormal investigator and psychic walked through the inn and said that there seemed to be a strong energy field in the building. Using dowsing rods, he found the the strongest sensations came from Rooms 2 and 8. Interestingly, most of the ghosts stories center on Room 2, which had been Nettie's room.

The Old Stagecoach Inn website shares the following story, "It was a busy summer weekend and all rooms had been booked, although the reservation for room three had been canceled unexpectedly the previous evening. Mr. Barwick had taken the cancellation himself, and he alone knew about it. So here it was, Sunday morning breakfast was being served, and the dining room was still mostly full. Mr. Barwick was helping the waitress by keeping the coffee urn and orange juice pitcher full, and by removing dishes. As he was standing at the dining room entrance, two people came down for breakfast. They were unfamiliar to him. He had registered all the other guests and chatted with many of them, so he had a pretty good idea who was staying there. He thought perhaps this couple had come in off the street looking for breakfast, which occasionally happens. But it was odd that they had come down the stairs instead of through the side door.

To make sure, he asked if they were guests of the inn.
“Yes,” they replied. “We’re all in room three.”
“How many of you are there?” Mr. Barwick asked.
“Three,” they answered.
“Three,” said Mr. Barwick. “That room accommodates only two. Where did you all
sleep?”
“Oh, we managed,” they replied. “We couldn’t find a place to stay. This was the only one.”
Still puzzled, Mr. Barwick asked, “Well, what time did you come in?”
“Oh,” they said, “it was around two-thirty this morning.”
“Well, who let you in?” asked Mr. Barwick. “Why, it was a lady, an older lady. Very nice.”

More puzzled than ever, thinking it might have been one of the other guests who had been unaccountably awake at that hour, he now asked, “What did she look like?”
“Gray hair, kind of in a bun, and wearing a long dress,” they replied.

That didn't match any of the other guests. But even if she had been a registered guest, it would have been highly unusual for someone to have unlocked the door and allowed three people to come in for the night. And how could she have known that the room was available? After the newcomers had been seated and their orders taken, Mr. Barwick queried the other guests as they left the dining room, to see if anyone had any knowledge of the incident. No, no one did. He thought for a long time about this. There was probably a logical explanation, but he couldn't think of it then, and still can’t think of one now."

UM1997 wrote on TripAdvisor, "So we head back to the Inn and get ready for bed. It had been a long day of walking around and sightseeing so we were all beat so everyone fell sound asleep. Around midnight, I woke up because I just had a strange feeling that something was in the room with us. I sat up and looked around the room and didn't see anything, but you know when you just get that creepy feeling and all the hair stands up on the back of your neck? Yeah, that's what I felt. There were also some really old pictures on the bureau that didn't help my feeling of uneasiness. I figured that I just had a bad dream that woke me up and since my parents were still sound asleep, I tried to push it out of my head and go back to sleep. I think I stayed awake for a few hours after that still looking around for something to pop out at me." 

The inn keeps a journal of guests' personal experiences. This picture was snapped at the inn:

We imagine a character like Nettie Henry Spencer would be hard to tamp down even after death. She seems like a prime candidate to be a mischievous ghost. And this inn was a part of her life for many years. One would think she would want to be around now that the place has such new life within it. Is the Old Stagecoach Inn haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 398 - Fort McClellan

Moment in Oddity - Cave of the Crystals

The Cave of the Crystals is also known as Giant Crystal Cave and is located Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. This is connected to the Naica Mine there and is a chamber of limestone with giant selenite crystals jutting out in all directions. And when we say giant, we mean giant. The largest one has been measured to a length of over 37 feet. These crystals were formed because there is an underground magma chamber below the cave that heated water full of sulfide ions, then mixed with cooled oxygenated water, gypsum crystals formed and then the temperature in the cave dropped and over 500,000 years, these crystals grew. The cave is a fairly recent discovery. Two brothers, Pedro and Juan Sanchez, discovered it in April of 2000 when they were drilling in the mine. The cave has been hard to explore because it is intensely hot in the chamber. Scientists designed their own exploration suits with reservoirs of cold water and ice that gave them about 30 minutes at a time of exploration. They explored the cave in detail in 2006. The cave was re-flooded in 2015 and can no longer be explored, but the crystals might grow more because the water is rich in the minerals needed to do that. A cave full of giant crystals, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Son of Sam Arrested

In the month of August, on the 10th, in 1977, David Berkowitz, also known as the Son of Sam, was arrested. Berkowitz had terrorized the people of New York City for over a year, starting on Christmas Eve in 1975 when he nearly stabbed to death a fifteen-year-old girl named Michelle Forman. He continued to fall deeper into paranoid schizophrenia and claimed that his neighbor's German Shepherd was talking to him, as were other neighborhood dogs. Berkowitz was convinced the dogs were possessed by demons as were his neighbors. The dogs ordered him to kill attractive young women. He moved to a new apartment with a neighbor named Sam Carr who had a black Labrador that also told Berkowitz to kill. When Berkowitz started referring to himself as the Son of Sam, he was referring to Sam Carr. His killing rampage left 6 people dead and 7 others wounded. He plead guilty to eight shootings and was sentenced to six life sentences, which he continues to serve at Shawangunk Correctional Facility. Berkowitz later claimed that he was part of a violent Satanic cult and that he had been helped with some of the murders, which were rituals. No evidence of this was ever proven and Berkowitz now claims to be a Christian.

Fort McClellan (Suggested by and Research Assistance from Jules Schlosser)

Fort McClellan is located in Anniston, Alabama at the foothills of the magical Appalachian Mountains. We've always found these mountains to harbor a supernatural energy and that seems to be the case here at the Fort, which closed in 1999. The Fort had a strong presence during World War II, training half a million troops and was home to the Women's Army Corps. Several people have died on the former base, including several foreign prisoners of war who are buried on the property, and ghost stories abound. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of Fort McClellan!

The town of Anniston was originally founded as a company town for the Woodstock Iron Company in 1872. This area had many advantages for manufacturing with endless supplies of coal and timber and railroad lines branching out into all directions. Furnace No. 1 was started in 1873 rising forty-three feet high. Furnace No. 2 was completed in 1879 with Furnace No. 3 and 4 being added quickly thereafter. The Brown Hematite Woodstock ores produced were considered the best and strongest iron for all purposes, made in the South. By 1883, Woodstock was renamed Anniston and opened to the public and grew to a population of 10,000. The Spanish–American War ended in 1898, but there were concerns that hostilities would erupt once again and the government felt they needed a military reserve force in Alabama. Because of its great location, Anniston was chosen to establish Camp Shipp.

Camp Shipp was named in honor of Lt. William E. Shipp who had bravely led his troops in a charge in the Battle of San Juan Hill and was killed during the skirmish. An artillery range was placed on the nearby Blue Mountain and 10,000 troops of the 3rd Alabama Volunteer Infantry were stationed here by October 1898. An influenza epidemic turned parts of Camp Shipp into a makeshift hospital for a time. There was no action for the camp and by March of 1899 the post was phased out. And that was it for a decade. The Choccolocco Mountain range of the Appalachians was such a great area for training though that in 1912 Alabama's Third District congressman Henry D. Clayton Jr. petitioned the Department of War to set up a new military training facility in Anniston. As a trial run, 20,000 National Guardsmen were sent for artillery training. The government was so pleased with the results that they purchased 18,952 acres in March of 1917 and it was perfect timing because America would declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917. 

Camp McClellan was officially established on July 18, 1917 and named in honor of Major General George B. McClellan, General-in-Chief of the Union Army from 1861 to 1862. The duty of the base was to quickly get men ready to fight in World War I. For this reason, all the early buildings were constructed from wood and rows of wooden floored tents were used to house the troops. This hasty building didn't mean that few buildings were erected. Quite the opposite. There were 1,500 buildings with 118 of them alone reserved for the base hospital. A terminal piece of the railroad was extended right into the camp. Men arrived from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and Washington, D.C. These men would become the 29th Infantry Division, commanded by Major General Charles G. Morton, and they would fight in France. On a side note about the 29th Infantry Division, they would be part of the first Allied assault on Normandy on D-Day during World War II and would be one of the 36 divisions recognized as liberating units because they liberated Nazi Concentration Camps. And Fort McClellan is where they were created.

There were other troops here as well including the 157th Depot Brigade, the 11th and 12th Training Battalions, the 6th Division, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Development Regiments and the 1st Separate Negro Company of Maryland. This latter group would later be absorbed into the 372nd Infantry Regiment and fight in the Champagne region of France during World War I. This was a black regiment with white officers. The unit was extremely well decorated. Urbane F. Bass was their black medical officer who was killed in action on October 6, 1918, and received the Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, most mobilization camps like Camp McClellan were closed, but it managed to make it onto the "caretaker status" list. This led to Congress approving funds to update the buildings at the camp in 1926 and these structures included barracks, a headquarters, officer quarters and a central hospital. On July 1, 1929, the post was officially designated as Fort McClellan and it would be permanent. 

In 1933, more funds were allocated and the Fort McClellan Army Airfield was built along with a radio facility featuring the call letters WUR and this mostly was used for Morse-code communications. Additional buildings were added and these featured Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. Troops that trained here were the Alabama Army National Guard, the Army's Reserve Officer Training Corps, the Army 22nd Infantry Regiment and District "D" of the Civilian Conservation Corps. This group was known as the CCC and it was a voluntary public work relief program for the unemployed during the Great Depression. It was advertised as "a young man's opportunity for work, play, study and health." This was a key part of Roosevelt's New Deal. Towards the end of 1940, the 27th Infantry Division of the New York National Guard was activated and sent to Fort McClellan. A year later, these men would be deployed to the Pacific Theater of Operations because America had entered World War II.

The new war prompted more construction at the base and any remaining buildings from the previous war were upgraded. The base also acquired more land, buying part of the Talladega National Forest and growing to over 42,000 acres. Fort McClellan was now able to house up to 50,000 troops. Hundreds of hutments were set up for those troops and as creature comforts, five theaters and an amphitheater were built. A firing range for mortars, artillery and tanks was set up and called Morrisville Maneuvering Area. That name was later changed to Pelham Range to honor a local hero named John Pelham, from the American Civil War. During World War II, 500,000 men were trained here and the basic training included handling live artillery fire, fighting from foxholes and hiding from tanks. Fort McClellan became unique among bases as it welcomed two detachments of the Women's Army Corps, also known as WAC. And they also trained special black troops that were sent to fight in Italy.

Fort McClellan had another designation during World War II and that was prisoner of war camp. This part of the base was built in 1943 and could house 3,000 prisoners. Unlike previous wars that featured harsh conditions for prisoners-of-war, the Prison Internment Camp here was really quite nice. The 1929 Geneva Conventions laid out rules for prisoners-of-war. There were plenty of provisions and there was lots of recreation. One German prisoner found the prison so comfortable that he wrote home and described Fort McClellan as a "golden cage." And as hard as it may be to believe, the nearby residents were having to ration food, so they began to resent how good the prisoners had it at the base. There were prisoners who made a run for it and did attempt to escape and they were killed. There is a cemetery here for the dead prisoners that includes 3 Italians and 26 Germans. Fort McClellan had 2,546 prisoners in total.

When the war was over, Fort McClellan trained occupation forces and then became a Recruit Training Center. By 1947, the base was moved to inactive status with just a small group left behind to maintain everything. A new war, the Korean War, would breathe new life into Fort McClellan and it was once again used for National Guard training. More funds brought more restoration and Brigadier General Theodore R. Wessels became the Commander and was nicknamed the "Father of the New Fort McClellan." A Chemical Corps would be formed and trained here. The training was made up of basic training for 8 weeks and then 8 weeks of chemical warfare training. Operation Top Hat was started in 1953 and the highly secretive operation tested nerve agents, biological warfare and sulfur mustard gas. The Chemical Corps name would change in the 1960s and be expanded with the U.S. Army Combat Development Command Chemical Biological-Radiological Agency moving to Fort McClellan. One can imagine that having all this chemical stuff on the base would not be a good thing and that will prove to be true when the base is closed. As a matter of fact, H.R. 3666 was introduced in Congress in 2017 and was called The Fort McClellan Health Registry Act. This was to register people exposed to chemical agents during their military service at Fort McClellan.

A Military Police Corps was trained at the base in the 1970s. Around the same time, the WAC that had Fort McClellan as its beginning and home, would officially be disestablished and its flag retired. The last director of the Women's Army Corps, General Mary E, Clarke, became the first female Commanding General to command any major U.S. Army installation and that was at Fort McClellan. She was in charge from 1978 to 1980. So this was a very important place in women's history. During the Vietnam War, the base would again train men for war. This training would be deactivated in 1970. A small satellite academy for the Border Patrol would call the base home in the 1980s for a very brief time. The end for the base would come in 1995 when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted to permanently close Fort McClellan. The closing ceremony took place on May 20, 1999. Major General Ralph G. Wooten summed up Fort McClellan in his speech during that ceremony saying, "For more than 81 years, Fort McClellan set the standard of excellence in training America's sons and daughters to defend freedom in two world wars and a myriad of conflicts and operations. In the last generation, we were singularly responsible for providing our Army with the world's finest military police and chemical soldiers. Our pride is justified by our spectacular success!"
  
The Alabama National Guard still trains at Fort McClellan and the Center for Domestic Preparedness headed by the Department of Homeland Security is here. Something that started up in the 2000s was a huge clean-up project so that the base could be used for other purposes. This place is sometimes referred to as "the most toxic place on the planet." It would take 11 years for that clean-up to be completed. Fort McClellan has over 900 residents, has become a workplace in industrial, retail, education and technological fields and the Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge has been opened. An important part of Fort McClellan's history came in the form of a race riot. Although Fort McClellan has always been a smaller base and fairly peaceful, there was a moment in time in late 1971 when a race riot started here. It was the largest WAC base in the world at the time and 20% of the WACs were black. Some of them were run down one evening by a white driver. They were not seriously injured, but major trouble followed. Tensions had already been building on base with a few racial disputes on both sides. A list of black grievances was submitted to the race-relations officer and this was followed by a mob gathering on an athletic field. The group of blacks shouted down a white race-relations officer and a black major and MPs were brought in to break everything up and 140 people were arrested.

There have been deaths at the base. An article in the New York Times published on May 29, 1983 reported a horrible accident at the base. It reads, "A tank resembling an oxygen container but faintly labeled "argon," a gas used in welding, was examined by investigators today after the deaths of two patients who breathed the gas at the Army hospital here. Military officials confirmed early today that two patients died and a third lapsed into a coma Wednesday because the argon tank was connected to the main oxygen supply system at Noble Army Hospital on Fort McClellan in Anniston. The 100-bed hospital's operating and delivery rooms had been closed for three days while investigators determined what killed a sergeant and a premature infant and left the wife of another Army sergeant near death.
"It is apparent that we were supplied argon in place of oxygen in a tank normally used for oxygen," said Col. Edward M. Johnson, a doctor and the commander at the hospital. "Subsequent administration of argon to the patients resulted in suffocation." The patient who lapsed into a coma was Charlotte Huddleston and she ended up dying the following day from a heart attack. She was only 28 at the time. A person wrote in 2019 on the Internet that, "Inside this Hospital a ghost named Charlotte lives. She is not hostile or friendly. There is a video of “Charlotte” appearing on YouTube. This is a real story and Charlotte is real, however do not look for Charlotte because she does not like to be hunted or filmed." Charlotte really likes to mess with lights.

There are parts of Fort McClellan that are like a ghost town and that is an appropriate term because Charlotte is not the only spirit here. There are a lot of spirits that seem to surround the area at Fort McClellan. Visitors to the area have reported some strange sights, including shadowy figures, apparitions, and odd lights. Others have felt cold spots and seen doors closing by themselves. Footsteps have also been heard in the old Patton Building. The most frequently seen ghost is the spirit of a soldier who committed suicide in one of the lodging buildings by hanging himself. He is known to be a full apparition or a dark shadow figure always standing by the water fountain on the top floor of the building. He has been seen by employees, and his death does have documentation. Another spirit here is one belonging to a young girl who is wearing an old fashioned white nightgown and she likes to wonder the grounds after dark.  

The most haunted location on the base is around Buckner Circle. Buckner Circle is the street where all of the officer mansions were located. These homes have a very high turn over rate. One of those places was the home of Jim and Sandra Coxwell who moved into their house in 2005. During their first night in the house, they had a weird experience and a type of bizarre light show. Sandra said, "There was a circle of crystals that dropped down from the ceiling and it was just spiraling, spiraling and spiraling. We didn’t know what that was. We heard stories about ghosts and so we just assumed that was the ghost saying hello."

Our listener Jules who suggested this location wrote, "The spirits that Peyton and I are most familiar with are the German POWs. They actually constructed the rock cottages as part of their "imprisonment" while at the Fort. On base families have lived in these cottages. I've heard whispering in German. I was an opera major in college so it was pretty easy to recognize the voice was speaking German. When Peyton was one and a half, I walked in to check on him and he was fully engaging in a conversation and pointing at someone I couldn't see.  I've seen doors open and close, and the TV turn on and off. I always felt a presence with me more than anything."

From 2016, "In September of 1991, I was undergoing basic training at Ft. McClellan, AL. Our platoon/company was outside conducting P. T., at approx 6 or 7 pm. I clearly saw a younger woman in a white, tattered dress move across a field directly in front of us. She was semi-transparent and was no more than 100 ft away. One distinct fact that I remember is that the woman was moving, but had no legs/feet. It was the kind of thing that you shake your head at and keep going. I never asked or told anyone while I was there because I was scared of what they would say (especially during basic training). I share this story often with friends and family. It was the one and only time that I have ever experienced anything like that."

From 2019, "My friends and I come to Fort McClellan to take pictures. We’ve had previous experiences here. Once we heard the voice of a woman. Today while taking pics there, the door behind us squeaked open and there was not the slightest breeze out so we left because we got creeped out and moved on to another spot there. At that spot, almost as soon as we got out of the car, we heard things falling from the higher levels of the building. Creepy!"

Anonymous wrote in 2021, "On 18 September, 1972 while attending Basic. I woke up to go to the Latrine at midnight. It was thunder and lightening storm that night. I heard a strange sound like someone was singing. I could not figure out where it was coming from. Then I saw a white figure standing at the end of the hall. I think it was looking at me, then it disappeared into the darkness. I decided to get the hell back in bed! I remember this because I kept a journal. I was in Alfa Company, 2nd Bn. What ever building that was back then."

As we've said before, it's always great when our listeners have actually had experiences at these locations that we share. Did Jules and her Spooktacular toddler really experience ghostly activity? Is Fort McClellan haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 339 - Ohio University

Moment in Oddity - The Screaming Mummy Museum of Mexico

Suggested by: Breanne Sanford

The Museo de las Momias is located in the small town of Guanajuato in Mexico. This is a museum right up our alley as it is home to a really weird display. This is a museum full of mummies, most of which are less than 200 years old. There are over 100 preserved mummies with one of them being the world's smallest mummy. This is a fetus that was still in its mother when she passed away. The mummies were dug up between 1865 and 1958 from the dry soil of Guanajuato and were found in a variety of poses. Many of these poses feature faces disfigured into looks of horror that have caused people to nickname them "The Screaming Mummies." Some are believed to be victims of a cholera outbreak in 1833. Others are thought to have been buried alive, particularly one that was found frozen in a pose of chewing on her own arm. The reason they might have been buried too soon is that cholera might have caused people to seem already dead because they were so dehydrated and were unconscious. This would explain why so many have their mouths wide open in screams. They must have awakened after being thrown into a mass grave. The mummy chewing on her arm has a different story. She was a woman named Ignacia who had a rare heart condition and she had been passed out for more than a day, so her family figured she was dead. When her coffin was exhumed, her mummified body was found flipped over, so that she was facing down, she was biting down on her arm and had dried blood in her mouth. The high altitude, low moisture and humidity are said to be responsible for the mummification. The bodies were first displayed in the 1950s and can still be seen today. A museum dedicated to screaming mummies, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Event That Inspired Les Miserables Occurred

In the month of June, on the 5th, in 1832, a two day insurrection rose up against King Louis-Philippe, inspiring the novel Les Miserables. The author of Les Miserables was Victor Hugo and he had been taking a walk through the Tuileries garden when he heard gunshots. He ran to the area, which was a working class neighborhood, and hid himself behind a pillar. There had been food shortages for years and a devastating cholera epidemic. The final straw was the death of General Jean Lamarque who was a hero to the working class. Republican demonstrators grabbed red flags and protested after the General's funeral. The protest became more of a riot and they built barricades. Hugo arrived in time to see the king’s soldiers firing on the republican rebels. He managed to get away without being hurt and he never forgot what he witnessed. The army took the momentum out of the uprising and by the next night it was all over. Thirteen years later, Hugo wrote Les Miserables about that moment in history and it became his most well known work.

Ohio University (Suggested by: Ashley Struz and Katie Meeks)

Ohio University in Athens, Ohio has been open for over 200 years and today has over 28,000 students enrolled. This was the first institute of higher education to be chartered by an Act of Congress and was founded by American Revolutionary War veterans. The university is the home of the Bobcats and apparently, quite a few ghosts. A ghostly bobcat might be a more appropriate mascot. There are few buildings on the campus that don't have some kind of ghost story connected to them. Join us as we explore the history and haunts of Ohio University.

The original inhabitants of Athens, Ohio were mound builders. The first Europeans arrived in 1797.  Athens County was established in 1805 and named for Athens, Greece. Ohio had become a state just two years before that. The town of Athens would incorporate in 1811, but it wouldn't become an official city until 1912. The town grew after the railroad arrived in 1857. There were many forms of commerce here from salt production to coal mining to iron production. The largest employer in Athens predated even the formation of the county and that was Ohio University.

Ohio University was chartered in 1804 and was the first institute of higher learning in the Northwest Territory and the eighth oldest in America. A group of American Revolutionary War veterans formed a company called the Ohio Company of Associates and they signed a contract with Congress that granted them large tracts of land in Athens and Alexander Townships. The company then set aside this first federal land grant for Ohio University. This would be the first time a university was chartered by an Act of Congress. The ordinance included with the charter read, "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Most of this land was leased out, but eventually the university grew into it and is one of the largest institutions of higher learning in Ohio.

Students started attending OU in 1809 and interestingly, the college was more like a high school in the beginning than a college and this was based on the course of study. It wouldn't be until 1822 that the university would bring in more specialized professors who could offer traditional college programs. The University specialized in educating teachers by the late 1800s and to attain the excellence they were seeking, OU was one of the first institutes of higher learning to receive state support from taxes. The greatest time of growth for the university would start in 1955 and carry through 1970 with 25 new dormitories being built. The university gained some fame when President Lyndon Johnson came in 1964, and talked about his Great Society initiative for the first time on the College Green. When you look at the architecture of the buildings on campus, it is easy to see the Early Americana Federalist influence.

The oldest building on the campus is Manasseh Cutler Hall and it was completed in 1819. The building is three stories, made from brick and has a distinctive wooden tower that is octagonal with louvered openings and a cupola. Originally, Cutler Hall housed a laboratory and dorm rooms. The building was modernized with an elevator and metal staircases in 1937. There was one story that a spirit hangs out in the bell tower, but we believe this very old building is surprisingly unhaunted. Cutler Hall was named for Manasseh Cutler who was a school teacher, botanist, doctor, attorney and minister. He wrote the charter for Ohio University modeled after Yale University's, which was the university he had graduated from. His family had all been clergymen, but he wanted to be different and so he had pursued the law. Eventually, he did become a minister. He co-founded OU with General Rufus Putnam and Brigadier General Benjamin Tupper. Cutler didn't spend much time in Ohio though. He was a New England man and he took over a church in Massachusetts. His congregation struggled to pay him, so he studied medicine - as though he didn't have enough degrees and areas of study - and he used this knowledge to treat people overcome by a small pox epidemic. He studied science until he died in 1823. Interestingly, one area of his scientific pursuits were the Native American mounds found here.

The College Green is the central gathering place for students and known as the Quad and has changed little in OU's 200 years. The College Green features Galbreath Chapel, which was dedicated in memorial of Helen Mauck Galbreath, who was the wife of alumnus John Galbreath. Helen and John met on campus and supposedly they shared there first kiss on this spot. The chapel is used by students for meditation and all sorts of cultural events are hosted here as well as weddings and memorial services. The Greek system uses it for their formal initiation ceremonies and receptions too. The spire that has a brass weather vane at the top was modeled after the portico of Nash's All Souls Church in London. There are two university gateways framing College Green: The first was built in 1915 and is known as the Alumni Gateway and has a verse etched on it that says, "That thou Mayest Grow In Knowledge, Wisdom and Love." The other gate was built in the 1960s and features words taken from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. There is a bronze university seal embedded at the college gate. Legend claims that if a freshman steps on it, they will have bad fortune.

The John Calhoun Baker University Center was named for the 14th president of the university and opened in January 2007. This is a large five-story building that serves as a hub for student activities. The architectural style was done to match the rest of the campus in the Federalist style. The rotunda is unique with curved walls and there is an inlaid arrow on the floor. If a person stands in the center of that arrow and whispers, they will get a reverberating echo similar to the effect created at the center of the United States Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.

East Green's Jefferson Marketplace is a nice food court type area, which features a variety of eateries like the New York-style Brick City Deli, Veggie Butcher and Juiced, The Ohio Café, the demonstration kitchen The Culinary Studio and the tea room Steeped & Stirred. There is the Bird Ice Arena and an Aquatic Center and a large recreation center for students. And many dormitories that we will get into in just a moment. This sounds like a gorgeous campus. Ohio University also owns the Athena Cinema, which has been continuously operated since 1915. This was originally the Bethel Grocery Store. The university renovated the building and students from the university run the theater.

For our haunts, let's first look at the fraternities and sororities. Several of these have ghost stories connected to them. One of the sororities is Pi Beta Phi. The spirit here is thought to belong to a young woman who drowned in the pool. Several girls who have lived here have felt something they couldn't see, crawl into bed with them. This thing actually slipped in under the covers. Another resident once claimed that she was awoken by an audible voice singing the ABCs and the voice clearly belonged to a little girl who would not have been in the house. This woman went to investigate where the voice was coming from and she saw a dark shadow. She turned around and ran back to her bedroom screaming and jumped into bed under the covers.

Our next Greek house is a fraternity called Delta Tau Delta. The actual house isn't haunted, but the brothers seemed to have brought something into the house with them when they returned from a trip to the Simms Cemetery. A part of a tombstone had broken off, so they brought the piece home with them. Strange things started happening in the house after this. Most of the activity was poltergeist in nature. Items would go missing, objects would move about on their own and strange noises were heard in the house. The brothers figured out that something was connected to the chunk of tombstone and they returned it to the cemetery. Apparently, the haunts stopped after that.

The building that houses Sigma Phi Epsilon has had several frats and sororities that have called it home. Not many like to stay here, probably because of a ghost here named Nicodemus. Athens was a city on the Underground Railroad and it is believed that Nicodemus is the spirit of an escaped slave. One of the students living at the frat was awoken several times by something pulling the sheets off his bed. He would look to see if it was one of his brothers pulling a prank, but there was never anybody there. Others reported doors slamming on their own and the lights flickering off and on. Things were so crazy when the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority was there that the Athens Magazine did an article about it back in the 1970s. These ladies reported being touched by something they couldn't see. There was the sound of scratching nails on the other side of walls too. This comes from an area that had a passageway where slaves would hide out. It was in here that Nicodemus is thought to have been shot by bounty hunters.The Sigma Phi Epsilon brothers don't mind having Nicodemus around and they feel he is no threat.

The Convocation Center was built in 1968 and is a large round building with a domed roof. This not only is home to the Men's Basketball Team, but it also has dorm rooms. Students call this The Convo and one of the spirits here likes to open and close the closet door in one of the rooms, which we could not track the number down on. This ghost also throws things out of the closet. Another spirit here is said to belong to a former RA who was killed by her boyfriend and she walks up and down the hallways. The last ghost here is said to belong to a student who died in her sleep.

There are several haunted halls on the campus. Perkins Hall was built in 1953 and was named in honor of Dr. Eliphaz Perkins who was the first physician, first postmaster, first auditor and first apothecary merchant in Athens County and became the first treasurer of Ohio University. The building served as a male dormitory with 210 students that first year. An RA claimed to have  experienced and heard several stories of unexplained phenomenon. One time, she gathered several residents in her room to go through Halloween decorations. They all heard a bone-chilling disembodied laugh and the girls went screaming from the room. The RA also said that the refrigerator for the dorm would open on its own - a spectre hankering for a snack apparently - and stereos and televisions would turn on by themselves. The RA also was in the dorm by herself a couple of weeks before students moved in and she distinctly heard a voice call out, "Hey!" When she turned to look, no one was there. She went into the hall and saw nobody there either. Another resident claimed to have some kind of presence enter her room and it felt as though it were filling it up with a malevolent energy. The ceiling fan blades began to spin slowly and then accelerated. And then the room got ice cold. That was enough and she ran out of the room and asked for another one.

Jefferson Hall was built in 1956 and was named in honor of President Thomas Jefferson. Residents had been experiencing some strange stuff and so they decided to have a ghost hunt in 1996. They didn't have much luck until they got to the attic. There they experienced the holy grail: a full-bodied apparition. This was the spirit of an older woman in clothes from the 1950s. She was floating above the floor. They ran to grab the RA to tell her what happened and when the group returned, they found the attic locked. Lights flash on and off by themselves. This location also has the marble sound, as though hundreds of marbles are dropping on a floor above.

Washington Hall was named after President George Washington and has one of the strangest hauntings on campus. An entire girl's basketball team is said to bang around in the afterlife in this dormitory. Residents claim to hear the squeaking of basketball shoes and to fill cold spots in the hall that connects this dorm to Read Hall. But there are those who claim that this is actually a male basketball team and that they hang out in the attic, which used to be a recreation room. Bush Hall was built in 1954 and named for an 1892 Ohio University graduate named Frederick W. Bush. The ghost that haunts this dorm likes to mess with the lights and turn on and off the water faucets. There is also a peculiar sound heard here and it is described as a marble sound as though hundreds of marbles are being dropped on the floor.

Brown House was built in 1928 and named in honor of Mildred Francis Brown, who had owned the 7,800 square foot house with her husband. Her grandfather had been the contractor who built three of the buildings on campus. After the University purchased the home, they converted it into the Contemporary History Institute, which was an interdisciplinary academic research institute. An article from July 2019 reported that the house had significant structural damage and was slated for demolition and a later article in the Athens News confirmed that it was indeed destroyed. There were reportedly a couple of hauntings here. One featured the disembodied sounds of children splashing around and there had been a pool here at one time. The other was about the ghost of Millie Brown. She was seen looking out the window as though she is watching the children play on her property as they once had. We wonder if the haunting will continue.

Wilson Hall is the most haunted dormitory on the campus and was built in 1965 and named for Hiram Roy Wilson. When "Scariest Places on Earth" came to feature the University, this was the location they chose as their backdrop. There are reports of strange noises, books fly off of shelves and lights turn on an off by themselves. Furniture like desks and dressers move around by themselves and doors open and close on their own. Pretty standard stuff, but other stories get weirder. Room 428 is said to be closed permanently and its because of the last girl to live in this room. She started acting very weird. She would chant in a strange language and eventually, she jumped from a window, killing herself. Some people think she became possessed after touching The Stain found at the Athens Lunatic Asylum. And speaking of stain, the face of a demon is said to show up in the wood grain on the door. Another student claimed that he saw the apparition of a girl and she was pointing at the door to Room 428. Was this the woman who killed herself? This room is said to be incredibly haunted, but clearly, there is stuff going on all over the dorm. Wilson Hall is also said to be the geographic center of a pentagram that is drawn through all the cemeteries in Athens. Does this give it some kind of supernatural energy?

History Goes Bump featured Athens Lunatic Asylum on Episode 121. This had been a place where the mentally ill, violent convicted criminals, Civil War vets and even children were kept. Eventually, the Asylum was bought by Ohio University and is today The Ridges. This houses the Kennedy Museum of Art, an auditorium, offices, classrooms and storage facilities. It also is incredibly haunted, just added more to the haunted mystique of this campus. Is Ohio University haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 175 - Santa Maria Inn

 
Moment in Oddity - The Little People of America

There are creatures described in the oral traditions of Native Americans that tell of tiny people eaters. These are little people that stood between 20 inches to three feet tall. These legends would seem to match up with European lore about fairies and leprechauns, but these tales date back before Europeans ever arrived in America. To the Shoshone Indians of Wyoming, this small race of people were known as the Nimerigar. These were an aggressive people who shot poison arrows from their tiny bows. It was said that they would kill their own if they were unable to be an active part of their community due to illness. The Comanche had the Nunupi, which were described as small bi-pedal humanoids with large heads and long arms. Some had long hair and some had no hair. They were described as mischievous. The Cherokee had the Yumwi and the Hawaiians have the Menehune. All of these little people are similar in attitudes and appearance. Were these just legends? Were these some kind of spirit as some native tribes believed?  Were these Star People from the heavens? It would be easy to pass these stories off as legends, but skeletons of these little people have been found in several places in America. Cochocton, Ohio had a burial ground with numerous remains of a race of people measuring under three feet. Another graveyard in Coffee County, Tennessee held the remains of reputedly thousands of little people. A whole race of little people is unique, but the fact that they no longer exist, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Pol Pot Overthrown

In the month of January in 1979, Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and this topples the Khmer Rouge and the dictator Pol Pot. He had organized the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian jungle in the 1960s. Their goal was to foment a Communist revolution. And if that meant killing people, they were willing to do so. They gained control of a third of the country by 1970 with the help of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The United States bombed the Cambodian territory in 1973 and the power vacuum left behind was captured by the Khmer Rouge and by 1975 the pro-U.S. regime was overthrown and Pol Pot was in control. Pol Pot and his thugs spread like a cancer across Cambodia and killed two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. Intellectuals were killed. Skilled workers were killed. Anyone with glasses or a watch were killed. These atrocities are known today as the Killing Fields. It would take until 2009 for the first genocide trials to start.

Santa Maria Inn (Suggested by: Elliot Gladstone of Entwined Podcast)

Santa Maria is a town that lies strategically halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. This makes it an attractive stop over point for travelers. The Santa Maria Inn is a central coastal historical landmark that has provided accommodation for business people, tourists and celebrities for nearly one hundred years. Those celebrities include Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Jean Harlow. Other guests that have stayed here, have never left and remain after death. The hotel is reputedly haunted by several spirits and gives enough creeps that some people never want to stay again. One of those people is Elliot Gladstone of the Entwined Podcast and he joins us to talk about the history, hauntings and his experiences at the Santa Maria Inn.

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to come to the Santa Maria area and they found the native Chumash tribe already there. The Spanish set up missions and two of them, San Luis Obispo founded in 1772, and La Purisima Concepcion, founded in 1787, bordered the Santa Maria Valley. These mission lands would be made available for private ownership after the Mexican War of Independence. Santa Maria was originally called Grangerville and then Central City and was founded by four men: Rudolph Cook, John Thornburgh, Isaac Fesler and Isaac Miller. These four men donated strips of land where their properties adjoined to lay out Central City in 1874. In 1882, the name was changed to Santa Maria because the town's mail kept ending up in Central City, Colorado. Huge fires ripped through in 1883 and 1884, but the town thrived as the Pacific Coast Railroad continued to bring in business. The turn of the 20th century brought oil discovery and the Santa Maria Valley would have produced $640 million worth of oil by the 1950s.

Frank J. McCoy was an American born in Ireland. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and moved to San Francisco in 1900. He came to the Santa Maria Valley in 1901 looking for work and he found it at the Union Sugar Plant. The plant extracted sucrose from sugar beets. A whole company town sprang up around the facility called Betteravia, which refers to the French word for beet root. About 350 lived there until the 1950s when the sugar company decided renting out homes was not something they were interested in doing anymore and by the 1960s most of the buildings had been razed in Betteravia. Atlas Obscura reports that "the site still boasts two enormous hermetically sealed silos, a more or less intact refinery building, and a towering furnace stack." McCoy left the company in 1916 after he noticed that the area really needed a hotel.

He built the original Santa Maria Inn, which only had 24 rooms at the time, in 1917. The property had highway frontage, so it was perfect for travelers. Each of the rooms had its own bath, which was a real luxury. McCoy planted gardens around the humble hotel and many of those original plantings are still a part of the Rose Garden today. Every room was supplied with fresh flowers every day. The main areas were decorated with McCoy's collection of copperware, pewter and artwork by California artists. In 1928, he expanded the hotel to 85 rooms. The Tap Room was designed by Edgar Cheesewright and added in 1941. This bar captured the atmosphere of an old English pub with peg plank wooden floors and rich wormwood paneling.

The rich and famous flocked to the hotel. Hollywood legends like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplain, Rudolph Valentino, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford and Bob Hope all stayed here and many of the rooms are marked with stars and indicate which celebrity had once stayed in the room. Sports stars like Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio and the rich and political like Richard Nixon, William Randolph Hearst and Herbert Hoover also stayed here.

The hotel went to a nephew after McCoy's death and he added more rooms, a coffee shop and a swimming pool. By the 1970s things were going poorly and the inn closed. Highway 101 and faster cars that could travel farther in one trip had taken their toll. The inn was vandalized and antiques were stolen. It reopened in 1981 under new ownership and in 1984 the six story tower was added. The hotel thrives today with 164 rooms and boasts that it has the "comfort and style of the English countryside." The hotel has something else that is anything, but comforting and that are ghosts. The Santa Maria Inn is reputedly home to many ghosts, each coming from a very different walk of life.

The first ghost that has been reported belongs to the Hollywood silent film hunk, Rudolph Valentino. Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover." He was born in Italy in 1895 as Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella. He was a poor student and a never-do-well. The family finally shipped him off to America to learn to be a man. He worked odd jobs in New York until he met and befriended a beautiful heiress. He found himself embroiled in scandal when this woman divorced her husband. She went on to kill her ex-husband. The whole situation degraded him and he changed his name to various parts of Rudolph Valentino and moved to Hollywood. He acted in the theater, while working odd jobs once again, which may have included some gigolo type work. He definitely worked as an exhibition dancer and we're not exactly sure what that meant.

He got bit parts in several movies, usually as a villain because he was darker complected. In 1921, he starred in "The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse," which was a critical success. It was the first film to make 1,000,000 at the box office and is the 6th best selling silent movie of all time. The silent film "The Sheik" would make him a huge star and he made more commercial movies after that gaining a rabid female following. Jack Dempsey said of Valentino, "He was the most virile and masculine of men. The women were like flies to a honeypot. He could never shake them off, anywhere he went. What a lovely, lucky guy." He was married twice and the second had to be annulled after it was discovered he was not divorced from his first wife, with whom he never consummated the marriage because she batted for our team. He eventually remarried the second wife,but they eventually divorced. He was heavily in debt and lived a hard life, which led to him having multiple ulcers in his stomach. Eventually, these ulcers perforated in 1926 and he lingered in excruciating pain for a little over a week, dying at the age of 31. Ten thousand people tried to attend his funeral.

During his Hollywood career, he stayed at the Santa Maria Inn in Room 221. He has been seen lying on the bed in the room and his indentation on the top of the covers is clearly seen. His favorite tactic seems to be knocking on doors, particularly of Room 221. We read several accounts of people being awakened by knocking on the door, some of them as negative reviews about the hotel where people are completely unaware that they may have experienced something supernatural. Elliot experienced this type of haunting during one of his stays.

The second most seen and experienced ghost at the inn belongs to a sea captain. His apparition dates back almost top the time of the hotel initially being built. The legend is that he was having an affair and his mistress murdered him. He is apparently attached to Room 210, so perhaps he was murdered in that room. He haunts other areas as well though. Activity felt in other areas that may be connected to him are icy chills in rooms. This is also something Elliot experienced. The gardens and cellars have activity, disembodied footsteps are heard, doors open and close on their own and a piano plays by itself. Unexplained perfume smells are also reported. A balloon once followed a housekeeper around, even following her downstairs.

The ghost of a woman known as Peppy has also been reported. This one we are not so sure about because she came through as a channeled spirit by a medium, which can be quite dubious. She claimed to be friends with the Hearsts and that she would stay at the Hearst Castle on occasion. She  apparently was a cocaine addict and she died of an overdose. An Assistant Manager at the hotel claimed that the curtains in room 216 sometimes billow by themselves, even when the windows were closed. He also said that one could feel The Captain all around the inn.

TripAdvisor Reviews: "Stayed in the Jacuzzi Suite. Wouldn't have it any other way. Gorgeous Suite with Bay Window, Nice Views, Fireplace, Bedroom, Kitchenette, and Master Bath. Had to nosey around the 'haunted' rooms (older part of Hotel) where Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities have stayed. Saw a few 'strange' things happen like a vending machine working on its own and a fork and knife appear out of nowhere. We found it too funny rather than scary. Must say if there are ghost, they are very friendly."

"I have found out that Rudolph Valentino, a film star from the 20's, used to stay at the Inn regularly...and still does. He stayed in a room on the same floor that I stayed in when I went to the Inn in 2003. There have been numerous reports of similar experiences as mine. Apparently, it is said that Rudolph loves to lie down on the beds and that was what I felt when my body was held down on the bed by an unexplained pressure. There have also been accounts of Mr. Valentino sitting at the head of the bed."

After reading about experiences people have had and hearing from Elliot about his experiences, someone we know and trust, it really would seem that something strange is going on at this hotel. Does Rudolph Valentino's spirit remain in a room where he once stayed even though he died elsewhere? Does the ghost of a former sea captain still roam about in the afterlife? Is the Santa Maria Inn haunted? That is for you to decide!