HGB Ep. 358 - The Ghosts of Whitechapel

Moment in Oddity - The Great Pumpkin Weighs As Much As Volkswagon

When Diane was a kid, her family grew pumpkins in their little backyard garden. For several of those years, they managed to grow at least one really large pumpkin. Diane's dad would carve out the pumpkin and the elementary school would display it at the front counter area. They would then bring it home for Halloween to grace the front porch. The largest pumpkin was big enough for four kids to sit on top comfortably. We all are aware that giant pumpkin growing contests are held at this time of year and the winner for 2020 was the Great Pumpkin indeed. Travis Gienger is a horticulture teacher who lives in Anoka, Minnesota, which also just happens to officially be the Halloween Capital, and he grew the winning pumpkin. He drove his giant pumpkin 35 hours to California for its official weigh-in. The pumpkin tipped the scales at a whopping 2,350 pounds. That means this pumpkin weighed more than Volkswagen Bug! This also earned him a prize of $16,450. That's a lot of pumpkin pie filling and that huge pumpkin, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Explosion During Ice Show at Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum

In the month of October, on the 31st, in 1963, a propane gas explosion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum killed 74 people and injured 400. The fairgrounds was hosting a "Holiday on Ice" skating exhibition inside the building and the skaters were just finishing up their final piece in the show and the group was gliding into a pinwheel formation. Suddenly, some propane gas that had leaked from a rusty tank in the concession area ignited and the explosion it created shot a ball of fire up through the south side seats. People and chairs went flying. A huge crater had been blown in the ground and many people fell into it and were buried by concrete. Fifty-four people were killed on the scene and another 20 died later. Indianapolis Star reporter Richard R. Roberts wrote of the event, "You walked into a nightmare. This was the worst thing I have seen since combat in World War II. The lights above still cast a bluish light onto the ice show. A red satin slipper lay on the ice. Three feet away was a pool of blood. A gray-haired man lay on his back staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Ambulance attendants threw a gray blanket across him. Chairs were scattered like ten-pins on the south end of the big building. The fairgrounds itself was almost like a battleground." Several people were indicted by a grand jury: the state fire marshal, the Indianapolis fire chief, the general manager and the concessions manager of the Coliseum and officers of the propane gas company. Only the president of the gas supplier was convicted, which was later overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court. Victims and survivors got $4.6 million in settlements.

Ghosts of Whitechapel

Jack the Ripper. That name can cause one's blood to run cold. No serial killer is as famous as Jack the Ripper. He was birthed during a time long before the term serial killer was devised by the FBI. His crimes were horrific and remain unsolved to this day. Since these multiple murders happened 130 years ago, Jack the Ripper is considered one of the first serial killers in documented history, although students of history know that serialized killing has been with us since man first discovered he could take a life. This killer was unique in that he seemed to be the first who reveled in provoking the police. The area where these crimes were committed, Whitechapel, would hold onto its infamous reputation. On this episode we will examine the crimes, talk about the victims, theorize on who the killer may have been and share the hauntings that have plagued Whitechapel ever since.  

Many people may not know that there are possibly eleven victims that could be attributed to Jack the Ripper. That is why the term canonical is used when referencing the five victims that historians and detectives have always connected with confidence to Jack the Ripper. These crimes took place in Whitechapel, London in 1888. The five victims were Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. Most of them were murdered in a 31 day time frame that abruptly ended. No one knows for sure why there was an abrupt end. Did the killer die? Was this just a sudden killing spree that he got out of his system? Did he leave the area? Was he arrested for some other crime? Let's first look at the area where the crimes were committed.

The Whitechapel of late 19th century London was overcrowded and dirty. Living and working conditions were deplorable and the sanitary conditions were terrible. Single gas lamps guttered along the maze of streets and alleyways, offering very little light. The smell of animal and human excrement hung heavy in the air. Around 15,000 people were homeless and unemployed and for those that could get housing, they usually shared it with another family to make ends meet. Single people would be crammed into large rooms with around 80 other people and pay four pence for a bed for the night. Death for children was common and only around half the children in Whitechapel would live to see the age of five. Prostitution was often the only choice for women and during the Victorian Period, around 1,200 prostitutes were working in Whitechapel. Typically, these women were bloated, sick and missing teeth because they were alcoholics and they looked far older than their real age. Many would be attacked by their clients and rarely did the police pay any attention to these complaints. So when the Ripper started his attacks, the police were not really concerned.

Martha Tabram also went by the name Martha Turner and there are those who believe she could have been the Ripper's first victim. She was born Martha White in 1849 and married a man named Henry Tabram in 1869. This marriage would be very troubled as Martha was an alcoholic. The couple had two children before Henry finally left in 1875. Martha eventually took up with another Henry. His last name was Turner and she would take his name although they never married. Her drinking would end this relationship as well and she found herself in need of income. There were not many options and eventually she was selling her body on the streets of Whitechapel. This is what she was doing in the early morning hours of August 7th in 1888. She and a client that she had met in a bar where she was drinking with another prostitute, walked to George Yard. The body of Martha Tabram was found in George Yard around 3:30am by a cab driver. He left her on a landing where he assumed she had passed out drunk, so the authorities were not notified until 5am when a resident of the building realized she was dead. Martha had been stabbed 39 times, so we're not sure why the cab driver thought she was just sleeping. Nine of the stabs were to her throat, two in the right lung, five in the left lung, five in the liver, two in the spleen, one in the heart and six in the stomach. Historians do not consider her a Ripper victim because her throat was not slit and she was not disemboweled. But the killing was frenzied, which might be something a first time serial killer would do until he had refined his method of attack. She was killed in a very violent way with a knife, in a secluded area and on a day that was near a holiday, which was the same as the five main canonical victims. So her being a victim is very possible.

The first canonical victim is Mary Nichols. She lived a rough life as so many women did in Victorian Whitechapel and much of it was her own making. She had married William Nichols in 1864 and they had five children. She left William and the children in 1881 mainly because she was an alcoholic. He continued to support her until he heard that she was working as a prostitute which meant he no longer was responsible for supporting her. Mary worked some odd jobs and was placed in a workhouse and finally ended up as a maid in Wandsworth. She left that job after stealing clothes from her employer and lived in a common lodging house with another woman in 1888. On the night of August 30th, Nichols was in need of money to obtain a bed and so she went out on the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road wearing a new bonnet. Her roommate met up with her an hour before her death and asked if Nichols had made any money. She replied that she had made enough for the bed three times over and when her roommate asked to see the money, Nichols remarked that she had spent it on drink. This was the last time Nichols was seen alive.

A carman named Charles Allen Cross found Nichols' body on the ground in front of a gated stable on Buck's Row, which is today Durward Street, at 3:40 AM. Cross asked another man for his opinion on whether Nichols was dead and this man was unsure. They went looking for a policeman and found PC Jonas Mizen. Cross told him, "She looks to me to be either dead or drunk, but for my part, I believe she's dead." Mizen inspected the body and another policeman named John Neale joined him. He flashed his lantern to get another policeman to join them. This was John Thain. The policemen questioned people in the area, but nobody had heard or seen a thing. PC Thain got surgeon Dr Henry Llewellyn to come to the scene and he found that Mary had been stabbed multiple times. Her throat had been slit twice from left to right and her abdomen had been mutilated with several incisions and one deep jagged wound. There was little blood, only "about enough to fill two large wine glasses, or half a pint at the most". The abdominal wounds took about five minutes to perform and were made by the murderer after she was dead. The attack was brutal and savage, but quick and quiet. The police decided they needed a man with a knowledge of the area to come in and help and that man was Inspector Frederick George Abberline. Abberline had spent fourteen years as a detective in the district where the Ripper crimes occurred. He was a well respected man and suited to the work.

Annie Chapman was the second canonical victim. She was born Eliza Ann Smith in 1841 and married John Chapman in 1869. They had three children. Their youngest was named John also and he was born disabled in 1880. They lost their eldest daughter in 1882 and both of these things are thought to have led the couple to drinking and eventually separating in 1884. Chapman moved in with another man, but John continued to support her until he died from alcoholism. When the man she lived with left her soon after, she became very depressed and people started calling her "Dark Annie." She sold flowers and did crochet work, but it was never enough and she soon was prostituting herself on the streets of Whitechapel. Annie found herself in the same predicament as Nichols in the early morning hours of September 8th in 1888. She needed money for lodging and decided to turn some tricks. Her body was discovered at 6am by a resident of Number 29 named John Davis. She was on the ground near the doorway in the backyard. A witness named Mrs. Elizabeth Long testified at an inquest that she had seen Chapman talking to a man at about 5:30am just beyond the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. The woman may have seen Chapman's murderer and she described him as over forty, a little taller than Chapman, dark haired a foreign and shabby appearance that entailed him wearing a deer-stalker hat and dark overcoat.

Dr George Bagster Phillips was the police surgeon and he described how he found the body, "The left arm was placed across the left breast. The legs were drawn up, the feet resting on the ground, and the knees turned outwards. The face was swollen and turned on the right side. The tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The tongue was evidently much swollen. The front teeth were perfect as far as the first molar, top and bottom and very fine teeth they were. The body was terribly mutilated ... the stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but was evidently commencing. He noticed that the throat was dissevered deeply; that the incision through the skin were jagged and reached right round the neck ... On the wooden paling between the yard in question and the next, smears of blood, corresponding to where the head of the deceased lay, were to be seen. These were about 14 inches from the ground, and immediately above the part where the blood from the neck lay. The instrument used at the throat and abdomen was the same. It must have been a very sharp knife with a thin narrow blade, and must have been at least 6 to 8 inches in length, probably longer. He should say that the injuries could not have been inflicted by a bayonet or a sword bayonet. They could have been done by such an instrument as a medical man used for post-mortem purposes, but the ordinary surgical cases might not contain such an instrument. Those used by the slaughtermen, well ground down, might have caused them. He thought the knives used by those in the leather trade would not be long enough in the blade. There were indications of anatomical knowledge ... he should say that the deceased had been dead at least two hours, and probably more, when he first saw her; but it was right to mention that it was a fairly cool morning, and that the body would be more apt to cool rapidly from its having lost a great quantity of blood. There was no evidence ...of a struggle having taken place. He was positive the deceased entered the yard alive...A handkerchief was round the throat of the deceased when he saw it early in the morning. He should say it was not tied on after the throat was cut." Chapman's throat was cut from left to right and she had been disemboweled, with her intestines thrown out of her abdomen over each of her shoulders. The morgue examination revealed that part of her uterus was missing. Her murder was quickly linked to Nichols'.

Elizabeth Stride went by the nickname "Long Liz." She was different than the other victims in that she got into prostitution early in her life, not because of a failed marriage and the resulting poverty. She had been born in Sweden in 1843. She eventually married a man named John Thomas Stride and stopped working as a prostitute, but they separated eight years after marrying. She ended up in a lodging house for a time and then moved in with another man. They had a tempestuous relationship and she had broken up with him for a final time, four days before her death. Her body was found at 1am on September 30, 1888. She was wearing a black jacket and skirt and black crepe bonnet. A policeman had seen her with a man wearing a hard felt hat who was carrying a package about 18 inches in length. The murder had happened so close to her discovery by Louis Diemschutz that blood still flowed from a wound on her neck. Stride only had a slit throat and no mutilations, so people believe that the Ripper was interrupted while he was murdering Stride. It is believed he grabbed her from behind by a handkerchief around her neck and that he pinned her to the ground on her back with his knees as he quickly slashed her across the throat.

Since Jack the Ripper was interrupted before he could finish his work with Stride, he went out and found himself another victim. This would be Catherine Eddowes. She was born in 1842 and had two common law husbands. She had three children with the first one named Thomas Conway. She was an alcoholic and left the family in 1880 and took up with John Kelly. She started casual prostitution to help pay the bills. Friends said she was a jolly woman who loved to sing, but she had a fierce temper. On the night of her death, she had been arrested for public intoxication. She was sober enough to be released by 1am. She was found dead in Mitre Square at 1:45am by PC Edward Watkins. Police surgeon Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown wrote of the scene, "The body was on its back, the head turned to left shoulder. The arms by the side of the body as if they had fallen there. Both palms upwards, the fingers slightly bent. A thimble was lying off the finger on the right side. The clothes drawn up above the abdomen. The thighs were naked. Left leg extended in a line with the body. The abdomen was exposed. Right leg bent at the thigh and knee. The bonnet was at the back of the head—great disfigurement of the face. The throat cut. Across below the throat was a neckerchief. ... The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder—they were smeared over with some feculent matter. A piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design. The lobe and auricle of the right ear were cut obliquely through. There was a quantity of clotted blood on the pavement on the left side of the neck round the shoulder and upper part of the arm, and fluid blood-coloured serum which had flowed under the neck to the right shoulder, the pavement sloping in that direction. Body was quite warm. No death stiffening had taken place. She must have been dead most likely within the half hour. We looked for superficial bruises and saw none. No blood on the skin of the abdomen or secretion of any kind on the thighs. No spurting of blood on the bricks or pavement around. No marks of blood below the middle of the body. Several buttons were found in the clotted blood after the body was removed. There was no blood on the front of the clothes. There were no traces of recent connection." 

After a post-mortem he wrote, "After washing the left hand carefully, a bruise the size of a sixpence, recent and red, was discovered on the back of the left hand between the thumb and first finger. A few small bruises on right shin of older date. The hands and arms were bronzed. No bruises on the scalp, the back of the body, or the elbows. ... The cause of death was haemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate and the mutilations were inflicted after death ... There would not be much blood on the murderer. The cut was made by someone on the right side of the body, kneeling below the middle of the body. ... The peritoneal lining was cut through on the left side and the left kidney carefully taken out and removed. ... I believe the perpetrator of the act must have had considerable knowledge of the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them. The parts removed would be of no use for any professional purpose. It required a great deal of knowledge to have removed the kidney and to know where it was placed. Such a knowledge might be possessed by one in the habit of cutting up animals. I think the perpetrator of this act had sufficient time ... It would take at least five minutes. ... I believe it was the act of one person."

The police disagreed as to whether the killer was highly skilled with anatomical knowledge. At about 3 a.m. on the same day as Eddowes was murdered, a blood-stained fragment of her apron with fecal matter was found in the doorway leading to Flats 108 and 119, Model Dwellings, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Above it on the wall was a graffiti written in chalk that read: "The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing". The writing may or may not have been related to the murder, but either way it was washed away before dawn on the orders of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, who feared that it would spark anti-Jewish riots. 

On October 1st, a postcard that was called the "Saucy Jacky" postcard and signed "Jack the Ripper", was received by the Central News Agency. It claimed responsibility for Stride's and Eddowes' murders, and described the killing of the two women as the "double event." Since the postcard was mailed before the murders were public, the letter is thought to be legitimate. But the postmark was more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area and so police think a journalist wrote the letter as a hoax and many historians today believe the same thing. Then there was the "From hell" letter that came with a parcel on October 16, 1888. Inside the parcel was half a human kidney. The writer claimed to have "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. The handwriting and style were unlike that of the "Saucy Jacky" postcard.

Mary Kelly was the Ripper's last victim. She was known by a variety of aliases from Fair Emma to Marie Kelly to Ginger to Black Mary. It is believed she was born in 1863, but the details of her life are little known. She had lived with a man named Joseph Barnett before her death. Around 1879 is when it is thought that Kelly started prostitution. Most reports of Kelly claim that she was a pretty woman and liked to sing when she was drunk, but she could get abusive after drinking too. A woman who lived near Kelly reported on the night of her murder that Kelly came home with a stout ginger-haired man who was wearing a bowler hat. She went out again around 2am. Her body was found on the morning of November 9th by a man working for her landlord who was trying to collect her rent that she was six weeks late on paying. When Kelly didn't answer the door, he looked through the window and saw Kelly's mutilated body. The scene was horrific. The Ripper had a lot of time with the body since they were inside her room and he took full advantage.

Dr. Thomas Bond wrote of the scene, "The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen. The right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress. The elbow was bent, the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubis. The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone. The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table. 

The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, and on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in several places. The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features. The neck was cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the fifth and sixth being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis. The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage. Both breasts were more or less removed by circular incisions, the muscle down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were cut through and the contents of the thorax visible through the openings. The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. 

The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation, and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin fascia, and muscles as far as the knee. The left calf showed a long gash through skin and tissues to the deep muscles and reaching from the knee to five inches above the ankle. Both arms and forearms had extensive jagged wounds. The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about one inch long, with extravasation of blood in the skin, and there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition. On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken and torn away. The left lung was intact. It was adherent at the apex and there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung there were several nodules of consolidation. The pericardium was open below and the heart absent. In the abdominal cavity there was some partly digested food of fish and potatoes, and similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines." The work took about two hours. The murder was linked to the four previous victims.

Those suspected of being Jack the Ripper are numerous, numbering in the hundreds. There were many arrests made during the investigation, but no one has ever been convicted of the crimes and theories as to who committed the crimes continues today with libraries full of books focusing on various characters that seem to meet the qualifications to be Jack the Ripper. Men who were arrested include a ship's cook named William Henry Piggott who was detained after being found in possession of a blood-stained shirt and making misogynist remarks. He was cleared. Swiss butcher Jacob Isenschmidt matched the description of a blood-stained man seen acting strangely and he had a distinctive ginger moustache and a history of mental illness. He was locked up in an asylum. German hairdresser Charles Ludwig was arrested after he attacked a prostitute and then tried to stab a man at a coffee stall. Both Isenschmidt and Ludwig were exonerated after another murder was committed while they were in custody. Other suspects included Friedrich Schumacher, pedlar Edward McKenna, apothecary and mental patient Oswald Puckridge and medical student John Sanders. No evidence was found against any of these men. Edward Stanley was another suspect who was dropped after his alibis for the nights of two of the murders were confirmed.

Mary Kelly's boyfriend Joe Barnett was questioned about her murder and the police thought maybe he killed her in a rage. He was exonerated. Other suspects included George Chapman, Dr. Francis Tumblety, Michael Ostrog, James Maybrick, Walter Sickert, Charles Cross, Montague John Druitt, Thomas Cutbush and Aaron Kosminski. Some outlandish suspects include Prince Albert Edward Victor, Lewis Carol, The Freemasons, Dr. Barnardo and more recently, H.H. Holmes, which was a theory made more known by the recent TV show "American Ripper." Author Patricia Cornwall believes Walter Sickert was the Ripper. Many of the suspects have viable reasons for being Jack the Ripper. 

In 2014, mitochondrial DNA that matched one of Eddowes' descendants was extracted from a shawl said to have come from the scene of her murder. The DNA match was based on one of seven small segments taken from the hypervariable regions. The DNA was said to uncommon with a 1 in 290,000 frequency worldwide. Many pointed out that there were errors. Other DNA on the shawl matched DNA from a relation of Aaron Kosminski, one of the suspects. This match is also questionable and many have said that there is no evidence that the shawl was Eddowes'. This shawl has been handled by so many people through the years that we wouldn't trust any claims about it. But Aaron Kosminski as the Ripper is very plausible. We'll just never know. If only the spirits could tell us because many of the victims still seem to have an afterlife here.

Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols is said to haunt the place where her body was found on today's Durward Street. The ghostly sounds of murder and muffled cries have been heard. The apparition of a body has been seen lying in the gutter where Polly was found and many have claimed that it has an ethereal grey or green color to it. These reports started as early as 1895. Horses and dogs have shied away from the spot. A man was photographing the area when he heard a man and woman coming up on him. He turned and stepped aside only to find that no one was near him.

The house in which Annie Chapman was slaughtered was demolished in the 1970s and the Truman Brewery was built in its place. In the 1930s, when the house still stood, people claimed to hear the sounds of Annie being murdered in the backyard of the house. A resident said he heard the disembodied gasps of breath of a woman and this was heard along with a male breathing heavily and the sounds of a knife plunging into something. Then there were the sounds of a body being dragged as though the murder were replaying invisibly. More terrifying are the reports of a  headless figure sitting in the backyard and Annie's ghost has been seen walking down Hanbury Street and then stopping at Number 29. Occasionally, a shadowy male figure accompanies her. As I said, the site of the murder is now occupied by the former Truman Brewery building and employees there claim that on the anniversary of Annie’s murder, September 8th, the brewery’s boardroom becomes icy cold.

The place were Elizabeth Stride was murdered is not very active. The gates of a school are located there now and there have been no complaints about unexplained activity. But this was not always the case. In the months after Stride's murder, people claimed to hear the ghostly sounds of a woman who seemed to be struggling against something and they have even heard her cry out.

The body of Catherine Eddows lies beneath a plaque that claims her as a victim of Jack the Ripper. Her body had been found on the northwest corner of Mitre Square and legend claims that on the anniversary of her death on September 30th, the cobblestones in this corner glow red. A more common occurrence that continues today is that people see her partly transparent body lying where it had been left after her murder and the mutilations can clearly be seen. A medical student had thought he was seeing a bundle of clothes in the square when he was walking home. The bundle moved slightly and he thought it might be a person in distress. He realized he was looking at a woman as he got close and just as her reached to touch her, she vanished. A young couple saw a shadowy figure running away from what they thought was a pile of rubbish. They walked over to the pile and recognized it as a woman. Again, the body disappeared.

Leonard Matters wrote the book "The Mystery of Jack the Ripper" in 1928. He visited Duval Street, which had formerly been Dorset Street, and he found an elderly man who had been a boy when the Whitechapel murders took place. He pointed out the house where Mary Kelly had been killed  and said, "That’s the house. They say it’s ‘aunted, but I never seen nobody comin’ out of it at nights." Through his research, Matters found stories from several witnesses who claimed to have met Mary Kelly several hours after doctors stated that she had been murdered. This has caused some to speculate that the ghost of Mary Kelly was walking the streets of Spitalfields just hours after her death. A witness named Caroline Maxwell claimed to have a conversation with Mary at 8am the morning after her murder. She had mentioned to Mary that she looked unwell and Mary said that she did in fact feel sick. The flat where Kelly was murdered was covered in blood and this blood seemed to leak through the paint after the room was relet. One woman claimed that a bloody handprint on the wall would reappear after the wall was painted over. Her apparition has been seen over the decades walking in the area, clad in black. 

There are other hauntings in Whitechapel too. The Ten Bells Pub is an infamous landmark in Whitechapel that has been around since the 1740sIt is located at the corner of Commercial and Fournier Streets. Many of Jack the Ripper’s victims drank at the pub and were seen there shortly before their murders. People report having many unexplained experiences here. The apparition of a old man dressed in period clothing has been seen. The pub's upper floors are rented out and tenants have complained of being awakened by the phantom of an old man. He is usually lying next to them in the bed. People also claim to have been pushed by something they can't see when on the stairs. The Jack the Ripper Tour website writes, "Although the descriptions were always similar, nobody could pinpoint the man’s identity. However, in 2000, a new landlord arrived. While clearing out the cellar, he found an old box hidden in a corner. The box contained items belonging to a certain George Roberts, including a wallet containing a 1900’s press cutting talking about Roberts’ murder. After further research, he found that Roberts had been the landlord of the pub around this time. Was it his ghost the staff kept seeing?"

On Durward Street where Mary Ann Nichols' body was found, a man went into a warehouse in December of 1974 and he saw the ghost of a young boy dangling from a rope that was tied to a ceiling hook. The building had once been a boarding school. It no longer exists, having been demolished. There is the Old Bass Sales Office on Cephas Street that had once been a doctor's surgery and is now an office building. In 1980, employees in the building complained about smelling embalming fluid and experiencing severely cold spots. The Royal London Hospital on Whitechapel features a grey lady who walks the hallways. The legend here claims that if the shutters are not closed at night, a death will follow. There is an eerie oddity here as well. The Elephant Man's mounted skeleton is kept here at the medical school.

The Tower of London is found in Whitechapel too. Check out Ep. 152 for more. Are these locations in Whitechapel still harboring spirits from the past? Could some of these ghosts be victims of Jack the Ripper? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 341 - Mass Murder at Taliesin

Moment in Oddity - The Phantom Fortress

Suggested by: John Michaels

During World War II, a Royal Air Force antiaircraft unit that was stationed in Belgium had a really weird experience. They watched as a B-17 appeared in the air over them with its landing gear down and slowly descending , ending its flight with a crash into a nearby field. The unit was perplexed. They had not been advised that a plane was coming in for a landing. The fact that it crashed was even more perplexing. The group rushed over to offer assistance. Major John V. Crisp reported what they found after opening the hatch, "We now made a thorough search and our most remarkable find in the fuselage was about a dozen parachutes neatly wrapped and ready for clipping on. This made the whereabouts of the crew even more mysterious. The Sperry bomb-sight remained in the Perspex nose, quite undamaged, with its cover neatly folded beside it. Back on the navigator’s desk was the code book giving the colors and letters of the day for identification purposes. Various fur-lined flying jackets lay in the fuselage together with a few bars of chocolate, partly consumed in some cases." There was absolutely no crew aboard! The B-17 had no other damage than what occurred during the crash. Clearly, the crew had not bailed out using parachutes since they were still on the plane. So where was the crew? Apparently, they were in Belgium. They claimed that enemy fire had damaged the bomb rack and taken out an engine, so they bailed. Only, the damage they described had not happened. People started calling the B-17 the Phantom Fortress and no real answers were ever given. There were many theories, but nothing plausible, leaving this as one of the biggest mysteries of World War II and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Fabricius Observes and Publishes on Sunspots

In the month of June, on the 13th, in 1611, Johnannes Fabricius published the first work on sunspots. Fabricius was a German medical student when he decided he would rather look at the stars like his father who was a well-known astronomer. He took several telescopes with him when he went to visit his father in Osteel. It would be here that he would see the black spots on the sun. Johannes wasn't the first to see the sunspots. The Chinese had done that before and an Englishman had recorded them in 1610, but Johannes was the first to publish a scientific treatise on the sunspots. Further studies would prove that the sun rotated and that sunspots have an 11-year cycle.

Mass Murder at Taliesin

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the most celebrated architects in America. His designs were ahead of their time and he was a true architectural visionary. Wright's ultimate design and build would be his 37,000 square foot home in Wisconsin that he named Taliesin. This would be the scene of what is considered the worst mass murder in Wisconsin's history. Most people know the successes, but not many know this dark spot in Wright's life and the event that has left one of his homes possibly haunted. Join us as we share the details of Wright's life, this tragic event and the haunts that are connected to this famous architect!

Frank Lloyd Wright was born Frank Lincoln Wright in Wisconsin in 1867. In 1876, Wright's mother Anna would make a purchase that would forever mold his future. Anna bought a set of blocks created by Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel when she visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The blocks were called Froebel Gifts and they were geometrically shaped and could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions. Wright loved those blocks and would spend hours playing with them. They had such an effect on him that he wrote in his autobiography, "For several years I sat at the little Kindergarten table-top ... and played ... with the cube, the sphere and the triangle—these smooth wooden maple blocks ... All are in my fingers to this day." The family moved from their small farming community to Madison in 1877 and Wright began spending summers at his uncle's home, which was in a rural area that provided Wright the opportunity to gain a real love for nature. And that would be key in his future designs. His architecture would be referred to as "organic architecture."

When Wright was 14, his mother asked his father to leave and after the divorce was final, Wright never saw his father again. He took on the responsibility of financially supporting the family. He also changed his middle name to Lloyd to honor his mother. Wright attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, but did not graduate. He was bored with school and moved to Chicago to find employment, which he did with an architectural firm that gave him the position of draftsman. Wright would move on to another firm, Adler & Sullivan, where his architectural prowess would blossom. He considered Louis Sullivan to be his teacher and he had great respect for the man, although he did not like his management methods. He also didn't like his fellow draftsmen and fist fights were a regular occurrence. Not something one would usually expect inside an architectural firm.

On June 1, 1889, Wright married Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin. Wright had expensive taste and his funds were always low for that reason, so he decided to start a little side hustle. This enterprise would be designing several private homes that he affectionately dubbed "Bootleg Houses" because his contract with Alder & Sullivan forbade any side work. When Louis Sullivan passed by a newly built home near his townhouse, he recognized Wright's style and Wright found himself getting the boot from the firm. The two men would not speak for 12 years. Wright decided this would be a good time to strike out on his own and he worked out of a couple of office buildings, before finally moving his practice into his home. The space was pretty cramped as Kitty and Wright had six children, so he added a studio onto the house.

Wright designed both buildings and homes, but his preference was the family home. His fame was growing and his designs were in demand. He was well on his way to becoming the most famous American architect in the world and he was changing the way Americans looked at architecture. Wright believed that design should be creative and geometric shapes would jut out of his buildings and the light of nature would flood the interiors. In his time, he designed 1,114 buildings and saw 532 of them built. And while he seemed like a god in the world of architecture, Wright was a man and men have flaws. Wright's main flaw was his desire for women other than his wife. He was not what one would describe as a family man and he wanted to leave Kitty. The opportunity would come when he decided to design a home for his neighbor Edwin Cheney. The project began in 1903 and through this, he got to know Cheney's wife better.

Her name was Martha, but she went by Mamah and she was a highly intellectual woman and a strong feminist. Wright was immediately enamored by her and considered her his equal in intellect. Mamah had similar feelings and the two fell in love despite the fact that they both were married to other people. This was not Wright's first dalliance outside his marriage and Kitty assumed that this woman would fall by the wayside like all the others. That did not happen. Wright asked Kitty for a divorce, but she would not grant him one. Mamah left for Europe and after two years, was able to get a divorce from her husband on the grounds of desertion. By 1909, both Wright and Mamah were living in Europe where Wright hoped he could get away from home design and into bigger projects. In 1910, he had his mother buy him property in Spring Green, Wisconsin and he built his dream home on it and named it Taliesin. Taliesin was the name of a poet and magician in Welsh mythology. The story was about an artist's struggle for identity. Just in 2019, a group of eight buildings designed by Wright were designated as World Heritage Sites along the lines of Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon and The Great Pyramids. Taliesin was one of those eight.

This has been described as Wright's autobiography in wood and stone. The site features the Midway Barn, Hillside School, the Romeo & Juliet Windmill, Tan-y-Deri and the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. Construction on the home was completed in 1911 and followed the Prairie Design or Organic Design and was low and snug like the land on which it sat. This would be the first of three versions of Taliesin and would have two broad portions connected by a narrow loggia that covered 12,000 square feet. One side was his studio and the other was the living quarters. Local yellow limestone was used and was laid to Wright's specific directions as long, thin ledges. This gave the home a golden hue. Shingles were colored to match the trees and every room had windows that would allow lots of sun all day long. The grounds had lots of fruit trees and berry bushes. There is a tea circle in the middle of the courtyard, inspired by Japanese wabi-sabi landscaping, that is rough cut from limestone with a curved stone bench and there is a pool in the center.

Mamah was an angry and mean woman and treated people according to where she thought their station in life was, meaning that if you were the help in her home, you were treated as the help. And if she decided that she no longer wanted a servant working for her, she just fired him or her with no cause or reason. Mamah moved into Taliesin and her children visited her there often. Society did not approve of the living arrangements since Wright and Mamah were not married and the press denounced Wright and Mamah in editorials. In 1914, Julian and Gertrude Carlton of Barbados were hired to work at Taliesin. One of Wright's friends had recommended the couple. Gertrude took on the cook responsibilities and Julian worked as a butler and handyman. Julian had a temper and so this set him at odds with the similarly tempered Mamah. He also did not get along with a draftsman who worked at the home named Emil Brodelle. The two openly fought. Julian took to sleeping with an axe next to his bed and this worried Gertrude. She noticed that he started acting very strangely. After a few weeks, Mamah asked the couple to leave, meaning they were fired. She gave no reason. But it is believed that Wright and Mamah had seen Julian Carlton sitting up at night holding a butcher knife and they may have even experienced some of his paranoia.

On August 15, 1914, Wright was away on business in Chicago. Mamah had her children visiting at Taliesin. At lunchtime, she sat down with her children on the screened in porch to have lunch. Wright's employees who worked at the home, sat down at the dining table in the adjoining room. Julian and his wife had not left yet, but he told Gertrude to go somewhere else. He then went around and locked all the doors and windows, except one. He poured gasoline all around, making sure it slipped under the door to the dining room. One survivor later said that he noticed “something flowing under the screen door from the court. We thought it was nothing but soap suds spilled outside. The liquid ran under my chair, and I noticed the odor of gasoline.”

Julian set fire to one wing of the home and then grabbed an axe and entered the screened-in porch. He killed Mamah and her son right away with the axe. Mamah's daughter tried to run away, but Julian caught her in the courtyard and killed her too. While this was happening, Wright's employees were trying to get away from the fire, but found the windows and doors to be locked. One of the draftsmen, Herbert Fritz, broke a window with his arm and escaped, but he had broken his arm in the process. Emil Brodelle was still in the room when Julian came in and he killed the draftsman with whom he had a rivalry. He then waited outside the door and ambushed foreman William Weston and his 13-year-old son Ernest. Both managed to get away, but Ernest had been mortally wounded and died hours later. Two of the other employees, laborer Thomas Brunker and gardener David Lindblom, managed to fight Julian off. They inhaled a lot of smoke though and had been badly burned and succumbed to their injuries days later. Of the nine people in the home, only two survived. The dead were 13-year-old Ernest Weston, draftsman Emil Brodelle, gardener David Lindblom, his laborer Thomas Brunker, Mamah Cheney and her two children John and Martha.

Neighbors ran to put out the fire, while Julian hid in the basement. He attempted suicide by drinking muriatic acid. He was found by a posse who wanted to lynch him on the spot, but they eventually carried him off to jail. Julian never gave a motive for the murders and he died a while later in jail from starvation because his esophagus was burned so badly by the acid. Gertrude had no idea of Julian's plans and had been dressed and packed for traveling, expecting to catch a train with her husband. She was found out in the field where we imagine she had run to get away from the burning house. She was released and left for Chicago and was never heard from again. Wright arrived home later that evening  and was overcome by the horror. He never did recover from the tragedy and never did another Prairie School design again. Taliesin was rebuilt and Wright would eventually move back there and bring another companion with him that he would later marry, but she eventually left him. Taliesin would burn again in 1925 and be rebuilt once more.

Taliesin still holds onto the tragedy. Spirits are restless here. When the bodies were pulled from the fire, they were taken to a cottage on the property, Tan-Y-Deri. Mamah Cheney's full bodied apparition, wearing white, has been seen here both inside and walking around the outside. She sometimes is seen washing clothes, which seems weird since she didn't live in the cottage and she had servants, so we can't imagine she would do the laundry. Doors mysteriously open and close at the cottage. The windows do the same. And she likes to play with the lights as well. Groundskeepers find windows and doors wide open the mornings after they lock up. One visitor arrived at the cottage and found the water running and no one else was there. He also heard disembodied footsteps. The scent of smoke is sometimes caught on the air as well. Frank Lloyd Wright is at unrest as well and it could be because his body was moved. He was originally buried on this property, but his daughter had him exhumed, cremated and moved to Taliesin West in Arizona. This was against his wishes.

To end on a more positive note, we would like to share about a place here in Florida with a strong connection to Frank Lloyd Wright and that is Florida Southern College. This is the oldest private college in the state and was founded in 1852 as a Methodist seminary. Dr. Ludd Spivey took over as the College's president in 1925 and he wanted to do something that would spice up the college and put it on the map. He wanted a "campus of tomorrow." What better architect to provide that than Frank Lloyd Wright? He visited the campus for the first time in 1938 and over the course of 20 years, he designed 18 buildings for the campus and 13 of them were built. Many of these buildings were built by the students. This is today, one of the 28 Wright projects that are National Historic Landmarks. This site is the greatest concentration of Wright's work on one site, for one client.

The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was the first Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built building on the campus. The church was dedicated in 1941 and has been home to both Protestant services and Catholic Masses. Inside the chapel, one can see a full organ, baby grand piano, theater-style seating and an ornate choir screen made from handcrafted interlocking textile blocks. This choir screen was not put in according to Wright's directions and he has been angry about it even after death. Rumors have circulated that Frank Lloyd Wright’s apparition has been seen staring over the screen.

The Buckner Theatre was designed by Wright and is a theater in the round. Many students have claimed that the theater is haunted, which is not surprising since most of them make that claim. Students say that they have seen phantom hands in the curtains and seen doors open and close on their own. There was one student who was in the theater alone and claimed to have seen legs walking up on the catwalk, but when he looked more closely, he saw no body above the legs. Other people who have been in the building say that they have heard disembodied screams and strange music on the air.

Lily shared her experience with Backpackerverse.com, "I had been volunteering with the theatre group for about a month. I felt like it was very obvious to everyone else on crew that I had no prior experience with sets. A majority of the hours I worked were actually spent correcting mistakes I had made with various backdrops. And that is precisely what I was doing when I had the most frightening experience of my life. It was late, and everyone else had gone home or back to their dorms. I  had just finished some detailing on a backdrop and I was the only one left at Buckner. The painting was finally finished, and I grabbed the supplies to take to the backstage area. I had my arms full of paint cans and brushes when I walked off the stage. As I passed by the curtains, the fabric seemed to move toward me in a swift lunge. It scared the crap out of me, so I began to run towards backstage—whatever it took to put the supplies away and get out of there. Furniture props were scattered everywhere, and as I scurried past a chair, numerous hands seemed to reach out and grab at my ankles. I fell and the paints went flying everywhere, but I was beyond caring at that point. I honestly can’t even recall driving out of Lakeland that night…and I never went back to work with the drama department again."

The Joseph-Reynolds Hall, or JR for short, is a female dorm that is one of the original buildings on the campus, built in 1922. It features beautiful chandeliers and white archways and was designed in the colonial-revival architectural style. An unidentified writer wrote in the LAL Today paper out of Lakeland on October 24, 2012, "And no ghost post could be complete without a personal testimony! Being a female student at FSC, I lived in Joseph-Reynolds Hall my freshman year and I had my own encounters with our resident ghost, Allan Spivey. Allan was the son of Mr. Spivey, a well-known figure on campus. At a young age, contrary to other stories, he was bitten by a rabid dog, causing him to die a slow and painful death. Stories tell that he passed in JR back before it became the freshman girls’ residence hall, but the truth behind that statement is unknown. Regardless, Allan passed and his presence continues to haunt the halls of JR. I lived on the third floor in a room previously used as a storage unit. Upon my roommate and I’s arrival, weird things started happening in our room. Our DVD player would turn on and off subtitles randomly, even though my remote was sitting on my desk, untouched. No matter what decoration we hung on the wall or what we hung it with, it was only a matter of days before it was torn off the wall, without anyone touching it (this happened several times while I was alone. Posters would be thrown at me from across the room where they were hung.) He would also walk around on our wooden furniture, making creaking footsteps as he moved around. He also liked to bang on our windows as we slept or when we had friends over. But every time we asked, “Allan, we don’t want to play right now,” the subtitles would turn off, posters would stop being torn down, furniture would stop creaking, the banging on the windows would cease. After we moved to another room the second semester to trade with a friend who wanted a bigger room, we never heard from Allan again. Coincidence? I think not."

Frank Lloyd Wright was an interesting man and a gifted designer. Is his former love, Mamah Cheney, still walking through the property where she met a tragic end? Is Taliesin haunted? Is the campus of Florida Southern University haunted and does Wright's spirit hang out there in the afterlife? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 334 - The Murder and Haunting of Helene Knabe

Moment in Oddity - Aliens Turn Soviet Soldiers to Stone

When the Soviet Union crumbled, many of its KGB documents found their way into public spaces. One such document that I found at cia.gov from their reading room shares an event reported by the KGB that is unbelievable if true. The KGB materials claim that a low flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer appeared above a Soviet military unit that was out doing maneuvers in Siberia. The group fired a missile at the UFO and brought it down. Five humanoid looking creatures that were short with large black eyes and bulbous heads, exited out of the downed UFO. This is already really weird, but it gets even more bizarre. These men were attacked by the aliens and all were killed, but two. These two claimed that the five aliens merged into a single object that was spherical shaped and then began to buzz and hiss and glowed a bright white. That light seemed to flare and explode and the soldiers that were exposed to it were pertrified. Twenty-three men were turned to stone that proved to be the same composition as limestone! The busted UFO and petrified men were taken away to a secret lab in Moscow. This CIA document also claimed that there are photographs to go with the report and one CIA agent said that this was "a horrific picture of revenge on the part of extraterrestrial creatures, a picture that makes one's blood freeze." The report doesn't say what happened to the aliens, but clearly they had no ship to take them away. Aliens morphing into a weapon that turns humans to stone is not only terrifying, it certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The 1974 Super Outbreak

In the month of April, on the 3rd and 4th, in 1974, 148 tornadoes ripped through much of America, earning the name "The 1974 Super Outbreak." Spring is the time of year when these storms rip through the Midwest. An outbreak is typically categorized as 6 to 10 twisters and there can't be a break of more than 6 hours between reported tornadoes. This would be the second-largest tornado outbreak on record for a single 24-hour period. It was actually the largest until 2011. It has always been the most violent. Thirteen states were effected: Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, and New York. Ontario in Canada was also hit. Thirty of the twisters hit the upper categories of E4 and E5 and caused roughly $843 million in damages, which would be $4.6 billion today. This was dwarfed in 2011 when that super outbreak had 362 tornadoes. That also occurred in April.

The Murder and Haunting of Helene Knabe (Suggested by Michelle Rooney)

Helene Knabe was ahead of her time. She became a doctor in the early 1900s and her specialty was in treating sexually transmitted diseases. She lived in the Delaware Flats in Indianapolis, Indiana and this is where she would breathe her last. Helene was murdered and to this day, the identity of her killer is a mystery. And that may be why her spirit is at unrest. Join us as we share about the history of the Delaware Flats, the life of this amazing woman and her tragic murder. 

Indianapolis had a street car system that helped get people living in the outer edges of town into town for work. The Delaware Flats apartments were located with a block of similar apartments in the 400 and 500 blocks of North Delaware Street. These apartments were designed by architect Charles A. Wallingford and completed in 1902. The Delaware Flats is three stories tall with a basement and low-pitched roof and was done in the Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical architecture style. There were eighteen, five bedroom flats. In 1911, contractor Lynn Millikan purchased the Delaware Flats for $46,250. That same year, Dr. Helene Knabe would be murdered in the Delaware Flats.

Dr. Helene Knabe was born in Ruegenwaelder-Munde, Germany, Prussia, which is now part of Poland in 1875. This was a time of struggle for power in Prussia with the monarchy receiving a lot of push back. This was also a time of not much freedom for women and when Helene decided that she wanted to become a doctor, she knew she was going to have to go somewhere else because Prussia would not allow it at the time. Here early life had been a very tough one. Her father had left her mother when she was still a baby and then her mother passed away and so she was raised by her uncle. So in 1896, she moved to Indiana because she had heard that women could go to medical school there, but she needed to make some money and learn English. So she spent four years as a seamstress and doing household things for the upper class and in turn they taught her English. She entered Butler University to prepare for medical school in 1900 and later that year she attended the Medical College of Indiana. The courses were tough, but she maintained above a 75% grade and dissected every body part presented to her even as she continued to work to pay for her education.

The professors were so impressed with her that one of them placed her as curator of the pathology museum and eventually she was instructing some underclassmen. Obviously, since this was the early 1900s, it was unheard of for a woman to be teaching men and many did not like this, so we think that says something about her. Not only was she so successful that her professors pushed back against this resistance, but she also was that good at being a doctor. She graduated as one of only two women in 1904. People described her as a vanguard and this was only one of the reasons. Dr. Knabe was a bit of an artist and she started providing illustrations to medical books and she continued to work as curator of the museum. And even though she wasn't paid to do this, she worked as a professor at the school. In 1905, she became the first woman to be appointed as a deputy state health officer in Indiana.

She was a pioneer in Indiana when it came to rabies too. This newspaper article from the Palladium in July of 1906 highlights this part of her career:

Dr. Knabe became the Superintendent for the State Board of Health in 1908 and she left the board shortly after that to start her own community practice where she offered services many times for bartered goods. The doctor worked with a variety of epidemics and pushed for better sanitation. And although she was expected to do more, she was never paid what she was worth. But she loved this and her passion had her traveling all of Indiana recommending sanitation practices and educating. Part of that education was in sex education, which was very taboo at the time. There were many who were outraged that she was teaching about sexually transmitted diseases and how to prevent them. She focused much of her efforts in communities with People of Color. There were some other things that she was outspoken about that probably put her in the crosshairs. When she left the State Board of Health she said that they "expected an employee in the laboratory to have a man’s brain, but be paid a woman’s salary."

A brilliant career came to a tragic and gruesome end on October 25, 1911. Dr. Helene Knabe was found murdered in the Delaware Flats by a colleague named Katherine McPherson. Dr. Knabe had a slit to her throat that was clearly dealt by not only a strong person, but this killer had skill with a knife. The killer had started on one side of her throat, taking care not to cut her carotid artery, and continued to the other side of her throat, pressing deeply and hitting her spine. The doctor then choked to death on her own blood. She had a bruise on her thigh that suggested a struggle. The coroner ruled that she had been murdered, but the police initially dismissed this and went forward with this as a suicide. They actually believe that she had slit her own throat in this way. Nothing had been stolen from the flat, except for a silk kimono that the doctor had been wearing, and the murder weapon was missing. Which clearly means we had no suicide here.

The police didn't have much to go on when they finally decided to pursue this as a murder. To complicate matters, McPherson had waited almost an hour before calling police and the crime scene had been contaminated by several people. The first person they treated as a suspect was a witness who was a black janitor who lived below her. His name was Jefferson Haynes and he lived in the basement with his daughter and a housekeeper. He told the police that he heard footsteps above him and three screams, but that he was too afraid to investigate. They decided to arrest him and hold him, but they could find no motive other than their own bias. So they released him.

Another theory was presented that perhaps a man having an extramartial affair had killed the doctor to silence her. This theory was put out in an article by the Brazil Daily Times on October 27, 1911:

In April of 1912, a sailor came forward claiming that he had slit the throat of Dr. Knabe. His name was Seth Nichols and he claimed that he had been paid to kill her for $1,500. Whoever this person was, he had joined Nichols at the Delaware Flats and watched as Nichols killed the doctor. The police listened for a while and the sailor did have a sister in Indianapolis, but they eventually decided he was lying. Although, Nichols wife did die in a similar way. A favorite spot for Dr. Knabe to visit in the few hours when she wasn't working was the German Cultural Center called Das Deutsche Haus. This is today the Athanaeum and the Rathskeller and one of the places said to be haunted by the doctor's spirit. She had gotten into a heated debate with a man at the center and some people thought this carried over into the murder. Had he killed her because of the fight? The police eventually tossed out this lead as well.

The case was growing cold at this point and a group of female doctor friends of Dr. Knabe, hired a private investigator. This was Detective Harry Webster and based on his research the police had another suspect. The police arrested Dr. William B. Craig. This was a local man with a successful veterinarian practice. He also had being Dr. Knabe's fiance. Their romance was not a well-known fact, which seems weird. Those that did know about it claimed it was volatile. The story goes that the engagement was called off a few days before the murder and that Dr. Craig planned to marry another woman.  Nobody really knew about the engagement, but Dr. Knabe had ordered a dress. When the police talked to his maid, she told them that Craig had left the morning after the murder with a bundle of stuff that the police thought was evidence. And she had also heard Dr. Knabe and Dr. Craig arguing. An undertaker named Alonso Ragsdale was found to have the bloody silk kimono that Dr. Knabe had worn while she was murdered and he claimed that Dr. Craig had paid him to remove the kimono from the scene. Both men were charged and the prosecutor claimed that the neck wound pointed to a veterinarian as the murderer because it was similar to a "sheep nick" or "sheep cut."

There was not much evidence, not even circumstantial. A bloody fingerprint in Dr. Knabe's apartment was never taken for evidence. Obviously, fingerprinting was pretty new at this time, but it still was something being used. Witnesses left town and disappeared and the housekeeper refused to testify. Did they not subpoena people back at this time? Due to lack of any real evidence, both Alfonso and Dr. Craig were acquitted. The main thing that became very clear through the investigation and prosecution is that Dr. Knabe was treated more like someone who deserved what she got than a victim. Was this just a random act of violence or was she targeted for being a strong-willed woman who demanded to be treated as an equal and believed in teaching people how they could safely keep themselves healthy in their environment and when having sex? Or was she targeted for being a lesbian? There are those who believe that she preferred the love of women and she was considered masculine. No one was ever convicted and the case remains unsolved to this day. Dr. Knabe was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis in an unmarked grave. Her case file was destroyed in a flood in 1977. In 2016, Nici Kobrowski published the book, "She Sleeps Well: the Extraordinary Life and Murder of Dr. Helene Elise Hermine Knabe." In it, she concludes that Dr. Craig was indeed the killer. The author also paid for a headstone for Dr. Knabe. That's awesome!

After the murder, Lynn B. Millikan decided to rebrand the Delware Flats as a hotel. This would be Hotel Barton with a main lobby, kitchen and dining room on the first floor. Renovations included fireplaces, decorative mirrors and egg-and-dart molding to the lobby and some guest rooms and adding decorative mirrors and fire places. Since the basement could not be used for rooms, Millikan turned it into a commercial space. The hotel changed its name to Barton House Hotel in the early 1960s, but the hotel was on its way out and by 1966, it was a nursing home. The Salvation Army eventually turned it into low-income housing. And through all of this, there were stories of unexplained things happening. The first floor here is incredibly haunted. Dr. Knabe's spirit has been seen here, particularly in the area where her apartment had been located. But in other areas, residents complain of lights turning on and off by themselves and disembodied footsteps are heard nearly everywhere.

As we mentioned before, Dr. Knabe enjoyed hanging out at the Das Deutsche Haus, which is today the Athanaeum. This place reminds us of the Cuban Club inside. The doctor loved dancing and eating here, but this was also a location where medical classes were conducted as well as autopsies. The autopsies and dissections were stopped overtime when there was a grave robbing scandal that was revealed. In 1902 alone, 315 bodies were stolen in three months and two dozen people were arrested. It was such an issue in Indianapolis that when John Dillinger was buried there in 1934, his family had several tons of concrete poured on top of his burial to keep grave robbers out. The Athanaeum is located at 401 E. Michigan Street and was built from 1893 to 1898 in the Romanesque style. It's a gorgeous red brick building with flattened columns on the front of the building, pillars and arches. There was a gymnasium, bowling alley, ballroom, restaurant and, of course, beer hall. A fireplace inside features Dante's Inferno. Today, the restaurant is now The Rathskeller and a YMCA occupies the gymnasium and there is the Basile Theater. The new version of the Ghost Hunters visited this location in October of 2019.

The president of the Athenaeum Foundation is Craig Mince and he said, "Since my first day on the job, all I've heard about from the staff and tenants of the Athenaeum are stories of all the spirits that call the building home,” Mince said in a statement. “Me being a bit intrigued, and a tad scared, I felt like I wanted to know more about the spirits and their stories. Having heard that A&E was resurrecting 'Ghost Hunters,' I felt like there was no better team of folks to help us get to the bottom of this mystery." Shannon Poole who works in the building described to the Ghost Hunters her experience of seeing a shadowy ghost from the neck and shoulders up. Craig told Greg and the crew that people feel very uncomfortable in the attic where costumes used to be stored. There was no explainable EMF in this area. A spirit in there did use the EMF to communicate with the crew.

There are ghost tours that go inside the building too and have even hosted overnights in October. One of these tours is hosted by Unseen Press, which is co-owned by Michael and Nici Kobrowski. They claim that people have seen shadow figures in the theater and heard disembodied whispers. A dancing couple has been seen on the stage in the theater and the woman is always wearing a blue dress. Paperwork goes missing and tables that were set and ready for service the night before are found unset the next day. One of the spirits here is believed to belong to a man named Jolly Werner who had been drinking too much and fell into the fireplace and died. He is generally seen in the restaurant. And, of course, the restless spirit of Dr. Knabe has been seen here as a full-bodied apparition in the east section on the first and second floors. She was seen in the building as soon as two weeks after her death. Back to that EMF communicating in the attic, the crew asked if it was a female and it confirmed twice that it was female. The spirit also confirmed that it taught about health and that it was a teacher and a doctor.

What happened to Dr. Helene Knabe was horrible. She was in the prime of her life, only 35, and she had been incredibly successful in her career when someone robbed her of that life. No one was brought to justice. This would definitely cause a spirit to be restless. Is Dr. Knabe's ghost haunting these two locations? That is for you to decide.

Show Notes:
Great article on Dr. Knabe:  https://blog.history.in.gov/dr-helene-knabe-a-vanguard/

HGB Ep. 330 - Starvation Heights

Moment in Oddity - Chainsaw Invented to Help With Childbirth
Suggested by: Lori Aceto Garcia

We all know what a chainsaw looks like and we all naturally assume that they are used for either cutting up wood or cutting off people's appendages in horror movies. Now while that last one may seem pretty far from the reason why the chainsaw was invented, it's actually closer than you think. The original chainsaw-like tool was designed in the late 18th century by Scottish doctors, John Aitken and James Jeffray. This chain hand saw appears in Aitken's Principles of Midwifery or Puerperal Medicine. A German orthopedist named Bernhard Heine invented another chainsaw in 1830 that had a chain link with small teeth guided by a sprocket wheel and was used to cut bone. But regardless of who got there first and who invented what, there was this early chain saw with a fine serrated link chain that was used in surgery. Specifically to cut out diseased joints. But it was also used in symphysiotomy, which was basically cutting away bone, tissue and cartilage from the birth canal, when a woman was having a difficult labor like breech or the baby became stuck and was suffocating. The chainsaw was far more effective in quickly handling the situation versus a knife. The idea that the chainsaw was actually invented to help with childbirth before it was used to fell trees, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Milicent Patrick and the Creature From the Black Lagoon
Suggested by: Shadow Hunter on Instagram

In the month of March, on the 5th, in 1954, Universal International Pictures released the film "Creature from the Black Lagoon." This film introduced another classic Universal Monster known simply as the Gill Man. The film was shot in Florida and the basic premise is that a group of scientists go on an expedition to the Amazon where they find the Gill Man. This creature falls in love with a female team member and kidnaps her. Nearly all the listeners probably know what the creature looks like, but we imagine most don't know that the creature was created by a woman. And that's probably because most people don't know that, since the artist was not credited with this accomplishment for 50 years. Her name was Milicent Patrick and she began her career with Walt Disney Studios in their ink and paint department. She went on to become one of the first female animators at Disney. She created the animated creature Chernabog in Fantasia. She left Disney in 1941 and became a model for a time. Bud Westmore at Universal hired her and she became the first woman to work in a special effects makeup department. In 1953, she designed the Gill-man suit. She was sent on a promotional tour to talk about the creation and initially it was called "The Beauty Who Created the Beast" Westmore was beyond jealous of the attention and insisted that the name be changed to "The Beauty Who Lives With the Beast." He was given full credit for the creation and when Patrick got back from the tour Westmore got Universal to fire her. The 2019 book "The Lady From the Black Lagoon" written by Mallory O'Meara, definitively proved that Patrick was the designer of the monster. Patrick died in 1998 never getting that full credit and she would only do small acting gigs after that. But now you know that Anna Prado Frias' favorite monster, was created by a woman!

Starvation Heights (HTC 1)

The desire to be thin and healthy has been with us since the dawn of human existence. Many of us have tried some kind of diet fad at least once. Not many diets work because they require deprivation and humans have a hard time sticking with something that limits them. We crave freedom in all areas of our lives. But for most of us, keeping the pounds off, especially as we age, can be difficult. There seems to be only one sure fire way to lose weight and keep it off for good, but the risk outweighs the results, because the risk is death. The only sure thing for losing weight is starvation. And that is just what Dr. Linda Hazzard was offering the desperate people who came to see her. Imagine a serial killer who is paid to do their killing. Join us as we discuss the history and haunts of Starvation Heights.

She looks like the sweet neighbor next door. Her face a little hardened by age, revealed more fully because of the neat bun-style in which she keeps her hair. There's nothing fancy about her dress and she seems so concerned and helpful when it comes to health. How could she possibly be a serial killer? And how could a serial killer come from a nice little town across from Puget Sound known as Olalla? This was a place where farmers, fisherman and loggers made a living. Not many people had even heard of Olalla until it ended up in all the papers, with the town entering center stage as headlines splashed across newspapers read, "Officials Expect to Expose Starvation Atrocities: Dr. Hazzard Depicted as Fiend" and "Woman ‘M.D’ Kills Another Patient." So who exactly was this Dr. Hazzard?

Linda Burfield was born in Minnesota in 1867. Little is known about her childhood. She married for the first time when she was only 18 years old and had two children. The marriage did not last. She had big dreams and those did not include being a wife and mother and in 1898, she left that life behind. The divorce became final in 1902 and it was that same year that Linda killed her first victim. Linda was a big believer in the idea that too much food was the root of all disease and that fasting was the cure. Now, I think we can all get behind the idea that giving our digestive systems a little break from food and fasting for a time can be beneficial. Many people do periodic fasts that last a day or two or maybe a little longer. Even Jesus himself fasted for 40 days. Although that was pretty extreme. Linda had read some books, like "The Gospel of Health" by Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, and devised a plan for a system incorporating extreme fasting. She just needed to test someone. She found a woman willing to give it a try. After several months, the woman died. The coroner ruled that the woman died from starvation and requested that Linda be arrested. There were a couple of problems though. The woman had volunteered to do the fast and Linda was not a licensed doctor in Minnesota, so there was nothing that could be done. The coroner also noticed another particular issue. The victim had no jewelry, so he asked Linda about that and she was evasive. She was able to go on with expanding her work with fasting unimpeded.

Linda met her match in Samuel Christman Hazzard, a drunkard who threw away his West Point military career with brawling and boozing. Sam was married to his second wife when he met Linda, but that didn't stop the couple from getting married. There was a trial for bigamy and Sam went to jail for two years. In 1906, the couple decided they needed to get out of town and start over somewhere new and they moved to Seattle, Washington. They set up their own health business focusing on fasting. The plan that they designed had a lot more than fasting involved and the ultimate goal was more than likely to swindle people and send them off into death. Linda had no medical training, but a loophole when it came to alternative therapies allowed her to get licensed to practice medicine in the state of Washington. As long as her therapies were drugless, she was fine. She wrote several books on the positive aspects of fasting, including  "Fasting for the Cure of Disease."In that book, she put forward her ideas that the best way to cure disease was to remove fat and impurities from the human body. She neglected to mention that incorporating torture helped too. At least in her sick mind.

Hazzard started insisting that people call her "Dr. Hazzard." If they referred to her as Mrs. Hazzard, she would say that that name was her mother-in-law's. She made some grandiose claims like many snake oil salesmen. People would be told that she could cure something as small as a toothache or something big like Tuberculosis. The Hazzards had bought a 40-acre plot of land in Olalla, Washington and named it Wilderness Heights. Linda planned to build a sanitarium there. Until that time, she took the ferry across the Sound to Seattle where she practiced among a community of free thinkers who liked her ideas. One of those people was a 38-year-old woman named Daisey Maud Haglund. In 1908, she decided to ask Hazzard to help her get healthier and she would become the second known victim. Haglund had a three-year-old named Ivar who would go on to become a Seattle entrepreneur and restaurateur behind Ivar's Fish and Chips. Linda put her on a strict 50 day fast.

The strict diet Hazzard designed consisted of an orange for breakfast and some kind of mashed or strained soup for lunch and dinner. Everyone was required to endure these horrendous enemas that were given daily and they would last for hours. Up to twelve quarts of water would be used on one person. People would cry out in pain. And then there were the massages. While massage should be a relaxing modality, Hazzard's brand of massage consisted of beating her patients. She would use her fists to beat people on the back and on their forehead and she would scream out "Eliminate" while she was beating them. This is what Daisey endured for 50 days. This only stopped when she died. Two more women would join that list of dead patients in 1908. They would be Ida Wilcox and Mrs. Elgin Cox. The next year, Blanche B. Tindall and Viola Heaton would die. Maude Whitney died in 1910 and Earl Edward Erdman died in 1911.

Erdman was a civil engineer from Seattle. He was a believer in this method and decided to keep a diary of his progress. Rather than serving as a record of his success, it helps reveal just how harsh Hazzard's fasting method was. It read: 

February 1- Saw Dr. Hazzard and began treatment this date. No breakfast. Mashed soup dinner. Mashed soup supper.
February 5 through 7- One orange breakfast. Mashed soup dinner. Mashed soup supper.
February 8- One orange breakfast. Mashed soup dinner. Mashed soup supper.
February 9 through 11- One orange breakfast. Strained soup dinner. Strained soup supper.
February 12- One orange breakfast. One orange dinner. One orange supper.
February 13- Two orange breakfast. No dinner. No supper.
February 14- One cup of strained tomato broth at 6 p.m.
February 15- One cup hot strained tomato soup night and morning.
February 16- One cup hot strained tomato soup a.m. and p.m. Slept better last night. Head quite dizzy. Eyes yellow streaked and red.
February 17- Ate three oranges today.
February 19- Called on Dr. (Dawson) today at his home. Slept well Saturday night.
February 20- Ate strained juice of two small oranges at 10 a.m. Dizzy all day. Ate strained juice of two small oranges at 5 p.m.
February 21- Ate one cup settled and strained tomato broth. Backache today just below ribs.
February 22- Ate juice of two small oranges at 10 a.m. Backache today in right side just below ribs.
February 23- Slept but little last night. Ate two small oranges at 9 a.m. Went after milk and felt very bad. Ate two small oranges 6 p.m.
February 24- Slept better Wednesday night. Kind of frontal headache in a.m. Ate two small oranges 10 a.m. Ate on and a half cups hot tomato soup at 6 p.m. Heart hit up to ninety-five minute and sweat considerable.
February 25- Slept pretty well Thursday night. Ate one and a half cups tomato broth 11 a.m. Ate one and a half cups tomato broth 6 p.m. Pain in right below ribs.
February 26- Did not sleep so very well Friday night. Pain in right side just below ribs in back. Pain quit in night. Ate 1 and a half cups tomato broth at 10:45 a.m. Ate two and a half pump small oranges at 4:30 p.m. Felt better afternoon than for the last week…

The authorities started to take notice that bodies were piling up under the care of Linda Hazzard, as did the press. Newspapers started reporting on the deaths, but patients just kept coming to Hazzard looking for her miracle cure. We have to believe that there had to have been some people that had success and didn't die to get other people interested. Perhaps people who didn't have much to steal were just put on the regiment for a month and since killing them was not a financial pull, they were sent out of the program as testimonials. That's all conjecture, but seems logical. Whispers began to spread that Hazzard was practicing some kind of black magic and mind control. Health authorities claimed that their hands were tied when it came to Hazzard because she was licensed and patients were voluntarily coming to her for treatment. She started performing her own autopsies as well, so that she could list the cause of death as anything but starvation. We're not sure how a naturopath or someone licensed as a drugless medical provider got away with doing autopsies, but it apparently happened. Neighbors started contacting police about seeing these skeletal patients wandering around the property, some of whom would beg for food.

There was one victim who had not died from starvation at this time. Eugene Stanley Wakelin had a bullet in his head. He was the son of an English lord, but had no money to his name. It is believed that the Hazzard's shot him in frustration because he had no money. They claimed it was suicide. So perhaps our theory on people without wealth getting out of this program alive is not correct. The end would come for Hazzard when Dorothea and Claire Williamson came to what locals started calling Starvation Heights. The sisters were hypochondriacs and filthy rich. They were perfect marks for the Hazzards. It was 1911 and Hazzard told the sisters that the sanitarium was not ready yet, but that she could treat them in Seattle. They rented two rooms at the Buena Vista Apartments. The doctor offered to keep the women's valuables at her office to make sure they were safe. She then started them on the diet of vegetable broth. They also were given the standard enemas and massage. Within a month, the sisters were emaciated. Obviously, a starved brain is not a reasoning brain. Hazzard had the sisters transferred to the sanitarium in Olalla and obtained Claire's signature on a document giving money to Hazzard if Claire should die. The contract also directed Hazzard to cremate the body. At this point, Claire was delirious.

Somehow, the sisters got a message to their childhood nanny named Margaret, begging her to visit. When she got to Seattle, Hazzard met her at her office and told Margaret that Claire had died from cirrhosis. Maragaret wanted to see the body, so Linda showed her Claire's body at the mortuary. Margaret didn't recognize Claire, clearly because she was so emaciated. It was then that she knew that Claire had starved to death, She demanded to see Dorothea and Hazzard agreed, but she warned her that Dorothea was insane. Margaret couldn't believe how thin Dorothea had become. She was going to take her away, but Dorothea insisted that the treatment was doing her a world of good even though she was skeletal. Margaret had no legal right to take Dorothea and one can only imagine how frustrating that would be. She stayed and tried to sneak flour and rice into the tomato broth soup fed to Dorothea. We're amazed that Linda let her stick around, but she probably feared if she was not hospitable that Margaret would run to the cops. Margaret would visit other patients at the sanitarium and see how they were doing. Two of those patients begged her to help them escape. They said they were prisoners. And Margaret found out Dorothea was a prisoner too.

When Margaret informed Hazzard that she was leaving and taking Dorothea, Hazzard produced a document giving her and her husband legal guardianship of Dorothea. They claimed she would be staying with them forever. Margaret also discovered that the Hazzards had been helping themselves to the Williamson sisters' funds. Margaret came up with a plan that included the women's uncle and he sent a letter demanding that Dorothea be released from the sanitarium. Hazzard gave them a bill for $2000. At this point, Dorothea weighed sixty pounds. The uncle paid what equated to a small ransom and got Dorothea out of there. Dorothea managed to get her faculties back and helped to pay for the prosecution of Linda Hazzard because the state said they did not have the funds to go after the doctor. Upon her arrest, Hazzard claimed she was being persecuted. Evidence was provided revealing forged documents and diary entries and there was no doubt that many people starved to death under the care of Dr. Hazzard. Hazzard was convicted of manslaughter. But even after all these deaths, she only served two years at the Walla Walla Pentitentiary.

When she was released, she and Sam moved to New Zealand where she continued to practice her brand of fasting for health. She became very wealthy. She returned to Olalla in 1920 and finished construction on her sanitarium. She again started starving people to death. The sanitarium burned down in 1935 and Hazzard starved herself to death three years later. Apparently, she was a true believer in her own cure. Which then makes one wonder if she was a killer due to neglect and some kind of mental illness or if she was a methodical serial killer. In total, there were more than two dozen victims and possibly more. We've heard there could possibly have been 40 victims. No one knows for sure how many people the Hazzards killed, but they rank up there with the most prolific serial killers.

The house and sanitarium at Starvation Heights no longer stand today, but when they did, there were reports of haunting activity. Opal and Chuck Abundis owned the Hazzard house in the 1990s and after Gregg Olsen's book "Starvation Heights" came out, they started offering tours of the place. People claimed to see strange symbols on the fireplace that indicated that it was the seventh gate of Hell. Opal's mother lived next door at the time and she claimed to hear disembodied footsteps on her porch nearly every day. When she would go to check the porch, nobody would be there. Chuck said, "You hear footsteps on the stairs. It sounds like people are walking around upstairs. One time I was in the bathroom, and there is no draft down there and it was a warm day, and I got the coldest feeling. It felt like they touched me on the back of my right arm and it was cold. A week ago I was wiping off the counter by the toaster and the electrical cord came out by itself and dropped onto the floor." One of the more haunted areas was a small closet in the basement with a small hole cut out in the middle of the door just big enough to slip food through. Many wonder if this was like a solitary confinement for unruly patients.

A family of four would later move into the home where the Hazzards had lived in Olalla. They claimed to have experienced unexplained activity and ghostly phenomena over the years. The family claimed that they saw apparitions, felt cold spots and doors opened and closed on their own. The mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen one evening with the stove in front of her and the bathroom door behind her. She turned around while cooking and was shocked to see that every chair from the kitchen had been piled up against the bathroom door. She was the only person in the house at the time and was really freaked out.

The attic seemed to have activity as well. Several low ledges were used for storage and a psychic who was visiting the house claimed that several of Hazzard's victims were sitting quietly on the ledges. As though they were scared to move. The psychic also claimed that the house was saturated with anguish. Washington State Paranormal Investigations and Research (WSPIR) visited Starvation Heights three times during 2005-2006. On their first visit the group divided into three teams. Each team had a psychic. The owners of the house had been instructed to hide anything that might inform the psychics of what they were investigating. The book Fasting for the Cure of Disease was clearly visible when the first psychic entered. The owners claimed that they had not left the book out and they had no idea how it got where it was found. The group picked up an EVP that said, “Help me!”
The second team caught EVPs, also. One EVP stated, “Are you talking about me now?” Another EVP said either, “Take us up” or “Dig us up.”

Dead Files did an episode featuring this location. The family used some of the wood from the previous house to build the new house and had been experiencing activity. It turned out that Steve found out while interrogating the son named Logan that he had conducted at least 17 seances in the house. Logan claimed to see the ghosts of a little boy and a little girl and that he tried to communicate with them. Amy also picked up on little kids running around the old house. Amy described seeing some kind of monster on the property that was almost smothering these children ghosts. Cannon was the name of another son on the property and he saw a male ghost wearing a cowboy hat sitting out by the wood pile. He could see through him which is how he knew it was a ghost. He also saw that male ghost in the cottage. Amy picked up on this spirit and that he ran the show there. He bragged about that. She also picked up that a woman had been raped there, probably by him.

She also saw a woman she described with a broken face that was trying to harm a living woman. This was really weird. It was like they figured out that Claire had been thrown down some stairs and that Hazzard was in the house and trying to throw someone else down the stairs since it had worked before, but when Amy had the spirit sketched, it looked like Hazzard rather than Claire. But Hazzard had starved to death. Is it possible that throwing down the stairs was a fill-in for starvation since Claire starved and Linda starved? Was Hazzard trying to kill the living woman at the house? So we don't know what was causing this activity. Were the ghosts already here? Did the seances bring spirits?

So as is probably clear, the cottage that was the sanitarium was eventually torn down and a new home was built. This was after the family had lived in a place where so many died and even used the original bathtub where bodies were dismembered. We have not heard of any hauntings taking place in the new home. Was Starvation Heights haunted? That is for you to decide!