Not Even Museums Will Display This Haunted Wooden Conjure Chest For The Public

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One hundred and fifty years ago, Jacob Cooley ordered his
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African American slave Hosea to build a chest for his
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first child. Josea set to work crafting a wooden chest
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of some remark. For some unknown reason, his master was
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displeased with his efforts and beat his slave to a pulp,
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killing him. Cooley's other slaves vowed to avenge the death
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of their friend and sprinkled the dried blood of an
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owl in the chest and had a conjure man cursed
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the chest as if by magic. Cooley's first born died
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in infancy, and over the forthcoming years, a total of
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seventeen deaths were attributed to the conjured chest. I'm Darren
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Marline and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren
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Marler and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every week
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you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the
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strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.
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Coming up this hour. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, there was a
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home built by slaves that is considered the most haunted
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in Alabama. Drivers are reporting strange, ghostly orbs following them
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on dark roads. We'll look at a few haunted roads
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and spook lights. But first, the brutal death of an
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African slave brings a curse upon the wooden chest he
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was ordered to construct. We begin with that story. If
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you're new here, welcome to the show. If you're already
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a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment
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and invite someone else to listen in with you. Recommending
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Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me
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to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be
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sure to visit Weirddarkness dot com, where you can follow
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me on social media, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated,
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and more. That's Weird Darkness dot com. Now, bult your doors,
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lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with
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me into the weird Darkness. An elegant mahogany veneer chest
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of drawers pan carved by an African American slave one
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hundred and fifty years ago, resides in the Kentucky Historic
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Museum at Frankfort. Crafted in the Empire style, the chest
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has glass knob on its four drawers. Nothing about its
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outward appearance gives any hint that tragedy has stalked its
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existence that it's known to historians as the Conjured Chest.
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Two decades before the Civil War, the family of one
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Jacob Cooley lived a sumptuous life as wealthy Southern planters.
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Jacob owned many slaves and farmed thousands of acres. He
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was also an evil, despicable man who frequently beat his
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slaves for the slightest infraction of his stringent rules. Jacob
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Cooley ordered one of his slaves, an excellent furniture maker
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named Josea, to construct a chest that would be used
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for his firstborn child. For some unknown reason, Jacob was
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angered at Hosea's finished product and beat him so savagely
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he died a few days later. Cooley's slaves, led by
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an old conjure man, placed a curb on the chest
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for all future generations. Wandroer was sprinkled with dried owl's blood,
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and a conjured chant was sung. All those associated with
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the chest would fall within the curs's evil power. Although
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Jacob Cooley himself evidently escaped the malevolence, his descendants were
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not as fortunate. The baby for whom the chest was
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originally built died soon after birth, the chest was in
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his nursery. His brother inherited the chest, and he was
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stabbed to death by his personal servant. Jacob Cooley had
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another son, John, who inherited one of his father's many plantations.
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The young man led a serene bachelor's life until a
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vivacious young woman barely out of Rotenes came into his life.
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Her name was Ellie, and she soon married John, nearly
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three times her age. The couple inherited the conjured chest.
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Knowing of the tragedies that had befallen her husband's siblings,
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she put the chest in an attic. Meanwhile, Jacob Cooley's
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youngest daughter, Melinda, eloped with a waggish irishman named Sean.
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With nowhere to live, Melinda turned to Ellie. John and
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Ellie had done well and had accumulated several farms in Tennessee.
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They turned over one of these to Sean and Melinda
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to work, while Melinda bore her young husband a brood
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of children and worked from sunrise to sunset. Sean came
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to loathe the dulness of farm life. Ellie Cooley tried
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to help, but Shawn's rebuffs made her presence unwelcome. To
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try and bring some beauty into Melinda's dreary existence, Ellie
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sent over her father in law's chest. It had been
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in her attic for a very long time, and nothing
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had happened. She had almost forgotten the chest's legacy. Perhaps
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the curse was only a lot of talk. Within days,
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Sewn deserted his wife for the bright lights of New Orleans.
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Melinda was inconsolable. She took to her bed with an ailment. There,
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Melinda soon died, an exhausted, gray haired woman barely out
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of her thirties. Shortly after his wife's death, Shawn was
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struck in the head by a steamboat's gangplank and died.
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The conjured chest had claimed its third and fourth victims.
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The couple left many orphaned children. Jean Cooley was given
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the job of traveling to Tennessee to assign the youngsters
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to other family members. The youngest, a baby named Evelyn,
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ran up to him her tiny arms outstretched. John took
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her to live with his own family in Kentucky. Little
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Evelyn grew into a beautiful and intelligent young woman. When
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she turned sixteen, Evelyn passed an examination that provided her
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with a teaching certificate, with which she took over a
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one room schoolhouse. She met and married a Scotsman, Malcolm Johnson,
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barely two months after she began teaching. As a wedding present,
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Ellie presented her niece with Jacob Cooley's handsome chest, and
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the evil passed to a new generation. Evelyn Johnson had
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children and even adopted a young orphan, a girl named Arabella.
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The curse was all but forgotten. Evelyn had the chest,
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but didn't find it necessary to use right away. However,
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after Arabella married some years later, Evelyn put the girl's
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bridle gown in the chest. Shortly thereafter, Arabella's husband suddenly died.
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That was the beginning of a series of horrible events
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visited upon Evelyn and Ellie. Arabella's child died after her
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baby clothes had been put in the chest. Evelyn's daughter
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in law, esther married to her oldest son, put her
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wedding attire in the chest she died. Evelyn's aunt Sarah,
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knitted a scarf in gloves to give to her son
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for Christmas. While walking along a train trestle, he fell
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off and was killed a few days before Christmas. Two
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other tragedies befell Evelyn's immediate family. A son in law
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deserted his wife, and a child was crippled for life
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in a bizarre accident. Yet Evelyn's husband, Malcolm, was a success.
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A small man, always courteous to those around him, he
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parleyed a shrewd Scottish sense of thrift into a burgeoning
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business empire that, at its height consisted of mills, houses,
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a coal yard, wharf, and a dry goods store. Malcolm
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was an extraordinarily wealthy man when he died. Despite her
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material comfort, his wife was haunted by the memories of
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those around her who were struck down or stricken in
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some other way by hardship. She took her own life
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eleven persons. The conjured chest was taking its toll as
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the twentieth century unfolded. The chest was inherited by Virginia
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Carrie Hudson from her grandmother Evelyn Johnson. Missus Hudson thought
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tales of the curse were just hearsay. She was wrong.
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Her first baby's clothes were put into the chest, she died.
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Another child's clothes were tucked in a drawer, and she
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contacted infantile paralysis. Another daughter's wedding dress was stored there,
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and her first husband ran off. A son was stabbed
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in the hand. He had clothes in the chest. A
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friend of the family put hunting clothes in it. He
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was shot in a hunting accident. And so it went
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sixteen victims, all of whom had one thing in common.
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Some of their personal clothing had been put in the
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conjured chest. Missus Hudson wanted to put an end to
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the curse. She found what she had hoped would be
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the solution in the form of an old friend of hers,
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an African American woman named Annie. Annie understood curses and conjures.
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The spell cast by Hosea's faithful companions would be broken
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only when three conditions were met. First, Missus Hudson would
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have to be given a dead owl without her having
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to ask. For one. Second, the green leaves of a
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willow tree had to be boiled from sun up to sundown.
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The dead owl had to remain in sight. Third, the
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boiled liquid was then to be buried in a jug
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with its handle facing east toward the rising sun below
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a flowering bush. A stuffed owl given to Missus Hudson's
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son by a friend accomplished the first requirement. Missus Hudson
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plucked leaves from a nearby willow tree and boiled them
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in a large black pot. The owl kept watch from
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a kitchen counter. At dusk, old Annie and Missus Hudson
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took the jug and, with its handle pointed east, buried
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it beneath a flowering lilac bush outside the kitchen window.
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Annie said they would only know if the curse had
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been broken if one of them died before the first
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full days of full Annie died in early September, the
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seventeenth and last known victim. The final private owner of
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the Conjure chest was Missus Hudson's daughter, Virginia C. Maine.
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Though she may have been skeptical of the curse and
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knew fully the story of the curse being lifted by
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Annie and her mother, she never stored anything in the
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chest and kept it hidden in her attic. The Kentucky
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History Museum has it now. Missus Maine donated it to
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the museum in nineteen seventy six. According to museum registrar
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Mike Hudson, the chest is in storage in our vaults,
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awaiting the time when it fit into a new exhibit.
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Supposedly the curse has been removed, but has it tucked safely.
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In the top chest drawer is an envelope with a
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cluster of owl feathers inside. The museum isn't taking any chances.
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Up next, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, there is a house built
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by slaves that is considered the most haunted in Alabama.
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Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marler. If you
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or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts,
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I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page
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at Weird Darkness dot Com. There I have gathered numerous
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free resources to help you fight depression, including the Crisis
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text line, the suicide and Crisis lifeline, save dot Org,
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I Fred and more. These resources are absolutely free. They're
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there when you need them anytime. Twenty four to seven
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on the Hope in the Darkness page at Weird Darkness
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dot com. That's Weird Darkness dot com slash Hope. On
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Seventeenth Street in Tuscaloosa, there is a home that is
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hailed as the most haunted in the state of Alabama.
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It is called the Drish House, which was formerly known
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as Monroe Place, built mostly by slaves for John Drisch
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and his wife on a plot of four hundred and
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fifty acres. It was a beautiful home, styled in both
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the Greek and Italian read as Aunt style. However, as
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beautiful as it was, darkness from its past marred its beauty.
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The owner, John Drish, already had a sad morbid history
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when the house was built. He was a doctor and
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was married to a woman named Katherine Washington. They had
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a daughter named Katherine. Sadly, his wife died when their
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daughter was young. He sent her to live in Virginia
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with relatives because he believed living with a widower would
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not be good for her. John Drish was allegedly a
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charming man, and it didn't take long for him to
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woo and marry a rich widow by the name of
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Sarah Owen. In eighteen twenty five, he brought his daughter
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Katherine back to Alabama to live with him, but their
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relationship was freed, so much so that a story of
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cruelty surrounds them. Allegedly, Catherine fell in love with a
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man John didn't approve of. He locked her in her
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room with very little food and water, and she eventually relented.
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She later married only to bring her sons back to
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the Drish house she had divorced their father. Many rumors
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suggest that Catherine suffered from mental illness. Though charming, Johndrish
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was an alcoholic, and he suffered from a violent temper. Sadly,
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Johndrish would die because of that. There are three stories
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surrounding his death. The first is he threw himself from
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a second floor balcony, The second is that he was
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drunk and fell down the stairs, and the third story
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alleges that he was trying to stop drinking and began
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to shake from withdrawals and fell. Regardless of which dory
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is true, John Dorish died in eighteen sixty seven, leaving
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his distraught wife to plan his funeral. Sarah was so
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distraught that she became more and more eccentric. She planned
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an elaborate funeral. When it was over, she kept her
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husband's funeral candles and hid them away. She insisted that
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they be burned at her funeral. When she died in
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eighteen eighty four, no one could find the candles, so
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her wishes were not met. Sadly, these were not the
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only dark things to surround the Drish family. Doctor Drish's
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niece was murdered by her husband, and there was also
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a rumor that a runaway slave hid in one of
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the towers, but when he exited because he needed food,
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he was returned to his owner, who burned him alive.
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There have been reports of a male ghost who is
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assumed to be this slave. Since Sarah's death, the house
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has been used as a school, a church, salvage yard,
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an auto parts store, and was also reportedly a prison
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during the Civil War. Besides the male ghost, ghost lights
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have also been reported near the top of the house
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and what appears to be a ghostly fire shooting from
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the third story tower. Of course, there is no fire
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when the firemen arrive. This occurrence is either blamed on
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the ghost of the slave or Sarah Drish, who is
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believed to be angry because her wishes of using her
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husband's funeral candles at her own funeral were not met.
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Though the house fell in disrepair for a while, it
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has been restored and it's now open for those who
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wish to hold events there. So there is hope that
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the dark history of the Drish house is gone and
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can now have a bright future in a society known
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for its superstitions. A property agency faced an unusual challenge
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when tasked with selling an alleged haunted house in Clang, Malaysia.
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To reassure potential customers, it took a unique approach, seeking
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the help of a paranormal research team. Brandon Grimes from
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Paranormality Magazine tells us about it. The property in question
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was rumored to have a dark history, with claims that
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the previous owner had tragically taken their own life. Keen
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on dispelling these rumors and certifying the property's safety, the
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property agency hired a paranormal research team, whose investigation garnered
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significant attention on the kl Salongorla Long Properties facebook page.
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On the specified date and time of observation, May thirtieth,
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twenty twenty three, from nine pm to midnight, the dedicated
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team diligently explored the property, searching for any signs of
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ghostly activities. Their findings were encouraging as they revealed no
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major indications of paranormal occurrences. They attributed the flickering lights
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to faulty cables, the door's movement to the wind, and
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the eerie sounds to wildlife. In the vicinity. Intrigued by
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the team's assessment, netizens had a good natured laugh, thanking
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them for confirming the absence of major ghostly activities while
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jokingly speculating about the possibility of minor ghostly activities. However,
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some curious medicines offered amusing suggestions to the research team.
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Some humorously recommended extending the observation period until three am,
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citing Chinese beliefs about heightened negative energy during that time.
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Another proposed and even longer investigation of fifteen consecutive nights
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rather than days. Despite the lighthearted banter, the property's value
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remained significant, with a market worth of two point four
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million in their currency, auctioned off at one point four million.
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Situated in negated community with access to exclusive clubhouse facilities,
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the property possessed alluring features for potential buyers. While the
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haunted house might have once discouraged buyers, the intervention of
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the paranormal research team managed to dispel some fears. Ultimately,
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it seems that superstitions and beliefs still hold a place
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in Malaysian society, but thanks to creative solutions selling, even
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the spookiest proper parties can become a spirited affair, leaving
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netizen's open to the idea of an extra companion in
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a large home. I'm Darren Marler. Welcome back to Weird Darkness.
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Have you seen the Monster Channel. It has horror hosts,
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b horror movies, retro television commercials, and a whole lot more.
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And you can watch it anytime, absolutely free twenty four
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to seven, three sixty five on the Monster Channel page
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at Weird Darkness dot com. Just go to Weird darknesstv
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dot com. That's Weird darknesstv dot com. Roads have always
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seemed to attract about them tales of the strange and unusual.
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They push out further and further ahead of us, their
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destinations not visible, mysterious as the landscape rushes by us,
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sometimes bringing with it bizarreness. It is perhaps this almost
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primal sense of oddness that has spawned countless tales of
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haunted roads, inhabited by all manner of strange entities and apparitions.
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One feature of some spooky haunted roads are ghost lights,
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also called spook lights, dancing and twirling in the dark
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to baffle and amaze, and sometimes they seem to be
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far from harmless. Some malevolent spook lights seem to be
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linked to some sort of phantom motorists, and perhaps one
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of the more well known of these is said to
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prowl a rural road in the town of Switzerland in
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Saint John's County, Florida, in the United States. Here there
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is a modest little road called Greenbriar Road which runs
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just east of the main town, and thereof for years
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been tails of a rather aggressive spook light that stalks
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vehicles that dare to drive along here at night. The
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enigmatic light is typically said to look just like a
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motorcycle headlight, which will pull up behind cars and steadily
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catch up no matter how fast the car goes, growing
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even larger in the rear view mirrors of the startled drivers.
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The light of the Greenbriar Road will then either chase
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the car until it is gone, or bizarrely perch itself
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atop the vehicle, sort of piggybacking the car for some
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distance before blinking out of existence as if it were
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never there at all. In some cases, the mysterious light
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has even been blamed for causing crashes alongside this lonely
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stretch of road. The most common origin story for this
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mysterious light is that it is the wraith of a
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doomed motorcyclist who died along the road when he was
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decapitated after running into a telephone pole wire, and that
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he now terrorizes the stretch upon which he met his fate,
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with only the headlight of his phantom bike visible. One
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witness named Todd m. Gave his story to the Weird
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Us website, saying, a few years ago I went to
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see Greenbrier Road at night with three of my friends.
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We had heard the stories about that light that people
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see and we wanted to see it. We drove up
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and down the road for like forty minutes trying to
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see something, but never saw anything until we got ready
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to leave. My friend Tom was driving and he looked
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in the rear view mirror and said, what's that. He
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looked behind us and there was the headlight of a
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motorcycle coming up fast. We slowed down a little and
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thought the biker would pass us, but then just as
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it got right behind us about one hundred feet, the
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light went out. There was no motorcycle or anything. We
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turned around and went back but didn't see anything. I
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really think we saw a ghost biker of that guy
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that was killed on his motorcycle on that road. The
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malignant Greenbriar ghost light is so well known in the
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area that it has been the target of paranormal investigations
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and even scientific studies and police investigations trying to find
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a rational explanation for what people are seeing, but no
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explanation has ever been found. Speaking of phantom motorcyclists, there
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is another similar spook said to haunt a remote stretch
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of road winding through the rural farming county of Exeter
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in Tulare County, California, which is suppose the stomping ground
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of a similar ghost in this case. In the nineteen fifties,
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a group of friends allegedly decided to play a prank
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on one of their friends by stretching out some rope
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across a narrow road called Bardsley Road in the Fresno Valley,
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after which they lied in wait for their motorcycle riding
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poal to come cruising by on his way home from work.
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The plan was for the rope to just hit him
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in the chest and knock him off his bike, which
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was pretty mean, but they didn't intend to seriously hurt him,
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certainly not kill him. The story goes that the rider
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came along the darkened road as expected and also hit
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the rope just as expected. What wasn't expected was that
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the rope would be too high and lop his head
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clean off to go rolling across the pavement. In the
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aftermath of the gruesome accident, people started occasionally claiming to
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see a bright light shooting up and down the road,
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sometimes accompanied by the sound of a motorcycle engine, and
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with the full apparition of a headless rider visible as well.
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Motorists and people walking along the road at night have
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also told of being followed or even chased by the
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phantom motorcyclist, and it's believed that if you encounter the rider,
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you will be cursed to be in an accident yourself.
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Adding to these is a headless rider said to prowl
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Creek Road of Ojai, California, apparently riding a vintage nineteen
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forties motorcycle and appearing as a glowing light at first,
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often pulling right up next to motorists to bang on
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their vehicles or chase them. Interestingly, Creek Road is ground
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zero for all manner of ghostly phenomena and high strangeness,
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including at least two phantom horse riders, numerous apparitions, a smoking,
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horribly burned and disfigured entity called the Charman, and even
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a supposed vampire making a headless motorcycle rider actually one
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of the less bizarre tales from this place. Other sinister
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spook lights seemed to be malevolent spirits or even possibly demons.
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Located out just northeast of Jacksonville, Florida, is Saint George Island,
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which is home to a historic sugar cane, cotton and
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corn plantation from the slave days called Kingsley Plantation, established
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by a man named Zephaniah Kingsley in eighteen thirteen. The
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original plantation would quickly grow until Kingsley owned around a
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total of thirty two thousand acres of land and employed
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about two hundred slaves. Despite having so many slaves, Kingsley
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was known for being a very lax and kind slave master,
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allowing his workforce to basically do whatever they wanted when
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they were off duty, and they were allowed to sell
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any crafts they made on their own time. Kingsley even
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married one of his slaves and a magagin jai, who
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would go on to take a prominent management role on
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the plantation, own her own land, and end up being
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one of the richest women in the state. Although conditions
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were much better for slaves on the Kingsley Plantation than
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they were elsewhere, there was some amount of tragedy on
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the plantation. Nevertheless, at some point one of the slaves
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allegedly took to beating and raping other female slaves, even,
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according to the stories, murdering a few and hiding their
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bodies in the wilderness. When the other slaves got wind
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of this grim behavior, they are said to have gathered
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up a lynch mob to haunt the perpetrator down, and
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had him strung up and hanged on a massive, spooky
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looking oak tree right in front of the plantation along
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the main road to the premises, leaving his lifeless Bonnie
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to swing there in the wind. Although Kingsley would move
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to Haiti along with all of his slaves in eighteen
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thirty seven, it seems that at least some of them
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remained in a macab sense. Over the years, the Kingsley
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Plantation has come to gather quite a reputation for being
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intensely haunted, supposedly by the ghosts of those murdered here.
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One is a woman in white that is frequently spotted
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roaming around and as a habit of photobombing pictures taken
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at the locale, while another is an unearthly screaming or
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wailing that supposedly emanates from the old abandoned well on
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the property, said to be from a victim of the
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crime spree whose body was unceremoniously dumped down there in
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the darkness. However, one of the most frightening of the
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spirits of the old Kingsley Plantation is supposedly the vindictive
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spirit of the mad slave murderer himself, who terrorizes the
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plantation's creepy and rugged, unpaved road. This particularly malicious spirit
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typically takes the form of two malevolent, angry looking red lights,
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said to be his glowing eyes, earning the phantom the
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name Old Red Eyes. These lights will supposedly appear right
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behind cars right about at the old Oak Tree and
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chase them, in some reports, even relentlessly attacking them. One
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report of an encounter with Old Red Eyes was described
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by a witness thus, I saw Old Red Eyes several
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years ago. I have a friend that lives just off
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of that road, and it had taken him home from
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Jacksonville one night. It's about midnight, and after driving him off,
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I was driving back down that road to the hard
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road and looked in the side mirror on my car
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and saw two red lights. At first, I thought it
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was the tail lights of another car, but they were
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too close together. I slowed down a little and watched
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them in the mirror, and it looked like they were
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coming closer. I knew that I had not passed another car,
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and it did not seem like a car would be
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coming down that dark road backwards. I stopped and stuck
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my head out the window and looked back, and there
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was nothing there. Then I looked in the mirror again,
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and there they were, and they were right behind my car.
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I gunned it and got the hell out of there.
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What I saw wasn't a car. Just as ominous is
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the appropriately named Demon's Road in Huntsville, Texas, which is
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already spooky enough as it meanders through groves of twisted
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trees and darkened woods and ends up at the desolate
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Martha's Chapel Cemetery. The real name is Bowden Road, but
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it has earned its nickname in the decidedly frightening phenomena
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that had been reported from there, such as shadow people,
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a ghostly child with glowing eyes on a tricycle, a hulking,
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faceless beast, a strange hooded figure, and arms reaching out
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from graves. There are many spirits said to lurk along
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the murky stretches of this road and in the cemetery,
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but one of the creepiest is a ghost light that
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seems to be quite malicious. Indeed, motorists venturing down the
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Demon's Road have often reported mysterious red lights hovering about
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in the dark, the number of which seem to depend
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on how many people are in the vehicle at the time.
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These spook lights will supposedly aggressively pursue cars, and spookiest
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of all, will leave unexplained handprints on the outside. Indeed,
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these lights have plagued many who have traveled down the road,
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often leaving those handprints, and always hostile, sometimes even clawing
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or grabbing at cars to leave scratches and dents behind.
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What could this diabolical force be and why does it
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want to attack vehicles? Nobody knows. More haunted roads and
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ghostly lights when weird darkness returns. Another case in Texas
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of an aggressive ghost light is that said to Roma
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Road in Hardin County, leading from Bragg to Saratoga, which
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actually at one point was a part of the Santa
469
00:33:52.319 --> 00:33:56.279
Fe Railroad back in the early nineteen hundreds before being
470
00:33:56.319 --> 00:33:59.559
paved over to be turned into a road. In an
471
00:33:59.599 --> 00:34:03.279
area called Big Thicket, there have long been reports of
472
00:34:03.359 --> 00:34:07.599
a multicolored spook light hovering about at night along the
473
00:34:07.680 --> 00:34:10.880
road and in the surrounding wilderness, with many of them
474
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:15.639
pointing at the light being quite evil. Even from the beginning,
475
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:19.480
the reports of the Big Thicket ghost Light, also called
476
00:34:19.599 --> 00:34:24.679
the Saratoga ghost Light, were far from friendly. Hunters reported
477
00:34:24.719 --> 00:34:27.639
being chased by the lights, and it was not uncommon
478
00:34:27.679 --> 00:34:31.000
to hear of them rushing amongst horses to send the
479
00:34:31.079 --> 00:34:34.880
animals into a panicked frenzy, to the point that on
480
00:34:34.920 --> 00:34:38.480
at least one occasion, a horse drawn wagon was forced
481
00:34:38.599 --> 00:34:41.440
to go crashing into a ditch because of the lights.
482
00:34:42.440 --> 00:34:45.880
At the time, the lights became a pretty widespread rumor,
483
00:34:46.239 --> 00:34:50.639
attracting all sorts of curiosity seekers, and author F. E.
484
00:34:50.800 --> 00:34:54.639
Abernethy would explain that the phenomenon in his book Tales
485
00:34:54.679 --> 00:34:59.039
from the Big Thicket Thus light seers poured onto the
486
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:02.719
road by the Hunter. People of all ages and intellects
487
00:35:02.800 --> 00:35:05.559
came to see and test their beliefs in the supernatural.
488
00:35:06.320 --> 00:35:09.239
They shot at it, they chased it, and they tested
489
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:13.199
it with litmus, paper and Geiger counters. A preacher harangued
490
00:35:13.239 --> 00:35:16.480
the road's multitudes from the top of this car, making
491
00:35:16.519 --> 00:35:20.039
the light as an ill omen of the world's impending doom.
492
00:35:20.440 --> 00:35:22.800
There were some nights the light didn't show at all,
493
00:35:22.960 --> 00:35:25.440
but for the most part it was there to inspire
494
00:35:25.559 --> 00:35:29.360
stories that could be passed on to change and grow
495
00:35:29.519 --> 00:35:35.599
at the will and imagination of the storyteller. In later years,
496
00:35:35.639 --> 00:35:38.880
the light did not stop its antics in the slightest bit,
497
00:35:39.480 --> 00:35:43.119
with reports of its chasing people or even attacking them common,
498
00:35:43.679 --> 00:35:46.599
such as cases in which the light stopped car engines,
499
00:35:47.119 --> 00:35:52.400
burned people's hands, or even violently knocked them down. There
500
00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:56.800
have been reports of cars being dinged, dented, or smashed
501
00:35:56.840 --> 00:36:00.119
by the ghost light, and it is generally not something
502
00:36:00.159 --> 00:36:03.639
one wants to encounter while driving down the already eerie
503
00:36:03.719 --> 00:36:07.639
rural road. As usual, there have been many attempts to
504
00:36:07.800 --> 00:36:11.920
rationally explain the big Thicket light, such as that it
505
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:16.280
is some sort of illusion, swamp gas, or merely headlights,
506
00:36:16.559 --> 00:36:19.559
and there have been a fair number of more paranormal
507
00:36:19.639 --> 00:36:23.280
explanations as well, including that it is the spirit of
508
00:36:23.320 --> 00:36:27.039
a hunter or Civil War soldier, or even that it
509
00:36:27.159 --> 00:36:31.960
is a curse placed over a lost Spanish treasure. Whatever
510
00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:34.760
the case may be, the stories of the evil ghost
511
00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:40.199
light of Saratoga persist. Texas seems to be a haven
512
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:43.599
for such spook lights because there is another road in
513
00:36:43.639 --> 00:36:47.440
this state that has its own scary stories of such entities.
514
00:36:48.440 --> 00:36:51.920
In the area of Mitchell Flat east of Marfa, Texas,
515
00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:55.760
there have long been reports of mystery lights floating out
516
00:36:55.920 --> 00:36:59.760
over the desert landscape since at least the eighteen hundreds.
517
00:37:00.599 --> 00:37:04.440
The phenomena are usually described as dancing orbs of light
518
00:37:04.920 --> 00:37:08.079
that zip and zoom low to the ground over the
519
00:37:08.159 --> 00:37:12.159
parched desert scrub, and they have collectively been coined the
520
00:37:12.320 --> 00:37:18.039
Marfa Lights. While the phenomenon is puzzling but usually harmless
521
00:37:18.039 --> 00:37:21.639
and distant, there have been some reports that show these
522
00:37:21.719 --> 00:37:26.360
lights can be rather frightening on occasion. In one report
523
00:37:26.559 --> 00:37:30.320
from Weird Texas, one man named Tim Stevens gave an
524
00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:34.519
account of a very bizarre experience witnessed by a friend
525
00:37:34.519 --> 00:37:38.480
of his father's named Roy, while traveling down Route ninety
526
00:37:38.559 --> 00:37:42.719
in the nineteen seventies. According to the report, Roy had
527
00:37:42.760 --> 00:37:46.639
been driving for hours out from San Antonio after sunset
528
00:37:46.800 --> 00:37:50.000
and just before dark, and there'd been no other cars
529
00:37:50.039 --> 00:37:52.519
out in this remote stretch of the highway that evening.
530
00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:56.440
Suddenly he noticed what he took to be headlights in
531
00:37:56.480 --> 00:37:59.920
his rear view mirror. For some time, the lights remained
532
00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:03.400
a comfortable distance away, but at some point the lights
533
00:38:03.480 --> 00:38:07.480
quickly closed the distance to follow right behind him. The
534
00:38:07.559 --> 00:38:13.199
report explained the following sequence of events. My dad said
535
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:15.000
that Roy had been driving up with the lights a
536
00:38:15.039 --> 00:38:18.639
comfortable distance behind him for several minutes when the vehicle
537
00:38:18.800 --> 00:38:22.559
sped up and approached his truck rapidly. For a few seconds,
538
00:38:22.599 --> 00:38:24.920
he honestly thought he was about to be rear ended
539
00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:28.519
before an impact occurred. However, the light stopped a few
540
00:38:28.559 --> 00:38:31.920
feet short of hitting his truck. It's sixty miles per
541
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:35.159
hour in the middle of an otherwise deserted highway, it
542
00:38:35.239 --> 00:38:38.039
probably wasn't too much to ask for a courtesy of
543
00:38:38.079 --> 00:38:42.239
a little breathing room, so Roy tapped the brakes. The
544
00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:46.199
driver of the vehicle behind him maintained his distance. Roy
545
00:38:46.239 --> 00:38:51.360
again tapped his brakes, no response. Finally, very annoyed, Roy
546
00:38:51.519 --> 00:38:54.119
jammed hard on his brakes for a fraction of a second.
547
00:38:54.639 --> 00:38:58.079
To his amazement, the vehicle behind him stayed the exact
548
00:38:58.119 --> 00:39:01.840
distance from his rear bumper as a had been. Roy
549
00:39:01.880 --> 00:39:04.960
decided to try a different approach, he said. He floored
550
00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:08.719
the gas pedal, making his small truck shudder and lurch ahead.
551
00:39:09.440 --> 00:39:12.119
The speed crept up to eighty miles per hour. The
552
00:39:12.199 --> 00:39:17.000
lights behind him reacted in perfect unison, staying several feet
553
00:39:17.039 --> 00:39:20.159
behind his truck as it approached speeds Roy was sure
554
00:39:20.199 --> 00:39:23.360
he'd never pushed it to before. At nearly one hundred
555
00:39:23.400 --> 00:39:26.239
miles per hour, the truck was beginning to vibrate badly,
556
00:39:26.760 --> 00:39:30.320
but the lights did not waver and off was enough.
557
00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:32.920
Roy eased off the gas and let the truck coast
558
00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:36.320
down to a scene speed. Then he stood on the brakes.
559
00:39:36.639 --> 00:39:40.320
The tires screeched and smoked, and the truck pitched and
560
00:39:40.440 --> 00:39:43.440
slid slightly to the side. But the whole time Roy
561
00:39:43.519 --> 00:39:47.000
watched the lights in the mirror, they stayed in exactly
562
00:39:47.039 --> 00:39:49.719
the same spot until the truck came to a stop.
563
00:39:50.440 --> 00:39:54.719
Roy then saw something completely unexpected. The lights shot out
564
00:39:55.039 --> 00:39:57.280
off the road to the right and fired across the
565
00:39:57.320 --> 00:40:00.840
desert like missiles. He craned his necker to try and
566
00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:04.119
follow them. Visually impressed by the driver's driving on what
567
00:40:04.280 --> 00:40:07.480
was sure to be a very rough road, he smiled
568
00:40:07.519 --> 00:40:09.760
and was about to drive on when a thought occurred
569
00:40:09.760 --> 00:40:13.400
to him. He frowned, and, making sure he wasn't about
570
00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:16.000
to be run over by a big rig or other traffic,
571
00:40:16.480 --> 00:40:19.559
put his truck in reverse and slowly backed up, maybe
572
00:40:19.639 --> 00:40:22.920
a couple hundred feet. He checked the barbed wire fence
573
00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:26.000
line for a road, a gate, or other break of
574
00:40:26.039 --> 00:40:29.440
some kind where his pursuer may have slipped through, but
575
00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:32.880
there was done. Roy said he was pretty spooked all right.
576
00:40:33.239 --> 00:40:36.599
Off the distance, he could see lights moved swiftly across
577
00:40:36.639 --> 00:40:42.320
the horizon. Whatever this was, whether it was connected to
578
00:40:42.400 --> 00:40:45.400
the Marpha lights or not, it certainly seems hard to
579
00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:49.119
explain away as a trick of light or headlight reflections
580
00:40:49.159 --> 00:40:53.199
from the distance. Ghost lights have been a persistent phenomenon
581
00:40:53.599 --> 00:40:56.239
within the world of the weird, and there have been
582
00:40:56.280 --> 00:41:00.519
countless theories to try and explain them, yet none seem
583
00:41:00.599 --> 00:41:03.000
to touch on those lights that seem to reach out
584
00:41:03.039 --> 00:41:07.159
from the merely mysterious to lash out at or harass
585
00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:11.360
those who encounter them. Is there some explanation for this
586
00:41:12.199 --> 00:41:16.480
or is this just paxes and tall tales. If it
587
00:41:16.599 --> 00:41:20.639
is indeed real, then why do these particular spook lights
588
00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:24.360
cling to these locations? And why do they seem so
589
00:41:24.639 --> 00:41:29.239
hostile and threatening? It seems to be beyond our ability
590
00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:32.880
to comprehend at this point, and these lights may flit
591
00:41:32.920 --> 00:41:37.480
about the periphery of our understanding, prowling their haunted grounds
592
00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:55.199
without ever being satisfactorily explained. Thanks for listening. If you
593
00:41:55.320 --> 00:41:57.599
like the show, please tell somebody about it who loves
594
00:41:57.599 --> 00:42:02.639
the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved
595
00:42:02.639 --> 00:42:05.320
mysteries like you do. If you missed any part of
596
00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:07.360
tonight's show, or if you'd like to hear it again,
597
00:42:07.440 --> 00:42:10.320
you can subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast
598
00:42:10.360 --> 00:42:13.880
app by searching for Weird Darkness. By doing that, you'll
599
00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:17.440
get a copy of Tonight's show, plus daily podcast episodes
600
00:42:17.440 --> 00:42:19.800
that come out seven days per week, and you'll also
601
00:42:20.119 --> 00:42:23.880
get Tonight's Sudden Death overtime content with stories I prepared
602
00:42:23.960 --> 00:42:27.440
but didn't have time to share. Visit Weirddarkness dot com,
603
00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:29.840
and you can also follow me on social media, drop
604
00:42:29.880 --> 00:42:32.719
me an email, send me your own true paranormal story,
605
00:42:32.960 --> 00:42:36.159
listen to other podcasts that I host, and more. All
606
00:42:36.159 --> 00:42:39.960
stories used tonight aren't purported to be true unless stated otherwise,
607
00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:41.679
and you can find links to the stories or the
608
00:42:41.719 --> 00:42:44.239
authors in the show notes, which I've already posted at
609
00:42:44.280 --> 00:42:49.079
Weirddarkness dot com. The Conjure Chest is for the unexplained mysteries.
610
00:42:49.599 --> 00:42:51.960
The Haunting of Drish House was written by Amanda Penn
611
00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:55.320
for Horror Media. Haunted Roads and spook Lights is by
612
00:42:55.360 --> 00:42:58.880
Brent Sponsor for Mysterious Universe. The Haunted House for Sale
613
00:42:58.920 --> 00:43:02.760
in Malaysia was and by Brandon Grimes for Paranormality magazine.
614
00:43:03.599 --> 00:43:07.840
Weird Darkness is a registered trademark copyright Weird Darkness. And
615
00:43:07.880 --> 00:43:09.920
now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave
616
00:43:09.960 --> 00:43:13.679
you with a little light Proverbs eleven, verse nine. With
617
00:43:13.800 --> 00:43:17.679
his mouth, the godless destroys his neighbor. But through knowledge,
618
00:43:17.880 --> 00:43:22.360
the righteous escape. And a final thought, if the only
619
00:43:22.440 --> 00:43:25.719
prayer you said in your whole life was thank you,
620
00:43:26.599 --> 00:43:32.079
that would suffice meister Eckhart. I'm Daryn Marler. Thanks for
621
00:43:32.159 --> 00:44:19.559
joining me in the Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren
622
00:44:19.599 --> 00:44:22.760
Marler and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every week
623
00:44:22.800 --> 00:44:27.920
you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the
624
00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:36.079
strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained
625
00:44:37.079 --> 00:44:41.320
coming up this hour. More than one hundred years ago,
626
00:44:41.440 --> 00:44:45.119
reports described it as the most weird and gruesome apartment
627
00:44:45.360 --> 00:44:49.280
in the world. Why display an entire room full of
628
00:44:49.360 --> 00:44:54.840
grotesque items and open it to the public kills Irish
629
00:44:54.840 --> 00:44:57.760
pop in Seattle has a creepy vibe to it, even
630
00:44:57.800 --> 00:45:01.320
if the displays and decorations inside aren't meant to be.
631
00:45:02.000 --> 00:45:05.199
Perhaps that's because the building started its life as a
632
00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:11.079
massive mortuary. Early one February morning in eighteen ninety seven,
633
00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:14.280
John Marge jumped out of bed from a sound sleep,
634
00:45:14.559 --> 00:45:17.800
and while the smell of breakfast cooking downstairs wafted up
635
00:45:17.840 --> 00:45:21.280
to the second level of the house, he inexplicably grabbed
636
00:45:21.280 --> 00:45:24.079
his pistol and went on a shooting spree of his
637
00:45:24.239 --> 00:45:28.760
own family. But first, a four year old has a
638
00:45:28.760 --> 00:45:32.719
paranormal experience, and the man he grew into over sixty
639
00:45:32.840 --> 00:45:36.679
years later is still unsure of what happened to him.
640
00:45:37.119 --> 00:45:41.440
We begin with that story. If you're new here, welcome
641
00:45:41.480 --> 00:45:43.440
to the show. And if you're already a member of
642
00:45:43.440 --> 00:45:46.199
this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone
643
00:45:46.199 --> 00:45:48.960
else to listen in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to
644
00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:51.079
others helps make it possible for me to keep doing
645
00:45:51.159 --> 00:45:54.079
the show. While you're listening, be sure to visit Weirddarkness
646
00:45:54.079 --> 00:45:56.480
dot com, where you can follow me on social media,
647
00:45:56.800 --> 00:46:00.440
listen to free audio books, off narrated and more. That's
648
00:46:00.559 --> 00:46:05.800
Weird Darkness dot com. I'll bolt your doors, lock your windows,
649
00:46:06.360 --> 00:46:10.280
turn off your lights, and come with me into the
650
00:46:10.320 --> 00:46:28.199
Weird Darkness. When this occurrence happened, I would have been
651
00:46:28.480 --> 00:46:31.400
about three and a half years of age, and I
652
00:46:31.440 --> 00:46:35.480
have never forgotten it. This would have been in nineteen
653
00:46:35.559 --> 00:46:40.039
fifty one or nineteen fifty two. My understanding is that
654
00:46:40.079 --> 00:46:43.840
this particular house came as a job package with my
655
00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:47.920
father's employment. I can still recall some parts of the
656
00:46:47.960 --> 00:46:52.800
house and its general interior layout. At this time, my
657
00:46:52.920 --> 00:46:56.519
parents and my sister younger than myself, we were living
658
00:46:56.679 --> 00:47:00.880
at thirty six Canal Street, Derby. I was never brought
659
00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:05.239
up with bogey man tails or other happenings to cause
660
00:47:05.400 --> 00:47:09.840
some fear or to obtain obedience from me. Therefore, I
661
00:47:09.880 --> 00:47:12.880
cannot say that such imaginings were put into my head
662
00:47:13.239 --> 00:47:17.960
for me to invoke an event later. Despite my young age,
663
00:47:18.079 --> 00:47:23.079
I can recall this particular evening and event. The house
664
00:47:23.159 --> 00:47:26.880
was somewhat large and it had a semi spiral staircase
665
00:47:27.480 --> 00:47:31.320
with a red colored stair carpet on the treads and risers.
666
00:47:32.039 --> 00:47:35.159
At the top of this staircase was a landing which
667
00:47:35.239 --> 00:47:39.199
led to the bedrooms and bathroom. For whatever reason, I
668
00:47:39.239 --> 00:47:42.039
always used to ask my mother to leave the curtains
669
00:47:42.199 --> 00:47:47.239
open and occasionally the window partly open. It was one
670
00:47:47.239 --> 00:47:51.199
of these sash type of windows that opened and closed vertically.
671
00:47:52.559 --> 00:47:55.159
On the adjacent wall to the window was the door
672
00:47:55.199 --> 00:47:58.480
to the landing. This door was in the area of
673
00:47:58.519 --> 00:48:00.800
the foot of the bed and to the right of
674
00:48:00.840 --> 00:48:03.840
the bed. The side of the bed was across from
675
00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:07.199
this wall, with the bed head on the wall behind me.
676
00:48:08.440 --> 00:48:11.000
There was a small table close to the head of
677
00:48:11.000 --> 00:48:13.800
the bed where I always had a tumbler of water,
678
00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:17.199
as often I would awaken overnight and have a drink
679
00:48:17.239 --> 00:48:21.239
of water, which continues to this day. When in bed
680
00:48:21.559 --> 00:48:25.480
and before the forthcoming event happened. I sometimes would hear
681
00:48:25.599 --> 00:48:29.440
what I thought to be a voice of someone who
682
00:48:29.519 --> 00:48:35.320
was speaking very softly, something like a loud whisper. The
683
00:48:35.360 --> 00:48:38.000
way this voice spoke it sounded to me as if
684
00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:41.280
this person was looking for someone, but in a more
685
00:48:41.639 --> 00:48:46.840
inquiring fashion. Sometimes I never heard this voice, but it
686
00:48:46.920 --> 00:48:51.719
always came back, even if eventually there was just the
687
00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:56.199
one word spoke, but it was repeated. This sounded to
688
00:48:56.239 --> 00:49:02.400
my ears to be Jack Jack. These two words would
689
00:49:02.400 --> 00:49:05.519
stop for a short while, and then the same two
690
00:49:05.639 --> 00:49:12.239
words were softly repeated, Jack Jack. This may happen three
691
00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:15.280
or four times, and then stop as if the person
692
00:49:15.320 --> 00:49:19.400
had gone away. I had no idea as to which
693
00:49:19.679 --> 00:49:23.719
gender the voice belonged. All of this caused me no
694
00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:28.000
issues whatsoever, and it certainly never frightened me. It was
695
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:31.840
just there from time to time. After I went to bed.
696
00:49:33.360 --> 00:49:37.400
The incident which I'm about to relate, I can well recall.
697
00:49:38.280 --> 00:49:41.159
My mother put me to bed, and as per usual,
698
00:49:41.320 --> 00:49:44.280
the curtains were left open and the window slightly cracked.
699
00:49:45.440 --> 00:49:48.679
I never heard these soft spoken words of inquiry, and
700
00:49:48.760 --> 00:49:52.320
so I must have fallen asleep. Later I awoke to
701
00:49:52.400 --> 00:49:56.960
what sounded like two cats fighting outside. We had no pets,
702
00:49:57.000 --> 00:49:59.159
but there were a couple of cats that came into
703
00:49:59.159 --> 00:50:03.599
the small garden. During all this screeching and wailing from
704
00:50:03.599 --> 00:50:06.199
these cats, there was the sound of what appeared to
705
00:50:06.239 --> 00:50:11.480
me as being of empty tin cans rolling, falling onto
706
00:50:11.519 --> 00:50:16.039
a paved surface, and then rolling along this surface. I
707
00:50:16.039 --> 00:50:18.920
imagined that the cats had run into such cans and
708
00:50:19.119 --> 00:50:23.119
toppled them. Over All of this certainly caused me no concerns.
709
00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:25.159
I had a drink of water, and I must have
710
00:50:25.280 --> 00:50:30.599
gone back to sleep. I was awoken by a lady laughing.
711
00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:34.079
She was in front of the bedside table and between
712
00:50:34.119 --> 00:50:36.440
the edge of my bed and the wall where the
713
00:50:36.519 --> 00:50:39.719
door was located, which in turn was adjacent to the
714
00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:42.840
window at the foot of my bed. The lady was
715
00:50:43.039 --> 00:50:48.000
nondescript in color, being a dark gray. However, I could
716
00:50:48.039 --> 00:50:52.760
see some patterns and frills on her dress. This was
717
00:50:53.039 --> 00:50:56.760
bell shaped front and back, but more so at the back,
718
00:50:57.079 --> 00:50:59.639
and something that would be seen in the late seventeen
719
00:50:59.679 --> 00:51:04.079
hundreds to early eighteen hundreds. Her hair was pulled backward
720
00:51:04.440 --> 00:51:06.679
and in the fashion of a bun at the back
721
00:51:06.760 --> 00:51:10.400
of her head. She appeared to have long sleeves on
722
00:51:10.440 --> 00:51:14.039
her dress that had a lace or other frill material.
723
00:51:14.119 --> 00:51:17.960
Close to the wrists, there seemed to be something like
724
00:51:18.039 --> 00:51:21.679
a frill or a lace collar to her dress. This
725
00:51:21.800 --> 00:51:25.599
lady had a bracelet on her right wrist. However, the
726
00:51:25.599 --> 00:51:30.320
most significant detail of this particular lady to me was
727
00:51:30.360 --> 00:51:34.320
that she was laughing, but more so by the way
728
00:51:34.800 --> 00:51:39.119
that she actually laughed. Her laughing was very loud, and
729
00:51:39.159 --> 00:51:41.440
it could be best described as being in the form
730
00:51:41.519 --> 00:51:46.800
of what is sometimes referred to as hysterical laughter. She
731
00:51:46.840 --> 00:51:49.639
had both her hands over her face and partly on
732
00:51:49.719 --> 00:51:55.400
her forehead while she endlessly laughed. Throughout this laughing, she
733
00:51:55.559 --> 00:51:59.199
was rocking forward and back up again from waste level.
734
00:52:00.519 --> 00:52:03.519
I do not recall if I was frightened, but even
735
00:52:03.559 --> 00:52:06.880
at my tender age at the time I thought something
736
00:52:07.199 --> 00:52:10.719
was amiss. I left my bed and went into my
737
00:52:10.800 --> 00:52:13.679
parents' room, awoke them and told them that there was
738
00:52:13.719 --> 00:52:18.239
a lady laughing in my room. And this is my
739
00:52:18.360 --> 00:52:22.440
story of the lady at thirty six Canal Street, Derby.
740
00:52:23.360 --> 00:52:26.840
Nothing frightening, but I would love to know if something
741
00:52:26.960 --> 00:52:30.360
ever went awry in the history of this house, long
742
00:52:30.440 --> 00:52:35.480
before we occupied it, very many years later, I must
743
00:52:35.480 --> 00:52:38.559
have been around seventeen or eighteen at the time, I
744
00:52:38.679 --> 00:52:42.280
learned that this house had originally been built by a
745
00:52:42.320 --> 00:52:46.039
person that arrived in Derby from what is now Belgium.
746
00:52:46.639 --> 00:52:50.199
My understanding is that this person was associated with, or
747
00:52:50.480 --> 00:52:54.559
was a founding member of the soft drink manufacturer Burrows
748
00:52:54.559 --> 00:52:59.519
and Sturgists of Derby. That would require investigative authentication, which
749
00:52:59.559 --> 00:53:03.679
I have ever performed. This newly learned piece of news
750
00:53:03.920 --> 00:53:06.800
at that time made me prick my ears up as
751
00:53:06.800 --> 00:53:09.920
it made me think, or should I say, at least consider,
752
00:53:10.599 --> 00:53:13.400
was the voice that I sometimes heard when in my
753
00:53:13.480 --> 00:53:17.440
bedroom which caused me no alarm or other concern not
754
00:53:17.559 --> 00:53:21.360
be saying Jack Jack, but in fact could it have
755
00:53:21.400 --> 00:53:26.000
been Jacques Jacques or even being the shortened form of
756
00:53:26.280 --> 00:53:30.880
Jacqueline in the French dialect. I wondered whether the person
757
00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:36.119
voicing Jack Jacques was actually looking for a Jack somewhere
758
00:53:36.119 --> 00:53:39.079
in the house, so calling out softly to get a
759
00:53:39.119 --> 00:53:44.360
response from Jack to locate that person's whereabouts. Very many
760
00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:48.079
years later I learned that my parents often heard talking
761
00:53:48.639 --> 00:53:53.159
elsewhere in the house and persons moving about in the house,
762
00:53:53.719 --> 00:53:57.840
as well as furniture being shuffled about. However, there was
763
00:53:57.880 --> 00:54:01.639
never any evidence on inspection or investigation of any furniture
764
00:54:01.719 --> 00:54:05.639
that had been moved. There were neighbors I never knew them,
765
00:54:05.679 --> 00:54:10.400
of course, who always had visitors, and they made some noises. However,
766
00:54:10.480 --> 00:54:14.159
these people left and I was informed that the noises
767
00:54:14.199 --> 00:54:19.920
and inaudible talking within the house persisted on. My mother
768
00:54:20.039 --> 00:54:24.039
was somewhat concerned and rather uneasy at times about this house.
769
00:54:24.599 --> 00:54:28.599
Apparently my father was not so inclined. This attitude of
770
00:54:28.639 --> 00:54:31.480
my father may have been related to the fact that
771
00:54:31.639 --> 00:54:35.000
during World War II he served in the raf as
772
00:54:35.079 --> 00:54:39.320
aircrew in bombers, which could be a physically and psychological
773
00:54:39.519 --> 00:54:44.840
terrifying experience in itself. Consequently, he had little to know
774
00:54:45.079 --> 00:54:49.000
fears of noises or voices emanating from elsewhere in the house.
775
00:54:49.960 --> 00:54:53.440
In later life, I cannot recall ever seeing or believing
776
00:54:53.480 --> 00:54:58.159
my father to be a fearful type of person. I
777
00:54:58.239 --> 00:55:01.079
recall when in this house and whether it was pre
778
00:55:01.400 --> 00:55:05.719
or post my experience of the lady. My aunt, my
779
00:55:05.920 --> 00:55:10.159
mother's sister, visited us from Scotland. The only thing that
780
00:55:10.239 --> 00:55:13.599
I can recall was that my aunt, my younger sister,
781
00:55:13.760 --> 00:55:18.000
and myself were in the lounge room one night with
782
00:55:18.239 --> 00:55:23.400
radio Luxembourg playing loudly. My parents had attended some function
783
00:55:23.519 --> 00:55:27.800
at Nottingham and my aunt was babysitting my sister and myself.
784
00:55:28.719 --> 00:55:32.039
My aunt appeared to be rather distressed, as I recall.
785
00:55:33.159 --> 00:55:35.639
My parents returned home, and I can recall my father
786
00:55:35.840 --> 00:55:39.320
being the first to enter into the lounge room. Both
787
00:55:39.360 --> 00:55:42.559
my parents were very surprised that my sister and I
788
00:55:42.639 --> 00:55:46.280
were still up and about, and also the radio playing loudly.
789
00:55:47.000 --> 00:55:50.360
The radio's volume was reduced, and my aunt, who was
790
00:55:50.400 --> 00:55:54.039
now in tears, was speaking to both my parents and
791
00:55:54.239 --> 00:55:57.159
all on the far side of the room. I never
792
00:55:57.199 --> 00:56:02.239
heard one word of this conversation. I was told again
793
00:56:02.440 --> 00:56:05.960
many years later that my aunt was very frightened on
794
00:56:06.079 --> 00:56:10.079
this evening as she heard talking outside the lounge room
795
00:56:10.519 --> 00:56:15.000
along with other noises. Also, the above mentioned neighbors had
796
00:56:15.039 --> 00:56:20.119
since left. Therefore, to drown out these stories and voices,
797
00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:23.840
she had greatly increased the radio's volume, and furthermore, she
798
00:56:23.840 --> 00:56:26.679
would not venture outside this room to put my sister
799
00:56:26.760 --> 00:56:30.960
and myself to bed. I tried a number of times,
800
00:56:31.119 --> 00:56:34.320
after learning of this incident, to get my aunt to
801
00:56:34.360 --> 00:56:39.360
tell me her experience of that evening. She adamantly refused
802
00:56:39.559 --> 00:56:43.239
to talk about it, and sadly I never found out
803
00:56:43.320 --> 00:56:48.000
directly from the person concerned what actually occurred. Apparently my
804
00:56:48.119 --> 00:56:51.360
aunt was always very frightened and alarmed about this house
805
00:56:51.599 --> 00:56:56.960
after her first visit before that mentioned episode. We eventually
806
00:56:57.079 --> 00:57:00.440
left Derby and moved to the village of willing where
807
00:57:00.480 --> 00:57:04.960
my father originated. We lived at Willington until September nineteen
808
00:57:05.079 --> 00:57:09.079
sixty two, when we moved to Stafford with my father's employment.
809
00:57:10.320 --> 00:57:14.280
Many years later, the subject of thirty six Canal Street
810
00:57:14.639 --> 00:57:17.559
came into the conversation with one of my father's friends.
811
00:57:18.519 --> 00:57:20.719
My father went on to say to this friend that
812
00:57:20.760 --> 00:57:23.639
the person who moved into the vacated house at thirty
813
00:57:23.679 --> 00:57:27.480
six Canal Street, Derby when we left for Willington once
814
00:57:27.559 --> 00:57:30.920
pulled my father to one side and asked him if
815
00:57:30.920 --> 00:57:35.679
the house was haunted. Apparently, my father would neither confirm
816
00:57:36.039 --> 00:57:39.920
or deny this. This person then told my father that
817
00:57:40.039 --> 00:57:43.800
he and his wife had heard all manner of noises
818
00:57:43.840 --> 00:57:49.400
within that house with people talking, but their conversations were imperceptible.
819
00:57:50.519 --> 00:57:53.960
On one occasion, late one night, when he returned home
820
00:57:54.000 --> 00:57:58.039
from work, a lady had passed this man on the stairs.
821
00:57:58.960 --> 00:58:01.480
This lady said so to him, but he was very
822
00:58:01.559 --> 00:58:04.920
tired and unsure of what she had voiced and didn't
823
00:58:04.960 --> 00:58:08.519
realize this passing on the stairs until he was on
824
00:58:08.599 --> 00:58:14.400
the landing. Furthermore, and most interestingly, he told my father
825
00:58:14.519 --> 00:58:17.360
that his daughter, who was about six years of age,
826
00:58:17.840 --> 00:58:21.239
was very frightened in the house and that she had
827
00:58:21.280 --> 00:58:27.880
heard somebody calling out Jack Jack. Furthermore, this little girl
828
00:58:28.480 --> 00:58:40.599
had seen a lady laughing very loudly in her bedroom.
829
00:58:40.840 --> 00:58:43.679
When Weird Darkness returns, more than one hundred years ago,
830
00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:48.159
reports described it as the most weird and gruesome apartment
831
00:58:48.280 --> 00:58:52.039
in the world. Why display an entire room full of
832
00:58:52.079 --> 00:59:22.480
grotesque items and open it to the public. I'm Darren Marler.
833
00:59:22.599 --> 00:59:25.599
Welcome back to Weird Darkness. You can get more Weird
834
00:59:25.639 --> 00:59:28.679
Darkness seven days a week through the Weird Darkness podcast,
835
00:59:28.760 --> 00:59:32.199
which you can find wherever you listen to podcasts on YouTube,
836
00:59:32.480 --> 00:59:35.440
or visit Weird Darkness dot com slash listen, and you
837
00:59:35.480 --> 00:59:37.360
can find a list of all the apps where you
838
00:59:37.400 --> 00:59:41.440
can listen to the show. That's Weirddarkness dot com slash listen.
839
00:59:52.280 --> 00:59:56.400
In June of eighteen ninety nine, newspapers across the country
840
00:59:56.440 --> 01:00:00.719
trumpeted the story of New York City's newest site, something
841
01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:04.800
so strange and macabre it would have rated the highest
842
01:00:04.840 --> 01:00:09.360
attention even in the heyday of P. T. Barnum. Reported
843
01:00:09.400 --> 01:00:11.960
first by the New York Journal and then picked up
844
01:00:12.000 --> 01:00:15.400
by the Newswires, it was the story of a hospital
845
01:00:15.480 --> 01:00:20.480
room that was being decorated entirely with human bones in
846
01:00:20.599 --> 01:00:24.480
order to present a specter of mortality that was intended
847
01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:28.920
to eventually rival such morbid monuments as the Paris Catacombs
848
01:00:29.000 --> 01:00:34.039
or Rome's Capuchin Cemetery. The masterminds of the project were
849
01:00:34.039 --> 01:00:39.039
a pair of doctors Northway Meyer and Howard Nielsen, both
850
01:00:39.159 --> 01:00:43.880
on staff as anatomy demonstrators at Flower Hospital at sixty
851
01:00:43.920 --> 01:00:47.559
third and Eastern, it would later merge with other hospitals
852
01:00:47.639 --> 01:00:50.960
to become the New York Medical College, and William Flatter,
853
01:00:51.320 --> 01:00:54.880
the head nurse of the dissecting room. The trio had
854
01:00:54.920 --> 01:01:01.159
converted the anatomy lab into a veritable Charnel house, composed
855
01:01:01.199 --> 01:01:04.639
of bones from all parts of the human body, surmounted
856
01:01:04.679 --> 01:01:07.519
by a skull, were set on a long table as
857
01:01:07.559 --> 01:01:12.199
the room's centerpiece, and were flanked by skulls hollowed into
858
01:01:12.400 --> 01:01:16.960
drinking cups atop what the newspapers described as tripods of tibia.
859
01:01:18.199 --> 01:01:21.639
Next to this was a full skeleton enthroned and a
860
01:01:21.760 --> 01:01:24.840
large chair with his arm resting on the table and
861
01:01:24.920 --> 01:01:29.840
his gaze overlooking the pile. The room also included signs
862
01:01:29.960 --> 01:01:34.000
lettered with tow and finger bones. These spelled out the
863
01:01:34.079 --> 01:01:38.519
names of Meyer and Nielsen against a black background and
864
01:01:38.639 --> 01:01:43.280
noted the initials of the institute's proper name n Y, H, M,
865
01:01:43.360 --> 01:01:48.719
and C in large blocks New York Homeopathic Medical College
866
01:01:48.760 --> 01:01:54.199
and Hospital. Various skulls and crossbones adorned the walls and
867
01:01:54.280 --> 01:01:58.639
garlands of bones had already been hung, with additional planned
868
01:01:58.800 --> 01:02:01.719
so that the ceiling itself would be obscured by a
869
01:02:01.760 --> 01:02:07.280
sea of human remains. Finally, as one newspaper account explained,
870
01:02:07.800 --> 01:02:11.840
up and down the walls like ghastly white serpents crawl
871
01:02:12.039 --> 01:02:17.679
coils of vertebra. Wire Service Reports dubbed it the most
872
01:02:17.800 --> 01:02:21.719
weird and gruesome apartment in the world and said that
873
01:02:21.840 --> 01:02:25.039
if the feeling of dread for these specimens displayed can
874
01:02:25.119 --> 01:02:28.719
be overcome, the display is quite enough to excite the
875
01:02:28.760 --> 01:02:35.000
interest and imagination of the most case hardened sightseer. Sensational
876
01:02:35.119 --> 01:02:38.400
it was, but the project was also not in the
877
01:02:38.599 --> 01:02:43.119
least controversial. What was the point to this macabre display
878
01:02:43.880 --> 01:02:49.079
or was it all simply the gratuitous fantasy of sick minds. Flater,
879
01:02:49.519 --> 01:02:52.840
who performed the actual labor of assembling the bones and
880
01:02:53.000 --> 01:02:57.039
was noted as the artist whose eccentric inspiration is accountable,
881
01:02:57.480 --> 01:03:01.039
was quick to provide a defense. It was meant to
882
01:03:01.079 --> 01:03:05.599
be didactic, a kind of learning aid, he explained. Our
883
01:03:05.679 --> 01:03:08.880
bone room is intended to serve as a practical aid
884
01:03:09.039 --> 01:03:13.360
to students of anatomy, He told reporters. Human bones of
885
01:03:13.400 --> 01:03:17.280
every description can be found grouped about in artistic confusion,
886
01:03:17.400 --> 01:03:20.960
he continued, and this would allow the anatomy lecturers to
887
01:03:21.079 --> 01:03:24.119
quiz students in novel ways on their knowledge of the
888
01:03:24.159 --> 01:03:29.199
parts of the human body. Flater's explanation struck many as
889
01:03:29.280 --> 01:03:33.679
a bit hollow. Was there really academic value in instructors
890
01:03:33.719 --> 01:03:36.760
pointing at bones hanging on wire from the ceiling as
891
01:03:36.800 --> 01:03:40.400
a means of a pop quiz. The scholarly value of
892
01:03:40.440 --> 01:03:43.239
the room was not the only issue of debate, though.
893
01:03:43.760 --> 01:03:47.599
There were also questions about the exact provenance of the bones.
894
01:03:56.760 --> 01:04:00.519
How did Flatter explain where the bones came from? We'll
895
01:04:00.559 --> 01:04:04.000
find out when weird Darkness returns, you can stay up
896
01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:07.599
to date on everything Weird Darkness. Read original paranormal articles
897
01:04:07.639 --> 01:04:10.760
by me, register for contests and more by signing up
898
01:04:10.800 --> 01:04:12.960
for the email newsletter. You can sign up for the
899
01:04:13.000 --> 01:04:16.480
Weird Darkness newsletter for free at weird Darkness dot com
900
01:04:16.519 --> 01:04:44.239
slash newsletter. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marler.
901
01:04:44.519 --> 01:04:47.199
If you'd like to display your dark weirdness wherever you go,
902
01:04:47.320 --> 01:04:50.800
you can find Weird Darkness t shirts, buttons, hoodies, office supplies,
903
01:04:50.920 --> 01:04:54.400
clothes for your kids, stickers, magnets, coffee mugs, and a
904
01:04:54.400 --> 01:04:57.639
whole lot more in the Weird Darkness Store, with dozens
905
01:04:57.639 --> 01:04:59.920
of designs to choose from and a variety of con
906
01:05:00.360 --> 01:05:03.199
to match your style. You can grab some weirdo merchandise
907
01:05:03.239 --> 01:05:05.719
for yourself or maybe as a gift for the weirdo
908
01:05:05.800 --> 01:05:09.239
in your life by clicking on store at weird Darkness
909
01:05:09.400 --> 01:05:13.320
dot com. When last we left, Flatter's explanation for why
910
01:05:13.360 --> 01:05:16.800
he needed bones in the classroom struck many as a
911
01:05:16.800 --> 01:05:20.559
bit hollow, but there was a bigger question where exactly
912
01:05:20.599 --> 01:05:32.440
did those bones come from. Flatter told reporters that they
913
01:05:32.440 --> 01:05:36.599
had been obtained several years before. When acquiring human remains
914
01:05:36.639 --> 01:05:39.880
was easier and had been lying around the college, many
915
01:05:39.960 --> 01:05:42.679
packed away in boxes and of little use to anyone.
916
01:05:43.800 --> 01:05:47.440
No doubt the medical school had bones stored away, but
917
01:05:47.559 --> 01:05:51.000
whether they had quite so many was another matter, and
918
01:05:51.159 --> 01:05:53.840
one theory that made the rounds during the meeting of
919
01:05:53.880 --> 01:05:58.360
a local medical association involved the distasteful idea that the
920
01:05:58.400 --> 01:06:01.880
trio had stolen or or otherwise obtained them from the
921
01:06:01.920 --> 01:06:07.159
Potter's Field or paupers cemetery on Hart Island. For a
922
01:06:07.199 --> 01:06:11.039
long time, Hart Island has been New York's naughty secret.
923
01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:14.800
A mile long island at the eastern end of the Bronx,
924
01:06:15.239 --> 01:06:19.360
Hart has served many functions throughout its history, including acting
925
01:06:19.400 --> 01:06:24.239
as a Civil War prison camp, a tuberculosis sanatorium, and
926
01:06:24.400 --> 01:06:29.440
a shutter island style psychiatric hospital. But most notably, it
927
01:06:29.480 --> 01:06:33.039
has acted since the late nineteenth century as a dumping
928
01:06:33.079 --> 01:06:36.960
place for New York's impoverished dead, and holds the distinction
929
01:06:37.280 --> 01:06:41.440
of being the world's largest paupers cemetery, with over a
930
01:06:41.639 --> 01:06:47.000
million interments. The first burial was in eighteen sixty nine,
931
01:06:47.440 --> 01:06:50.800
and the volume eventually grew so high that the dead
932
01:06:50.880 --> 01:06:55.239
were placed in large mass graves. Three layers deep, with
933
01:06:55.320 --> 01:06:59.320
a level of sod between each layer. Pits for children,
934
01:06:59.400 --> 01:07:02.480
for instance, were so vast that they held up to
935
01:07:02.559 --> 01:07:06.599
one thousand burials. By the time the room at Flower
936
01:07:06.639 --> 01:07:10.480
Hospital was being decorated, there had already been one hundred,
937
01:07:10.559 --> 01:07:14.639
ten thousand, seven hundred fifty one burials on heart, so
938
01:07:14.679 --> 01:07:17.920
there were potentially plenty of bones to be obtained there.
939
01:07:18.840 --> 01:07:21.639
Bodies were delivered to the island by a boat named
940
01:07:21.719 --> 01:07:26.079
the Fidelity, captained by Edward McAvoy, who had received several
941
01:07:26.119 --> 01:07:30.159
demerits for misconduct while in the Navy. He would sail
942
01:07:30.199 --> 01:07:32.519
the East River to pick up bodies from the City
943
01:07:32.519 --> 01:07:36.079
Morgue and Harlem Hospital, among others, and twice weekly during
944
01:07:36.079 --> 01:07:38.599
the winter and three times a week during the summer,
945
01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:42.920
dropped them off on heart. The Fidelity could hold up
946
01:07:42.920 --> 01:07:46.159
to one hundred corpses, which were covered over on the
947
01:07:46.199 --> 01:07:49.440
deck by tarps so that passing boats would not be
948
01:07:49.480 --> 01:07:53.239
able to see the grisly cargo. On the island, they
949
01:07:53.239 --> 01:07:57.480
were received by Superintendent of Burials John Bopp, who then
950
01:07:57.639 --> 01:08:01.519
processed them with a team of fifty convicts from Riker's Penitentiary.
951
01:08:02.400 --> 01:08:05.559
It was a nauseating spectacle and as a crew member
952
01:08:05.559 --> 01:08:08.960
from the Fidelity told a reporter in nineteen hundred, it's
953
01:08:09.000 --> 01:08:11.480
all the same after you're dead. But if you want
954
01:08:11.519 --> 01:08:14.559
to know the advantage of passing away among friends, take
955
01:08:14.599 --> 01:08:19.000
a trip to Hart's Island on burying day. It would
956
01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:21.720
have been scandalous to the hospital if it were to
957
01:08:21.720 --> 01:08:24.600
turn out that the trio had been obtaining bones from
958
01:08:24.640 --> 01:08:27.920
the graves on hart Island for their project, but the
959
01:08:27.960 --> 01:08:31.760
suspicious past of Meyer and Nielsen meant that the question
960
01:08:31.840 --> 01:08:35.520
would not go away easily. The pair had already come
961
01:08:35.600 --> 01:08:39.039
under media scrutiny in eighteen ninety four, when The New
962
01:08:39.119 --> 01:08:41.880
York Times carried a story about how they were using
963
01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:46.199
narcotics to place stray dogs into comas in order to
964
01:08:46.279 --> 01:08:50.920
experiment with a potassium solution as an antidote to morphine poisoning.
965
01:08:51.960 --> 01:08:54.520
Meyer at the time was known by his true first
966
01:08:54.600 --> 01:08:58.720
name of Oscar, although when he went into professional practice
967
01:08:58.880 --> 01:09:02.600
he adopted instead his middle name of Northway, apparently in
968
01:09:02.680 --> 01:09:05.880
order to avoid confusion with the Oscar Meyer Wiener Company,
969
01:09:06.079 --> 01:09:09.760
which had been founded in eighteen eighty three. At the time,
970
01:09:10.279 --> 01:09:14.079
neither of the two were even properly physicians, having yet
971
01:09:14.079 --> 01:09:17.399
to graduate medical school, and they instructed the paper to
972
01:09:17.560 --> 01:09:21.479
omit the title of doctor, since, as they described it,
973
01:09:21.760 --> 01:09:25.840
they were simply students with an inquisitive bent. They would
974
01:09:25.840 --> 01:09:29.640
administer morphine intravenously to the dogs until they fell into
975
01:09:29.720 --> 01:09:33.239
a coma very quick for a small mongrel, up to
976
01:09:33.359 --> 01:09:36.720
four hours for a large dog, and follow that with
977
01:09:36.800 --> 01:09:40.960
a solution of permanningate of potash. The validity of their
978
01:09:41.079 --> 01:09:45.359
experiment was questionable, but at least none of the dogs died,
979
01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:49.600
or so they claimed. Not surprisingly, the weight of both
980
01:09:49.640 --> 01:09:54.520
public and private opinion was falling heavily against Meyer, Nielsen
981
01:09:54.600 --> 01:09:58.680
and Flater. The latter was vehement in his insistence that
982
01:09:58.760 --> 01:10:02.279
not only was the display ethical, it wasn't even intended
983
01:10:02.319 --> 01:10:06.000
to be morbid. If the bones present a site most gruesome,
984
01:10:06.159 --> 01:10:08.640
he argued, it is because of the nature of the subject,
985
01:10:08.680 --> 01:10:11.439
and not because I had any idea of arranging such
986
01:10:11.479 --> 01:10:15.359
an effect. Despite the claims of the trio that the
987
01:10:15.439 --> 01:10:17.520
room was simply a means to put the remains of
988
01:10:17.560 --> 01:10:21.079
the dead to good and practical use, the hospital's governing
989
01:10:21.119 --> 01:10:25.279
board eventually mandated that not only would they cease adding
990
01:10:25.279 --> 01:10:29.159
to the display, they would remove what had already been constructed.
991
01:10:30.159 --> 01:10:33.479
Such a spectacle might be fine for the Catholic bone
992
01:10:33.479 --> 01:10:37.000
houses of seventh century Europe, but modern New York would
993
01:10:37.000 --> 01:10:41.319
not tolerate it. And with that, amid suspicions of grave
994
01:10:41.399 --> 01:10:46.199
robbing and professional misconduct, America lost its one and only
995
01:10:46.279 --> 01:10:57.680
attempt at a fantastic charnel house coming up. Kell's Irish
996
01:10:57.680 --> 01:11:00.640
Pup in Seattle has a creepy vibe to it, even
997
01:11:00.680 --> 01:11:03.840
if the displays and decorations inside aren't meant to be.
998
01:11:04.640 --> 01:11:07.680
Perhaps that's because the building started its life as a
999
01:11:07.720 --> 01:11:13.159
massive mortuary, and early one February morning in eighteen ninety seven,
1000
01:11:13.600 --> 01:11:16.560
John Mars jumped out of bed from a sound sleep,
1001
01:11:17.039 --> 01:11:20.319
and while the smell of breakfast cooking downstairs wafted up
1002
01:11:20.359 --> 01:11:23.560
to the second level of the house, he inexplicably grabbed
1003
01:11:23.560 --> 01:11:26.600
his pistol and went on a shooting spree of his
1004
01:11:26.640 --> 01:11:55.840
own family. These stories are up next when Weird Darkness returns.
1005
01:12:00.760 --> 01:12:04.840
If there is a definitive go to Irish pub in Seattle, Washington,
1006
01:12:05.279 --> 01:12:09.359
it's Kells in the Pike Place Market. Just About any
1007
01:12:09.439 --> 01:12:13.039
local you ask who doesn't live the teetotal life has
1008
01:12:13.079 --> 01:12:15.960
spent an after work happy hour on its post alley
1009
01:12:16.039 --> 01:12:19.199
patio or a drunken Saint Patrick's day or two in
1010
01:12:19.239 --> 01:12:24.880
this creaky, spooky, old fashioned bottom floor bar, perhaps partaking
1011
01:12:24.960 --> 01:12:29.159
in the city's largest collection of single malt scotch. But
1012
01:12:29.239 --> 01:12:32.520
not everyone who hangs out at Kells knows that there
1013
01:12:32.600 --> 01:12:35.960
is a great reason why it is so creepy in there.
1014
01:12:36.880 --> 01:12:40.399
Kells is in the ground floor of the Butterworth Building,
1015
01:12:41.159 --> 01:12:46.680
as in Er Butterworth, who built Seattle's first mortuary inside
1016
01:12:46.680 --> 01:12:50.760
this building, and who basically invented the modern funeral as
1017
01:12:50.800 --> 01:12:55.319
we know it, and the very words mortuary and mortician
1018
01:12:55.399 --> 01:12:59.880
for that matter. Kells occupies the former stables and fe
1019
01:13:00.039 --> 01:13:04.680
uneral wagon garage half a block east from Kels. The
1020
01:13:04.800 --> 01:13:09.720
Greco Roman sandstone arches at nineteen twenty one First Avenue were,
1021
01:13:10.000 --> 01:13:13.560
as Seattle Metz editor in chief James ross Gardner wrote
1022
01:13:13.600 --> 01:13:17.479
in twenty twelve, a passageway of sorts from this life
1023
01:13:17.640 --> 01:13:22.279
into the next, Beginning in nineteen oh three, when Butterworth
1024
01:13:22.279 --> 01:13:25.840
and Sons moved into this snappy new building after bouncing
1025
01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:28.960
around from the old Masonic temple at Second in Pike
1026
01:13:29.319 --> 01:13:32.680
to another location on Second and then another on Third.
1027
01:13:33.600 --> 01:13:37.239
Arn Company had a monopoly on the death industry in Seattle.
1028
01:13:38.199 --> 01:13:42.000
For the first few decades that followed, just about everyone
1029
01:13:42.039 --> 01:13:47.640
who died in Seattle sailed through this building's archway. Many
1030
01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:51.960
of the dead came through without names or identification. The
1031
01:13:52.039 --> 01:13:57.039
era in which Seattle was settled saw epidemics of tuberculosis, diphtheria,
1032
01:13:57.079 --> 01:14:01.079
and Spanish flu likely among others. When without proper burial
1033
01:14:01.119 --> 01:14:05.359
services available the case before Butterworth and sons, dead bodies
1034
01:14:05.399 --> 01:14:09.199
would regularly just appear on the streets of downtown Seattle.
1035
01:14:09.960 --> 01:14:13.560
It got so bad that the city started offering undertakers
1036
01:14:13.680 --> 01:14:16.520
fifty dollars per body that they could take off the
1037
01:14:16.520 --> 01:14:20.760
streets as a community clean up effort. Butterworth saw an
1038
01:14:20.760 --> 01:14:23.760
opportunity and took it, and it would make him a
1039
01:14:23.880 --> 01:14:28.880
very wealthy man. He hired John Graham, the English architect
1040
01:14:29.119 --> 01:14:32.239
whose firm would later design the Space Needle, to plan
1041
01:14:32.359 --> 01:14:36.159
out his grand five story mortuary with a two hundred
1042
01:14:36.239 --> 01:14:41.439
mortar chapel, a crematorium, a columbarium for storing funeral urns,
1043
01:14:42.000 --> 01:14:45.600
a casket showroom, and an elevator, the very first on
1044
01:14:45.680 --> 01:14:49.039
the West coast, used for transporting bodies up and down
1045
01:14:49.119 --> 01:14:53.840
this marvelous palace of death. Butterworth had Graham draw up
1046
01:14:53.880 --> 01:14:57.279
eight different blueprints before he presented one that was to
1047
01:14:57.359 --> 01:15:01.920
Butterworth's liking. The building was done up in the bosar
1048
01:15:02.039 --> 01:15:05.680
style of the era, with four sculpted lionheads on the
1049
01:15:05.720 --> 01:15:11.279
facade facing first Avenue from three stories up. The aforementioned
1050
01:15:11.319 --> 01:15:15.319
space that Kels now sits in held horses and hearses
1051
01:15:15.840 --> 01:15:18.920
concealed in the alley to hide the unsightly bodies from
1052
01:15:18.960 --> 01:15:23.439
public view. The floors above were tricked out in mahogany,
1053
01:15:23.760 --> 01:15:30.279
bronze and brass fixtures, elaborate stained glass and general Victorian filigree.
1054
01:15:30.319 --> 01:15:34.640
The spacious chapel had pews of Flemish oak, a choir loft,
1055
01:15:34.720 --> 01:15:37.680
and a new fangled system of light signals that acquire
1056
01:15:38.079 --> 01:15:41.159
should the family hire one could follow to start or
1057
01:15:41.159 --> 01:15:45.359
stop singing. Some of the services offered for Butterworth and
1058
01:15:45.439 --> 01:15:48.640
Son's funeral packages were the transport of the body to
1059
01:15:48.760 --> 01:15:54.479
the mortuary, washing the body, dressing the body, embalming, newspaper
1060
01:15:54.560 --> 01:15:59.720
death notices, limousine and hearse service casket with optional crushed
1061
01:15:59.760 --> 01:16:04.840
so ilk, interior, fresh flowers, burial permit, air sealed vault,
1062
01:16:05.079 --> 01:16:09.600
and musicians. There was nothing like it in the United States.
1063
01:16:09.600 --> 01:16:13.000
Gardner said of Butterworth and sons, maybe nothing like it
1064
01:16:13.159 --> 01:16:18.079
in the world. Edgar Ray Butterworth never meant to work
1065
01:16:18.239 --> 01:16:21.720
as an undertaker to begin with. Born in the Boston
1066
01:16:21.800 --> 01:16:25.319
suburbs in eighteen forty seven, he found himself working as
1067
01:16:25.359 --> 01:16:28.720
a cattleman on the plains of Kansas when he encountered
1068
01:16:28.760 --> 01:16:32.760
a grieving settler while traveling with his team. The man,
1069
01:16:32.880 --> 01:16:37.119
whose wife and newborn child had both just died, had
1070
01:16:37.199 --> 01:16:42.039
no lumber available for coffins on the prairie. Butterworth had said,
1071
01:16:42.079 --> 01:16:44.520
built a coffin for the guy with wood taken from
1072
01:16:44.520 --> 01:16:48.479
his own wagon. Everyone in turn of the century Seattle
1073
01:16:48.640 --> 01:16:52.239
knew Er, who also served in the state legislature, and
1074
01:16:52.319 --> 01:16:56.560
his oldest son Gilbert, respectively by Ar's signature long ago
1075
01:16:56.720 --> 01:17:00.199
tee and his son's high, classic cheek bones and all
1076
01:17:00.239 --> 01:17:04.359
around good looks. They trusted the Butterworths with their family
1077
01:17:04.359 --> 01:17:08.199
members who'd passed on, although it is unclear whether folks
1078
01:17:08.239 --> 01:17:11.720
did because they wanted to or because they didn't really
1079
01:17:11.760 --> 01:17:16.640
have a choice. As for its modern day incarnation as Kells,
1080
01:17:17.359 --> 01:17:22.159
it has ghosts. Everyone who even vaguely follows that sort
1081
01:17:22.159 --> 01:17:25.319
of thing will tell you this. The most sighted one
1082
01:17:25.399 --> 01:17:27.840
is a young girl of about eight years old with
1083
01:17:27.960 --> 01:17:32.319
blonde or red hair. She supposedly shows up most when
1084
01:17:32.359 --> 01:17:35.880
the traditional Irish music is going, appearing in the main
1085
01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:40.600
room or on the stairs. It's less famous ghost is Sammy,
1086
01:17:40.760 --> 01:17:43.119
who will show up in the mirror on the back wall.
1087
01:17:44.079 --> 01:17:46.920
People say, you'll see a man's face in the mirror
1088
01:17:47.039 --> 01:17:50.079
looking right at you, but if you turn around to
1089
01:17:50.159 --> 01:17:54.399
check him out, he vanishes. Turn back around to face
1090
01:17:54.439 --> 01:17:58.640
the mirror, he's right there again, grinning at you. There
1091
01:17:58.640 --> 01:18:02.399
are also ghosts that never show their faces. According to
1092
01:18:02.479 --> 01:18:06.439
local legend, there is a small ornate whiskey bar in
1093
01:18:06.479 --> 01:18:09.680
the back corner at the restaurant, just a little corner
1094
01:18:09.720 --> 01:18:12.279
bar that's easy to miss, but if you keep an
1095
01:18:12.279 --> 01:18:15.399
eye on it, the candles all around the bar will
1096
01:18:15.520 --> 01:18:19.439
allegedly light up on their own, Glasses are known to
1097
01:18:19.479 --> 01:18:24.119
break on their own, silverware will levitate, and disembodied women's
1098
01:18:24.239 --> 01:18:28.439
voices are heard. That same stairwell in the back where
1099
01:18:28.479 --> 01:18:31.840
the little red haired girl hangs out, is supposedly home
1100
01:18:31.880 --> 01:18:35.239
to lots of other spirits too, who turn up in
1101
01:18:35.279 --> 01:18:42.319
photographs via orbs, or maybe it's just dust. Mercedes Caraba,
1102
01:18:42.640 --> 01:18:47.359
who once ran the now defunct full Disclosure Market Ghost
1103
01:18:47.439 --> 01:18:51.079
Tours told Kuow in two thousand and nine that she
1104
01:18:51.159 --> 01:18:55.000
spotted a pair of muddy, dirty hands pressed up in
1105
01:18:55.039 --> 01:18:58.079
the windows of the first Avenue entrance to the building.
1106
01:18:59.119 --> 01:19:03.560
The area is just kind of inarguably deathy, said Caraba,
1107
01:19:04.039 --> 01:19:07.880
with a Duwamish burial site nearby and a nineteenth century
1108
01:19:07.920 --> 01:19:13.439
settler's graveyard block away. That said, this building hasn't been
1109
01:19:13.479 --> 01:19:17.199
a mortuary or funeral parlor for a really long time.
1110
01:19:18.319 --> 01:19:21.640
In nineteen twenty three, E. R. Butterworth moved his business
1111
01:19:21.680 --> 01:19:25.000
to the western slope of Capitol Hill, at the northeast
1112
01:19:25.000 --> 01:19:28.880
corner of Melrose Avenue and Pine Street. The new building
1113
01:19:29.159 --> 01:19:33.119
was even more souped up and deluxe, with a crematorium
1114
01:19:33.239 --> 01:19:38.560
and columbarium, fireproof vaults, and even bigger chapel and drawing
1115
01:19:38.640 --> 01:19:44.359
rooms versus equipped with Cadillac motor equipment with special designed bodies.
1116
01:19:44.800 --> 01:19:48.520
Pioneer historian Clarence Bagley wrote of it in nineteen twenty nine.
1117
01:19:48.920 --> 01:19:52.319
In addition to funeral furnishings from the most simple to
1118
01:19:52.439 --> 01:19:57.319
the magnificent, er passed the business on to his sons,
1119
01:19:57.520 --> 01:20:00.399
who passed it on to theirs and It remained in
1120
01:20:00.439 --> 01:20:05.159
the family until New Orleans based chain Stewart Enterprises bought
1121
01:20:05.279 --> 01:20:09.000
Butterworth Funeral Home in nineteen ninety eight, making it one
1122
01:20:09.000 --> 01:20:13.399
of the longest operating family owned businesses in Seattle history.
1123
01:20:13.920 --> 01:20:17.560
The last Butterworth to run it was e Ar's great grandson,
1124
01:20:17.880 --> 01:20:21.039
Bert Butterworth Junior, who was the one who sold it.
1125
01:20:22.079 --> 01:20:25.239
Kells moved into the former livery in nineteen eighty three,
1126
01:20:25.800 --> 01:20:29.279
and not much of the grandiose Victorian interior of Butterworth
1127
01:20:29.319 --> 01:20:33.199
and Sons remains there, or even inside the building's upper
1128
01:20:33.199 --> 01:20:36.720
floors for that matter. Other than the bar, the building
1129
01:20:36.760 --> 01:20:39.520
has been more or less empty as long as anyone
1130
01:20:39.560 --> 01:20:43.359
can remember, except for the ghosts if you count those.
1131
01:20:44.279 --> 01:20:47.840
Its deathy superstitions are still being kept alive by the
1132
01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:51.960
building's current owners, though. Since two thousand and five, the
1133
01:20:51.960 --> 01:20:55.760
Butterworth Block has been owned by the McAleese family, which
1134
01:20:55.840 --> 01:20:59.359
also owns Kells and the same year it was purchased,
1135
01:20:59.640 --> 01:21:03.520
Karencalise saw something in the pub's kitchen that she still
1136
01:21:03.640 --> 01:21:07.640
can't explain. He was a tall man who looked like
1137
01:21:07.720 --> 01:21:10.479
he was part black, with a suit jacket on. She
1138
01:21:10.600 --> 01:21:13.960
reported to The Seattle Times. He had very thin hands.
1139
01:21:14.359 --> 01:21:16.319
He walked to the end of the bar and just
1140
01:21:16.560 --> 01:21:22.399
kind of faded. Whether it's Halloween or Saint Patrick's Day,
1141
01:21:22.800 --> 01:21:25.319
if you're in Seattle and you feel like having an
1142
01:21:25.319 --> 01:21:29.079
other worldly experience, you just might want to spend it
1143
01:21:29.479 --> 01:21:38.359
at an Irish pub and try your luck. Missus Emma
1144
01:21:38.399 --> 01:21:41.800
Mars and her sister in law Ida Mars, were preparing
1145
01:21:41.840 --> 01:21:46.319
breakfast the morning of February thirteenth, eighteen ninety seven, in
1146
01:21:46.399 --> 01:21:50.800
their home at one twenty nine South Upper Street, Lexington, Kentucky.
1147
01:21:51.680 --> 01:21:55.199
Around seven forty five. Missus Mars sent the servant girl
1148
01:21:55.279 --> 01:21:58.239
upstairs with a bowl of warm water so her husband
1149
01:21:58.319 --> 01:22:02.000
John could wash up. When she entered the room, John
1150
01:22:02.359 --> 01:22:05.319
jumped out of bed with such a peculiar expression on
1151
01:22:05.359 --> 01:22:08.279
his face that she quickly set the water down and
1152
01:22:08.439 --> 01:22:11.319
hurried out of the room. She was half way down
1153
01:22:11.359 --> 01:22:14.560
the stairs when she heard a pistol shot from the bedroom.
1154
01:22:15.439 --> 01:22:18.800
Mister and Missus Mars and their two children, John Junior,
1155
01:22:18.840 --> 01:22:22.920
aged five, and Helen, aged fifteen, slept in two beds
1156
01:22:22.960 --> 01:22:26.800
in the same room. John Mars Senior had shot his
1157
01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:30.319
son in the forehead as he lay in bed. The
1158
01:22:30.359 --> 01:22:33.760
shot startled Helen awake, She saw what had happened and
1159
01:22:33.840 --> 01:22:38.319
started screaming. John fired two shots at Helen, one mister
1160
01:22:38.600 --> 01:22:41.560
the other went through her neck. Helen ran from the
1161
01:22:41.640 --> 01:22:45.720
room as Emma and Ida approached the room, running into
1162
01:22:45.720 --> 01:22:49.279
her mother's arms, Helen cried, Oh, Mamma, Papa has killed me.
1163
01:22:49.439 --> 01:22:53.039
Don't go in there, He'll kill you. Ida Mars entered
1164
01:22:53.039 --> 01:22:56.199
the room just as John Mars smashed the head of
1165
01:22:56.239 --> 01:22:59.479
his wounded son with the pistol. He turned the gun
1166
01:22:59.560 --> 01:23:02.920
on his sin and fired. When the shot missed Ida,
1167
01:23:03.199 --> 01:23:05.720
he threw the pistol at her head, knocking her to
1168
01:23:05.760 --> 01:23:10.119
the ground. The boy was still crying in pain. Mars
1169
01:23:10.199 --> 01:23:13.640
drew a straight razor and with a wild, maniacal laugh,
1170
01:23:14.000 --> 01:23:18.000
cut his son's throat from ear to ear. He then
1171
01:23:18.479 --> 01:23:22.720
did the same to his own throat, severing his windpipe
1172
01:23:22.760 --> 01:23:26.920
and jugular vein. Carrying the Gunshot's neighbors forced open the
1173
01:23:26.960 --> 01:23:31.720
door and rushed in. In the bedroom, now quiet, they
1174
01:23:31.760 --> 01:23:35.520
found a gruesome scene. The young boy lay on the bed,
1175
01:23:36.039 --> 01:23:41.199
shot beaten and slashed. John Mars lay on the floor
1176
01:23:41.319 --> 01:23:44.840
in a sea of blood. In the hall, Helen was
1177
01:23:44.880 --> 01:23:48.359
wounded and unconscious. Ida was in a state of shock
1178
01:23:48.840 --> 01:23:54.279
and Emma was suffering from nervous prostration. John Mars had
1179
01:23:54.279 --> 01:23:58.039
a history of mental illness. At age twenty two, he
1180
01:23:58.239 --> 01:24:01.760
was courting Emma Davis and asked for her hand in marriage.
1181
01:24:02.279 --> 01:24:06.399
When she refused, he became infuriated and swore he would
1182
01:24:06.479 --> 01:24:09.720
kill her if she did not marry him. Mars was
1183
01:24:09.800 --> 01:24:14.840
judged insane and committed to the Eastern Kentucky Asylum. After
1184
01:24:14.880 --> 01:24:18.520
six months, the doctors determined him cured and he was released.
1185
01:24:19.359 --> 01:24:22.319
Emma then agreed to marry him, and they settled into
1186
01:24:22.359 --> 01:24:26.319
a happy marriage. John had a successful career with M.
1187
01:24:26.399 --> 01:24:29.479
Kaufman and Company clothiers, and owned a great deal of
1188
01:24:29.520 --> 01:24:34.000
real estate and interest in several building associations. He belonged
1189
01:24:34.039 --> 01:24:36.720
to the Knights of Honour and the Odd Fellows, and
1190
01:24:36.920 --> 01:24:41.279
was a deacon at the Central Christian Church. Around Christmas
1191
01:24:41.439 --> 01:24:47.119
eighteen ninety six, John was taken violently ill, having peculiar headaches.
1192
01:24:48.159 --> 01:24:50.800
Since then, he had not been in his right mind.
1193
01:24:51.479 --> 01:24:54.279
He was given to spells of melancholy, during which he
1194
01:24:54.279 --> 01:24:59.960
would discuss suicide. Doctor Joseph Bryan examined John and advised
1195
01:25:00.159 --> 01:25:03.960
family to commit him to the asylum again. The night
1196
01:25:04.039 --> 01:25:06.840
before the murder, he said to his wife and sister,
1197
01:25:07.399 --> 01:25:10.560
I'm not afraid to die, but I can't bear to
1198
01:25:10.640 --> 01:25:13.720
leave you all. I want my children to go with me.
1199
01:25:14.960 --> 01:25:18.279
Thinking he was joking, one of them responded, why what
1200
01:25:18.359 --> 01:25:20.399
are you going to do with your wife and sister.
1201
01:25:21.520 --> 01:25:24.720
Oh you must come too, he said, I want all
1202
01:25:24.800 --> 01:25:28.800
of you. The Mars family was one of the oldest
1203
01:25:28.920 --> 01:25:33.199
and most prominent families in Kentucky. The funeral for John
1204
01:25:33.239 --> 01:25:37.760
Mars Senior and John Mars Junior on February fourteenth filled
1205
01:25:37.800 --> 01:25:42.520
the Central Christian Church with fifteen hundred mourners, and Minnie
1206
01:25:42.560 --> 01:25:47.600
Moore stood outside blocking the streets for blocks. Father and
1207
01:25:47.720 --> 01:26:03.159
son were buried in the same grave. Thanks for listening.
1208
01:26:03.279 --> 01:26:05.399
If you like the show, please tell someone about it
1209
01:26:05.399 --> 01:26:09.680
who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters,
1210
01:26:09.760 --> 01:26:12.760
or unsolved mysteries like you do. If you missed any
1211
01:26:12.760 --> 01:26:14.279
part of tonight's show, or if you'd like to hear
1212
01:26:14.319 --> 01:26:16.840
it again, you can subscribe to the podcast in your
1213
01:26:16.840 --> 01:26:20.840
favorite podcast app by searching for Weird Darkness. By doing that,
1214
01:26:20.880 --> 01:26:23.560
you'll get a copy of tonight's show, plus daily podcast
1215
01:26:23.600 --> 01:26:27.159
episodes that come out seven days per week. Visit Weirddarkness
1216
01:26:27.239 --> 01:26:29.439
dot com, and you can follow me on social media,
1217
01:26:29.760 --> 01:26:32.840
drop me an email, send me your own true paranormal story,
1218
01:26:33.039 --> 01:26:36.359
listen to other podcasts that I host, and more. All
1219
01:26:36.399 --> 01:26:39.960
stories used tonight are purported to be true unless stated otherwise,
1220
01:26:40.039 --> 01:26:41.720
and you can find links to the stories or the
1221
01:26:41.800 --> 01:26:44.520
authors in the show notes, which I've already posted at
1222
01:26:44.520 --> 01:26:47.800
Weirddarkness dot com. The Leady You Laughing in My Bedroom
1223
01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:51.439
is by Jeff James from My Haunted Life Too, New York.
1224
01:26:51.479 --> 01:26:55.359
Charnelhouse was posted at Empire Dilomort. The Beaux Arts Butterworth
1225
01:26:55.399 --> 01:26:58.920
Building was by Meg Van Hegen for Seattle Curbbed. The
1226
01:26:59.000 --> 01:27:01.560
Act of a Madman was written by Robert Wilhelm for
1227
01:27:01.720 --> 01:27:06.439
Murder by Gaslight. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark copyright
1228
01:27:06.479 --> 01:27:09.479
Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark,
1229
01:27:09.840 --> 01:27:13.039
I'll leave you with a little light first, Peter five,
1230
01:27:13.239 --> 01:27:18.039
verses six and seven. Humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand,
1231
01:27:18.119 --> 01:27:20.920
that he may lift you up in due time. Cast
1232
01:27:20.960 --> 01:27:23.920
all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1233
01:27:25.359 --> 01:27:29.399
And a final thought, value yourself and know your worth.
1234
01:27:29.720 --> 01:27:33.359
You are as important as everyone on this earth, every
1235
01:27:33.439 --> 01:27:36.560
human being has a purpose. Your life has value. It
1236
01:27:36.640 --> 01:27:41.279
is not worthless. You are beautiful and special. Be proud
1237
01:27:41.439 --> 01:27:44.319
of who you are. Live your life to the fullest,
1238
01:27:44.640 --> 01:27:49.920
and reach for the stars. Harry Bridgeman, I'm Daryn Marler.
1239
01:27:50.680 --> 01:28:43.159
Thanks for joining me in the weird darkness Dots in Washington,
1240
01:28:43.239 --> 01:28:46.640
d C. There are two walls that, from far enough away,
1241
01:28:47.079 --> 01:28:51.239
appear to be black slabs. As you come closer, you
1242
01:28:51.279 --> 01:28:55.560
start to notice the etchings on the walls. Closer still,
1243
01:28:55.720 --> 01:28:59.520
and you will see that the etchings are names. In total,
1244
01:28:59.600 --> 01:29:03.640
there are fifty eight thousand, three hundred and eight names,
1245
01:29:04.319 --> 01:29:07.600
each one belonging to an American man or woman who
1246
01:29:07.680 --> 01:29:11.640
lost their life in the Vietnam War. Most of these
1247
01:29:11.720 --> 01:29:15.680
lost souls return home to be buried, but far too
1248
01:29:15.760 --> 01:29:19.239
many some who died but were never found, Others who
1249
01:29:19.319 --> 01:29:24.119
were taken as POWs et cetera, never came back. For
1250
01:29:24.159 --> 01:29:27.600
the families of these missing twelve hundred people, there was
1251
01:29:27.680 --> 01:29:31.840
a hole that will never be filled, a hole created
1252
01:29:31.920 --> 01:29:38.319
by uncertainty, by fear, by grief. To this day, there
1253
01:29:38.359 --> 01:29:42.399
are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters
1254
01:29:43.000 --> 01:29:47.560
hoping for a miracle, hoping that their loved one will return,
1255
01:29:48.119 --> 01:29:51.239
and with each passing year the chances of that miracle
1256
01:29:51.279 --> 01:29:56.520
happening shrinks. For the family of Master Sergeant John Hartley Robertson,
1257
01:29:57.079 --> 01:30:01.239
that miracle happened in twenty thirteen, No matter what the
1258
01:30:01.279 --> 01:30:05.720
world tells them. John Robertson was thirty two when the
1259
01:30:05.760 --> 01:30:09.079
helicopter he was in was shot down over Laos in
1260
01:30:09.159 --> 01:30:13.760
May nineteen sixty eight. The copter carrying Robertson was never recovered,
1261
01:30:13.920 --> 01:30:17.199
and in nineteen seventy six he and the other passengers
1262
01:30:17.199 --> 01:30:22.199
were declared dead. In nineteen eighty two, Robertson, along with
1263
01:30:22.239 --> 01:30:25.239
his brothers in arms, had his name etched into the
1264
01:30:25.319 --> 01:30:29.119
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. He can be found on panel
1265
01:30:29.199 --> 01:30:34.000
sixty four, e row eight. At the same time as
1266
01:30:34.039 --> 01:30:37.000
the memorial was opened to the public, the U. S
1267
01:30:37.039 --> 01:30:41.880
Government received reports that Robertson was alive. Robertson's wife and
1268
01:30:42.000 --> 01:30:47.279
children weren't told. Tom Fonce never had an easy life.
1269
01:30:47.359 --> 01:30:50.479
Born in Detroit, Fwance's father died when he was young,
1270
01:30:50.800 --> 01:30:53.680
and while Fonce never liked to speak about it, his
1271
01:30:53.800 --> 01:30:57.079
children believed that their grandfather perished in a house fire.
1272
01:30:58.000 --> 01:31:00.760
After the death of his father, Fance spent a life
1273
01:31:00.800 --> 01:31:04.800
in and out of orphanages and detention centers, suffering abuses.
1274
01:31:04.840 --> 01:31:08.159
He preferred to keep to himself. When the chance came,
1275
01:31:08.319 --> 01:31:11.119
Fance joined the U. S. Army and spent twenty seven
1276
01:31:11.159 --> 01:31:14.600
months in Vietnam. His time in the military gave Fance
1277
01:31:14.720 --> 01:31:19.119
something he had been missing, a family. After the war,
1278
01:31:19.479 --> 01:31:22.119
Fance became a born again Christian and chose to live
1279
01:31:22.159 --> 01:31:25.960
his life by a simple but honorable credo, radical love,
1280
01:31:26.600 --> 01:31:31.720
No one left behind, no one left unloved. Fans spent
1281
01:31:31.760 --> 01:31:35.680
his life traveling the world on humanitarian missions, doing his
1282
01:31:35.840 --> 01:31:39.840
best to ease the suffering of others. In two thousand
1283
01:31:39.840 --> 01:31:42.840
and eight, France was on a humanitarian mission in Vietnam
1284
01:31:43.239 --> 01:31:46.960
when he heard about John Robertson, the American soldier who
1285
01:31:46.960 --> 01:31:50.279
had been living in a small village. Fance set out
1286
01:31:50.319 --> 01:31:54.800
to the village to find Robertson. Robertson was old and
1287
01:31:54.880 --> 01:31:58.319
he had all but forgotten how to speak English. He
1288
01:31:58.359 --> 01:32:01.720
sat with Fonse and explained what happened. In May nineteen
1289
01:32:01.800 --> 01:32:05.079
sixty eight, his coptor was en route to a rescue
1290
01:32:05.079 --> 01:32:08.600
mission when it was shot down over some mountains. Robertson
1291
01:32:08.600 --> 01:32:11.520
survived the crash, but was instantly taken captive by North
1292
01:32:11.600 --> 01:32:15.840
Vietnamese soldiers. For four years, they kept Robertson caged up,
1293
01:32:16.079 --> 01:32:19.720
beating and starving him. At first, they tortured Robertson in
1294
01:32:19.840 --> 01:32:22.920
hopes of gaining information from him, but in time the
1295
01:32:23.000 --> 01:32:26.479
torture just became something to pass the time when he
1296
01:32:26.520 --> 01:32:29.760
saw his chance, Robertson escaped from his cage and ran.
1297
01:32:30.520 --> 01:32:33.439
He evaded the soldiers that pursued him and broke out
1298
01:32:33.439 --> 01:32:36.279
of the forest before collapsing into a field, where he
1299
01:32:36.359 --> 01:32:39.119
was found by a woman he would later marry and
1300
01:32:39.239 --> 01:32:44.119
have four children with. For reasons unknown, Robertson never tried
1301
01:32:44.119 --> 01:32:48.279
to contact his family in America. For over forty years,
1302
01:32:48.520 --> 01:32:51.720
John Hartley Robertson lived with his new wife and children
1303
01:32:52.199 --> 01:32:55.640
under the name of his new wife's dead husband. Dang
1304
01:32:55.760 --> 01:33:00.800
Tan knock fonce pushed Robertson, now in his seventies, for
1305
01:33:00.880 --> 01:33:04.119
more information. He wasn't about to blindly trust the man,
1306
01:33:04.199 --> 01:33:06.880
but he hoped deep in his heart that what he
1307
01:33:07.000 --> 01:33:11.199
was being told was the truth. Robertson was clear on
1308
01:33:11.319 --> 01:33:14.159
some details, but other things, like when he was born
1309
01:33:14.279 --> 01:33:17.359
or the names of his American children, he couldn't remember,
1310
01:33:18.199 --> 01:33:21.079
he was suffering from dementia and would often break down
1311
01:33:21.119 --> 01:33:25.560
in tears. Fonts, with the help of Emmy winning documentarian
1312
01:33:25.680 --> 01:33:31.279
Michael Jorgensen, searched for more information on Robertson. They found
1313
01:33:31.359 --> 01:33:35.239
that the US government has been contacted by Robertson multiple times,
1314
01:33:35.319 --> 01:33:39.479
but they never informed his family. Robertson first contacted the
1315
01:33:39.560 --> 01:33:42.159
US military in two thousand and six to tell them
1316
01:33:42.199 --> 01:33:45.439
that he was alive. In the information he filled out,
1317
01:33:45.800 --> 01:33:48.359
Robertson wrote down the name of a non existent high
1318
01:33:48.399 --> 01:33:52.039
school and the wrong address for his US home. He
1319
01:33:52.119 --> 01:33:57.199
also misspelled his own name. Robertson tried again in two
1320
01:33:57.279 --> 01:33:59.600
thousand and eight, and this time he was taken to
1321
01:33:59.600 --> 01:34:03.039
the US symbassy in Panan, penn where he was fingerprinted.
1322
01:34:03.640 --> 01:34:06.720
His prince did not match the ones on file. As
1323
01:34:06.720 --> 01:34:09.359
far as the US government was concerned, this was another
1324
01:34:09.399 --> 01:34:12.800
case of a Vietnamese man trying to trick the military
1325
01:34:12.840 --> 01:34:15.640
into giving him the back pay that John Robertson would
1326
01:34:15.640 --> 01:34:19.760
be owed. Tom Fawns wasn't so ready to call Robertson
1327
01:34:19.800 --> 01:34:23.239
a liar, though. His belief is that the US authorities
1328
01:34:23.239 --> 01:34:28.039
are working to keep Robertson and other living US Miapow's
1329
01:34:28.079 --> 01:34:32.239
and Vietnam silent, though the reason to do so is unclear.
1330
01:34:33.239 --> 01:34:37.319
Fonce and Jorgenson took Robertson to Edmonton, Canada to meet
1331
01:34:37.359 --> 01:34:42.039
his only living sister, Jean Robertson Holly. After a brief moment,
1332
01:34:42.159 --> 01:34:44.920
Jeane was sure the man standing before her was her
1333
01:34:44.920 --> 01:34:48.560
brother back from the dead. Jorgenson turned the story into
1334
01:34:48.560 --> 01:34:54.640
a documentary titled Undocumented in twenty thirteen. Shortly after the premiere,
1335
01:34:54.880 --> 01:34:59.760
US authorities released new information on Robertson. In nineteen ninety one,
1336
01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:04.760
former CIA Paramilitary Operations officer Billy Waugh traveled to Vietnam
1337
01:35:04.840 --> 01:35:08.159
to fined Robertson and obtained a DNA sample for testing.
1338
01:35:08.880 --> 01:35:12.720
Waugh was successful, and the test proved that Robertson had
1339
01:35:12.760 --> 01:35:15.840
not taken the name Dang Tang Knock from a dead man.
1340
01:35:16.399 --> 01:35:20.840
He was Dang Tan Knock. How Dang Tan Knock, a
1341
01:35:20.920 --> 01:35:24.800
Vietnamese citizen of French origin, had found the name of
1342
01:35:24.920 --> 01:35:29.159
Master Sergeant John Hartley Robertson, or why he chose it
1343
01:35:29.199 --> 01:35:32.279
is unknown. What is known is that Dang Tang Knock
1344
01:35:32.479 --> 01:35:35.239
is a well known con man who has used the
1345
01:35:35.319 --> 01:35:39.359
names of multiple dead soldiers to con veterans groups into
1346
01:35:39.359 --> 01:35:43.680
giving him money. While believed that Knock had collected thousands
1347
01:35:43.680 --> 01:35:48.680
of dollars over the year, still Master Sergeant Robertson's family
1348
01:35:48.920 --> 01:35:52.760
held out hope. In November of twenty thirteen, they started
1349
01:35:52.760 --> 01:35:55.800
a gofund me campaign in hopes to get the money
1350
01:35:55.800 --> 01:35:59.479
needed to perform their own DNA test. While they were
1351
01:35:59.560 --> 01:36:03.000
unable to reach the intended goal, the Robertson family was
1352
01:36:03.039 --> 01:36:06.039
able to get the test done. The results showed that
1353
01:36:06.079 --> 01:36:09.600
Wall had found over twenty years earlier. Dang Tan Knock
1354
01:36:09.760 --> 01:36:14.760
was not John Hartley Robertson. Men like Dang Tan Knock,
1355
01:36:15.039 --> 01:36:18.039
men who take advantage of the grieving and the hopeful,
1356
01:36:18.359 --> 01:36:22.119
are true monsters who walk the earth every day. To
1357
01:36:22.199 --> 01:36:24.960
lose a family member to a war can be nothing
1358
01:36:25.039 --> 01:36:29.199
less than shattering to one's soul. To lose them again
1359
01:36:29.760 --> 01:36:32.600
because of the actions of a con man is something
1360
01:36:32.840 --> 01:36:36.359
no one should ever have to feel. The want to
1361
01:36:36.399 --> 01:36:40.399
believe that your loved one is alive and well overtakes
1362
01:36:40.439 --> 01:36:44.279
the rational side of your mind, pushing out all doubts,
1363
01:36:44.800 --> 01:36:48.399
because in the end, all any of us want is
1364
01:36:48.439 --> 01:36:53.399
a happy ending. To find out more about Mia or
1365
01:36:53.479 --> 01:36:56.960
POW's that are still missing, and to donate to those
1366
01:36:57.000 --> 01:36:59.880
families who are still living with uncertainty about their loved
1367
01:37:00.079 --> 01:37:04.239
one who fought in Vietnam. You can visit pow dash
1368
01:37:04.439 --> 01:37:11.159
Mia families dot org. That's pow dash Mia families dot org.
1369
01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:20.159
When Weird Darkness returns, a woman comes home to find
1370
01:37:20.199 --> 01:37:24.880
her visiting sister murdered and police are convinced she was
1371
01:37:24.920 --> 01:37:28.199
the one who committed the crime, So why wasn't she
1372
01:37:28.319 --> 01:37:33.239
locked up in prison? And a bordello, pizza and a haunting.
1373
01:37:33.600 --> 01:37:36.199
You can find them all at the Red Onion Saloon.
1374
01:37:37.119 --> 01:38:08.840
These stories are up next. Missus Ida Quinlan and her
1375
01:38:08.920 --> 01:38:11.359
nine year old son Johnny, went out to buy a
1376
01:38:11.399 --> 01:38:15.199
pair of stockings around nine o'clock the night of February first,
1377
01:38:15.279 --> 01:38:18.560
eighteen ninety six. Leaving her baby in the care of
1378
01:38:18.600 --> 01:38:22.159
her sister, missus Sophia Grant. They took a street car
1379
01:38:22.239 --> 01:38:26.159
to the store several miles away, purchased the stockings and
1380
01:38:26.319 --> 01:38:29.840
other sundry items. Returning to the house at around eleven,
1381
01:38:30.720 --> 01:38:34.479
Ida rang the bell, but there was no response, so
1382
01:38:34.520 --> 01:38:37.279
she went to the landlord who lived nearby and got
1383
01:38:37.319 --> 01:38:40.239
a key to the house. Entering the sitting room, she
1384
01:38:40.319 --> 01:38:43.479
was surprised to see the drawers of the chiffoniers pulled
1385
01:38:43.479 --> 01:38:47.319
out and the contents spread on the floor. She called
1386
01:38:47.319 --> 01:38:50.319
for Sophia, and, getting no response, went into the kitchen,
1387
01:38:50.800 --> 01:38:53.640
where she found her sister lying dead on the floor,
1388
01:38:54.199 --> 01:38:58.520
covered with blood. Horrified, Ida ran from the house to
1389
01:38:58.520 --> 01:39:01.560
seek assistance from the neighbors. At least that was the
1390
01:39:01.600 --> 01:39:05.640
story she told the police. The following day, Ida Quinland
1391
01:39:05.680 --> 01:39:09.600
was arrested for the murder of her own sister. They
1392
01:39:09.640 --> 01:39:12.880
lived in a three story tenement in the Charlestown section
1393
01:39:13.119 --> 01:39:16.000
of Boston. It was a two family home, but at
1394
01:39:16.039 --> 01:39:19.039
the time Ida Quinland and the two children shared the
1395
01:39:19.079 --> 01:39:22.960
house with their sister, Sophia Grant and their brother Angus MacLeod,
1396
01:39:23.319 --> 01:39:26.600
a conductor on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
1397
01:39:27.199 --> 01:39:30.720
They also took in lodgers. John Thompson, a brake band
1398
01:39:30.760 --> 01:39:32.880
on the same line as Angus, sat a room there.
1399
01:39:33.880 --> 01:39:37.359
Sophia had married b. W. Grand three years earlier, but
1400
01:39:37.439 --> 01:39:39.920
after a few months they decided that they did not
1401
01:39:40.079 --> 01:39:43.439
want to live together. She stayed in Charlestown and he
1402
01:39:43.680 --> 01:39:46.119
lived in Providence, Rhode Island, where he had a dry
1403
01:39:46.119 --> 01:39:49.880
goods business. It was said Sophia and her husband were
1404
01:39:49.880 --> 01:39:55.439
on friendly terms and corresponded frequently. Doctor O'Brien examined the
1405
01:39:55.479 --> 01:39:58.800
body for the police and determined Sophia Grand had been
1406
01:39:58.840 --> 01:40:02.119
struck in the head several times, with a blunt object
1407
01:40:02.680 --> 01:40:06.199
fracturing her skull. She was wearing nothing but a night
1408
01:40:06.279 --> 01:40:10.520
dress and stockings, but had not been sexually assaulted. There
1409
01:40:10.520 --> 01:40:13.279
were no signs of a struggle, but a rocking chair
1410
01:40:13.319 --> 01:40:17.479
in the kitchen was overturned. She was probably struck while
1411
01:40:17.520 --> 01:40:21.600
sitting in it. Robbery was thought to be the motive,
1412
01:40:21.680 --> 01:40:24.079
but no one from the house could say that anything
1413
01:40:24.279 --> 01:40:28.880
was missing. Ida thought Sophia kept twenty five dollars and
1414
01:40:29.079 --> 01:40:32.800
wanted the drawers, but that could not be confirmed. The
1415
01:40:32.880 --> 01:40:35.640
doors had been locked when Ida returned, and there were
1416
01:40:35.680 --> 01:40:38.760
no signs of a forced entry. It could have been
1417
01:40:38.840 --> 01:40:41.079
one of the residents of the house, but everyone with
1418
01:40:41.159 --> 01:40:44.399
a latch key had an alibi. It might have been
1419
01:40:44.439 --> 01:40:48.000
a former lodger who kept his key, or possibly the
1420
01:40:48.079 --> 01:40:50.600
killer had climbed a drain pipe and entered through a
1421
01:40:50.600 --> 01:40:54.199
broken window on the third floor, but the police did
1422
01:40:54.199 --> 01:40:57.399
not think it was necessary to go so far afield.
1423
01:40:58.159 --> 01:41:02.479
Ida Quinlan's story did not stand up to close scrutiny.
1424
01:41:02.880 --> 01:41:06.520
The police had several reasons to suspect Ida of the murder.
1425
01:41:07.119 --> 01:41:09.720
She had a record of violence, having been charged with
1426
01:41:09.760 --> 01:41:13.680
assault and battery three months earlier. Ida's husband, David, had
1427
01:41:13.720 --> 01:41:17.239
moved out due to her bad temper and drinking habits.
1428
01:41:17.479 --> 01:41:19.920
She was the last to see the murdered woman and
1429
01:41:20.039 --> 01:41:23.279
the first to find her dead. She could not explain
1430
01:41:23.479 --> 01:41:26.840
why she left the house after nine o'clock and traveled
1431
01:41:26.880 --> 01:41:29.319
so far to make a purchase that she could have
1432
01:41:29.399 --> 01:41:32.640
made at a store near her home. It was unusual
1433
01:41:32.960 --> 01:41:34.800
for her to keep her nine year old boy out
1434
01:41:34.840 --> 01:41:38.079
past eleven. After finding the body, she ran from the
1435
01:41:38.119 --> 01:41:41.279
house without first checking on her baby. Their guard dog,
1436
01:41:41.479 --> 01:41:45.520
a large black Newfoundland named Fred, gave no indication of
1437
01:41:45.560 --> 01:41:49.680
being disturbed by an intruder. The police were convinced that
1438
01:41:49.720 --> 01:41:53.000
Ida Quinlan was guilty and arrested her for the murder
1439
01:41:53.039 --> 01:41:58.239
of her sister. Additional evidence was gathered. Doctor Wood of
1440
01:41:58.279 --> 01:42:02.640
Harvard University, who did forends analysis for the police, examined
1441
01:42:02.680 --> 01:42:06.520
the dress Ida war and found blood not in blotches
1442
01:42:06.600 --> 01:42:09.319
which might have resulted from touching the body after death,
1443
01:42:09.760 --> 01:42:15.039
but small spots as if spattered. Her Macintosh shirt, waist
1444
01:42:15.079 --> 01:42:19.319
and shoes also had spots of blood. Nine year old
1445
01:42:19.359 --> 01:42:22.960
Johnny Quinlan, when questioned, said he'd been by his mother's
1446
01:42:23.000 --> 01:42:27.439
side all night, but the police found witnesses who contradicted that.
1447
01:42:28.079 --> 01:42:30.560
At nine o'clock, a delivery man came by with a
1448
01:42:30.600 --> 01:42:34.319
dozen bottles of beer Ida had ordered. Normally, he would
1449
01:42:34.319 --> 01:42:36.880
have carried them upstairs for her, but this time Ida
1450
01:42:36.960 --> 01:42:41.920
carried them herself while she was inside. William D. Daughtry,
1451
01:42:42.119 --> 01:42:44.199
a tailor on his way to the shop, saw a
1452
01:42:44.239 --> 01:42:47.880
boy standing alone on the street. He recognized him as
1453
01:42:47.960 --> 01:42:52.159
Johnny Quinlan and said hello. Ida and Johnny had been
1454
01:42:52.199 --> 01:42:56.079
seen apart long enough for her to have murdered Sophia.
1455
01:42:57.359 --> 01:43:00.279
The biggest problem for the police was the absence sense
1456
01:43:00.319 --> 01:43:04.319
of a motive for the murder. Relations between Ida and
1457
01:43:04.399 --> 01:43:08.319
Sophia were cordial. There were no recent arguments or long
1458
01:43:08.359 --> 01:43:12.279
standing feuds between them. It was said that they disagreed
1459
01:43:12.359 --> 01:43:16.880
on religious matters, but not enough to incur violence. Ida
1460
01:43:17.000 --> 01:43:21.119
would not benefit financially by her sister's death. There appeared
1461
01:43:21.119 --> 01:43:24.079
to be no reason for Ida to kill her sister.
1462
01:43:25.239 --> 01:43:27.600
In spite of this, the police were ready to take
1463
01:43:27.680 --> 01:43:31.039
their case to the grand jury. Without a motive. It
1464
01:43:31.119 --> 01:43:33.680
was doubtful that Ida would be indicted for a first
1465
01:43:33.720 --> 01:43:36.680
degree murder, but the police were sure that she'd be
1466
01:43:36.800 --> 01:43:41.199
charged with second degree murder or at least manslaughter. But
1467
01:43:41.239 --> 01:43:44.399
the grand jury was not impressed by the evidence against
1468
01:43:44.439 --> 01:43:49.279
Ida Quinlan and did not return any indictment. While they
1469
01:43:49.359 --> 01:43:52.880
vowed to keep investigating, the police were reluctant to pursue
1470
01:43:52.920 --> 01:43:56.720
any other theory. They had gone all in against Ida
1471
01:43:56.800 --> 01:44:01.159
Quinlan and they still believed she was guilty. Their reputation
1472
01:44:01.239 --> 01:44:05.199
as officers rests on their claim, said the Boston Daily Advertiser,
1473
01:44:05.520 --> 01:44:07.520
and it could not be said that they would attempt
1474
01:44:07.560 --> 01:44:10.479
to pass over any other clue. Yet it can easily
1475
01:44:10.560 --> 01:44:12.399
be seen that it would be very hard for them
1476
01:44:12.439 --> 01:44:15.279
to get up much enthusiasm and working over something that
1477
01:44:15.319 --> 01:44:18.920
would be a slap in their own faces. The Boston
1478
01:44:18.960 --> 01:44:23.600
Police found no more evidence against Ida Quinlan or anyone
1479
01:44:23.640 --> 01:44:27.880
else in the case. The murder, which made sensational headlines
1480
01:44:27.920 --> 01:44:43.279
in February, was all but forgotten in March. In the
1481
01:44:43.319 --> 01:44:47.359
small city of Skagway, Alaska, on Broadway Street, there is
1482
01:44:47.399 --> 01:44:50.600
a building built with planks cut by the town's founder
1483
01:44:50.800 --> 01:44:55.560
Captain William Moore. This building is interesting for three reasons,
1484
01:44:56.119 --> 01:45:02.159
a bit of naughty history, pizza, and a haunting. The
1485
01:45:02.279 --> 01:45:05.760
naughty history of the building began just after its completion,
1486
01:45:05.960 --> 01:45:09.000
when it opened as a bordello in eighteen ninety eight,
1487
01:45:09.399 --> 01:45:13.119
called the Red Onion Saloon. This was during the gold
1488
01:45:13.239 --> 01:45:17.239
rush when miners hoping to hit it big traveled through Skagway,
1489
01:45:17.319 --> 01:45:20.039
which had been dubbed the Gateway to the Klondike, on
1490
01:45:20.119 --> 01:45:23.199
their way to find gold nuggets. Miners would come in
1491
01:45:23.279 --> 01:45:26.920
looking for entertainment in both drink and ladies that they
1492
01:45:26.960 --> 01:45:30.840
found both in the Red Onion Saloon. The first floor
1493
01:45:30.920 --> 01:45:33.680
was a saloon where the men would imbibe alcohol and
1494
01:45:33.800 --> 01:45:37.399
dance with the women. The second floor contained ten rooms
1495
01:45:37.680 --> 01:45:41.319
where the men were entertained by the ladies who inhabited them.
1496
01:45:41.720 --> 01:45:45.000
Choosing the ladies was done with dolls. Each had a
1497
01:45:45.039 --> 01:45:48.199
doll that represented them behind the bar. If the dolls
1498
01:45:48.199 --> 01:45:51.560
were sitting up, the lady that the doll represented was available.
1499
01:45:52.000 --> 01:45:55.359
If the doll was lying on their back, they were entertaining.
1500
01:45:56.399 --> 01:45:59.119
As time passed and the rush for gold faded from
1501
01:45:59.159 --> 01:46:03.119
the area, the bordello eventually faded as well, leaving the
1502
01:46:03.119 --> 01:46:07.319
building behind to become other things. It was used as
1503
01:46:07.399 --> 01:46:11.000
barracks in World War II to house soldiers. It also
1504
01:46:11.199 --> 01:46:15.239
became a union hall, bakery and gift shop, as well
1505
01:46:15.279 --> 01:46:18.720
as a laundry and television station. But its history as
1506
01:46:18.720 --> 01:46:21.680
a bordello would not fade and it was destined to
1507
01:46:21.720 --> 01:46:26.640
become a saloon again, only this time there would be pizza.
1508
01:46:27.840 --> 01:46:30.920
Today it is a historical landmark and operates as a
1509
01:46:31.000 --> 01:46:36.039
saloon and brothel themed pizzeria with pizzas with bordello themed
1510
01:46:36.159 --> 01:46:40.600
names like the Busty LaRue or Lady Lovoi, and the
1511
01:46:40.640 --> 01:46:44.760
employees dress as madams from the Red Onion Saloons Heyday,
1512
01:46:45.319 --> 01:46:48.880
as well as barmen and musicians in period dress from
1513
01:46:48.960 --> 01:46:52.399
that time. It's also a working museum where they give
1514
01:46:52.479 --> 01:46:55.319
tours and you can view items that were once in
1515
01:46:55.359 --> 01:46:59.359
the brothel. Sounds like a fun place to visit, even
1516
01:46:59.399 --> 01:47:03.399
without a ghost. The haunting itself is allegedly the ghost
1517
01:47:03.479 --> 01:47:06.199
of a woman who had been named Lydia and is
1518
01:47:06.279 --> 01:47:08.800
thought to have been a prostitute at the Red Onion
1519
01:47:08.840 --> 01:47:12.560
Saloon during the Gold Rush. There have been multiple sightings
1520
01:47:12.600 --> 01:47:16.079
of her, especially in the upstairs area, though she has
1521
01:47:16.159 --> 01:47:19.560
been allegedly hostile to men. She does have a fondness
1522
01:47:19.600 --> 01:47:23.319
for plants in the saloon and waters them. There have
1523
01:47:23.399 --> 01:47:26.479
been footsteps heard on the second floor, and if that
1524
01:47:26.520 --> 01:47:29.359
doesn't frighten you, she also has appeared as a full
1525
01:47:29.439 --> 01:47:33.399
bodied apparition that ran down the hall when police came
1526
01:47:33.439 --> 01:47:36.680
to check out a disturbance. She then ran into the
1527
01:47:36.720 --> 01:47:40.159
Madam's room. When they checked it, no one was in
1528
01:47:40.199 --> 01:47:43.880
the room. It is often this room where her spirit
1529
01:47:43.920 --> 01:47:46.600
is seen walking around and watering plants that are no
1530
01:47:46.680 --> 01:47:50.720
longer there. There is often a strong smell of perfume
1531
01:47:51.039 --> 01:47:55.880
and cold spots. Unfortunately, it's not known whether she died
1532
01:47:56.079 --> 01:47:59.119
in the Red Onion Saloon, but one of the former
1533
01:47:59.159 --> 01:48:03.640
madams believed to be named Lydia, and perhaps it is
1534
01:48:03.720 --> 01:48:07.319
her spirit that lingers. So if you want to do
1535
01:48:07.359 --> 01:48:10.640
some ghost hunting on your own, the Red Onion Saloon
1536
01:48:10.880 --> 01:48:16.199
operates from April to October. Get a drink, order a pizza,
1537
01:48:16.880 --> 01:48:20.239
and if you're lucky, you'll also get to see Lydia
1538
01:48:20.279 --> 01:48:24.479
sid intent over time, your darkness