HGB Ep. 524 - St. Ignatius Hospital

Moment in Oddity - Exploding Casket Syndrome (Suggested by: Kim Gasiorowski)

Many of our listeners are taphophiles and enjoy the peace and tranquility of a beautiful cemetery. Walking along, admiring various headstones and often times extravagant mausoleums. We would imagine a sudden BOOM from an explosion of a mausoleum would scare and shock most people. If the explosion didn't scare you the noxious fumes assaulting your nasal passages would certainly disgust you. This phenomenon typically happens in above ground crypts. You see, when bodies are in a state of decomposition, they release gases as they begin to liquify. If there is no way for those gases to be released from a mausoleum coffin, Ka-BAM! You end up with a putrid mess and possibly a cracked mausoleum wall or two. The solution to this ghastly issue is to be certain that the casket itself has a burper installed. Yes, you heard that correctly, a burper valve allows the gases to be released and oxygen to enter the casket so that the dehydration process can occur. Sounds similar to some Tupperware containers, doesn't it? Now, we read some articles that indicated that this whole story may just be an urban legend, however, the thought of experiencing the malodorous discharge of decomposition gases from a mausoleum explosion due to lacking a casket burper valve, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Introduction of Alka Seltzer

In the month of February, on the 21st, in 1931, Alka Seltzer was first sold in the United States. It's origin can be followed back to the flu epidemic that hit the states back in 1928. The president of Miles Laboratory, Hub Beardsley, had heard a rumor that the employees of the local newspaper were all healthy and working. Meanwhile, the majority of the townsfolk were suffering quite badly with flu symptoms. Upon visiting the newspaper, Beardsley found the staff working like normal. Inquiring about any illnesses within the company, Hub was told that any time the employees were feeling any flu like symptom, they would drink a mixture of aspirin and baking soda which eliminated any signs of illness. When Beardsley returned to the laboratory, he conferred with his head chemist who developed a mixture of aspirin, sodium bicarbonate and anhydrous citric acid. The antacid would become effervescent when added to water. To test the new product, Beardsley took 100 pills on a cruise and supplied free samples to anyone who was feeling ill. The results were that every person who took the novel medication received some form of relief. Due to this test, Miles Laboratory introduced Alka Seltzer to their line-up of medications. Although there are variations of the original formulation, one constant that remains is the "plop, plop, fizz, fizz, Oh what a relief it is" jingle that we are all familiar with.

St. Ignatius Hospital (Suggested by listener: Nate)

St. Ignatius Hospital dates back to the 1890s and was started by a group of nuns from Montreal. For over seventy years it served as a healthcare facility and then reopened as an assisted living facility that shuttered in 2003. The building was left to decay for many years, but was taken under the wing of the Colfax Chamber of Commerce and the Whitman County Historical Society in 2015. Tours have been hosted since then and some of them include talk of ghosts. Join us and our guest Valoree Gregory as we explore the history and hauntings of St. Ignatius Hospital. 

St. Ignatius was designed and built by Mother Joseph. Mother Joseph was born as Esther Pariseau in 1823 in Quebec, Canada. She entered the Sisters of Charity of Providence convent in 1843. She led her congregation to the Pacific Northwest of the United States and they established a network of schools and healthcare facilities. Mother Joseph was the first female architect in British Columbia and she built 11 hospitals, seven academies, five schools for Native American children and two orphanages. These were spread through four states. She died of a brain tumor in 1902.

In early 2021, the hospital was purchased by Laura and Austin Storm. They have been doing a ton of renovation that started with repairing a large hole in the roof that had allowed extensive damage to the interior for over 20 years. Decades of neglect had left the building in poor condition so that it has appeared on the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation’s “Most Endangered Watch List” every year since 2015. Funding of the renovations is provided by historic and ghost tours and ghost hunts. There does seem to be a lot of activity here. Paranormal Lockdown visited in 2017 and Ghost Adventures visited in 2019. The GA Crew caught an anomaly in a photo from one of their full-spectrum cameras. It appeared to show “a white misty apparition.”

The first patient that died at the hospital was a local railroad employee who tragically was crushed between two railroad cars. Some people believe his spirit is the one that is described as a large, angry black mass that tries to attack people. 

Nuture Your Soul visited in December of 2023 and wrote of the experience on Facebook, "What I experienced there personally - were communications of love & excitement that I could see / hear. I saw 4 small children following us & peering out the windows at us as we passed by - which was delightful to them & to me. I felt palpable whimsey & delight that so many people still choose to visit there & I felt nothing terrified, stuck, angry or regretful. In fact, quite the opposite!"

Valoree shared the experiences that she has had in the hospital. 

St. Ignatius Hospital is a building in need of a lot of love and it seems that it has people who want to honor it and rehab it now. There seem to be many souls that have not passed on and decided to stay within the confines of that building. Is St. Ignatius Hospital haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 446 - Southgate-Thompson House

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

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

This Month in History - Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex Discovered

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

Southgate-Thompson House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HGB Ep. 439 - Historic Scott County Jail

Moment in Oddity - Sculptures with Human Teeth (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

There is a factory worker who spent 50 years of his life filling a garden with otherworldly sculptures. Veijo Ronkkonen was a recluse who worked in a paper mill but spent his free time on his farm in a Finnish forest. As it's told, he wasn't a people person (Diane and I can relate) and he never studied art, but at the time of his death in 2010, he had covered his land with 550 sculptures. Many believe Viejo's artwork was his way of communicating with the world. Once he received his first paycheck at the mill, it is said that he purchased apple seedlings and concrete. This is where his first artistic garden creations were born. His garden draws 25,000 visitors annually. Although many describe it as eerie, we'd venture to guess that our listeners would describe it in more provocative ways. Some of these sculptures have the interesting addition of actual human teeth along with speakers buried within their 'frozen in time' bodies which emit sounds some of us would relate to a class C EVP. Clearly this artist was a great observer of humanity, even if he preferred to sculpt instead of interreact with others.  It is said that his sculptures represent his exploration of self, but also what he viewed of the world. Regardless, adding human teeth to several human sculptures, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - First Sustained Untethered Flight

In the month of June, on the 4th, in 1783, the first sustained untethered flight occurred as a hot air balloon was launched in Annonnay, France. Brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier were the inventors of the first practical hot air balloon. They had discovered that heated air contained within a paper or lightweight cloth bag, caused the bag to float into the air. The brothers made their first public demonstration of this discovery on the 4th at a marketplace in Annonnay. They created the heated air by burning straw and wool under the opening of the bag which rose to a height of 3,000 feet and hovered for about 10 minutes before floating towards earth about 1.5 miles from its point of origination. This experiment expanded in following months to include their first passengers of a sheep, rooster and duck, which took flight for approximately 8 minutes, landing safely about 2 miles away. Shortly thereafter, their first untethered manned flight sailed over Paris for 5.5 miles in about 25 minutes.

Historic Scott County Jail

The Historic Scott County Jail is located in Huntsville, Tennessee. The jail is nearly 120 years old and housed inmates until 2008. Huntsville is a small town and the jail isn't very substantial, but the stories about this place are big. On this episode, we are joined by Dr. Kristy Sumner, founder of Soul Sisters Paranormal and History, Highways and Haunts, LLC. She and her business partner - Miranda Young aka Ghost Biker - run tours, events and ghost hunts at the jail and Kristy shares the history and many of the unexplained things that have happened in the jail!

Huntsville, Tennessee is located on the Cumberland Plateau in northeast Tennessee. This is the home of the Cumberland Mountains and the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. Twenty-five acres of land purchased from George McDonald and Emanuel Phillips gave Huntsville its meager beginning. Forty-seven lots were platted out and the first courthouse and jail were built in 1851. The name is in honor of hunting, either for the long hunters who once lived in the area or a hunter named Hunt. By the early 1900s, Huntsville had its own newspaper, three hotels, four stores, a feed store, two blacksmith shops, a woodworking shop, a meat market, a lumberyard, a bank and a small public park. Despite being founded in 1850, the town wasn't incorporated until 1965. A courthouse square was built in 1906 and included a courthouse, First National Bank and a county jail, all built from the native beige-colored sandstone. That jail was added to the National Register of Historic Places and is known today as the Old Scott County Jail.

That jail was used until 2008 when a new justice center was built across town. The jail sat abandoned until 2017 when the Huntsville mayor, Dennis Jeffers, petitioned the Scott County Commission to transfer ownership of the jail to the town of Huntsville. In 2018, the Town of Huntsville received a $50,000 tourism enhancement grant from the State of Tennessee and restoration work began. This jail is a very personal project for many people, the mayor being one of them. His mother learned to cook biscuits and gravy from the wife of a former sheriff in the old jail's kitchen. This building also became a personal project for Dr. Kristy Sumner.

(Interview with Kristy) Kristy sent a couple of EVPs for us to share. The first is the EVP that Vickie Norris captured in their drunk tank when she was all alone. (EVP from Vickie) Sounds like a guy hollering some stuff. The first one sounds like, "Get out now, let's go!" Then, "Stand up!" And then, "Get out the door!" Very interesting! The second is the EVP that they captured on their security camera in their gift shop and we have amplified it so it is easier to hear. (EVP gift shop) They thought it said, "Not so loud next time."

Based on what Dr. Kristy Sumner shared about the jail, it seems that something unexplained is going on here. Is the Historic Scott County Jail haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 425 - Hannah House

Moment in Oddity - Oldest Drawing of a Ghost in Babylon (Suggested by: John Michaels)

In one of the vaults at the British Museum, one can find the oldest drawing of a ghost. The curator of the Middle Eastern department at the museum and a world authority on cuneiform, Dr. Irving Finkel, said that the artifact had been overlooked until now. Part of the problem is that it has never been on display and the other reason is that it needed to be viewed in the proper lighting. Under the right lighting, a faint outline of a figure appears on the Babylonian cuneiform tablet. Dr. Finkel thinks the tablet has been misinterpreted since being acquired by the museum in the 19th century. He describes the carving as showing "a male ghost and he’s miserable. You can imagine a tall, thin, bearded ghost hanging about the house did get on people’s nerves. The final analysis was that what this ghost needed was a lover. You can’t help but imagine what happened before. ‘Oh God, Uncle Henry’s back.’ Maybe Uncle Henry’s lost three wives. Something that everybody knew was that the way to get rid of the old bugger was to marry him off. It’s not fanciful to read this into it. It’s a kind of explicit message. There’s very high-quality writing there and immaculate draughtsmanship. That somebody thinks they can get rid of a ghost by giving them a bedfellow is quite comic." The tablet was created about 3,500 years ago and is believed to have been part of a library of magic. The palm-sized tablet also contains directions on the back for exorcising an unwanted ghost and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - OK Enters National Vernacular

In the month of March, on the 23rd, in 1839, OK enters the national vernacular. Apparently, the young people of the late 1830s liked to misspell words on purpose and then abbreviate them, which doesn't seem much different than today. For example, "no use" would be spelled "know yuse" and then abbreviated to KY. "No go" was similar being spelled "know go" and abbreviated to KG. "All correct" became "oll korrect" and this was abbreviated to OK. On that day in March, OK made it into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. It gained even more popularity when it became part of Martin Van Buren's re-election campaign. People called him "Old Kinderhook" because that was the name of his hometown in New York. He had a group of thugs helping to convince people to re-elect him and the group was called the OK Club for both Van Buren's nickname and the now popular term OK. American linguist Allen Walker Read was the man to figure out where OK originated and now you know!

Hannah House (Suggested by Ed Jones and Sarah Silver) 

The Hannah House in Indianapolis, Indiana was the family home of Alexander Hannah. This home was meant to be a place of refuge for runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad. Tragedy struck when a lantern that a group of the formerly enslaved people were using tipped over. A fire erupted and they were trapped in their hiding place and none survived. Their bodies were more than likely buried on the property. This event has led to hauntings in what is now a museum. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Hannah House.

The Hannah House is located in Indianapolis, Indiana at 3801 Madison Avenue in Marion County. The county had originally been home to the Lenape tribe. The county was organized in 1822 and named in honor of American Revolutionary General Francis Marion. Alexander Ralston had assisted in laying out Washington, D.C. and he assisted laying out Indianapolis, which is why it has a circular common in the center of town that is known today as Monument Circle. Indianapolis became a major stopping point in the 1830s and the capital of Indiana. The city eventually became a major manufacturer of automobiles and this connection to vehicles continues today with the Brickyard 400 and Indy 500.

Alexander Hannah was the man who had the Hannah House built. He was born in the southern part of Indiana in Wayne County in 1821. He learned the trade of harness making, but when the California Gold Rush started, he decided to find his fortune. Hannah did manage to find some gold and bought a ranch while he was in California. When the rush died down, he chose to return to Indiana and decided to live in Indianapolis where he worked for the Indiana Central Railroad. His father Samuel was president of the company and owned hundreds of acres in the area. Hannah eventually bought 240 acres for himself, just south of Indianapolis. He decided to build his mansion on that land in 1858.

The Hannah House was built in the Italianate architectural design with elements of Greek Revival. The exterior was constructed from red brick. The house was two-and-a-half stories tall with a smaller two-story wing connected to the main block house. The roof was a low hip style with wide eaves and had four chimneys. The central doorway is pretty plain with a rectangular transom, so this element is clearly Greek Revival. The windows were tall and thin and had shutters. The second floor had taller windows that opened onto an uncovered balcony that no longer exists. The original porch no longer exists either, but there had been porches on the north and south facades.

The interior featured 24 rooms with a wide central hall floored with poplar, laid in 8-inch boards, at the entrance of the house. There were two formal rooms on either side of the hallway with fireplaces. One was a double parlor and the other was a sitting room and dining room. The connected wing had the kitchen and a pantry. The kitchen had its own fireplace, which is the largest in the house. The kitchen also has a cool secret passage that is concealed in a dining room cupboard that passes from the pantry to the dining room. The doors and windows were decorated with acanthus forms, which are like ornamental foliage. There was a main staircase that led up to the second floor with four bedrooms and a sitting room. Three of the bedrooms had fireplaces.

Hannah came up with another line of revenue after buying his land. The first toll road to be built in Marion County crossed his land. This was the Indianapolis-Southport Toll Road that stretched from Indianapolis to Madison. That street still reflects this history in its name, Hannah Avenue. Alexander collected tolls from people who used this section of road. He also got into farming and raising livestock. The property grew hay, wheat, corn and oats. Cattle sheep and pigs were raised on the land too. Hannah also served the Indianapolis Southside as postmaster, sheriff, Circuit Court Clerk and a member of the Indiana General Assembly. 

Alexander married late in life. He was fifty-one when he married Elizabeth Jackson in 1872. She had been born in 1835 and was 37 years old. The couple had wanted children. There are claims that Elizabeth did become pregnant, but that she either miscarried or the baby was stillborn. There are no records for either of these, but there is a small unmarked gravestone at the family burial, which seems to indicate an infant burial. The couple added onto the property with a service building that included a summer kitchen, smoke house, wash house, milk cooling room and servant's quarters. The couple were very active in civil events, especially since Alexander had his fingers in many political arenas. They loved to entertain and often opened up the parlors to celebrate. 

But the couple had a secret that would have brought ruin to their social lives. They were staunch abolitionists and their property was located in such a place that it worked well for the Underground Railroad. There were acres and acres of wooded area and not many people living in close proximity. Our research claimed that Alexander was a conductor, but that term doesn't seem to be accurate. Conductors were people like Harriet Tubman who actually guided people personally along the tracks, which was the term for the routes. Station Masters hid escaped slaves in their homes, which were referred to as stations, and that is what the Hannahs did. They hid these enslaved people in their cellar, which had lots of room.

The cellar obviously would have been chilly and dark and oil lamps would have been supplied to the fugitives. A devastating story connected to the mansion claims that one of these lamps got knocked over and the cellar was quickly set ablaze. The fugitives were unable to get out as the room filled with smoke and flames. They were all killed. The Hannahs clearly would have been very upset about this development. They would have wanted to give these people a Christian burial, but doing anything public would reveal their secret and they both could have been jailed. They also needed this station along the railroad. The house servants decided to bury the bodies in the floor of the cellar. We have no proof of this story, but it certainly was something that would be kept tight-lipped within the house and family. And a partially-collapsed tunnel leading towards the Hannah property seems to lend credence to the home being a station. 

Elizabeth died in 1888 at the age of 53. Alexander did not remarry and he died in 1895 at the age of 73 and joined Elizabeth at Crown Hill Cemetery. His monument is a large obelisk. The house sat abandoned for four years and then a German immigrant named Roman Oehler bought the house and 21 acres in 1899. He owned a jewelry business in Indianapolis. He built some outbuildings for the property and put a new porch on the mansion. The house stayed in the family with his daughter, Romena Oehler Elder, being the last. She was in the house until 1962, but the house stayed in the family for another six years, although it was vacant. From 1968 to 1978, a couple by the name of O'Brien, lived in part of the house and ran an antique shop out of the rest of it. The house was placed on the Register of Historic Places in 1978. In 1980, the house was used to host a haunted house-themed fundraiser, which seems fitting since the house is reputed to be haunted. It was a museum for a while and then a private home again and now today, it is a museum again that offers tours and hosts weddings.

Alexander and his wife Elizabeth have been seen in the house and there are even claims that there is a foul smell that is connected to the stillborn baby. We're not sure why that would be the case since there is a grave for the baby, so it wasn't holed up in the house somewhere. And with the story of burying the fire victims in the cellar, we would think that any smell of decay would be linked to that event. The house even has the nickname "The House That Reeks of Death." Elizabeth wears a variety of clothing. Sometimes she is seen wearing a black dress and other times a peach dress. She likes to peek out of an upstairs window. Alexander once told a guest to go back downstairs and mind their own business.

There are claims of cold spots, disembodied voices, flying utensils, electrical equipment going haywire, pictures flying off walls, doors opening and closing on their own and strange noises. The staircase leading to the second floor has carpet, but that doesn't stop people from hearing the sound of footsteps of varying loudness moving up and down the stairs. Rustling clothing is also heard on the stairs. The house has been investigated by many paranormal investigators and the mansion embraces this by offering ghost hunts. It's very reasonable running $500 for a group up to ten people. News crews have come through as have psychics. They have all reported unexplained occurrences in the house. The ghosts of the formerly enslaved people have been seen as well. Their wailing and moaning has been heard in the cellar and whispers have also been heard. Bad smells aren't the only phantom scents. The scent of roses and lavender have also been detected, as has the scent of burning wood.

A woman named Agatha claimed to see a spirit looking out of a window when she drove by one day. A woman named Tiara attended a ghost hunt and they captured a recording of a child saying, "Save me, save me!" up in the attic. This is said to be the ghost of a boy named Tommy. Richard said, "I went on a tour of this house many years ago in the summer, hot as the devil. I was with my wife and daughter and was getting ready to descend the steps from the attic! I decided to venture around while they went down the steps. It is then the temperature in that steaming hot attic turned into a refrigerator, and the most horrible smell I ever encountered filled the attic. I never moved so fast in my life getting out of that house. My wife and daughter said I looked like all the blood left my face, they said I was white as a ghost. Needless to say I will never venture back into the Hanna House, I won't even look in that direction when I drive by it! God is my witness that house is definitely haunted, they say a ghost can't hurt you but a ghost can definitely make you hurt yourself!"

Cali said, "We went one year when it was a haunted house. It was like 5 of us and we started in what I think was the attic and worked our way down. At one point we heard some one say Kisha, Kisha. We were spooked because we're like who is saying my friends name we never told anyone her name. I was pretty much running at this point. Trying to get the hell out of there. I didn't care who I ran over. I have never been to another haunted house since that day."

A review in 2019 said, "I attended a tour and haunted house at this location years ago. While in one of the upstairs rooms on the tour, I was touched by what felt like a child running past and bumping into me. In the basement I was grabbed on the forearm by an unseen hand. There is definite activity here."

A review in April 2020 of the house claimed, "I visited the Hannah House with my family back in the late 60s when I was maybe 6 years old. It must have been an open-house because there were many people there touring the house. It was a sunny day as I recall. Two things I remember. I have a memory of a rocking chair on the porch, rocking it's self. The second is that I was in a line of people going down the stairs into the basement and I remember becoming hysterical with fright, even though I was surrounded by adults. I had to be taken out of line and calmed down. I never set foot in that house again until about 5 years ago when the H.House hosted the Indiana Paranormal Meet and Greet. I toured the house and finally made it into that scary basement, but had no experiences. I did find out, that the rocking chair is one of the reported phenomena at this house, so that was a "real" memory. I will say that as a historical home, it is worth taking a tour."

Daywalkers Paranormal Investigations investigated the mansion in June of 2012. They captured several EVP. There was a female saying "You're welcome" and a male voice that said "want help." Diane also thought one sounded like a child saying "come on." And there was one that sounded like "I don't like her." One group was at the house when they heard a crashing in the cellar. There were old canning jars that stood along a wall down there and they thought that is sounded like those had gone crashing, but when they got to the cellar, they found nothing amiss. 

A TV crew came through the haunted house hosted by the Jaycees in 1981. The camera man commented that it would be creepy if the chandelier started swinging in the room he was filming and the chandelier suddenly started swinging in a six-inch arc. They could find no reason for the light to be doing that. Later, they caught a picture falling off the wall. The nail was still in the wall and pointing upward. The string on the back of the picture was intact. The only way for the picture to fall would be if something lifted it up off the nail.

In the 1970s, an older couple lived in the house and sold antiques out of it. A man named Dan went shopping there once and shared the following experience, "The old couple who lived there sold 'Antiques'- more like accumulated house stuff. They let me roam all over the house looking for used furniture and usable things. Went up to the attic- the roof had caved in and though there were piles of furniture- all weather ruined. There was an old woman up there who asked what I was doing there. 'Looking for a bookcase,' I said. 'Well it ain't here,' she said. I went downstairs, having found one in a bedroom, and commented about other customer in the attic. The Mrs. laughed and explained thay she
was not a customer and thought that  still owned the house and did not like anyone upstairs. She was a house spirit and harmless. The old man was in an antique wooden wheelchair and they never went upstairs anyway. The Mrs. saw her sometimes and asked that I not go to the attic as the floor may not be safe from the weather coming in. Definitely a house ghost who had loved her life there and had not moved on. The old couple were used to the spirits there."

There definitely was a supervisor spirit while the O'Briens lived in the house. They hired a painter and he eventually left the job, but who could blame him once you hear what he went through. Doors would swing open as he walked by and pictures would slide on the wall when he passed as well. He heard an audible voice say, "You will not paint my house!" and "Do a good job painting my house!" The final straw for him was when a spoon flew across the room at him. Mrs. O’Brien’s son volunteered to finish the paint job. From his first night working, he could feel that someone was watching him and that unnerving feeling continued until he finished. Something else weird happened while he worked. On the second night, he brought his family with him, which included his wife and two daughters. Three of them worked on painting while the littlest girl played on the stairs. They heard her talking to someone and so Mrs. O'Brien's son went out to see who she was talking to. He saw no one, but she claimed to be able to see an elderly man. They all watched as she continued to carry on a conversation until she said the man went back up the stairs.

Mrs. O’Brien once looked up at the second floor and saw a man standing there in a black suit and she watched as he walked across the upstairs hallway. She thought maybe he was a customer, so she went up to help him, but when she got up there, she could find him nowhere. Mr. O’Brien saw something similar. He saw a transparent man, dressed in a period black suit standing at the top of the stairs on the second floor. He faded away slowly. 

The Hannah House sounds like an interesting place to investigate. Is it haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 424 - Thomas House Hotel

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Moment in Oddity - Seneca Village (Suggested by: Jennifer Guthrie) 

Central Park in New York City breaks up the metropolitan expanse of skyscrapers with a natural space. Back in the early 1800s, lower Manhattan had become a dangerous place and very crowded. Plots in the open countryside that would eventually become Central Park were very cheap. John and Elizabeth Whitehead had owned the farm land here and they started selling plots. The first man to buy a plot was a black shoe shiner named Andrew Williams. Several hundred people of color bought up more plots and they founded Seneca Village. Irish and German immigrants came to the area as well. This village was a perfect example of racial harmony for a middle-class group of people. On July 21, 1853 that all ended when New York City used eminent domain to take ownership of Seneca Village, so they could make Central Park to satisfy the wealthy New York families. And the history and evidence of Seneca Village just disappeared. And what was allowed to be told about the village were lies, claiming that it had been home to squatters and was swampland offering little more than squalid conditions. This changed in the 1990s when historians began to piece together the truth. Archaeological digs have also taken place to ascertain where the village was and to uncover more information. Managing to disappear a whole village and hide the truth about it for over a hundred years, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Tenley Albright Becomes First American Female to Win World Figure Skating Championship

In the month of February, on the 15th, in 1953, Tenley Albright became the first American female to win the world figure skating championship. Tenley began her skating career as a young girl on a man-made flooded and iced over area behind the family home. Her father had created the space for her and her friends. She started entering competitions when she was 11-years-old. And then polio hit. Tenley's case was mild and rehab honed her skating skills. She won a silver medal at the 1952 Olympics, but eclipsed that with her world championship win. She performed feats never performed by a female skater before. In an age when we have women that are performing quads, it may not sound impressive that Tenley pulled off a double axel, double loop, double rittbereer and double solchow, but at the time it was amazing. Many thought that she would go on to become a professional skater, but she opted for school. She competed at the Winter Olympics in 1956 and became the first American female gold medalist in figure skating and then entered Harvard Medical School, following in the footsteps of her surgeon father. She became a noted surgeon. Today, she is 86 and lives in Massachusetts.

Thomas House Hotel

The 1880s were a time of great interest in the healing powers of mineral springs and one of those springs we haven't covered yet was Red Boiling Springs in Tennessee. Hotels often were built near these springs and one of them that was constructed here is today known as the Thomas House Hotel. This seems to be an incredibly haunted location that has been featured on several paranormal television shows and the hotel regularly offers ghost hunts. Join us for the history and haunts of the Thomas House Hotel!

Red Boiling Springs is in a valley on the Highland Rim in Macon County in the Upper Cumberland region of Middle Tennessee. This is about 70 miles northeast of Nashville. Mineral springs were not the first things to bring people into the Red Boiling Springs area. A salt lick attracted animals and Native Americans and so the area was named Salt Lick Creek. Attracting animals was good fro hunting and men like Daniel Boone traversed the animal trails leaving their mark behind. He carved 1775 and his name on a beech tree here. Land grants were issued starting in the 1780s. The city of Salt Lick Creek was officially founded with a post office in 1829. By 1847, the town had been renamed Red Boiling Springs in honor of the red-colored sulfur mineral water that bubbled up from springs. 

There were several types of mineral waters here, differentiated mostly by color names. There was Red Water, which had iron and sulphur and high levels of calcium and magnesium with a somewhat agreeable taste. Black Water had the same minerals, but had a horrible taste and turned silver coins black. The White Water was used for dyspepsia. Freestone Water had very little mineral content so tasted pretty good. The Double and Twist Water apparently made drinkers do that, so we imagine it was pretty gross. People not only drank the waters, but also soaked or bathed in them.

Attention was brought to these springs by a woman named Aunt Sooky Goad. She claimed that she drank from the sulfur water and that it cured her issue with dropsy. Dropsy was a term used for an accumulation of excess water in body tissue. Basically this would be like edema from congestive heart failure. She developed a salve from the water that she called Aunt Sooky's Salve and she sold it as a medical product. Aunt Sooky's brother, John D. Kirby, also claimed that the mineral water had healed his sore eyes. People started coming to the area and setting up tents, so they could partake of the healing waters.

Most of these springs were on the Jesse Jones farm and he happily sold a 20 acre plot surrounding the springs to a businessman named Samuel Hare. Hare envisioned a great enterprise. He had seen other businessman around the country buy up land near mineral springs and then build inns to bring people in to partake of the health benefits of the water. And we love that these entrepreneurs did this kind of thing because it seems like nearly all of these hotels connected to these mineral springs have hauntings. One has to wonder if the use of these waters that were considered sacred by the indigineous people who lived near them led to these hauntings because elemental land and water spirits have been angered. Samuel Hare did go on to build his inn in 1844, but he didn't focus on the roads which were very poor. Those poor roads and the remoteness of his inn, led to it being closed by the 1870s.

James Bennett was the next businessman to step up and try his hand at running a resort at the springs. In 1876, he opened up his resort, which was several log cabins and a dining hall. A stagecoach line had been developed between Gallatin and Red Boiling Springs, which helped this endeavour to be more successful. New York businessman James F.O. Shaughnesy bought the tract of land from Bennett in the 1880s and started developing a bigger resort. Zack and Clay Cloyd were general store owners in Red Boiling Springs and they decided to take advantage of the growing reputation of the town as a mineral spring resort. They built the Cloyd Hotel in 1890. This was a two-story white weatherboard building with long two-story verandas. In 1905, the Red Boiling Springs Water and Realty Company was formed and bought the initial tract from Shaughnesy. Ten years later they replaced Shaughnesy's hotel with a bigger and more lavish hotel they called The Palace.

Several other hotels would be built including the Central Hotel and the Donoho. The springs here did well into the 1930s, which was better than most areas, and there was plenty of entertainment too. Lots of games were played and circuses would come to town, as well as minstrel shows. Red Boiling Springs had its height of popularity during World War I and II. Eventually, people lost interest in the springs and the hotels fell into disrepair. The town became a shell of its former self and then a large flood in 1969 destroyed many businesses and homes and killed two little girls. But the former Cloyd Hotel, now known as the Thomas House Hotel, is still here and apparently, crazy haunted. The current hotel is not the original. That one burned down in 1924. It was rebuilt by Joseph H. Peters in 1927. He had purchased the hotel from the Cloyd's in 1916 when they could no longer afford to run it and he continued to call it the Cloyd Hotel. The hotel was kept at two-stories with 50 rooms and two community bathrooms, but this one was built from red brick and had an arcaded portico, as described by its application for historical designation. This confused us a bit because arcades and porticoes are different, so we aren't sure why this verbiage was used. Porticoes have horizontal beams across the top versus the arches of arcades. The red bricks were made on-site. The hotel offered patrons three meals a day served family style.

The hotel was bought by Dr. A.T. Hall in 1950 and he updated the hotel, adding a bowling alley, miniature golf course and swimming pool. Unfortunately, Edwin Ward Rush, would drown in that pool in 1961 at the age of seven. Professional wrestler Lester Morgan bought the hotel in 1973 and he held onto it for a short period of time. He was foreclosed on in 1974, unable to make the hotel profitable even though he kept a live bear inside the hotel as entertainment. Evan Moss bought the property and opened up the Mossy Creek Summer Camp for children in 1983. The camp closed in 1988 and the Anzara Corporation bought the building and renamed it the Anzara Hotel. This was not a real business group, it was actually a religious cult. This hotel and the other two still open in Red Boiling Springs were used as basically a commune. Not much is known about this group, but they are described as an Armageddon cult that liked to summon the dead. 

Penni Goode Evans wrote of her time with the cult in her article "My Time with a Cult, "We stayed at all three hotels in Red Boiling at different times, but for a few months we lived at the Anzara.  I was seventeen then and very naive, I knew nothing of cults or anything like that, and wasn't even sure they WERE a cult until we'd left and Dateline or one of those shows did a piece on them, somewhere around 1990.  By the time they did the piece, the cult had picked up and split.  Anyway, my boyfriend and I got a room at the Anzara.  At that time, there was a very big, hard-nosed woman who owned the hotel (she was the leader of the cult) and in the beginning, I thought they were just Baptists or something and I remember telling her, "I'm a Christian......Baptist?" - She just looked at me like I was stupid. Our room was downstairs by the laundry room. I remember some strange people staying there, which I chalked up to just people being strange.  My seventeen year old mind was blown, though, one night, very late, when my boyfriend went down to the kitchen (we were allowed use of the kitchen)  and saw the people staying at the hotel, naked, and dancing in the dining room.  He ran back to our room, like, "What the fuck did I just see?"  ---- I remember, also, there was a very rich lady staying at the hotel.  I now know the cult was milking her for her money, but back then, I wasn't hip to people and their motives.  Anyway, so this fancy pants lady was from New York City and she had a little white dog and she and I would sit on the swing on the front porch and I would smoke her Pall Mall filterless cigarettes with her (and almost die because they had no filter!)  and we had a lot of long talks.  I don't remember now about what but, I really liked this lady. I do remember that she was sad and she seemed very lonely. It was summer then, and I recall that she drank a lot of sweet tea. -- Funny, as I think of our time there, I also remember that there was a front desk in the foyer, with an old fashioned cash register, and back then, it cost fifty dollars a week to stay at the hotel and my boyfriend would pay our fee, and then, when the cult leaders were out of sight, he would go back and hit the NO SALE button, and take our money back."

The Anzara Corporation collapsed in 1992. A fire in the 1990s destroyed one of the wings, but this was rebuilt. Today, the hotel is owned by the Cole family who acquired it in 1993, and features a 125 seat dining room with a stage that hosts events and shows. There are 15 rooms with private bathrooms for rent. And they offer Ghost Hunt Weekends. Chad Morin, owner of Ghost Hunt Weekends said, "We go every month and several times a month, and fans of the paranormal can join us. We have dinner. We show you our documentary that it took me about six years to produce, and it tells about the history and the haunts of the Thomas House Hotel and of the area.We’ve had doors opening and closing. We’ve had a ball captured on video roll across the floor. We’ve heard screams. We’ve hard talking. We’ve heard whistling. We’ve seen shadow people. We’ve seen the apparition of a little child and another one of a tall man, that the only thing we can figure out is that he’s the previous hotel owner from the 1900s that still wanders the halls. It’s a great time. There’s nothing evil or malevolent there. It seems like the spirits there are the previous hotel owner and some children. It seems like they enjoy being there and the company."

The most haunted room at the hotel is said to be Room 37. Loud crashes have been heard, the sound of bricks falling even though no bricks are found laying around and a shadow figure has been seen going through the front door and then it stood next to a chair before disappearing. The young daughter of one of the Cloyd Brothers, Sarah, died at the hotel and her spirit has been seen, mainly in Room 37. So that room is full of toys for Sarah. A guest who fell off a horse and died is thought to haunt the property too. Cherry Cole was so unsettled by things going on at the hotel that she was unwilling to be in it at night. Guests hear a man whistling through the hotel and guests sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to see a female apparition staring down at them.

In 2012 during Season 8, Ghost Hunters visited the location. Cherry told Jason and Grant that people regularly heard footsteps walking around above them when nobody is on the upper floor. Her husband Derrell claimed to have seen the apparition of an elderly man, but he didn't know it was a ghost until he asked him if he could help him and he disappeared right before his eyes. Apparently, Mr. Cloyd whistled all the time and so they think he is The Whistler. Their daughter-in-law Destiny said that one night she was looking down as she walked the hallway and she ran into something. She looked up and there was a tall, thin man standing there. She had never seen him before and when he disappeared, she realized he was a ghost. A lady dressed in pink has been seen by a member of the Cole family too. She had white hair, smiled and then faded away.

During the investigation, Jason and Grant heard disembodied footsteps on the second floor and like something being dragged. There was also audible whistling. It was really loud and I got chills listening to it. Adam and Amy asked for the spirit to knock to let them know it was there and there was a knock. They asked for two knocks and there were two knocks. This was in Room 16. Amy and Adam were whistling in the area where The Whistler made noise with Grant and Jason and they heard whistling in response. Tango and Steve heard a female voice moaning, They thought it might have been Sarah. Later, in an area that had a ton of dolls, Jason and Grant were calling out to Sarah and asking if she wanted to play with the dolls and they heard the audible voice of a little girl. We heard it too, very clear. Something like "those are my toys" or "I like toys." Amy did the flashlight experiment with Sarah and she turned off the flashlight when asked. And then she stopped playing with the flashlight. Amy asked if she stopped playing because she as told to stop and the light turned on. The spirit let her know that she was more than 5-years-old.

Katrina and Jack visited this location in Season 2 of Portals to Hell. They think they communicated with an Elemental. Katrina saw a tiny blue light and then shortly after that Jack saw a shadow move across behind their camera man Scott. As Jack was describing that, he, Katrina and a producer all saw another orb of light appear and then disappear. They caught it on camera and it was weird. A dark force has been traced to a hallway and the camera in that hallway shut off when they were in there. Jack claimed that this force kept waking him up in the middle of the night and Katrina said that it had pulled hard on her ear. They did a Geo Box session in the Cloyd Chapel that is also owned by the Cole family. This has been an ongoing restoration project for the Coles, Ghost Hunt Weekends and author Kyl Cobb. When they asked if someone was in there, "Hell no" came through the box. (Thomas 1) Then the name Rohepeshal came through the box and Katrina repeated it and the box said it again. It was said that Rohepeshal is an Algonquian word for 'spirit'. A whole group of coyotes started howling outside suddenly when they decided to go dark and silent. Maybe just a coincidence, but since they thought they were dealing with an elemental, it was a bit chilling to hear. This elemental seems to be connected to the water and possibly angry because the springs were sucked dry by people. So it isn't just the hotel that is haunted, but perhaps the entire area where the springs were.

This hotel seems like a quaint place to stay, but guests might get more than they bargained for. Is the Thomas House Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 419 - Holly Hotel

Moment in Oddity - Eggnog Riot of 1826

Ever heard of an Eggnog Riot? How about a Grog Mutiny? In December of 1826, the United States Academy at West Point, with all of its discipline, descended into a drunken riotous party. Colonel Sylvanus Thayer was in charge of the school and he had banned drinking, tobacco and gambling. Eggnog had become popular and more readily available at this time in America. George Washington was known to enjoy his eggnog with a liberal amount of rum or whiskey. The soldiers at West Point were determined to celebrate Christmas with some spirits. They snuck in gallons of brandy, rum, whiskey and wine and planned to mix it with homemade eggnog. The officer assigned to watch the North Barracks, Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock, went to bed on Christmas Day thinking that the cadets were not going to throw a party. He was wrong and the cadets in the North Barracks started partying. By 4am, the party was spiraling out of control. The Captain was awakened and he entered one of the party rooms and told the cadets their party was unlawful and they were going to be punished. The drunken cadets turned on him, throwing rocks through his window. They also rampaged through the hallways with muskets, bayonets and swords and even took shots at the Captain. Things ballooned into a riot with more than one-third of the cadets involved. When everything wrapped up, 70 cadets were implicated with 20 of them court-martialed. An eggnog riot, especially at West Point, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Avalanche in Peru Kills Thousands

In the month of January, on the 10th, in 1962, and avalanche kills thousands in Peru. There were several small farming communities that had formed in the Rio Santa Valley in the shadow of Mount Huascaran, part of the Andes Mountains. This mountain was notorious for cracking off ice and snow, but villagers usually had plenty of warning to get to higher ground. On this particular day, things happened so fast that there was no escape. The block of ice that broke off was the size of two skyscrapers and weighed millions of ton. The avalanche it created traveled nine-and-a-half miles in only seven minutes. Whole towns were buried in up to 40 feet of ice and mud and trees. Barely anyone survived. Four thousand people were believed to have died with many bodies never being recovered. Some washed away as far as the Pacific Ocean in flooding created by the avalanche. That was a distance of 100 miles.

Holly Hotel (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

The Holly Hotel is located in Holly, Michigan and has survived through several fires, the Great Depression, two world wars and a visit from the infamous temperance leader Carrie Nation. This is a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian that once provided lodging to railroad men and is today a popular restaurant that reputedly is full of ghosts. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of the Holly Hotel!

Holly, Michigan is a village located in the thumb area of the mitten about 55 miles northwest of Detroit. Nathan Herrick was the first settler to arrive in 1830. A little over a decade later, a sawmill and a grist mill were built and in 1850, the village was official when the post office was opened. At the time it was known as Holly Mills. The name changed to Holly officially in 1861. No one knows for sure where the name came from. Holly does grow in the area and an earlier settler named Jonathan Allen did come from Mount Holly, New Jersey so there are multiple possibilities. When the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad came to town, twenty-five trains a day stopped here and the village began to prosper. Soon hotels were needed for railroad men and travelers and the Hirst Hotel would open in 1891.

John Henry Hirst was born in 1857 and he built the first hotel to stand on the site at 110 Martha Street in 1891, naming it after himself. Martha Street was mainly known as Battle Alley because of all the street fights that took place here and the name stuck into the modern era, so the street is officially known as Battle Alley today. The structure was built from wood and was soon destroyed in a fire that happened in April of 1892. Hirst decided to rebuild and chose to use bricks this time. This would also be a more elaborate hotel. He hired George Stanard and John Laneto to design and build it. The new hotel was built from red brick in the Queen Anne style and was two and half stories with a gabled hip-roof and every modern convenience of the time. It was completed at a cost of $16,000 and was said to be the finest hotel in Oakland County with the largest dining room in the area. Hirst's wife Lydia died in 1903 and he remarried in 1904. He held onto the hotel for a couple more years and decided to sell, which he did in August of 1906 to a man named Alfred Jones. Jones then immediately transferred ownership to a man named F.W. Johnson and then leased it from him for two years.

The site would suffer its second fire and this new hotel would have the first of two major fires it would endure in July of 1907. The roof was completely destroyed and the interior had smoke and water damage. The interior was restored and the roof was replaced and the hotel would change its name to the Holly Inn. The following year would bring another force of nature to the hotel. Carrie Nation brought her hatchet to town on August 29, 1908. She brought a group of Pro-Temperance supporters with her and they used umbrellas to club patrons at the Holly Hotel. Nation was already angry about the drinking, but when she saw the painting of a scantily clad woman above the bar she weilded her ax and took out a row of whiskey bottles. The owner had Nation arrested and when Governor Fred Warner heard that news, he made his way to town to use the incarceration for political means. He popped into Holly to make a re-election campaign speech, which had a spotlight on it. Nation got out of prison and confronted the Governor yelling, "You're a coward!" since he wouldn't crack down on liquor. The Governor left town quickly after that. The Holly Hotel commemorates Nation's visit every year with a re-enactment of her visit, but we imagine without the busted alcohol bottle. They also have a special menu and, of course, drink specials.

The second major fire for the hotel happened on January 19, 1913 and The Flint Journal reported, "Fire which is believed to have originated in a clothes chute where someone carelessly threw a match, totally destroyed the Holly Inn here yesterday. The estimated loss is $20,000, of which only $8,000 was covered by insurance. The fire had worked its way up the elevator shaft to the third floor before being discovered. The flames were noticed by several persons at the same time, and when the fire department reached the hotel the roof was ablaze. The hotel was a brick structure, built in 1892. It was owned by Mrs. Marie Powell, of Pontiac, and conducted by Otis Kennedy. Very little furniture or clothing was saved from the fire, and several of the guests had narrow escapes."

Mrs. Powell decided to sell the property rather than rebuild. Joseph P. Allen became the new owner and he was going to add a new element to the hotel when he rebuilt. He had obtained a liquor license, so there would now be a bar. Allen rebuilt the front entrance with a Tuscan columned porch and took the top story off the corner tower. The interior had elegant custom millwork with rich woods, tin ceilings, lead glass, luxurious velvets and plaster walls. The restaurant featured china and fine linens. Joseph renamed the hotel for himself, The Allendorf, taking inspiration from New York's Waldorf Hotel. People came from all over the Midwest just to eat here. The Sunday dinners were famous and priced at 50 cents per person. Things went great until Prohibition came to town and shut down the bar, Allen innovated and added an ice cream parlor and movie theater to try to make up the revenue lost at the bar. He sold the hotel in 1930 to Henry Norton who changed the name to Hotel Norton. It was at this time that the hotel mainly became a dining establishment as rail travel dropped off drastically. 

In a bizarre synchronicity only HGB listeners could appreciate, the hotel suffered another devastating fire exactly 65 years to the day as the 1913 blaze. Some accounts claim it was even exact to the hour. Faulty wiring completely gutted the interior. The ruined building was bought by local residents Dr. Leslie Sher and his wife and they decided that if they were going to rebuild, they were going to return the hotel to the way it looked in 1892 and that's just what they did, which included salvaging pressed tin from the ceiling and ceramic tiles from the floor. They used local historians to help ensure everything was painstakingly exact to as the hotel had been in its glory days. They reopened in 1979 as a fine dining restaurant and they called it the  Historic Holly Hotel. The following year it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today, the Holly Hotel is owned by George and Chrissy Kutlenios. The hotel still has its three-story, helmut-domed, octagonal corner tower and hip-roof. There are three main floor dining rooms and two private banquet rooms. The Holly Hotel is one of the few properties to have had continual food service into three centuries. And the hotel is going to be featured in a Hallmark-style Christmas Movie named "Christmas at the Holly Hotel" in 2022. You know, home town girl leaves New York to help folks run the hotel and she falls in love with the police chief.

The Holly Hotel website says, "True to historic accounts from the turn of the century, the Main Dining Room has been decorated in burgundies, mauves and warm, dark oak, all typifying the Victorian Era. Rich Axminster carpeting provides an elegant field for the Victorian pedestal tables red velvet wing-back chairs, and arched, stained glass windows. Authentic Victorian gas fixtures reflect a soft light from the embossed tin ceilings. The dining rooms, each with it’s own distinctive character, have been appointed to blend true Victorian tradition with the spirit of the bustling railroad era." The restaurant has won numerous awards. Many of their recipes date back to the original hotel. And they have a comedy club here that has hosted the likes of Soupy Sales, Jackie Vernon, Bill Mahar, Pat Paulsen, Judy Tenta and Tim Allen. 

Octobers are special at the hotel. This establishment embraces its spirits, and we aren't talking about the ones Carrie Nation busted up. Several paranormal groups have investigated here and captured evidence and the end of October features Victorian seances. And they offer a special haunted dinner menu. And the fun with ghosts continues into December when the hotel hosts the Spirit of Christmas with an Olde Fashioned Christmas Celebration, complete with characters from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Professor of Parapsychology Norman Gauthier visited the hotel in 1989 and declared that it was "loaded with spirits." And many people agree with him believing that the Holly Hotel is the most haunted historic building in Michigan and maybe even one of the most haunted hotels in America.

Hotel owner Chrissy Kutlenios said in an article in 2009 that she had heard hundreds of experiences from guests and employees in the 30 years she had owned the building at that point. She even had her own experience in February of 1996. On that particular morning, she entered the building and began to walk the dining rooms for a quick morning inspection. When she came around a corner, she saw the full-body apparition of a Native American Indian, minus his feet. She said of it, "It was strikingly real and in three seconds it was gone. It was a very, very frightening experience and one that I haven’t been able to recreate." The spirit was only seen that one time and has never returned. This is very interesting because one has to wonder what a Native American spirit would be doing inside this hotel. Was there something he was connected to with the land?

One of the most widely experienced unexplained happenings are phantom smells. So here we go with our nose pictures again, but they are pretty reliable, especially when it comes to cigar smoke and old lady perfume. There is no smoking in the building, but the original owner of the hotel, John Hirst, enjoyed his cigars. And we imagine several bar patrons did as well. Guests claim to catch a scent of cigar tobacco on occasion describing it as barely a whiff at times and overpowering at others. And a flowery perfume is often detected as well. Mr. Hirst is the most prominent ghost here and he shows up in ways that are not just olfactory. He has appeared as a full-bodied apparition although that is very rare. When he is seen, he is wearing a frock coat and top hat. Hirst generally sticks to the top of the stairs, but has been seen a few times in the Carry Nation Banquet Room. The lower level of the Hotel once had the tonsorial parlor and he likes this area as well, especially with the cigar smoke. For those who don't know, a tonsorial parlor was a fancy barber shop. EVPs of someone believed to be Hirst have been captured. These usually feature a faint, baritone laugh. A couple of employees claim to have heard this audibly as well.

When the investigation group Highland Ghost Hunters investigated the building, they claimed that the door to the attic swung open by itself even though it was supposed to be locked. A medium named Kirsten Stanley-Morin felt an overwhelming presence of a woman when she visited the hotel. People believe this may be Nora Kane. She was the hotel hostess in the early 1900s. Her portrait is on display in the restaurant's main lobby wearing a mourning dress. She was a beautiful and petite woman who enjoyed playing music, so if you hear piano music in the air when no one is at the piano, it is probably her playing the tune. Her soft disembodied singing is heard as well. Occasionally, people playing at the piano have heard a feminine voice whisper in their ear a tune she would like to hear. The perfume scent that people have detected is thought to be hers. She likes to hang out in the turret area in the main bar and the back hallway. Nora's figure has been captured in photos, particularly during weddings that are hosted at the hotel. She is usually wearing a beautiful dress and looks graceful, but what convinces people that she doesn't belong in the pictures is that she is cut off at the knees. 

And then there is the ghost in the kitchen. Nora Kane had a daughter and she is wearing the mourning dress in her portrait because that daughter passed away. This little girl ghost likes to hang out in the kitchen and she plays with many of the pots, pans, dishes and utensils, moving them all around . Many of these date back to the turn of the century. It is a bit troubling that her favorite implement is a meat clever. This spirit sometimes plays on the banquet room steps as well, running up and down them. And there are some who claim that this actually might be the spirit of another little girl who died in an accident in the livery stable. Possibly there are spirits of two little girls here. The spirit that has materialized sometimes appears to be between the ages of ten and thirteen and she has red hair. She is a happy and playful spirit whoever she might be as her disembodied giggling is heard. This young ghost made its presence known during a seance in the early 1990s.

There is an animal spirit here too that many people believe is the Hirst's rat terrier dog that they named Leona. The sound of a dog running in the hallways is heard even though there are no animals in the building. The feeling of an animal brushing up against a leg has been felt by guests and employees. And disembodied barking is heard, especially in the early morning hours by kitchen staff. 

Sally wrote in 2016, "I live in Holly and frequent the Hotel quite often for their tea hour and Sunday brunches. It took several times before I finally had an experience. To be honest it wasn’t even on my radar, and was the very last thing on my mind. When you live here in Holly you hear about it all the time and eventually take it with a grain of salt. While in the bathroom freshening up, all alone standing at the sink I had the most cliche of experiences, but one that frightened me to the core. The air became very cold, not drafty but icy. I looked at myself in the mirror and actually saw my hair moving from the breeze (there are no windows in the bathroom) as I turned to leave I actually turned my body so I was face to face with a woman. She was most definitely not of this world. She had very long black hair, her head was down and her arms were out as if she wanted me to hand her something. She looked to be “misty” with very torn clothing and greasy looking hair. I tore out of there faster than I have ever moved in my life! While in the basement on another occasion at the comedy club, we were some of the first to arrive. We ordered our cocktails and were chatting when the same cold air came in. It’s a completely different feel than a cool breeze from outdoors. It actually makes the hair on your neck and arms stand up and the eerie feeling that comes with it is unmistakable. We stayed for the show with no further incidents, but I am now a true believer."

Robin wrote in 2018, "My Aunt and Uncle owned the Holly Hotel for many years. They operated it as a boarding house, bar, package liquor store, pool hall and restaurant, serving hamburgers and pizza. They lived on the second floor in a large apartment. It always smelled like cigars, everywhere We had the run of the place. We had experiences down in the cellar/basement where we played on our Uncles old /illegal slot machines and often times when we ran up and down the large staircases. We just got use to the fact that our balls would be moved around on the old pool tales or “someone” would brush past us on the stairs. We would say things like “hey, leave my #3 ball alone.” or “you’re in my way,” while on the stairs. Nothing too frightening ever happened. As an older adult we had a lunch at the Holly Hotel after our Aunt died five years ago. We, again, went all over the building and the only place I felt some presence was in the lady’s bathroom."

Alex Cripps was a former employee and he said, "I never believed in it until I decided to work here, and it’s one of those things that you have no choice of not believing. There’s just too much activity. It’s just too frequent to just pass it off as something else and act like it’s nothing." Based on all these accounts, it does seem that paranormal activity is frequent here. It would be cool if that Christmas movie manages to capture some evidence during filming. Is the Holly Hotel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 415 - The Ramsey House

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

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

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

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

 The Ramsey House (Suggested by: Tammie Burroughs)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haunted Knoxville Ghost Tours