HGB Ep. 352 - Cleveland's Millionaire's Row

Moment in Oddity - Theodore Judson Claims to Have Seen Mermaids

In 1873, P.T. Barnum offered $50,000 to anyone who could bring him the body of a sea serpent. There might just have been someone who could have done that at one time and his name was Theodore Judson who eventually was known as Crazy Judson. He became keeper at Stratford Point Lighthouse in 1880 and he stayed there for over 40 years. His family joined him at the lighthouse. In 1886, they told the Bridgeport Union that they had seen a sea serpent. The paper reported, "A sea serpent with pea green whiskers passed down Long Island Sound in a big hurry Wednesday morning. He was plowing through the water at a 25 knot clip when he passed the Stratford lighthouse and left a wake of foam behind him a mile in length. He was easily 200 feet in length, and his head was reared 20 feet above the brine...The big reptile was plainly seen from the lighthouse by Keeper Theodore Judson, his wife, his son Henry and his daughter Agnes, and by H. W. Curtis of Stratford, as well as by a number of people at Captain John Bond’s place up the river...Keeper Judson seriously declared to a reporter that he could not be mistaken. 'I saw it plainly,' he said, 'and so did my wife and children and Mr. Curtis. All of us are familiar with the appearance of a school of porpoises, and this sight was entirely different. . . . It could be plainly seen without a glass.' There were many witnesses, so this is not what earned Judson his nickname of "crazy." It would be his report about seeing mermaids that would do that. Judson told a reporter in 1915, "Three days ago, I saw a shoal of mermaids off Lighthouse point. I’ve seen them again and again, but it’s only once I laid hands on one. She scratched me well, but I got her brush away from her and I’ve got it yet. It’s generally in the early morning or late afternoon that they gather around the rocks off the point. Sometimes I’ve counted as many as 12 or 15 of them, their yellow hair glistening and their scaly tails flashing. They’re a grand sight." Judson would produce the brush when asked about it and his wife believed the story. This keeper was known for his tales, but he always maintained he had really seen and touched a mermaid and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - The Penny Press Begins

In the month of September, on the 3rd, in 1833, the New York Sun newspaper first appeared launching the penny press. While printed newspapers are in decline and fairly obsolete in 2020, there was a time when nearly everyone got their news from the newspaper. The Penny Press was exactly what it sounds like, newspapers sold for a penny. This innovation began with Benjamin Day when he founded the New York Sun. It was a desparate move rather than a smart business move because Day had lost his printing business during the Cholera Epidemic of 1832. He assumed that the working class would enjoy newspapers if they could afford them. Most newspapers sold for six cents. So Day targeted his newspaper to the working class and featured human interest stories and sensational stories, like the Moon Hoax which claimed scientists had found life on the moon. He also introduced another innovation, the newsboy. The Sun would be the first paper to be hawked on street corners by newsboys. By 1836, the New York Sun was the largest seller in America with a circulation of 30,000.

Cleveland's Millionaires' Row (Suggested by Lori Blackburn)

Cleveland's Millionaires' Row was the place where the elite built their grand mansions in the early 1900s. Industry was booming and men like Marcus Hanna, Amasa Stone, Samuel Andrews, Charles F. Brush and John D. Rockefeller picked this sixth largest city in America as their home. These were some of the most powerful men in the country and their street would be known as the "Showplace of America." All but four of these mansions would eventually be demolished. They are a testament to the past and hold on to their spirits. Join us as we explore the history and haunts of Cleveland's Millionaires' Row. 

Paleo-indigineous tribes were here where Cleveland would eventually set down roots as far back as 10500 BC and these were migrant groups. Many of their tools featured flint that came from Indiana. Ohio is famous for its burial mounds and many are found here. Many Native American tribes would come through the area like the Iroquois, Ottawa and Shawnee, but not many stayed. From the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s, no tribes inhabited the region. Cleveland was named for its founder General Moses Cleaveland. He had been a director of the survey group sent out by the Connecticut Land Company. Cleaveland would become the capital city of the Connecticut Western Reserve. The General designed the public square after those in New England. The village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814. The spelling was changed in 1831 to Cleveland for an interesting reason. A newspaper could not fit the other spelling on its masthead. Because the city was located on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, trade became a major industry. Eventually the city would become a center of industry and a gateway of immigration. During the early part of the 20th century, the city was one of the largest cities in America. After the Wars, the city declined as people moved out of the city into the suburbs and industry slowed down.

It was during the roaring success of the industrial age that Cleveland's Millionaires' Row would be born. Euclid Avenue is an old road that was originally laid out in 1815 and paved with Medina sandstone. The road followed the historic Lake Shore Trail and was given the name Euclid from a surveyors' settlement to the east that had that name. The street was declared to be a highway in 1832 by the state legislature. Rufus Dunham would be the first man to see the potential of Euclid Avenue. He would buy 140 acres of land and built a farm and tavern. This tavern opened in 1824 and would become a stagecoach stop. The Dunham Tavern still stands today at 6709 Euclid Avenue and is the oldest building in Cleveland, Ohio.  Cleveland landscape architect, A. Donald Gray purchased the home in 1932, and restored it and it reopened as the Dunham Tavern Museum in 1941. Rufus Dunham had struggles in those early years because the city did little to service the street and drainage was horrible. As more wealthy people were drawn to the street, the city was forced to update, so that flooding would stop and the property would be more desirable.

Mark Twain wrote that Euclid Avenue was "the most beautiful street in the world." If you fronted on Euclid Avenue, you had really arrived. After the Civil War, manufacturing took off in America and Cleveland grew quickly. The city became one of the five main oil refining centers in the U.S. joining cities in Pennsylvania and New York City. It would be here that Standard Oil would get its start as a partnership between William Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Adams and Henry M. Flagler. The wealthy would build their homes between Erie (E. 9th) St. and Willson Ave. (E. 55th St.) with Lake Erie to their rear and that included these oil magnates. John Rockefeller bought his home on the avenue in 1868 for $40,000.  Many of the mansions were built in the Romanesque style and Cleveland architect Chas F. Schweinfurth designed at least 15 of the mansions. What is interesting about these homes is that these were large stone structures that should have stood for decades and maybe even a couple of centuries, but these homes went up and were torn down over and over as new owners would come along. Many mansions would be demolished for good as the wealthy chose to move to the suburbs. By 1937, only seven of the  forty mansions remained on Millionaires' Row. And unbelievably, the luscious lawns in front of these homes became used car lots with the houses serving as offices for those lots. Most of the rest of the homes were destroyed so the Innerbelt Freeway could be built.

The grandeur of Euclid Avenue was over. Ironically, the pollution created by these rich men's factories pushed them out. There would be no more parades or social gatherings with patriotic bunting decorating the streetlights. It was hard to believe that this street once rivaled New York's Fifth Avenue for wealth. Only four of these grand structures have made it to our present day and a couple of them have spirits still knocking around in them. Fun Fact: One of the most interesting people to live on this street was con artist Cassie Chadwick. This was the woman who claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. She pulled off one of the greatest bank heists in history. She also claimed to be a clairvoyant and went by the name Madame Marie LaRose. She was also a real madame and opened a brothel in Cleveland. But don't tell her third husband that, whom she convinced she was a widow running a boarding house for women. It was with him that she lived on Millionaires' Row. She was not welcomed by her neighbors.

Stager-Beckwith Mansion

This mansion is located at 3813 Euclid Ave. This is the oldest mansion on Millionaires' Row and was built in 1866 by Anson Stager who was the general superintendent of Western Union Telegraph whose claim to fame was creating the most effective secret code during the Civil War. His home was the first mansion built on Euclid Avenue and was designed by Joseph Ireland. The original floor plan had 15 rooms and covered 10,000 square-feet. Stager lived here with his family for two years and then he sold it in 1868 to Thomas Sterling Beckwith who made his fortune in the furniture business. He founded the first furniture and carpet store in the city, Beckwith, Sterling and Company. When Beckwith died in 1876, Charles Brush bought the mansion. Brush sold the house in 1913 to the University Club. The club occupied the space for 90 years and added 40,000 square feet to the property. The University Club was a social club for men with college degrees. In 2018, the mansion became the Cleveland Children’s Museum and that is what it is today. To date, we have heard no reports of hauntings here. If you hear differently, let us know.

H.W. White Mansion

The H.W. White Mansion is located at 8937 Euclid Ave and is today known as the Cleveland Clinic White Mansion. H.W. White had worked for the Baker Motor Vehicle Company, which had been an electric car producer in Cleveland during the turn of the century. The house was designed in the Romanesque Revival style. There is wonderful detail in the stone carving and stained glass windows. We have heard no haunting tales about this location either. Again, if you've been there to see a doctor and had some kind of experience, let us know.

Mather Mansion

The largest among the mansions constructed on the street was Mather Mansion, which is located at 2605 Euclid Ave. This was built for Samuel Mather in 1910 by architect Charles Schweinfurth in the Tudor style. Mather was chairman of Pickands, Mather & Company, which was one of the four largest shippers of iron ore in the country. He was one of the richest men in Cleveland and held powerful positions in transportation, iron and banking. His mansion was luxurious with the finest furnishings from around the world and a ballroom with a 16-foot ceiling. The interior featured handcrafted woodwork, stone and brick. The house had cost $1,200,000 upon completion. Samuel Mather died in 1931 and the Cleveland Institute of Music moved in until 1940. The Cleveland Automobile Club purchased the house then, staying until 1967 when Cleveland State University acquired the property. The university renovated it and the mansion was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 20, 1973. The university planned to turn the house into a boutique hotel, but they gave up that plan in 2014. Instead they set it up for the Center for International Services and Programs, a program that taught English as a second language.

The Mather Mansion is reputedly haunted. One story was shared by a member of the grounds crew who was sent to investigate why motion sensors had been set off at 2 a.m. He walked throughout the mansion and suddenly heard the elevator fire up. It began to move and then he heard the sound of people laughing and the clinking of glasses. Music traveled on the air and yet, he was the only one in the building. He was so scared that he said he would never enter the house again and he never did. A housekeeper had her own experience that was even more terrifying. She was cleaning a room when she felt something that she could not see, forcibly grab her and she was flung from the room. As she picked herself up, she heard the vacuum turn itself on and then it joined her out in the hallway. Other people in the house have experienced the faucets turning on and off by themselves, heard disembodied footsteps and strange knocks. It's the creepy moaning that gets most people though.

An article in November of 2016 in the CSU Alumni Association details an investigation they hosted: "In what has become one of the Alumni Association’s most popular Passport Cleveland tours, a group of brave alumni recently joined the Ohio Ghost Hunters for an investigation into whether Mather is indeed haunted. Based out of central Ohio, the Hunters are a group of scientific and psychic medium investigators traveling the state, gathering evidence of the paranormal and offering solutions on how to address otherworldly phenomena. 'We’ve found spirits present in business buildings, open fields, trains, navy ships [and] historic villages,' said Peggy, director of Ohio Ghost Hunters. And as you might guess, they might have found some at Mather Mansion during the tour. Peggy led the group into what is believed to be Samuel Mather’s former bedroom—a cavernous room with elaborate woodwork and candle-like wall sconces—set up an electromagnetic field detector and what’s known as a Spirit Box that can supposedly interpret voices from the "other side," turned off the lights and initiated an investigation.

It started with basic questions. “Is there anybody here from the Mather family?” Peggy asked. 'We’re not here to do anything but ask you questions,' she assured whatever, whomever they hoped to encounter. 'Are there any spirits that haunt Mather Mansion?' 'Me,' a voice supposedly intoned through the Spirit Box. 'That sounds like a child,' Peggy said. 'What's your name?' Though they never found out the child’s identity, two members of the Ghost Hunters were fairly certain they could distinguish two separate voices communicating. 'How about we come back sometime?' Peggy offered as the evening drew to a close, following that with a farewell. Through the white noise of the Spirit Box, what sounded like 'goodnight' replied. 'Did you hear that?' Peggy chuckled.

The Drury Mansion

The Drury Mansion is located at 8615 Euclid Avenue. Francis Drury began the road to success by inventing a lawnmower. He was born in 1850 in Michigan and got started early in the hardware business. It was at that time that Drury invented the first internal gear lawnmower. He moved to Cleveland with his invention and partnered with Taylor and Boggis Foundry Company to manufacture the lawnmower. Later, he started the Cleveland Foundry Company and focused on cooking stoves. So he created the first kerosene stove that would eventually lead to the Coleman stoves many of us have used for camping. This was really innovative cause everybody was using wood stoves. This would get Drury working with John D. Rockefeller who produced kerosene. It was a great partnering.  

Drury had arrived and he wanted to build a mansion where all the other successful men had on Euclid Avenue. Construction began in 1910 and finished in 1912. It was built in the Tudor Revival style and had 34 rooms. The spacious home covered 25,000 square feet. Drury, his wife Julia and their son lived at this location for twelve years. They followed their neighbors to the suburbs and bought the 155 acre Cedar Hill Farm. Julia and Francis only lived there for a year before Francis died and then she moved and died in 1943, eleven years later. The Drurys would always be known for their philanthropy. They donated much to the music community in Cleveland. The Drury Mansion was bought by the Drury Club in 1939. Much of the Drury family's furnishings remained as a part of the Drury Club. People would come here to have dinner and do some dancing. This later became a nursing home for many years, around four decades, although this seems to have been a halfway house of some sort in the 1970s because there were stories of guards and parolees in the house. And unwed mothers were said to find sanctuary here before the halfway house. The Cleveland Clinic bought it in 1989 and they continue to maintain it today. 

An article written in the Cleveland Plain Dealer written by Imogene Addams in 1939 claimed that the Drury Mansion had "rumors of its secret doors and subterranean tunnel have long mantled it in a shroud of mystery." The author went on to write that the tunnel had been sealed. The passage had lead to some sunken gardens across the way. One of the main rooms had a six foot fireplace with hand-carved Bedford stone and dark oak paneling. More rooms must have been added at some point because their are stories that claim there are 52 rooms inside.

This home is notoriously haunted. There were some years when it stood vacant. There were two police officers who were guarding the house in 1972 and one evening they had a terrifying experience that they would not discuss. They were found in the morning sitting on the floor with their backs against each other and they each had their shotguns at the ready. Others who have worked in the house have reported hearing disembodied footsteps and doors and windows that open and close by themselves. Some have claimed feeling as though they are being watched. In 1978, the first report of seeing an apparition would be made. The sighting took place on the main staircase and a worker claimed that he saw a mysterious woman standing there with her hair up in a knot on top of her head and wearing a brown dress. There were other sightings of her in the kitchen and in some of the bedrooms. Many people wondered if this was Julia Drury. Others believe that this is another woman. Possibly a woman who boarded here. People say that they have heard disembodied screams floating through the hallways. Stairs creak as though under the weight of a human.

On Dan Ruminski's Cleveland Storyteller website: "A couple of years ago, I was giving a Cleveland Storyteller presentation at the Drury Mansion on Euclid Avenue, one of the four Millionaire’s Row mansions that is still standing. With 52 rooms and walls of remarkable wood detail, the mansion’s sheer size and splendor took us all back into time. I was speaking with my back to the grand fireplace, entertaining a crowd that had gathered to hear about Francis Drury and his wife, Julia. When I spoke Julia Drury’s name, the lights over the fireplace flickered quickly—intentionally. The simple mention of her name triggered an obvious sign of her presence. I halted; the audience gasped. Our eyes darted around the room. My wife described Julia’s appearance with stunning accuracy, and she had never seen a picture of Mrs. Drury before. The following Monday I returned to the Drury Mansion to return some photographs to the mansion curator. Again, I mentioned Julia Drury’s name while standing in the living room with the man. And, again, the lights flickered fast—on and off, on and off. The ghost of Julia Drury was letting us know we were in her company."

A distant tragedy has been connected to the mansion. About a half-dozen blocks down the street a fire broke out at another building occupied by the Cleveland Clinic. This took place on May 15, 1929. One hundred twenty-three people perished in the blaze that was started by vapors connected to x-rays. One of the victims spirits is said to have traveled down to the Drury Mansion and it seems appropriate since this is another place owned by the Cleveland Clinic. This apparition has been described as being beautiful and brunette. She wears a bracelet identifying her as a patient of the Cleveland Clinic. When she makes appearances temperatures rise to unbearably hot levels. People who see the ghosts claim that she seems to be trying to share a message. She then disappears in a flash of smoke.

The fact that so many of the mansions that once stood along Euclid Avenue no longer exist is sad. How did a street that once was a showcase, lose so many of its treasures? Two of the four are thought to be haunted. Are the Mather Mansion and Drury Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!

Show Notes:

Danielle Rose, “Mather Mansion,” Cleveland Historical, accessed September 7, 2020, https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/87

McNamara, Robert. "Penny Press." ThoughtCo, Feb. 11, 2020, thoughtco.com/penny-press-definition-1773293.

HGB Ep. 351 - The Ghosts of Bermuda

Moment in Oddity - Dying Banned in Longyearbyen                                                              Suggested by: John Michaels

While it's not a law on the books, so its not illegal to die in Longyearbyen, Norway, for all intents and purposes, one is not encouraged to die there. This little village is located on the archipelago of Svalbard and is thought to be the most northerly town in the world. There are not many services on the island. The hospital can only handle non-life threatening conditions and there are no nursing homes. For this reason, any residents of the island must also have an address on the mainland. When they get to a point where they can't care for themselves, they have to leave. Some people do die here though in accidents and the 1918 Spanish Flu even hit here. But one cannot be buried here in a coffin because the bodies don't decompose since it is always so cold here. There are actually victims of the 1918 Spanish Flu buried here with remnants of the virus that were sampled and studied in 1998. So while dying isn't banned here, it is uncommon and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Bobby Fischer Wins World Chess Championship

In the month of September, on the 1st, in 1972, Bobby Fischer wins the World Chess Championship in Iceland. This was the most publicized and still the most famous chess title match in history. American Bobby Fischer faced Russian Boris Spassky and since the Cold War was going strong at this time, there were many political undertones. Fischer had started early with chess. He was playing professionally by the age of eight and he won the U.S. Open Championship when he was only fourteen. When Fischer won, it was the first time an American won the competition since it started in 1866 and the Russians had not been defeated in 24 years. So Fischer was a hero in some circles, but he definitely had his flaws. He was arrogant, demanding and only agreed to play in the tournament after the prize money was doubled and Henry Kissinger begged him to go. Fischer took home over $156,000, but would lose his title three years later when he had to forfeit his title because he wouldn't show up for the competition when his demands were not met. "The Ballad of Bobby Fischer" was a song he inspired and he became the subject of many movies and books.

The Ghosts of Bermuda

Most people think of the island of Bermuda as a tropical getaway with turquoise water and pink sand beaches. And while that is true, Bermuda has been known as the Isle of Devils. Much of the reason why was because of the stormy weather that has throttled the island, along with the treacherous ring of coral that has surrounded it. This also happens to be the eastern point of the Bermuda Triangle. Thus the island has become a place of lore and there are many tales of hauntings. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of Bermuda! 

Juan de Bermúdez was a Spanish explorer who was the first to discover the island of Bermuda in 1505. He was sailing back to Spain after bringing provisions to Hispaniola. The island would be named for him and he would return to it a few years later to drop off some pigs in case anyone ever got marooned there. In 1609, Bermuda would finally be settled by the British, but this was not a planned development. Their ship The Sea Venture was headed to Jamestown when it wrecked on those treacherous corals around the island. Three people stayed here while the rest continued to Jamestown. It would take three years before the island was officially British territory and it has stayed that way up until our current time. The Town of St. George would be named the capitol and is considered the oldest continually inhabited English town in the Americas.

Bermuda has seen a lot of action through the years. The British used this as a launching point during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The Confederates used it during the Civil War. When Prohibition was in full swing, Bermuda was the scene of rum running. And while Bermuda is a British territory, it has been allowed to self-govern and British troops left in 1952. Agriculture and salt trading were early parts of its economy and these grew into shipbuilding and exporting lilies and onions. Fun Fact: Bermudians are sometimes called Onions for this reason. And, of course, the island's main enterprise is tourism. There is a mix of cultures here with a melding of British colonialism, the slave trade and immigrants from other islands and countries. There are many people on the island who speak Portuguese and Bermudians have unique idioms. For example, a "regular Sally Bassett day" means a hot summer's day and "Aunt Haggie's children" means slow or confounding people. 

For many people, when hearing the name Bermuda, they immediately think of the strange triangular portal referred to as the Bermuda Triangle. Christopher Columbus documented some of the earliest anomalous incidents in his logs, in which he describes compasses moving about erratically and strange lights in the sky. The Bermuda Triangle is also known as the Devil's Triangle and stretches from Miami, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico to Bermuda and could encompass up to 1.5 million square miles. This is one of the most heavily trafficked areas in the world by planes and ships, and several of those planes and ships have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. There are those who believe that the disappearances are tied to something paranormal like UFOs or some kind of portal or vortex. But science has a very different opinion.

From the NOAA website, "Environmental considerations could explain many, if not most, of the disappearances...And there is some evidence to suggest that the Bermuda Triangle is a place where a “magnetic” compass sometimes points towards “true” north, as opposed to “magnetic” north. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard contend that there are no supernatural explanations for disasters at sea.  Their experience suggests that the combined forces of nature and human fallibility outdo even the most incredulous science fiction. They add that no official maps exist that delineate the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle. The U. S. Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name and does not maintain an official file on the area. The ocean has always been a mysterious place to humans, and when foul weather or poor navigation is involved, it can be a very deadly place.  This is true all over the world.  There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean." 

One of the most famous disappearances was Flight 19. This was a group of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers out on a training flight on December 5, 1945. They never returned home and naval investigators assumed there was a navigational error and then the aircrafts ran out of fuel. There were 14 men lost with that disappearance. Radio conversations between the pilots of the planes was overheard by other aircraft. One of the students was asked about his compass reading and he said, "I don't know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn." Another student was having the same trouble saying, "Both of my compasses are out and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land but it's broken. I am sure I'm in the Keys but I don't know how far down and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale." A search and rescue aircraft with a 13-man crew disappeared while looking for wreckage from Flight 19. The theory is that this plane was overloaded with fuel and exploded.

Spithead House

Granaway Deep is a basin in Warwick, Bermuda. Along the shores of this location, one finds a house known as Spithead. This was the former home of Bermuda's foremost privateer, Hezekiah Frith. He was born in Bermuda and became a successful shipowner in the late 1700s. He made a fortune from smuggling and privateering. He ran a store next to the house where he sold treasures from two ships he had captured. Legend claims that he captured a Frenchwoman and kept her at his house. It is thought that he might have killed the young woman in the carriage house. And it is her and Hezekiah that are believed to haunt this location. American playwright Eugene O'Neill once lived in the house as did actor and director Charlie Chaplin. English playwright Sir Noel Coward lived here in 1956 and he claimed to have seen both apparitions on many occasions. 

The Ghost of Captain George Dew

Captain George Dew was a privateer who starting as a sailor working on the slave ships heading for west Africa. After this, he focused his efforts in Central and South America. In 1686, he took part in buccaneer raids on Panama City and the following year, he helped sack the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador. Bermuda would become a part of his life in 1691 when the country gave him a commission to privateer and he was told to focus on French ships. He partnered with William Kidd for awhile and also Thomas Griffin. They were pursued by pirate hunter Christopher Goffe, but he could never catch them as it was said "they could sail two feet to his one." Captain Dew returned to Bermuda in 1693 and got married and started a family. Soon he was off being a pirate again. He joined Thomas Tew for a bit and then he was off pioneering the Pirate Round route to Madagascar and then he pirated through the Caribbean. He settled down finally in 1699 and returned to Bermuda where he built his home that is now known as the Old Rectory. It took on this later name after Parson Richardson who was known as the "little bishop" lived here. Dew began a law practice of all things and was elected to a seat in the General Assembly. He died in 1703. The Old Rectory was eventually turned into a bed-and-breakfast and a Bermuda National Trust property. There are unique features like welcoming arms stairs and windows that are positioned high on the house, just under the eaves. (Those welcoming arms stairs are the ones that come up both sides. Legends claim that this was so a man wouldn't see a woman's ankles. Probably more about symmetry.) The Old Rectory is haunted by the ghost of Captain Dew and he is said to be seen most often sitting at a harpsichord and playing it softly.

Old Morgan

Some locals call this legend The Cloudy Captain, others refer to it as Old Morgan. Apparently, the Old Morgan is a long, low-lying raincloud that appears during the summertime over the island, but it is not actually a raincloud. This is supposed to be the spirit of a whaleboat captain by the name of Morgan. So, yes, Captain Morgan. One has to wonder if he was running rum. Legend claims that smugglers ransacked his boats in 1775 and he was so angry about this that even in death he cannot rest until the culprits are apprehended. That never seems to have happened, so this cloud will continue to show up and islanders will probably hope that the rain that is falling is actually rum. (When we researched further we did find that there was a Charles W. Morgan whaling ship that carried whaleboats aboard it. She is nearly 180 years old and has been restored and named for Charles Waln Morgan, a businessman rather than a captain.)

Somersalls 

Somersalls is a home found at Orange Grove that was built in the late 1600s. This was built by William Manigan. His family had a Native American slave named John that they abused horribly. One day, John decided to kill the family, so he set the house on fire and then waited outside with a gun to shoot anyone who fled. After the deed, he was captured, tried and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. Legend claims that his spirit still roams the grounds, although we could find no records that this location still exists. John is heard chanting in a Native American language and holding a pistol.

Bel-Air

Another weird story is told about a house called Bel-Air on Cobb's Hill. People claimed there were strange noises, disembodied voices and flickering lights here. The Helen Hays Repertory Theater visited in 1958 and while staying here, they felt very unsettled. They decided to use a Ouija Board to see if the place was haunted. It was said that they made contact with a female slave who had once worked on the property. She told them that another slave had stolen some jewelry from their master and that he was tortured as punishment. While that happened, he cursed the house and that had left the dwelling with an oppressive and negative energy. One part of the torture was that the slave's hand was burned in a kiln. The spirit gave them directions where they could find it and when they dug in the spot, they found an old kiln.

Fort St. Catherine 

Fort St. Catherine is the oldest and largest fort on the island and sits at the northeastern tip of St. Geroge's Island. As was the case with many forts built in the 1600s, this one was originally constructed from wood. A stone fort replaced it in 1614, but that would not be the final fort. This one was rebuilt five times with the final one being completed at the end of the 19th Century. The main issue for Fort St. Catherine was that it was fairly exposed, but its position did help it prevent ships that had entered through the open Atlantic from coming around St. George's Island and heading West. Ships had to get close to the fort because of the reefline, so they were easier to hit. Today, the fort is a museum and a fun fact is that Charlton Heston once appeared in a production of Macbeth in the 1950s at Fort St. Catherine's. The main spirit that haunts the fort is known as George. His apparition has been seen and heard in the lower chambers of Fort St. Catherine. Apparently, he got rather bothersome with his antics and an exorcism was performed, but it didn't work. Mainly because those are for demons. George is just cantankerous. 

Windswept Cottage

Hugh Gray was a hotelier in Bermuda and he owned the Cambridge Beaches property. On the property was the Windswept Cottage and this is where he lived with his wife. The Grays went to lunch with Inspector Dennis Alderson in the 1920s and the trio decided to go for a boat ride. The boat turned over and only Hugh Gray survived. He was rescued and a search was made for the bodies of his wife and the Inspector. Five days later, the body of Inspector Vernon Jackson was found at Spanish Point, but he had not drowned. His cummerbund was found tightened around his neck. Mrs. Gray was never found. An inquest was held, but Hugh Gray was cleared. Most people believe there was a love triangle and Gray killed his wife and her lover. Some time later, Hugh Gray was found dead at the bottom of the stairs at the Windswept Cottage. Rumors circulated that his wife's ghost had come back to get revenge. There are claims that Hugh Gray now haunts that cottage. Housekeepers are afraid to clean the cottage and there are claims that the disembodied whistling of Hugh is heard. His apparition is seen walking the coastline near the cottage as well.

Winton Estate

The estate known as Winton is said to be the scariest haunted property on the island. The Winton Estate is found on the North Shore and is over 200 years old. This home was built by Captain Thomas Dill who had been born in Devonshire Parish. Dill would start as a rifleman with the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps in 1895 and work his way up to lieutenant and finally Captain by 1914. He was the commandant and it was his duty to guard the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. He gave up his position to fight in World War I and the Bermudian contingent was strongly praised for their work. Dill later became Bermuda's Attorney General and served as a member of the Colonial Parliament. He married Ruth Neilson and they had seven children. Fun Fact: Their daughter Diana married Kirk Douglas and she was the mother of Michael Douglas. The haunting that takes place here is said to be from Mrs. Dill. Her misty apparition has been seen roaming the house and she touches people by tapping them. Her disembodied footsteps are heard and she appears hovering over people when they are in bed. She answers the phone too, but doesn't say anything, confounding the callers on the other end of the line. 

There are claims that the haunting is so intense that it has driven people to a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Doreen “Mac” Musson told The Bermudian about her time living in the house for 11 months in 1964, "We just couldn’t get any sleep at night. Even after the first week I began to notice something, though I didn’t believe in ghosts when I first moved in. There were sudden temperature drops in the house–even in the dining room–which couldn’t be explained away as drafts." She also claimed that her children saw the ghostly face of a woman looking at them and that objects would go missing. Orbs would travel up and down the stairs. Eventually, Mac Musson wrote a book with John Cox titled "Bermuda’s Favourite Haunts."

Orange Valley Road House

Devonshire Parish is one of the nine parishes that make up Bermuda and it lies in the very center of Bermuda. This was named after William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire. Within the parish, on 15 wooded acres, stands a 200 year old home known as the Orange Valley Road House since it sits on that road, but it should probably be known as the Cox House because that is the name of the family that has owned this house throughout those centuries. The house is well preserved and has some of the finest examples of Queen Anne furniture and there are painted portraits of all the generations who have owned the home. The house was originally built by Captain William Cox in 1796. Another member of the Cox family who lived here was named Laura. She was an avid horticulturist and took great pride in the gardens on the property. She died in 1861, but it is at unrest because her beloved flower garden was torn up and removed. She appears as a full-bodied apparition pointing angrily at the spot where her garden once was located. 

One of Cox's descendants, John Cox, is the current owner and he has experienced many things. He wrote an article in The Bermudian in October of 2019 and he wrote, "Although I have never seen it, I actually experienced it some years ago which caused me serious alarm. At the time, I was occupying the west bedroom upstairs. Night after night, I was awakened by strange steps pacing back and forth across my room. Eerie lights would also pass by the opened door which led into the day room and small objects on the bureau would move of their own accord. Sometimes I would feel that I could not breathe, as though I were being choked. Finally, after many unnerving encounters, I called out loudly, 'Please, whoever you are, stop this. You are frightening me!' In the next instant, I was aware of someone standing over me. A warm hand touched my neck. It was as real as if my own mother had touched me. After that night, I was never again troubled by the ghost."

John Cox also wrote of his cousin's experience that happened a couple decades earlier. She had brought her twin daughters over for a birthday party and was walking around the grounds when she ran into a Lady in White with her hair pulled back into a bun. His cousin said, "The mysterious woman seemed to want to communicate with me, but she said nothing. She just gazed intently at me. She next beckoned me towards the old rose garden. I looked toward the garden, some 40 feet away and then back at the mysterious woman but she had vanished as quickly as that! I knew then that I had encountered a ghost. For a while I had an odd feeling about it but I tried not to let it bother me." 

Laura Cox is not the only spirit reputedly on this property, which some claim is the most haunted in Bermuda. In 1974, John's brother and some of his friends decided to camp out in Orange Valley. When they returned to the house the following morning, they saw a man staring out of a window of the east bedroom. The boys turned on a flashlight to get a better look and they saw that the man was heavy set and wearing a dark cloak. They could all see the man clearly and they observed him for a while before he disappeared. The boys ran inside to search the house and only found the father sleeping in an upstairs room. John later figured out who the spirit belonged to and it was an eccentric uncle named Aubrey Cox. Aubrey had put in the larger window that is found in this room because he liked to wake up early and watch the dawn approach out that window. John's brother has also been awakened by the spirit of a young black man and seen him standing by the bed before he disappeared. For some reason, after he vanishes, there is a smell of bacon.

A young woman was taking a tour of the house and she told John, "You will probably think me crazy but do you know you have a ghost in the house?" John told her that they had several. She must have thought he was poking fun at her because she emphasized that she was serious and then she told him what she had just experienced, "I have communicated with the spirit of a woman of about 40 years of age. She says her name is Mary and she is very distressed because her husband is away at sea and he doesn’t know she is ill." When John looked through his family records, he found out that Captain William Cox was married to a woman named Mary who died of pneumonia in the house in April of 1806 while he was away, sailing in the West Indies. Objects have been known to move on their own around the house and there have been some disturbing experiences too. John and his cousin were both choked on the stairs when they were teenagers to the point that they couldn't breathe.

The Ghosts of New England Research Society investigated the house in 2013. They claimed to catch the sound of a woman sobbing uncontrollably in an upstairs bedroom. They also reported, "We also witnessed what appeared to be a black, shadow figure, appear near a coffee table in the main parlor of the house during an EVP session. In the interest of full disclosure, of the four people in the room, three could see it and one could not. However, at that very instant, an infra-red, motion activated camera tripped and took several pictures, none of which show anything unusual." They also detected the scent of roses when there were no roses in the house.

Bermuda is a beautiful island with a landscape dotted by hundreds of historic buildings. Are some of those buildings haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 350 - H.H. Richardson Complex

Moment in Oddity - Mammoth in Alaska

Massive shaking near the Kultieth River in southeast Alaska was picked up by an earthquake center in Alaska in 2015. The shaking lasted for eight minutes before the transmission stopped. The scientists knew from observing the data that they were receiving from this remote seismic station, that what was registering was not an earthquake. So what could it be? Thoughts of the movie The Thing probably came to mind for some of these scientists. Whatever had caused the shaking had also damaged the machine. There are some who wondered if it was possible that a prehistoric mammoth had caused the damage. Mammoths went extinct at least 4,000 years ago or so we've been told. But indigineous shamen claim that mammoths were being hunted as recently as 200 years ago. The scientists decided that it was probably just a bear that destroyed the machine based on teeth marks. Mammoths had lived here at one time and Alaska is so remote, the possibility that some survived is real. There are also reports that there is an Alaskan Bigfoot, which could be big enough and powerful enough to destroy equipment. No one knows definitively what destroyed the equipment and caused 8 minutes of shaking and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Jimmy Carter's UFO Report

In the month of September, on the 18th, in 1973, Jimmy Carter filed a UFO Report. The future president's sighting had actually happened in October of 1969, but he waited several years before officially filing the report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICA.) His story detailed how he was waiting outside a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia in the evening. He looked up at the sky and saw what he described as "the darndest thing I’ve ever seen." What makes this even more believable is that he was with a group of people who all saw the same thing. President Carter wrote that the UFO was "very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon" and "the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance." Because of his own experience, Carter promised during the presidential campaign of 1976 that he would push for the release of government documents about UFOs if he were elected President. As we know now, that was just another presidential campaign promise not kept.

H.H. Richardson Complex (Suggested by: Karen Hubbard)

Hotel Henry, Urban Resort Conference Center sounds like a nice place to stay. Looks like a great place to host a wedding and who doesn't want a historic Gothic structure in their wedding photos? Perhaps hearing that this location is situated on a War of 1812 battlefield might give one pause. Or maybe the fact that this structure was once an asylum might be worrisome. Would the fact that Frederick Olmstead designed these grounds cause some hesitation before booking? After all, Olmstead was a landscape architect who was notorious in supernatural circles for designing haunted property. It is not surprising that the former H.H. Richardson Complex is reputed to be one of the most haunted sites in Buffalo and in the state of New York. Join us and our listener Karen Hubbard as we explore the history and haunts of the H.H. Richardson Complex!

The Buffalo State Asylum opened in 1880 on what had been 200 acres of farm land overlooking the Niagara River and Lake Erie. The corner stone was laid on September 18, 1872 and the account about it that appears in the book "The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada" states, "The corner-stone of the hospital was laid before a distinguished body of people. The account written at that time says 'the display made by the military and Masonic Order, including the Knights Templar, was the finest ever witnessed in this city, and had the weather proved propitious the effect would have been grand. Governor John T. Hoffman made the opening address, and an oration was delivered by James O. Putnam. After the oration Dr. James P. White, president of the Board of Managers, notified Christopher Fox, Grand Master of the Masons of the State of New York, to lay the corner-stone with the ancient forms of Masonry.'"

Construction had begun in 1870 and took twenty years to complete, but when it was finished, it was one of the most state-of-the-art asylums of its time. This was the first hospital for the insane to offer a training school for nurses. Like many of its counterparts, this institute was designed in the Kirkbride Plan and the grounds were specially designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted famously said, "The root of all my good work is an early respect for, regard and enjoyment of scenery… and extraordinary opportunities for cultivating susceptibility to the power of scenery." He had a lot to work with because there were several springs on the property and groves of oak and maple trees. The architect of the asylum was the man for whom it was named, H.H. Richardson. And as Karen Hubbard informed us, (Karen 1) that is what Richardson Romanesque was named for. The buildings were constructed from red sandstone and brick. A very unique feature was that the buildings had curved walls and there was a reason for this. In many asylums, patients would be placed out in hallways with overcrowding, but these curved walls prevented that from happening here.

The first buildings on the property were the administration buildings. There were five buildings and eleven wards and it wouldn't be until 1895 that the final five buildings would be completed and finish the original plan. That are these two glorious towers rising up out of the main building like some kind of Gothic cathedral. Additional buildings would be added. In 1897 would come the building for the worst cases of mental illness that housed the operating rooms, hydrotherapy equipment, electrical apparatuses and laboratory. An amusement hall, a male employee dormitory, a chapel and home for the superintendent were added in 1905. Ward 35 would come in 1909 and housed female tubercular patients. Ward 36 was built in 1913 and was a pavilion for contagious disease.

The first patients to arrive at the Buffalo asylum came from the Utica State Hospital. And as was the case with all asylums and despite the fact that this one was constructed to prevent the issues experienced at other asylums when overcrowding happened, this asylum became horribly overcrowded and old, outdated practices started to be used meaning people were abused and living conditions went downhill.

In the 1970s, despite restoration efforts, three buildings were demolished. The Richardson Center Corporation was formed by the state of New York in 2006 with the goal to rehabilitate the site. In 2008, stabilization efforts were made that were completed in 2012. During that time, a fire caused $200,000 in damage and no cause was ever found. In 2013, plans were made for the first Phase of the development and Hotel Henry would be born.

Hotel Henry is unique in that it claims to be an urban resort. Their website describes it this way, "Hotel Henry’s Urban Resort is distinctive from the type of 'resort' that most travelers expect. Instead, the surrounding city of Buffalo – its galleries and cultural institutions, architecture, nearby parks… are the treasures to be enjoyed. The Urban Resort is the design-rich city of Buffalo itself. Situated on 42 acres within the City of Buffalo’s museum district and cultural corridor, the Urban Resort Conference Center is surrounded by parks, lakes, museums and connected to the fun and vibrant Elmwood Village. Enjoy a vibrant urban streetscape interwoven with sprawling parkways, local food and shopping, an adjacent college campus, world-class museums and galleries, and nearby Delaware Park. Hotel Henry is centrally-located among Buffalo’s most eclectic and active areas. This is the urban resort experience." Architecture firm Deborah Berke Partners, along with Flynn Battaglia Architects and Goody Clancy, which is a preservation firm, partially restored the former asylum. The hotel offers 88 rooms and many upgrades, but some original features are still here. There is a winged staircase, original moldings and fireplaces and 12-foot hallways.

We found this article in the Buffalo Biz Journals dated to 2016 talking about the ghost stories connected to building and despite the fact that a haunted reputation is usually a selling point for many hotels, Henry Hotel developer Dennis Murphy said, "I suppose from the outside looking in, those types of stories could be really interesting. But as someone who is making a big financial investment in this project, they are not helpful." And despite the fact that Murphy claimed that he never experienced any activity and that a paranormal investigator interviewed for the article made the same claim, there are plenty of people who report having paranormal experiences here. One of those people is our listener Karen Hubbard. (EVPs -2)

Paranormal investigator and Buffalo ghost walks guide Mason Winfield has an interesting theory we had not heard before. He has said basically that it's not surprising that the mentally ill have "a greater tendency" for hauntings because "they have higher functions of the unconscious mind." A young woman and her friends visited the Buffalo Asylum when it was abandoned and she said, "It looked like someone snapped their fingers and everyone disappeared.' There was still medical equipment and hospital beds inside. She said there were no ghosts, but she definitely got some intense feelings. A floor partially caved and the group started running. The woman said, "When we saw a sign for the morgue I said, ‘Screw this! I need to get out!’" She had felt overwhelmed by fear. "All I can remember were my emotions. I wanted to die."

The idea that a former asylum would not be haunted is ludicrous based on our experiences. There is just far too much energy left over, regardless of what renovations have been made. Maybe one day Hotel Henry will embrace the past and embrace its spirits. But as is the case with all of our episodes as to whether this location is haunted, that is for you to decide!

Show Notes:

The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada, By Henry Mills Hurd, William Francis Drewry, Richard Dewey, Charles Winfield Pilgrim, George Adler Blumer, American Medico-Psychological Association. Committee on a History of the Institutional Care of the Insane, Thomas Joseph Workmann Burgess, Volume 3, The John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1916, Pages 179 – 184.

HGB Ep. 349 - Haunted Saratoga Springs

Moment in Oddity - The Lost Tomb of Queen Hetepheres

The tomb of Queen Hetepheres was once lost. Its discovery started in 1925 with a photographer's tripod. He was setting up a shot near the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Giza, Egypt, when the leg of his tripod slipped into a crevice. This crevice led into a hidden shaft that led into a hidden staircase that emptied into a limestone filled vertical shaft. The limestone had been used to seal the grave from grave robbers. It would take 10 years for archaeologists to excavate the tomb and what they found was amazing. The tomb was filled with the finest examples of ancient Egyptian jewelry and furniture. There was gilded wooden furniture and silver bracelets full of jewels  and precious stones like lapis lazuli and turquoise. Queen Hetepheres was the mother of Pharaoh Khufu. The strangest part of the discovery was that the Queen's body was not in the tomb. Archaeologists have no explanation as to the mystery of the missing body and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Mona Lisa Stolen

In the month of August, on the 21st, in 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen. The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci around 1517 and is considered to be the most well known work of art in the world. The work was acquired by King Francis I of France and eventually became the property of the French Republic. In 1797, it was put on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris. It was from the Louvre that the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911. The heist was pulled off by an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia who worked at the Louvre making the protective glass cases for the artwork. The Mona Lisa was one of the pieces. Peruggia hid the painting under his clothes and left the building after a plumber unlocked the door for him. It took 24 hours before the painting was reported missing and another two years before it was recovered. Peruggia was arrested, tried and sentenced to seven months in jail.

Haunted Saratoga Springs

 

Through the years, we have covered many locations with the word "springs" in their name. These sites all seem to have one thing in common: they have been places considered special because they were sacred or spiritual or healing. The Native Americans held them in reverence. Saratoga Springs in New York is another one of these places. Many have claimed that areas like this are portals that attract spirits. And it does seem that there are many haunted locations here. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of Saratoga Springs!

 

Saratoga Springs has a deep and rich history starting with the Native Americans who used the mineral springs here for healing and ritual. These were the Mohawk, Mahican and Haudenosaunee. High Rock Spring was the most famous spring here and the Native Americans called it the "Medicine Spring of the Great Spirit." The Native Americans called the area "Sarahoga," which means "place of swift water." Sir William Johnson was the first European to test the healing reputation of this spring. He had suffered a battle wound at the Battle of Lake George in 1755. The wound left him unable to walk, but after visiting High Rock in 1771, he was said to be able to walk back to Johnstown. The spring's reputation spread and even George Washington visited the spring in 1783. 

 

The Dutch and British were the first Europeans in the area and the British built Fort Saratoga here in 1691. There was much conflict in the area between the Dutch, British and native tribes. The first European to settle what would become Saratoga Springs was Alexander Bryan in 1787 and eventually many people followed. They gave the town the special name of "Town of the Springs Near Saratoga." The town would be officially established as Saratoga Springs in 1819 with the village incorporating in 1826. The Saratoga and Schenectady Railroad brought in many tourists to the springs. Many hotels were built at this time too. One of these was the Grand Union Hotel, which was the largest hotel in the world at one time. This started out as Putnam's Tavern and Boarding House, built by Gideon Putnam in 1802. This hotel was demolished in 1953, unfortunately. But there is another hotel named for Gideon Putnam and this one is apparently haunted! 

Gideon Putnam Resort

 

Gideon Putnam was born in Massachusetts in 1763 and he was considered the founder of the hotel business in Saratoga Springs. The name Putnam is big in Saratoga Springs. He married Doanda Risley Putnam and they moved to Saratoga Springs in 1789. Putnam was not impressed with the area and referred to it as a "forest with a few log houses and a mineral spring." He and his wife chose the upper village to settle and they would have nine children. Putnam started his first business and he became a lumber baron. He started a sawmill and made barrel staves and shingles, which were sold in New York City after being floated down the Hudson River. Putnam became a rich man and he bought a tract of land surrounding Congress Spring. In 1802, he built the 70-room Putnam Tavern and Boarding House, which the local folk called "Putnam's Folly." We heard this about Orleans Waterfront Inn too.

This was anything but folly though. The boarding house flourished and in 1810, Putnam added on to the boarding house and renamed the place Union Hall. The hotel grew to the size of a whole city block and was renamed the Grand Union Hotel and was operated by the Putnam family until 1864. As we said before, this was demolished in 1953 to make way for a grocery store and parking lot. Putnam died at a young age. He was only 49 when he died from injuries he sustained when another hotel he was building called Congress Hall, had a section of scaffolding collapse on him. He was the first person buried in the cemetery that he founded, Gideon Putnam Burial Ground. 

 

The city continued to flourish with the vision that Putnam had put forward and eventually in 1935, another hotel was built dedicated to the man by using his name, The Gideon Putnam Hotel. This hotel did not have the size of the Grand Union with only 87 rooms compared to the Grand Union's 600 rooms. The hotel was designed in the Colonial Revival/Neo-Georgian style by prominent architect Marcus T. Reynolds. This was a convenient and modest hotel that was not overly ornate. And by modest, we aren't just talking about the accoutrements. Sleeveless dresses were prohibited in the dining room. Well known interior decorator Dorothy Tuckerman Draper designed the interior decor with bright colors and internationally acclaimed artist James Reynolds painted the murals in the dining room. These murals featured Saratoga scenes. 

 

In that first decade, the Gideon Putnam Hotel was always booked solid and many people would stay for the recommended three weeks to properly enjoy the spa and springs. Many celebrities came to stay as well like Fred Astaire, Cary Grant and Bob Hope. And then things changed as the automobile made long stays at resorts less popular and modern medicine took care of ailments that used to bring people to the springs to drink the water to cure. The hotel would be redecorated in 1953 and later bring in a new clientele with the Saratoga Performing Arts Center being built in 1966. This brought in other famous people like the Grateful Dead and opera star Beverly Sills. In 1969, a $750,000 remodel added a cocktail lounge and more guestrooms and in 1979, a 9,000 square foot convention center was added. *Fun fact: that convention center was named after Sir William Johnson. Today, the hotel offers 123 guestrooms and is listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's guide to Historic Hotels of America. Many refer to this as the "Jewel of Saratoga." It also is reputedly haunted by several spirits.

Both staff and guests have experiences to share. They claim to have experienced cold spots and breezes and unexplained noises. One employee went up to the attic to fix light fixtures that would not turn on up on the roof. He found that the lights somehow had turned themselves on by themselves. He was shocked when he then saw the face of an old woman staring back at him from a window in the attic.

Witch of Saratoga

 

Angeline Tubbs was known as the Witch of Saratoga. She reputedly died on August 16, 1865 at the age of 104. She had lived in a shack just north of Saratoga Springs and the story of how she came to be here was a sad one. She had been a beautiful young woman engaged to a British soldier when the Revolutionary War started. He brought her across the ocean with him and then abandoned her after his company was defeated at the Battle of Saratoga. She made her way to the mountains to find a place to live and built a shack there where she was surrounded by cats. The first cat lady? Tubbs made a living telling fortunes and trapping. People claimed to see her out on the mountainside waving her arms around with her hair flying all about whenever there was a violent thunderstorm and they said it seemed as though she were conversing with spirits. Red lightning was said to flash all about her. And that is how she came to be known as the Witch of Saratoga. She eventually ended up in a local poorhouse where she died. A doctor who knew her at that time said that she was probably ten years younger than the 104 that was claimed about her. She still lived to be an old woman. And there are stories that for years after her death, the image or spirit of a wild-haired woman dancing on the mountain during bad storms was seen.

Yaddo Gardens

Yaddo Gardens makes the perfect setting for a horror movie. The mansion is set back among large pine trees and resembles a gothic mansion of old, built from stone. The gardens surrounding the property are dotted with statuary, much of it adding to the creepy vibe. The wrought iron gate leading onto the property at 312 Union Avenue features the word "Yaddo" fashioned in the iron in a quirky form of cursive. That is the first indication that one is about to enter a very unique property. Before the mansion and gardens were at this location, there were Native Americans here and they believed the land to be special. The first European to own the property was Jacobus Barhyte who was a Revolutionary War veteran. He built a farm house, gristmill and tavern on the property and a fun legend about that tavern is that Edgar Allan Poe supposedly wrote part of "The Raven" at Barhyte’s tavern!

The mansion here was built in 1893 by the Trask Family. Spencer and Katrina Trask had bought the property in 1881 because Katrina felt a spiritual connection to it. The couple let their daughter, Christina, name it and she came up with Yaddo. She wanted something that rhymed with shadow. Sadly, Christina would not live to adulthood. And even more depressing is that she was not the only Trask child to die young. The Trasks had already lost their eldest son, Alanson, when they bought the property. A few years after the mansion was built, Christina died along with her brother Spencer. They had caught diphtheria from their mother. The doctors had thought that Katrina was going to die, so they brought the children in to say goodbye and that's when it is thought they caught the disease. It was all very tragic.

The youngest Trask child was named after her mother Katrina and she died shortly after her birth. The poor Trasks could not catch a break when it came to their children. Katrina would take the pain of her loss and write. A Tiffany stained glass window in the mansion features an epiphany that she had in the garden. She was a Theosophist and believed in an immense creative spirit and part of that spirit was here at Yaddo. The Trasks had followed that spirit in the design of the gardens. They had consulted landscape architects, but the design was entirely their own. These gardens are situated on lower and upper terraces that are divided by a pergola. The lower part is formal with a Rose Garden and reflects Italian and French Renaissance influences. The upper part is a woodland rock garden, which was a style that came into fashion in the late nineteenth century. Both gardens have fountains and statuary. There are four statues inspired by the four seasons. Another statuary features a sundial that bears the inscription, "Hours fly, Flowers die, New days, New ways, Pass by, Love stays." In 1893, the original mansion burned down, but the Trasks rebuilt and that is the mansion that is there now.

The mansion at Yaddo has been an artist community since 1926 and most artists who have made this their home base at some point, describe the location as paradise. Changing this into an artist retreat was Spencer's idea as a gift to his wife. It offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video. Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 66 Pulitzer Prizes, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, 61 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 108 Rome Prizes, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards, a Nobel Prize and at least one Man Booker Prize. Since this is an active retreat, the public is not granted access to the mansion. For a time in the 1980s, the gardens fell into disrepair. In 1991, Saratoga Springs resident and Yaddo board member Jane Wait founded the Yaddo Garden Association. Under her leadership, the all-volunteer association brought the gardens back to life and raised funds to restore statuary and ornaments. The gardens have been vandalized in more recent years too unfortunately. There are many who believe the property is haunted.

 

Katrina Trask was buried on the on the grounds and visitors have said that they’ve felt her presence around the property. Tour guide Leslie Leduc has worked here for over 20 years and she said that many artists who completed the residency program have claimed to have seen or felt Katrina. One memorable story involved the artists getting together and forming an impromptu band they called The Trask Children. As they played and sang, the windows started slamming and they believed that Katrina was unhappy with them. Leduc said it was like Katrina was shaking her finger and saying no, no, no. People who volunteer in the gardens claim to have felt her presence through unexplained sounds or sudden cool breezes. Some artists believe that Katrina has inspired their work by guiding them through dreams. There are other spirits here too. There were Native Americans who were on the land previously and they have been known to make an appearance. And Jacobus Barhyte is said to haunt his former property too. One other ghost that is said to haunt the grounds is Allena Pardee, who worked for and was very close to Katrina. According to Leduc, she’s usually in the gardens where she was happiest. Dowsers have investigated the property and been drawn to the four statues, which represent the four seasons and play a key role in the ghost tours.
 

The Olde Bryan Inn
 

In 1773, Dirck Schoughten built a simple log cabin on the bluff overlooking High Rock Spring and this spot would eventually become home for The Olde Bryan Inn, which was built in 1832. Today, this is a very popular restaurant in Saratoga Springs. Schoughten left his cabin shortly after building it because of conflicts he had with the Native Americans. John Arnold moved his family into the cabin the following year and expanded it. so that they could operate it as an inn. A man named Sam Norton purchased the inn in 1777, but his efforts in the business were short lived because the Revolutionary War started and the British pushed him out as they took control of Saratoga Springs. Sam would never return, but his son did after the war and he ran the inn for a decade. 

The inn was then sold to Gilbert Morgan in 1787 and he turned around and sold it to Alexander Bryan who was a hero of the Revolutionary War. He had served as a spy on the British. He worked his way into a British camp and found out the plans of the British. Bryan then made a run for it, but was pursued and chased on horseback for three days. He then had to leave his horse and make his way down a river with only his mouth above the water. He succeeded and the information he had helped the outnumbered Americans to win the Battle of Saratoga. This man was never given the credit for what he did at the time, but many believe that he was the reason the Americans ultimately won the war because this was a huge turning point. Bryan expanded the property where the inn sat even more, adding a log house across the street that served as an inn and tavern and he also added a blacksmith shop. These two inns were the only hotels in Saratoga Springs until Gideon Putnam built the Grand Union Hotel. Bryan's son, John, inherited the property and he built a stone house where the tavern had been in 1825. This structure remained in the family until the 1900s.

The Bryan home was sold to the LaMountain family in 1925 and they added a brick addition and Burnhams hand laundry was opened up there. In 1954, this became a family home for the Veitch family and they remained until 1979. Dave Powers and Joe Wilkinson purchased it at that time with the goal of restoring the Olde Bryan Inn. When Steve Sullivan joined them in 1981, that vision came to fruition. Little did the men know, but this location was haunted. Many locals think of it as the most haunted place in Saratoga Springs. There are a number of spirits here. The first is a man who has been seen in colonial era clothing. Another is the Lady in Green. It is believed that she is a Civil War widow named Beatrice, but there is no story about how she died. She is usually seen in the upstairs women's room, hich is believed to be her former bedroom. She is referred to as the Lady in Green because she is wearing a high neck Victorian green dress. To add believability to the story, a green Victorian dress was found in a trunk in the attic. 

The official website of the restaurant shares some ghost stories. The first is "The chandelier hanging now is not the one we used to have – it used to be an old, giant one. The power was out one afternoon, but we all came in for the night just in case, because if it came on we would open for business. We were all sitting in the main dining room chatting and we started joking and making fun of the portraits on the wall, and the idea of a ghost, when one of the servers suddenly gasped and pointed – the chandelier was swinging in circles! I did a head count and we were all there. The owner stood on a chair and stopped the chandelier. As soon as he let go it started swinging again!"

Another employee said, "One night I was coming from the third floor with a box of things from storage. As I took a step down something snagged my pants leg, hard. I took a couple more steps down and turned to look and see if there was a crooked nail or something, and there was absolutely NOTHING there. Another night I was about to leave for the evening, and nobody was in the restaurant but me and the manager, who was in the office on the second floor. When I turned my reports and cash in to him and went back down to leave, my keys were in a glass of water."

A patron say the Lady in Green and described it this way, "It was 2001 and my first time coming to OBI. I had just moved to the area and didn’t know any of the history. I was having dinner in the main dining area in the front. I looked up and there was a woman in a green old fashioned dress standing on the catwalk, looking over the railing. I asked the waiter if there was a reenactment event taking place that evening and he said no. It was puzzling but we left it at that. At the end of our meal I went upstairs to the restroom and heard someone else come in. I could see a green dress under the door of my stall. When I exited there wasn’t anyone in the restroom. I never heard anyone open the door to leave. I had chills all over."

Batcheller's Mansion Inn

The Batcheller Mansion Inn is one of the most outstanding pieces of architecture in not only Saratoga Springs, but the state of New York. This was the former home of George Sherman Batcheller who had it built in 1873 by NY architectural firm Nichols & Halcott. The architecture featured several styles: French Renaissance Revival, Italianate and Egyptian. The Victorian style features a mansard roof and a tower topped by a minaret. Batcheller was born in 1837 and he attended Harvard Law School. He came from a line of well-known historical figures including Daniel Webster and Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He would be the youngest person elected to the New York State Assembly. He was only 21 at the time. Batcheller married Catherine Cook in 1861 and they would have three children. Only one of them would survive infancy. 

 

The couple had their magnificent home built for $100,000 and they named it Kaser-el-Nouzha, which means "palace of pleasure" in Arabic. There were three floors and the home had so many unique features that the design was copyrighted. There were two steam-vapor furnaces, eleven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a large basement kitchen fed food to the butler’s pantry via dumbwaiters and there was a music room. The Batcheller family didn't get to enjoy their mansion for long because President Ulysses S. Grant asked George to be the Judge and American Representative in the Court of First Instance in Cairo. The Batchellers spent the next ten years in Egypt, returning in 1885 and George then served in the New York State Legislature until 1888.

The Batchellers loved to host big social events and they did so often. The family had to leave their home again when George was appointed minister to Portugal in 1891. He served in Europe until 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Egypt. Catherine would pass away in Egypt in 1903 and a grand funeral was held for her and she was buried temporarily in Egypt. George would bring her back to Saratoga Springs and have her buried in their Egyptian style pink granite mausoleum in Greenridge Cemetery. He would join her five years later in 1908. Kate Batcheller decided to sell the family home in 1916 to D. Walter Mabee. He moved out in 1937 and it sat vacant for three years. Edward and Pauline Muscovier bought the house in 1940 and they ran it as a boarding house. This started the destruction of the interior and this continued when Meyer Goldman bought the property in 1952 and remodeled it into a 28-unit retirement home for orthodox Jews named Goldman’s Park View. His daughter inherited it when he died in 1965 and she left it basically abandoned. And as happens with most abandoned properties, this one was vandalized.

 

The damage was so extensive that the City of Saratoga Springs Department of Public Works condemned the house in 1973. A local attorney named Eugene Turchi and his partner Ray Marshall convinced Goldman's daughter to sell them the wrecked house for $40,000.00. After removing nearly 100 dump truck loads of trash and debris, the men poured $250,000.00 into the restoration. Part of that work included the addition of three 23’ windows in the kitchen. In 1983, Turchi sold the house to
Bruce J. Levinsky for $500,000.00. He continued restoration work and used the house as his home until 1994, when he opened it as an inn and named it for the family who originally built it. The house is considered the Crown Jewel of Saratoga Springs.

 

When the mansion started being rehabbed into the bed and breakfast a strange thing started to happen. Objects started showing up out of thin air. There would be a piece of molding that no one had seen before just laying in a room. Then there was a mantle piece that appeared out of nowhere. This was followed by a mirror. To this day, no one knows where any of these items came from. The Albany Paranormal Research Society, was part of the TAPS Family and they investigated here twice. They caught an EVP they believed belonged to George Batcheller with him saying, "Come find me." Guests claim to have seen weird orbs and feeling as though something unseen is watching them or near them.

Canfield Casino

 

Saratoga Springs definitely has a darker side to its history. During Prohibition, gangsters were running booze and gambling in the back rooms of lake houses while famous performers like Bing Crosby entertained in the front rooms. Houses of ill repute were open secrets and New York madams traveled north to the springs in summer and paid local officials to look the other way. The Canfield Casino is one location that played host to much of this seamy side. This was originally called the Saratoga Club House and opened in 1870. This was founded by professional boxer John Morrissey who had learned all about politics, gambling, high society and fighting from Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall in New York. He started with a small gaming house when he first arrived in Saratoga Springs in 1861. 

 

Morrissey began building the Club House in 1867. The gambling hall had three rules when it opened: no ladies allowed, cash only and no locals. The main part of the casino was a three-story building topped by a flat roof, bordered by an ornate bracketed cornice. The windows had sandstone trim. The east wing is where most of the gambling took place and the north wing had the dining room and kitchen, which featured parkay floors and the ceiling had these beautiful stained glass hexagonal windows. There were also stained glass windows featuring horses along the walls. An office and library were in the west wing. There were private gambling rooms upstairs and rooms for living quarters on the third floor. The gambling room was elegant with statuettes and mirrors and much of this remains today. 

Morrissey did not operate the Club House for long. He came to an untimely end at 47 in 1878. Ownership went to two men, Charles Reed and Albert Spencer, and they joined forces with Richard Canfield in 1883. Eventually, Canfield bought them out of the Club House and he remodeled the gambling hall, pouring $800,000 into the building and the grounds of Congress Park that surrounded the establishment. He added an early form of air conditioning to the building and marble statues to the grounds. Canfield eventually was known as the King of the Gamblers and Saratoga Springs was known as the American Monte Carlo. This would all come to an end in 1907 when gambling became an illegal practice and he eventually sold the building to the village in 1911. There had also been the Congress Park Hotel here and a bottling plant, which were demolished.

Today, the Canfield Casino sits in the center of Congress Park on 17 acres and serves as the Saratoga Springs History Museum and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Ghost tours are hosted here and this location has not only been investigated by Ghost Hunters in Season 6, Episode 18 in 2010, but it has also been featured on Most Terrifying Places on the Travel Channel. There are many ghost tales told about the former gambling hall. A visitor in the 1990s, claimed to see a woman dressed in a Victorian era gown walking through the corridors and then she climbed the stairs to the third floor. A man in Victorian clothing knocked on the office door in 2007 and a museum volunteer turned toface him. The man asked the volunteer a question and then disappeared. There is furniture here from the Walworth Mansion that seems to have spirits of that prominent family attached to it.

Night crews have had doors slammed on them mysteriously. In 2009, a visitor had a glass slapped out of her hand by something she could not see. The smell of cigar smoke wafts through the air when no one is smoking. Objects move about on their own and once an employee saw a garbage can lid go flying into the air and then it crashed to the ground on its own. Some of the energy in the building has even felt hostile. The costume exhibit had a candelabra that made a noise that several people heard from another room. When they investigated, they found no one. Linda Zimmermann is a friend of mine and she wrote "America’s Historic Haunts." In it she writes about the Canfield Casino and claims that there are spirits who hang around the roulette table on the second floor and spin the wheel. She also writes about a female ghost who has blonde hair. The Ghost Hunters caught most of their evidence on the third floor and this included EMF spikes. Some members had their hair pulled and were touched too. They heard things move and also heard an audible male voice and later the voices of a male and female who seemed to be having a conversation.

 

Saratoga Springs is clearly a village with a rich history and many original buildings that not only provide a testament to that history, but offer a final resting place for spirits. Are these locations in Saratoga Springs haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 348 - Orleans Waterfront Inn and Haunted Brewster

Moment in Oddity - The Legend of Cliff Young

Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers

Cliff Young was an unlikely competitor. He was an Australian farmer who was 61 years old and he showed up to the start line of the annual Sydney to Melbourne endurance race wearing overalls and work boots in 1983. The young professional athletes getting ready to run this race probably figured that Cliff was there to watch. And that makes sense considering that this race is 544 miles long and considered one of the world's most grueling races. Most athletes took five days to complete the race. Every one was shocked when Cliff picked up his race number.  His fellow competitors mocked him and said he would never finish the race. Cliff replied, "Yes I can. See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I'd always catch them. I believe I can run this race." Cliff started the race behind everybody and rather than run, he shuffled. Most runners would run for 18 hours and then sleep for six, but Cliff kept right on shuffling. As the race continued, Cliff gained ground and started passing the racers. He eventually passed them all and he was the first runner to cross the finish line and he set a record. He was awarded $10,000, but he didn't care about the money and he gave it away to several other runners. Cliff's racing style came to be known as the "Young-shuffle" and many ultra-marathon runners use it, with three of them winning using that style. And all runners forego sleeping because they know they won't win if they do. A sixty-one year old farmer winning a marathon is amazing, but one winning an endurance race while shuffling in work boots, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Six Flags Over Texas Opens

In the month of August, on the 1st, in 1961, Six Flags Over Texas opens. This Six Flags park in Texas would be the first park in the Six Flags chain. The park was located in Arlington, Texas on 212 acres and took one year and $10 million to build. Six Flags Over Texas would pioneer many rides and concepts that are now the standard for amusement parks. Here one would find the first mine train ride, log flume, 360-degree looping roller coaster, parachute drop and river rapid ride. An all-inclusive admission price ticket, rather than the standard individual ride tickets was introduced by Six Flags too. Surprisingly, the man who built the park was an oilman and real estate developer who had thrown the park up on some vacant land as a temporary way to make a quick buck. The success of the park changed his mind about this being a temporary place. And the name Six Flags has a historical meaning behind it. Six different flags have flown over the state of Texas: France, Spain, Mexico, the Confederacy, Texas and the United States.

Orleans Waterfront Inn and Haunted Brewster

The Orleans Waterfront Inn lies between Town Cove and Route 28 in Orleans, Massachusetts. This had been the home of a sea captain whose family had strong ties to Orleans and whose ancestors were pilgrims. The original building has been here for over 100 years and was said to be a favorite haunt of the Irish Mafia where they ran whiskey. This was reputedly a brothel for a time as well, where a lady of the evening lost her life. The inn was the scene of two suicides. Perhaps because of this history, the inn is reputedly haunted. Not far from Orleans is the town of Brewster. There are several haunted locations in this town from the Crosby Mansion to the Bramble Inn and Restaurant to the Captain Freeman Perry house. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Orleans Waterfront Inn and the town of Brewster.

Constance Hopkins was the first pilgrim to spot Cape Cod from the Mayflower. She was fourteen at the time. In 1627, she would marry Nicholas Snow and they would have between nine to twelve children. Officially, there are only nine documented children. Her descendants would be integral in the formation of Orleans. Some of the pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony were not happy with the size of their land tracts, nor the soil. In 1693, they decided to leave and found a separate settlement. At the time this was just a southern parish of Eastham. Later, it was named Orleans in honor of Louis Philippe II who was the Duke of Orleans and the town would be officially incorporated in 1797. Constance's descendant Isaac Snow was part of that effort to incorporate. The town chose a French name to honor the French for their support during the Revolutionary War. Today, Orleans is known as the Jewell of the Lower Cape. There are 46 miles of salt water shoreline and 12 miles of fresh water shoreline depending on which side of the village one is located.

The Cape supported several industries from whaling to fishing to agriculture to salt works. Aaron Snow Jr. was another descendant of Constance and he would build a wharf near Town Cove. He used timber from a vessel that shipwrecked on the dangerous Nauset Shoals. His business was running a schooner called the Nettie M Rogers and Aaron would sail up and down the New England coast, transporting fuel, oil and grain. Near this wharf, he built a home for himself, his wife and their seven children in 1875. This was Victorian in style with mansard roofs and was quite large because it also housed a store that the Snow family ran. The main part of the house was six stories with that sixth level being a cupola.

Many residents of the town referred to the store and house as "Aaron's Folly." The sea captain died on May 10, 1892. One of Aaron's sons was named William H. and when he inherited the business, he decided to move it to the center of Orleans and it still runs there today under the Snow family. The house remained empty until it was bought in 1900. Two sisters bought it and reopened as a boarding house and that is how it remained for 30 years as it passed through the hands of four owners. In the 1940s, a German man bought the building and the northeast and southwest wings were added and the boarding house became an inn and restaurant known as the Orleans Inn. At first, it was only open in the summer, but it moved to year round. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was THE place to visit on the Cape. It fell into disrepair, but in 1995 Ed and Laurie Maas purchased the property and restored it to its former glory. The family rebuilt a large deck and added a large awning over it and this serves as a gathering area. They run it as the Orleans Waterfront Inn and O'Hagan's Irish Pub. There is a neat windmill adjacent to the inn.
 
That's the official history, but there is a seedy side to this hotel. There are rumors that it ran as a brothel for a time during the Roaring Twenties and that the Irish Mafia controlled the building at some point during Prohibition. Hannah was said to be one of the ladies who worked at the brothel and she was murdered in the front entrance of the hotel, although we could find no official report of this crime. Same goes for the stories of the Irish Mob being here. The Irish Mob was founded in the early 19th century and is thought to be the oldest mob in America. For more than 200 years, this group has worked in major cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Boston committing various crimes from racketeering to robbery, assault, gambling, drug and liquor trafficking, murder, loansharking and counterfeiting. Their main focus has been in the drug trade, but during Prohibition, they were alcohol runners. Boston had a presence through the Gustin Gang, which was run by Frank Wallace until his death in 1931. We couldn't find anything that indicated that the Irish Mafia ventured into Cape Cod, but it's definitely possible. What is interesting about this time of bootlegging is that from 1931 to 1933, nearly every high level Irish American bootlegger was executed gangland style. (Whitey Bulger probably most famous Irish mob guy.)

Owner Ed Maas has not only heard many stories about the haunts at his inn, he has experienced strange things himself. In fact, he had purchased the inn with the plan to demolish it and build something else, but when he and his wife walked through it and felt a blast of cold air, his wife declared that they should save the hotel for the ghosts. Guests have reported disembodied footsteps, doors slamming shut on their own and gusts of cold air. Ed snapped a weird picture at the Chatham High School 25th reunion party that was held at the inn. There are three couples in the picture and right in front of them is a white, smoky mist. Ed claims that this more than likely was Hannah manifesting.

Ed thinks there are at least three ghosts. He has experienced Hannah himself. He liked to sleep on the couch in case a guest needed something in the middle of the night. He was awakened one evening when a naked woman came down the stairs and started dancing in the center of the room. He politely said "hello" as he wondered what she was doing and she said "hello" to him in return. He then fell back to sleep. The next day, a man called who had been a passing motorist and he wanted to complain about the lack of curtains in the windows. He said he could see a naked woman dancing in the fifth floor window. There was no guest staying in that room.

Ryan Maas was the owner's son and he shared his experiences with Ghost Hunters when they featured the inn on an episode. In 1996, Ryan was eighteen and he came up to do renovations. One of his duties was to lock everything up. He would start up at the cupola and check all the windows and doors on his way down, ending with the front door. The next day, the front door was completely open when he arrived. No one was in the house. This happened repeatedly and this was a door that was triple bolted. Another door on an upper floor that had been locked would be found open as well.

In the dining room, servers will blow out all the candles at the end of the evening and sometimes when they come back in, they find the candles relit. Josh Santiago was a server and he saw a man wearing plaid out of the corner of his eye and when he turned to look at the man, there was no one there. In the tavern, drinks would move along the rail of the bar top all on their own. This has been experienced over and over and the glass always slides in the same direction.

In the 1970s, a kitchen worker named Paul had worked here and he loved his job. He had lived down in the basement and when he didn't come up for work, a co-worker went down and found him hanging. Now kitchen workers claim to see a well-dressed man, wearing an apron, coming up from or retreating to the basement. And nobody will go into the basement at night, especially alone.

Room 5 is reputedly haunted. A former guest had checked in claiming that she only wanted a room for the weekend, but she ended up staying for three months and wouldn't let anybody come into the room. During that time she slowly unraveled into a breakdown. Another woman checked in to this room on another weekend and she seemed to be driven crazy in the room too. Other guests claimed to hear weird noises coming out of the room like a pack of wolves. So this was the woman making a noise that sounded like that. Ryan Haas said it scared him to death. They had to get the cops to take the first woman out and the family of the second woman had to come get her out. Room 4 is another haunted room. Ryan's sister once saw a figure in the mirror in this room.

The cupola was the scene of another suicide. Fred was a bartender and he climbed up to the cupola and hanged himself inside of it. He was there for five days before he was found, so it was a rough scene. Peggy Begg was a former employee and she was watching the inn by herself one evening and she decided to tell Fred "goodnight." Right after that, she heard an audible male voice call out "goodnight." She started running.

Jason and Grant were in Room 5, about four hours into the investigation when they both heard an audible female scream. The sound came from the other side of the closet. They both also heard a male voice mutter something later in the evening. Amy and Kris investigated Room 4. This is a room that is said to have a ghost cat. The ladies tried to make contact with Hannah and while they were doing an EVP session, they heard noises coming from the bathroom. Amy figured out that it was the shower curtain. They decided to do the flashlight experiment in that bathroom. The flashlight turned on to indicate that the spirit understood. And then it was turned off on command. The flashlight started turning on to indicate "yes." They believed they were talking with Hannah and she indicated that a customer had murdered her. The ladies then heard footsteps coming from above them, which was the cupola. Two other investigators were shushed by something unseen in the bar. These same guys heard a bang in the bathroom of Room 5. Steve and Tango figured out that big EMF spikes down in the basement were coming from the HVAC units, so that may be causing the creepy feelings.

Just a short ten minute drive down the road is the town of Brewster. Elder William Brewster was the first religious leader of the pilgrims at Plymouth Colony and this town was named in his honor. Brewster was first settled in 1656 and would be incorporated in 1803. This was a town where rich sea captains chose to live and they built mansions here. Several of these still exist and have been turned into bed-and-breakfasts. And wouldn't you know, some of them are apparently haunted too!

Bramble Inn and Restaurant

The Bramble Inn and Restaurant is located at 2019 Main Street and had been voted the best restaurant in Cape Cod. This property consists of two historic buildings, with the main building being built in 1861 and the smaller house being built in 1849. Ruth Manchester's family bought the property in 1985 and they began renovations in 1987. She felt like the renovations kicked up some paranormal activity and thought the place was haunted. She said, "I used to get a creepy feeling sometimes when I entered the room." This was a guestroom in the 1849 house. She was not alone. Both employees and guests have had similar feelings in the room. A female spirit reportedly bangs on doors and moans throughout the night. The property was bought by Rob and Andrea DiSimone in 2017 and they renamed it Spinnaker. They gave the restaurant and bed-and-breakfast a makeover and Rob runs the kitchen and Andrea supervises the dining room. We're not sure if any spirits have made their presence known to them.

Captain Freeman Perry House

We couldn't find much history on this one. Unfortunately, the official website of this inn doesn't have a page on the history. Here's what we managed to dig up. Captain William Freeman was born in Beverly, Massachusetts in 1820. He married Phebe Hurd in 1845 and they had two children. Phebe died in 1885 and the Captain remarried in 1886 to a woman named Hannah and they had a daughter they named Phebe. He got involved in the clipper trade and amassed a fortune. He commanded several ships and made his home in Brewster. He built his mansion in 1866. Today, the Captain Freeman Inn is owned by Laurie and Jason who purchased it in 2011. In August of 2019 they finished up the major renovations they were doing to the inn. This took them seven years. The interior is beautiful and features medallions on the ceilings above beautiful chandeliers and the ceilings were painted by Laurie in haint blue just like one would find on the porch ceilings. Donna Caine is the cook and makes some delectable stuff. They ghost stories connected to this inn feature an apparition dating back to the early 1900s that has been seen floating through the hallways and in the guest rooms.

The Crosby Mansion

The Crosby Mansion is located on a rise of land with great views of Cape Cod Bay. This three-story, 35-room mansion was built by Albert Crosby. He was born in 1823 and raised here. As a matter of fact, his mansion wraps around his family's homestead. He left for the Merchant Marines as an adult and then ended up in Chicago where he opened up a dry goods business with borrowed money. He made his fortune distilling alcohol and he also patented the first kerosene oil that was smokeless. Most of his sales for the distilled alcohol came during the Civil War to the government. He moved back to his hometown after making his fortune, bringing his new wife with him who was a burlesque performer and 23 years younger than him. Her name was Matilda and he built the mansion for her.

The mansion was built by John Hinckley and Sons in 1888 and no expense was spared. There was a tall 60 foot vewing tower. The interior was extraordinary with 15 fireplaces that were each diverse, made from imported English tile. The parlor fireplace had intricate woodwork and a beveled mirror tinted green. This was inspired by a mirror Matilda saw at Versailles when the couple were on their honeymoon. The main foyer fireplace was modeled after one she saw at Buckingham Palace.

A beautiful library was off the foyer with carved mahogany and the upper portions of the walls were done in Japanese leather paper that was imported from Japan and washed in gold leaf. The master bedroom is on the second floor and features a dressing room with his-and-her walk-in closets and a marble bathroom with running water and a flush toilet, which was ahead of its time then. A large guest room was on this level too that hosted guests like Mark Twain and Prince Albert. There were marble sinks and floors throughout the home, gas lighting and heating, an art gallery and a two-story billiards room.

The Crosbys called their home "Tawasentha", probably after Longfellow’s poem, "Song of Hiawatha." Matilda loved to entertain here and the Old Colony Railroad laid a side track to the house to make it easier for people to arrive. Sometimes the parties got to be too much for the older Albert and he would retreat to his favorite rocking chair or head over to the home where he grew up, the modest 1830s Cape style home. Albert died in 1906 at the age of 83. Matilda decided to open the gallery to the public one day a week in summer and the town in return gave her a break on taxes.

Matilda died in 1928 and the mansion passed to her grandnieces and they later sold it. Martha Atwood was an opera singer and she bought the mansion in 1938. She opened a music school there and Kirk Douglas even studied there. The school went out of business during World War II. Then the mansion just sat vacant until 1950. The Horgan Family bought it and remodeled it so they could open the Gold Coast Restaurant and Inn. The art gallery burned during that time. The mansion became a weight-loss camp in 1959 when a group of nutritionists headed by Dr. John Spargo bought it. They added a dining hall in 1965. Dr. Spargo bought out his partners in 1978 and decided to develop condominiums on the property. The town of Brewster said no to that plan and so he sold it to the state. The mansion fell into disrepair and, of course, was vandalized. A grassroots effort to save the mansion was started by Brewster residents Brian Locke and his mother, Ginny Locke. The Friends of Crosby Mansion was then started and they began the restoration of Crosby Mansion. Weddings and various functions are hosted here.

There are some whom claim that the Crosby Mansion is haunted. When the house was basically abandoned and had no electricity hooked up, people claimed to see lights on inside the mansion. They also claimed to see faces in the windows even though nobody was inside. And the weirdest claim is that unexplained blood marks have appeared on the front step.

The Orleans Waterfront Inn is a gorgeous seaside inn with a seedy history. Many people have experienced unexplained happenings here and the Ghost Hunters seemed to get some evidence. Brewster has some beautiful old homes that seem to have some weird things going on as well. Is the Orleans Waterfront Inn haunted and are these Brewster locations haunted? That is for you to decide!